Chapter VI:

Making Informed
Decisions
Bring out ½ sheet of
yellow paper and
answer the questions
flashed honestly and
thoughtfully.
1. What is the most
important decision in your
life you have done
lately?
2. How did your decision
affect who you are and
where you are right
now?
3. How did your decision
affect other people,
especially those who are
close to you?
4. How long did it take
for you to come up
with that decision?
5. Do you consider your
decision a good one or a
bad one? Why?
What do you think are
the things needed when
you undergo a decision
making process?
Objectives:
1. Identify the different factors that shape
an individual in her moral decision-
making
2. Internalize the necessary steps toward
making informed moral decisions
3. Apply the ethical theories or frameworks
on moral issues involving the self, society
and non-human environment
What is the VALUE of College Level
Ethics?
Utilitarianism
Natural law
Deontology
Virtue Ethics
Did all the ethical theories present
a holistic view and final answer on
what is ethics?
 NO
 They are the best attempts of the
best thinkers in history to give a fully
thought-out answer about the
questions, “What ought I to do?” and
“Why ought I to do so?”
 The quest in trying to answer these
question has not provided us a final
answer.
 Man’s limitations and finiteness
demands us to continue grappling
these questions
 It is a part of man’s quest towards
perfection to be fully human by facing
moral choices.
Our course in ethics has provided us several notions:
1. These questions of the right thing to do is and why are the questions that
all human beings – regardless of race, age, socio-economic class,
gender, culture, educational attainment, religious affiliation or political
association – will have to ask at one point or another in their lives.
2. Neither the laws or rules of one’s immediate community or of wider
culture or of religious affiliation can sufficiently answer these questions,
especially when different duties, cultures or religions intersect and
conflict.
3. Reason has a role to play in answering these questions, if not in resolving
them.

*REASON, hopefully, will allow one to finally make the best decision possible
in a given situation of moral choice
 The Moral Agent and
Contexts
 Theone who is tasked to think about what is
“right” and why it is so, and to choose to do so, is
a human individual
 Whoone is, in the most fundamental sense, is
another topic in the act of philosophizing
 “Epimeleia me auto” – an aged old philosophical
challenge
Ramon Castillo Reyes (1935-2014)
 “who one is” is a cross-point
 One’s identity, who one is or who I am, is
the products of the many forces and events
that happened outside one’s choosing
 Reyes identifies four cross points – physical,
interpersonal, societal and historical
Physical
- Physical events and past
material factors
- Genetic make-up and
environmental factors
Societal
- Elements of the human
group
- Molded by culture
Interpersonal
- Shaping of ones character
brought about by
interactions with other
people
- Shaped by one’s
relationship and physical
factors
Historical
- The events that one has
undergone
- Being a product of our
past
“Who one is” is a project of oneself
- A human individual has freedom
- Freedom is not absolute – one does not
become something because he chooses to
be
- It is up to you on who you want to become
CULTURE AND ETHICS
 A common opinion many people hold is that one’s culture
dictates what is right or wrong to an individual.
 St. Ambrose – “When in Rome do what the Romans do”
 One’s culture is inescapable, that is, one has to look into the
standards of his/her own society to resolve all her ethical
issues
 How one relates to oneself, her close relations, with other
societies, and with the natural world are all predetermined
by one’s membership to one’s society and culture.
 Generalizations concerning one’s supposed cultural traits
sometimes end up as empty stereotypes, especially since
one may be hard put to think if any other culture does not
exhibit such traits.
 HOSPITALITY – can we say that the Chinese are not
hospitable?
 Most probably, they are hospitable too, but they may exhibit
such hospitality in a radically different ways.
 HOSPITALITY – “a FILIPINO WAY” – A Filipino way of thinking
 MORALITY – is Filipino Morality different from Chinese
Morality?
 “Filipinos are communal and Americans are individualistic.”
 People have different sets of Moral Values
 Are values and moralities radically different
from cultures?
 The notions of right and wrong, good or bad
are different from what cultures perceive
them to be.
 What is ethically/morally acceptable or
unacceptable is relative to or that is to say
dependent on one’s culture.
 CULTURAL RELATIVISM
 James Rachels (1941-2003)– American Philosopher
- provides a clear argument against cultural relativism
- He defines cultural relativism as the position that
claims there is no such thing as an objective truth in the
real of morality
- there are different moral codes, there is no correct
moral codes that cultures must follow
- each culture has its own standard of right and
wrong
 He argues against cultural relativism because
of its logic:
- cultural relativism confuses a statement of
fact (that different culture have different moral
codes) , which is merely descriptive, with a
normative statement(that there cannot be an
objective truth in morality.
 Rachel employs reductio ad absurdum argument. A mode
of argumentation or a form of argument in which a
proposition is disproven by following its implications logically
to an absurd conclusion.
 He posits three absurd consequences if CULTURAL
RELATIVISM is accepted as a standard.
1. If cultural relativism was correct, then one cannot criticize the
practices or beliefs of other culture
2. If cultural relativism was correct, one cannot criticize his/her own
culture
3. If cultural relativism was correct, then one cannot accept that
moral progress can happen.
 Accepting CULTURAL RELATIVISM do recognize the
differences of our cultures and also to respect this
differences but this does not mean that there can be no
objective truth
 According to Rachels, someone can recognize respect
cultural differences and still maintain the right to criticize
beliefs and practices that she thinks are wrong, if she
performs proper rational deliberation.