Philosophy Exam 2

Egoistic Motive

A motive that is ultimately concerned with that is good for oneself

Altruistic Motive

A motive that is ultimately concerned with the good of other people

Dutiful Motive

A motive that is ultimately concerned with what is right or required

Boors

According to Aristotle "those who can neither make a joke themselves nor put up with those who do are thought to be boorish and unpolished..."

Buffoons

According to Aristotle "those who carry humor to excess are thought to be vulgar buffoons"

Moral Virtue

According to Aristotle: (1) a habitual disposition connected with choice, (2) lying in a mean relative to us, (3) a mean that is determined by reason, (4) by which the prudent person would determine it

Normative Ethics

An area of philosophical ethics that contains two components-the philosophical study of goodness and the philosophical study of right action

"[F]eelings and actions... admit of excess, deficiency, and an intermediate condition. We can be afraid, e.g., or be confident, or have appetites, or get angry, or feel pity, in general have pleasure or pain, both too much and too little, and in both ways not well; but [having these feelings] at the right times, about the right things, towards the right people, for the right end, and in the right way, is the intermediate and best condition, and this is proper to virtue."

Aristotle: Virtue Ethics Aristotle is arguing that a virtue is a mean. The virtue of character deals with feelings and actions, in which excess and deficiency are in error and are the reason to blame, while the central claim is correct, which are both characteristics of virtues. To experience all these feelings Aristotle listed at the right time, for the right reason, in the right way, and towards the right people makes them proper or appropriate to virtue. All people encounter these feelings, and that is okay as long as they are experiencing them correctly.

"Justice, for Plato...is a quality of character, and a just action is one such as a just man would do it."

Bernard Mayo: Virtue & the Moral Life Mayo is saying that the morally right action is the one that the virtuous person would do in the circumstances. When we say that a person is courageous, we refer to the kind of person they are, not just the action. A person should look up to a virtuous person and base their actions off of them, because they virtuous people are the 'whole person' meaning, they are a courageous person; they did not just simply do a courageous act. Choosing how we act based off of what a courageous person would do will help us in a situation where we are acting as a bystander.

Categorical Imperatives

Command categorically; they apply to all rational agents whatever their goals

Hypothetical Imperatives

Command hypothetically; they command on the condition that the person has willed for him/herself some goal

The Central Question of Normative Ethics of Right Action

In general when is an action morally right or morally wrong?

"It can happen that a certain moral principle becomes untenable—meaning that literally that one cannot hold it any longer—because it conflicts intolerably with the pity or revulsion or whatever that one feels when one sees what the principles leads to."

Jonathan Bennet: The Conscience of Huckleberry Finn Bennet is discussing Huckleberry Finn's indecisiveness in helping the black, enslaved man escape. Huckleberry Finn decides to help free the slave even after making a tough decision to go against the woman owner who he realized has done no wrong to him. Huckleberry Finn's pity for Jim (his emotions) led him to going against the principle of returning the slave to his owner. Bennet is talking about this pity he felt that made him overcome a moral principle. Feelings force one to modify a principle.

Moral Grandstanding

Occurs when one makes a contribution to public moral discourse that aims to convince others that one is "morally respectable"

"To treat one another as ends in themselves such beings have to base their action on principles that do not undermine but rather sustain and extend one another's capacities for autonomous action"

Onora O'Neill: Kantian Ethics and World Hunger O'Neill brings up the topic of treating others as "ends in themselves." To do this a person must not only avoid using them as mere means but also treat them as rational and autonomous, meaning self-governing, beings with their own maxims. O'Neill is saying that to treat a person as ends in themselves, we must share and support their ends and activities to some extent. Rational beings can not usually achieve their goals by themselves, so we should be there to help and support them in completing these goals. We should not force, deceive, or manipulate others, but support them. In saying this, we are required to do what we can to solve hunger in the world.

Naïve Utilitarianism

The view that the morally right action is the one that maximizes total pleasure for all sentient beings

Formula of Humanity (FH)

We are supposed to "act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means"

Formula of the Law of Nature (FLN)

We are supposed to act "as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a universal law of nature"

"It is hard to see how a morality of principles can get off the ground except through the development of dispositions to act in accordance with its principles... it is hard to see how we could know what traits to encourage or inculcate if we did not subscribe to principles, for example, to the principle of utility, or to those of benevolence and justice. I propose therefore that we regard the morality of duty and principles and the morality of traits of character not as rival kinds of morality between which we must choose, but as two complementary aspects of the same morality."

William Frankena: A Critique of Virtue based ethics Frankena is questioning "to be or to do." Should we take morality as primarily a following of certain rules or as primarily a culture of dispositions (tendencies) and traits? Rules alone will not work if the person has no interest in it. Going off of tendencies alone will not work because we do not know which to encourage and which to avoid. Her answer here explains that we should not consider morality as a choice between these two, but as two aspects of the same morality. In doing this, for every principle there will be a morally good trait there will be a tendency to act accordingly and a principle defining it.