What is Ethics

The article Issues in Ethics IIE V1 N1 (Fall 1987) as the question what is ethics and defined is as follows.

What, then, is ethics? Ethics is two things. First, ethics refers to well based standards of right and wrong that prescribe what humans ought to do, usually in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society, fairness, or specific virtues. Ethics, for example, refers to those standards that impose the reasonable obligations to refrain from rape, stealing, murder, assault, slander, and fraud. Ethical standards also include those that enjoin virtues of honesty, compassion, and loyalty. And, ethical standards include standards relating to rights, such as the right to life, the right to freedom from injury, and the right to privacy. Such standards are adequate standards of ethics because they are supported by consistent and well founded reasons.

Secondly, ethics refers to the study and development of one's ethical standards. As mentioned above, feelings, laws, and social norms can deviate from what is ethical. So it is necessary to constantly examine one's standards to ensure that they are reasonable and well-founded. Ethics also means, then, the continuous effort of studying our own moral beliefs and our moral conduct, and striving to ensure that we, and the institutions we help to shape, live up to standards that are reasonable and solidly-based.

While definitions provide guidance on how to carry out ethical or non ethical procedures the gut feeling is never wrong. Some call it this also the 6th sense. But this happens to be the Holy Spirit talking. We are always fighting with our selves and our Spirit when we are in a "fix" on choosing whether what we are doing is ethical or not. Most of the times we are so clogged in the thought process with our personal desires, that we put ourselves first.

Are we more concerned about out jobs, if we are asked to change a date on a financial document, yet we feel it inside of us that this is not morally correct to do so. We see a no-smoking sign and we think that since I have a right to smoke I do not care about what the rest of the non-smokers feel about the second hand smoke after all they can always go somewhere else.

How ethical conscience are you on a daily basis?