WESTERN MINDANAO STATE UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS

BSST221687
ETHICS 101

REFLECTION
ABOUT THE
8 THEORIES
OF ETHICS

ANISA B. ALIE
BS STAT 2
ANISA B. ALIE
BS STAT 2

1.1 PLEASURE THEORY

Before watching this video, a lot of questions came into my mind. Just like why there is this kind
of theory? We all know what pleasure by definition, is a source of delight or joy. And when we
are talking about joy, it means happiness. Some people acquire their happiness by means of
family, some wealth, and some just a contentment. After watching this video, I now realized,
pleasure is not just about the desire of your greedy mind or about satisfying yourself with
luxurious things, but pleasure is just a contentment. If you are contented then you have a
pleasured life. But, if that person defines pleasure as the desire of being wealthy or any greedy
thinking, then that person will never experience the life with pleasure that he or she wants. If a
person wants to gain the pleasure, he or she should not spoil what he or she have by desiring
what he or she have not, according to Epicurus. Living a pleasured life, all we need to do is
again, a contentment with our life and everything, be free from those negative energies. We all
need to eliminate vain and the unnecessary desires such as addictions. Just live life that we can
live, don’t force ourselves living a life that will make our minds and hearts struggle. Just earn
enough money, and give time for the simple and most pleasant values in our life, such as, family,
friends, silence, reflection, water, bread, and music. In simple words, this video is all about being
thankful of what you have means you live a pleasured life.

1.2 PLEASURE THEORY

In this video, I learn about the TETRAPHARMAKOS, is capital doctrines of Epicureanism: God
is nothing to fear, Death is nothing to worry about, it is easy to acquire the good things in life,
and it is easy to endure the terrible things. We all know everyone feared God. But here it says
that God is nothing to fear. It is instill in our mind that gods such Poseidon can cause
earthquakes and storms. But for the scientific and theological reasons, “the divine should not be
thought to be the cause of natural disasters. 55-According to this, everything can be explained
without any appeal to God. I was also mentioned that “if we consider God to be an invulnerable
and happy living thing, them God must be completely unbothered and unworried by human
affairs. “Death is nothing to worry about”, this statement was also mentioned in the video and is
part as capital doctrines of Epicureanism, and it says that there is no need to worry that god will
punish us after death. Furthermore, our natural sciences state that we our body breaks down, the

Page |1
ANISA B. ALIE
BS STAT 2

living things ceases to exist. There is no immaterial soul can be tormented or rewarded in the
afterlife. It says that death is just nothing to us, for it can’t affect neither the living nor the dead.
How can death affect you, when you are still living? And, death can’t affect dead people, if that
person is already don’t exist anymore. “The good things in life are easy to acquire”, when we
consider things the things we want it is comforting to realize that our true needs are limited and
are easily available through nature. The things that are difficult to obtain, we just simply don’t
need. And the natural needs are air which is for our breathing, water for our thirst, fire for our
warm, and earth for us to stand on. I have to agree with Epicurus in points 1, 2 and even though I
have never thought about it like that before. Point 4, I have to disagree with “The Terrible Things
in Life are Easy to Endure”, some terrible things I can name: slavery, cancer, the holocaust. Does
that mean being slave, having cancer or being in a concentration camp are easy to endure? After
all the pain felt is limited in time and amount? Of course not! It is still something that, I would
imagine to be unbearable. Clearly, truly terrible things are not easy to endure. The last two
premises pose interesting ideas for the fields, if happiness economics and positive psychology.
We have plenty, but it is hard to fulfill our desires because, as Aristotle put it, we live in a world
of scarcity and conflict. Now a days, that scarcity and conflict is almost entirely artificial. We
have enough food, water, space and building material for shelter, etc., but we create scarcity, so
some can have more than others, even if this does not end up benefiting anyone.

2. UTILITY THEORY

After watching the video, I learn a lot of things. “If you have the ability to stop a killer, and you
don’t, are you morally pure because you didn’t kill? Or are you morally dirty because you
refused to do what needs to be done?” This statements give me confusing idea as well. But
logically speaking, it depends on the intention of that person. Based from the beliefs of
utilitarian, they agree that moral theory should apply equally to everyone. But they thought the
way to do that was to ground it in something that’s really intuitive, and there’s really nothing
more basic than the primal desire to seek pleasure and avoid pain. So basically speaking, if you
believe in utilitarianism as good consequences equals good actions. So that person will make an
action that will lead to good consequence. If he or she refuse to stop the killings because he or
she favor the killer, then he or she can be considered as an evil doer. But if you refuse to so

Page |2
ANISA B. ALIE
BS STAT 2

because you are afraid of being involve, he or she should consider as a killer. We all know every
person has his or her weaknesses. But I am also agreeing to the statement “We live in a world
where sometimes people do terrible things. And, if we are the ones who happen be there, and we
can do something to make things better, we must. Even if that means getting our hands dirty”.
We should not let or tolerate other people do unnecessary things, we must spread awareness and
good doings and stop the one who are doing things which are not good to every individual or our
society. And, I just realized that iRobot is some more of an argument of Kantian morality over
act utilitarian morality than what I previously thought was a cautionary tale for technology or
technocratic logic. It makes me appreciate it in a huge way as I disagree with the second idea and
I agree with the first. See the robots take away freedom knowing that ultimately overall suffering
would be reduced and pleasure could then be increased. It is portrayed as ‘logic’ brought them to
this decision but in reality there are plenty of postulates and pre-requisites that prevent their
actions from being completely logical and those postulates are the same as those in
utilitarianism. And as I already watched the “BATMANT”, I have something to say with the
utilitarianism. The problem with utilitarianism is, in short, the butterfly effect; determining your
ethics by the consequences of your actions forces you to grapple with the fact that consequences
are often unpredictable and inconsistent. If Batman kills the Joker, he leaves something of a
power vacuum in Gotham (unless we’re talking about Silver Age Joker), which could give rise to
an even worse evil. Or, Harley Quinn could nuke the City in revenge or something. If the man
shoots the native, the soldiers could just throw all the prisoners in solitary confinement cells until
they starve, killing them even more painfully. Or, the man’s involvement could influence foreign
powers to get involved in whatever struggle was happening in that country, leading to a tangled
mess of armies and governments like in the Middle East. Rule utilitarianism foxes this somewhat
by considering more long-term consequences, but no system of rules can perfectly predict the
consequences of a given action, so utilitarianism will always be imperfect. Of course, just
because it is imperfect does not mean it’s invalid. It just means that, It should not be taken as a
given that, x action will lead to y results.

Page |3
ANISA B. ALIE
BS STAT 2

3. DUTY THEORY

The Kant’s categorical imperative – taking a moral rule and universalizing it, sounds a lot like
the Rule Utilitarianism. The difference is Kant asks “if we universalized this, would it leads to
logical contradictions?” While the rule utilitarianism asks “if we universalized it, what would the
consequences be for people’s lives and happiness?” So, I think, It’d be possible for Batman to be
a rule utilitarian and still not kill the Joker, if he’d deemed that “killing bad people” was an
action that, if universalized, would lead to less happiness in the long run. This theory gives me of
diverse ideas. My understanding of the categorical imperative is not that, we would not all want
everyone to steal, but that universalizing theft would negate the concept of theft altogether. If
stealing were the norm, then property would not exist in the way it does today. Stealing would
become merely taking. If the imperative was to steal then the concept of stealing would not be
possible. Maybe some people thought, they had fully grasped the categorical imperative, but they
never actually knew that it meant for something that is wrong in one situation is wrong in every
situation for all people.

4. JUSTICE THEORY

In this video gives me more insights about justice. When we talk about justice, it something goo
of course, it like fairness. But justice falls in different categories. Some people have different
definition to the word justice. And how you define justice personally will define as how you
think the society should work. People says in general justice is about stuff, like who has more
stuff or money, food, or access to the services such as health care services. It is like justice
should have fair of those I have mentioned earlier. There’s should not be who gets way more
than others. In short, it is justice as equality. This justice as equality simply wants that everyone
should get equal amount of stuff. But as in the video was stated, every individual might want
different type of stuff. Some people may want this stuff, but that other person may not want what
that person want. So, it seems injustice. Then, it should be need-based justice, where everyone
should not get the same because our needs are not the same. Like, who need more get more. And
for the merit-based justice, justice actually means giving unequally, based on what each person

Page |4
ANISA B. ALIE
BS STAT 2

deserves. You will get the things you need based from the effort you give. You will get what
you’ve deserve. In today’s society, justice is everywhere, so do as injustice. But for me, no
matter who are, where you live, where you came from, or what social status you have, you
deserve to get the justice you deserve. Because for a society to work property, justice should be
the main factor to attain peace, progression and happiness that every individual wants.

5. CARE THEORY

Before watching this theory, I am also wondering what this theory got. As far as I know, care is
something you concerned about. If you love something or someone, then hundred percent you
will take care of them. But I think this theory is far from the idea what I have. After watching
this video, I now then realized, it is about how women differ from men when it comes to moral
dilemmas. At first, it is about something feminist content, but as she said that her book is not in a
woman voice but “In a Different Voice”, which it will not only represent woman or man, but as a
whole individual. It is a voice that hear both woman and man. She (Carol Gilligan) also said, it
was not necessarily an inherently female/feminine philosophy, but rather a different one, which I
believe she implied, many or most women utilized.

6. NATURAL LAW THEORY

Before watching this theory, I questioned myself, is natural law changeable? But I want to say
something on how the speaker being respectful while talking. I really appreciate how respectful
he was in the video. He said “in this worldview” or “Plato said” objectively, without passing
judgment on people who do or not hold a certain philosophical view. Because people will judge
each other for their theist/atheist beliefs, but he did not went there in his videos. This video tells
us how our god gives us instinct. We somehow have our instinct which are good or beneficial to
our life. Like for example we have instinct to protect ourselves from heat and cold that is why
human beings are wearing clothes. And so do as other animals, they have instinct to eat so that
they would survive. Accordingly, creatures’ inclinations toward what is good for them as a
sharing in God’s eternal law. The natural law is the term given by Aquinas on human being’s
participation on the eternal law.

Page |5
ANISA B. ALIE
BS STAT 2

7. DEVINE COMMAND THEORY

The most lines that really hits mind my differently is “next time we’re going to look at another
moral theory that approaches things from a theistic perspective”. The writers did not smash
religion. They smashed the Devine Command Theory of Morality. Really the writers have not
been smashing religion all series – have been presenting past philosophical arguments and their
pros and cons. The scripts are always carefully worded to ask you to consider things for yourself,
and never to condemn belief in divinity.

I also love the reverse Ten Commandments part, “kill, steal, commit adultery, and so forth...”
Add in honoring parents and false witness and you have all the commandments that have
anything even arguably to do with morality.

And after watching this video, I remember a movie I watched, it’s about a mother Otter dived
into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged onto half
submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I still remember
to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby
otters, who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature’s wonders,
absolutely. Mother and children dining upon mother and children. And, that is when I first
learned about evil. It is built into the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If
there is any kind of Supreme Being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become His moral
superior.

I think the thing I find most interesting is that the video do a great job of painting very simple,
clear scenario and approaching it from both sides. We can’t avoid other people, there is a major

Page |6
ANISA B. ALIE
BS STAT 2

element of additional assumptions. I am not trying to criticize people for diving in and exploring
the problem. But if you try to include all things in your argument, you effectively argue about all
thing at once. One of the biggest strengths of series is breaking out questions and beliefs to be
considered individually instead of throwing everything into a pile of confusion.

8. VIRTUE THEORY

I love this theory. For me, this is generally the most helpful in terms of deciding how to act on
the spot in ethically demanding decisions. I tend to ask myself, “What kind of person will
deciding x make others? I learn about Eudaimonia. It does not mean a life of cupcakes and
rainbows. It means the sweet pleasure of sinking into bed at the end of an absolutely exhausting
day. It is the satisfaction of knowing you have accomplished a lot, and that person you could be.
While watching this, I was stunned by how precisely this describes my morality, with the
exception of believing everyone is instinctively moral. Striving for the happy middle between
extremes, trying to be a good person as an active process, heck I almost literally live the flash
philosophy example and came to the same conclusions. All this before I had ever heard of
Aristotle’s moral philosophy.

Page |7