PHI2000-Assessment 5 Personal Morality Essay

PHI2000-Assessment 5 Personal Morality Essay

Everyday life entails making choices between competing values about right or wrong. Research indicates that ethics is as old as humanity and a society without a proper value system is neither successful nor meaningful. Since time immemorial, an average human being is expected to observe certain ethical standards. Scholars affirm that the quality of life largely depends on the type of decisions that people make. Similarly, it is through the practice of ethics that governments can be responsible and organizations can be competitive. However, making ethical decisions is not that easy mainly because determining what is right or wrong is a complex task which often depends on the context and circumstances of the decision maker. Every society all over the world has its share of morality. When laws or regulations are enacted to manage ethical conducts, the resulting guidelines are referred to as codes of ethics. By and large, what is right or wrong depends on many things including personal background, education levels, and political inclination.

What Amounts to Ethics?

Ethics regulate human behavior through helping people to make proper decisions when faced with different life situations. Consequently, it can be concluded that the discipline of ethics concerns itself with human choices and how they are made. It is possible to confuse ethics with other decision-making methods like morality, religion, politics and the law. Though religion teaches about ethical conduct, it does not analyze the many ethical decisions that are typically made by humans. Also, religions abhor individual behaviors that are squarely outside the domain of ethics, for example, the dietary constraints or sexual conducts (Ferrell & Fraedric, 2015). Philosophers have for many years attempted to define what ethics is, but unfortunately, they have not yet come with a precise definition about the same. Similarly, the discipline of law attempts to define what ethics is by setting a universal setting, which in effect is not able to address personal context. This is true despite the fact that a good system must be ethical.

Law, unlike ethics, may encounter serious challenges when trying to regulate some areas or trying to adapt to changes in the society. Ethics is considered by some people as a useful tool to control human behavior due to its flexible nature and thus able to adapt to changing social, economic, cultural and political dynamic swiftly. Law and ethics help to achieve harmonious and active living. Although many people use the terms law and ethics interchangeably to mean the same thing, the latter is sometimes viewed to be involved in how persons relate with one another (Bond, 2015). Additionally, some scholars perceive morality as the virtuous conduct while regarding ethics to be the code that drives morality.

Traditional Arrangement and the Discipline of Ethics

The field of ethics has been addressed by different systems. There are numerous schools of thought that attempt to explain what is right or wrong, what unethical conduct is and what amounts to ethical behavior. Fundamentally, the field of ethics is historically categorized into three areas: metaphysics, normative ethics and applied ethics. Metaphysics attempts to answer the question of what is the character of the right or the good. It also handles the nature and legitimacy of ethical claims. Normative ethics, on the other hand, deals with the criteria used to assess whether something qualifies to be right or wrong. Lastly, applied ethics focuses on the actual application of ethical views to a particular circumstance (Preston, & Wickson, 2016).

The Ethics of Genetically Modified Organisms

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and genetic foods have remained to be an issue of significant concern that has generated a fundamental public debate. The issue of concern is the product of diverging viewpoints regarding the products of biotechnology. The advancement in technology has led to the new developments in the field of biotechnology. Modern scientists can crossbreed across different species with the aim of creating new breeds of plants and animals. GMOs have faced criticism from many quarters including religion, political scientists, and the business community. While religion views this science as an attempt to replace Gods work of creation, scientists consider biotechnology as a golden opportunity to create new breeds of plants and animals that could not have been accomplished by the traditional methods of cross-breeding.

One advantage of GMO plants is that they are more tolerant to harsh weather conditions, thus giving hope for a future that is food secure. However, the resulting food products have been accused of causing the emergence of dangerous diseases including cancer. The nature of cross genetic technology has made some people to start doubting its authenticity and its impact on human life. For example, are there fundamental differences between genetically modified foods and those that are non-genetic? Is the difference in the content of GMOs so significant to the extent of threatening human and plant life? Religious persons, as well as some scientists and consumers have questioned whether the testing of GMOs is done independently and objectively? Secondly, is the government partial when regulating and registering these genetic foods? These concerns are of scientific, moral, religious, ethical and legal nature, and as such they have attracted the attention of different stakeholders due to their potential impact on humanity (Preston & Wickson, 2016).

Stakeholders including the Congress, consumers, regulator, farmers, and scientists have all differed regarding their thinking about the question of whether GMOs are ethically right or wrong. Is manufacturing of GMOs the moral thing to undertake? Would we say that consumption of genetically modified food is right simply because they are perceived legitimate and morally acceptable? Many have argued that if making GMOs is not legitimate, then scientists should stop producing them with immediate effect. Alternatively, those who dislike GMOs should, as a matter of ethics, stop consuming them.

In terms of ethics, some people think that GMOs and their commodities are ethically justifiable while others hold that they are unacceptable (Dizon et al., 2016). Either way, it is only through analyzing specific products and their components that the ethical justifiability of a commodity can be judged. An ethical framework avails the criteria for decision making. Such a framework can be regarded as a central, general thought regarding what elements are right or wrong and the rationale behind. Since public interest should guide ethics and the law, the ethical paradigm creates the lenses via which people view the globe. It therefore generates the standard for unconditionally judging which actions and policies regulate products and procedures that are ethically right.

The field of ethics is governed by several theories which include consequentialism, consent and tradition ethics. All of these theories do set ethical considerations and judgments about food and agriculture. They in effect form the basis of an opinion about the moral legitimacy of genetically modified foods and commodities. Human beings in their daily lives make judgments of ethical nature based on the rationale of the three paradigms. As a matter of fact, many are the times when humans decide life problems as consequentialists and other times as virtue inclined individuals.

The field of biotechnology has been controversial globally. Some of the reasons for its controversy are ethical concerns therein. Debate continues to take root on the ethical acceptability of genetics or lack of it. In the year 1990, some consumer organizations started pushing an agenda for consent regarding GMOs. In many ways, this opened the flood gates of other ethical issues. Genetically modified commodities started to be viewed from a different angle. Farmers for the first time were regarded as the main stakeholders in the matters GM foods and its relevance in the modern day world. Environmentalists started their campaign to encourage considerations which were of intrinsic nature more so in the environmental sector (Hielscher, Pies, Valentinov & Chatalova, 2016)). Both the environmentalists and the members of the civil society ushered a debate on ethical concerns that had been unfortunately missing from the public arena for decades.

Conclusion

The field of ethics is critical to any person. Ethics is the social fabric that holds human beings together. Moreover, it sets standards for human behavior. It is hard to imagine a society that is not founded on ethics. Indeed laws that do not respect the values of the relevant society cannot be said to be legitimate. However, ethics is relative and therefore it differs from society to society and from individual to individual.  Although many scholars have attempted to define what ethics is, they have failed to identify it comprehensively. Notably, changes in modern day society have redefined the field of ethics.

References

Bond, T. (2015). Standards and ethics for counselling in action. United Kingdom: Sage.

Dizon, F., Costa, S., Rock, C., Harris, A., Husk, C., & Mei, J. (2016). Genetically modified (GM) foods and ethical eating. Journal of food Science, 81(2).

Ferrell, O. C., & Fraedrich, J. (2015). Business ethics: Ethical decision making & cases. Toronto: Nelson Education.

Hielscher, S., Pies, I., Valentinov, V., & Chatalova, L. (2016). Rationalizing the GMO debate: the ordonomic approach to addressing agricultural myths. International journal of environmental research and public health, 13(5), 476.

Preston, C. J., & Wickson, F. (2016). Broadening the lens for the governance of emerging technologies: Care ethics and agricultural biotechnology. Technology in Society, 45, 48-57.

PHI2000-Assessment 5 Personal Morality Essay