Philosophy 2800
Week 12
What Do I Know Now that I Didn't Know 12 Weeks Ago?

1. The claim that 'morality is all subjective' isn't obviously true.

In considering the views known as moral objectivism & moral relativism, we've seen that, while something like relativism might be right, it at least takes some serious argument to show this is true.

For that matter, even if moral relativism is true, we need to contend with the fact that, in our culture, a lot of value is placed on being able to defend our moral views.  We'll talk more about this later on.

2. Appeals to religion aren't that helpful in settling moral problems.
Don't forget the Euthyphro Problem:  Even if we knew what god approved of & disapproved of, the question of why he felt that way would still be left over.
3. Many of the most difficult problems in ethics result from clashes between principles & consequences.
The problem with principles is that they tend to be blunt instruments.  Even those that apply well in most cases may seem inflexible & unreasonable in some particular cases.
Do I follow the rule 'don't lie' when the killer is at the door asking questions about his intended victim?
Noting this, we could simply deal with things on a case-by-case basis. 'Just do whatever is likely to have the best results in the case at hand.'  But this strategy runs the risk of pointing us towards 'repugnant conclusions'.
Do we convict the innocent person when this is the only way of stopping a potentially deadly riot?
'Reflective Equilibrium' - A Compromise View?
John Rawls, who we've encountered on several occasions in this course, recommends an approach in which we try to use our intuitions about what's right in particular cases to adjust our principles & our principles to check those intuitions.  The hope is that by relying on neither principles nor intuitions exclusively, we might reach some sort of balance between the two (i.e., a 'reflective equilibrium').
4. Beware of 'Trojan Horse' Principles
:What looks like a simple, commonsense claim about our moral obligations (or anything else) often has implications that go far beyond what first meets the eye.  Remember how far Singer's Strong Principle seems to take us:
"if it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it."
When it comes to principles, we should look before we leap.
5. Theories of human nature often have profound moral implications.
A number of the issues we looked at this term can be understood in terms of the conflict between two competing views of what human beings are like.  One view says that we are different from most (maybe all) other species because we have free will & reason.  We are not simply a product of our upbringing & physical make-up.  The other view identifies us as just another animal, different in degree from other natural creatures, but not in kind.  The first view might be called the 'traditional' view of human nature. It points towards drawing a moral distinction between ourselves & other animals.  It also might point away from N.R.T.'s like human cloning.  The second view of human nature points towards animal rights & ecocentric ethics.  It might also make us less edgy about things like human cloning.

Likewise, differing conceptions of human nature loomed large in our discussion of the idea of a female ethic.

The big moral here:  you can't do ethics properly without doing philosophy in a broader sense (e.g., investigating questions about human nature).

6.  The idea of 'naturalness' is weak, morally speaking.
In thinking about both sexual morality & N.R.T.'s, we noted that many common arguments on these (& other) topics are built on the idea of naturalness.  We also saw the weakness of this approach.  In the end, the notion of naturalness seems to be empty morally speaking.
7. Ethical problems don't come to an end
If you've been following the news over the last few days you'll have seen that the topic of cloning is back on the national & international agenda.  There's a general pattern at work here -- new technological possibilities create new ethical problems.  Just because we can do something, does that mean we should do it?
Think here of N.R.T.'s or new weapons.
8. Ethics is hard!
Why is this good?  Because some of the worst things that have ever been done have been done by people who were absolutely convinced that they were doing the right thing.  The events of 9-11 are a perfect example. If nothing else, this course should make you think twice about your deeply held convictions.
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OK, but what do I with all this information?

How can we possibly get anywhere in ethics, given that we can't even settle the question of whether relativism or objectivism is true?

A Truce Between Objectivists and Relativists?

One approach we might take is to see if we can find enough common ground between relativists and objectivists to proceed.  In most cases, the answer is 'yes'.

The thing to remember is that the relativist is committed to the existence of at least a kind of 'moral fact'.  Within a particular culture, there can be 'facts' about which ways of behaving are right and which are wrong. It's just that the relativist claims these are not facts that would hold in every place and time.

Having noted this, you should now ask yourself this question - 'Is it important that I have good reasons for my moral beliefs?'  For most of us, the answer will again be 'yes'.  We want to be in a position to say why our beliefs are the right ones to hold.  This suggests that, if relativism is true, people in our culture have a moral obligation to provide good reasons in support of their moral judgments.  (Why?  Because most people think this is how you should behave and, if relativism is true, that's all it takes to make it true that you should have such reasons.)

Likewise, a believer in objectivism will presumably want to have reasons to justify his claim that the moral facts are the way he says they are.  So, he (or she) will also be committed to the project of giving good reasons in support of his moral judgments.  It seems then that, to some extent anyway, we can get on with thinking about particular moral issues without definitively settling the relativism vs. objectivism dispute.

A Couple of Starting Points
If the relativist and the objectivist to agree on a common project, perhaps they can also agree on other things.  What follows is a couple of possible starting points that we've encountered over the course of the term.
1. The Consistency Principle: 'If you are morally obligated to act one way in some particular situation (call it situation A) and you are not obligated to act in that same way in some other situation (call it situation B) there must be some morally significant difference between the two situations.'

2. The Is-Ought Principle:  'The fact that things are a certain way doesn't prove that they ought to be that way.'

3. The 'Ought Implies Can' Principle:  'To say that you ought to do something is to imply that you can do that thing.'

Will this leave us enough common ground to get anywhere?

I'll leave that to you to consider.

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