Ethics

Ethics

Ethics

• We are all faced with difficult decisions every day and make value judgements

– Not doing your homework is wrong– She has not done her homework– Therefore she is wrong

• Is ethics closely related to another area of knowledge then?

http://edrontheoryofknowledge.blogspot.mx/2012/05/reason-and-universality-of-human-rights.html

Ethics

• The problem is: who is to decide the first principle of the syllogism: i.e. is it really “wrong” not to do your homework? Does this make the syllogism a fallacy?

• Despite this problem, humans do seem to have somehow developed a shared system of ‘values’ or ‘moral principles’

• Is this down to logic, instinct, language?....

What is Morality?• A moral act is a human act which requires both

conscience and liberty

• A moral act always has consequences (good or bad)

• A moral act confers responsibility on the person who carries it out

• We can label a moral act as ‘moral’ or ‘immoral’ depending on the desired outcome

• An act without conscience and liberty is labelled amoral

What is Morality?

MORAL IMMORAL

A MORAL ACT

AMORAL

AN ACT WITHOUT MORALS

Without conscience and/or liberty With responsibility

What is Morality?

• Is this moral, immoral or amoral?

• Me putting this pen on the table

• MORAL – I have done it with conscience and liberty

What is Morality?

• Is this moral, immoral or amoral?

• A 5 year old child is playing cops and robbers with his friends. He goes into the house and finds his dad’s gun. He takes it outside to continue playing and shoots his friend dead

• AMORAL – done without conscience of the outcome

What is Morality?

• Is this moral, immoral or amoral?

• A pilot is coming into the airport for a landing. The pilot does not listen properly to the instructions from the control tower, makes a mistake and crashes the plane, killing everybody on board.

• MORAL

Calvin and Hobbes

• In the cartoon, Calvin says he doesn’t believe in ethics any more. But that’s not really true

• What he should say is that he believes in ‘moral relativism’ (a branch of ethics)

• What do you think moral relativism means?

Ethics• Moral relativism is a belief that

different groups of people can develop different values, and this simply depends on the society that you grow up in

• A good example is the growth of the Nazi State in Germany in which generally accepted moral beliefs were changed in favour of those that benefited the fatherland

Moral Relativism

• There are no universal values

• We all have values determined by the way we are brought up

• Moral values vary from culture to culture

• The philosopher Claude Levi-Strauss believed there is only one ethical taboo that all cultures share – do you know what it is?

http://edrontheoryofknowledge.blogspot.mx/2012/04/taboo.html

Arguments in favour of moral relativism

• The ‘Diversity Argument’– How can there be a single moral code

amongst humans, when some cultures have allowed practices like: female circumcision, cannibalism, slavery, stoning of adulterers, execution, eugenics, euthanasia….

• The ‘Lack of foundations’ argument– Morals have no grounding in logic. There is no

“moral code” against which all humans can set their values

Moral Relativism

"We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires"

Pope Benedict XVI

Josef Fritzl • Josef Fritzel is the Austrian

man who imprisoned his daughter in a basement for 24 years

• He raped her thousands of times and she had 7 children with him

• He allowed at least one of the babies to die

• He pleaded guilty and been sentenced to life imprisonment

Michele Mongelli

• This man has been called the Italian Josef Fritzl

• He is accused of keeping his daughter captive for 25 years, and repeatedly raping her

• His son is accused of similar crimes with his own daughters

Arcebio Alvarez

• This man as been called the Colombian Fritzl

• He abused his daughter for 25 years and fathered 11 children with her

• His defence was that they were both in a “loving” relationship

Defintions

• Morals– the shared ideals of a group, irrespective of

whether they are practiced.

• Ethics– the rules of conduct recognised in respect to a

particular class of human actions or a particular group, culture, etc. eg medical ethics, Christian ethics

1. Religious Ethics

•  Pope Benedict XVI, 2007, Brazil :“Where God is absent - God with the human face of Jesus Christ - these [moral] values fail to show themselves with their full force: nor does a consensus arise concerning them.I do not mean that nonbelievers cannot live a lofty and exemplary morality; I am only saying that a society in which God is absent will not find the necessary consensus on moral values or the strength to live according to the model of these values".

1. Religious Ethics

• Plato: “Is something good because God says it is good, or does God say it is good because it is good?”

• But if something is good without the objective opinion of God, doesn’t that mean that ethics are completely independent of religion?

http://edrontheoryofknowledge.blogspot.mx/2011/06/morality-without-religion.html

2. Duty Ethics

• Duty (or obligations) are things we take for granted. But where do they come from?

• Some people would say religion (e.g. the Ten Commandments). But how do we justify these claims?

• Some people would say intuition

• The philosopher Immanuel Kant said it is based on reason

Kant: The idea of “consistency”• Kant believed that ethical acts have nothing to do with

‘rightness’ or ‘wrongness’ of their outcomes, but the intention of the person performing them. This is also referred to as the deontological argument

• He argued that people see something as their ‘duty’ if there is inconsistency if it is not done

• For example, it is your duty to stand in line at the cafeteria

• If you didn’t there would be chaos for everybody and nobody would get served

Kant and Consistency

• Use Kant’s model of consistency to argue the following:– It is my duty to be on time for a meeting I

have planned with my friends– It is my duty to vote in a general election– It is my duty to give honest information about

myself on my university application– It is my duty not to commit suicide

Duty Ethics

• “If you want to know the foulness of lying for yourself, consider the lying of someone else and how you shun it and despise the man who lies and regard his communication as foul. Do the same with regard to all your own vices, for you do not realize the foulness of your vices from your own case, but from someone else’s.”Al Ghazali, Muslim teacher (1058 – 1111)

• “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” Based on the words of Jesus Christ in the Sermon on the mount (also called the “Golden Rule” of the Catholic Catechism)

3. Moral Relativism

• A belief that our values are determined by the society that we grow up in

• This supports the idea that there is no ‘universal moral code’

4. Fear of punishment

• Some people would see this as a way to force others to conform to society’s norms and others’ ideas of morality

• Consider the fact that many Mexicans are now supporting the idea that the death penalty should be re-introduced to combat the rise in crime

• Many would see religious ethics as ultimately stemming from a fear of punishment

5. Utilitarianism

• We intuitively stick to a moral code because that is what will bring “the greatest happiness to the greatest number”

• Utilitarians believe that the thing we all strive towards is happiness, therefore actions are ‘good’ if they increase happiness and ‘bad’ if they decrease happiness

Utilitarianism

• It was developed in the nineteenth century by two British philosophers – Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill

• They wanted to establish a more scientific foundation for ethics

Arguments in Favour of Utilitarianism• It is a simple and coherent theory

• It is a teleological argument (the opposite of the deontological). This states that there is inherent ‘rightness’ and ‘wrongness’ in actions, which would seem to most people to be intuitively correct

• It is democratic and can by applied on an individual basis, depending on what makes each person happy

• It is a rational theory which takes into account both short-

term and long-term happiness

Arguments Against Utilitarianism

• Happiness is a very difficult thing to measure objectively

• Simply ensuring that pleasure is available does not ensure happiness. It seems that true happiness comes from striving to achieve something and being successful

• It is in practice very difficult to predict the outcomes of any action and how it will affect the happiness of all involved

• The things that bring pleasure to some people are not always good in themselves. Some are empty pleasures (e.g. gorging on chocolate) or malicious pleasures (e.g. sado-masochism)

Arguments Against Utilitarianism

• Some people find the idea that the ultimate goal in life is to pursue pleasure somewhat distasteful

• The Scottish philosopher and writer Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) called utilitarianism ‘pig philosophy’ as it appeared to him to be based on ‘the swinish pleasures of the multitude’

• Albert Einstein (1879-1955) once said “well-being and happiness never appeared to me as an absolute aim. I am even inclined to compare such moral aims to the ambitions of a pig.”

6. Self interest

• A belief that human beings are essentially selfish not altruistic– The definitional argument – all humans are selfish

and we only do things we don’t want to do because we are being forced to do it

– The evolutionary argument – we are “programmed” to look after number one

– The fear of punishment argument– The hidden benefits argument – we gain something

from being moral e.g. gratitude, praise, a debt which we expect others to repay later

The Roots of Morality• Richard Dawkins gives 4 reasons why

altruism exists in animals (he compares this to morality in humans)1. Genetic kinship and the unconscious desire for

one's genes to pass to the next generation2. Reciprocation: the expectation or anticipation

that favours given will be repaid later3. The benefit of acquiring a 'reputation'

for generosity4. The benefit of being able to identify oneself as

dominant due to the ability to give favours without necessarily expecting payback

The Evolutionary Argument/ Hidden Benefits Argument

http://edrontheoryofknowledge.blogspot.mx/2012/06/morality-in-animals.html

1. The Selfish Gene

• Many birds (e.g. oystercatchers, plovers, sandpipers) will pretend to be injured in order to lure a predator away from their nest and protect their eggs

2. Reciprocation• Vampire bats feed each

other by regurgitating blood. A bat that has fed another one does so with the expectation that it will be paid back in blood at a later date. Some bats have been observed to be cheaters and refuse to be altruistic (it pays to be a cheat since most bats don’t seem to identify them)

3. Reputation

• Cleaner wrasse earn the right to pick parasites and dead tissue from their larger fishy clients by acquiring a reputation for being good cleaners. Cheaters have been observed to lose their cleaning rights and hence their client base

4. Dominance Behaviour

• Some individual babbler birds have been observed to assert their dominance by feeding subordinates, reacting violently if the subordinate bird tries to reverse these roles. Similarly, dominant birds will also actively compete for the dangerous role of sentinel - the right to sit on the highest branches to look out for predators.

The Roots of Morality• Do you agree with Richard Dawkins that

the roots of morality (and therefore ethics) lie in these kind of instincts that were presumably present in our hominid ancestors?

http://edrontheoryofknowledge.blogspot.mx/2012/02/why-do-morals-exist.html

Ethical Orientations

• One theory of ethics states that there are two basic ethical orientations:– The Ethic of Care– The Ethic of Justice

• They are not necessarily mutually exclusive

http://edrontheoryofknowledge.blogspot.mx/2012/09/ethical-orientations.html

• Dalai Lama

“When each of us learns to appreciate the critical importance of ethics and makes inner values like compassion and patience an integral part of our basic outlook on life, the effects will be far-reaching”