Exploring Ethical Theories: From Relativism to Duty-Based Ethics
The Main Purposes (Functions) of Morality
To Keep Society From Falling Apart
To Resolve Conflicts and Justice in Just and Peaceful Ways
To Reduce Human Suffering
To Promote Human Flourishing
Ethics and Science (Descriptive vs. Normative Ethics)
Descriptive Ethics: An Empirical Study of Moral Beliefs
Goal: To describe or explain the phenomenon of morality.
Perspective: No moral belief system is preferable to any other.
Normative Ethics: Justification of Moral Beliefs
Focus: Questions if moral beliefs of people can be justified.
Comparison:
What we ought to do must be based on what we can do.
Therefore, Normative Ethics can’t ignore the insights of Descriptive Ethics regarding human nature.
Ethical Approaches: Teleological, Deontological, and Aretic
Teleological (Consequentialist): Focus on Consequences
Theories that determine the rightness or wrongness of an act based on its consequences.
Deontological (Duty-Based): Focus on Motives and Reasons
The rightness or wrongness of an act is determined by the motive or reason behind the action, not its consequences.
Virtue-Based Ethics: Focus on Character
Emphasizes the character of the agent as central to ethics. Seeks to cultivate excellent persons who act out of spontaneous goodness and inspire others.
Morality and Law: A Complex Relationship
Does legality have priority over morality or vice versa?
Similarities: Both aim to regulate social relations and promote social harmony. Law, like morality, can enhance well-being and resolve conflicts.
Differences: Morality is an internal control on behavior, while law is an externally imposed power enforced by physical force. Morality relies on conscience and reputation.
Priority: The priority of legality over morality is often a matter of prudence, while the priority of morality over legality concerns the justification of laws. Both can have priority depending on the situation.
Morality and Etiquette: Social Norms with Different Weights
Similarities: Both involve social norms and rules of behavior.
Key Difference: Etiquette is based on social convention, while morality addresses vitally important issues of social life and is not merely conventional.
Morality and Religion: Secular and Divine Perspectives
Secular vs. Religious Morality: Secular ethics relies on reason and common human experience, while religious ethics is grounded in revelation or divine authority.
Moral Non-Objectivism: Emotivism, Subjectivism, and Relativism
Relativism: Morality as Cultural Construct
Right and wrong are determined by societal or cultural norms, with no objective truth.
Moral judgments are not objectively justifiable.
Subjectivism: Morality as Individual Feeling
Moral opinions are based solely on feelings, with no objective right or wrong.
Individuals cannot hold false moral beliefs.
Emotivism: Morality as Emotional Expression
Moral language expresses emotions rather than stating facts.
Moral judgments are neither true nor false.
Moral Objectivism: Fallibilism and Absolutism
Fallibilism: Openness to Revision
Acknowledges the importance of cultural context but believes in right and wrong answers.
Emphasizes the possibility of error and the need for open-mindedness.
Absolutism: Fixed and Universal Principles
Asserts absolute moral rules that apply universally, regardless of context.
Moral principles are fixed and allow no exceptions.
Ethnocentrism and Objectivism
Ethnocentrism: Cultural Superiority
The belief in the superiority of one’s own culture and its values.
Objectivism and Ethnocentrism: Not all objectivist views are ethnocentric. One can hold universal principles that differ from or even criticize their own culture.
Egoism vs. Altruism: Self-Interest and the Well-Being of Others
Altruism: Emphasizes responsibility for the well-being of others, even at the cost of personal sacrifice.
Egoism: Prioritizes self-interest as the primary motivation for action.
Psychological Egoism: A Theory of Human Motivation
Definition: Claims that self-love is the sole human motivation, and people always act in their own self-interest.
Ethical Egoism: Self-Interest as the Ultimate Principle
Definition: Posits self-interest as the ultimate guide for conduct.
Criticism: Can lead to the exclusion of values like love and friendship.
Hedonism: Pleasure as the Intrinsic Good
Definition: The view that pleasure is the sole intrinsic good in life.
Ethical Hedonism: Right actions maximize pleasure and minimize pain.
Types:
Egoistic Hedonism
Non-Egoistic Hedonism
Utilitarianism: The Greatest Happiness Principle
Key Figures: Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill
Principles:
Actions are judged solely by their consequences, regardless of motive (consequentialist).
Right actions maximize happiness (pleasure, well-being) and minimize unhappiness (pain, suffering).
Everyone’s happiness is equally important (impartiality).
Duty-Based Ethics (Kant): The Categorical Imperative
Focus: Emphasizes the inherent rightness or wrongness of actions, regardless of consequences.
Do the right thing because it is right.
Avoid wrong actions because they are wrong.
Key Principle: The Categorical Imperative
Act only according to rules that you could universalize without contradiction.
Treat humanity as an end, never merely as a means.
Kant’s Distinction: Accordance with Duty vs. For the Sake of Duty
Focus: The difference lies in motivation, not the action itself.
Acting from Duty: Performing an action because it is right, regardless of personal inclination.
Acting in Accordance with Duty: Performing a right action but motivated by personal inclination or self-interest.
Kant’s Categorical Imperative: Unconditional Commands
Imperative: A command.
Categorical: Unconditional.
Hypothetical Imperative: Conditional command (e.g.,”Practice the piano if you want to be good”).
Categorical Imperative: Unconditional command (e.g.,”Never torture innocent people”).
First Formulation (Universal Law): Act only on maxims you can universalize.
Homework: Multiple Choice
1. Which of the following is true?
e. All of the above.
2. An important function of morality is to:
d. all of the above.
3. Which of the following statements is true?
b. Secular ethics is based on human reason and experience, but religious ethics is ultimately based on divine authority.
4. Which of the following statements is false?
d. It is appropriate and desirable to make laws against every action that can be considered immoral.
5. Which of the following is an example of an act that may be considered immoral by some but may also be legal?
e. all of the above.
Moral Subjectivism, Relativism (Conventionalism), Objectivism (Absolutism and Fallibilism)
6. Moral Subjectivism is the view that:
a. Whatever an individual believes about a moral issue is true for that individual and there is no other kind of moral truth.
7. The fact that different cultures have moral beliefs,
a. doesn’t prove that moral relativism (conventionalism) is true.
8. Which of the following statements is true about fallibilism?
a. Fallibilism requires us to be prepared to revise any belief, even if it is one of our most cherished beliefs.
9. Which of the following statements is false?
a. If moral relativism (conventionalism) is true, then all moral beliefs and judgments are false.
10. Which of the following statements is true?
a. Absolutism and subjectivism are two opposite views about the nature of morality.
11. According to Pojman,
a. In moral controversies we can actually always persuade people with good reason.
12. Which of the following statements defines ethnocentrism:
a. The point of view that a certain way of life is better than all others because it is one’s own culture.
Egoism:
13. According to Psychological Egoism,
c. (a) and (b)
14. According to some critics of Psychological Egoism:
d. All of the above
15. According to Ethical Egoism,
c. It’s never wrong to do what’s, in the long run, in one’s own self-interest.
16. According to some critics, Ethical Egoism
b. violates the principle of fairness.
17. According to altruism,
a. We can and should sometimes act according to the interests of others.
18. “Ought” implies “can” means:
c. We ought not to be under an obligation to do what is impossible.
19. Which of the following philosophers is considered to be an egoist?
a. Friedrich Nietzsche
20. Who said, “In the state of nature, life is ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.'”
a. Thomas Hobbes
Utilitarianism
21. According to Utilitarianism, the rightness and wrongness of actions depends on:
a.The consequences of the action.
22. Which of the following statements is true:
a.Hedonism is a philosophy which views pleasure as the good.
b.There are two kinds of hedonism: egoistic and social hedonism.
c.Egoistic hedonism is the doctrine that the pursuit and production of one’s own pleasure is the highest good and the criterion of right action.
d.An important form of hedonism is Epicureanism, which was named after its founder, Epicurus (300 B.C.)
e.all of the above
23. Who said “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as what we shall do.”?
a.Jeremy Bentham
24. Who said “The happiness which forms the utilitarian standard of what is right in conduct, is not the agent’s own happiness, but that of all concerned. As between his own happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator.” ?
a.John Stuart Mill
25.In judging right and wrong, utilitarianism focuses on:
a.Increases and decreases in well-being.
26.Utilitarianism does not have room for:
a.actions above and beyond the call of duty.
Section II: One essay question from the list below: (24 points)
Purposes of morality:
To keep society from falling apart
Morality, first of all, keeps society from sinking to a state of chaos in which everyone is the enemy of everyone else and fear and insecurity dominate the mind and prevent peace and happiness.
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) described this kind of moral chaos as a “state of nature” in which there is a perpetual war of all against all and life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”
To resolve conflicts of interest in just and peaceful ways
Keeping law and order is necessary but not sufficient for a desirable social life.
Morality must also have rules of justice to resolve conflicts of interest that are mutually agreed upon and are just.
There are scarce resources in terms of power, wealth, jobs, land, property, and so on. And we need rules to adjudicate conflicting claims about these goods.
Unless we can resolve these conflicts of interest in a just manner, we will not be able to reach any other goal.
To reduce human suffering
The third and related function of morality is to prevent unnecessary and unjust suffering.
Morality includes norms that are the foundations of social institutions and conventions that can help victims of disease, famine, and violence.
It is seen that gratuitous suffering is evil, whether it occurs in humans or in animals, we should try to to decrease the suffering and pain from the action as much as possible whenever possible.
Although there is some suffering may be deserved, such as punishment, and some may be part of an acceptable process, such as the suffering an individual endures in the dentist’s chair, as part of medical treatment, or in being turned down for a job.
But these are justified, rather than gratuitous, instances of suffering.
To promote human flourishing (morality also play a positive role, not just negative
The purpose of morality is not simply negative – to prevent chaos and unjust suffering.
Moral rules also play a positive role in promoting human flourishing.
Moral rules enable people to pursue their goals in peace and freedom, encouraging them to friendship and cooperation, challenging them to a good life.
Deep morality creates a good life for its participants and turns a potential hell into something that can approximate “a heaven on Earth.”
We should characterize morality as a set of rules or practices that if almost everyone obeys, most all of the time, almost everyone will be better off.
This acknowledges the possiblity that sometimes it may not be in out best interest to be moral (refraining from stealing money even if I know no one will discover that I took it.)
Conclusion: Morality provides criteria for holding people responsible for their actions, as worthy of praise, and blame, reward and punishment. We think we are centers of action, and, as such, deserve the good or bad that attaches to those actions. In our time, many people overemphasize rights and underemphasize responsibilities. Both are important, but moral responsibility is central to being an autonomous person.
3. Compare and contrast Relativism, Absolutism, and Fallibilism. Define each clearly and explain the best reasons in support and the strongest objections to each, and which of the three is a more appropriate approach to ethics and explain why.
Moral Relativism is the doctrine that when it comes to the claims about morality and justice, there is no fact of the matter. What is right or wrong is just what members of a society or culture regard to be right or wrong. Right and wrong are only matters of opinion and opinions vary from culture to culture
Ex)-Different Cultures have different moral codes.
– C. Therefore, there is no objective or universal “truth” in morality. Right and wrong are only matters of opinion and opinions vary from culture to culture.
Absolutism is the view that there are absolute rules that provides answers for every possible situation in life regardless of cultural contexts. According to absolutists, the ultimate principles of morality are fixed and can be discovered once and for all.
Ex)The Constitution and laws set rules that settled answers if they are morally right or wrong.
Fallibilists agree with relativists that the cultural context of moral beliefs is important. But unlike relativists, fallibilists believe that there are right and wrong answers to at least some moral questions. Fallibilism is the view that no matter how strong the evidence for our beliefs is, we might be mistaken. So it is always possible that we may have to reconsider and revise our beliefs. Open mindedness is the corollary of Fallibilism.
Ex) Slavery was first morally allowed, however later it was changed to be immoral.
6. Compare and contrast the three basic approaches to ethics. Use examples for illustration.
Briefly define each of the three approaches. Mention the name of one prominent philosopher associated with each of the three approaches.
Explain the most important differences of the three approaches, and also explain what, if anything, they have in common.
- Explain if there is a sense in which some of these approaches may complement each other rather than simply being opposing views about the nature of morality.