Ethics 292 Midterm

Virtue Ethics

The general concept behind Virtue Ethics is that it focuses on what the individual should choose for his/her own personal inward behavior (character) rather than the individual relying solely on the external laws and customs of the person's culture, and if a person's character is good then so ought the person's choices and actions be good. • Not so much a focus on what we do or particular actions as it does on WHO we are as a person. What kind of person we are. • Intentions or the action itself is virtuous? • Do virtues vary?

William's View on Utilitarianism and Negative Responsibility

Utilitarianism has the consequence that you are just as morally responsible for failing to prevent an action committed by others if it were within your powers as you are from committing the act yourself. This is the point about negative responsibility. Ex: George not taking ChemE job making weapons so someone else more evil takes it and kills more people.

Descriptive Statements

• Claims that try to describe what the world is like and are either true or false. • "Dark matter exists" • "My car is blue" • "Murder is illegal" • Typically used in theoretical reasoning

Normative Statement

• Claims that use practical reasoning about what we should and should not do and what the world SHOULD be like. • Some claims use ethics, others do not • "You should play the piano" • "You should not smoke" • "You should not murder"

The Euthyphro Contrast

"Does God approve of/command something because it is good; or is it good because God approves of/commands it?" God's commands would be completely random - he commands/approves of benevolence because ... he does; no further explanation is possible. You cannot say, for instance, that "God might have his reasons for giving this commands, even though we don't know them". If you argue that God has his own mysterious reasons for approving of or commanding benevolence, then what it takes for benevolence to be good is that it satisfies those reasons, not that God commanded or approved of it. In effect your theory would be that benevolence is good or right for some mysterious reason (that God had to command it). This is not a divine command theory. Similarly if you thought that God commanded or approved of benevolence because it is positive for humanity if we were benevolent, then God and his commands would be an idly spinning wheel in your moral theory - your moral theory would be that benevolence is good or right because it is positive for humanity. We can eliminate the middle man. Being told that the moral prohibition on killing is actually a consequence of our society's religious beliefs doesn't answer the question of whether killing is morally right or wrong. You need a moral theory - a theory of what right or wrong amounts to - in order to answer that. Explaining where our moral rules originated is not answering the question of whether these are, in fact, the correct rules to live by.

Moral Luck

"Where a significant aspect of what someone does depends on factors beyond his control, yet we continue to treat him in that respect as an object of moral judgment, it can be called moral luck" o We are only responsible for things that are within our control o Either this is false, or we are really responsible for nothing o Nagel favors that this is false

Feinberg's Psychological Egoism Arguments

(a) "Every action of mine is prompted by motives or desires or impulses which are my motives and not somebody else's." (b) When a person gets what s/he wants, s/he feels pleasure. (c) We often deceive ourselves about our selfish motives. (d) Moralists often appeal to pleasure and pain to instill morality (to educate).

Act Utilitarianism

Belief that Principle of Utility is the only moral rule there is. The right action is the one among the possible alternatives that produces the most happiness or pleasure (the greatest net effect of pleasure) and the least amount of pain. Says that the intention behind an action does not really matter, it's the consequences behind the action that matter.

Bentham on punishment

All things being equal, we shouldn't ever want to punish anyone - unless you can show that it will do good for someone else (or that person). The only justification for punishing people for their conduct is ... the consequences of punishing people; that punishing them might lead to overall utility. Revenge or retribution is not compatible with utilitarianism! In Bentham, however, it is not obvious that it is always wrong to punish people for something they haven't done (although a society which allowed this might quickly turn into a less pleasant place overall) Bentham would thus agree that it is good that the evil gets off the hook if no good is served by punishing him.

Problems with Principle of Utility

Bentham assumes that we can weigh up pleasures and pains. This is obviously difficult in practice: how do pleasures outweigh pain? Can 10 pleasures outweigh one pain. Intensity and duration count, but how do you weigh this? An intense pleasure for 3 seconds vs. a mild pleasure for 30 seconds? Notice another delicate point about the principle of utility: Even though we do not always apply the principle to guide our action, it is still the standard for goodness, but if we use it consciously every time, we will risk doing less good - calculating pleasures and pains might make you waste precious time; hence consulting the principle could be wrong by the standards of the principle of utility itself

Objection to Ethical Egoism

Claiming that everyone ought to seek one's personal best interest because it contributes to the general well being overall (i.e. achieves the best possible society), just isn't egoism. This is rather a form of utilitarianism (providing a utilitarian justification for why we should have a society where people are concerned with their own self-interest).

Deontology

Deontological theories judge morality by examining the nature of actions and the will of agents rather than goals achieved or expected outcomes (roughly: A deontological theory looks at inputs rather than outcomes.) One reason for the shift away from consequences to duties is that, in spite of our best efforts, we cannot control the future

Ethical Egoism

Ethical egoism is the view that you ought to do what is in your own best self interest or, quite simply, that you ought to be an egoist. Notice, however, that if you are a psychological egoist, then being an ethical egoist does not make much sense, since psychological egoism claims that you only act in your own self-interest anyway and cannot help doing so (thus, there would be little reason to make the normative claim).

Evaluative Statements

Evaluative Claims • Claims that pass some kind of judgment • "Murder is bad" • "This knife is good"

Kant's Definition of Good Will

I. The good will is the only good without qualification. II. The good will is a will that acts for the sake of duty, as a "good-in-itself." Note this important definition of a good will. Having a "good will" is not a matter of having certain inclinations, e.g. benevolent ones. It is a matter of willing to act for the sake

Kant on Deontology

Kant denies that the purpose of ethics is happiness. Kant believes that only actions performed for the sake of duty have moral worth. Notice what this implies: If one performs an action purely by inclination, then that action has no moral worth. Kant believed that to be ethical is to be perfectly rational, and that the most rational behavior is naturally the most ethical one. When considering an act consider this: What rule would you be following were you to go through with the act? This would be the "maxim" or guideline for said action. Would you be willing to have this rule become universal law, to be practiced by everyone else around you at all times? (Categorical imperative) Kant would approve of punishment for the sake of retribution; rather then correct a criminal's behavior, this sort of punishment simply addresses a wrong that has already been committed • Recognize that everyone is a rational being that is allowed to have value and their freedom to pursue their own projects unless bad

Mill's Views on Utilitarianism

Mill accepts the greatest happiness principle as the basic statement of utilitarian value: "actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness." On the other hand, Mill diverges from Bentham when it comes to how to calculate happiness, that is: Mill rejects the idea that pleasures can be quantified (along the parameters listed in Bentham). Rather, the various kinds of pleasure humans experience differ from each other qualitatively (and only those who have experienced pleasure of both sorts are competent judges of their relative quality). Hence, Mill emphasizes the moral importance of promoting higher, intellectual pleasures among sentient beings even when their momentary intensity may be less than that of alternative "lower" pleasures.

Justice in Utilitarianism

One objection to utilitarianism is that there is no room for justice. Punishing someone is right only insofar as the punishment leads to the greatest overall good. Likewise, rewarding someone is right only insofar as the reward leads to the greatest overall good. But there is no room on utilitarianism to talk about punishing or rewarding someone because they deserve it

Objections to Rule Utilitarianism

One question for the rule-utilitarian is: If someone is sure that an action violating the rules in question will cause more happiness than following the rule, why should he or she follow the rule? Another problem is that rules come into conflict (e.g. lying vs. offending), and isn't one of the main points of a moral theory to tell us what to do in such circumstances? How can this be resolved? By appealing to the principle of utility? But then it will easily seem as if we were treating the moral rules merely as rules of thumb to be discarded if they, on a given occasion, conflict with maximal utility, and the whole point about rule utilitarianism was to give us rules that where inherently moral

Bentham's Utilitarian Argument

Pleasure and pain are the only parameters for judging the moral value of an action. Bentham actually believes that happiness is quantifiable. Happiness for whom? Everyone - each individual - in the society counts for the same and therefore must be considered when taking action. The crucial idea in Bentham's version of utilitarianism is that nothing is intrinsically wrong. Morality is instrumental to moral good. There is nothing intrinsically wrong about stealing. Stealing is usually wrong in practice because it produces pain. But there can be exceptions; the principle if utility is the only moral principle.

Psychological Egoism

Psychological egoism is the view that humans are always motivated by self-interest, even in what seem to be acts of altruism. It claims that, when people choose to help others, they do so ultimately because of the personal benefits that they themselves expect to obtain, directly or indirectly, from doing so. Psychological egoism is not itself an ethical theory. It is a descriptive (empirical) theory about what in fact motivates people to act. It is not the claim that most people usually behave selfishly; it is the claim that all people, everywhere, always behave for what is (in the end) selfish reasons.

Responses to Feinberg's Arguments

Response to (a): The egoists' first argument [about our only motives being our motives] is flawed: "from this simple tautology that all of my motives and desires are my motives and desires nothing whatever concerning the nature of my motives or the objective of my desires can possibly follow." "It is not the genesis of an action or the origin of its motives which makes it a "selfish" one, but rather the "purpose" of the act or the objective of its motives; not where the motive comes from...but what it aims at determines whether or not it is selfish." Response to (b): The second argument for psychological egoism [getting what one wants and receiving pleasure] is also flawed: from the fact that all our successful actions are accompanied by pleasure (for us), it does not follow that the objective of these acts is pleasure for oneself. Response to (c): The third argument for the thesis [near total self-deception] is unlikely: while there is no logical flaw in the argument, it seems unlikely that this sort of sweeping generalization is correct. Response to (d): The fourth argument for psychological egoism [pleasure, pain, and moral education] leads to paradox: the way to get happiness is to forget about it and psychological egoists/hedonists can not recognize this.

Rule Utilitarianism

Rule utilitarianism recognizes a plurality of moral rules such as don't steal (perhaps adding "unless you are about to starve to death") or don't lie. According to rule utilitarianism, it really is wrong to steal - always, and for everyone. Stealing is simply wrong, period. since it is the principle of utility that determines which rules we should adopt - "don't lie" is a universal rule since adopting this rule, rather than "lying is OK" or "you should lie", is what leads to the best overall outcome. Hence, the Principle of Utility functions as the justification for the various moral rules, rather than being the single valid moral rule (as the act utilitarian would maintain). Rule utilitarianism could also incorporate justice ("give to everyone what is their due" or "don't punish people for things they didn't do") among its rules. But it comes with a cost.

Psychological Egoism Example

Suppose my friend needs help achieving some goal. Since I care about her happiness, I wish that she achieve this goal. That is, I desire that she manage to achieve it. It is, of course, my desire that she achieves the goal. So when I help her, I do - in a trivial sense - attempt to satisfy my own desire. But that does not establish egoism. It would be egoism if I attempted to satisfy my desire that she achieve her goal only because I wanted me to be happy (and helping her would be merely a means to achieve my own happiness). But this requires much more than i) establishes; it requires that ii) is true. Lincoln Example: If Lincoln only cared about his own happiness, why did he free the slaves Happiness is not everything we seek!!

Descriptive fallacy (is-ought fallacy)

The is-ought fallacy occurs when the assumption is made that because things are a certain way, they should be that way. It can also consist of the assumption that because something is not now occurring, this means it should not occur. In effect, this fallacy asserts that the status quo should be maintained simply for its own sake. It seeks to make a value of a fact or to derive a moral imperative from the description of a state of affairs.

Divine Command Theory

The moral theory that tells you that morality depends on God. Notice, first, that this is a kind of subjectivist view - it does entail that morality is subjective, only that the relevant subject is God: what is right or wrong is equated with what God subjectively decides is right or wrong. The view is not the view that morality depends on what religion one has; divine command theory does not say that morality is based on religious beliefs. Divine command theory says that morality is based on God's will and that this is the one and only foundation of morality, regardless of what beliefs you have about it or whether you even believe in God.

Principle of Humanity (Kant)

The principle of humanity emphasizes respect for persons. Persons, unlike things, ought never to be merely used. Their value is never merely instrumental; they are ends in themselves. Of course, a person may be useful, but must always at the same time be treated with all the respect due to a person, i.e., also as an end. It is OK to pay the taxi driver to drive me home even if that is treating him as a means. But it is not OK to treat a person as a means only - it is not OK to take a taxi ride and run away without paying; that would be treating the taxi driver as a means only. The principle of humanity is often invoked as being the foundation for the modern conception of human rights. It immediately entails that slavery is forbidden (of course); as is e.g. rape. It also entails that the maxims of the Nazi officer and (probably) the bank robber above are unacceptable - they don't exhibit the right kind of respect for the humanity of their victims.

Principle of Utility

The right action in a given situation is the action that produces the best possible overall outcome.

How to determine Principle of Utility

We conduct a cost-benefit analysis. The net balance should at least take into consideration: *Intensity *Duration *Certainty *Propinquity, remoteness [most modern utilitarians drop this factor - whatever motivation it has can probably be explained by Certainty]. *Fecundity (producing further pleasures) and purity (not pleasures being followed by pain) *Extent (how many are affected by it)

Utilitarianism and rules of thumb

What does the utilitarian say about general rules such as 'thou shall not kill' or not lie or something? Bentham says that these are rules of thumb, principles that are generally recognized to lead to good results (even if they may not always do so). There is nothing wrong in following such principles, quite the contrary; it is only that such principles are not the ultimate standards for moral evaluation. Both Bentham and Mill are act-utilitarians. An act-utilitarian holds that the principle of utility is the only moral principle, and that other 'rules' such as 'don't lie' are only rules of thumb with no intrinsic moral value.