In week 7 we were taught about the ethical framework. This was something quite really new to me. I had never learnt about these different kinds of ethical views before. Therefore it was pretty interesting in the class. This was also because how the lecturer conducted the class and his teaching style which most of the students found it fascinating and fun. He had some interesting activities for us to follow during his lessons. By these activities, each of us was able to identify our own ethical framework and therefore I found out that I belong to the divine command ethical framework. The ethical framework that I learnt in class is as follows.
Relativist ethics: A tendency to make ethical choices only on the basis of what looks right or reasonable according to one’s own belief or value system. Divine command ethics: Theories of ethics that ground the nature of ethical demands in the fact that they represent the commands of God.
Utilitarian ethics: An ethical philosophy in which the happiness of the greatest number of people in the society is considered the greatest good. According to this philosophy, an action is morally right if its consequences lead to happiness, and wrong if it ends in unhappiness. Since the link between actions and their happy or unhappy outcomes depends on the circumstances, no moral principle is absolute or necessary in itself under utilitarianism.
Virtue ethics: Is an approach that emphasizes rules, consequences and particular acts and places the focus on the kind of person who is acting. The issue is not primarily whether an intention is right, though that is important; nor is it primarily whether one is following the correct rule; nor is it primarily whether the consequences of action are good, though these factors are not irrelevant. Deontology ethics: A system of ethics that judges actions based on whether they obeyed to a rule or a set of rules. Deontological ethics is different from teleological ethics, which states that the rightness of an action is based on the goal that the action is meant to achieve. Learning all these kinds of ethical framework made me think about certain things in a different way. Now sometimes I think twice before I do anything and after the action is done, I think which ethical framework does it belong to. Therefore learning about them has made me to think about my life and actions that I do in a different perspective which also sometimes avoids me in doing any wrong actions.