Question

In approximately 350 words, please answer the following question(s):

What is the primary difference between a moral theory and a moral code? Have your personal, everyday ethical decisions been based upon a particular moral code or moral theory? If so, what code or theory? And finally, what reasons/factors led to your adoption of that particular moral code or moral theory?

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In approximately 350 words, please answer the following question(s):

Would you describe your personal approach to morality as primarily consequentialist, nonconsequentialist, or some combination of both? What reasons do you have for adopting this particular approach? Please explain.

Answer 1

Moral theory is a supposition that worldly ‘society’ could use some help, that we need to come up with; so it can live more harmoniously.Moral ‘code’ is the pages of rules and laws that need to be complied with to make the theory work. They usually require some sort of doctrine, and or laws. If any of those sets of doctrines or laws are broken; there is usually some form of ‘enforcement’.The low end of that enforcement is just being ‘called out’ on it, maybe a bit of ‘smack talk’ or scolding. Then some sort of arrest; you know, you’re going to stay at home for a month, no cell phone, you’re doing all the dish washing, and yard watering and mowing this month, hand me your ‘keys’ , your not driving anywhere this weekend.Then we hit the ‘legalism’ issue BOOM . . . big fines, jail cell time, attorneys fees, and paying for ‘repair’ of damages of the code to people you broke the rules on.Quite honestly, that’s just what the ‘knowledge of good and evil’ works on too. Morality is really the same thing . . . just dressed in a bit of ‘charming’ street wear, instead of a business suit, or uniform with a big shot badge.That’s why government kind of likes ‘religion’ . . . because it pushes ‘Little Miss Morality quite a bit . . . to keep the low end offenders from becoming pro’s.Decisions about right and wrong permeate everyday life. Ethics should concern all levels of life: acting properly as individuals, creating responsible organizations and governments, and making our society as a whole more ethical. This document is designed as an introduction to making ethical decisions. It recognizes that decisions about “right” and “wrong” can be difficult, and may be related to individual context. It first provides a summary of the major sources for ethical thinking, and then presents a framework for decision-making.Utilitarianism is one of the most common approaches to making ethical decisions, especially decisions with consequences that concern large groups of people, in part because it instructs us to weigh the different amounts of good and bad that will be produced by our action. This conforms to our feeling that some good and some bad will necessarily be the result of our action and that the best action will be that which provides the most good or does the least harm, or, to put it another way, produces the greatest balance of good over harm. Ethical environmental action, then, is the one that produces the greatest good and does the least harm for all who are affected—government, corporations, the community, and the environment

2. Consequentialist ethics holds that the rightness/wrongness of actions resides in the consequences of those actions. ... Non-consequentialist ethics holds that actions are intrinsically good or bad (= by themselves), their rightness/wrongness does not depend on their consequences.The theory consequentialism in this viewpoint, a moral action is one that produces a positive outcome, and an immoral action creates a negative outcome. A common way to express this is the end justifies the means, so if something will ultimately be beneficial, the action is moral.

Now, again, this is philosophy, so nothing's quite that simple. In consequentialism, the morality of an action is based on its consequence, but how do you define a consequence as negative or positive. There are a few basic divisions here. The first is personal. If an action is personally beneficial, some say that makes it moral. But what if that action hurts others? More commonly, consequentialism is judged by a larger consequence, sometimes by the impact on society, or the state, or the greater good in general.