How do you really define ethics? What is ethical, what is unethical?

Question

How do we really know what's ethical and what's not?
Is there some thing as a "universal moral compass", or are really moral values a completely relative thing?

Try to step back for a second from the ethics you gained by tradition or religious following... how do you know that they are correct?
In what standard should we base ourselves to define our personal ethics? Who, or what, defines and constitutes right and wrong?

I have my own answer to this question, but I want to see what other people think about this.

Answer 1

Naturally speaking, ethics are purely subjective.

However, since we live in an unnatural world, ethics are based on religion, social standards, and basically our environment.

Answer 2

Unfortunately ethics are based on right and wrong, which is something that in today's society is unclear as they are defined differently based on different people.

In other words, there is no concrete basis that all agree to and follow.

As such I define my own ethics based on my personal views and beliefs. I try to educate and encourage others to follow the same belief system, but ultimately it is not my decision to make for them.

The next level you get into is situational ethics, and that get's even more complicated.

For example think of the story of the Bastrop High School football team that won the Louisiana State Championship last year. They are in the process of being stripped of their title due to an alleged recruitment infraction. However when digging further, we find that the school assisted with 47 displaced Katrina victims and provided them with the means to go to Bastrop High School. Of those 47, 5 ended up playing football, 1 of which wound up being the Star QB.

As a part of this, these students where living in shelters and had no transportation, let alone food and clothes. The school helped by providing transportation, clothes and food...to all 47 students, not just the football players. However one of the modes of transportation happened to be from a member of the coaching staff. As a result this is a "Recruitment Violation"

What is the ethical thing to do?

This is a very complicated question and one that has no complete answer.

Answer 3

I think right and wrong are basically determined by the lasting impact of an action, whether it is beneficial or harmful. These turn out to be often different from what one feels at the moment of action, because the immediate impact need not retain its character of being beneficial or not on a lasting basis. Right or wrong thus are merely a longer term generalizations based on past experience of the relationship between an action and its likely impact on the person contemplating the action. Beneficial or harmful can obviously be only relative, since to a great extent it has to do with desirability by the subject and the subject individuals are indeed uniquely different from each other. Therefore every individual can have a varying set of do's and dont's based on own assessment of desirability or otherwise of the likely impact. However, at the level of society, that can not be acceptable since one person's benefit could mean harm to many others or to the society as a whole. Therefore, a society must draw up a code of do's and dont's based on its collective assessment of what is beneficial or harmful in the long run to the interests of the society as a whole, which is mostly determined by the desirability of it by the majority or any other power that be. At the individual level, these do's and dont's are values and at the collective level, these get coded as 'ethics'. And of course at the governance or administrative level, these become laws and rules and regulations.

Answer 4

I think many people are confused with what ethical really means. Killing someone can be ethical if your ethics dictate it. Ethics is purely subjective. Ethics are based on principles which people use all the time when deciding what to do. This is why I belive there should be an ethics class in schools, not to tell people what there ethics should be, but to teach them how to think about ethics, its history, and the many differint philosophys out there.

Answer 5

This confusion arises because of lack of clarity about "how ethical is ethics", it is about the concept of concepts again !
Once we know why ethics is needed, then we know how good it can be, and then we are also clear about moral ethics, social ethics, business ethics, and so on.
It is the essence of experience of many great lives that is given in the form of ethics, to make life easier for next generation (not requiring to re-invent the wheel each time) !
The problem is with overlapping of each type of ethics, the situation based, out-dated ethics overshooting its life span, etc that creates confusion.
Fine-tuning the ethics is an on going process within an individual who is sincerely involved in living life in all its dimensions, fully !

Answer 6

Ethics are you asking Moral Ethics? For me ethics is anything that doesn't hurt or harm or disturb someone! In my opinion someone that spies, blabbs and insults another has no ethics!
Smart people are ethical and those without ethics are simply.. Plain Jerks
I don't go by tradition cause that word spells Puppet to me! I go by what feels right for me!

Answer 7

Not doing unto others what you would not have done unto you is ethical. Doing unto others what you would not have done unto you is unethical. Ethics promote cooperation, peace and prosperity. Unethical acts disrupt peace and cooperation.
Though we use terms ethics, morals and values to denote the same thing, they are distinct. Ethics is universal, even animals need them to work in a group. Morals and values are matters of tradition and change from society to society and from time to time in the same society.

Answer 8

Yes! There is a "universal moral compass". . Anything we do (without selfisness)for welfare of other people irrespective of cast, religion etc. is ethical. e.g, telling a lie is unethical as we all know. But one lie that saves a life is more ethical than a truth that kills one.
This is my opinion.

Answer 9

Well there are alot of websites that define Ethics just check www.wikipedia.org for it but in my opinion the people who are non ethical are more than ethical people but that doesnt mean that the non ethical people doesnt have any ethical virtues

Answer 10

I think ethics were put into place to scare people, and keep them in a straight line like the good sheep that they are...Nothing more nothing less...To say someone is unethical just means, they aren't acting up to a society's standard...and to beg one's pardon..Who gives a flying Crap..-shrugs-