Basics of Ethics-1 Lecture 2 Course structure Topics: – Ethics and critical reasoning, argument analysis – Moral skepticism – Goodness and Value – Consequentialism – Non-consequentialism – Virtue ethics – Engineering ethics, Moral responsibility Add ● Capuchin monkeys ● Divine command theory – ● Socrates and Euthyphro What makes a problem moral Morality in Monkeys? ● Capuchin Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg ● Wrongness vs. Consequences ● Ponder then: – Is there a sense of the ‘moral’ in the monkeys? – What does ‘wrongness’ capture over and above its consequences? Some deflationary theories: The hard porblem ● ● How could we ever see an ethical fact? When I attribute goodness to an action or state of affairs, is there any sense in the idea that I might perceive this goodness, as I perceive the color of an object or its shape? Ethical properties are not ordinary “natural” properties of things, that you can see and touch; so what are they? Is it perhaps wrong to think of moral words as denoting properties of things at all? Maybe they have another function entirely; if so, what might it be? Deflationary solutions: Emotivism Emotivism supposes that moral words serve merely to express emotions, rather than to describe external facts ● like saying “Boo!” and “Hurrah!” – Thus when I describe an action as good or right I am not attributing any real property to it; ● I am simply expressing my approval of it. – ● ● ● There are no “moral facts” that might make an object of genuine moral knowledge; there are just moral feelings that we express in words. According to a similar view, moral language serves to prescribe courses of action rather than to describe facts: if I call something good I am simply saying that everyone ought to act that way, not ascribing some peculiar imperceptible property to it. Moral statements are no more true or false than “Hurrah!” or “Love thy neighbor!”; indeed, they are not really genuine statements. – They express emotions or prescribe actions, rather than state facts Opposing view: Moral Realism ● ethics is best conceived as a branch of a priori knowledge: – ● when I come to know that stealing is wrong my knowledge is based on a kind of direct intuition into the moral facts—just like my knowledge of mathematical and logical truth. I know just from the concept of stealing that stealing is wrong; and similarly for murder and rape. Like other kinds of a priori knowledge, ethical knowledge is not derived from experience—in the sense that my senses can detect the ethical properties of things. Realism vs. Relativism Emotivism as relativism (non-cognitivism) ● – No moral facts, only emotion and its expression – Emotions may be subjective – No moral facts out there Moral Realism (cognitivism) ● – Moral knowledge can be objective Ethics is best conceived as a branch of a priori knowledge: when I come to know that stealing is wrong my knowledge is based on a kind of direct intuition into the moral facts—just like my knowledge of mathematical and logical truth. ● – I know just from the concept of stealing that stealing is wrong; and similarly for murder and rape. – Like other kinds of a priori knowledge, ethical knowledge is not derived from experience—in the sense that my senses can detect the ethical properties of things. ● Immanuel Kant’s “Starry heavens above and the moral law within”! Problems ● No room for deliberation on emotions and moral tastes ● No room for praise or blame ● No scope for moral responsibility ● No scope for reason to motivate actions – Hume: reason is a slave to passion! Divine Command Theory ● ● An act is morally required just because it is commanded by God, and immoral just because God forbids it. God is the source of morality – The reason murder, lying, adultery, are all wrong (immoral) is because God commands and thereby decrees that it is wrong Exposing the fallacy of the argument ● Socrates does this 2500 years ago – ● ● In Plato’s dialogue, Euthyphro The setting: – Euthyphro is prosecuting his own father for having killed one of the family’s servants. – Socrates sees him and asks how come he is testifying against his own father. – Euthyphro replies that he is being pious and obeying the Gods Socrates then wants to know what ‘piety’ consists in What is Piety? ● ● ● ● But when Euthyphro gives his definition of piety, Socrates is disappointed. “To do as I am doing,” Euthyphro says, “prosecuting the impious.” Socrates points out that although prosecuting the impious is certainly an example of a pious action, there are obviously other kinds of pious actions. Socrates wants to know what all (and only) pious actions have in common that makes them pious. Euthyphro says, “There are things that all the gods agree on. That must be what makes something pious: being loved by all the gods.” Certainly this is something that all and only pious actions have in common, Socrates points out, but is that what makes them pious? In other words, the gods love pious actions because they are pious; those actions are not pious because the gods love them. Deflating the argument ● ● God’s commanding something is not what makes it moral; rather, God commands things because they are moral—because he recognizes something about them that makes them good Some people think that morality can only be binding if God is at the root of it; without God it is a moral free-for-all. Thus the reason murder is wrong is just that God has commanded us not to murder —he decrees that it is wrong. ● The trouble with this position, as was pointed out by Plato over two thousand years ago, is that it gets things backwards: it is not that murder is wrong because God commands us not to murder; it is rather that God commands us not to murder because murder is wrong. – God cannot simply by decree make murder wrong, any more than he can make it right; if he could morality would be arbitrary and pointless. Murder is wrong because of what it is, not because God has decided to declare it wrong. God is not the source of moral truth—though He may be responsible for rewards and punishments for your actions. But then, if God cannot be the logical basis of morality, there is no necessity for God to exist in order that morality has force: murder is still wrong even if there is no God. – ● Laundry list of conditions ● those who seek divine guidance in trying to lead a moral life may succeed. But several conditions must be met. It must be the case that – (1) God exists, and that we can be justified in believing this. – (2) Theists must be justified in selecting a particular source of religious and moral wisdom, such as the Koran, the Book of Mormon, or the Christian scriptures. – Theists must also (3) defend specific interpretations of those sources. – Finally, when an interpretation conflicts with tradition, religious believers must (4) successfully argue for the priority of one over the other. Watch/Listen ● ● Watch – The Great Hack – Human Nature – We Need to Talk About AI – The Bleeding Edge – Coded Bias Listen – Examining Ethics – Ethics of AI in Context – Land of the Giants Read: ● ● Russ Shafer-Landau, Living Ethics: An Introduction with Readings (2018) Dean A Kowalski, Moral theory at the movies: An Introduction to Ethics (2012)
