Final Argumentative Paper

[Course name and number]

[Instructor's name]

[Date submitted]

Final Argumentative Paper

Introduction

This paper critically discusses one out of the three important sub-disciplines of philosophy; Ethics. Being an argumentative paper, the main discussion includes presenting a critical and self review on whether if ethics is a learned or a natural behavior. The purpose of choosing this topic, under this sub-discipline, is to better understand and identify that if like behavior, is ethics too innately ingrained in a human's sub-conscious or, as strongly believed in personal opinion, that it is a learned behavior.

Discussion

To begin this section, it is only wise that the meaning and concept of both ethics and behavior; learned or innate, are discussed individually for clear understanding for the ensuing critical argument discussion later on in the paper.

Ethics

In principle, ethics is all about choosing the right action, although the word ethics has originated from the Greek word ethos that means morals. In other words, ethics is defined as a systematic reflection of morality itself. However, in a broader aspect, the principle of morality itself encompasses the actions, decisions and opinions that individuals think to be good or bad.

Types of Ethics

Commonly, ethics is classified into two main types of, descriptive and normative ethics, where descriptive ethics revolves around factual and precise judgments, such as true or false and normative ethics deals with normative or value judgments that are primarily concerned with determining if something is good or bad (www.aerostudents.com). The discussion of this paper is also mainly concerned with normative ethics.

To discuss further on normative ethics, it is important to highlight that the most important parts of this branch of ethics is the moral values, virtues and norms of a human being. A moral value of an individual consists of convictions such as happiness and charity, while the moral norms entails actions such as permitted or forbidden that help a person to achieve their ideal behavior. Similarly, moral virtues enlist the various characteristics that make an individual a good or a bad person.

Importance of Ethics

The importance of ethics can analyzed on the terms that they prove to be a guideline or a yardstick measure of determining the basic concept of a right or wrong action. This, in return, helps in both heavily influencing and determining an individual's behaviors in different situations. Conversely, Hunt (n.d.) comments that the main importance of ethics is state it in terms of a continuing effort for all humans to rationalize, evaluate and analyze a particular way of life that is 'worth living'.

Determining if ethics are acquired

One of the easiest ways to gauge if an individual has ethics is through challenging one's beliefs and mentally visualize the reaction that individual would give out in such a scenario. Some analysts state that an individual react and resolve their problems based on their ethics. This raises the question of how do one acquire ethics and as commented by De Cremer (2009) ethics are acquired through learning. Considering ethics to be a characteristic trait in humans, it is ...