What makes an ethical issue an ethical issue?

Answer 1

Ethics is beyond empirical science. Science is amoral

Best science has come up with is arguing it's the result of natural selection, that ethical behavior helps the species survive better.

Whatever anyone else says, your "gut feeling" your emotions may tell you more about any ethical problem than any reason or rationalizing. IF you don't feel right about something, there's an ethical problem. Of course, you might be a psychopath in which case, you have no ethical qualms about anything.

But the Prof. Sheldon Cooper Star Trek ethics seems to be the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. It's Jeremy Bentham or John Stuart Mill utilitarianism. You have an ethical problem if there's a question as to who benefits and who loses and whether it's fair or just.

Then there's Kant with his categorical imperative. You make choices that anyone should make in similar circumstances. There's an absolute ethics, with no exceptions for anyone. The law or ethics applies to all equally, and speculating about who gains or loses most is pure rationalizing like the High Priest saying one man should die for the people. Kant was religious and called it the "serpentine wanderings" of the High Priest.

Also popular among philosophers is Aristotle's "virtue ethics," the golden mean. There are excesses to be avoided, and the virtuous conduct is the middle ground, a happy mean. Coward is one extreme, Recklessness another extreme, with courage the golden mean. For Aristotle this all takes practice, to see the ethical problems as well as solutions.

Ethics is individual justice. For Aristotle creating character through practice, a life well lived without regret. For Kant it's like following a Law given by a Deity, such as the 10 commandments. For Bentham, it's more like situation ethics.

For Darwin and evolutionary psychologists or hard determinism scientists, there is no free choice or ethical choices, just random acts that may be tragedies but not evil or unethical choices.

What makes it an ethical problem is you believe you have a choice to make, and how you choose affects others to different degrees, positive or negative.