A Preliminary Challenge to Ethics:
Cultural Ethical Relativism
•
Cultural relativism: Different cultures (or societies) have different ethical
beliefs and practices.
•
Cultural ethical relativism: Because different cultures (or societies) have
different ethical beliefs and practices, different cultures should have different
ethical beliefs and practices.
•
Ethics are relative to nothing more than a particular culture. Whatever a
particular culture says is right or wrong, really is right or wrong, but only for
that particular culture. There are no cross-cultural or universal moral norms
that transcend particular cultures.
•
If you believe in cultural ethical relativism, what can you say about cultures
other than your own?
•
Is cultural ethical relativism a good ethical theory?
Another Preliminary Challenge to Ethics:
Individual Ethical Relativism
• Individual ethical relativism = cultural ethical relativism, but “individual” is
substituted for “cultural.”
• Ethics are relative to individual humans. Whatever a particular person
says is right or wrong ,really is right or wrong, but only for that particular
person.
• There are no moral norms that transcend particular people. What’s right
for me might be wrong for you.
• If you believe in individual ethical relativism, what can you say about other
people and their actions?
• Is individual ethical relativism a good ethical theory?
Utilitarianism: Main Features
1. Consequentialist: Only the consequences of an act are morally
significant.
2. Teleological: Actions are good or bad, as determined by the ends
of the actions.
3. Egalitarian: It applies to everyone equally.
4. Core feature is a principle of utility: An action or policy is right if
it maximizes good consequences over bad consequences for all
beings that stand to be affected by that action or policy.
5. Value distinctions:
Positive intrinsic value = pleasure, happiness, or preference satisfaction.
Instrumental value = that which leads to intrinsic value.
Types of Utilitarianism (U)
What makes consequences good or bad?
1. Hedonistic U: Pleasure vs. pain
2. Hedonistic U: Happiness vs. unhappiness (lifetime utilitarianism)
3. Preference U: Preference satisfaction vs. thwarting of preferences
This is sometimes called welfare utilitarianism.
Happiness is sometimes couched in terms of preferences.
Ways utilitarianism can guide actions:
1. By applying the principle of utility to each act = act utilitarianism
2. By using the principle of utility to create rules = rule utilitarianism
Utilitarianism (U) and the Environment
• Very influential in shaping public policy through risk-costbenefit analysis.
• Used extensively by governments and other bureaucracies.
• Peter Singer and others extend U to include sentient animals
who can be harmed and benefited and/or have preferences.
• Difficult or impossible to extend U beyond anthropocentric
and zoocentric versions.
Deontology: Immanuel Kant’s (1724-1804)
Moral Philosophy
• Deontological standards are derived from reason itself.
• Intrinsic moral worth = good will.
• Good will = autonomous, can recognize duty, and can act out
of a sense of duty.
• Reason tells you what your duty is.
Grounding Kant’s Moral Philosophy
• According to reason, the central feature of moral actions is
universalizability = actions must be universalizable so that
everyone in relevantly similar circumstances can perform the
same actions for the same reasons.
• And remember that a good will has intrinsic moral worth.
• Kant grounds his moral philosophy in both reason and a good
will.
Imperatives
• Something is imperative if it must be done.
• Hypothetical Imperatives: What you want provided you have
the relevant desires. The desires can be renounced. The
desires are indexed to what you want in terms of
consequences.
• Categorical Imperatives: What must be done (categorically)
regardless of what you want as determined by consequences.
Kant’s Categorical Imperative:
Universalizability Form
“Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it
should become a universal law.”
• Maxim = principle of action.
• Take a possible course of action, turn it into a maxim, and see if it can be
universalized without contradiction for all people in relevantly similar
circumstances.
1. If it can, the action is morally right.
2. If it cannot, the action is morally wrong.
• A categorical imperative admits of no exceptions. Therefore moral rules
established by it will admit of no exceptions.
Kant’s Categorical Imperative:
Respect for Persons
(or Human Dignity) Formulation
• A good will comes attached to a rational, autonomous person.
• Such a person is an end in herself or himself.
• To treat such a person as merely a means is an affront to that person’s
autonomy and prevents that person from acting autonomously.
“Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your person or
in the person of another, never simply as a means but always at the same
time as an end.”
Kantianism and the Environment
• Kant’s moral theory is anthropocentric. You can only have
indirect duties to the nonhuman environment.
• Alternative autonomistic interpretation  preference
autonomy: to have a preference and the ability to initiate
action with a view to satisfying the preference.
• Zoocentric Kantianism: Tom Regan and others use this
alternative to attribute preferences and inherent worth or
intrinsic value to nonhuman animals.
Human Rights
• Human rights can ground ethics and justice. One is
acting ethically right or justly when one is following
human rights norms, or at least not violating such rights.
• Human rights are norms and, as such, are situated
within deontological approaches to morality.
Human Rights
• Relationship between legal and moral rights:
1. Legalism: Legal rights are conventions created by
political entities and are not related to moral rights.
2. Morality: Legal rights follow from moral rights.
• But why do people have rights?
Rights:
Some Central Characteristics
1.
Rights inform us of our obligations to other people.
2.
Rights establish and are established by claims, powers, liberties, and
immunities.
3.
Rights establish duties that we owe to other people and that other
people owe to us.
4.
Rights are relationships between people.
5.
Rights typically override other non-moral considerations, and
sometimes even other moral considerations.
Negative versus Positive Rights
• Negative rights: omissions that tell you what you can’t do.
• Positive rights: commissions that tell you what you have to
do.
• Some people such as classic libertarians do not recognize
positive rights.
Some Possible
Environmental Human Rights
• The right to a safe, livable environment
• The right to natural resources
• The right to live a life free from pollution
• The right to make a living (subsistence) that requires natural resources
• The right to live in a natural world
• Many traditional rights such as rights to life, liberty, and property might
require some forms of environmental protection
Virtue Ethics
• The morally relevant features of actions are the character traits of the
person performing the actions.
• Good people naturally perform good actions for the right reasons, and this
naturally leads to good consequences.
• We can give accounts of good virtues we should have and how we can go
about acquiring such virtues.
• Good people avoid vices.
• When deliberating about what to do, virtue ethicists tell us to be good
people. Virtue ethics are thus teleological because we aim at being good
people.
Virtue Ethics
• Virtues are at the center of morality. A virtue is a good character trait.
• Having a virtue involves:
1. the disposition to act in a particular way,
2. the ability to identify cases to which the virtue is applicable,
3. having appropriate emotions and attitudes,
4. acting for the right reasons,
5. having role models to demonstrate the virtue,
6. and inculcating the virtue in a holistic way such that it is part of your
basic character.
• Virtue ethicists put a premium on moral development.
Virtues
Plato (424/423-348/347 BCE) claimed that there were four central virtues:
1. Fortitude: strength of mind and body to persevere in the face of adversity.
Fortitude is sometimes called courage: knowing how to regulate fear.
2. Temperance: control of all unruly appetites, especially appetites associated with
drink, food, and sex.
3. Prudence: practical wisdom and the ability to make the right choice in specific
situations.
4. Justice: fairness, honesty, lawfulness, and the ability to keep one’s promises.
Aristotle (384-322 BCE) added many other virtues such as friendliness, generosity,
modesty, pride, and truthfulness.
Christianity added theological virtues such as charity, faith, and hope.
Environmental Virtue Ethics (EVE)
•
•
Two main EVE approaches:
1. Environmental virtues come from a theory of virtue.
2. Environmental virtues are gleaned from exemplary,
environmentally virtuous people.
EVE as an environmental ethic:
1. Does EVE supply the entire environmental ethic?
or
2. Does EVE complement an existing environmental ethic?
Moral Principles
• Principle of Nonmaleficence
• Principle of Beneficence
• Principle of Utility
• Principle of Respect for Autonomy
• Principle of Justice
Informed Consent
Many cases of environmental injustice involve a violation of
informed consent and thus violate the principle of respect for
autonomy.
Informed Consent:
1. Competence
2. Voluntariness
a. Free of compulsion and threats
b. There are alternatives
3. Disclosure
4. Understanding
Justice
Classic Formulation of Formal Justice: “Equals must be
treated equally, and unequals must be treated
unequally.”
So what counts as relevant conditions for equal or
unequal treatment?
Material Conditions of Justice
Equal and unequal treatment concerns how
burdens and benefits are distributed. This could
be based on some of the following:
1. Need
2. Effort
3. Contribution
4. Merit
5. Full equality
6. $
7. Race and ethnicity
8. Gender
9. Economic class
10. Country of origin
Distributive Justice
• This concerns what material conditions are used to
determine how burdens and benefits are distributed.
• Distributive Justice = Equity.
• Most past and contemporary theories of justice focus
almost exclusively on distributive justice.
Three Preliminary Issues
1. Scope: Which entities are the legitimate recipients of burdens
and benefits? This could include some people, all people, all
current and future people, all people and some nonhuman
animals, etc.
2. Shape: What patterns or criteria should be used to determine
who gets benefits? Classic answers are efficiency, equality,
priority, and sufficiency.
3. Currency: What material conditions should be distributed?
Classic answers are resources, welfare, opportunities for
welfare, basic capabilities, and access to advantage.
Three Issues continued
and Three Preconditions
The relationship between the scope, shape, and currency of
distributive justice can be posed as:
What pattern (shape) should be used to determine who
(scope) gets what (currency)?
Preconditions that supposedly lead to the need for distributive
justice:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Scarcity of resources
Technology developments
Social changes
Normativity: what should be right/wrong or good/bad
Libertarianism
Classically based on three rights:
1. Life
2. Liberty
3. Property
There is some debate as to which of these is most
important.
Libertarianism
Libertarianism as an expression of three principles of justice:
1. Entitlement to what you own—your life, liberty, and property.
2. Reparations to protect you against nuisance, trespass, fraud, and
force.
3. Property Acquisition (from John Locke): you come to own things
by mixing your labor with them.
Two provisos:
a. One must leave “as much and as good for others.”
b. “Nothing was made by God for man to spoil or
destroy” (e.g., you can only have as much land as you
can till, plant, improve, cultivate, and use).
Libertarianism
Government:
1. Exists only to defend and enforce the three
basic rights.
2. Is retaliatory and has a monopolistic claim to
the use of force against those who have
violated the rights of others.
3. Should be a minimal state with a police and
military.
Libertarianism
Classification of Laws:
1. Those that protect people against themselves
are illegitimate.
2. Those that protect people against others are
legitimate.
3. Those that require people to help others
(positive rights) are illegitimate.
Utilitarianism
• Utilitarianism as a theory of distributive justice is really equivalent to
utilitarianism as a consequentialist approach to normative ethics.
• Two main elements:
1. Principle of Utility: An action or policy is right if it maximizes
good consequences over bad consequences for all beings that
stand to be affected by that action or policy.
2. Egalitarian Principle: Each person (or sentient being) to
count for one and none should count for more than one.
Social Contract Theories
• These have been among the most popular approaches to
political philosophy since the European Enlightenment.
• The best known social contract philosophers from this time
period include Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), John Locke
(1632-1704), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778).
• All posit an original state of nature—historical or logical.
• John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice (1971) was a revival of this
tradition.
John Rawls’ Liberalism
Rawls: Getting Started
• Society should be a fair system of cooperation between free and equal
persons set up as an agreement by those who enter the system.
• People who enter into this system are in an original position of reasonable
pluralism where they cannot agree on moral authority, moral values, and
natural law.
• Consider this original position as a thought experiment that models :
– Fair conditions under which free and equal persons agree to fair terms of
cooperation to regulate the basic structure of political society.
– Acceptable restrictions on the reasons people may use to accept and reject
principles of political justice when people advance their own different
interpretations of what they believe is good.
Rawls: People in the Original Position (POPs)
• POPs are self-interested but not necessarily selfish.
• POPs are under a veil of ignorance whereby they don’t know the social
positions or doctrines of the people they will be or represent: POPs don’t
know anything specific such as their race, ethnicity, gender, and various
mental and physical endowments.
• POPs seek to create a social contract that sets up principles of justice for a
basic structure of society.
Rawls: More About the POPs
• POPs are handed a menu of principles from the western tradition of
political society and asked to choose their principles
• Because the POPs are reasonable, they should follow a maximin rule
whereby they maximize the minimum payoff: Identify the worst possible
outcome of each principle they could adopt and choose those principles
whose worst outcomes are better than the worse outcomes of all other
alternatives.
• Rawls’ central insight is: Justice as Fairness.
Rawls’ Principles of Justice
In an original position, Rawls believes that the POPs will select two (really
three) principles of justice:
1.
Equal Liberty Principle: Each person has the same indefeasible claim to a
fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties, which scheme is
compatible with the same scheme of liberties for all.
2.
Equal Opportunity Principle (and Difference Principle): Social and
economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: first they are to be
attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair
equality of opportunity; and second, they are to be the greatest benefit
of the least-advantaged members of society (difference principle).
Feminism?
There are many different types of feminists. All of them typically believe that
some version of the following statements is true:
1.
Part of the structure of the world has been and still is patriarchy—a
system where groups of men have more power than groups of women
and more access to what societies esteem.
2.
Under patriarchy, sexist subordination (or domination or oppression)
occurs.
3.
Sexist subordination is morally wrong.
4.
Sexist subordination ought to be ended, and we should work toward a
post-patriarchal (or post-feminist) world.
Feminist Theories of Justice
Feminist theories of justice are related to feminist
approaches to ethics and/or politics. Two main
types:
1. Feminine or care-based approaches
2. Power-based approaches
Feminist theories of justice tend to focus more on
participatory justice and identity or recognition
justice, rather than strictly distributive justice.
Ethics versus Politics
• Traditional distinction between ethics and politics: Ethics
concerns personal relationships we have as individuals to
other individuals, while politics concerns social relationships
we have as individuals and groups to public institutions such
as governments and markets.
• But the same types of subordinating (or oppressive or
dominating) relationships exist in both the personal and
public spheres.
• We thus must simultaneously address personal morality and
public politics (“the personal is the political”).
Feminism: Power-Based Approaches
• Feminisms differ in terms of defining what subordination (or domination
or oppression) is, how and why it occurs, and how it should be eliminated.
• Power-based approaches to feminism attempt to provide answers to at
least three different questions:
1. Descriptive: How can we accurately describe and discuss the
different experiences and viewpoints of people, especially women?
2. Critical: What explains the subordination (or domination or
oppression) of women and other groups of people?
3. Prescriptive: What should be done to end the subordination (or
domination or oppression) of women and other groups of people?
Ecological Feminism
• Ecological feminism builds on other forms of feminism and
adds in the domination of nature.
• In addition to all of the ways women (and men) are
subordinated, nature itself is dominated, and the domination
of nature is conceptually and historically linked to the
subordination of people, especially women.
Characterizing Ecofeminism
There is no one generic ecofeminism. Ecofeminism is a cluster of different positions
minimally characterized by some or all of the following convictions:
1.
All ecofeminisms are both feminist and environmentalist.
2.
All ecofeminisms examine and critique a variety of connections between the
domination of women (and others) and nature.
3.
Ecofeminist insights concerning men/women, privileged groups/others, and
humans/nature connections should be part of any theory of environmental ethics or
environmental justice.
4.
Beyond critiquing domination in all its forms, ecofeminists should work toward
dismantling all forms and systems of human domination.
5.
Ecofeminists should be committed to creative problem-solving in developing lifeaffirming, environmentally and socially sustainable, biologically and culturally diverse
practices, policies, lifestyles, and communities of choice.
Capabilities Approaches
• Central insight: Human development concerns not just what people have
(such as resources and money) but, more importantly, what people
actively can do with their lives.
• Amartya Sen’s approach is based on the idea that expanding peoples’
freedoms is both the principal means of development and the primary
end of development.
• Martha Nussbaum’s approach is based on the idea that there are core
human capabilities that are central in human lives and that distinctively
make us human.
• These approaches support the creation of social, political, economic, legal,
and moral conditions for people to develop and exercise their capabilities.
Amartya Sen: “Development as Freedom”
Justice concerns::
1. Elementary functions: “doings” and
“beings” such as having access to
adequate food and shelter that can be secured by
personal liberty, income, and wealth.
2. Complex functions: “doings” and “beings” such as
having self-respect and being able to take part in
political communities that depend on factors
independent of possessing resources.
Some Aspects of Sen’s Approach
•
Rather than an exclusive focus on economic indicators,
focuses also on the range and quality of valued options of
people’s choices.
•
To examine a person’s capabilities, normatively rank:
1. A set of life paths that person could follow.
2. How that person actually lives.
3. How satisfied that person feels.
4. The goods/commodities that person uses.
Martha Nussbaum: “Capabilities Approach”
• Develops an open and revisable threshold list of central
human capabilities that all people ought to be able to
exercise.
• This list can be used for public planning purposes by
governments and other political entities. The goal would be
to develop legal, political, and social institutions and
procedures that create conditions in which people can
develop and exercise their capabilities.
Nussbaum’s List of Central Human Capabilities
1. Life: being able to live a normal human life span.
2. Bodily Health: being able to have good health.
3. Bodily Integrity: being able to be physically secure, including rights over
one’s own body.
4. Senses, Imagination, and Thought: being able to use these mental
capacities in a truly human way through adequate education,
informed consent, and freedom from repression.
5. Emotions: being able to have and freely express feelings and sentiments.
6. Practical Reason: being able “to form a conception of the good and to
engage in critical reflection about the planning of one’s life.”
7. Affiliation: (a) being able to interact well with other people, and
(b) having the social bases for self-respect, dignity, and non-humiliation.
8. Other Species: being able to live with concern for the natural world.
9. Play: being able to play and laugh.
10. Control Over Environment: being able to effectively participate in
political processes, to have possessions, and to seek employment.