Ethics in care and education
College 1
Moral reasoning/utilitarianism
2 Meta / Normative / Applied Ethics
,“Homosexuality is against the will of God, against nature”
• This is the typical argumentation
The Eutyphro Dilemma
How does God know, what is right and what is
wrong? Are things right or wrong, because God
commands them? Or does God command these
rules, because they are right?
• In the first case:
o God would be able to command
the most cruel things, and they would be good merely because he/she/they/it has
said so?
• In the second case:
o These rules apparently exist outside of God!! Goodness is there for us to discover, as
much as it is there for God to discover!!
➔ Plato came up with this dilemma. How does God know what is right? 2nd case: why can’t we
do that ourselves?
Such questions are called ‘meta-ethical’ because they question the nature of ethics
Meta-ethical questions: where does morality come from? Where can we find it? Can we find it by
reasoning, is it in our hearts?
An answer might be: goodness/exists somewhere outside in nature of God – although he created
it: Homosexuality is against nature! (natural law).
• Natural law theory is an example of ‘normative ethics’.
o Nature law-argument: it is normative ethics, because it gives you rules you can live
by, we have to look at nature to think and decide what is right and wrong
o Normative ethics: it provides a framework for evaluating and determining what is
morally acceptable or unacceptable in various situations
▪ It includes various ethical theories such as utilitarianism, deontology, virtue
ethics, and natural law theory
o Natural law theory is a specific normative ethical theory that posits that there are
objective moral principles that are inherent in the nature of human beings and the
world. These principles are discovered through reason and are considered to be
universal and unchanging.
, • Yes, nature can be a helpful guide in determining what is right and wrong.
o Homosexuality occurs in many species and is quite common
o Maybe we can use some of it, but not everything, people are subjective
• No, nature is often cruel and hardly a standard for what is desired/good
o Applied ethics: for instance, laws, codes of conduct, medical ethics, research ethics.
▪ For example, the bioethics community is concerned with identifying the
correct approach to moral issues in the life sciences, such as euthanasia, the
allocation of scarce health resources, or the use of human embryos in
research. Environmental ethics is concerned with ecological issues such as
the responsibility of government and corporations to clean up
pollution. Business ethics includes questions regarding the duties or duty of
'whistleblowers' to the general public or their
loyalty to their employers (Wikipedia)
3 Moral reasoning
The importance of reasoning in relation to Ethics – the curious case of
ADHD.
• Thought experiments
• Informal logic (Jantje did it too.., well if Jantje would tell you to jump into the pond).
• Case Studies
• Formal Logic.
• Netflix
DSM 5 - ADHD
• Let’s look at formal logic and how we
can use it.
• First, some background info on
ADHD.
• Often is used a lot, but what does it
mean exactly?
• It’s all about some sort of
expectations
• It’s all about school: situated in
school environment
, Result: heterogeneity, prone to subjectivity
Case control studies:
➔ Average is different, but individual cases differ for each group
There is not one cause for ADHD
• Different interacting causes
• Only correlations, not necessarily causes
• Mix of potential causes different for each individual with the diagnosis(!).
If there is a strong relation it is:
• Birth month. Early students have up to twice as much diagnoses of ADHD compared to older
classmates!
• It is mostly the youngest in the class who is diagnosed with ADHD, because they have
younger behavior
Generalizations:
Franke/Hoogman paper (2017):
The data from our highly powered analysis confirm that patients with ADHD do have altered brains
and therefore that ADHD is a disorder of the brain. This message is clear for clinicians to convey to
parents and patients’
