PHILOSOPHICAL
ETHICS
Meta-Ethics
Philosophical Ethics
Practical Ethics
TWO META-ETHICAL
ISSUES WE WILL EXPLORE:
1)
How to go about judging between right and
wrong
2)
What 'faculties' or human capacities are
deployed: feeling as well as reason, or only reason?
First Issue: How
to go about judging between right and wrong
Theory One:
Consequentialism: you measure
consequences
· Conquences
for what? For human happiness, or
"for the greatest good of the greatest number"
· Problems
to be faced:
· Ambiguities
in the classic utilitarian principle
· Problems
in defining and measuring 'happiness'
· What
makes the consequences good?
· Further
consequences?
· Likes/dislikes?
· Some
other moral source?
These all have their problems
· Massively
counter-intuitive moral judgements
· The
distinction between Rule and Act Utilitarianism
It's part of the story, but not the whole story??
Theory Two: Deontology: you follow rules.
· What
Rules?
1)
Divine Commands: "Divine Command
Ethics"
2)
Rules derived from Reason: as in Kantian
Ethics, the Principle of Universalizability, the Principle of Ends
· Problems:
· What
happens in cases of apparent conflict?
· Handling
Difficult Cases - seems to fail.
But surely not all can be subsumed under cost-benefit analyses -
that too leads to massively counter-intuitive positions.
ONCE AGAIN: IT'S PART OF THE STORY BUT NOT THE WHOLE STORY??
THEORY THREE: VIRTUE ETHICS:
you strive to act in accordance with
virtue
· Virtues
= esteemed qualities of character, e.g. wisdom, courage, temperance, justice,
compassion, patience, kindness, humility/proper pride
· Presumes
that ethics has to do crucially with what kind of people we are and what kinds
of communities we create. Actions are
important, but actions follow from character (as well as helping to form
character).
· What
is virtuous in a particular situation takes judgement and practice, not always
a simple matter: the way a person of 'phronesis' already possessed of various
virtues would act.
· Problems
also:
· 'virtue'
in particular cases seems to be culturally and socially determined (but so are
rules and our evaluation of consequences!)
· It's
not as clear-cut as with the other theories ( but this may be to its'
advantage? Morals is often not so clear
cut...)
Theory Four:
Ethics of Care
Cf. esp. Carol
Gilligan, In a Different Voice, 1982.
An Ethic of Care
versus an Ethic of Justice
·
Responding to concrete situations and people, taking account also
of emotions and feelings, versus abstract principles applied across the board
as determined usually by reason
·
People as essentially connected, embedded in a web of
relationships, versus separate and distinct theoretically independent
‘autonomous’ individuals
·
Responsibility and care for others in their totality and whatever their
needs, versus rights and purely ethical duties and obligations towards them.
Not exclusively gender specific, males can also be into an ethics of
care, and some women are also more into an ethic of justice.
And often just a matter of bias, more into one way rather than
another.
Best to find a way to take account of both?
Theory 5:
Natural Law Ethics
·
A law written so to speak into the nature of things, by reference
to which human positive laws might sometimes be critiqued, such that human
positive law is not right just because it is law.
·
Accessible to natural human reason, quite apart from revelation,
though revelation may enable us to know it more clearly and more readily.
·
Goes back a long way, from Socrates through to the Stoics and Roman
Law, into medieval scholasticism and beyond among 18th century
deistic advocates of natural rights.
Went out of favour in the 19th century, a come-back largely
in consequence of 2nd World War
·
Cf. especially the work of John Finnis.
(See separate
PowerPoint presentation.)
Theory 6:
Divine Command Ethics
·
The simplest of the lot, as in the Ten Commandments or the Sermon
on the Mount, or the Jewish Law or Torah, or the Koran.
·
Also via our conscience, interpreted as the voice of God in us, a
law written into our hearts so to speak.
·
Runs up against the so-called ‘Euthyphro Dilemma’: does God will
the good because it’s good, or is it good because God wills it?
·
The former subordinates God to ethics, the latter seems to make
ethics arbitrary
·
Problems arise with the interpretation of religious texts and
traditions, also by the plurality of such texts and traditions.
·
Also by the fact that some elements within some interpretations of
some traditions seem to be readily amenable to critique on ethical grounds.
Best to think of Ethics having an integrity of its own, but then
slotted into a broader, cosmically deep Personal Relationship?
Also to think of God as an Ideal Perceiver, beyond our situatedness
and compassionate without boundaries and distinctions?
This can be worked into disciplines in spirituality whereby we
strive to get ourselves into a similar space?
While there might also be some ‘naturals’ who seem to slot themselves
into something like this space anyway?
(Certain traditions of Christian (Jewish, Islamic) and also
Buddhist spirituality would seem to fit into something like this pattern.)
What Then to Do?
1) Each of the
theories picks up on a part, but only a part, of our total moral practice
(a) do our own mix and match
or
(b) let someone else e.g. Preston, do most of the work.
2) Go Deeper (or try to):
· For
example: our ethical theorists over the centuries seem to be running on two
main lines as to what ethics is for, namely
(A) Ethics Promotes Human Flourishing; and
(B) Ethics Protects/Respects/Responds to
Human Dignity, the perceived
preciousness of each and every human being.
· There
seem to be some traditional and contemporary schemas which more or less
successfully combine these deep interests.
· It
seems to make good sense to run with some such schema.
· Cf.
esp. Martha Nussbaum, but also John Rawls, and John Finnis.
· Two
useful notions for putting them together
(i) the notion of a Threshold (Nussbaum):
a certain threshold of basic goods or basic capacities for human
flourishing would seem to be necessary for the maintenance of human dignity.
(ii) the (Rawlsian) Difference
Principle (see later, third segment of unit):
Both together make for An Ethic of Human Flourishing, One by One,
in which no one is excluded, striving to maximize human flourishing,
but in such a way as studiously to avoid human sacrifice and thus also
protecting and respecting human dignity.
Second Issue: what human capacities are
deployed in making moral judgements?
1)
In favour of involvement of REASON:
· We do
reason about questions of morality, and sometimes change our minds as a result
of such reasoning
· Having
Reason doing all the essential work makes it much easier to save the
objectivity of moral judgment
2) In favour of
some involvement of FEELING or Sentiment
· Sentiment
or feeling is in fact often involved in the making of moral judgments,
sometimes quite strongly. And other
feelings and emotions do seem to play a vital and integral role in our moral
lives, e.g. feelings of remorse.
· Positive
versus negative feelings seem to be attached in some intrinsic fashion with
virtue versus vice (at least when we agree in our hearts with the virtue versus
vice judgment)
· Moral
judgments seem in all except psychopaths to include an inclination to action
along those lines (even when, because of other passions we do go astray).
· Reason
seems best adapted to relations of ideas and matters of fact and
existence. Once we have determined all
the facts, sometimes which way to go still remains to be determined… It is at this point that moral sentiment or
something like that comes into play.
· Purely
rationalist ethics can sometimes have pathological consequences if not
corrected by sentiment and feeling.
Sometimes it positively helps to be ‘sentimental’: why not build it into
our system in the first place?
n People
who want to argue that feelings are intrinsically involved have to solve some
problems:
· Which
feelings are relevant?
· perhaps
the universalizable ones?
· Why
doesn't this interfere with the objectivity of moral values?
n Perhaps
certain feelings just are our way of assessing values??
The issue is further complicated by differing geographies of the Mind (Amelie Rorty)
Ancient/Scholastic/Lonergan
|
|
COGNITIVE |
AFFECTIVE |
|
VEGETATIVE |
|
|
|
ANIMAL |
Perception Memory Animal
estimative power |
Tendency towards
good-for-the-animal and her off-spring |
|
RATIONAL |
Intellect:
possible and active |
Affective
tendency toward the good-in-itself |
HUME AND THE
MODERNS GENERALLY:
|
|
Relations of
ideas |
|
Calm (inc.
moral) |
|
REASON |
|
FEELING |
|
|
|
Matters of
fact/ existence |
|
Violent (various
passions) |
That is: for
Moderns, 'rational affectivity' doesn't make sense.