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One important area of moral psychology concerns the inherent selfishness
of humans. 17th century British philosopher Thomas Hobbes held
that many, if not all, of our actions are prompted by selfish
desires. Even if an action seems selfless, such as donating to
charity, there are still selfish causes for this, such as experiencing
power over other people. This view is called psychological egoism
and maintains that self-oriented interests ultimately motivate
all human actions. Closely related to psychological egoism is
a view called psychological hedonism which is the view that pleasure
is the specific driving force behind all of our actions. 18th
century British philosopher Joseph Butler agreed that instinctive
selfishness and pleasure prompt much of our conduct. However,
Butler argued that we also have an inherent psychological capacity
to show benevolence to others. This view is called psychological
altruism and maintains that at least some of our actions are motivated
by instinctive benevolence.
Applied Ethics :
Applied ethics is the branch of ethics which consists of the analysis
of specific, controversial moral issues such as abortion, animal
rights, or euthanasia. In recent years applied ethical issues have
been subdivided into convenient groups such as medical ethics, business
ethics, environmental ethics, and sexual ethics. Generally speaking,
two features are necessary for an issue to be considered an "applied
ethical issue." First, the issue needs to be controversial
in the sense that there are significant groups of people both for
and against the issue at hand. The issue of drive-by shooting, for
example, is not an applied ethical issue, since everyone agrees
that this practice is grossly immoral. By contrast, the issue of
gun control would be an applied ethical issue since there are significant
groups of people both for and against gun control.
The second requirement for in issue to be an applied ethical
issue is that it must be a distinctly moral issue. On any given
day, the media presents us with an array of sensitive issues such
as affirmative action policies, gays in the military, involuntary
commitment of the mentally impaired, capitalistic vs. socialistic
business practices, public vs. private health care systems, or
energy conservation. Although all of these issues are controversial
and have an important impact on society, they are not all moral
issues. Some are only issues of social policy. The aim of social
policy is to help make a given society run efficiently by devising
conventions, such as traffic laws, tax laws, and zoning codes.
Moral issues, by contrast, concern more universally obligatory
practices, such as our duty to avoid lying, and are not confined
to individual societies. Frequently, issues of social policy and
morality overlap, as with murder which is both socially prohibited
and immoral. However, the two groups of issues are often distinct.
For example, many people would argue that sexual promiscuity is
immoral, but may not feel that there should be social policies
regulating sexual conduct, or laws punishing us for promiscuity.
Similarly, some social policies forbid residents in certain neighborhoods
from having yard sales. But, so long as the neighbors are not
offended, there is nothing immoral in itself about a resident
having a yard sale in one of these neighborhoods. Thus, to qualify
as an applied ethical issue, the issue must be more than one of
mere social policy: it must be morally relevant as well.
In theory, resolving particular applied ethical issues should
be easy. With the issue of abortion, for example, we would simply
determine its morality by consulting our normative principle of
choice, such as act-utilitarianism. If a given abortion produces
greater benefit than disbenefit, then, according to act-utilitarianism,
it would be morally acceptable to have the abortion. Unfortunately,
there are perhaps hundreds of rival normative principles from
which to choose, many of which yield opposite conclusions. Thus,
the stalemate in normative ethics between conflicting theories
prevents us from using a single decisive procedure for determining
the morality of a specific issue. The usual solution today to
this stalemate is to consult several representative normative
principles on a given issue and see where the weight of the evidence
lies.
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
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