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What is ethics?

When we say “ethics,” what are we talking about?

“Ethics” refers to the moral values that govern the appropriate conduct of an individual or group. “Ethics” speaks to how we ought to live, that is, how we ought to treat others and how we ought to run or manage our own lives.

Ethics as systematic thinking

“Ethics,” as a branch of philosophy, is a systematic attempt to understand the nature and foundations of morality and its effect on our conduct. This involves considering questions of justification, such as, What are the foundations of morality?  How do we know them to be true, or good, or right? It also involves questions of motivation, such as Why should we obey the demands of morality? Or, what motivates us to behave ethically?

Ethics as action-guiding

Ethics is concerned with norms – with standards of conduct – therefore it is concerned with what ought to be the case rather than merely what is the case. Thus, ethics is normative: it is concerned with how we ought to act and what results we ought to try to bring about.

Ethics versus other normative systems

Ethics shares its “action-guiding” nature with other areas of human life such as religion and law.

Unlike religion, ethics appeals to reasons rather than authority to justify its principles. A religious person might believe it is wrong to steal because “Thou shalt not steal” is one of the Ten Commandments of the Bible. But using ethics as our base, we can justify our conclusion that we should not steal because it is morally wrong to harm another person and, when we deprive a person of what is rightfully theirs, we harm them.

And, while much law is based on ethical principles, the two domains are separate. We know that laws can be totally unethical. Think of the South African laws which until 1994 enforced a cruel racial apartheid in that country.

Conversely, there are things we should (ethically speaking) do, for example, give to charities, even though they are not legally required.

Is ethics just about having the right principles?

When people respond intuitively to the question ‘What is ethics?’ they tend to identify ethics with principles which distinguish right and wrong. And this is correct – as far as it goes. However, the kinds of situations which demand ethical action motivated by sound ethical principles also require a specific kind of thinking, namely ethical reflection. 

What do we mean by ethical reflection?

To start, ethical reflection requires perception and judgment. We must be able to identify the relevant facts in a given case, as well as understand whether our action-guiding principles apply in this or that case. And this can be very difficult. For example, is it relevant to our thinking about the ethics of punishment to consider the circumstances and motivation for the wrongdoer's actions.  Consider Robert Latimer, who was convicted of killing his severely disabled daughter Tracy.  He claims that he ended Tracy's life out of love and concern for her suffering.  Serious ethical reflection requires us to distinguish his actions and intentions from someone who kills in cold blood or in the process of committing another crime.  Notice, though, that consideration of Latimer's intentions doesn't mean that we can arrive at an easy decision about his proper punishment.  In fact, such reflection often complicates rather than simplifies our ethical decision-making.

The ability to make these distinctions and judgments develops over time. We all acquire our basic ethical principles and frameworks in early childhood. This is evident in the fact that most cultures teach children some form of the “Golden Rule” – with their parents or guardians asking, “How would you like it if someone did that to you?”

However, our ethical education does not end in childhood – it is a lifelong process of questioning and critical thinking. This is the real business of ethical reflection: refining our ethical perception and judgment through real-life experience, clear thinking, and informed discussion.

Not only are our ethical principles and frameworks learned – they can also be improved. This is the impetus for the Sheldon Chumir Foundation’s efforts to foster critical reflection about ethics: we believe that everyone benefits from thoughtful ethical reflection about the pressing issues of contemporary life, such as our society’s ethical obligations surrounding poverty and powerlessness.

We all have beliefs, ideas, and feelings about ethics. The Foundation’s aim is to help people refine their ethical thinking by providing information and facilitating discussion about ethical issues.

Aren’t ethics just a matter of feelings?

Many people think that ethics are not, in fact, grounded in reasons but merely based on how a person feels about an issue. One reason for this view is that we all have strong feelings about ethical issues and we often disagree with others about them. This sometimes leads people to think that there is no right or wrong answer to any ethical question and that ethics is just a matter of personal conviction.

But this seems wrong. Because we all seem naturally drawn to trying to convince others of our ethical point of view by arguing with them, it seems strange to say that ethics is just a matter of feelings rather than reasons. After all, arguments are about giving reasons for our point of view and it happens that people change their minds in the course of arguments because they find the reasons offered by others convincing. So, ethics can’t just be a matter of how we feel.

This is not to say that emotions do not have an important place in our ethical thinking. If we did not rely on our emotions to some degree – if we didn’t care about others at all, for example – it would be hard to see why we would take any ethical reasons seriously at all. So, emotions certainly can inform our ethical judgments and can motivate us to act out of deep concern for others, but they cannot be all there is to ethical judgment.

The main point here is that good ethical judgments are considered judgments, rather than unexamined biases or emotional intuitions. It is important to feel strongly about our ethical convictions, but feelings alone are not enough – we must think carefully about our ethical judgments in order to ensure that they are justified and consistent.

What about ethical relativism?

You often hear it said that people from one group cannot make moral judgments about the traditions, practices or ways of life of another group. For example, quite a few people seem to think that mainstream Canadians should not label the apparently discriminatory treatment women receive in certain minority ethnic or religious groups as “wrong,” because those practices are part of “their” culture and “we” have, therefore, no right to criticize them. This view is called “ethical relativism” because according to it, what is right and wrong can only be evaluated relative to the behaviour of the group, or culture, in question.

But ethical relativism does not make sense. If ethics are just relative to the given cultural group, then no one can criticize anyone else’s values unless they belong to the same group. Each group’s ethics are “their” ethics and no one can pass  moral judgment on the practices of others. But if this is so, then no group can ever claim that their moral judgments are right, but only “right for us.” Notice that this means that you can't appeal to standards from outside your culture to criticize what you think is wrong—or endorse what is right—within your own culture. For example, if relativism were true, the abolitionists could never have appealed to standards beyond the culture of their time to argue that slavery is wrong. And this is clearly false: some things are just wrong, regardless of your cultural background.

While it may sound shocking, it is nevertheless true, that no one actually believes relativism is an appropriate ethical approach when they stop and think about it. People from societies which have had the benefit of time to “stop and think about it” would all agree, for example, that child sacrifice is morally wrong regardless of the fact, and it is a fact, that there are societies in which that practice continues. So, ethics are not relative.

How does ethical reflection help us to make sense of our lives?

We often face situations in life where we find that our obligations conflict. All of us have gut reactions to the ethical questions we face in life, but if we simply responded in terms of our initial gut reactions we would soon find that we had no way of ranking our ethical priorities. We would have no way to make sense of our system of ethical values. This is where ethical reflection plays a crucial role.

Ethical reflection is no idle exercise: the better prepared we are to think imaginatively, critically, and ethically, the better off we will be when we face real-life practical dilemmas about what we ought to do.

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