Applied Ethics: An Introduction

1. Applied Ethics: An Introduction

2. In this introduction … What is ethics? Right and wrong Moral reasoning Fallacies Principles and Theories

3. What is ethics? • Ethics is the philosophical study of morality, a rational examination of people’s moral beliefs and behavior. • Applied ethics is a branch of moral philosophy that attempts to apply ethical principles, theories and concepts to real-life moral issues.

4. What is ethics? • In the study of ethics, we evaluate people’s actions (i.e. to judge or decide whether these actions are right or wrong), we study people’s moral beliefs and judgments, and we examine the justifications (or reasons) given for moral judgments and decisions.

5. What is ethics? • Every society has rules of conduct telling people what they should do and should not do in various situations. • We need morality (i.e. rules of behavior that people can agree on) because it tells us what we would expect others to do and what others would expect us to do.

6. Right and wrong • NOT MATH OR SCIENCE  • Moral judgments and decisions, therefore, are much less certain than scientific facts.

7. Right and wrong • The statement ‘Water boils at 100°c’ denotes an objective fact that can be examined scientifically to see whether it is true or not. • The same cannot be said of the statement ‘Homosexuality is immoral’, which is just someone’s subjective moral judgment.

8. Right and wrong • If your friend has committed a crime (e.g. stealing from a supermarket), should you report the crime to the police? • Different people may have different opinions. They may not agree on what is the right thing to do in a situation like this.

9. Right and wrong • Some people may say that you should report the crime because ‘justice’ is more important than ‘friendship’. • Others may choose not to report the crime because they value ‘friendship’ above ‘justice’.

10. Right and wrong • Different people may have different responses because they have different moral values, beliefs or judgments. They may not agree on what is the morally right thing to do in a situation like this.

11. Right and wrong • Does it imply that moral judgments (i.e. judgments about what is right and what is wrong) are simply subjective expressions of personal feelings and attitudes?

12. Right and wrong • No, not necessarily. People’s moral beliefs and judgments can be either ‘subjective’ or ‘objective’. • Subjective moral judgments are based on personal feelings and attitudes, whereas objective moral judgments are based on knowledge of actions, events, and situations.

13. Right and wrong • In dealing with ethical issues, there are always objective and rational considerations that we should focus on when we make moral judgments and decisions. • In the previous example, we may ask ourselves the following questions:

14. Right and wrong How serious is the crime committed? How does it affect other people? Are we really helping our friends if we cover up their crimes for them? What would happen if everyone covered up the crimes committed by their friends?

15. Right and wrong Moral judgments, therefore, are not simply subjective expressions of personal feelings and attitudes. Rational people are able to make moral judgments and decisions on the basis of objective knowledge of actions, events and situations, moral reasoning, and shared moral values.

16. Moral reasoning Do you think babies can make moral judgments? Do they know the difference between right and wrong? Let’s watch this video to find out!

17. Moral reasoning As we can see, babies as young as 3 months old prefer nice behavior to mean behavior. They also have an ‘innate sense of justice’. For example, they think that bad behavior should be punished.

18. Moral reasoning However, babies’ moral judgments are not based on reason. As shown in the video, they prefer others who are similar to them. They even want those who are different from them to be treated badly.

19. Moral reasoning Babies’ moral judgments are often irrational and unreasonable. They cannot explain, justify, or give reasons for their judgments. From an ethical point of view, we need to think about the reasons or justifications of our moral judgments, i.e. what makes an action right or wrong.

20. Moral reasoning Consider another example: Is it acceptable for adult siblings (brothers and sisters) to have consensual sex with each other if they use contraception and no one is harmed?

21. Moral reasoning A survey found that about 80% of college students answered ‘No’ to the question, but most of them were unable to provide reasons or justifications for their opinion. This shows that our moral judgments are often based on how we ‘feel’ about an issue rather than good reasoning.

22. Moral reasoning As we have seen, ethical choices are not simply a matter of personal preference. Good moral judgment and decision-making should be based on objective knowledge of actions, events and situations. Moreover, it also requires the use of ‘reason’.

23. Moral reasoning ‘Reason’ is the ability to think logically. Persons, objects, actions, events and situations are represented in the human mind as ideas (or concepts). We use reason to make sense of the world by figuring out the relationship between ideas or concepts inside our minds.That is how we form our beliefs and judgments.

24. Moral reasoning What should we do when people disagree on an ethical issue? When people have different views, we can examine the facts and the reasoning (or supporting arguments) behind their beliefs and judgments to determine whose view is more reasonable.

25. Moral reasoning What we try to do in ethics is to approach disagreements through open-minded discussions of alternative viewpoints. Because ethics is based on reason, we should be able to explain or justify our moral judgments through reasoned arguments, and thereby persuade others to accept our point of view.

26. Moral reasoning • To think critically and reason well about an issue, we should: • understand the background or situation • think open-mindedly and raise relevant questions • gather and evaluate information

27. Moral reasoning • examine different viewpoints and their supporting arguments • develop a standpoint or position of our own • construct reasoned arguments to support our own position

28. Moral reasoning • An argument is composed of a premise (or several premises) supporting a particular conclusion. • Premises are reasons or evidence offered to support a belief or judgment, and the conclusion is the belief or judgment that the premisesare intended to support.

29. Moral reasoning • Reasoning is the act of drawing (or deriving) a conclusion from a premise or a set of premises. • Consider the following example: • Second-hand smoke can cause cancer. [premise] • Therefore, smoking in public areas should be banned. [conclusion]

30. Moral reasoning In this example, the premise ‘second-hand smoke can cause cancer’ is a fact that lends support to (i.e. provides the reason or justification for) the conclusion that ‘smoking in public areas should be banned’.

31. Moral reasoning Generally speaking, arguments are either ‘valid’ (logical) or ‘invalid’ (illogical). A valid argument is one in which the support is as strong as can be: the truth of the premises guarantees the truth of the conclusion.

32. Moral reasoning An inference from a number of particular facts or observations to general conclusion is called ‘generalization.’ Generalizing from a limited set of facts or observations, however, is not always reliable. This is called ‘the problem of induction’ or ‘the problem of the black swan.’

33. Moral reasoning For centuries, people of the West thought that all swans were white (a general conclusion that was believed to be true). The belief that all swans were white was proven wrong with the discovery of black swans in Australia in the 17th century.

34. Moral reasoning Philosophy in general and ethics in particular often have to deal with questions and issues that do not have model answers. Although there are usually no model answers to controversial moral issues, some arguments are clearly better than others.

35. Moral reasoning There are good arguments as well as bad ones, and much of the skill of moral reasoning consists in discerning the difference. Good arguments are relevant, valid, and well supported by evidence (facts, observations, statistics and examples).

36. Moral reasoning • When we evaluate our own or other people’s arguments, we should consider the following questions: • Is the evidence relevant? • Are the facts correct? • Is the reasoning logical? • Are there any counterarguments?

37. Fallacies • Reasoning, as we have seen, is the act of deriving a conclusion from a premise or a set of premises. • A ‘fallacy’ is an error in reasoning.An argument is fallacious if the premise or premises do not support the conclusion.

38. Fallacies Because there are hundreds of ways an argument can go wrong, there are hundreds of different types of fallacies. As examples, we will focus on four types of fallacies; namely, ‘false analogy’, ‘begging the question’, ‘the straw man’ and ‘the slippery slope’.

39. Fallacies Two things may have superficial similarities, but they are not exactly the same. ‘False analogy’ is the mistake of overlooking the dissimilarities between things.

40. Fallacies For example, you may think that a person is lazy just because you have seen that the person’s brother is lazy. This is likely to be a case of ‘false analogy’ because having the same biological parents may have little or nothing to do with the character trait of ‘laziness’.

41. Fallacies Another common fallacy or error in reasoning is called begging the questionor arguing in a circle.Consider the following statement: “Abortion should be permitted because women should be allowed to make choices.”

42. Fallacies Since ‘to permit’ has exactly the same meaning as ‘to allow to choose’, the above statement simply repeats itself without giving any real explanation. Further argument or information would have to be given to explain why women should be allowed to choose abortion.

43. Fallacies The straw man fallacy is an error in reasoning that we commit when we attribute a poorly reasoned argument to someone who never actually made that argument.

44. Fallacies Here is an example: “The Buddha thinks that desire is the root cause of suffering. The best way to extinguish one’s desire is to commit suicide. Therefore, the Buddha encourages people to commit suicide.”

45. Fallacies When someone criticizes Buddhism for encouraging people to commit suicide, they are attacking a straw man because the Buddha never says anything to that effect. The Buddha does not think that committing suicide is the best or only way to extinguish desire.

46. Fallacies Slippery slope arguments are often put forward to criticize certain proposals or initiatives on the grounds that putting them into practice would lead to terrible outcomes in the long run.

47. Fallacies It usually involves a prediction that serious, avoidable harm willfollow if some new policy is introduced or some legal, social or political reform is carried out. Once the Pandora’s box is open, there is no way of preventing the dreadful consequences.

48. Fallacies A slippery slope argument typically states that a relatively small first step will cause a chain of related events and eventually result in a disaster of some sort. It usually involves making a claim that A leads to B, B leads to C, and so on. And things only get worse and worse.

49. Fallacies Here is an example: ‘If we legalize soccer betting, more people will be addicted to gambling. As the number of pathological gamblers increases, there will be more crimes and other social problems. We must think twice before allowing this to happen.’

50. Fallacies Whether a ‘slippery slope argument’ is sound or not depends to a large extent on the availability of evidence. If there is insufficient evidence for the slippery slope effect, then it can be regarded as a ‘fallacy’.