Epistemology

Epistemology is basically the study of knowledge through a philosophycal analysis, it questions what is knowledge and how we adquire it. In the class we went through the trolley problem. It consists on the following: Let's say there's a trolley in a trail going fast towards a group of five people, however you have the choice of pulling a lever that changes the direction that the trolley is going, and instead of killing the five people it will only kill one single person. No matter what your choise is, you can't save everyone, one must die. But there is a detail, this particular person is someone significant to you, which makes the decision much harder. The thing with this question is that we need to decide what is more important: saving five lives or saving one life of a person that matters to you. At this moment I would take everything in consideration but in the end I would surely choose to save the life of the one that matters to me the most. But that's what I would do, there are other opinions on what you should do or how you should judge the situation. Those are: 

• Relativists: the name says for itself, it has to do with relativity, they will at first analyze the greater good, which in the case would be save five lives rather than only one. But he would also analyze the fact that this one person matters to him.

• Rationalists: rationalists would take in consideration the people's past and background, and then decide what to do.

• Empiricists: empiricists would anylize every single aspect about the situation, taking in consideration who that person is. And afterwards, make a decision. 

• Absolutists: the absolutists would analyze it rationally rather than mixing it with feelings. He would decide what is worth more, and would save the five people.

Morals vs Ethics

So the difference between morals and ethics is that ethics, in first place, relies on the idea of having a bunch of rules and laws that the government and the society imposes relating to what you should or shouldn't do. This applies to the terms of a society in order to live in peace; whether it is on work, with your colleagues, the people that you live with and even with people that you see on the streets. Morals in the other hand is much more related to an individual's personal beliefs, education and opinions. For example, while an attitude can be moral-less to someone, it is not to someone else, it really depends on what the person believes in. Morals also got something to do with free will, because when it comes to the subject of morals, people live according to their own, which affect their attitudes in different circumstances. Morals have much more to do with your own mind and the opinions that you have created and built throughout your life, as well as how you judge your own, and others actions. Which leads us to question: "How does people's actions and attitudes affect the way we look at them?" or even: "What people's attitudes say about their personalities?"

While morals differs from person to person, ethics is a one concept about what is right and wrong, or bad and good. Even though not everyone acts according to the laws, everyone knows (or should know) what is ethical and what's non-ethical to do. However, you can't guess an individual's morals just by looking at them. Somebody's morals might be different from their idea of ethics. Also, ethics and morals are too very similar in a way, the concept might be different, but the idea is the same. So in conclusion, we should always remember to balance both, in order to live in balance.