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Normative Ethics. Aesthetics. Logic. Meta Ethics. Ethics. Philosophy. Applied Ethics. Health Care Ethics Business Ethics Environmental Ethics. What is Ethics?. The branch of philosophy concerned with systematizing, defending, and proposing concepts of right and wrong conduct.
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Normative Ethics Aesthetics Logic Meta Ethics Ethics Philosophy Applied Ethics Health Care Ethics Business Ethics Environmental Ethics
What is Ethics? The branch of philosophy concerned with systematizing, defending, and proposing concepts of right and wrong conduct. The term ethics derives from the Ancient Greek word ethikos, which derives from the word ethos (habit, or custom).
Investigates moral questions: • “What is the best way for people to live?” • “What actions are right or wrong” • “What’s the proper course of action in particular circumstances?”
3 major areas of study within ethics are • Meta-ethics: (Descriptive) • Moral Ontology: Nature and origin. • Moral Epistemology: Knowledge. • Moral Semantics: Meaning of terms. • 2. Normative ethics: (Prescriptive) • - Norms/Ethical Systems • 3. Applied ethics: (Practical) How do we take moral knowledge and put it into practice?
Meta-Ethics asks about the nature, of ethics. Meta-ethical questions: “Is it possible to acquire knowledge of right and wrong?” “Are certain actions objectively right or wrong” “If certain actions are objectively wrong or right, what makes them so?”
Various Theories of Meta-ethics Cognitivismvs. Non-Cognitivism: Cognitivism: ethical sentences express actual propositions that can be true or false. Cognitivismembodies many views: moral realism: ethical sentences express propositions about mind-independent facts. moral subjectivism: ethical sentences express propositions about peoples’ attitudes or opinions.
Non-cognitivism: moral statements don’t describe properties, don’t make statements that could be true or false. When people utter moral sentences they are not expressing non-cognitiveattitudes more similar to desires, approval or disapproval, like “Cool!”
A. J. Ayer: “If I say to someone “You acted wrongly in stealing that money,” I am not stating anything more than, “You stole that money.” In adding “wrong”I am not making any further statement about it. I am simply evincing my moral disapproval about it. It is as if I had said, “You stole that money,” in a particular tone of horror. It merely serves to show that the expression is attended by certain feelings in the speaker. . . . If I say, “Stealing money is wrong,” I produce a sentence which has no factual meaning – that is, expresses no proposition that can be either true or false.”
Cognitivists hold that moral judgments express beliefs: truth-evaluable mental states that represent moral facts. • Non-cognitivists hold that moral judgments express some other sort of non-truth-evaluable, non-representational mental states.
Normative Ethics is the study of ethical action. It is the area of ethics concerned with the set of questions that arise when considering how one ought to act, morally speaking. Normative ethics is distinct from meta-ethics because it examines standards for the rightness and wrongness of actions, while meta-ethics studies the meaning of moral language and the metaphysics of moral facts. Normative ethics because deals with norms or moral systems.
Applied Ethics is the examination of particular moral issues in private and public life. Use of philosophical methods to identify the morally correct course of action in various fields of human life. • Bioethics. • Environmental ethics • Business ethics. • Spots ethics.
Moral Agency • Who/What is a moral agent? Philosophers argue over the criteria to determine moral agency: • Rationality • Ability to deliberate moral judgment • Humanity • Cognitive capacities • Sentience • Relationship
MORAL RELATIVISM: the concept that morality is relative. Objectivism says that all people are under the same moral principles. Moral principles are objective. Relativismsays that societies decide what is moral. Who are we to judge?
Moral Relativism does not say that in morality anything goes. • It does not mean there are no moral rules. • Moral rules are relative. • It states that what’s moral for a society could be immoral for another. • So there is no way to say that one society is moral and the other immoral. • Morality is relative to the particular society.
Who Are We to Judge? • The Callatians, an Indian people, ate their dead people, while ancient Greeks cremated theirs. They viewed each other’s practice as immoral. So moral relativism concludes that morality is a matter of what peoples take it to be.
But, is morality relative? It seems that people’s beliefs differ, not moral principles. Callatiansbelieved their dead would continue living if ingested. Greeks believed flesh could be corrupted and so cremated the dead. Often, peoples’ differences are not moral but cultural. Aabortion? Everyone agrees that murder is wrong. We disagree over whether a fetus is a person.
If relativism is true, you must admit there was nothing wrong about Nazi morality or slavery!
Think About it… Those who fought against segregation and slavery were moral reformers. If you are a moral relativist, you cannot praise moral reformers. In fact, you should condemn them.
Those who try to better the moral principles of a society try to change the moral rules of that society! Moral progress implies moving toward an ideal, objective, moral standard. But this is what relativism denies! There is no objective morality.
Also, relativism says that the social group you belong to determines morality, right? But ask yourself: to which social group do I belong? Answer: you belong to many groups.
Finally, some might say relativism is valid because we should have tolerance and respect other people’s practices and beliefs. But, if we apply this principle universally, then tolerance is ruled out by relativism because you are not a relativist but an objectivist.
In ethics we need to determine what makes things right or wrong. Which theory is best? A theory’s principles must provide a compelling explanation of why certain things are right while others are wrong. Adequate ethical theory needs to satisfy certain criteria. The more fully the theory satisfies all these criteria the better the theory.
1. Completeness: theory should be able to address completely moral concepts. If the theory leaves something out that must be included, then that theory is faulty. Hedonistic theories, don’t account for justice. • 2. Explanatory Power: The theory must give us insight into what makes something moral or immoral. It must help us understand the difference between right and wrong.
3. Practicability: how useful is a theory? - Clear and precise moral claims. If the theory’s principles are vague, then it isn’t a practical theory: “don’t hurt people unless they deserve it.” Vague. - Moral guidance to ordinary people. - Principles should not create conflict. Imagine a friend lives in the US illegally. Should you turn him in? A practicable theory must be able to resolve your dilemma.
4. Moral confirmation: a theory must give correct answers to moral questions. Does it work? A theory is morally confirmed if we have good reasons to consider it true. This criterion resembles the scientific method. In science we begin testing a theory’s hypotheses by experiment and observation.
SOME WAYS NOT TO ANSWER MORAL QUESTIONS, AND THE IDEAL MORAL JUDGMENT
Moral judgments and personal preferencesSome people like classical music; others do not. This is disagreement in preferences. Moral disagreements, disagreements over right or wrong, are not the same. If I say abortion is always wrong and you say abortion is never wrong, then you are denying what I affirm. The point: right or wrong require reasons. Cannot be determined just by finding out about the personal preferences of people.
Moral judgments and feelings Some philosophers think words like right and wrong are empty. This position suggests it doesn’t matter one way or the other. But morality matters. So, one must not use personal feelings to determine what’s right and wrong.
Thinking it is so does not make it so This should be obvious: upon reflection you might be surprised. You might think same-sex marriage is immoral, but when you reason logically, you might arrive at the opposite conclusion.
Irrelevance of statistics Some people think that the more people believe something, the truer something is. Religious people may say that God exists because the majority of the world’s population believes in a god. Clearly this is not true. If the majority holds that capital punishment is wrong, that doesn’t make it wrong.
The appeal to a moral authority: Many people think that there is a moral authority, e.g., a God. However, appealing to such an authority creates problems...
THE IDEAL MORAL JUDGMENT There are different concepts that an ideal moral judgment must satisfy
Conceptual clarity: if someone tells us that euthanasia is always wrong we could not determine whether that statement is true before we understand what euthanasia is. Concepts need clarity. • In the case of abortion, for example, is a fetus is a person?
Information: We answer moral questions by having knowledge of the world. For example, in order to know why eating meet is morally wrong, we must know the facts: e.g. animals feel pain and like us do not want to feel pain. They are killed, Chopped up, packaged, and sold. Many people ignore, or want to ignore, these facts.
Rationality: must be able to recognize the connection between different ideas. The best way is to use logic. Sally thinks all abortions are morally wrong, but she recently has had an abortion. Sally is not being rational or logical.
Impartiality: correct answer to moral questions must be impartial. Impartiality is related to justice: the principle that justice is the similar, and injustice the dissimilar, treatment of similar individuals, e.g. If causing suffering to humans is wrong, but it is not wrong in the case of animals, this is not impartial. - we should not consider irrelevant characteristics such as the color of the skin, the color of hair, nationality, height, age, species, and so on.
Coolness: the idea is that the more emotionally charged we are, the more likely we are to reach a mistaken moral conclusion, while the cooler or calm we are, greater the chances that we will avoid mistakes.
VALID MORAL PRINCIPLES besides information, impartiality, conceptual clarity, etc., ideal moral judgment must be based on valid or correct moral principles. Ideally, one wants not only to make the correct moral judgment but also to make it for the correct reasons.
Criteria for evaluating moral principles: • Consistency:whatever principle let Sally to believe that all abortions are morally wrong and yet have an abortion is morally right, must be an inconsistent principle. • Adequacy of scope: A successful principle is one that provides guidance to different circumstances. So, the wider the principle’s scope, the greater its potential uses, the narrower its scope, the narrower its range of applications. • Precision: What we want from an ethical principle is not to be vague. For example if we are told we should love our neighbors and we should do no harm we must also be told in a clear way what love, harm, and a neighbor are supposed to mean.
Consequentialistic Ethics: Everything we do has consequences. Consequentialism defines morally right actions based on what produces desirable consequences. Consequentialism: an approach to ethics arguing that only consequences are what makes something morally good or bad. Utility: Desirable consequences. Disutility: Undesirable consequences. Consequentialism
Hedonism and Consequentialism • Consequentialistic theories commit to a definition of utility. • Hedonistic theories regard Pleasure/Happiness as utility and pain as disutility. • Hedonism views pleasure as the only good. • Not all pleasures are good. • Pleasure and happiness are not the same.
