We'll spend the first week or so of term on an introduction to the area of ethics. We're doing this for two reasons:
(1) to give you some practice at doing philosophy**********************************
(2) because ethics will be our main area of focus in this class (particularly in the second half of the term)
Terminology: Morality versus Ethics
People often draw a distinction between morality and ethics. (For example, some suggest that the word 'morality' refers to an individual's own assessment of what is right or wrong, while 'ethics' refers to the study of the various principles and values and concepts utilized in thinking about morality.) We won't be drawing such a distinction. For us, the terms 'morality' and 'ethics' will be interchangeable.*********************************
The central question of ethics:
How should we live?'Should' has a special sense here
Not: How does rationality tell me I should live?****************************************Here, being rational means acting so as to promote your own self-interest. It seems fairly plausible that living an ethical life isn't the same thing as living so that you promote your own self-interest. (Although, not everyone thinks this is right. Ethical egoists do identify the promotion of self-interest with living a morally good life.)Not: How does society tell me I should live?Actually, we should be careful here. It does seem plausible that an action can be accepted by a particular society and yet still be immoral (e.g., even if everyone in Canada thought slavery was morally OK, many of us would say that still wouldn't make slavery actually OK). However, as we'll soon see, some people do identify morality with what is believed by a particular society. (For more on this, see the material on moral relativism below.)
A Brief Digression
A Good Rule of Thumb in Philosophy - 'For every possible viewpoint, there has been or will be a philosopher who has argued for it.'
End of DigressionOur job, of course, is to figure out which arguments are good ones and which ones aren't.
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So then, what does 'How should we live?' mean?
Two Answers:***********************1. A Modern Answer - Think of morality as being like a legal system in that it disallows some actions and allows all others. Living a moral life is about trying not to violate the moral laws (and about figuring out what the moral laws are).In this class, we'll think of ethics in both sorts of ways. Many of our discussions will consider how technology alters our lives and, more importantly, whether it improves them. In other words, we'll consider whether various forms of technology help us achieve eudaimonia. But we'll also often think in the more legalistic, modern sense of morality. It is to this sense that we turn first.E.g., Morality tells us things like 'Stealing is morally wrong' or2. A Broader, Classical Answer - Focus on how we should live in order to live a good life for a human being.
'Stealing is morally wrong except when ...'eudaimonia - flourishing/happinessTends to focus on character traits or virtues, rather than moral rules.
Modern morality tends to only consider certain parts of human life as figuring in morality (e.g., whether or not you'll tell the truth is a moral decision, but whether or not you'll be a engineer is not.) A eudaimonistic approach takes a broader view. It looks at the 'shape' of a person's whole life in order to assess it.
Moral Objectivism vs. Moral Relativism
On the Modern approach, we tend to think in terms of moral rules of conduct. One large question this raises is: what determines what those rules are?Two Answers:
1. Moral Relativism: What is morally right or wrong depends on what the prevailing view is in the society or culture we happen to be dealing with.2. Moral Objectivism: What is morally right or wrong doesn’t depend on what anyone thinks is right or wrong. 'Moral facts' are like 'physical' facts in that what the facts are does not depend on what anyone thinks they are. They simply have to be discovered just like the laws of physics.
Some Bad Arguments for Moral Relativism
Obviously P2 is controversial, but even ignoring that, there's a
serious problem with this argument. Why should we believe P1?
The Euthyphro Problem (from Plato) - Does God approve of the things he approves of because they're good or are they good because he approves of them?
OK, then maybe God approves of certain things because they're
good. But, if that's right, then moral goodness and badness are independent
of God. If that's right, then there could still be objective morality
even if God didn't exist.
C: There is no objective fact as to which of this beliefs
is correct, morality is relative.
This is perhaps the most common argument for moral relativism, but
it's a very bad argument.
Perhaps what we have here is not a disagreement about moral principles, but about their application in particular circumstances.
(ii) It is a mistake to conclude based upon differing opinions
about some issue, that there are no facts about that issue.
Clearly, this is an incredibly weak argument.
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What does all this show?
It doesn't show that moral objectivism is true, but it does show that the most common reasons people give for believing in moral relativism aren't good reasons. If you want to believe in moral relativism, you'll have to find betters reasons than these.There's something to this response. (Although, it threatens to get us into a unproductive argument about whose job it is to meet the burden of proof. It would be much better for one side or the other to make a convincing case for its position.) What we'll consider next is a couple of attempts to meet this burden. We'll consider Deontological and Consequentialist Theories of (Objective) Morality.A Last Attempt - Shifting the Burden of Proof
We've been acting as though it's the job of the relativist to give us reasons to believe his theory. Why not say, instead, that the burden should be on the objectivist to show us what the objective moral facts are?