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Review Sheet:
Chapt. 1: The Moral Point of View
Moral concerns are unavoidable in life.
ETHICS: the conscious reflection on our moral beliefs.
How is ethics like nutrition?
a. the fields consist of everyday knowledge and specialists
b. specialists disagree on certain issues but provide firmer foundation
and insight
c. we can’t avoid their questions in our lives
d. doing, not just saying, the right thing leads to joy
Ethics is an ongoing conversation.
a. Professional discussions of ethical issues in journals.
b. We come back to ideas again and again, finding new meaning in them.
Morality: first-order set of beliefs and practices about how to live a good life.
Ethics: a second order, conscious reflection on the adequacy of our moral beliefs.
Public and Private Moral Beliefs:
Distinguish between overt and covert moral beliefs (what I say I believe and what I
demonstrate in action.
Self knowledge required for awareness of moral beliefs.
One aim of the course is discussion to promote this self-knowledge.
The goal of ethical reflection is moral health.
Thus we seek to determine what will nourish our moral life and what will poison it.
What makes something a moral issue?
 Content: duties, rights, human welfare, suffering, character, etc.
 Perspective: impartial, compassionate, etc.
Example: Cheating
Imagine a situation in which you see a classmate cheating. There are several elements from a
moral point of view in this situation.
 Some people are hurt by the cheating.
 There is deception in the situation.
 Cheating seems to be unfair to those who don’t cheat.
 There are conflicting values—honesty, loyalty, etc.
 There are questions of character.
Names of ethical theories.
a. Relativism
b. Absolutism
c. Pluralism
Language of moral concern: ought, must, should, right -- used by normative ethics.
Many philosophers have argued that the moral point of view is characterized by impartiality,
that is, I don’t give my own interest any special weight. Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill
Other philosophers have seen the origin of the moral life to be in compassion, feeling for the
suffering of other sentient beings.
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Josiah Royce: “Such as that is for me, so is it for him, nothing less.”
Universally binding obligations:
Some philosophers maintain that moral obligations are universally binding and that is what
gives them their distinctive character. Immanuel Kant.
Concern for Character
Philosophers from Aristotle onward have seen the primary focus of morality to be character.
What ought I to do (Kant and Mill)
What kind of person ought I to be? (Aristotle)
The Point of Ethical Reflection
 Evaluate other people’s behavior
 Search for meaning and value in our own lives
Ethics as the Evaluation of Other People’s Behavior
 Ethics used as a weapon
 Hypocrisy possibility of knowing other people
 Right to judge other people
 Right to intervene
 Judging and caring
Ethics as the Search for Meaning and Value in Our Own Lives
 Positive focus
 Aims at discerning what is good
 Emphasizes personal responsibility for one’s own life
What to Expect from a Moral Theory
 Description – Descriptive ethics does not take a stand
 Explanation
 Strength
 Prescription – new possibilities and wonder – normative ethics gives direction
Ethics is more like engineering than physics. Physics has clear-cut, definitive answers, where
engineering offers several possible ways of doing things, including many ways that are wrong.
Ethics is like nutrition: One studies bodily health the other moral health.
There is significant disagreement in both fields but also common ground.
Chapt. 2: Relativism, Absolutism, and Pluralism
Quote from Rudy Giuliani after 9/11
“The era of moral relativism between those who practice or condone terrorism, and those
nations who stand up against it, must end.” P . 24 5th ed.
Definitions:
Three responses to moral conflicts: relativism, absolutism and pluralism.
Live and let live – acknowledge differences without judgment. Criticize practices outside our
culture and speak out against them or intervene using force?
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Examine both concrete conflicts and conflicts of ethical theory.
Concrete Conflicts:
1. Clitoridectomy. Painful, traumatizing mutilation of young girls that leaves them permanently
disfigured and deprived of sexual enjoyment. Unsanitary conditions without anaesthesia.
Sometimes against the will of the girls themselves. Middle East and Africa.
2. In American Midwest, two Iraqi men celebrate a wedding to two sisters, aged 13 and 14. Not
doing anything wrong. Statutory rape?
3. The Taliban destruction of the giant statues of the Buddha that had watched over the Bamiyan
Valley in Afghanistan for over 15 centuries claiming that the images were offensive to Islam.
Conflicting Theories:
Follow God’s will – or religious teachings: polygamy
Ethical egoism: pursue self-interest. Produce greatest overall amount of happiness or pleasure.
Kant: respect for autonomy of ourselves and others. Use girls as means not ends. Rights: moral
minimum with which all must comply – children are vulnerable and have rights – using peyote
in Native ceremony!
Some women ask for asylum in this country for themselves or their daughters.
Ethical relativism: Moral values are relative to a culture and cannot be judged by an outsider.
Another version says that peripheral values differ from culture to culture.
Ethical relativists see each culture as an island unto itself, right in its own world, and they deny
that there is any overarching standard in terms of which conflicting cultures can be judged.
Absolutism: There is a single moral standard of right. Usually derived from religion. Values
are absolute and universal.
Pluralism: There are many ways to judge value. Cultures can legitimately pass judgments on
one another . We are encouraged to listen to what other cultures say about us as well as what
we say about them. Encourages tolerance recognizing that cultures may differ. In some
situations we must stand up to evil and oppose it.. Wisdom consists in knowing where to draw
the line between the tolerable and intolerable.
Cultural practices that raise ethical questions:
Polygamy
Destruction of Buddhist statues by the Taliban in Bamiyan valley in Afghanistan, or images in
the Kabul Museum. 1
`4WWII after Pearl Harbor.
Ethnic cleansing in the Balkans by the Serbian forces to eliminate Muslims from their territory –
US intervened Taliban
A good theory provides:
1. description and explanation
2. strength
3. critique -- see moral blind spots
4. new possibilities
5. wonder
It does not merely tell us what’s right or wrong, but how to determine what’s right or wrong.
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Attractions of relativism:
1. need for tolerance and understanding
2. the fact of moral diversity – recognizes this fact
3. lack of plausible alternative
4. relativity of all understanding
5. defense - don’t cast the first stone
Problems with relativism:
1. Easily collapses into subjectivism: moral values are relative to each
unique individual. It’s right because I think it’s right.
2. Makes critique difficult -- and standing up against evil.
In action: it gives no advice when cultures overlap, or tell why we act, gives no leverage to
provoke change -- no room for revolution. Majority is de facto “right.”
3. In understanding: it claims one needs to be a native to understand sufficiently
4. Need to be a native to judge: only Romans can judge Romans.
5. Relativism supposes determinism -- values determined by culture.
Strengths and values of Pluralism.
Types and Definitions of Relativism:
Descriptive and Normative Ethical Relativism
Descriptive Ethical Relativism: Various societies in the past have engaged in various practices:
cannibalism, sacrificing humans to the gods – viewed as morally acceptable and commendable.
Stating differences is descriptive ethical relativism. Does not claim correctness or belief about
right or wrong. Descriptive Ethical Relativism is largely a scientific, descriptive activity that
does not claim to judge the morality of cultural practice
Normative ethical relativism is more controversial. Validity is claimed for whatever the
culture holds. Means we can’t make any claims like intentionally killing innocent human beings
is always wrong.
Relative to what? Isolated tribe or culture? Isolation hard to come by in today’s world. Internal
diversity as well as exchange and overlap. Hopis in American southwest, businessmen with
branches in different parts of the world.
Leads to subjectivism: moral values are unique to each individual. People are islands to
themselves. Causes for moral beliefs – not the same as understganding and judging -- justifying
moral values. How much morality is relative?
Behavior: belch with approval after dinner, spit at another’s feet to express respect – good to
express appreciation of a meal, but the way differs from culture to culture
Peripheral values: individual privacy: freedom to smoke, value of private property, polygamy –
value family but different ideas of family and childrearing.
Fundamental Values: torturing and killing innocent children
What kind of doctrine is Ethical Relativism:When in Rome, do as the Romans do. See Graphp. 45
Action: how to act consistent with local customs.
What to do when cultures overlap
Why we should act this way
Provide leverage to convince the majority to change
Understanding
Understand background meanings in a culture
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Claims cultural context can be understood only by participants, outsiders can’t get it.
Weak version: outsiders can understand and dialog is possible
Judgment
Judge only by standards of the society in question. Strong versions allows only Romans to judge
Romans, weak version allows anyone to judge if they use Roman standards
Explanation:
Moral values are caused or determined by cultural forces. If you were born in Rome you would
have the Roman values- “when in Rome…”. – not freely chosen.
Justification
Only from within culture. Accept the views of a culture from perspective of the culture. Nazi
anti-Semitism could not be questioned.
Against Relativism:
1. Facts of Moral Diversity – do not justify ethical relativism -- establishes descriptive ethical
relativism but does not commit us to normative ethical relativism. There may be many
scientific views in the world today but that doesn’t make them all right. Also are we
referring to low level values or fundamental values. May have seemed right to Nazis to
exterminate Jews, homosexuals and gypsies – but wasn’t right.
2. The refutation of relativism through the defense of one’s own absolutist position –
debatable – and the subject matter of the course – everyone would have to accept this
absolute position for it to function as needed here
3. Claim that relativism is self-defeating – what if the Romans are absolutist and
ethnocentric, or if they are intolerant (where relativism is presented as promoting
toleration)? Furthermore should tolerance be our highest value? Racism, Genocide –
tolerance is important but not highest value.
4. Concern that ethical relativism is a form of moral isolationism or indifference that ignores
the fact that moral judgments are unavoidable – if it’s all relative then we can’t criticize it.
No basis for criticism., also care-less and isolating. No way to resolve moral
disagreements between cultures, ignores shrinking world needing intercultural moral
judgments, that are part of everyday life, cultures intersect.
5. Unable to provide an adequate basis for moral change – no basis for change – prophets
who oppose the system don’t make sense. We mean something by progress – freedom,
respect for more people, etc.
Pluralism: like deciding who’s the best baseball player: many ways to decide.
1. Satisfies need to understand differences in cultures
2. Satisfies need for tolerance
3. Recognizes limits to tolerance in the face of evil
4. Acknowledges “we” could be wrong, fallibility
Who’s the best….baseball player, singer, etc.?
Plurality of moral values: actions, consequences, agents, intentions, character. Not a single
factor. Several standards See p. 56 graph
Standards may not be consistent but will be compatible – checks and balances.
Fallibility: moral humility – we might be mistaken (circumcision)
Understanding: understand the meaning of practices of other cultures.
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Tolerance: many ways to achieve moral excellence. Leave different cultures room
Standing Up Against Evil: can’t lead to moral laissez faire policy. Can’t say anything goes. Most
outrageous wrongdoing is often directed against the powerless: children, women, minorities.
Fallibility: two way conversation recognizing our own possible shortcomings.
Ch. 3 – The Ethics of Divine Commands: Religious Moralities
Religious moralities are based on the conviction that religion tells us how to act and that religion
overrides society’s morality.
Diversity of Traditions:
The Christian Worldview
Contrast with atheistic: the Euthyphro then relationship between religion and ethics
God’s Relationship to the World
God
Creation
God creates the world and is in constant interaction with the world, sustains it in its existence
Revelation Human History through Revelation Incarnation Final Cause – God gives the world a final
purpose or telos toward which it strives
Universe comes from God and thus if fundamentally good
The natural order because it is created by God is fundamentally good
Ways God is in touch with the world
As a result of these interactions the world has Unity – a single world with structure; Purpose: beings on
earth have a goal or purpose ordained by God; Value: the world is good because it comes from God who is
all good; it is aiming toward God who can only establish good purposes.
For atheist Bertrand Russell existence has no unity, value and purpose in the Christian sense
 “That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving;
 “That his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of
accidental collocations of atoms;
 “That no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life
beyond the grave,
 “That all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of
human genius, are all destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system,
 “And that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of
a universe in ruins
 “--all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which
rejects them can hope to stand.
 “Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can
the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.”
o No place for preordained purposes in Russell’s view
o No goodness inherent in the world for him
o No privileged place for humanity within his view
 The implications of these differences for ethics are profound
o No ultimate purpose for humanity
o No ultimate reward or punishment
 Nietzsche's question: if God is dead, is everything permitted?
o No guarantee that nature is good or bad
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“Unnatural” becomes a purely descriptive term
Now let’s expand the discussion beyond Christianity.
Navajo tradition emphasizes harmony and balance in relationship between human beings and
the natural world. Natural and supernatural permeate one another.
Islamic teaching emphasizes unification of religion and law and an ethic of law based on the
Qur’an and other sacred texts. Obedience to the will of Allah is the highest good. Ethics is
clearly dependent on religion. The good is ultimately what Allah wills it to be.
Buddhist ethics emphasizes compassion. Alleviation of suffering and purification of the soul are
key. Path to nirvana blurs Western distinctions between faith and reason. Enlightenment
beyond rationality.
The Navajo:
The Navajo Holy Wind
Tradition and Society
Oriented toward how Navajo treat one another
– Small society
– Practical, not theoretical
Dualisms and Antagonisms
– No Western mind-body split
– Don’t choose one side of the dualism
Attitude toward evil: it’s a necessary presence. Avoid it but don’t try to create a world free from evil.
Navajo Medicine
 Western view
o mind/body split (Descartes)
o heal the body
o Stamp out disease
 Navajo view
o Mind and body together
o Heal the whole person
o Seek harmony
Hozho or harmony, beauty, peace of mind, goodness, health, well being – is the Navajo main goal.
Morality guides individuals toward achieving balance and harmony.
Three levels to harmonize:
– natural
– human
– supernatural
– Create harmony rather than domination
– Example: moving to higher ground rather than building a dam
– Respecting the rattlesnake
The holy messenger wind is like the Christian conscience, a source of moral guidance. It swirls around an
individual through a hidden point in the ear; it warns individuals of impending disruptions of hozho, it
does not punish. It is both physical (we feel it on our faces) and ephemeral (we cannot see it), it can shift
in direction and intensity. It is one but also many as it comes from four directions or mountains. It is
local. Person who heeds the winds is “one who lacks faults.” He thinks and talks and acts in a good way.
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Practical ethics:
Basic premise: life is very very dangerous
Maxims:
 Be wary of non-relatives.
 Avoid excesses
 When you are in a new situation, do nothing.
 Escape.
 Maintain orderliness (harmony) in those sectors of life which are little subject to human control.
Role of Ritual – reestablish harmony and insure hozho.
The Blessingway is one of the ceremonies performed to reestablish harmony when there has been a
disruption.
Balance and harmony are the chief ethical goals. Peacemaker Court provides structure for community to
reestablish harmony disturbed by either criminal or civil offense.
The Islamic Shari’ah
Rejects traditional Western distinctions between church and state, religion and ethics.
Three canonical elements in Islam:
Belief or faith (imam)
Practice or action (islam)
Virtue (ishan)
To be good is to surrender to the will of the One God, Allah. An action is good simply because God wills
it. The will of Allah is embodied in shari’ah, the religious and civil law that governs Muslim life.
Also a mystical tradition in Islam: Sufism.
Rational tradition known as Mutazila emphasized importance of rational reflection on belief. God is able
to act only in ways that are good.
Shari’ah is the Islamic Law. Covers virtually all areas of human behavior and tells in great detail
1. what behavior is required (fard- obligatory – daily prayers, fasting, articles of faith, obligatory
charity, the hajj)
2. recommended – (mushtahab – proper behavior in matters such as marriage, funeral rites and family
life. Same as areas of civil law in the West.)
3. permitted – (mubah – eating apples or oranges)
4. discouraged – makruh – may be subject to penalties – using great amounts of water for ablutions,
eating shrimp.)
5. forbidden – (haram – pre-marital sex, murder, getting a tattoo, eating pork, drinking alcohol)
Laws address behavior toward God and the ways human beings treat one another.
The Five Pillars govern how believers should act toward God:
1. Shahadah: the profession of faith that “there is no god but God (Allah) and Muhammad is the
messenger of God.
2. Salah: ritual prayer and ablutions undertaken five times a day while facing Mecca.
3. Zakah: obligatory giving of alms to the poor to alleviate suffering and promote spread of Islam
4. Saum: ritual fasting and abstinence from sexual intercourse and smoking during the month of
Ramadan to commemorate the first revelations to Muhammad
5. Hajj: ritual pilgrimage to Mecca undertaken at least once in a lifetime.
Family is central to Islamic society. Status of women higher than in tribal cultures of the Middle East.
Limited number of wives to four, gave inheritance right to women, forbade infanticide of female infants.
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Virtue or ihsan: worshipping God and excellence in pursuit of some goal. “Allah has prescribed ihsan for
everything; hence if you kill, do it well, and if you slaughter, do it well; and let each one of you sharpen
his knife and let his victim die at once.”
The role of the Ulama :
The Ulama, or clergy, give the definitive interpretation of Allah’s will
No separation between church and state
The Ulama also have an executive role in implementing Allah’s will
Jihad:
 Literally means “striving”
 Focus on resisting, overcoming evil
 Greater Jihad:
o focus on internal striving
 Lesser Jihad
 focus on external striving
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Moderate and Fundamentalist Factors
Islam, like many religions, has various factions.
o Fundamentalist factions see little room for compromise with other religions
o Leads to attacks against others, including attacks against the United States and against
Hindus
o Moderate factions see Islam as coexisting with other major religions.
 Buddhism
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An Ethic of Compassion for all
An Ethic of renunciation for monks
An Ethic of reincarnation for lay persons
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The Four Noble Truths deal with
1. The inevitability of suffering
2. The sources of suffering
3. The elimination of suffering.
4. The paths to the elimination of suffering
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Two Ways of Reducing Suffering
Suffering arises from a discrepancy between desire and actuality
o change the actual world--Western technology
o change the desire, extinguish the individual self--Buddhism
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Reincarnation
Personal self moves through the wheel of existence like a flame being passed from one candle to
another
Karma: each individual action helps to set free or bind us to the personal self
Moral commandments are generated by demands of karma
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The Eightfold Path
right views;
right intention;
right speech;
right action;
right livelihood;
Wisdom
Wisdom
Wisdom
Morality
Morality
Prajna
Prajna
Prajna
Sila
Sila
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right effort;
right mindfulness
right concentration
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Compassion
Theravada Buddhism stresses an ethic of self-renunciation, self-purification, detachment
Mahayana Buddhism stresses an ethics of compassion for all living things
Morality
Sila
Concentration Samadhi
Concentration Samadhi
Overview
Christianity
Navajo
Islam
Buddhism
Ideal
Love
Harmony
Law
Compassion
View of
God
One God,
Three
Persons
Many
Gods
One God
No
personal/
individual
God
Religion and Reason in Ethics
Supremacy of
Religion
Compatibilist
Theories
Supremacy of
Reason
Strong Version
All morality is
based on divine
commands
(Islamic shari’ah)
Reason and
religion are
identical in
content (Hegel)
Ethics is based
only on reason
(agnostic or
atheistic)
Weak Version
Divine
commands
sometimes
override ethics
(Kierkegaard’s
teleological
suspension of
the ethical)
Reason and
religion may be
different but do
not contradict
one another.
(Aquinas)
Even God must
follow dictates of
reason.
(Kant)
Weakness of Divine Command Theories:
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How can we know God’s will? Sacred texts? Which ones? Which tradition? What exactly is God’s
will? Inner voice? Clergy? Community consensus? Natural events?
God and the Criteria for the Divine: is something good because God wills it, or does God will it
because it’s good?
Human Autonomy: human moral life depends solely on God’s will. Omnipotence of God, no
independent human reason or choice.
Autonomy of Ethics Theories: Reason should override divine command
 Heritage of the Enlightenment – reason is autonomous and effective.
 Autonomy of Reason: nothing outside of itself taken for granted. (Descartes)
 Efficacy of Reason: force for changing the world.
 Theistic versions: Kant – reason is the same for God and human
 Agnostic and Atheistic versions: disregard God.
 Compatibilist Theories: faith and reason don’t conflict – Hegel and Aquinas.
Saints and Moral Exemplars
 Models of moral goodness more compatible among religions than dogmas
 Stories: allow cross-cultural identification more easily than dogmas.
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Is Religion Harmful to Morality?
Marx and the “opiate of the people”
Nietzsche, morality and the Death of God
New atheism: Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens: religion is false, delusional and harmful
Are the bad effects necessary or accidental to history?
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Does Morality Need Religion?
Ultimate reckoning: God will balance the scales
Motivation of reward and punishment
Practices and community that support values
Religion as liberating: Civil Rights, peaceful change, cause of the poor
Moral significance of suffering
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Religious Belief: Diversity and Dialogue
Jihad vs.MacWorld
Fundamentalism: beliefs as literal and spelled out; beliefs are absolute; beliefs are true for everyone
for all times. Intolerant of disagreement
Ecumenism: Pluralism Project – statements of belief are metaphorical, not absolute, language distorts.
Disagreement tolerated
Ch 4. Egoism: Psychological Egoism and Ethical Egoism
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Two types of egoism:
o Psychological egoism
 Asserts that as a matter of fact we do always act selfishly
 Purely descriptive
o Ethical egoism
 Maintains that we should always act selfishly
Our concern here is with psychological egoism Part Two. Reconceptualizing psychological
egoism
Part One. Analyzing the psychological egoist’s claim
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Analyzing the Psychological Egoist’s Claim: Thomas Hobbes
The psychological egoist claims that people always act selfishly or in their own self-interest.
One of the earlier advocates of this view was Thomas Hobbes, who saw life as “…nasty, brutish,
and short.”
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Psychological Egoism is a widespread belief;
Folk psychology
o There is a widespread belief that people are just out for themselves
o Social Darwinism: everyone is just trying to survive.
Social sciences
o Economics: rational agent theory
Foreign policy
o Belief that other nations will always act solely in terms of self-interest
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Psychological Egoism claims:
What exactly does the psychological egoist maintain? Two possible interpretations:
o #1: We act selfishly, or
o #2: We act in our self-interest
In addition, we need to clarify:
o Genuine or apparent self-interest? If we act out of self-interest, is it genuine self-interest or
only apparent self-interest?
o Maximizing or non-maximizing? Are we saying that we always seek to maximize selfinterest, or simply that self-interest is always part of the picture
o Exclusive or non-exclusive? Are we saying that we act only out of selfishness, or that
selfishness is always one of our motives?
o Causally determined? Are we saying that human beings are causally determined to act this
way or that we choose to do so?
There is a fundamental ambiguity at the heart of psychological egoism.
o #1: We act selfishly, or
o #2: We act in our self-interest
We can distinguish these in the following way:
o #1: A claim about our motives
o #2: A claim about the objective consequences of our actions
What does it mean to be selfish?
If we are selfish, do we only do things that are in our genuine self-interest?
o What about the chain smoker? Is this person acting out of genuine self-interest?
o In fact, the smoker may be acting selfishly (doing what he wants without regard to others)
but not self-interestedly (doing what will ultimately benefit him).
If we are selfish, do we only do things are we believe are in our self-interest?
o What about those who believe that sometimes they act altruistically?
o Does anyone truly believe Mother Theresa was completely selfish?
Think of the actions of parents. Don’t parents sometimes act for the sake of their children, even
when it is against their narrow self-interest to do so?
There are two ways in which the psychological egoist's claim may be interpreted:
#1: We act selfishly
o If the psychological egoist is saying that we act selfishly, then how do we explain
apparently altruistic people like Mother Theresa? Two possible answers:
 People are unconsciously selfish. But what do we mean by unconscious intentions?
This devolves into a second claim.
 People are unconsciously self-interested. Without realizing it, our actions are selfinterested. This leads to interpretation #2
#2: We act in our self-interest
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o If the psychological egoist is saying that we act in our self-interest, then how do we explain
the fact that people sometimes do self-destructive things?
o We could draw a distinction between genuine and apparent self-interest, but:
 It is obviously false that people in fact always act in their own genuine self-interest
(the smoker)
 If people are said to act in their apparent self-interest, this then becomes a claim
about intentions (apparent to whom?), and this is then subject to all the objections
about the claim that we act selfishly.
Is psychological egoism an unfalsifiable hypothesis?
o Karl Popper first formulated this notion to distinguish science from non-science
o Apparently very powerful
o Actually not empirical: no counter-instances
Motives and Consequences:
Psychological egoists, as we have seen in the preceding analysis, often confuse motives and
consequences
The fact that we may get something back as a result of a particular action does not entail that we
did the action in order to get something back.
o We may experience great rewards in love, but that doesn’t mean we do it solely or even
primarily in order to obtain those rewards.
Ambiguities
Ambiguity #1: Do we act exclusively out of selfishness?
o Exclusive vs. Non-exclusive psychological egoism.
o If we act selfishly all the time, how could we prove this?
o If we act selfishly only part of the time, this is true but uninteresting
o What counts as counter-evidence?
Ambiguity #2: Do we act to maximize self-interest or simply to increase it?
o Maximizing vs. Non-maximizing psychological egoism.
o Maximizing psychological egoism seems interesting but false
o Non-maximizing psychological egoism may be true but uninteresting.
Ambiguity #3: Are we causally determined to act this way or do we choose to do so?
o If this is a causal claim, it is presumably about consequences. Yet this causal claim (that in
fact people always act [solely] in ways that promote their self-interest) seems empirically
false.
o If this is not a causal claim, then it implies that people freely choose to act this way. But
how do we explain the counter-evidence of people’s claims about their own intentions and
motivations?
Ambiguity #4: Is there really such a sharp division between self-interest and the interests of others,
especially the interests of those we love?
o Psychological egoism is founded on an Enlightenment view of the autonomy self.
In reality, this strict separation is misleading, as we will now see
Psychological egoism rests on ambiguities and false dichotomies, as we have seen.
We need to re-conceptualize this area to understand what is true and what is false in psychological
egoism.
Rather than two opposing positions, we should view egoism and altruism as existing along a spectrum.
We should also consider the distinction between intentions and consequences so as not to fall into a false
dichotomy between altruism and egoism. Do we act out of selfish motives or in order to achieve selfish
ends. Sometimes concern for others results in our own happiness or fulfillment of our own interests. The
two should not be set in necessary opposition.
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Psychological egoism gains its apparent plausibility by trading on ambiguities (selfishness vs. selfinterest) and false dichotomies (self-interest vs. altruism).
As we have seen, we can accept psychological egoism as a partial truth and recognize that there is
more to human behavior than selfishness
Ethical Egoism claims:
 “Love, we are repeatedly taught, consists of self-sacrifice. Love based on self-interest, we are
admonished, is cheap and sordid. True love, we are told, is altruistic. But is it?
 “Genuine love is the exact opposite. It is the most selfish experience possible, in the true sense of
the term: it benefits your life in a way that involves no sacrifice of others to yourself nor of yourself
to others
 Selfishness is extolled as a virtue
o Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness
 May appeal to psychological egoism as a foundation
 Often very compelling for high school students
 Personal Ethical Egoism
o “I am going to act only in my own interest, and everyone else can do whatever they want.”
 Individual Ethical Egoism
o “Everyone should act in my own interest.”
 Universal Ethical Egoism
o “Each individual should act in his or her own self interest.”
 There are at least three principal arguments in support of ethical egoism:
 Altruism is demeaning.
 Acting selfishly creates a better world.
 It doesn’t result in such a different world after all.
 Friedrich Nietzsche and other philosophers argued that altruism was demeaning because it meant
that an individual was saying that some other person was more important than that individual.
Nietzsche saw this as denigrating oneself, putting oneself down by valuing oneself less than the
other. This, the heart of altruism, is demeaning in Nietzsche’s eyes.
 Ethical egoists sometimes maintain that if each person took care of himself/herself, the overall
effect would be to make the world a better place for everyone.
o Epistemological: Each person is best suited to know his or her own best interests.
o Moral: Helping others makes them dependent, which ultimately harms them.
 Reply: this justification ultimately appeals to utilitarian principles, not the principles of ethical
egoism
 This argument presupposes the people in fact already act selfishly (i.e, psychological egoism) and
are just pretending to be altruistic.
 If psychological egoism is true, then we should admit its truth and get rid of our hypocrisy.
 Reply: it may not make a big difference in a world of independent adults, but in a world with
children and people at risk or in need, they would be put in further jeopardy
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Criticisms:
Cannot be consistently universalized
o But see Kalin: This works in sports.
Presupposes a world of strangers indifferent to one another.
Difficult to imagine love or even friendship from the egoist’s standpoint.
Seems to be morally insensitive
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Some philosophers have argued that ethical egoism is, at best, appropriate to living in a world of
strangers that you do not care about
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Can ethical egoists be good friends?
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o If friendship involves (among other things) being concerned about other people for their
own sake, then this seems something beyond the reach of the egoist.
o Ethical egoists can help their friends if they believe there is a long-term payoff for doing so.
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o Truths in Ethical Egoism
o Sometimes self-interest masquerades as altruism
Ethics should not deny the importance of self-interest
Self-love is a virtue, but it is not the only virtue Ethical egoism mistakes a part of the picture for the
whole picture
Ideally, we seek a society in which self-interest and regard for others converge—the green zone.
Egoism at the expense of others and altruism at the expense of self-interest both create worlds in
which goodness and self-regard are mutually exclusive
Ch 5 – The Ethics of Consequences – Utilitarianism
Peter Singer is the most widely known utilitarian philosopher today. Advocate for the poor and
elimination of world hunger. Strong supporter of animal welfare because the suffering of animals is as
real as our own suffering. Vegetarianism becomes a moral imperative in his view. Lessens animal
suffering but also avoids contributing to climate change. He also deals with issues at the beginning and
end of life and the medical dilemmas about saving severely damaged newborns or those at the end of life
who choose to die. The morally right thing, he claims, is to first and foremost reduce suffering and
increase pleasure or happiness.
Basic Insights of Utilitarianism:
 The purpose of morality is to make the world a better place.
 Morality is about producing good consequences, not having good intentions
 We should do whatever will bring the most benefit (i.e., intrinsic value) to all of humanity.
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The utilitarian has a very simple answer to the question of why morality exists at all:
o The purpose of morality is to guide people’s actions in such a way as to produce a better
world.
Consequently, the emphasis in utilitarianism is on consequences, not intentions.
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The fundamental imperative of utilitarianism is:
Always act in the way that will produce the greatest overall amount of good in the world.
The emphasis is clearly on consequences, not intentions
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We often speak of “utilitarian” solutions in a disparaging tone, but in fact utilitarianism is a
demanding moral position that often asks us to put aside self-interest for the sake of the whole.
Utilitarianism is a morally demanding position for two reasons:
o It always asks us to do the most, to maximize utility, not to do the minimum.
It asks us to set aside personal interest
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The Dream of Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism offers us a powerful vision of the moral life, one that promises to reduce or eliminate
moral disagreement.
o If we can agree that the purpose of morality is to make the world a better place; and
o If we can scientifically assess various possible courses of action to determine which will
have the greatest positive effect on the world; then
o We can provide a scientific answer to the question of what we ought to do.
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History of utilitarian ideas:
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Many things have instrumental value, that is, they have value as means to an end.
However, there must be some things which are not merely instrumental, but have value in
themselves. This is what we call intrinsic value.
What has intrinsic value? Four principal candidates:
o Pleasure
 Jeremy Bentham
o Happiness
 John Stuart Mill
o Ideals
 G. E. Moore
Preferences
Bentham believed that we should try to increase the overall amount of pleasure in the world.
Bentham believed that we should try to increase the overall amount of pleasure in the world.
Criticisms
o Came to be known as “the pig’s philosophy”
o Ignores higher values
o Could justify living on a pleasure machine
Bentham’s godson
Believed that happiness, not pleasure, should be the standard of utility.
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Advantages
o A higher standard, more specific to humans
o About realization of goals
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Disadvantages
o More difficult to measure
o Competing conceptions of happiness
G. E. Moore suggested that we should strive to maximize ideal values such as freedom, knowledge,
justice, and beauty.
The world may not be a better place with more pleasure in it, but it certainly will be a better place
with more freedom, more knowledge, more justice, and more beauty.
Moore’s candidates for intrinsic good remain difficult to quantify
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Kenneth Arrow, a Nobel Prize winning Stanford economist, argued that what has intrinsic value is
preference satisfaction.
The advantage of Arrow’s approach is that, in effect, it lets people choose for themselves what has
intrinsic value. It simply defines intrinsic value as whatever satisfies an agent’s preferences. It is
elegant and pluralistic.
The Utilitarian Calculus
Math and ethics finally merge: all consequences must be measured and weighed.
Units of measurement:
o Hedons: positive
o Dolors: negative
Hedons/dolors may be defined in terms of
o Pleasure
o Happiness
o Ideals
o Preferences
For any given action, we must calculate:
o How many people will be affected, negatively (dolors) as well as positively (hedons)
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o How intensely they will be affected
o Similar calculations for all available alternatives
o Choose the action that produces the greatest overall amount of utility (hedons minus dolors)
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Utilitarians would have to calculate:
o Benefits
 Increased nutrition for x number of children
 Increased performance, greater long-range chances of success
 Incidental benefits to contractors, etc.
o Costs
 Cost to each taxpayer
 Contrast with other programs that could have been funded and with lower taxes (no
program)
o Multiply each factor by
 Number of individuals affected
 Intensity of effects
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Pleasure and preference satisfaction are easier to quantify than happiness or ideals
Two distinct issues:
o Can everything be quantified?
 Some would maintain that some of the most important things in life (love, family,
etc.) cannot easily be quantified, while other things (productivity, material goods)
may get emphasized precisely because they are quantifiable.
 The danger: if it can’t be counted, it doesn’t count.
o Are quantified goods necessarily commensurable?
 Are a fine dinner and a good night’s sleep commensurable? Can one be traded or
substituted for the other?
Utilitarianism doesn’t always have a cold and calculating face—we perform utilitarian calculations
in everyday life.
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Act utilitarianism
o Looks at the consequences of each individual act and calculate utility each time the act is
performed.
Rule utilitarianism
Looks at the consequences of having everyone follow a particular rule and calculates the overall
utility of accepting or rejecting the rule
Imagine the following scenario. A prominent and much-loved leader has been rushed to the
hospital, grievously wounded by an assassin’s bullet. He needs a heart and lung transplant
immediately to survive. No suitable donors are available, but there is a homeless person in the
emergency room who is being kept alive on a respirator, who probably has only a few days to live,
and who is a perfect donor. Without the transplant, the leader will die; the homeless person will
die in a few days anyway. Security at the hospital is very well controlled. The transplant team
could hasten the death of the homeless person and carry out the transplant without the public ever
knowing that they killed the homeless person for his organs. What should they do?
o For rule utilitarians, this is an easy choice. No one could approve a general rule that lets
hospitals kill patients for their organs when they are going to die anyway. The
consequences of adopting such a general rule would be highly negative and would certainly
undermine public trust in the medical establishment.
o For act utilitarians, the situation is more complex. If secrecy were guaranteed, the overall
consequences might be such that in this particular instance greater utility is produced by
hastening the death of the homeless person and using his organs for the transplant.
Rule utilitarians claim:
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o In particular cases, act utilitarianism can justify disobeying important moral rules and
violating individual rights.
o Act utilitarianism also takes too much time to calculate in each and every case.
Act utilitarians respond:
o Following a rule in a particular case when the overall utility demands that we violate the
rule is just rule-worship. If the consequences demand it, we should violate the rule.
o Furthermore, act utilitarians can follow rules-of-thumb (accumulated wisdom based on
consequences in the past) most of the time and engage in individual calculation only when
there is some pressing reason for doing so.
Responsibility
Integrity
Intentions
Moral Luck
Who does the calculating?
Who is included?
Responsibility
Utilitarianism suggests that we are responsible for all the consequences of our choices.
The problem is that sometimes we can foresee consequences of other people’s actions that are
taken in response to our own acts. Are we responsible for those actions, even though we don’t
choose them or approve of them?
o Discuss Bernard Williams’ example of Jim in the village
o Imagine a terrorist situation where the terrorists say that they will kill their hostages if we
do not meet their demands. We refuse to meet their demands. Are we responsible for what
happens to the hostages?
o Imagine someone like Sadam Hussein putting children in targets likely to be bombed in
order to deter bombing by the United States. If we bomb our original targets, are we
responsible if those children are killed by our bombing?
Integrity
Utilitarianism often demands that we put aside self-interest. Sometimes this means putting aside
our own moral convictions.
o Discuss Bernard Williams on the chemist example.
o Develop a variation on Jim in the village, substituting a mercenary soldier and then Martin
Luther King, Jr. for Jim. Does this substitution make a difference?
Integrity may involve certain identity-conferring commitments, such that the violation of those
commitments entails a violation of who we are at our core
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Intentions
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Utilitarianism is concerned almost exclusively about consequences, not intentions.
o There is a version of utilitarianism called “motive utilitarianism,” developed by Robert
Adams, that attempts to correct this.
Intentions may matter is morally assessing an agent, even if they don’t matter in terms of guiding
action
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Moral Luck
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By concentrating exclusively on consequences, utilitarianism makes the moral worth of our actions
a matter of luck. We must await the final consequences before we find out if our action was good
or bad.
This seems to make the moral life a matter of chance, which runs counter to our basic moral
intuitions.
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o We can imagine actions with good intentions that have unforeseeable and unintended bad
consequences
o We can also imagine actions with bad intentions that have unforeseeable and unintended
good conseqeunces.
Who Does the Calculating?
Historically, this was an issue for the British in India. The British felt they wanted to do what was
best for India, but that they were the ones to judge what that was.
o See Ragavan Iyer, Utilitarianism and All That
Typically, the count differs depending on who does the counting
In Vietnam, Americans could never understand how much independence.
Who is Included?
When we consider the issue of consequences, we must ask who is included within that circle.
o Those in our own group (group egoism)
o Those in our own country (nationalism)
o Those who share our skin color (racism)
o All human beings (humanism or speciesism?)
o All sentient beings
Classical utilitarianism has often claimed that we should acknowledge the pain and suffering of
animals and not restrict the calculus just to human beings.
Concluding Assessment
Utilitarianism is most appropriate for policy decisions, as long as a strong notion of fundamental
human rights guarantees that it will not violate rights of small minorities.
 Ch 6 – The Ethics of Duty – Immanuel Kant
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More than any other philosopher, Kant emphasized the way in which the moral life was centered
on duty.
 Duty as following orders
o The Adolph Eichmann model
o Duty is external
o Duty is imposed by others
 Duty as freely imposing obligation on one’s own self
– The Kantian model
– Duty is internal
– We impose duty on ourselves
The second conception of duty is much more morally advanced than the first.
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“I had known the Categorical Imperative, but it was in a nutshell, in a summarized form. I suppose
it could be summarized as, ‘Be loyal to the laws, be a disciplined person, live an orderly life, do
not come into conflict with laws’—that more or less was the whole essence of that law for the use
of the little man.”
Adolph Eichmann
The example of Edmund Ross
o He voted against Jackson’s impeachment as a matter of duty
The Grocer Example
o The grocer with regular customers might be honest just out of self-interest.
Duty and Utility: The Suicide Example
Kant was mistrustful of inclinations (Neigungen) as motivations
o This was part of his view of the physical world as causally determined
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Saw feelings as
o Unreliable
o Passive
Phenomenal
The Man of duty
“Suppose then that the mind of this friend of man were overclouded by sorrows of his own which
extinguished all sympathy with the fate of others, but that he still had power to help those in
distress, though no longer stirred by the need of others because sufficiently occupied with his own;
and suppose that, when no longer moved by any inclination, he tears himself out of this deadly
insensibility and does the action without any inclination for the sake of duty alone; then for the first
time his action has its genuine moral worth. Still further: if nature had implanted little sympathy in
this or that man’s heart; if (being in other respects an honest fellow) he were cold in temperament
and indifferent to the sufferings of others—perhaps because, being endowed with the special gift of
patience and robust endurance in his own sufferings, he assumed the like in others or even
demanded it; if such a man (who would in truth not be the worst product of nature) were not
exactly fashioned by her to be a philanthropist, would he not still find in himself a source from
which he might draw a worth far higher than any that a good-natured temperament can have?
Assuredly he would. It is precisely in this that the worth of character begins to show—a moral
worth and beyond all comparison the highest—namely, that he does good, not from inclination, but
from duty.”
--Groundwork of a Metaphysics of Morals
Criticisms
Moral Minimalism
o Requirements are not heartfelt
Moral Alienation
o Alienated from feelings
Duty and “Just Following Orders”
This is not Kant’s genuine position
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The Categorical Imperative and Universalizability
Central insight:
What is fair for one is fair for all
Most of us live by rules much of the time. Some of these are what Kant called Categorical
Imperatives—unconditional commands that are binding on everyone at all times.
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Types of Imperatives”
Hypothetical Imperative:
o “If you want to drive to UCLA from San Diego, take the 405 freeway.”
o Structure: if…then…
Categorical Imperative
o “Always tell the truth”
Unconditional, applicable at all times.
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Maxims
Maxims, according to Kant, are subjective rules that guide action.
o Relevant Act Description
o Sufficient Generality
All actions have maxims, such as,
o Never lie to your friends.
o Never act in a way that would make your parents ashamed of you.
o Always watch out for number one.
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o It’s ok to cheat if you need to.
“Always act in such a way that the maxim of your action can be willed as a universal law of
humanity.”
--Immanuel Kant
Respect
“Always treat humanity, whether in yourself or in other people, as an end in itself and never as a
mere means.”
--Immanuel Kant
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Publicity
 Always act in such a way that you would not be embarrassed to have your actions described on the
front page of The New York Times.
 --Probably not Bill Clinton
Categorical Imperatives
 “I know the questions to ask. It’s the answers I’m after. And what about learning how to live?
Isn’t that philosophy too? What’s yours?”
 The reply had come easily but, she had thought, with honesty. “To get as much happiness as I can.
Not to harm others. Not to whine. In that order.”
 Adam Dalgliesh, in reply to Kate Miskin’s question
 P. D. James, A Certain Justice
Lying
 Is it possible to universalize a maxim that permits lying?
 What is the maxim?
o It’s ok to cheat when you want/need to?
 Can this consistently be willed as a universal law?
 No, it undermines itself, destroying the rational expectation of trust upon which it depends.
Academic Cheating
 Cheating involves not playing by the rules. Is it possible for the cheater to will his/her maxim as a
universal law?
 No, because then others (including the teacher) could refuse to follow the rules as well, failing the
cheater even with a good grade.
 Exceptions
 Are exceptions possible for Kant?
o Yes, as long as they can be consistently universalized
Examples
o The speeding car
 We can universalize an exception for something like ambulance drivers
o The Gestapo example
 Can we universalize a maxim to deceive in order to save innocent lives? No.
 Never lie
 In an essay written near the end of his life, Kant maintained that you are never justified in telling a
lie.
o Franco-Prussian rivalry
o Beliefs about causality—if you do the right thing, you are not responsible for bad outcomes.
The Categorical Imperative: Respect for persons:
Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any
other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end. Kant, Groundwork of a
Metaphysics of Morals
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Respect for self as well as for others.
Instruction about how to act, not how to feel.
Some element of using people as means is permissible, only using them exclusively as means is
prohibited.
Using Persons as Means
Syphilis Experiments
Factory closings
Firing longtime employees
Respect requires action
Do not take away conditions of moral agency or autonomy from others
o 1. access to information necessary for rational decision/autonomy
o 2. freedom to act on basis of information
Recognize unique value of each individual
What to respect?
 Person’s ability to reason.
 Not animals, they have no reason. Indirect duty to respect animals because of the effect lack of
respect would have on us.
 No direct duty to respect feelings.
 Create space for other voices – Gilligan.
 Examples of failure to respect oneself
 Examples of failure to respect oneself:
 The Uncle tom
 The self-deprecator
 The deferential wife.
Strengths
 Doing one’s duty deserves admiration.
 Duty is evenhanded – treat everyone in the same way
 Respect other persons
Weaknesses
 Neglect of moral integration – duty and inclination need to be integrated along with split between
reason and emotion
 Role of emotions neglected
 Consequences ignored
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Kant saw that morality must be fair and evenhanded.
The Kantian path offers a certain kind of moral safety in an uncertain world.
Ch 7. The Ethics of Rights
Initial Distinctions
• Rights holders: permission to act, an entitlement
• Rights observers: duty or obligation
– Negative – refrain from interfering with rights holder’s exercise of the right (freedom of
speech)
– Positive – assist in the successful exercise of the right (housing, education, health care)
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Responsibility on the part of the rights holder about how to exercise the right – right limited by
harm to others.
Classification of Strengths
• Absolute rights - cannot be overriden by other types of considerations that do not involve rights –
(not to be tortured?)
• Prima Facie rights – at first glance it appears applicable but may be outweighed by considerations
Justification of Rights
• Self-evidence: seem obvious but usually an unhelpful category in settling disputes.
• Divine foundations: natural rights founded in God. A source of claim against the crown and part of
the deep structure of the world. Not viable for nontheists and no language of rights in religious
traditions.
• Natural law: natural order is fundamentally good (created by God). No basis again for nontheists.
• Human nature: characteristics essential to humans confer rights
Human Nature and Rights
Rights conferring properties of humans include
• The fact of being born a human being
• Rationality, the ability to think
• Autonomy, the ability to make free choices
• Sentience, the ability to feel and suffer
• The ability to be a “self” or person
• The ability to have projects and plans
Who has rights?
• Future generations: we think of rights belonging only to existing individuals.
• Animals: do they have rights conferring properties? Sentience, interests, free will, rationality?
What rights do animals have?
Types of Rights
Negative Rights:
• Liberty: political movements
• Life: no one entitled to kill us: capital punishment, abortion, war, animal rights to life, end of life
• Property:
• Equality: civil rights
Positive Rights
• Rights to well-well being: physical security, employment, goods necessary for subsistence.
• Social contract rights: belonging to particular societies at particular times – rights of persons with
disabilities,
Limits of Rights
• Nonsense on stilts – rights are moral fictions embedded in particular societies, not universal. Are
rights basic or just useful for society and result of decisions about how society will be governed.
• Rights emphasize isolated autonomy
• Liberty – each person as an island
• Privacy
Role of Rights in Moral Life
Exclusive emphasis on rights distorts total vision of moral life.
Ch 8 - Justice – From Plato to Rawls
Plato’s Account of Justice
• Conventional View: Helping Friends and Harming Enemies
• Cynical View: Might Makes Right
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Plato’s View: Harmony, internal and external – inner harmony of faculties of the soul; outer
harmony of social classes.
John Rawls’s Distributive Justice
• Egalitarianism: treat everyone as fairly as possible.
• The Original Position: A Thought Experiment: act rationally to bring about best interests of the
people
• Social Contract
• Veil of Ignorance: pretend ignorance of your gender, race, ethnicity, age, income, locality. Divide
benefits to level playing field.
The Difference Principle
• The Difference Principle:
1. Social and economic inequalities are to be attached to positions and offices open to all under
conditions of fair equality of opportunity
2. They are to be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society.
Non-Rawlsian Distributive Justice
Distribution of Scarce Goods – example of organ transplant
1. Rawlsian approach: go to the medically most needy and likeliest to succeed.
2. Egalitarian approach: have a lottery
3. Welfare or utilitarian approach: those most likely to have a long life should get the kidney
4. Libertarian or market-based: give it to the highest bidder
Justice and the Politics of Difference
Iris Marion Young’s Justice and the Politics of Difference (1990)
Views justice in terms of overcoming oppression and domination.
Exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence.
Civil Rights Movement, feminism and other political movements.
Sen and Nussbaum
• Amartya Sen: connection of poverty, freedom and justice. Stay close to the ground and look for
ways of making things better. Not Rawls’s original position where specific cultural heritages are
banished but with the concrete and how to improve it.
• Martha Nussbaum: capabilities approach: life, bodily health, bodily integrity, freedom of travel,
bodily safety, forms of affiliation, play, imagination and concern for other species.
Criminal Justice
• Retributive Justice: lex talionis, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Inflicting such punishment
can itself be debasing or simply impossible.
• Compensatory Justice: proportional compensation to the victim
• Restorative Justice: set the record straight about what happened during oppression.
• Justice as Hozho: Navajo notion of harmony through ceremonial restoration of relationships.
• Global Justice: either just solutions to global problems or global conception of justice cutting
across national, regional and cultural boundaries.
The Just War Tradition
• Jus ad bellum: the just conditions for entering into a war
1. Just cause
2. Right intention
3. Publicly declared by a lawful authority
4. Last resort
5. Probability of success
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Jus in bello: the just conduct of war
Discriminate between combatants and civilians
Principle of proportionality
Use no means that are evil in themselves
Jus post Bellum: A Just Peace following the war
Just cause for termination
Right intention
Public declaration and legitimate authority
Discrimination
Environmental Justice
• Famine and atmospheric and water pollution transcend national boundaries. Small developing
countries may feel the effects of large highly industrialized countries directly through pollution,
reduced air and water quality as well as sea level rise from global warming. They may experience
the polluting effects of foreign owned industry.
• Spread of disease in an era of international travel.
• Is it fair for some nations and their populations to suffer harmful consequences of actions taken by
other nations with knowing disregard of their negative consequences.
Economic Exploitation
• Manufacturing processes cross national boundaries. Labor is cheaper and environmental and safety
restrictions more lax, natural resources more easily and cheaply available in developing countries.
How achieve economic justice in a world of radical economic disparities?
Justice Is fundamental
• Justice is a fundamental moral concept.
• What is the meaning of justice
• How do we make the world a just place?
• Justice is the foundation of a lasting world peace.
Ch 9 – The Ethics of Character – Vices and Virtues
Concern for character has flourished in the West since the time of Plato, whose early dialogues explored
such virtues as courage and piety
Two Moral Questions:
• The Question of Action:
- How ought I to act?
• The Question of Character:
- What kind of person ought I to be?
Our concern here is with the question of character
Analogy with Criminal Justice System
As a country, we place our trust for just decisions in the legal arena in two places:
1. Laws, which provide the necessary rules
2. People, who (as judge and jury) apply rules judiciously
Similarly, ethics places its trust in:
1. Theories, which provide rules for conduct
2. Virtue, which provides the wisdom necessary for applying rules in particular instances.
•
Virtue: Strength of character (involving both feeling and action)
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•
•
Seeks the mean between excess and deficiency relative to us
Promotes human flourishing
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Two Conceptions of Morality
• We can contrast two approaches to the moral life.
--The childhood conception of moral life
• Comes from outside (usually parents)
• Is negative (“don’t touch that stove burner)
• Rules and habit formation are central.
---The adult conception of morality
• Comes from within (self-directed_
• Is positive (“this is the kind of person I want to be”)
Virtue centered, often modeled on ideal
Purpose of Morality
• Both of these conceptions of morality are appropriate at different times in life.
• Adolescence and early adulthood is the time when some people make the transition from the
adolescent conception of morality to the adult conception.
Rightly Ordered Desires
• Aristotle draws an interesting contrast between:
• Continent people, who have unruly desires but manage to control them.
• Temperate people, whose desires are naturally—or through habit, second-nature—directed toward
that which is good for them.
• Weakness of will (akrasia) occurs when individuals cannot keep their desires under control.
•
•
Moral education may initially seek to control unruly desires through rules, the formation of habits,
etc.
Ultimately, moral education aims at forming rightly-ordered desires, that is, teaching people to
desire what is genuinely good for them.
Character and Human flourishing
• Aristotle on Human Flourishing
- functional context: a good hammer nails well, a good guitar is capable of making good music.
- unique properties: for humans reasoning or thinking: for Aristotle, the contemplative life leads
to happiness. Largely determined by leisure.
- for Aristotle happiness is related to practical wisdom. Deliberating well promotes flourishing
and a recognition of political conception of happiness – that humans are happy in a social context.
• Pluralistic approach recognizes humans have many goals, contemplative and social. Some
restraints on goals from our social and intellectual natures.
Assessing Aristotle’s Account of Flourishing
• Anti-reductionistic – not lowest common denominator.
• Holism – other extreme: highest common denominator. Overemphasis on role of thinking not
totality of human functions.
• Ethics for nobility – ethics for privileged ruling class, free, adult Greek males.
Contemporary Accounts
• External impediments to human flourishing:
- social factors: economics, architecture of living and work environments
• Internal Impediments:
- Freud’s or Jung’s balance of psychological factors
- Maslow’s peak experiences
- we are our own worst enemies; flourishing is primarily a state of mind rather than a state of
matter.
Aristotle’s Definition of Virtue
• External impediments to human flourishing:
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•
- social factors: economics, architecture of living and work environments
Internal Impediments:
- Freud’s or Jung’s balance of psychological factors
- Maslow’s peak experiences
- we are our own worst enemies; flourishing is primarily a state of mind rather than a state of
matter.
Habits of Soul
• According to Aristotle virtue is a hexis, a dispostion or habit.
• We are not born with virtues. We acquire them through imitation of role models and practice.
• Moral education focusses on the development of character, or what Aristotle calls “soul.”
Feeling and Action
• For Aristotle virtue is not just acting in a particular way but feeling certain ways.
• Virtue includes emotion as well as action.
• The compassionate person not only helps to alleviate suffering but has feelings toward others’
suffering.
Exclusion of feeling from moral consideration led to problems for Kantian theory, utilitarianism and
egoistic theories. Aristotle’s inclusion of the emotive character of virtue overcomes this objection.
The golden mean:
• Strength of character (virtue), Aristotle suggests, involves finding the proper balance between two
extremes.
--Excess: having too much of something
--Deficiency: having too little of something
• Not mediocrity, but harmony and balance.
• See examples below.
Courage
• The strength of character necessary to continue in the face of our fears.
-Deficiency: cowardice, the inability to do what is necessary to have those things in life which we
need in order to flourish.
• Too much fear
• Too little confidence
-Excess: Rashness
 Too little fear.
 Too much confidence
 Poor judgment about ends worth achieving
Courage and Gender
• Women are not warriors: For Aristotle, women can’t be courageous in the fullest sense. They
weren’t allowed to fight in wars. Only in 2011 have women been permitted active combat roles in
America.
Under-recognition of Women’s Courage: Native American and European pioneer women required
courage. Childbirth requires courage. Courage in response to emotional and physical abuse.
Developmental challenges going from girlhood to womanhood.
Compassion
• Compassion begins in feeling.
• Compassion needs action.
• Moral imagination needed to translate feeling into action.
• Compassion is not pity – acknowledges a kind of moral equality.
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Self-Love
• Involves feelings as well as acting and knowing.
• Loving Others – wants to see the other flourish.
• Loving Ourselves – not unconditional self-approval, involves self-examination and deep concern
for welfare of the self.
• Self-love involves a self that is engaged in the world.
• Self-love demands self knowledge.
Practical Wisdom
• Application of specific excellence of character to a particular situation in light of an overall
conception of the good life.
• Knowing how to achieve a particular end and which ends are worth striving to achieve.
• The virtues are interdependent.
• Practical wisdom is difficult and elusive.
Ethical Pluralism and Practical Wisdom
• Balance competing theories in particular situations.
• Admit all relevant moral considerations and seek best balance.
Act-oriented traditions needed to balance character ethics. This is practical wisdom.
Ch. 10 – The Ethics of Diversity – Gender
The history of ethical thinking has needed rethinking from a feminine and feminist perspective:
• Women’s voices have been excluded from the canon.
• Autonomous man – an ethics of strangers, odd from a feminist perspective.
• Social contract theory – disadvantages women, glue of society is not contract but family
• Impartiality and Universality – invalidates moral priority of intimate relationships
• Absence of embodiment – res cogitans (Descartes) not embodied beings
Consider Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development:
Preconventional morality: early childhood:
• Stage One: desire to avoid punishment
• Stage Two: Tit for tat
Conventional morality: adolescence and adulthood
• Stage three: Good boy/ nice girl orientation
• Stage four: Rule following
Post conventional morality: rarely reached
• Stage five: social construct orientation
• Stage six: universal justice, reciprocity, equality and respect
Carol Gilligan Introduces the Ethics of Care:
• Carol Gilligan – began research on moral development with draft resisters then shifted to female
subjects on the subject of abortion when the draft ended in 1973.
• Metaphor of voice – instead of theory or perspective.
• Women’s voices didn’t fit Kohlberg’s stages: care rather than justice
• Women emerge as more concerned about relationships, emotional connectedness and caregiving.
Voice varies internally regarding masculine and feminine approaches to morality, as well as
between the genders.
Gilligan claims the foundations of ethics must be reconsidered:
• Ethics as conversation: conversation not argument.
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•
•
•
Inclusive conversation: women and people of color need to be involved.
New issues emerge: domestic violence, child abuse, family leave, responsibilities toward elderly
parents.
Caution against using morality to justify violence: honor, domestic violence, suppression.
Caring has some similarity to act utilitarianism:
• Both are consequentialist and address pleasures and pains.
• Care ethic calculates differently:
a. Extent to which people might be hurt by a particular decision
b. Degree to which a particular decision might diminish the sense of connectedness among
participants of the situation.
• Emotions more important.
There is a difference between feminine and feminist ethics:
• Feminine ethics: emphasize women’s moral voices, often an ethics of care, following Gilligan.
• Feminist ethics focuses on women’s oppression and argues for policies to rectify past injustices.
• Power and inequality stressed.
• Conditions for feminist ethics from Alison Jagger:
a. Sensitive to gender inequalities
b. Understand individual actions in the context of broader social practices.
c. Provide guidance on issues traditionally seen as private, e.g., personal relationships and
family.
d. Take the moral experience of women seriously
Feminist ethics stresses the inclusion of moral concern in the private as well as public realm.
• Feminist ethics emphasizes moral scrutiny in the private realm generally confined to women,
children persons or color and persons with disabilities.
• Family issues – equal treatment of men and women at home, in workplace.
• Power issues: patriarchy, rape, reproductive freedom, sexism in language, harassment,
pornography, poverty.
Rethinking diversity with regard to gender has opened new avenues of thought beyond women’s issues
and into the domain of transgender issues.
• Reconsider the notion of gender identity and sexual orientation and domination entailed.
• Reconsider “the natural.”
• Reconsider dichotomous thinking: male/female
• Emergence of transgender theory.
Ch 11 – The Ethics of Diversity: Race, Ethnicity, and Culture in
Moral Theory
Increasing interest in diversity in the past two decades
 Fundamental question: what place, if any, do race, ethnicity, and culture have in moral theory?
The Identity Argument
 Minority Rights
 The Virtues Necessary for Living Well in a Diverse Society
The basic claim of the identity argument is that race, ethnicity, and culture are central to moral identity
 The argument has two parts:
o Negative: The Critique of Impartiality
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o Positive: The Situatedness of the Moral Agent
Impartiality and Particularity
 The premise of modern moral theory has been that the moral agent ought to be impartial
o Utilitarianism: The Impartial Calculator
o Deontology: Acting according to the duty of any rational agent
 See especially Alasdair MacIntyre, “How the Moral Agent Became a Ghost.”
Godwin’s Choice: Which to choose to rescue in a burning building?
 The Bishop of Cambray or his chambermaid?
 The Bishop of Cambray or your mother?



“Suppose the valet had been my brother, my father, or my benefactor. This would not alter the truth
of the proposition. The life of Fenelon would still be more valuable than that of the valet; and
justice, pure, unadulterated justice, would still have preferred that which was most valuable. Justice
would have taught me to save the life of Fenelon [the Bishop of Cambray] at the expense of the
other. What magic is there in the pronoun "my," that should justify us in overturning the decisions
of impartial truth? My brother or my father may be a fool or a profligate, malicious, lying or
dishonest. If they be, of what consequence is it that they are mine?”
--Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, Chapter 2
Godwin’s dilemma poses two distinct questions to us:
o Behavior: What should I do?
o Motivation: Why should I do it?
Sometimes what is morally required in a situation is acting out of a particular moral motivation
o e.g., visiting a sick friend.
o Michael Stocker has argued that modern moral theory has a kind of “schizophrenia,” a split
between motivation and justification
o Bernard Williams has pointed out the problem of “one motivation too many”
Impartiality and Behavior
 Considerations of rights establish the boundaries within which considerations of partiality may play
a role:
o In acting on the basis of particularity, people may not violate rights.
 Thus, in Godwin’s example, we should not violate someone’s right to be saved

Critics of impartiality often claim that claims of impartiality often mask power relationships of
dominance:
o Impartiality is really just the partiality of the powerful.
Identity and Transparency
 For the dominant group in a society, their particular identity is transparent, I.e., not perceived by
them as a specific identity
o Supermarket example
 For non-dominant groups, their identity is always experienced as particular, as specific to them as
members of a group.
The Identity Argument:
 Premise 1 -What is morally right depends (at least in part) on one’s identity as a moral agent;
 Premise 2 - One’s race (or ethnicity, or culture) is central to one’s identity as a moral agent;
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
Conclusion - Thus, what is morally right depends (at least in part) on that person’s race, ethnicity,
or culture.
Analyzing the identity argument:
Premise 1:
 What is morally right depends (at least in part) on one’s identity as a moral agent.
 Kantians would argue that moral identity is purely rational, and that it does not involve any
elements of particularity.
 Supporters of this premise point to special obligations characteristic of particular cultures and
ethnicities, e.g., placing a high value on family commitments.
Premise 2:
 One’s race (or ethnicity, or culture) is central to one’s identity as a moral agent.
 In order to evaluate this premise, we first must ask: What exactly do we mean by race, ethnicity,
and culture
Definitions:
 Race
o Initially appears to be biological
o Eventually is seen as socially constructed
 Ethnicity
o An individual’s identification with a particular cultural group to which they are usually
biologically related
 Culture
o Set of beliefs, values and practices that define a group’s identity
Internalist and Externalist Accounts of Ethnic Identity:
 Externalist accounts:
o Ethnic identity is formed by certain external events, e.g., slavery, persecution,
discrimination;
o This even fits within utilitarianism
 Internalist accounts:
o Ethnic identity is formed by certain shared experiences, often of oppression, which bind a
people together

Responses to the Identity Argument
o Separatist—seeks to preserve identity by maintaining a separate existence.
 May be:
o Partial
o Complete
o Examples
o Amish and Mennonites
o Orthodox Jews
o Acoma Pueblo
o Supremacist – seeks power and superiority over all other groups.
Supremacists:


-Seek power and superiority over all other groups.
-Approve Jim Crow laws in the United States, which tried to retain white supremacy.
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Assimilationist and Integrationist--seek a common identity, the “melting pot.”
 Predominant American metaphor: the melting pot.
 Classic philosophical source: Richard Wasserstrom, “On Racism and Sexism.” Wasserstrom
argues that race and gender should be no more significant than eye color.

Pluralist—preserves particularity in a shared framework, the “crazy quilt.”



Rejects ideal of impartiality
Seeks to preserve and strengthen group identity.
Sources:
o Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference.
Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice

Pluralism and Multiculturalism
 Principle of Understanding
o We seek to understand other cultures before we pass judgment on them.
 Principle of Tolerance
o We recognize that there are important areas in which intelligent people of good will will in
fact differ.
 Principle of Standing Up to Evil
o We recognize that at some points we must stand up against evil, even when it is outside of
our own borders.
 Principle of Fallibility
o We recognize that, even with the best of intentions, our judgments may be flawed and
mistake.
Minority Rights
 Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community, and Culture (1989) and Multicultural Citizenship (1995)
 Thesis: liberalism entails minority rights
Kymlicka’s Argument
 Following Rawls, Kymlicka argues that the ability to develop and pursue a life plan is a very
important good
 One’s own culture is necessary for achieving that good
 Many minority cultures need special protection if they are to continue to exist
 Thus minority cultures must be given special protection so that all members of society have an
equal opportunity to pursue a life plan.
Groups:
 Indigenous Peoples
 Compensatory Justice
o Backward-looking
o Redress past harms
 Rights of Indigenous Peoples
o Language
o Religion
o Land
o Self-determination
Formerly Enslaved Peoples
 Do we owe a special debt to those who have been forcibly brought to our shores and enslaved?
 To their descendants?
 How is such a debt measured? Repaid?
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Immigrant Minorities
Hate Crimes:
 One way of providing special protection to groups that have been the object of persecution is to
provide special legal sanctions against persecutory acts--in other words, against hate crimes


The Virtues Necessary for Living Well in a diverse society:
What special rights, if any, do immigrant minorities have if they have freely come to the United
States in search of a better life?
o Language
o Support
Ch 12 – Conclusion: Applying Ethical Theories: Abortion, Capital
Punishment, Euthanasia
Difficult moral issues:
• Life and death decisions involved and all the difficult decisions that lie in-between
• Case Studies:
1. Abortion
2. Euthanasia
3. The Death Penalty
Abortion
• Morally relevant facts
• Theories: Utilitarianism:
– Pain of the fetus
– Costs and benefits
• Feminist Ethics:
– Forcing a woman to carry a pregnancy against her will
• Rights theorists and Libertarians:
– Autonomy and right of non-interference
• Deontological concern for principle of respect for human life
– Fetus is a person
– Killing a person is wrong
• Virtue Ethics
– Framework of flourishing
Euthanasia:
• Morally relevant facts of the case
• Libertarian: individual liberty and rights
• Utilitarian: maximize overall utility
• Deontological concerns: duty of self-love precludes suicide, justice
• Religious traditions: suicide forbidden as an act of despair
• Character: how address end of life care and decisions?
The Death Penalty:
• Morally relevant facts
• Deontologists: lex talionis vs proportionality and human decency
• Character: honesty and self-awareness, compassion
• Utilitarian: cost-benefit, deterrence
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