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Cultural relativism
Example: arranged marriage
No marriage is legally binding without consent. In this sense, parents cannot force you to get married.
If you refuse, they can still make your life harder.
Let’s assume that you think that two following things are true:
 Abuse of power - you don’t think that you owe to your parents to get married to someone, whom
you’ve never met just because they want you to do so;
 Influence – if your parents were to use their influence over you to force you to get married then they
would be doing something wrong.
It is morally wrong because it would have a considerable negative impact on your life.
Now, think that almost 90% of marriages in India are arranged marriages.
Would you be willing to pass the same judgements on parents in India? Would you be willing to say that
if parents in India arrange marriages for their children that they are involved in immoral practices?
Cultural relativism or Moral relativism = same
If you think that:
 we should judge these practices differently when they happen in other cultures as when they happen
in your own culture;
 we should not judge other cultures simply because these are different cultures;
Then, you probably accept cultural relativism.
Moral relativism → natural companion of moral diversity.
Different cultures have different customs.
Examples:
Polyandry – woman have several husbands
Eating animals – live fish/dog meat
Honor killing – women are killed because of brought shame
Wife sharing – wife for the night
Senicide – killing elderly people
Cannibalism – eat conquered enemies
Important thing about these examples that only practices are different but also people’s attitudes towards
them. Cannibalism was not considered wrong for people who practiced it.
Cultural moral diversity → some practices/moral norms are accepted in some cultures while being not
accepted in other cultures.
Acknowledging the existence of moral diversity/disagreement does not make one into a moral relativist.
There are several theses (2 – 3) theses, which together make up cultural relativism.
Thesis #1. Nothing is universally right or wrong
1. The thesis that there is a moral diversity is different from the thesis that nothing is universally right or
wrong.
 The first thesis about moral diversity is a descriptive claim, it is about what people think is right or
wrong;
 The second thesis about “nothing is universally right or wrong” is about the nature of moral norms.
It claims that moral norms are never universally valid;
2. The thesis about that nothing is universally right or wrong is not only different from the thesis of
moral diversity (the thesis that people in different cultures have different moral beliefs), it is also
logically independent from the former.
We cannot infer that nothing is universally right or wrong from a mere observation of moral diversity.
Why not?
Example: consider two groups of people that disagree whether the Earth revolves around the Sun or not.
The mere fact that two groups of people disagree doesn’t tempt us to thinking that either both groups
must therefore be right or that neither can therefore be right.
Still, cultural moral diversity seems for many of us that it is a natural basis for moral relativism.
Why there is a difference?
1. Facts in ethics: we deal with moral values rather than natural laws.
2. Moral reasons: we may feel that it is wrong to judge the whole group of people that live
differently and have different ideas about how to live. Perhaps, you may think that judging other
cultures means to consider your culture as superior.
This gets things backwards.
1. If some things are universally right or wrong how could it be wrong to recognize them as such?
Granted, we may sometimes have a good reason to:
 refrain from judging if we have insufficient knowledge;
 refrain from expressing our judgements (may do more harm than good communicating our
disagreement);
⸫ But none of that warrants to claim that nothing is universally right or wrong.
2. One the other hand, if we assume, for the sake of argument that nothing is universally right or wrong,
this would not allow us to infer that it is morally wrong to judge another culture on account of its
different practices rather than simply mistaken.
When we say that it is wrong to judge a culture, it means that we’ve just accepted that nothing is
universally right or wrong.
⸫ More importantly, the claim that it is wrong to judge another culture, doesn’t follow from the thesis that
nothing is universally right or wrong.
“our norms do not hold for them”
Thesis #2. There is only right or wrong for a culture X.
The idea that nothing is universally right or wrong is not unique for cultural relativism. It is also shared
by moral nihilists who think that nothing is morally wrong. Contrary to nihilist, it makes perfect sense for
a relativist to say that abortion is wrong for someone in a certain culture X. The relativist simply denies
that it is correct to say that something is morally right or wrong if we mean by right or wrong something
other than right for culture X and wrong for culture X.
Thesis #3. Right for a culture X is what is morally approved by the members of that culture. Wrong
for the culture X is what morally disapproved by the members of that culture.
Problem: thesis assumes that cultures are morally relatively homogeneous, which is not always the case.
Explanation: We often find that people within the culture disagree.
This thesis makes the moral relativism to seem weaker if not highly implausible.
To see this lets consider agent relativism and appraiser relativism.
 Agent → thesis that the moral judgement that an action is right is true if the action is morally
approved by the members of the culture of the one who performed the action;
 Appraiser → thesis that the moral judgement that an action is right is true if the action is morally
approved by the members of the culture of the one who judges the action;
Agent
Example: genital mutilation (circumcised genitals)
People accept the norm and believe that if a woman is not properly circumcised then children she will
give birth to will suffer from some serious illnesses. Tilda a member of this culture. She studies medicine
and discovers that this practice is very harmful for women due to serious infections and other automatical
problems. She also discovers that the belief about born children is false. According to agent relativism,
this discovery is completely irrelevant to the morality of circumcision for the members of the cultures.
What matters, are the norms that people hold, not whether these norms originate in true or false factual
beliefs. The claim that women should be circumcised for Tilda’s culture because people accepted the
norm despite the empirical facts (these beliefs) are false.
Absurd 1: The implication that it does not matter to the morality of a norm that it is based on a false belief
in absurd.
Absurd 2: Ethical disputes can be resolved by taking a poll. This dispute is not about what the majority of
people think about. It is about what is right.
Absurd 3: Makes moral reforms impossible. If you want to convince people to eat from eating chicken
that was treated badly. According to agent’s relativism you are mistaken because you contradict to the
common belief.
Appraiser
Example: Abortion
Aradia says to Yakamoto: “You are right when you say that aborting a baby because it is a girl is
immoral. Nevertheless, aborting a baby because it is a girl is not immoral”.
Absurd 1: If Yakamoto’s culture disapproves of abortion of babies because of their gender and Aradia’s
culture doesn’t disapprove, then her statement is true for the appraiser relativist.
Absurd 2: It is always absurd (accordingly to appraiser) to criticize the norms of one’s culture as morally
wrong.
 “People in your country does not think that slavery is wrong therefore it is not wrong”.
There is no way as members of the culture as a group could be mistaken about the rightness of
wrongness of their practices.
 When two people claim that polyandry is wrong one maybe speaking the truth while the other is false.
⸫ Thus, we reject agent and appraiser – however they do not necessarily affect all forms of relativism.
Vulgar relativism
One of the motives for accepting moral relativism maybe that you feel that judging other cultures is
wrong. You may feel that we ought to accept cultural relativism because we end up judging cultures
unless we accept cultural relativism – and judging other cultures is wrong. However, you may also think
there is a convincing argument from moral relativism to the moral requirements not to judge other
cultures.
Thesis #4. This is to be understood in a functionalist sense.
Thesis #5. Therefore, it is wrong to interfere with the values/norms of other cultures.
Norms and values performs a function into the survival of the culture. Thus, if we try to temper with the
cultures norms, we may have initiated the process that leads to the destruction of culture.
Problem: The sense of right or wrong used in the conclusion (the claim that it is wrong to interfere with
the values and norms held by other people) is the universal one.
Explanation: If it follows from the argument above, if it is wrong to interfere with the norms and values
of the culture because doing so threatens to destroy the culture, then it would be wrong for anyone in any
country independently from culture. This would mean that there is at least one thing that is universally
wrong – interfering. This would mean that cultural relativism is mistaken. In other words, the conclusion
is inconsistent with the theses #1 and #2.
⸫ So, the moral relativist who thinks that relativism provides the case for tolerance is mistaken. The moral
requirement to be tolerant is a universal requirement and hence, inconsistent with moral relativism.
SHOULD WE ACCEPT IT?
If we do not identify what is right for the culture with what is approved by members of that culture we
can accept that the statement “women have a moral right to vote” was always true or false for the Swiss
culture independently of the norms accepted in that culture.
We have seen that the relativism does not follow from the mere fact of cultural moral diversity.
People in different cultures may have different opinions about what is right and wrong. But it simply
doesn’t follow that a ‘right’ is therefore relative to a culture. Nor is there in the versions of the cultural
relativism that we are now considering, any necessary connection between the norms accepted by a
culture, and what is right for that culture.
⸫ Hence, cultural moral diversity is not a good reason to accept moral relativism.
So what is?
1st argument: True for them
Argument
Different cultures see the world in different perspectives. We can criticize them but we can only do so
from our perspective. Whatever we do no matter how much we learn and how much we change we will
never be able to avoid viewing the world from some perspective or another.
Hence, there is no universal point of view.
Hence, we cannot say that certain things are universally right or wrong.
⸫ Therefore, we should adopt cultural relativism.
Counterargument
In response, we need to distinguish between what people are justified in believing and what is true. It may
follow from the fact that people in different cultures have very different beliefs about certain things that
they are justified in having different beliefs about of what is right and wrong. Still, it does not mean that
truth about these things is relative.
⸫ Therefore the “true for them argument” is not good enough to adopt cultural relativism.
2nd argument: Fallibilism
Argument
In can’t be denied that all knowledge is fallible. To claim that we know better than other cultures would
be to think of ourselves infallible.
⸫ Hence, incredibly arrogant.
Fallibilism is a thesis about our knowledge. It says we can never be certain that what we think is true
really is true. Given what we know about the development of our knowledge, fallibilism is a very
reasonable thesis.
Counterargument
In response, accepting fallibilism does not require us to accept relativism. We can be fallibilistic about
scientific knowledge while accepting that there is some truth. Similarly, we can accept fallibilism while
being universalists about morality. To accept the morality is universal is not to think that of ourself or
anyone else as infallible.
⸫ Hence, accepting that our knowledge is fallible is not a good reason to accept cultural relativism.
3rd argument: Ethnocentrism
Argument
When universalists are asked to tell us which moral values are universally valid, they will often point to
the values of their culture.
⸫ Hence, universalism is just disguised ethnocentrism. It is just people thinking that their own values and
practices provide the standards by which to measure everyone and everything.
Counterargument
In response, Universalist can be but doesn’t have to be ethnocentric. Just as one can accept universalism
without thinking of one’s moral beliefs as infallible.
⸫ So, there is no incompatibility between being a universalist and accepting that the truth about the
morality could be different from what is currently accepted by members of one’s culture.
4th argument: Should not be narrow – minded
Argument
Some cultures practice polygamy, some monogamy. In some cultures people dress very modestly, in
other cultures women and men walk around almost naked.
⸫ To think that only one is right to be narrow – minded
Counterargument
In response, while it is true that dress codes and prohibition against pre – marital sex etc. are often
considered apart of morality. Morality is certain about more than this. It is about important things such as
whether torture/rape are wrong or whether people are entitled to be free from slavery. Surely, saying that
slavery is wrong even when practiced in another culture is not being narrow – minded, is it? Being liberal
in the sense of thinking that some things are neither wrong nor obligatory does not mean that one thinks
of these things as relative.
⸫ It means that they are outside of the domain of the morally obligatory.
5th argument: Ought not to blame people who act on different beliefs about morality
Argument
We may think that people that practiced slavery in the 18th century were wrong. But can we really blame
them?
⸫ If we had lived in the same era we might also have thought that there is nothing wrong with the
institution of slavery. Let’s take human sacrifice – can we really blame them for not realizing that human
sacrifice is wrong? Wouldn’t it be ridiculous for us to go up to them and condemn them?
Counterargument
In response, we should be careful to distinguish moral judgements and judgments of blame.
 Moral judgements are judgements of actions;
 Blame is directed to the person who does the action;
⸫ There is nothing inconsistent in holding that someone acted wrongly even if it is not appropriate to
blame him or her.
6th argument: Nomad argument
Argument
Some practices like the senicide are the result of necessity. It is easy for us to say that senicide is wrong.
If we were to live in similar conditions we would also be forced to do it.
⸫ So, we should not condemn it. We want to say, that they were compelled to do something that is wrong
but they compelled to do something otherwise, if the conditions were different, be wrong.
Counterargument
Alternatively, we may want to say that circumstances excuse the act but the act of senicide will not be
excusable in our living conditions. This is not cultural relativism. Whether what we do is right or wrong,
depends always on the situation.
⸫ It does not mean that senicide is wrong for us and right for inwids rather it means that depending on the
situation it is right or wrong for anyone in any culture.
7th argument: Radical difference
Argument
Research has shown that cultures are radically different. Their moralities differ fundamentally from each
other as well.
⸫ Since we cannot even compare them, we cannot say that there is one universally valid morality.
Counterargument
The claim that people have radically different moralities refers to what people accept as right or wrong.
This argument is only an argument for relativism if we take the claim “there is no universal morality” to
refer what is right or wrong.
⸫ The fact that people accept different things as right or wrong doesn’t mean that the truth about what is
right or wrong is relative.
8th argument: Moral rules are not absolute
Argument
To adopt universalism is to think of moral standards as absolute – but we know that nothing is always
right or wrong. For example, lying is often wrong but there are situations where it would not be wrong to
lie.
⸫ Hence, the universalism is mistaken.
Counterargument
In response, we should distinguish between universalism and absolutism. Absolutism is the idea that there
are moral rules, which allow for no exceptions. Most universalists moral theories do not subscribe to
absolutism. There is nothing paradoxical about taking a moral rule to be valid universally, while allowing
that it can be overruled by other moral consideration.
⸫ Hence, the rejection of moral absolutism does not imply the acceptance of relativism.
9th argument: Naivite argument
Argument
To accept universalism is to be naïve about the source and influence of morality.
We acquire moral beliefs not from apprehension of moral truths, rather our beliefs about morality are
determined by enculturation. This explains, why the moral norms that people in different cultures accept,
are so different from those that are accepted elsewhere.
It is also naïve to think that morality, actually, has much influence on people’s behavior. Whereas in
fact, our behavior is mostly determined by the policies and the interests of those in power.
Counterargument
In response, neither relativist nor universalist need to accept that morally valid rules, are the rules that are
currently accepted in any culture. A universalist can, therefore, be critical of the moral beliefs that people
hold and suspend judgements on whether they are actually universally valid rules.
⸫ So, a universalist need not be naive about these things.
10th argument: Tolerance argument
Argument
To be cultural relativist is to be tolerant towards other cultures and to accept that we should not impose
our morality on them.
Counterargument
In response, we already saw that the rule “you should be tolerant towards others” is at least compatible
with universalism. In fact, it is most likely understood as a universal rule by those who think that it
provides a reason to accept relativism. If one accepts this as such means that one is not relativist.
Moreover, it is not true that a cultural relativist is necessarily tolerant, if tolerance means something more
than acknowledging that other cultures have different values.
11th argument: Universal moral truth are trivial
Argument
The triviality objection states that if any kind of moral judgement is universally valid, it is perhaps
judgements like:
 cruelty is prima facie wrong;
 kindness is prima facie right;
Different cultures interpret cruelty and kindness differently.
⸫ So, nothing important follows from accepting such moral judgements are universally valid.
Counterargument
In response, even if it is the case, people in different cultures interpret concepts like cruelty and
kindness differently. Accepting these statements still is allowing for some moral judgements to be
universally valid. It is then hard to see why only such very general judgements could be universally valid.
Though these judgements may not be definite they are certainly not empty – important things follow
from them.
⸫ The lack of universal acceptance of a moral norm is not a reason to accept relativism.
Subjectivism
Example: Should women dress more modestly than men?
Talgat Sholtaev – he became famous for dressing up the statue in Nur – Sultan. The woman’s dress was
revealing the contours of her body. This Mr. Sholtaev thought an affront to the dignity and honor of the
kazakh girl. There were other points of view like Asel Bayandarova’s (posted revealing photos) or Nurbol
Akhanov etc. One could respond differently to situation such as these.
One could side to Asel Bayandarova and say that women should have the right to live their lives as they
please or cite with the defenders of traditional moral values and say that what she did was shameful.
However, there is also a third possibility and this brings us to ethical subjectivism.
One could say something like this: “There is no right and wrong here, there are only opinions”.
Asel has one opinion and Talgat has another opinion, but there is nothing more, just opinions.
Ethical subjectivism → a theory about the nature of moral judgements. It is not a theory what is good or
bad, or about what is right or wrong. Accepting ethical subjectivism does not even prevent you from
taking side in this debate. As long as you are willing to agree, that your opinion is also just an opinion,
not the truth about the matter because there is no truth.
Perhaps, you may think that the theory is not just true but that it is obviously true.
Why would that be?
1. Persistent moral disagreements. Members of the same culture continue to disagree about moral
issues. Isn’t a fact that they continue to disagree best explain the fact that there is no truth and
there are only opinions?
2. Queerness of moral properties.
To understand this consider the difference between a scientific statement and a statement in ethics.
To understand the scientific explanation for water freezes below zero degrees one has to accept
entities like atoms, vibration of atoms, molecules, attraction between molecules and so forth.
To understand a statement like “murder is wrong” one has to accept the existence of some
property “moral wrongness” that may see spooky or strange to many of us. Many people would be
willing that mass and density are properties of atoms but many people would not be willing to
accept that “moral wrongness” is a property of an act.
Don’t be too quick to dismiss the opposite of ethical subjectivism though.
There are at least three reasons (counterarguments):
1. Intuitions. If you someone set a cat on fire, you wouldn’t tell me: “I don’t think that it’s a nice
thing to do. But hey, that is just my opinion”. You think that what that guy is doing was wrong,
and so we talk at least as if wrongness is part of the fabric of the world;
2. Debate. When we debate moral issues, we don’t think of ourselves as merely trying to change
someone else’s opinion. We often think that the other is wrong and we try to convince them of the
wrongness of their position.
3. Moral wrongness. Think of why you might think that moral wrongness is a spooky property. You
can’t feel, see or smell moral wrongness but then again you can’t smell gravity either. Gravity is
the property that scientists thought we need it to explain things we see around us and things get a
lot weirder in relativity theory or quantum physics. Is the idea that the gravity is a world pin of
space and time not very weird?
Suppose you are tempted to agree with the claim that moral judgements are mere opinions.
We all have opinions about many things; some of them are about facts. For example, you may have an
opinion about whether the 1969 moon landing was real or not; or about whether water boils at a 100
Celsius. Such opinions can be true or false. However, if you are inclined to say that moral judgements are
mere opinions you are probably thinking that there are neither true nor false.
How could this be?
Let’s first ask how we arrived at moral judgements in the first place.
Argument:
Centuries ago, moral philosophers were already thinking about such questions. Some philosophers and
theologians thought that we know right or wrong, good or bad through reason. As rational beings, we can
discover that some things are right and other things wrong just like we can perceive say the validity of
mathematical prove through reason.
⸫ To act rightly they would sometimes say to act in accordance with right reason.
Counterargument:
David Hume – an 18th century philosopher was among those who disagreed.
1. Reason allows us to discover truths or falsehood.
And the truth or falsehood is a relation between an idea on the one hand, and fact or relation
between the ideas on the other.
Example: If I think that swans are always white – an idea, but as it turns out there exist black swan,
then upon seeing a black swan I can reason that my original idea was false. For me to clin to the
idea that “all swans are white” after being confronted with the evidence to the contrary would be
unreasonable. After all, my idea turned out to be false.
2. Desires or action, however, can be neither true nor false.
Obviously, my idea when someone did something or when someone that desires something can
be true or false but the action itself cannot be. For actions are just realities that exist out there.
Since action cannot be true or false, we cannot say that they are reasonable or unreasonable.
Hume also agreed that human beings are sometimes motivated to do something because they think it is
the right thing to do. However, we are motivated to things by desires not by reason.
⸫ So, the judgement that something is morally right or wrong cannot be a judgement about a
reasonableness of an action.
3. Judgements about the action can be true of false. Even if actions cannot be true or false,
however, this doesn’t yet show that our judgements that an action is right or wrong cannot be
true or false. Hume thought that we judge an action to be wrong or vicious, when seeing that it
causes us to feel uneasiness of a particular kind. We judge an action to be right or virtues when
seeing it causes a certain kind of pleasure in us.
In fact, Hume sometimes appears to have thought that a particular moral judgements is nothing more than
the feeling of pleasure of displeasure caused by the perception of an action. He wrote, the very feeling
constitutes are appraise or admiration, we go no further nor do we inquire into the cause of satisfaction.
We do not infer a character to be virtuous because it pleases but the feeling that it pleases after such a
particular manner we in fact feel that it is virtuous.
Counter-counter argument: If Hume was right and to say something was morally wrong maybe nothing
more than to say I dislike this or I disapprove of this. Call this idea simple subjectivism.
Two things follow from this:
1. We cannot be mistaken about our moral judgements. We are after all simply expressing something
that we feel. This seems odd.
Example: friend asks you to help him/her to cheat during the exam. Upon hearing the request, you
begin to wonder what you should do. You ask, for example, whether he/she is trying to take unfair
advantage of you, whether she should face up to her own responsibility for the situation that she is in.
Or whether you would be wronging your parents after all you parents have done for you if you were
in danger of your graduation etc. In other words, you consider many factual and moral aspects of the
situation in order to decide what is the right think to do.
But that could not possibly make sense if your judgements of what is right is nothing more than the
expression of your feeling.
If simple subjectivism is correct:
 All you need to do in order to decide what is right is to imagine the action and decide how you
feel about it. Careful considerations of the moral aspects of the situation could not be relevant to
your judgement.
 Careful consideration of the moral complexities would at most have the effect of changing how
you feel, and hence, changing what is the right or the wrong thing to do.
When you engage in moral deliberation however, you probably think of yourself as attempting to get
the answer right.
⸫ Hence, simple subjectivism appears to be mistaken.
2. We will be unable to make sense of moral disagreement.
Example: Suppose, we are arguing about whether the homosexual relations are immoral or not. Or
about the women whether they should cover their hair when they leave the house.
If we thought that a moral judgement is nothing more than an expression of like or dislike that we
better stop discussing. You may dislike certain behavior and I may not have the same dislike but there
is no point arguing about differences in taste. We do however debate moral issues and sometimes we
debate them passionately.
⸫ So again, simple subjectivism seems to be mistaken.
Second, lets talk about the way we use language when we engage in an ethical discourse.
Argument:
A key insight that led to the development of more sophisticated defense of the subjectivism was the
realization that we use language to do different things. Much of what we say or what we write each other
has the purpose of reporting facts. Even when your friend asks you: “How are you?” and you answer
“Fine” – you probably mean to report something, however fake about your present condition or about
your present state of mind.
⸫ This may tempt us into thinking that the function of language is simply to communicate information
about the world (ourselves included).
Counterargument:
But this would be to lose sight of the many other kinds of speech acts. We use language to ask questions,
to give advice, to cheer, to order food or to get married.
In the beginning of the 20th century started paying closer attention to the different ways in which we use
language. Charles Stivenson – an American philosopher was one of them. He was convinced that the
resolution of moral problems would be greatly benefited from a better understanding of the language that
we use to express moral uncertainty or moral disagreement.
Disagreement, Stivenson thought, is of two broad kinds:
1. Disagreement in belief – example about the US president candidates;
2. Disagreement in attitude – example about the lunch;
Moral problems, Stivenson thought, almost always involve disagreement in beliefs.
But their distinguishing feature is disagreement in attitude.
As we saw, language can be used to report things but it can also be used to express attitudes. Language
can have both descriptive and/or emotive meaning. In ethical language, the emotive meaning is essential
because ethics is essentially disagreement in attitude.
Emotivism has clear advantages over simple subjectivism.
Advantage 1: One of the intuitive problems for simple subjectivism originated in the fact that it construes
our moral judgements as reports about our preferences.
Remember that simple subjectivism interprets “Generosity is good” as “I like or approve of generosity”.
It construes ethical language as report of our feeling about actions or people. It follows then, that we are
always right when we express the moral judgements unless we are diluted about our own feelings or
unless we are being insincere. Once we see ethical language as an expression of our attitude rather than a
report, we are not tempted to think of it as true or false.
⸫ So emotivism does not imply that we are always right when we express our moral judgements.
Advantage 2: Emotivism can still make sense of our moral disagreement. Simple subjectivism made
moral debates look like two people reporting their tastes to each other.
But Stivenson was sensitive to the fact that we sometimes feel a need or desire to align our attitudes.
Discuss/Debate
Emotivism is not only more sophisticated that simple subjectivism it is also an improvement upon the
former, because it is not vulnerable to obvious the most intuitive objections of the simple subjectivism.
⸫ Hence, emotivism is much less implausible than simple subjectivism.
When we make a moral judgement we often think of ourselves as saying something that is true. And
when we disagree on moral issue we think of the other person as wrong or mistaken.
So, when we reflect on our moral experience we find that subjectivism is not “obviously true”. You may
think the alternative to subjectivism is “obviously false” and if it is then still subjectivism may still be
clearly true. So, let’s see whether “moral realism” is “obviously false”.
Moral realism → is a view that moral judgements are beliefs that are meant to describe the way things
really are, some of these beliefs are true, that they are true independently of our attitudes towards them.
If you accept moral realism you believe that something is right or wrong not just because you think it is
right or because people in your society think that it is right. After all, we know that people are sometimes
mistaken in their judgements of what is right or wrong.
From this definition, moral realism does not appear “obviously mistaken”.
So, why should we think it is?
There are 3 candidates why it is mistaken and shows why these are not convincing arguments against
realism. Before that, we need to introduce the distinction between a posteriori and a priori knowledge.
Posteriori → much of what we know is derived from our senses sometimes with the help of microscopes
and other technical devices. In Kants terminology it is a posteriori.
Priori → a good example is the idea that the relation “is taller than” is transitive. When we reflect on the
relation “is taller than” we don’t feel the need to check with people around us that B>A and C>B then
C>A. Knowledge such as this is not straightforwardly derived from empirical evidence.
Observation: moral disagreement is pervasive even within a single culture;
1st argument (against moral realism): there is no truth
Argument:
Since we so often disagree on moral issues, we may easily be tempted to think that there are no objective
truths in ethics. After all isn’t it the best explanation for the fact that we are unable to agree.
Counterargument:
Our disagreement may be caused by the combination of several factors including insufficient non – moral
information, reasoning errors, lack of empathy, a failure to remain impartial (especially when our
personal interests are involved) etc.
These and other factors could easily result in us disagreeing about ethical matters.
⸫ Since there is another very plausible explanation, we cannot conclude that pervasive disagreement
supports the thesis that there are no objective truths in ethics.
2nd argument: disagreement of ideal reasoners
Argument:
Let’s imagine a group of ideal reasoners → people with all necessary information with impeccable
reasoning skills and no lack of empathy, would still disagree with each other about the correct moral
norms. Would this show that there are no objective truths in ethics?
Counterargument:
Actually, it wouldn’t because there are truths we are unable to access.
Godle, for example, has shown that we will never be able to prove that algebra is consistent. Still, this
doesn’t prevent us from holding that there is a correct answer to the question whether algebra is consistent
or not. We just don’t know for sure what the answer is. The same is true for things like say the question
whether there is a God or not.
⸫ However, it doesn’t follow from the fact that we agree and continue to disagree that there is no truth to
the question.
Freewill/Nature of consciousness/Knowledge claims
3rd argument: intractable disagreement
If the intractable disagreement about moral norms should warrant to conclusion that there is no truth in
ethics then similar disagreement in many areas should lead us to the same conclusion. But this is the
conclusion that few willing to accept.
Would intractable moral disagreement undermine our justification for holding on to our moral beliefs?
Example: ethical egoists who sincerely beliefs that we have a moral obligation to further our own and
only our own interests.
Argument:
Suppose you disagree with him/her, and try to poke holes in his/her arguments for ethical egoism. But
you realize that none of this is based on factual mistakes or flawed arguments, you simply unable to
convince him/her that ethical egoism is misguided. Would that mean that you are no longer justified in
holding on to your own moral beliefs?
Counterargument:
Not quite. There is a difference between being justified in once beliefs and being able to justify these
beliefs to others. And it is perfectly possible that someone else is justified in believing something opposite
from what you are justified in believing.
Example: you know for sure that you didn’t push him off the cliff, you are perfectly justified in believing
that you didn’t push him off the cliff. People who know your history of rivalry are equally justified in
believing that you pushed your enemy off the cliff. People can have contradictory beliefs and all be
justified in having them.
In fact, the argument against us being justified in our ethical beliefs can be turned upon itself.
Some people who are rational and knowledgeable believe that intractable disagreement undermines the
justification for the beliefs that people disagree about. Another people who are rational and
knowledgeable believe that intractable disagreement does not undermine the justification for the beliefs
that people disagree about.
⸫ So, nobody can be justified in believing that intractable disagreement undermines the justification for
the beliefs that people disagree about.
Gravity has an independent causal power, it has an impact on the world whether we believe in it or not.
Moral facts however don’t possess independent causal powers. They only make a difference in so, far as
they are able to influence our behavior thorough us acknowledging them. If the only thing that exists
independently of our acceptance are those that have independent causal power than moral facts don’t exist
independently of our acceptance.
The criteria that we shouldn’t accept the thesis that anything that lacks causal powers seems attractive
because it rules out all those things. But the causal desk has highly counterintuitive consequences. One of
these that it also rules out epistemic facts.
Example: modus ponens (p → q)
Friend accepts that p accepts q but is unwilling to accept that q is the case. You would probably be baffled
and start to question your friend’s sanity. The truth of an argument which has form of the modus ponens
is valid independently of anyone’s acceptance. Since such normative facts don’t have independent causal
powers their existence would be ruled out by the criteria that we should only accept the existence of
things that have independent causal powers.
Ethics and intuitions
*Gave different examples*
Probably, you may already have made up your mind but many of us would hesitate. The reason why you
hesitate is that you have two case specific intuitions, which pull you in different directions. Both case
specific intuitions can be generalized:
1. Duty not lie
2. You should avoid hurting people
Why it is wrong to lie?
1. If you lie and your friend finds out, then she will be hurt. Hurting people is wrong.
2. Friendship is an important part of life. Without trust friendship would not last long.
3. Within a friendship you voluntarily create expectations of trustworthiness. It is wrong not to honor
voluntarily created expectations.
Observation 1: We don’t just judge cases on bases of case specific intuitions, we also use principles/rules;
Observation 2: Once these principles/rules are accepted, they can generate new intuitions.
Then try to make generalizations over case specific intuitions and extract valid rules and principles. We
may then adopt these rules and principles to help us navigate our moral lives.
Objection: it takes moral intuitions too seriously.
Principles can be plausible independently of our moral intuitions, and when they do they help us to
navigate our moral world.
Utilitarianism → is a doctrine that we have a moral obligation to maximize happiness.
Happiness is very important → attracted to the theory.
Criticism of utilitarianism
Example: head of police frames an innocent black man instead of the one who raped a girl in order to
save more lives. A good utilitarian should prefer sending one innocent man to prison over having many
innocent people killed.
If you agree that sending an innocent man is unjust and you think that it follows from the utilitarianism
that you should send an innocent man to prison then you (as the critique assumes) should reject
utilitarianism.
A theory of morality that tells you that you must do something that is obviously immoral must be wrong.
Let’s call the intuition that you shouldn’t frame an innocent man and have them send to prison → a case
specific intuition.
Strong confidence?
When a case specific intuition clashes with an ethical or moral principle that we find attractive we seem
to favor relying on case specific intuition rather than a principle.
Example: Lying is wrong – but someone presents you a situation where lying appears justifiable – you
will likely be inclined to take the intuition about the permissibility of lying in this particular case as
showing that lying is not always wrong.
But why we give priority to the case specific intuition whenever it clashes with the more general rule,
principle or theory?
Why should our belief that we ought to maximize happiness will not lead us to conclude that we should
imprison an innocent man in order to save several lives?
Analogy:
Reliance on moral intuitions could be justified by the way of an analogy with the role of observation in
empirical science. Our confidence in a scientific theory typically is a function of how well the theory
accommodates our observations. If we find that the world behaves as our theory predicts it will count in
support of the theory (and vice versa). Similarly with the case specific intuitions, intuitions that cohere
with the theory or general moral principle tend to strengthen our faith in a theory (and vice versa).
Disanalogy 1:
We have a relatively good idea how empirical observation works. We have sense organs, but do we have
a moral sense organ? We could say that our moral sense organ is whatever produces moral intuitions, but
this doesn’t help us. The question we are trying to answer whether we have a good reasons to trust our
moral intuitions, whether we have good reasons to rely on them.
Empirical knowledge – observations reliable;
⸫ Analogy – hasn’t helped us in justifying our reliance on case – specific intuitions. It merely establishes
that we have a strong confidence in our empirical observations, which explains why we demand our
scientific theories accommodate them. Just like our confidence in case specific moral intuitions explains
why we expect our moral theories to accommodate them.
So, why do we trust our empirical observations?
Apart from the fact that we simply trust them unless we have a good reason, to the contrary we are also
able to formulate an overall theory of the empirical world which endorses our observations. If we could
do the same with our case specific moral intuitions, if they could be accommodated by an attractive and
plausible theory of morality that could explain features of our moral outlook, then this theory would help
us to justify our reliance on moral intuitions.
Can such a theory be developed?
Shally Kagan – argued that some very strong intuitions that we have are in fact mistaken.
They cannot be given a kind of theoretical explanations that we would need in order to justify our
confidence in them. If this is correct, then we have a good reason to be skeptical towards many of our
case specific intuitions.
Even if we are disinclined to believe our intuitions are mistaken we must face the complication that there
is a considerable disagreement among us. The problem is that a theory could explain and endorse at most
the moral intuition of some while discarding as mistaken the intuitions of others.
Should explain – why some of us have reliable intuitions while other don’t? If the theory would only
focus intuitions that we all agree upon it would have to explain why only some of our intuitions are
reliable and others are not.
Distinguish case specific intuitions from more general rules, principles and theories.
Disanalogy 2:
We respond intuitively to quite general principles or theories. In science, we can’t see the truth of
scientific laws but still endorse something like for example the principle that one should always maximize
happiness.
 Problem 1: What justifies a priority that we gave to our case specific intuitions when they clash with
more general intuitions? Are we perhaps better able to see moral truth when looking at a particular
case?

Problem 2: An additional problem however is that the divide between case specific intuitions on the
one hand and general moral principles on the other is itself misguided.
Here is why.
While it is often true that our moral intuitions are triggered when we are confronted with specific events,
they are also triggered by descriptions of particular cases. Our response to these descriptions is often a
response of a particular kind of act in a particular kind of case. Even when we response to an actual case
we often response to a more or less general type of action. For example, lying.
⸫ This means that there is no clear cut distinction between case specific intuitions and more general ones.
Rather we are always responding to some aspect of a situation or some aspect of a description of a
situation at a certain degree of generality. Since we necessarily focus on aspects of situations at different
degrees of generality it is again unclear why our intuition should be more reliable when we focus on
something less general.
In conclusion, we don’t have an adequate answer to the question why should we have greater confidence
in our case specific intuitions compared to more general ones. We also lack a clear insight in how reliable
our intuitions are.
Have you ever felt a need to reconsider some of your beliefs?
Example: Crush tells you that you are egocentric. Parents. Engineer.
 Sometimes we feel a need to reconsider our moral beliefs;
 We may also be forced to reconsider some of our moral beliefs when our moral norms clash with each
other;
 When we are in doubt what is the right thing to do we may sometimes find it helpful to turn to the
rules or principles that we find intuitively plausible;
In the introduction, mentioned rules or principles may sometimes appear independently plausible to us or
it may derive its plausibility from a case – specific intuition that supports it. More often, it could be a
combination of both. This is why the principles may themselves may up for revision if we find that they
clash with some of our case specific intuitions.
This way of going about revising the intuitions and principles with the aim of resolving dissonance in our
belief has been described by John Rawls as a process of aiming at achieving reflective equilibrium. For
convenience, we shall use the label to refer both to the process or methods as well as to the end results.
We all have ideas about fairness. Friend returns a favor if she can/Hire you did salary promised;
Our sensitivities to ideas about fairness may in very obvious ways be influenced by the position in
society:
 Rich parents existing inequalities in income and opportunities
 Men are more advantaged and have easier lives – being a man himself
 If you are part of the majority group you may not clearly see the disadvantages
We are probably biased when we think about fairness. But we can think of procedures that will likely
result in fair outcomes.
Example: Cutting the cake – the person that cuts the cate gets the second choice – so he will be motivated
to cut it equally;
Rawls: Our choices can be influenced by the context in which we take them.
Remember that our ideas about fairness are biased by our position in society, abilities, color of the skin,
gender etc.
To imagine what a just society would look like we should try to imagine what kind of society we would
want to live in if we could redesign the basic structure of our society while making abstraction of such
knowledge.
We should imagine ourselves behind the “veil of ignorance” choosing the principles of justice that
will be regulated at our society. We choose the principles by imagining the society that will maximize our
chances of living the life that we want to live but lacking knowledge of gender, race, talents, wealth as
well as knowledge of our particular conception of the good.
The principles that are chosen behind the veil of ignorance will later be applied to decisions as the
system of property rights, how democratic we want our society to be, whether we want freedom of
speech, legaly endorsed marriage etc. Since the principles of justice are chosen in circumstances that are
considered fair by Rawls, one might expect Rawls to defend these principles as justified by the fact that
they are chosen in these special circumstances.
Yet, Rawls attaches another condition on the principles, namely that they match our intuitions or better
our considered judgements.
If the participants behind the “veil of ignorance” would choose a set of principles that doesn’t rule out
slavery, we should not accept these principles. We should then do one of two things:
1. If the principles clash with some of our intuitions that we are not confident about we may want to
reconsider these intuitions.
Best possible case – slight revision of our intuitions results in the set of considered judgements
that matches the principles that were chosen behind the veil of ignorance. However, in case of
principles justify something that we consider unjust as an the example when they do not rule out
the permissibility of slavery, we must go back to the drawing board and revise conditions under
which the principles are chosen. We then see which principles the participants would choose in
these revised circumstances and again measure these principles without considered judgements to
see if some changes needed.
 If we can match new principles perhaps with some revision of our considered judgements we
should do this.
 If not, go back and forth until they cohere and we have reached the state of reflective
equilibrium.
2. Narrow reflective equilibrium – method.
Wide reflective equilibrium (Rawls) – extension of the method, includes testing the principles of
justice against the principles of other theories like utilitarianism. But also justifying the
description of the condition under which the principles are chosen as a condition of fairness.
One reason, why this is important, some have argued that Rawls rigs the description of the
conditions under which the social contract is chosen by requiring that the conditions cohere
without considered judgements.
⸫ It seems then that most of the work is being done by our considered judgements and not by the
fact that they were chosen in the conditions of fairness.
Utilitarianism
We judged someone’s behavior as immoral because someone did something that generated suffering or
the person could’ve make people happy but failed to do so.
Basic intuition behind utilitarianism → you ought to try to generate happiness if you can do so or you
ought to avoid making people suffer if you can do so.
Utilitarianism → part of larger family of theories called consequentialist theories.
For a consequentialist rightness or wrongness, goodness or badness of an act or a rule or a virtue or a
character trait or even a law is determined solely by consequences.
Alternatives for consequentialists theories were deontological theories (Kant’s moral theories).
For deontological theories – is not only determined by its consequences.
Example: Lying is wrong – generate suffer – social fabric would not sustain good relations –
consequentialists reasons;
Some people think that these reasons don’t tell the whole story – not only the consequences that matter –
certain actions are just wrong – some actions are wrong all the time;
Utilitarianism has an intuitive appeal. When hearing criticisms you may tend to think that only an
ignorant person would still be a utilitarian.
Overdemandness objection: coffee, check money, many people in the world who are sick – rather that a
coffee decide to spend money on charity – then you realize that you will not drink coffee for the rest of
your life since there are still people who need drugs and can’t afford them.
If utilitarianism demands that much of us – could not be a true theory. No moral theory could be true if it
demands of us that we always forsake our own pleasure for the benefit of other people who needs the
money more than we do.
Still there are utilitarian that think:
1. Our intuitions regarding these cases are false;
2. Their versions of the theory are not vulnerable to these objections.
Utilitarians think of the good as happiness.
Attractive:
1. If we think of morality as imposing demands on us as telling us that there are some things that we
ought to do and ought not to do than it seems reasonable for ask a question why I should refrain from
doing these things? Why should I be moral?
Answer: happiness matters to all of us, better or not you agree with utilitarianism that happiness is
only that matters to us, certainly all people as at much as it matters to us);
2. Idea that human beings are in some fundamental sense equal. We may not be equally endowed with
talents or equally achieved but we matter equally.
Answer: we matter equally in the sense of there are happiness is equally important;
My happiness is not more important than yours;
3. Provides foundations for morality that is divorced from particular creeds. In a societies where people
with different religions have to live with each other and with people that are not religious it doesn’t
make sense to refer to the Koran or Bible to ground particular moral requirements.
Answer: provides a ground for morality that doesn’t depend on a particular religion and it is not
obviously incompatible with any particular religion.
What is utilitarianism?
1. Consequentialism
2. Hedonism (nature of happiness)
3. It requires us to maximize happiness
Consequentialism → consequences.
Act consequentialists → actions are morally right or good only depending on their consequences.
1. Morality of an act never depends directly on something that someone did earlier.
If I promised yesterday, to help out today – does not function directly in the evaluation of whether
I should help you or not. Nor can the fact that you help me many times function directly to answer
the question whether I should help you now.
Utilitarian can argue about moral duty to keep our promises. They should be kept because of
expectations that they have generated; part of the practice to be valuable; judge reciprocity to be
good because our relations are sustained by it. Moral duty, reciprocity etc.
2. The rightness of an act only depends on the act itself. Intentions of the agents are not directly
relevant in judging whether the agent acted rightly or not. Kill a colleague by pushing him on the
road but saving him unintentionally from the falling piano – right thing for the consequentialist –
even intentions were awful;
For classical utilitarian the right act is what produces the best consequences not the one we expect
will produce the best consequences;
Act consequentialism compares the states of the world resulting from our actions in terms of the
amount of good that they contain;
Classical utilitarians were hedonists, for them the best states that contain most pleasure and least
pain. Since the morality of our actions depends on the amount of good created utilitarianism can
only guide our actions if we can compare different pleasures and different kinds of pain.
You might think that utilitarianism can only make sense if we quantify pleasures and pain.
Example: Health vs Education
Measure the benefits in terms of the different amounts of pleasure that it will generate and compare this to
the amount of suffering that is prevented by good health care system;
Pleasure is different.
Utilitarians suggest to rank different kinds of pleasures as higher or lower depending on which ones
would be chosen by people who are familiar with both.
⸫ This only counts as hedonism if we are right in assuming that people will prefer one thing over another
because it generates more pleasure.
Recently, utilitarians tried to avoid such problems by positing that we ought to act in such a way that as
many preferences as possible are satisfied.
⸫ This relieves us of the difficulties associated with comparing and measuring the pleasure and pain but
as we will the move generates problems of its own.
Problem: One of these problems is that even if he prefer one thing over another because we think that it
will make up us better off our judgements may often be mistaken. And if it can be mistaken shouldn’t
other people who care about us try to do what’s really in our best interests rather than try to give us what
we mistakenly prefer.
Mill thought that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness and wrong in
proportion as they tend to promote the reverse of happiness.
⸫ This seems to suggest that there are degrees of rightness and wrongness.
“The greatest happiness for the greatest number” suggests that we ought to maximize happiness.
We shouldn’t merely be doing something that prevents some pain and brings about some happiness rather
we only do what’s right if we among the options available to us choose the action that generates more
happiness and/or prevents more pain that the alternatives.
Drawn away from prioritizing our own good → naturally want more pleasure to ourselves than for others.
Morally right thing to do so utilitarianism tells us is to generate as much pleasure as we can even if it
comes at the expense of our own. However, if we are merely interested in generating as much good as
possible it doesn’t seem to matter where the good is produced in other.
⸫ Utilitarianism doesn’t tell us anything about how the good should be distributed. In fact, the serious
commitment to maximizing the good seems to rule out distributive considerations.
Example: Improve life of 10 kids (education) or only 1 (world class education) – you may think that the
world where everyone are getting the decent standard of living is better than the world where the majority
suffers even if the small minority have fantastic life.
Utilitarian will be concerned about with the total amount not with how it is distributed.
Utilitarian chooses the 2 option if the combined utility of the 10 children is outweigh by the utility of the
one privileged person.
Criticisms of utilitarianism
To know right from wrong we need to be able to judge the amount of goodness over different kinds of
goodness. Problems with predicting the outcomes and comparing the value of different experiences;
Example: It is hard to compare the pleasure of walking in the park with listening to the music.
Mill believes that we can safely conclude that listening to music provides more intense pleasure compared
to the walking in the park iff all/most people who are familiar with both pleasures would prefer the first
over the second. Since we want to compare the pleasure of many people and different occasions of
listening to music and walking in the park and ordinal ranking would not do. We can only hope to
calculate the total utility produced by the investment if we know more or less how much greater one
pleasure is compared to another.
In other words, we need to be able to measure very different kinds of pleasure in cardinal terms.
Moreover, take into account that different people have different tastes: some will more into visual arts
than music etc.
⸫ So, the comparison of the utility of a variety of activities will be different for different people.
1. It seems then that measuring the happiness produced by what we do is sheer impossible task.
2. Utilitarian takes into account only the consequences of an action. It tells us the action is right or
wrong/good or bad depending on their consequences, specifically the amount of good they generate.
But is it really only the consequences that matter?
1st argument
Example: watching a game with the dad vs watching a film with the friend (you promised).
Both situations generate equal amount of pleasure for you. You know that your dad would get
significantly more pleasure from you joining him than your friend would.
Would that mean that you should stay at home?
Not quite. Perhaps your friend would be more disappointed if you don’t go to the movie than your dad
would be if you do. You did after all make a promise to your friend. Notice, promise enters the utility
calculus by virtue of the fact that not doing what you promised generate negative utility.
If, however, that disappointment is outweighed by the pleasure that your dad would derive from you
staying home then you should stay at home. But this seems wrong.
Argument:
Surely, the fact that you made a promise makes it at least prima facie wrong not to fulfill it even in cases
where you can generate more utility by breaking the promise. Utilitarian, however, does not take into
account things happened in the past because it tell us only to look at consequences.
⸫ So, it will not be able to accommodate this intuition.
Counterargument:
Utilitarian respond that promises come into the picture in another way because breaking the promise
would lessen the amount of trust that people would have in future promises and endanger your ability to
rely on each other. If we take this effect into account – breaking the promise would only be right in
exceptional cases.
Let’s assume that this effect of breaking promises will not only make less likely that u will justify
promise breaking but that u will only justify promise breaking in such cases where we are intuitively
inclined to think that it is better to break your promise. Many people would say that it is still the case that
promises come into the picture for the wrong reasons. Not keeping the promise is prima facie wrong
because you made a promise not just because of the consequences of breaking it. If this is right then U
violates our intuitions about the wrongness of breaking promises.
2nd argument
Utilitarianism has also problems accommodating our intuitions about distributive justice.
Example: Societies
A: 10;
B: Half utility of 15 and half of utility of 5;
Argument:
Since utilitarian concerns about the total amount of utility it is totally indifferent between both societies.
Many of us would favor the society where the utility is distributed more equally. One would say this is
because we care about people’s happiness because we care about people.
⸫ But utilitarian seems to tell us that people only matters as producers of happiness.
C: 18 and 3 and 2, but the total is slightly higher than A/B;
⸫ For utilitarians, society C is definitely the one that we should choose if A and B are the only
alternatives. Whereas we might feel that the equal distribution of utility in A matters at least somewhat.
Counterargument:
Utilitarians say that they will tend to favor equal distributions because of the phenomenon called
diminishing marginal utility (DMU).
DMU → imagine how much pleasure winning 5 million tenge could bring you, however if Bill receives
this money he might not even notice it and even if he did it would not make any difference to the quality
of his life.
Because it is generally true that additional resources would produce more utility with those who have less,
Utilitarians will tend to favor relatively egalitarian income distribution.
3rd argument
Argument:
You might still think, like in the case of keeping promises utilitarianhas got things backwards. You might
think that economic equality is intrinsically valuable whereas utilitarians will only deliver economically
egalitarian societies as a matter of fact because relatively egalitarian society will be a more efficient
means of producing happiness.
Counterargument:
You are the fanatic about equality, after all the society that produces most happiness will almost certainly
turn out to have relatively little inequality.
Related objection the utilitarians concern with maximizing the total amount of happiness was labeled →
the repugnant conclusion.
Let’s imagine 5 billion people and you can slightly increase the total utility by enlarging the population to
30 billion. Even though the total utility will be slightly higher in this tensely populated world, its
members have lives that barely worth living. If you agree that we should not multiply the size of the
population to such an extend that the quality of life of each would be reduced significantly even if it is a
way of increasing the total amount of utility then you must conclude that there is something wrong with
utilitarians focus on the total amount of happiness.
Indirect utilitarianism
 Argument #1:
Utilitarianism is asking us to make decisions based on very little relevant information and it is asking us
to make such decisions all the time – you may spend all our lives trying to figure out what is the best
thing to do. Even if we are attracted to the idea that we should maximize the happiness – you may find
that we are unable to be good utilitarians.
 Argument #2:
We often have to make decisions based on expectations of the consequences of what we do and these
consequences are often very hard to gauge. You may take a guess but often these things are hard to
predict.
Counterargument:
Utilitarians say we should be focusing not on actions but on rules. Example of lying: creation of trust;
Limit the application of utilitarianism to public policy – it is easy to see that the idea that the government
should try to maximize happiness is less acceptable to challenges such as the one we mentioned.
⸫ Governments can rely on academics and public servants to help them predict the effect of their policies.
Many utilitarians have felt that these criticisms have misrepresented utilitarianism.
Utilitarianism is the criteria of rightness not the decision procedure. It means that utilitarianism was
never meant to guide the way we go about deciding in our daily lives what to do.
 Utilitarians would say that in most cases we would be bringing about the best result by simply
following the rules/principles/intuitions that we have acquired to our upbringing. It is only in special
circumstances that it would be a good idea to scrutinize some of these rules/principles/intuitions and
see whether they are conducive to the best results.
 Some utilitarians have even suggested that it might be better if we accept the grounds for morality
different than utilitarian ones.
 Or even more extreme that it might be better if the truth of U were hidden from us, so we should just
accept that lying is wrong (period).
If we thought to generate more happiness than we might want to try to generate more happiness in our
daily lives and then we would simply be producing less good consequences than if we would simply
followed the moral rules that we were brought up with.
In the previous lecture we discussed a few criticisms of utilitarianism. Let’s look at the few more. Let me
introduce two objections with one example.
Example: In October 1958, a woman went to a police department to fire charges because she had been
assaulted. The police officer in charge told her that it was necessary to take photographs of her. He
brought her to room in the police office, locked the door and told her to undress, which she did. The
officer then directed her to assume her in various indecent positions and photographed her. Woman
objected to undressing. She stated that there was no need to take photographs in the nude or in the
positions she was directed to take, because the bruises would not show in any of the photographs. She
was later told that photos had not come out. But in fact, the officer had made several copies of photos and
had distributed these among his colleagues.
You agree that the police officer’s actions were immoral.
 Argument #1: Women’s pain.
Utilitarian would have to seriously consider the pain caused by the police officer’s action. The woman
had been assaulted and came to see justice. Instead, she was abused again. The long-term psychological
damage of the abuse could be very severe.
 Argument #2: Pleasure.
Utilitarian would also need to take into account the pleasure that the police officer had, when he was
tricking a woman into undressing, and the pleasure of the fellow officers with whom he shared the photos.
My guess is that it is unlikely that the pleasure of even a large number of police officers would have
outweigh the pain inflicted on the woman. But imagine that the woman had not realized that the officer
was dishonest. In such a case a utilitarian might conclude that the officer acted rightly when he deceived
woman.
⸫ This would be a disturbing conclusion.
Counterargument:
Utilitarians who agree that there is something wrong with this conclusion can easily refer to the long-term
effects of the idea that the behavior of the police officer is permissible. If everyone knew that the police
officer thought it would be morally permissible to do such things, we would no longer trust police
officers. And that would be harmful to society.
⸫ We may have to conclude that the behavior is not morally right after all.
Still there are two problems for utilitarianism.
Objection 1:
The first is that we can easily conceive of actions that we could consider to be wrong even if they
generate more utility than the alternatives. Convicting the innocent man to death may be the one of them.
⸫ Some actions are just wrong irrespective of the amount of utility that they generate.
Objection 2:
We may think that some pleasures should not be counted at all as good. Perhaps the pleasure of the police
officer is in this sense similar to the pleasure of the sadist. Even if the sadist genuinely derives pleasure
from torturing his victim, no moral theory should count his pleasure as good. But utilitarianism could
only discount pleasure of either police officer or the sadist if it has a criterion other than pleasure for some
action to be morally right.
⸫ It is hard to see how such a criterion would fit the theory.
Another problem has to do with a distinction between a particular and general obligations.
Egalitarianism → one of the attractions of utilitarianism → it counts everyone’s pleasure and pain as
equally valuable and in many ways, these is how should be.
 Egoists think of their own happiness as much more important than the happiness of others.
 Racists would discount of pleasures of people of different skin color and would not regard their
pain as an equal moral concern. That’s exactly what is wrong with racism.
1st argument: Impartiality between the others
Argument:
 In certain context it is psychologically impossible for us to be impartial.
Example: Mothers and fathers could not possibly be impartial between the well-being of their own
kids and well-being of other kids. Friends could not be impartial between the happiness of their
friends and other people.
 Even if it were psychologically possible to be impartial in this way, we might not think of such an
attitude as desirable.
Example: A world which mothers and fathers had no greater love and concern for their own kids as
opposed to other kids would probably strike you as less good and perhaps even ethically
impoverished.
With friendships we might even think that the greater concern with well-being of one’s friend is
constitutive of friendship. If this is true, then the demand that we be impartial in our actions towards
others implies that it is wrong to have friends. And surely a world without friendships is an impoverished
world.
⸫ Hence, critics would maintain utilitarianism demands that we act in a way that would make our lives
less fulfilling than they could be. Again, that these would mean that utilitarianism would end up achieving
exactly opposite to what it aims to achieve. In other words, utilitarianism would be self-defeating.
2nd argument: Impartiality between oneself and others
Argument:
Everyone’s happiness is equally important, but it focuses on the consequences for how you should weight
the value of your own happiness. Since your own happiness is not more important than the happiness of
others, you would be acting wrongly if you choose to give preference to increasing your own happiness
on occasion where you can create more happiness for others.
 Most of us think that we should at least sometimes take the happiness of others into considerations
when deciding what to do.
 But few of us think that we should always be impartial between our own happiness and happiness
of others, even if that were psychologically possible.
One reason for this is that it would be impossible to pursue any project.
Example: Imagine you want to study a literature. Perhaps your study will help you to become a good
writer and your books will produce a lot of utility to people. But suppose, however, that you know that
you do not have a talent to write and you will produce less utility if you study literature than if you pursue
the career in medicine.
Would it be wrong for you to study literature, nevertheless?
Few of us would think so. In fact, this brings us to the same objection as the previous point.
If all of us would choose not to pursue personal projects whenever we might create more happiness by
doing something else, we would not be able to live meaningful lives. Hence, most of us living less haply
lives if we try to utilitarian calculus to all out actions.
⸫ If utilitarianism requires us never to give priority to the things we want to do and achieve in life, it will
turn out again to be self-defeating.
Counterargument:
If attempting the utilitarian calculus to the choices we make in daily life, it is indeed counter-productive
in the sense that we would end up producing less utility than we otherwise would.
⸫ This would give us a very good reason on utilitarian grounds not to attempt to maximize happiness in
our daily decisions.
Well - being
Example: You could be hooked up to a machine. This machine would:
 Put you in a subconscious state;
 Give you the most intense pleasure imaginable for a rest of your life;
 Take care of your body functions, so you would live for the rest of your life equally;
The only thing that you couldn’t do is get out of the machine. You would stay there.
Would you choose to be hooked on to that machine?
The topic of this week is well-being or what makes our life good for us, not morally good but just a life
worth living. Probably not choose to be hooked up to that machine, you would find the idea even
repugnant.
But why should that be?
Argument:
Remember that you utilitarians tell us that happiness is all that matters that we do everything for the sake
of happiness, and they define happiness as pleasure and absence of pain.
If utilitarians were right, then there should be no reason why we wouldn’t to be hooked up to that
machine. After all, it gives us only pleasure.
It could be that the example really does not prove what it is sometimes taken to prove.
 Counterargument #1:
Perhaps, the idea of being hooked up to a machine evokes associations with drug abuse and therefore
associations with bad health and addiction.
 Counterargument #2:
Perhaps, what matters to us is not just pleasure and absence of pain, but valuable experiences.
 Counterargument #3: Remember that Mill thought of different qualities of pleasure. The idea that
there might be something like quality of a pleasure beyond the duration and the intensity. Perhaps,
what Mill was really after was the quality of different pleasurable experiences.
So, let’s ask ourselves whether what we really want, what matters to us and what would make our life into
a good life is the variety of experiences.
Example: So, imagine being hooked up to a machine. This one doesn’t give you just pleasure, it gives
you a variety of valuable experiences. Once you are hooked up to the machine, it sends signals to your
brain and these signals give you the illusion of for example going bungee jumping. You could go bungee
jumping or at least have the experience of going bungee jumping without ever risking your life. (And
other examples).
Would you choose to be hooked up to that machine?
Let’s assume that the experience is quite advance. So, before you get hooked up to it you could have it set
in a such way it will induce exactly the experiences that you would like to have. For example, if you
always wanted to raise a family, the machine will induce experience of you raising a family. It will make
your dreams come true.
If the experiences all that matter, then it is hard to see how anyone could hesitate to be hooked up to the
machine. After all, the machine can make your dreams come true.
So, why is it that most of us would not want to be hooked up to this machine?
1. One is the idea that once you hooked up to a machine, you are a passive consumer of the experiences.
You are not really an agent.
Example: But now, let’s imagine that the machine is actually allows you to influence the experiences
that you will have. So, what you do while being hooked up to the machine influence the kind of
experiences that you will have.
Still, I think many of us would not to be hooked up to the machine.
Why is that?
One plausible explanation is that we don’t just want the experience of having a family, we want to have a
family. If this is true, then what matters to us is not just experiences, it’s what we do in life. This is not to
say that the experiences don’t matter to us, it is not to say that pain and pleasure don’t matter to us, but it
is to say that it not the only thing that matters to us.
2. Desire – fulfillment theories.
 According to such theories is that it only gives us the illusion that we are doing or achieving
something that we want to do or achieve. When we want to raise a family, we don’t just want the
experience of raising a family.
⸫ So, if desire-fulfillment theories are right what really matters to us is that we are able to do or
achieve some of the things that we want to achieve in life.

An additional advantage of desire-fulfillment theories is that it can also accommodate the desire to
avoid pain, the desire to have pleasure, and the desire to have valuable experiences.
But one problem of desire-fulfillment theories is that we can sometimes be mistaken about our desires.
Example: For example, you can find that you spent a whole lot of time in your life achieving a great
carrier. But then at some in your life perhaps you find that this carrier hasn’t made you happy. Even
though you achieved a lot, you found that it didn’t generate the kind of happiness that you were expecting
that it would generate.
⸫ If this is true, then even fulfillment of our desires is not all that matters in life.
An answer to the question what makes our life good for us is important to us. It’s also important to ethics
not just to utilitarianism.
Kantian ethics
This link could be very useful: https://www.csus.edu/indiv/g/gaskilld/ethics/kantian%20ethics.htm