Ethical Principles and Values in Decision-Making

Ethics

Ethics is an edge. Practicing it involves trafficking in human rights at the individual level.

Right is a capacity that humans have to freely choose between different possibilities, knowing the truth of something.

Freedom is a value that is synonymous with thinking and acting independently of any coercion. Freedom always supposes responsibility.

Disclaimer: This is a mean value of what we know to respond freely.

Morality: We have a set of rules that humans use to regulate their behavior and form their personality. For example: Friendship.

• Theoretical reason: "Things are like this" -> Science
• Practical reason: To make things sound! -> Ethics

Ethics: Interested in acts done by a subject with morality.

Values

Values are qualities that people understand in their personality. For example: Friendship, Sincerity.

Nature: Subjectivity and objectivity are between positive and negative, or disvalues. Values are based on preferences, time, and historical place. Judgments made (report) of value (value), and scales (bad-regulate well), and absolute values (persons), and relative (animals, things). Types of values: instrumental, vital, aesthetic, intellectual, ethical, social, political, religious. Some say they depend on their intuitions and practices and not the senses or reason. They can be understood from the individual, social, and political (justice) point of view.

Factors that change values: Experience, present conditions, future consequences, that are medium/long, that we choose.

Fair

Ethical Material

(Heteronomous rules, finality: happiness)

• Emotivism: Proposes that happiness is found in feelings, desires, and emotions, and that these approve or deny any action.
• Hedonism: Refers to seeking pleasure and moving away from pain. It refers to knowledge of things.
• Stoicism: Refers to seeking pleasure but also supporting pain. The fact remained impassive before any event. This is called "Ataraxia".
• Utilitarianism: Is looking for maximum happiness for the maximum number of people. It supposes both freedom and equality, and justice, and that some individuals agree.
• Intuitionism: Practice that does not depend on reason or feelings but on intuitions and destinations.
• Pragmatism: Considers that what is valuable is what is useful and practical, without accepting theories and feelings.
• Religions: Seek happiness by giving rules to find it, having some faith-based beliefs, and looking for a "Beyond".

Formal Ethics

(Standards in independent freedom, no finality, the important thing is the action):

• Kantian Formalism: Based on categorical imperatives, based on reason and without a finality or reward.
• Habermas' Communicative Ethics: It proposes that autonomy must communicate and reach agreements.