Philosophical Ethics
Outline
. Philosophical timeline
. Classical ethics (Aristotle)
. Deontological theories (Kant)
. The “categorical imperative”
. Consequentialist theories (Bentham and Mill)
. Utilitarianism and the “greatest happiness” principle
. Omelas as a challenge to utilitarianism
. Ethical relativism and its problems
. Ethical analysis from a scientific perspective
Philosophical Timeline
1600
1700
1800
1900
Galileo learns of telescope
Cromwell’s Commonwealth
Restoration of Charles II
Newton’s Principia
Smith’s Wealth of Nations
American Revolution
French Revolution
Malthus’ essay on population
Luddite movement
Babbage’s Difference Engine
Darwin’s Origin of Species
Locke
Priestley
Bentham
James Mill
J. S. Mill
Berkeley
Hume Rousseau
Kant
Hegel
Marx
Nietzsche
Classical Foundations
Although most of our discussion will center
on philosophy from the 18th and 19th
centuries, it is important to recognize that
ethical philosophy has much deeper
historical roots.
The most important figures in the early
development of ethical thought is Aristotle,
who introduced, primarily in his book
Nicomachean Ethics, three ideas that had
profound influence on later philosophers:
.
The distinction between intrinsic good and instrumental good
.
The use of happiness as the measure of intrinsic good
.
The importance of virtue as distinct from pleasure
Aristotle (384-322 BCE)
Deontological Theories
The notion that there is an abstract sense of the good that
transcends the objective and measurable concept of pleasure
gives rise to a set of philosophical theories called deontological
theories after the Greek word deo., or duty. Under these
frameworks, human beings.given their capacity for rational
thought.have an obligation to behave in a morally defensible
way.
While most deontological writing has a religious foundation, the
challenge for philosophers writing during the Enlightenment was
to argue for ethical norms from secular principles.
Immanuel Kant
The German philosopher Immanuel Kant is
the leading exponent of the deontological
school and wrote extensively on ethical
philosophy, most notably in his Grounding
of the Metaphysics of Morals, originally
published in 1785.
Kant’s
ethical theory assumes, following
Aristotle, that there are intrinsic qualities
that are “good
without qualification.”
For
Kant, this good is the “rational
will.”
To guide people toward good behavior, Kant outlines a set of
imperatives. Some imperatives are hypothetical in the sense
that they depend on the situation, but at least one is categorical,
which are “objectively
necessary in themselves, without
reference to another end.”
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
Kant’s “Categorical Imperative”
First formulation:
Act in such a way that such actions would be appropriate
as a universal law.
Second formulation:
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.
Consequentialist Theories
The major competition to the deontological framework of Kant
consists of a broad class of theories labeled as consequentialist
because they focus on the expected consequences of an action
rather than on any absolute moral imperative.
The most prominent consequentialist theory is utilitarianism,
whose principal exponents are Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart
Mill.
Jeremy Bentham and Utilitarianism
The leading early proponent of modern
utilitarianism is Jeremy Bentham. Bentham
is sometimes difficult to read, but there are
many straightforward quotations that give a
good sense of his philosophy, including
It is the greatest good to the greatest
number of people which is the measure
of right and wrong.
Bentham believed that it was possible to define a calculus for
measuring utility according to the following formula:
utils = hedons .
dolors
Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)
John Stuart Mill
The most accessible defense of utilitarianism
comes not from Bentham himself but from
John Stuart Mill, who was closely connected
with Bentham’s
philosophy through his
father James. Mill abandoned the strict
mathematical structure that Bentham had
sought to impose on utilitarian calculation
and recognized the complexity and nuances
involved in using utilitarianism as a
decision-making tool. John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
The Greatest Happiness Principle holds that actions
are right in proportion as they tend to promote
happiness, wrong as they tend to promote the reverse
of happiness.
Act Utilitarianism vs. Rule Utilitarianism
Modern philosophers have sought to mitigate some of the
problems of pure utilitarian theory by differentiating two types
of utilitarian thought:
.
Act utilitarianism focuses on the consequences of particular
actions and therefore corresponds most closely to the classical
utilitarian position.
.
Rule utilitarianism retains the classic metric of maximizing
happiness but uses that metric as the underlying motivation
for specific rules that cover behavior. Rule utilitarianism
therefore combines elements of the classical deontological
and consequentialist perspectives.
Le Guin and Omelas
Ursula Le Guin’s
short story “The
Ones Who
Walk Away from Omelas”.winner of the Hugo
Award in 1974.offers a dramatic illustration of
the contradictions that arise in any philosophical
theory. In a later essay about the story, Le Guin
describes the “shock
of recognition”
she felt on
reading the following passage in William
James’s
essay “The
Moral Philosopher and the
Ursula K. Le Guin
Moral Life”:
If the hypothesis were offered us of a world [with] millions kept
permanently happy on the one simple condition that a certain
lost soul on the far-off edge of things should lead a life of lonely
torment, what except a specifical and independent sort of
emotion can it be which would make us immediately feel, even
though an impulse arose within us to clutch at the happiness so
offered, how hideous a thing would be its enjoyment when
deliberately accepted as the fruit of such a bargain?
Omelas as a Challenge to Utilitarianism
Superficially, the Omelas society seems to follow precisely the
logic of the early utilitarians. Even if the misery of the child is
substantially more intense than the happiness of the other
inhabitants of Omelas, Bentham’s
utilitarian calculus might
well show a positive balance sheet:
1 child
10,000 dolors = .10,000 utils
100 hedons = 100,000 utils
1000 people
90,000 utils
Does this example mean that utilitarianism is fatally flawed?
Should we reject it entirely?
Ethical Relativism
In the interest of completeness, it is important to consider the
possibility that there can be no absolute ethical standard and that
all moral reasoning is determined by cultural norms. This view
is generally called ethical relativism. Ethical relativism has
strong appeal among those inclined toward libertarianism but
has relatively little support within the philosophical community.
Ethical relativism is associated with other forms of relativist
thought, which have become prominent in academic discourse
through the postmodernist and poststructuralist movements.
These frameworks raise the issue of whether objective truth can
exist given that all interpretation of experience is mediated
through cultural processes. This questioning of objective truth
often manifests itself as epistemological relativism, in which the
foundations of knowledge itself are called into question.
Are There Limits to Ethical Relativism?
The problem that most philosophers have with ethical
relativism is that adopting it as practice makes it difficult to
take action against the following sorts of problems:
.
Genocide
.
Slavery
.
Institutionalized racism, such as in the pre-civil-rights
American South or under apartheid in South Africa.
.
A recent survey showed that more than 75% of the people
in both Egypt and Pakistan support stoning for adulterers
and the death penalty for apostasy. Clitoridectomy (female
genital mutilation) is common in many African countries.
Polls taken in 2005 showed that a majority of Americans
supported torture in some cases. Are these justifiable as
local cultural norms?
Can We Agree on Basic Principles?
Adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 10, 1948.
C. P. Snow and The Two Cultures
In 1959, C. P. Snow.successful as both a
physicist and a novelist.delivered the
Rede Lectures at Cambridge University.
He described what he saw as a growing gap
between humanists and scientists:
I believe the intellectual life of the
whole of western society is
increasingly being split into two polar
groups. . . . Literary intellectuals at
one pole.at the other scientists, and
as the most representative, the
physical scientists. Between the two
a gulf of mutual incomprehension.
sometimes (particularly among the
young) hostility and dislike, but most
of all lack of understanding.
C. P. Snow (1905-1980)
Ethical Analysis from a Scientific Perspective
The gap between the “techie”
and “fuzzy”
perspectives is interesting for many reasons.
In this course, the most important thing is to
recognize that the traditional scientific route
to knowledge is not always the optimal one.
Students of science and engineering tend to
internalize.not always consciously.the
following precept developed by philosopher
of science Karl Popper: that science proceeds
by falsification. Given a theory, a
scientist bg
tries to find counterexamples that invalidate the theory.
As the Le Guin short story makes clear, it is easy to find refutations
of ethical theories. Those theories nonetheless provide useful tools
for analysis as long as one remains mindful of their limitations.
Karl Popper (1902-1994)
For Monday
Choose a novel, play, short story, film, television show, or any
other literary work that (1) is sufficiently popular that other
students are at least reasonably likely to be familiar with it and
(2) raises an interesting ethical question for which it makes sense
to apply the ethical frameworks put forward by Kant and Mill.
If you come up with a good one, send me an e-mail message in
which you briefly outline the scenario and tell me why you think
it presents an interesting ethical challenge.
To take part, I’ll
need to receive your suggestions by Sunday at
midnight. I’ll
pick the best ones and add them to the class
discussion. If I pick yours (or if I think it was as good as the ones
I chose but impossible for lack of time), you’ll
get an extra-credit
point added to your final score at the end of the term.
