ETHICS: PRELIMS

o Personal ethical egoism: I ought to act in

my own self-interest, but make no
CHAPTER 2: CONSEQUENTIALIST (TELEOLOGICAL) claims about what anyone else ought to
do
THEORIES OF MORALITY
o Universal ethical egoism : everyone
should always act in his or her own best
§ Greek word theoria means “a way of seeing”
self-interest
§ Moral theories attempt to see or view moral
§ Problems with individual and personal ethical
phenomena and understand morality from a
egoism
comprehensive perspective
o Serious problems associated with
§ Good theories also provide practical principles
individual or personal ethical egoism, in
to guide and direct human conduct
that apply only to one individual and
§ Two major viewpoints:
can’t be laid down for humanity in
o Consequentialist (Teleological): based
general.
on or concerned with consequences
o Problems associated with promulgating
o Nonconsequentialist (Deontological):
§ Universal Ethical Egoism
not based on or concerned with
o Most commonly presented by egoists
consequences
o Apply to all human beings
§ Two major consequentialist ethical theories:
o Propounded by Epicurus, Ayn Rand,
o Ethical egoism
Jesse Kalin, and John Hospers
§ Ought to act in their own self-
o Most ethical viewpoint: for everyone to
interest
act in his or her own self-interest
o Utilitarianism
o Problems with Universal Ethical Egoism
§ Ought to act in the interests of
§ Inconsistency
all concerned
• Brian Medlin
**Both agree that human beings ought to
• Ethical egoist says that
behave in ways that will bring about good
everyone ought to act in
consequences. However, they differ according
his own self-interest
to whom the consequences will be of benefit.
• Unclear whose self-
interest should be
PSYCHOLOGICAL EGOISM
satisfied
§ Not an ethical field or theory
§ What is meant by everyone
§ Scientific and descriptive approach
§ Factual description of how people behave and • Unclear and there are
their motivations behind their actions inconsistencies present
§ Don’t tell us what to do • Self-interests conflict
§ May be divided into two forms: strong and weak and universal ethical
form egoism provides for no
o Strong form: always act in their own resolution that will truly
self-interest be in the best interest
o Weak form: often, but not always, act in of everyone
their own self-interest § Difficulty in giving moral advice
**Can’t provide as basis but where descriptions • Ethical egoism is highly
of behavior questionable
§ Psychological egoism in its strong form does not • Giving moral advice
refute morality, and in its weak form it does not • If someone advises you
provide rational foundation for ethical egoism to act according to his
interest then, you are
ETHICAL EGOISM retreating to individual
§ Philosophical- normative (prescriptive) approach egoism —> in this case,
§ Appears in three forms: you are not serving your
o Individual ethical egoism: everyone own self-interest —>
ought to act in my own best self-interest
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 ethical egoism is
defeated
• Kalin says that to
consistently state
universal ethical
egoism, one must act
according to his own
self-interest —>
everything then will be
all right
• Universal ethical egoism
is inconsistent because
it clearly contradicts
what the egoist wants
—> interests conflict
and has incompatible
wants
• What people ought to
do cannot be
promulgated
• Should have an ethical
theory that is a secret,
otherwise, it may
violate self-interest.
§ Blurring the moral and
nonmoral uses of ought and
should
• Major difference: is or
do and ought and
should
• Ought and should are
not always used in a
moral sense and often,
used in nonmoral sense.
• Universal ethical egoism
is highly impractical,
seriously brings into
conflicts desire to do
good things and
inconsistencies
• Universal ethical egoism
claims to be a moral
system that is based on
nonmoral - rules that
have no moral import
§ Ayn Rand’s Rational Ethical Egoism
§ Inconsistent with helping
professions
• Ethical egoism does not
provide the proper
ethical basis for people
who are in the helping
professions
• Not applicable to
nurses, doctors, social
workers, teacher, or
minister is to help
others, a highly self-
interested attitude
would not serve one
well in these
professions
• Egoism in any if its
forms is not a moral
system but rather more
of nonmoral stance
from which one asks,
“why should I be
moral?”
o Advantages of Universal Ethical Egoism
§ It’s easier to determine self-
interest
• Easier for individuals to
know what their own
interests
• Better chance of
assessing their own self-
interest than they have
of assessing the
interests of anyone else.
§ It encourages individual
freedom and responsibility
• Need only to consider
their own self-interest
• Take responsibility for
their actions
• No dependence
§ Limitations to these advantages
• Operating in relative
isolation, thereby
minimizing the
occasions for conflict
• In our society, the
possibility of conflict of
interests conflict is
inevitable
o Exponent of universal ethical egoism
o Self-interests of rational human beings
by virtue of their being rational, will
never conflict
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 o Does not address the very real conflicts
that do actually arise in our crowded
and interdependent societies
o E.g Minerva Project: island community
to be run without government
Libertarianism: maximizing their
political freedom
UTILITARIANISM
o Derives name from utility = “usefulness”
o Act is right (moral) if it is useful in “ bringing
about a desirable or good end”
o Everyone should perform that act or follow that
moral rule that will bring about the greatest goo
(or happiness) for everyone concerned
o Two main forms:
o ACT UTILITARIANISM
§ “Case to case basis”
§ Greatest amount of good over
bad for everyone affected by
the act
§ Act what’s good for many
§ Every situation is unique
§ Examine situation and identify
what’s good for everyone
§ One can’t establish in advance
to cover all situations and
people because they are all
different
§ No absolute rules against killing,
stealing, lying
§ Don’t base act on past situations
§ e.g “How sure are you that
what’s good for you is good for
others as well?”
§ Criticisms of Act Utilitarianism:
• Difficulty of determining
consequences for
others
o What may be a
good
consequence
for you may not
be equally, or at
all, good for
another
o How are you to
tell unless you
ask other
people what
would be good
for them?
• Impracticality of
beginning anew
o Certain
impracticality in
having begin
anew with new
situation
o
• Difficulty of educating
the young or uninitiated
o RULE UTILITARIANISM
§ Everyone should always act to
bring the greatest good for all
concerned
§ Believes that there are enough
similar human motives, actions
and situations to justify setting
up rules that will apply to all
human beings and situations
§ Criticisms of Rule Utilitarianism:
• Difficulty of determining
consequences for
others
o The cost-benefit analysis or end-justifies-the-
means, approach
o Problem in utilitarianism
o Difficulty of carrying the “useful” aspect
o Danger of trying to determine the social
worth of individuals
o Greatest good is often interpreted as
the greatest food of the majority
o There will always be people left behind
o Each individual is, morally speaking,
unique
o Approach where we try to calculate how
much effort or cost will bring about the
most benefits
o People who are “worth” more to society
are given more benefits
o Kant and Rand believe that each human
being should be considered as an end
himself or herself, never as merely a
means
o E.g serious disaster : whom to prioritize
first?
o Hitler and some other dictators are
examples of people who agreed to this
approach
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DIFFICULTY WITH CONSEQUENTIALIST THEORIES IN
GENERAL
§ Difficulty of the fact that it is necessary to try to
discover and determine as many of the possible
consequences of our actions as we can
§ Consequentialist theories demand that we
discover and determine all of the consequences
of our actions or rules
§ This is virtually impossible to accomplish
§ Do consequences or ends constitute all of
morality?
§ E.g. Assassination of an incompetent leader
CARE ETHICS
§ Carol Gilligan
§ Not considered as a consequentialist theory but
fits under this theory more than the
nonconsequentialist
§ Men and women think differently
§ Women’s ethical reasoning is inferior to men
§ Men’s moral attitudes have to do with justice,
rights, competition, being independent and
living by rules
§ Women’s moral attitudes have to do with
generosity, harmony, reconciliation and working
to maintain close relationships
§ Two views are different but are equally valid
§ Criticisms of Care Ethics:
o Gilligan may be replacing one
problematic theory with another
o Given men and women more
opportunities, may result in excluding
women from traditionally men’s jobs
like engineering and men from women’s
like nursing
o Instead of her theory describing gender
equality, it may be prescribing who
ought to do what jobs.
CHAPTER 3: NONCONSEQUENTIALIST
(DEONTOLOGICAL) THEORIES OF MORALITY
§ Basic assumption = consequences do not, and in
fact should not, enter into our judging of
whether actions or people are moral or immoral
§ Moral and immoral is decided upon the basis of
some standard/s of morality other than
consequences
ACT NONCONSEQUENTIALIST THEORIES
§ Major assumption = there are no general moral
rules or theories, but only particular actions,
situations and people about which we cannot
generalize
§ One must approach each situation individually as
one of a kind and decide what is the right action
to take in that situation
§ “How we decide”
§ Highly individualistic theory
§ Emotive theory: ethical words and sentences
really do only two things
o Express feelings and attitudes
o Generate certain feelings and attitudes
in others
§ Decisions are based upon “intuitionism”; that is,
what is right and wrong in any particular
situation is based upon what people feel (intuit)
is right or wrong
o Arguments for intuitionism:
1. Well-meaning person seems to
have immediate sense of right
or wrong
2. They have moral ideas and
convictions before ethics was
created as a formal study
3. Reasoning is used to confirm
our direct perceptions or
intuitions
4. Reasoning can go wrong; must
fall back upon our moral insights
and intuitions
o Arguments against intuitionism:
Four strong arguments
1. Intuitions as “hunches”, “wild
guesses”, “irrational
inspirations”, “clairvoyance”
2. No proof that we have any
inborn or innate moral rules
which we can compare our acts
to see whether they are moral
or not
3. Intuition is immune to objective
criticism
4. Do not possess moral intuitions
either have no ethics or have to
establish their ethics on other
grounds
§ Criticisms of Act Nonconsequentialist:
o How can we know, with no other guides,
that what we feel will be morally
correct?
o How will we know when we have
acquired sufficient facts to make a moral
decision?
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 o With morality so highly individualized,
how can we know we are doing the best
things for everyone else involved in a
particular situation?
o Can we really rely upon nothing more
than our momentary feelings to help us
make our moral decisions?
o How will we able to justify our actions
except by saying, “Well, it felt like that
right thing for me to do”?
RULE NONCONSEQUENTIALIST THEORIES
§ Major assumption = there are or can be rules
that are only basis for morality and that
consequences do not matter
§ Following the rules (right moral commands) is
what is moral, not what happens because one
follows the rules.
§ Differ in their methods of establishing rules
§ According to the Divine command theory, an
action is right and people are good if, and only if,
they obey commands supposedly given to them
by a divine being, regardless of consequences.
§ Criticisms of Divine Command Theory
o does not provide rational foundation for
the existence of a supernatural being
and therefore not for morality either
o if proven the existence of the being,
how could we prove that this being was
morally trustworthy?
o Interpretations of the Ten
Commandments vary often conflict
KANT’S DUTY OF ETHICS
§ Kant believed that it is possible by reasoning
alone to set up valid absolute moral rules that
have same force as indisputable mathematical
truths.
o Such truths must be logically consistent,
not self-contradictory
§ “A circle is a square”
o They also must be universalizable
§ “All triangles are three-sided”
§ According to the Categorical Imperative, an act
is immoral if the rule that would authorize it
"cannot be made into a rule for all human beings
to follow
o E.g. stealing and killing
§ The Practical Imperative, another important
principle in Kant’s moral system, states that no
human being should be thought of or used
merely as a means for someone else’s end, but
rather that each human being is an unique end
in himself or herself
§ Once moral rules have been discovered to be
absolutes, human beings must obey them out of
sense of duty rather than follow their
inclinations
o Inclinations are irrational and emotional;
people force themselves to do what is
moral out of a sense of duty
§ Example of Kant’s system
o Man contemplating about suicide
§ Contradictory to end life
§ Inconsistent with categorical
imperative
§ Violates practical imperative
where in he uses suicide as a
means to escape from painful
circumstances
§ Criticisms of Kant’s theories
Consistency and conflict of duties:
o Although Kant showed that some rules
would become inconsistent when
universalized, this does not tell us which
rules are morally valid
o Kant never showed us how to resolve
conflicts between absolute rules, such
as “Do not break a promise” and “Do
not kill”
o Kant did not distinguish between making
an exception to a rule and qualifying a
rule
o Some rules, such as ”Do not help anyone
in need”, can be universalized without
inconsistency yet still have questionable
moral value.
The Reversibility Criterion
o Kant answered this criticism by means of
the reversibility criterion, that is, the
would-you-want-this-done-to-you, or
Golden rule, idea
o However, the reversibility criterion
suggest a reliance upon consequences,
which goes against the grain of
everything Kant set out to do in his
system.
Qualifying a rule versus making exceptions to it
o Open to question whether qualified rule
is any less universalizable than one tha is
unqualified
o Never distinguished exception to a rule
and qualifying that rule
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 o Strong point to make about not making § Criticisms of Ross’s theory
exceptions o How are we to decide which duties are
Duties versus inclinations prima facie?
o Kant seems to have emphasized duties o On what basis are we to decide which
over inclinations, in stating that we must take precedence over the rest?
act from a sense of duty rather than o How can we determine when there is
from our inclinations. sufficient reason to override one prima
o However, he gave us no rule for what facie duty with another?
we should do when our inclinations and
duties are the same. GENERAL CRITICISMS OF NONCONSEQUENTIALIST
o Kant did not believe on “person who THEORIES
acts morally from inclinations = § Can we , and indeed should we, avoid
immoral” but rather person is not moral consequences when we are trying to set up a
in the truest sense of the word moral system?
o Kant was strongly against killing and yet § Is it entirely possible to exclude consequences
in favor of capital punishment from an ethical system?
§ What is the real point of any moral system if not
ROSS’S PRIMA FACIE DUTIES to do goof for oneself, others or both and if not
§ Sir William David Ross to create a moral society in which people can
§ Ross agreed with Kant as to establishing of create and grow peacefully with a minimum of
morality on a basis other than consequences but unnecessary conflict?
disagreed with Kant’s overly absolute rules. He § How do we resolve conflicts among moral rules
falls between Kant and rule utilitarianism in his that are equally absolute? This problem is
approach to ethics peculiar to rule nonconsequentialist theories.
§ Established Prima Facie Duties that all human § Any system that operates on a basis of such rigid
beings must adhere to, unless there are serious absolutes as does rule nonconsequentialism
reasons why they should not. closes the door on further discussion of moral
§ Prima facie means “at first glance” or “on the quandaries.
surface of things”
§ He listed several Prima Facie Duties, those of
1. Fidelity: telling the truth, promises,
contractual agreements
2. Reparation: making up for the wrongs
3. Gratitude: recognizing what others have
done and show gratitude
4. Justice: prevent improper distribution of
good and bad
5. Beneficence: helping to improve the
condition of others in areas of virtue,
intelligence and happiness
6. Self-improvement: obligation to improve
our own virtue, intelligence and
happiness
7. Nonmaleficence (noninjury): not injuring
others and preventing injury to others
§ He offered two principles for use in the
resolution of conflicting duties
o Always act in accord with the stronger
prima facie duty
o Always act in such a way as to achieve
the greatest amount of prima facie
rightness over wrongness

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