Vice and Virtue in Everyday
Life
Chapter 4

The Experience
Machine, Nozick
►
What matters to us, apart from having pleasant conscious experiences?
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First, we want to actually do certain things.
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Second, we want to be a certain kind of people.

The Experience
Machine, Nozick
►
Third, we do not want to be limited to a man-made reality.

►
The Judeo-Christian
Tradition
Genesis: Creation and Fall
►
Exodus: The 10 Commandments and other moral prescriptions for Israel
►
Psalms: Happiness in knowing and following God

►
The Judeo-Christian
Tradition
The Sermon on the Mount: Human fulfillment through an inner moral and spiritual transformation

Morality is Based on
God’s Commands,
Mortimer
►
The Divine Command Theory of Ethics:
God’s will determines what is right and what is wrong.
►
The ethical person is both merciful and just.

Why Morality Does
Not Depend on
Religion, Arthur
►
The Nature of Morality
►
The Nature of Religion
►
What is the connection between morality and religion?

►
Why Morality Does
Not Depend on
Religion
Religion might motivate moral behavior.
►
Perhaps God provides us with moral knowledge.
►
Arthur’s rejection of these 2 claims

►
Why Morality Does
Not Depend on
Religion
The Euthyphro Dilemma

Of Benevolence, Hume
►
Hume believes that all knowledge is based on experience.
►
Morality is grounded in our human sentiments.
►
Benevolence is the key moral sentiment.

The Ones Who Walk
Away from Omelas,
Le Guine
►
Le Guine’s description of the happiness of the many in Omelas
►
Le Guine’s description of the misery of the one child

The Ones Who Walk
Away from Omelas
►
Why do some people walk away from
Omelas?
►
What implications does this have for the credibility of utilitarianism?

Utilitarianism, Mill
►
Mill’s Principle of Utility
►
Mill’s Definition of Happiness
►
There is a difference between the higher and lower pleasures.
►
How do we discover which pleasures are better?

►
A Critique of
Utilitarianism,
Williams
Utilitarianism sometimes might require us to do the wrong thing.
►
The case of George
►
The case of Jim and Pedro

A Critique of
Utilitarianism
►
Integrity and the value of our deeply held projects pose problems for utilitarianism.

Good Will, Duty, and the Categorical
Imperative, Kant
►
Kant believes that only a good will is unconditionally good.
►
The person of good will does her duty for duty’s sake.

Kant cont’d.
►
Kant’s analysis of the moral worth of actions: impulse, reason, and duty.
►
Hypothetical and Categorical
Imperatives
►
The Categorical Imperative: act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

►
The Holocaust and
Moral Philosophy,
Sommers
Introduction: religion, morality, and the Holocaust
►
Doing wrong vs. wrongdoing
►
The rationalist approach to morality, e.g. Kant

The Holocaust and
Moral Philosophy
►
The sentimentalist approach to morality, e.g. Hume
►
Moral philosophy should prohibit cruelty to sentient non-persons.

A Critique of
Kantianism, Taylor
►
The problem with many moral philosophers is their lack of appreciation for the pain and sorrow that exist in the world.
►
Such moralists focus on solving abstract philosophical problems.

A Critique of Kantianism
►
Kant failed to realize that there may be no true morality.
►
Kant’s theory is divorced from concrete human nature and experience.
►
We must find moral answers that work.