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QW • There are many poor people in the world who lack the money to buy food, clothing, shelter, and medicine. If you were to donate $100 to a charity such as Oxfam, then some of these people would get what they desperately need and you would thereby increase happiness. But if you were to donate all of your spare income each month, then even more people would get what they desperately need and you would produce even more happiness. Should you donate all of your spare income to charities such as Oxfam? Would it be wrong not to do so?
When applying the principle of utility, everyone counts equally. It doesn’t matter if you are the king or a servant, your pain or pleasure is considered equally. Not that degree is irrelevant. It is the amount of pain or pleasure that gets tallied, not whose it is. That includes non-humans as well. Since animals can feel pleasure and pain, their utility must be considered as well. • So, when trying to decide what to do, the utilitarian approach is to calculate the overall utility for all of the options – pain being considered negative pleasure. You then pick the option that has the greatest balance of pleasure over pain, that is the one with the best overall (or least worst) consequences. • Because the utilitarian locates moral acceptability or impermissibility in the consequences of an act and not the act itself, a significant result is that there cannot be blanket prohibitions of any category of action. One could always concoct some artificial example in which it would be outweighed by the consequences on the other side.
Mill • Mill argues that more intellectual pleasures are inherently more valuable than more physical bodily pleasures. It isn’t purely the amount, but the type of pleasure that matters. He writes, • “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. • “He says that smart people, those who have experienced both types will prefer the pleasures of the intellect, making them more valuable. Is this true? Are pleasures of the mind more valuable than pleasures of the body, or is this just the bias of a smart person?” • Do you agree? Why/why not? Is this truly in line with utilitarianism?
Liberty • Stresses individual rights: people should be free to do as they wish as long as it does not harm others. • This rests on utilitarian grounds. • We should maximize utility in the long run. Respecting individual liberty will lead to the greatest happiness for several reasons: • The dissenting view could turn out to be true • Prevents dogma and prejudice • Ensures intellectual energy and vitality
Objections • Respecting individual rights as a means to progress rather than an ends in itself, does not ensure individual rights. • What if we come across a society that has achieved long term happiness by despotic means? The utilitarian could not condemn such a society.
Discussion • Choose one of Sandel’s examples and discuss as a group • Torture • The City of Happiness • Exploding Gas Tanks • Throwing Christians to the Lions How would Bentham respond? How would Mill respond? Do you find the utilitarian argument compelling in these cases? Why/why not?
Act Vs. Rule • Act utilitarians focus on the effects of individual actions • rule utilitarians focus on the effects of types of actions (such as killing or stealing). • Act utilitarians believe that whenever we are deciding what to do, we should perform the action that will create the greatest net utility. In their view, the principle of utility—do whatever will produce the best overall results—should be applied on a case by case basis. The right action in any situation is the one that yields more utility (i.e. creates more well-being) than other available actions.
Rule • Rule utilitarians adopt a two part view that stresses the importance of moral rules. According to rule utilitarians, a) a specific action is morally justified if it conforms to a justified moral rule; and b) a moral rule is justified if its inclusion into our moral code would create more utility than other possible rules (or no rule at all). According to this perspective, we should judge the morality of individual actions by reference to general moral rules, and we should judge particular moral rules by seeing whether their acceptance into our moral code would produce more well-being than other possible rules.
Objections to AU • The most common argument against act utilitarianism is that it gives the wrong answers to moral questions. Critics say that it permits various actions that everyone knows are morally wrong. The following cases are among the commonly cited examples: • If a judge can prevent riots that will cause many deaths only by convicting an innocent person of a crime and imposing a severe punishment on that person, act utilitarianism implies that the judge should convict and punish the innocent person. • If a doctor can save five people from death by killing one healthy person and using that person’s organs for life-saving transplants, then act utilitarianism implies that the doctor should kill the one person to save five.
RU • Rule utilitarians say that they can avoid all these charges because they do not evaluate individual actions separately but instead support rules whose acceptance maximizes utility. To see the difference that their focus on rules makes, consider which rule would maximize utility: a) a rule that allows medical doctors to kill healthy patients so that they can use their organs for transplants that will save a larger number of patients who would die without these organs; or b) a rule that forbids doctors to remove the organs of healthy patients in order to benefit other patients. • Although more good may be done by killing the healthy patient in an individual case, it is unlikely that more overall good will be done by having a rule that allows this practice.
Problems with Utilitarianism? • Respecting individual rights as a means to progress rather than an ends in itself, does not ensure individual rights. • What if we come across a society that has achieved long term happiness by despotic means? The utilitarian could not condemn such a society. • Are there are any acts that are so heinous – slavery, torture – that they should be morally banned regardless of context? • Think about Sandel’s examples.
Cover page: • Title • Name • Aspect of the syllabus the essay connects to • Word count • Image if using a picture
Citations • Cite your image • Present a bibliography • Make sure to provide a 150 word explanation of your stimulus if a film • Submit: • Final_IA_Last_First_period
QW • Do you believe that we should have universal human rights? • Why/why not? • Are they based on utilitarian principles or something else?
Deontology/Kant 1724-1804 • All humans are worthy of respect because we are rational beings. • The Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals offered a critique of utilitarianism: what is the supreme principle of morality?
Critique of utilitarianism • Deriving moral principles from the desires we happen to have is the wrong way to go about it. Just because something gives many people pleasure doesn't make it right. Examples? • Empirical considerations, wants, desires, etc. are contingent and subject to change. • Utilitarians misunderstand what morality Is about . Happiness and goodness are not the same • The kinds of beings we are: we have the capacity to reason and the capacity to feel pleasure and pain, but we are not driven by the latter.
Freedom: we are all subject to natural laws • Freedom/Autonomy: Reason over inclination • The only acts in which I am free are ones where I act out of reason rather than need/feeling/inclination • Deciding what to eat is not a free choice, nor is seeking pleasure(we are responding to desires that we did not choose) • Heteronomy: acting according to external factors • We are only free when we choose to act in accordance with a moral law that we give yourself
If we were only empirical beings, we would be incapable of freedom since we would only be acting in response to physical needs • We need the intelligible realm for freedom to exist • We are both rational/intelligible and empirical/physical, so some of our actions are free and others are not: we inhabit both realms at once (freedom and necessity) there is always potentially a gap between what we do and what we ought to do. Morality is not empirical. Science cannot decide moral questions.
Problem: how do we derive universality if we “give ourselves” laws? • Everyone shares practical reason; this is how we escape subjectivism • Act only when such an action can be made a universal law: we have to reason universally outside of individual circumstances= pure reason
The motive matters • The moral worth of an action depends on the motive, not the consequences • Our motive must be to act out of duty to the moral law • Hypothetical( if you want x, do y) vs. categorical imperative (without exception and regardless of outcome) • The shopkeeper example
Acting out of compassion is not moral • Acting out of love is not moral
Categorical imperatives • 1. universalize your maxim • 2. treat persons as ends • Test: would the application of the law undermine the moral principle? The lying about a loan example: this would negate the concept of promises • Dignity of humans in virtue of their reason: humanity should never be used as a means, only as an end: makes utilitarianism impossible
Humanity must always be an end • The case of lying: • The murderer at the door: • Lying is wrong. It is at odds with the categorical imperative • However, there are situations in which we can conceive of telling the truth being wrong. • Kant’s response: once you start taking consequences into account, you have given up the whole moral framework.
Defense: is there a way that you could avoid telling a lie in the murderer example? • Is there a difference between a lie and a misleading truth? • A misleading truth is still at least partially motivated by a duty to the moral law
Discussion • If all people have dignity and infinite worth, then how do we make choices about life and death? Suppose we have to choose between repairing a road in Boston and vaccinating children in Toledo. If we repair the road, ten fewer children will die in car accidents in Boston. If we vaccinate, twenty children will be saved in Toledo. If everyone has infinite worth, how do we choose? What would a utilitarian say? • Kant imagines a second person, who is naturally sweet and kind and loving. She always does the right thing—but only because being good brings her pleasure. Kant thinks that her actions are not really moral because, like the actions of the prudent shopkeeper, they aim at personal pleasure. Sure, it’s a good thing that she wants to help people, but Kant thinks there is no deep reason to admire her. Do you agree? • Kant also thinks the naturally kind person is not really moral because she acts out of habit. According to Kant, habits can be useful, but not moral. Is that right? Is your childhood education really just a kind of conditioning and not really moral? What is moral character, anyway? Is it what you tend to do, or is it your attitude?
QW • Kant starts Metaphysics of Morals with the definition of "crime" and "the right to punish". In his opinion neither a society, nor a state can exist without laws. If there is no law, there is no society and no state. • Therefore enforcement of the law, which is the society's foundation, means protection of the society and the state. Thus, any person violating the law loses the right to be a society member, opposes social order and consequently must be deemed guilty and punished. • Kant thinks that death penalty is morally acceptable because it result on preventing future criminals’ behaviors. • ant believes that everyone should follow the law as he states: “Everything in nature works according to laws,” and who violates the law should be punished and he doesn’t deserve to be a member of the society anymore. • Kant suggests that acting in order to satisfy someone self-interest is morally unacceptable. To illustrate that, if someone kills another person to revenge or for any other reason, this action is immoral. In the other hand, if the government applies death penalty on someone because he killed another person, this action is a moral one because the state doesn’t act in regard to its self-interest but to protect its citizens from this criminal. So, this person who violates the law and kill another person might do this again, that is why it is better to prevent him or others from doing such actions again by applying death penalty on him. For Kant, social crimes which might be harmful to the public such as murder and theft are the kind of crimes that deserve a great punishment Are you satisfied with Kant’s defense of the death penalty, or do you see contradictions in his stance? Explain. Remember the categorical imperative: 1. Never view people as a means, only as an end 2. Act only when your maxim can be universalized
Consider: What would a Kantian say? What would a utilitarian say? What would you say? • Current United States law allows individuals to donate human organs for transplant and allows individuals to receive donated human organs for transplant. Indeed, public policy and ad campaigns encourage the behavior – however, it is currently illegal to buy or sell human organs. • According to the Health Resources and Services Administration, over 50,000 people were added to the organ transplant list in 2011 alone. In that same year, only about 28,500 transplants occurred. Those who didn’t receive transplants continued to wait; many die before they receive donor organs. An average of 18 people on the transplant list dies each day waiting for an organ.1 Simply stated, there aren’t enough compatible organs available. • Some individuals have suggested the possibility of allowing healthy individuals to be legally permitted to sell their organs as a way to combat the shortage. Proponents of an open organ market argue that allowing people to sell their organs would increase the supply of available organs. Openly traded organs would include only those organs that can be donated by living donors: kidneys, and pieces of livers, lungs, and pancreases are the most common. Opponents describe a disturbing future in which those of means harvest the organs of the young and poor, and contend that there are some things that money simply cannot buy.
Kant starts Metaphysics of Morals with the definition of "crime" and "the right to punish". In his opinion neither a society, nor a state can exist without laws. If there is no law, there is no society and no state. • Therefore enforcement of the law, which is the society's foundation, means protection of the society and the state. Thus, any person violating the law loses the right to be a society member, opposes social order and consequently must be deemed guilty and punished. • Kant thinks that death penalty is morally acceptable because it result on preventing future criminals’ behaviors. • Kant believes that everyone should follow the law as he states: “Everything in nature works according to laws,” and who violates the law should be punished and he doesn’t deserve to be a member of the society anymore. • Kant suggests that acting in order to satisfy someone self-interest is morally unacceptable. To illustrate that, if someone kills another person to revenge or for any other reason, this action is immoral. In the other hand, if the government applies death penalty on someone because he killed another person, this action is a moral one because the state doesn’t act in regard to its self-interest but to protect its citizens from this criminal.. For Kant, social crimes which might be harmful to the public such as murder and theft are the kind of crimes that deserve a great punishment • Are you satisfied with Kant’s defense of the death penalty, or do you see contradictions in his stance? Explain. Remember the categorical imperative:1. Never view people as a means, only as an end 2. Act only when your maxim can be universalized
Are you satisfied with Kant’s defense of the death penalty, or do you see contradictions in his stance? Explain. Remember the categorical imperative: • 1. Never view people as a means, only as an end 2. Act only when your maxim can be universalized
Teleological ethics, (teleological from Greek telos, “end”; logos, “science”), theory of morality that derives duty or moral obligation from what is good or desirable as an end to be achieved. Also known as consequentialist ethics. It is opposed to deontological ethics from the Greek deon, “duty”), which holds that the basic standards for an action’s being morally right are independent of the good or evil generated.
Aristotle was born in Macedonia in 384 B.C.E., the son of king's physician. He was sent to Athens in 402 to study at the Academy, the school of Plato. While he learned from Plato, he did not agree with everything Plato taught. • He left Macedonia and returned to Athens where he opened his own school, the Lyceum. Here he studied and lectured on topics across the intellectual spectrum. He wrote dialogues, plays meant to examine scientific and philosophical issues, but none of them have survived. All that we have of Aristotle's works are rough lecture notes. But in them, we find the beginning of virtually every major field of study from astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, and logic, to ethics, political science, and literary theory.
TheNicomachean Ethics • Ethics is the study of what it is for a human to live the good life. Aristotle's teacher Plato had a view in which all truth was derived from a single concept of the good. The form of good is the highest, most exalted concept that the human mind could glimpse and all that is real, true, or just partakes of the form of the good. • Aristotle objected that this singular notion of the good was wrong. we must draw a distinction between "good for" and "good in itself." Something that is good for something else is a means, but the goal of the good life is something that is an end. One does not live the good life to get something else, the good life is the ultimate human goal.
The good life is one that allows us to make real the perfect possible self within ourselves. That actualization of our potential comes from our own doing, not from the way others regard us. It is not physical pleasure. • The only true good for itself with regard to human life is happiness. You may ask someone why she is working for money or why he is exercising so hard and they may reasonably say that it is a step towards achieving happiness. • Happiness is its own end, not a means for something else. • Humans alone have a rational part to their minds and it is in reaching our rational potential that true human happiness is found. That characteristic that brings us closer to the potentially perfect being we have within us is called a virtue. Characteristics that take us away from our perfect potential selves are called vices.
Reflection • Take a couple of minutes and write down those words that describe your perfect selves. Imagine that you are everything you could be, that you have actualized all of your potential. What adjectives would you use to describe yourself?
Human virtues are common to all people. They belong to us all because we are members of a species and all species have an internal striving, a common sense of perfection that all members are trying to realize. • But while these virtues are common to all of us, they are not naturally within us. We will not become virtuous if left on our own. • Virtues must be taught and practiced, like a craft, like a musician learning his or her instrument. We must observe them in others and then replicate them in our own actions at which point they become a part of our character by becoming habitual.
The Golden Mean • In book I, Aristotle distinguished between parts of the rational mind. One part deals with abstract reasoning, for these the virtues are to be found in the extreme – it is always better to be smarter, to have better problem solving skills, to have more knowledge of the world. • In book II, section 2, he looks at the virtues of the practical part of the mind and these virtues are to be found as the mean between two extremes. • To much or too little constitutes a vice, but the mean is just right. If you run from all danger, you are cowardly. If you rush into all dangerous situations, you are rash. The brave person is the one who takes the middle path. To overindulge in bodily pleasures is to be intemperate. To abstain from all bodily pleasures is to be a bore. the temperate person knows when to say when.
There are some vicious actions that do not have a mean, for example, murder, adultery, or theft. While in general the moderate path is always the best one, it should not be taken to imply that murdering half the people you meet is virtuous because it is halfway between murder everyone or no one.
Virtue and Vice • When someone has been properly trained in the ways of virtue, then being virtuous will be pleasurable and s/he will experience vice as painful. • Similarly, when one has a corrupted character, when one embodies vice regularly, virtuous acts will seem uncomfortable. We want to train ourselves to acquire habits of virtue because then we will derive pleasure from doing the right thing.
Virtuous Actions • Our acts determine our character. • Virtuous acts will lead to a virtuous character, to our become more like the perfect person we could be, but only if they are done properly. To affect one's character, a virtuous act must be done • (1) with the knowledge of the virtue which is embodied, • (2) it must be the person free choice to do them, • (3) it must be done willingly, not grudgingly, done because it is known to be right, not from a sense that one is doing it only because it is expected.
Virtue ethics • Character based • You should devote yourself to becoming a virtuous person • Virtue: reliable habits that you engrave into your identity (practice is needed) • You must be virtuous in all aspects of your life
Actions still count in virtue ethics • You are driven to behave in virtuous ways in situations that require virtuous responses. • Character defines a person: our actions express our character • Good character traits=virtues • Bad character traits=vices • What is virtue? • 1. settled habits that direct you toward what so good • 2. think the right things=feel the right things=act in the right way
Virtue and vice • Vice: a person who thinks, feels, and does the wrong things • Incontinence: thinks in a way that aligns with virtue, but feels and desires in a way that is in conflict with virtue. These override the thinking and lead to wrong actions. • Continence: has vice oriented drives, but virtue oriented thinking. In this case, the thinking wins out and the person acts rightly. • Virtue: Has a unified character. Virtuous thinking, feeling, acting.
The four parts of virtue • Thinking • Feeling • Seeing/interpretation: example how we view a homeless person • Acting
Phronesis • Unlike utilitarianism and Kantianism, virtue ethics states that you cannot figure out what you should do beforehand using reason. • There is something particular to each case • The virtuous person must be able to make right judgments in particular cases that don’t rely on rules or formulas. This requires a creative capacity (pronesis) which means practical wisdom • A good person has reason mixed with virtue: the on the spot ability to see what is good in a particular situation
Suppose it is obvious that someone in need should be helped. A utilitarian will point to the fact that the consequences of doing so maximizes happiness of those affected by the act of helping. A deontologist points to the fact that, in helping the one in need, the agent is acting in accordance with a moral rule such as “Do unto others as you would be done by”. A virtue ethicist points to the fact that helping the person is exercising the character trait of benevolence. All the three moral theories will agree that helping the person in need is ethically correct.
Discussion • Critique Aristotle's virtue ethics theory. What are its strengths and weaknesses? • compare the advantages and disadvantages of utilitarianism, Kantianism, and virtue ethics. Which do you think is a better theory? Are there ways to combine the two theories to make a better one? • William Frankena says that morality requires both principles and virtues. Do you agree? Why/why not? What would this look like as a theory?
