Ethical Concepts and Self Moral Development
Ethical Concepts and Self Moral Development
1.0 Introduction
Ethical judgment, in our everyday lives, is acquired via a complex combination of cultural background, particular workplace, past experiences and so on. The purpose of this essay is to examine two competing ethical concepts and approaches I used to evaluate my own moral development. In addition, this essay also conducted to analyze how my ethical being assist me to deal with moral dilemmas in two different work context: a commercial website in 2004 and a local government website in 2008.
The essential theory used in this study is an identification of Utilitarianism and deontological ethics, Kolhberg’s theories of moral developmental stages and the ethical relativism also for considerations here.
2.0 Explanation
2.1 Utilitarianism
There are two broad categories of normative ethical theories concerning the rightness or wrongness of actions: consquentialist and non-consequentialist. A consequentialist theory evaluate the morality of a action based on the consequences that action has. The most familiar and commonly accepted ethical form would be utilitarianism. The modern theory is most often associated with the British philosopher John Stuart Mill(1806-1873) who developed the theory from a plain hedonistic version put forward by his mentor Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832). Whereas Bentham established an act utilitarianism, Mill established a rule utilitarianism.
According to the basic principle of rule utilitarianism, actions are right to the degree that they tend to promote the greatest good for the greatest number of people. For instance, lie can be moral if it protect most peoples' feeling. Extract from this definition, there are two key words: greatest good and greatest number.
Mill states that not all pleasures were equally worthy. He defined "the good" in terms of well-being, and distinguished not just quantitatively but also qualitatively between various forms of pleasure. He also insist that
1.0 Introduction
Ethical judgment, in our everyday lives, is acquired via a complex combination of cultural background, particular workplace, past experiences and so on. The purpose of this essay is to examine two competing ethical concepts and approaches I used to evaluate my own moral development. In addition, this essay also conducted to analyze how my ethical being assist me to deal with moral dilemmas in two different work context: a commercial website in 2004 and a local government website in 2008.
The essential theory used in this study is an identification of Utilitarianism and deontological ethics, Kolhberg’s theories of moral developmental stages and the ethical relativism also for considerations here.
2.0 Explanation
2.1 Utilitarianism
There are two broad categories of normative ethical theories concerning the rightness or wrongness of actions: consquentialist and non-consequentialist. A consequentialist theory evaluate the morality of a action based on the consequences that action has. The most familiar and commonly accepted ethical form would be utilitarianism. The modern theory is most often associated with the British philosopher John Stuart Mill(1806-1873) who developed the theory from a plain hedonistic version put forward by his mentor Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832). Whereas Bentham established an act utilitarianism, Mill established a rule utilitarianism.
According to the basic principle of rule utilitarianism, actions are right to the degree that they tend to promote the greatest good for the greatest number of people. For instance, lie can be moral if it protect most peoples' feeling. Extract from this definition, there are two key words: greatest good and greatest number.
Mill states that not all pleasures were equally worthy. He defined "the good" in terms of well-being, and distinguished not just quantitatively but also qualitatively between various forms of pleasure. He also insist that
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