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Ethics Lesson 1
Year 11 Theory of Knowledge – St Leonard’s
College 2013
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What is ethics?
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Ethics is an AOK in TOK.
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Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is the discipline
concerned with the concepts of right and wrong, good and
bad.
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Some questions that ethics is concerned with:
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How should I live?
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What should I do?
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Should I aim at happiness, knowledge, wealth?
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Whose happiness, knowledge, wealth matters?
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Everyday life
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Some of the previous questions seem remote from our
everyday lives, but ethics also examines more immediately
pressing questions:
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Should I lie to my friend in order to make her feel better?
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Should I donate money to charity? If so, how much?
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Should I accept the job with Philip Morris?
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Is it wrong to smack naughty children?
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The method of ethics I
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How do we answer these questions?
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Option 1: Empirical research (sense perception)
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Is it possible to see that an action is wrong?
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Suppose I am at Chadstone Shopping Centre and I see a parent
smacking his child.
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You might say that I can see that this person is doing something
wrong.
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However, this presupposes that I already know or believe that
smacking children is wrong.
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Can I see that smacking children (in general) is wrong?
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The same question put another way: Could scientists (either
those working within the human or physical sciences) investigate
this question and come up with an answer?
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The method of ethics II
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How do we arrive at a justified belief about – for example –
the rightness or wrongness of smacking children?
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Moral theorising starts with the beliefs that we have about
the rightness or wrongness of particular actions.
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These pre-existing beliefs about the morality of particular
actions are called our “moral intuitions”.
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The next step involves a search for the principle(s) that
ground – or lie behind - these beliefs about particular
actions.
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Note: A moral principle makes a claim about the rightness or
wrongness of some class or set of actions.
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The method of ethics III
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Examples of moral principles (these may or may not be
correct):
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Violence against children is never morally justified.
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Exploitation of workers is never morally justified.
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It is good when rich members of a society sacrifice some of their
wealth to help the poor.
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It is always good to tell the truth.
The process used (by philosophers and by everyone else) to
arrive at moral principles is generally known as reflective
equilibrium
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Reflective Equilibrium
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Step 1: Come up with a general moral principle (this principle
may start out as a generalization from a set of moral intuitions)
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Step 2: Consider the implications of this theory (reason), and
determine whether the theory conflicts with any intuitions (
intuition combined with reason).
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Step 3:
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If your principle is in harmony with all your moral intuitions,
then great. You’ve got yourself a moral principle that you can
use to make moral judgements about cases you are not sure
about.
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If your principle conflicts with lots of moral intuitions, discard it
and try a different principle.
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If your principle conflicts with a small range of moral intuitions
– but is in harmony with all the others – you need to decide
whether you are more attached to the conflicting intuitions, or
the principle.
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Disagreement
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People disagree about which things are good and bad.
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What is the significance of this?
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Either :
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(a) there is no fact of the matter as to which things are good and
bad, or
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(b) some people are wrong about which things are good and bad
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Moral Nihilism
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The claim that there is no fact of the matter as to which things
are right and wrong can be understood in two ways
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First, it may mean that there are no things that are good or
bad. Goodness and badness are illusions. This is moral
nihilism.
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On this view to say that something is good or bad, right or
wrong is a mistake. E.g. the claim ‘murder is wrong’ would be
false on this view.
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Moral Relativism
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The second way of understanding the claim that there is no
fact of the matter as to which things are right or wrong is to
say that the rightness or wrongness of an action depends on
who the person is.
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This is moral relativism.
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E.g. the claim ‘murder is wrong’ might be true for me but
false for Jack the Ripper.
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Moral Theory
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Most of us reject both nihilism and relativism
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Those of us who do are faced with the following question:
which moral theory/priniciple is the best?
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We will look at 2 different families of moral theories
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Consequentialism
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Deontological theories
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Case 1: 1 person on track A, 5 people on track B
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Consequentialism I
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Most people when faced with the trolley/train problem think
the answer is obvious – of course you should pull the lever.
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The normal explanation is that it is better because it is better
that 1 person dies rather than 5
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This basic idea is the beginning of consequentialism – the
idea that we should judge actions by looking at their
consequences.
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Trains and transplants
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Case 2: Fat Man
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Trains and transplants
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Case 3: Transplant 1
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5 victims of a train accident.
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All of the same blood-type.
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1 with severe head injuries (very small chance of survival).
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4 have a good chance of survival as long as they receive a
transplant (each one needs a different organ).
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Trains and transplants
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Case 4: Transplant 2
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4 victims of a train accident.
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All of the same blood-type.
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All 4 have a good chance of survival as long as they receive a
transplant (each one needs a different organ).
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There is a guy with broken thumb with the same blood-type
asleep in the waiting room.
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Deontology
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When asked whether we should push the fat man off the
bridge many people want to say “No”, despite the fact that
the net consequences seem identical.
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When asked about the transplant cases – and especially the
one involving the healthy man sleeping in the waiting room –
nearly everyone says “No”.
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This idea leads us to the second family of moral theories,
namely deontology.
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According to the deontological theories, we should do our
moral duty, regardless of what the consequences of doing so
might be.
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Kant
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Perhaps the most well-known deontological theory is that of
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
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Kant thought that there was just one moral rule, which he
called the Categorical Imperative (CI)
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CI = Act always so that you treat humanity, whether in your
own person or that of any other, always as an end and never
merely as a means
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Humanity = beings with a capacity for rational thought
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Which theory is best?
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In order to determine which theory is best, we need to
examine what the implications of the theories are, and
determine whether it seems to give the right results
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In other words, we need to use the process of reflective
equilibrium
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In the remainder of the lesson, you will work in small groups
to:
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(1) Decide what your moral intuitions are regarding three cases.
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(2) Decide what our two moral theories/principles say about the
three cases.
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(3) Decide which of the two moral theories you think is correct.
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Case 1
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You are a doctor in a hospital. Five of your patients are in
desperate need of an organ transplant. If they do not get one
in the next 24 hours they will die. In the emergency room you
have a fit young man who has broken his thumb and, who
coincidentally, is a perfect donor for all of the five patients. If
you killed the young man, you could use his organs to save
the five. What should you do?
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Case 2
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George has just received his PhD in chemistry, but can’t find
a job. His wife is ill, and he has small kids. He is offered a job
in a lab that researches chemical and biological warfare.
George doesn’t want to take the job, but hears that if he
doesn’t then someone much more excited about the research
will get the job, and hence the research will likely progress
quicker. What should George do?
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Case 3
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Jane has a friend in hospital. She thinks that she should go
and visit her, but wonders whether this is the morally right
thing to do.
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Being a student of philosophy, she decides to consult ethical
theories. What do they tell her?
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She arrives at the hospital, and her friend asks her why she
came. What should she say?