Philosophy 2803 – Health Ethics
Andrew Latus
Introduction
• Ethics
• Study of right and wrong/good and bad
• A Branch of Philosophy
• Central Question = “How should I live?”
• Medical Ethics (Health Ethics)
• Study of right and wrong/good and bad in ‘medical
situations’.
What Do We Mean By ‘Studying
Right and Wrong’?
• Two Approaches:
1. Descriptive: recording the ethical
attitudes of particular individuals or groups
• E.g., what does the Canadian Medical
Association Code say?
• Doesn’t ask whether we should listen to those
ethical attitudes, e.g., doesn’t endorse or reject
the CMA Code
What Do We Mean By ‘Studying
Right and Wrong’?
• Two Approaches
2. Normative: investigating what people’s
ethical attitudes (and actions) should be
• Some would say ‘investigating the facts of
morality’
• Note: for our purposes ‘moral’ and ‘ethical’ are
interchangeable terms
Our Project: Normative Ethics
• Our focus will be on normative medical ethics, i.e.,
how people should behave in medical situations
• We will be taking a philosophical approach to this
project
• i.e., we will be seeking to provide reasons or
arguments for our claims about how people should
behave
• Contrast with approaches that rely on some
authority, either religious or human
A Big Question
• Our focus will be on normative medical ethics,
i.e., how people should behave in medical
situations
• A Big Question: ‘uhhhh....how people should
behave in medical situations, according to
whom?’
• We’ll spend the first two weeks of the course
considering this question.
Moral/Ethical Value
• A Big Question: ‘uhhhh....how people should behave
in medical situations, according to whom?’
• Short answer: how people should behave from the
standpoint of moral value
• This gives us part of the picture.
• Whatever morality is about, it’s about evaluating
people and their actions from a certain viewpoint
(i.e., the viewpoint of morality)
• Notice that there are other sorts of value judgment
Other Sorts of Value Judgment
• Based on aesthetic value
• E.g., Creed should never be allowed to make
another album.
• Based on legal value
• E.g., It’s wrong to possess marijuana.
• An important question: What is the relationship
between ethics and law?
A Brief Aside: Law & Ethics
• It’s impossible to talk about medical ethics
without talking about the law
• But ethics and law are not the same thing
• They share many concepts
• Rights, obligations, justice
• But differ in other respects
• Sanctions, enforcement, source
Illegal vs. Immoral 1
• If it’s illegal, is it immoral?
• Not necessarily
• Ethics provides the backdrop for law. In order for laws to be
legitimate they must ultimately be ethically defensible.
• Some legally prohibited things are clearly immoral (e.g.,
killing for fun), others only because the legal prohibition is
broadly ethically defensible (e.g., driving when the light is
red).
Illegal vs. Immoral 2
• If it’s immoral, should it be illegal?
• Not necessarily
• Telling lies is in most cases immoral, but should it
really be made illegal?
• Moral Value is broader than Legal Value
• Law is about not being bad.
• Morality is about being good.
Making Ethical Evaluations
• If morality is all about evaluation, it makes
sense to ask how those evaluations are
supposed to be made.
• One possible answer: ‘Making moral
evaluations is just about going with your gut
feeling. There’s no such thing as getting the
evaluation right or wrong. It’s all subjective.’
• Contrast aesthetic value with legal value
Moral Facts?
• We certainly talk about moral value as though
it involves more than just a gut reaction.
• We tend to talk as though it is possible to be
wrong in our judgments about moral value.
• i.e., we tend to talk as though it is possible to get
the ‘moral facts’ wrong.
• Another big question: what is the source of those
facts?
Two Views of Morality
• 1. Moral Relativism: What is morally right or
wrong depends on what the prevailing view is
in the society or culture we happen to be
dealing with.
• The ‘moral facts’ are relative to culture.
• The ‘moral facts’ may change over time.
• There’s no such thing as right or wrong period.
Two Views of Morality
• 2. Moral Objectivism: What is morally
right or wrong doesn't depend on what
anyone thinks is right or wrong.
• 'Moral facts' are like 'physical facts'.
• They simply have to be discovered just like
the laws of physics.
Objectivism or Relativism?
• Moral Relativism has been an increasingly
popular view since the late 20th century.
• Did this change at all with Sept. 11?
• But is it correct?
• Remember that for us this is a question about
what sort of argument can be offered in support of
this view.
The ‘Cultural Differences’ Argument
for Moral Relativism
• This is the most common argument offered in
support of moral relativism.
• Notation: arguments considered in this class
will often be presented as a series of
premises (or reasons) leading to a
conclusion.
• Premises will be abbreviated as P1, P2,…
• Conclusion will be abbreviated as C
The Cultural Differences Argument
• P1: There are huge differences in moral beliefs from
culture to culture and era to era.
• E.g., Some cultures endorse the killing of elderly members of
the tribe, we condemn such actions.
• Therefore…
• C: There must be no objective fact as to which of
these beliefs is correct, morality is relative.
Assessing an Argument
•
Is the Cultural Differences Argument
convincing?
•
Any time we are asked to consider an
argument, we need to consider two
questions:
1. Are its premises true?
2. If its premises are true, do they give us good
reason to believe its conclusion is also true?
Two Problems with the Cultural
Differences Argument
• 1. Are there really such huge differences
in moral beliefs as P1 says?
• Perhaps what we see in considering different
cultures is not so much disagreement about moral
principles, as about their application in particular
circumstances.
• How would we act if we lived in conditions of great
scarcity?
Two Problems with the Cultural
Differences Argument
• 2. It is a mistake to conclude based only upon
differing opinions about some issue, that there
are no facts about that issue.
• Consider this parallel argument:
• P1: There is widespread disagreement about the shape of
the earth. Some people say it's flat, others say it's spherical.
• C: There is no objective fact about what the shape of the
earth is. It's all just a matter of opinion.
What Do These Problems Show?
• It’s clear that the cultural differences argument does
not make a convincing case for moral relativism.
• This doesn’t prove that moral relativism is false.
• It does prove that the cultural differences argument
isn’t a good reason for believing in moral relativism.
• A general rule for philosophy/ethics: if you don’t
have a good reason for holding a particular belief,
you should question that belief.
Next
• Our next move could be to look for other arguments
for moral relativism, but next class we will take a
different approach.
• Objectivists say there are moral facts. But what are
they?
• We will consider some influential theories that attempt to tell
us how to figure out what the moral facts are.
• This should help you consider how plausible moral
objectivism is.