Normative ethics

John Wesley -

- English religious thinker and founder of the Methodist Church
- Business on earth is to do good as much and as often as we can
- Efforts must extend beyond ourselves
- Leave behind good works and a life of altruism

Consequentialist outlook-

- Do as much good as you can
- Move beyond egoistic concerns, improve the lives of others/your own
- Make the world the best place it can be
- Look at the consequences of our actions or policies

G.E. Moore-

- Declared it plain that what is right is whatever produces the most good
- Acts are morally right just because they maximize the amount of goodness in the world

Capital punishment-

- Consequalist camp: people insist that such punishment is justified only if it improves our lives (decrease crime, increase security, expand respect for human life)
- Optimism: yields the greatest balance of benefits over drawbacks (is required by morali

Consequentialism's structure-

1. Identify what is worth having for its own sake (happiness, knowledge, virtue and friendship), if it is valuable then it is intrinsically good
2. Identify what is intrinsically bad (bad by itself apart from any regrettable results it may cause) ex: phys

Utilitarianism-

- Endorse the idea that well-being is the only thing that is intrinsically valuable
- If an action is morally right if and only if it does more to improve overall well-being than any other action you could have done in the circumstances (principle of util

Maximizing Goodness-

- John Stuart Mill- summarized it by saying create the greatest good for the greatest number, he was a hedonist who believed that only happiness was intrinsically valuable and only misery was intrinsically bad
- 1st misunderstanding- in choosing between a

Moral Knowledge-

- No statute of limitations on counting consequences
- Brings in question of if rightness of an action depends on all its results and these haven't occurred yet how can we know whether it is right or wrong: some think it depends on their actual results ot

Actual vs Expected results-

- example of helping an old man across the street: in this case a car comes out of nowhere and kills him. If the man didn't offer to help him across the street he would still be at the curb waiting, unharmed. If one were to analyze the actual results then

Assessing Actions and Intentions-

- Actions are right provided that they are optimistic
- Intentions are morally good provided that they are reasonably expected to yield good results
- In the example above they would say that the action was wrong but they would praise his intentions
- If

Impartiality-

- tells us that our well-being is just as serious a moral concern as anyone else's
- Jeremy Bentham: wrote Principles of Morals and Legislation which gave the first sophisticated defense of utilitarianism (big abolitionist), his godson was John Stuart MIl

Ability to Justify conventional moral wisdom-

- we clearly know: rape, slavery, killing innocent people = does more harm then good, utilitarianism condemns them
- we clearly know: happiness, truth, keeping promises = beneficial, utilitarianism commends them
- Greed, malice, vindictiveness, ingratitud

Conflict resolution-

- honesty may be the best policy but that doesn't mean that full disclosure is always called for (telling the truth may not always increase the overall well-being)
- Mill said this works in cases of taxation (utilitarianism compared to its competitor idea

Moral Flexibility-

- Donner Party story: passing through California's Sierra Nevada range when buried in heavy mountain snows, supplies ran out/over half of the 87 people died that winter, those who survived made the choice to eat the remains of their fellow travelers oppos

Scope of moral community-

- utilitarians argue that animals are members of the moral community (their life can go better or worse for them)
- to be a member is to have intrinsic moral importance, with duties
- cannot ignore the happiness and the suffering of any being who can expe

right/good

The right- how actions are classified
The good- when states of affairs are morally desirable or they are not

obligatory
merely permissible
wrong
superogratory

obligatory actions- if u do them u do the right thing if u don't you did something wrong
merely permissible actions- ex: scratching your head, can perform without moral implication
wrong actions- obligated not to do them, if you do them you do good
supero

adopt the actual view-

say a positive implication is that we are not committed to saying action A is the right action

expected-

interprets that action B will have less badness even though action A seems to have the most goodness (look at net balance)

actual consequences

^ if actual consequences are what matter then you will not have any reason not to believe that the consequences extend to all of the consequences in the future

act consequentialism
rule utilitarianism

act consequentialism- for any action the right one is the one that produces the most good
rule utilitarianism- for any action the right thing to do is to follow the rule such that if everyone followed it it would produce the most good

Measuring well-being-

1) add up all the benefits it produces
2) add up all of the harm it causes
3) determine the balance
4) see whether the balance is greater than that of any other available action

Coming in quantities

- inplausible

Matter of the degree to which our desires were satisfied

- determine how well off someone was by noting what percentage of his desires were fulfilled
- but how do you measure degrees of friendship? love? virtue?

If autonomy and happiness conflict-

-Mill says maximize the quality of our pleasures, as well as their quality
- some pleasures are higher than others
- even if there is one single intrinsic value (happiness)
- because happiness comes in many different flavors: momentary elation, physical e

Same thing for harms

- different degrees

Deliberation

-utilitarianism demands too much information and computational skills that no one could possibly possess
- Mills response to the above= Christians know what their religion requires of them without having to reread the entire Bible prior to each action (sa

Motivation

- it is too much to make morality the entire focus of our lives
- part of your life must be devoted to yourself and the things you are deeply interested in
- a moral theory can be disqualified if it sets the bar so high that no one but a saint can meet it

Decision procedure

- a method for reliably guiding our decisions so that when we use it well we make decisions as we ought to

Standard of rightness

- statement of the conditions under which actions are morally right

Action

-we really must act so as achieve optimistic results
- whenever we fail we are violating our moral duty and so behaving immorally
- any time you can do more good for others than you can for yourself you are required to do so
- supererogation: action that

Impartiality

- the happiness of a celebrity or billionaire is no more important than that of a sanitation worker or chambermaid
- everyone counts equally, and no one's interests are more important than anyone else's
- we often get better results when focusing on famil

No intrinsic wrongness or Rightness

- actions like torture, rape, enslavement are intrinsically wrong
- for utilitarians the morality of an action always depends on its results
- they reject any absolute ban on killing innocents (or torturing them, or stealing from them) -- that any action

The problem of Injustice

- we must maximize well-being but doing so will sometimes come at the cost of injustice
- moral theories should not permit, much less require, that we act unjustly
- to do justice is to respect rights
- to commit injustice is to violate rights

Vicarious punishment

- targets innocents as a way to deter the guilty
- often backfires
- though the torture and deliberate killing of innocent civilians certainly infringes their rights, the utilitarian will require that it be done if it prevents even greater harm

Exemplary punishment

- is punishment that "makes an example" of someone
- ex: Sherman's 1864 march to the sea (Southern guerrillas captured, tortured, and killed some of Sherman's soldiers while his army was encamped), Sherman had the Southern prisoners of war in his camp bro

Justice is also intrinsically valuable

- maximize well-being and maximize justice in the world
- or does this just open ourselves up to the problem aired earlier, in which consequentialism loses its ability to give guidance when promoting one value comes at the expense of another
- they say al

Injustice is never optimific

- some utilitarians deny that their theory ever requires us to commit injustice
- saying if we consider all the results of unfair actions we will see that those actions aren't really optimific after all

Justice must sometimes be sacrificed

- allows that well-being and justice sometimes conflict
- well-being > justice
- we are socialized to tell the truth, protect the weak, keep our promises etc. because doing so tends to be optimific
- say it can be sacrificed when the results would be opti

Rule Consequentialism

- the view that an action is morally right just in case it is required by an optimific social rule
- meets the following condition: if nearly everyone in a society were to accept it, then the results would be optimific (as good as they could be)
- instead

To know if a rule is an optimific social rule

1. Carefully describe the rule
2. Imagine what a society would be like if just about everyone in it endorsed the rule
3. Ask: Will that society be better off with this rule than with any competing rule?

benefit to this rule vs. the others

- rather than predict the benefits and harms of each available action and then trying to balance them against one another we are instructed to follow simple rules

Torture

-immoral even if in unusual cases it yields real benefits

Impartiality objection

- implication, no special thing made if subjects implicated by the action have a relationship to you
- objection: don't have an obligation sometimes
- two kids drowning, one is your son, consequentialists would say don't favor your son
- opponents say thi

Doesn't allow for intrinsic moral value

- Theory of R = pleasure
- if p then q, not q therefore not p
- ex: psycho likes killing babies, gets pleasure for murdering them, the pleasure he gets is greater than the pleasure parents would have had if they were alive
- if this theory was right then

Objection to conseqentialism

- claim you can't measure the quantities to all things
- epistemic barrier (theory of R maximize happiness)
- happiness is quantifiable but we have no means to assess it
- or that sort of data doesn't exist (not quantifiable)
- but this may not be a probl

Obligatory & Superogratory

- over and beyond call of duty
- do good thing but not required to
A - 10 B- 9 C- 8 D- 6
(consequentialism says pick A)
A- 10 B-9 C-8 D- 7 E-10
(C says A/E are merely permissible actions, and in this case no room for superogratory actions, if you chose B,

Consequentialism (examples: not all of them though!)

Pro-
1) maximizes the good
2) seems to capture much of folk morality
3) everyone's well-being is equal
Con-
1) No room for special duties (obligations you may bare because of special relationships people have to you)
2) The good can't be quantified
3) Act

SHOULD WE BELIEVE THAT CONSEQUENTIALISM IS TRUE?

- this is an epistemic question
- do we have sufficient evidence to justify our belief in Consequentialism
- pros evidence it is true cons evidence that it is false
- think of C as a hypothesis
- evaluate evidence with a standard
- if we think we should a

the way we test normative assertions are by seeing what their implications are and seeing if they have the right results

- Foot's killing 1 worse than letting 5 die
- T says if you are right then the guy is obligated to flip the switch
- T says it seems wrong that he is obligated to flip the switch
- Therefore Foot is wrong

grants

falsify a theory by showing it has false implications
that intuitions are sources of data when testing a philosophical theory

disagree about-
where or not intuitions can be wrong

1) if general theory of morality but if anything is wrong it is a false theory
2) if you think intuitions are always factive then the theory would be correct

Think intuitions aren't always correct-

if your intuition changes
act A - giving present to little timmy
is act A morally impermissible?
most people say no
......then they read Singer and then you ask them again
some people are going to think about it and think that it is wrong to give him the

see notes in gmail

- when evaluating a theory we are asking a question about the sufficient evidence we may have for it? for its truth/falsity
- appeal to intuitive statements (do you think they are factive or do you think they are false because they change over time: then

The Kantian perspective:

- immorality: what they did was unfair, took advantage of the system, broke the rules that work to everyone's benefit, violated the rights of others
- Immanuel Kant: said that the ultimate point of morality is to improve well-being rather than do justice

Made this theory:

because he thought consequentialists had acts that were assigning intrinsic value and that was wrong (because obvious that there are some things that are always right/wrong), needed theory to say that certain acts are intrinsically right/wrong
ex: if ever

Tests for immorality:

1. What if everyone did that?
2. How would you like it if I did that to you?
- when we ask these questions we will be trying to get the person to see that he/she is acting unfairly, making an exception of himself, living by a set of rules that work only b

Argument: if disastrous results would occur if everyone did X, then X is immoral.

- fails to determine if all actions are moral
- makes the morality of an action depend on how it is described

The golden rule:

- tells you to treat others as you would like to be treated
- consistent (if you wouldn't do things to yourself you shouldn't do it to them)
- if you act inconsistently then you are being unfair and therefore immoral
- Kant says: it makes morality depend

Golden rule fails to give us guidance on self-regarding actions:

- those that concern only oneself
- Kant: self-regarding duties were widely endorsed and many still think there is something immoral about suicide or about letting one's talents go to waste even if no one else is harmed in the process
- the rule sometimes

Principle of Universalizability:

- an act is morally acceptable if and only if its maxim is universalizable
- maxim: the principle of action you give yourself when you are about to do something
-it states what you are about to do and why you are about to do it (constituted by this intent

3 Part test:

1. Formulate your maxim clearly- state what you intend to do, and why you intend to do it
2. Imagine a world in which everyone supports and acts on your maxim
3. Can the goal of my action be achieved in such a world?
- if answer to 3 is yes then the maxim

Universal means:

- we are pursuing actions for reasons that everyone could stand behind

Morality and Rationality

- immoral conduct is irrational (the mistakes and the inconsistent, contradictory reasoning behind them is why)
- exception: killers who knows what he wants, how to get it and executes his plan without fail (knows what he is doing is immoral but that does

Amoralist Challenge

- amoralist is someone who believes in right and wrong but doesn't care about morality at all
- obedience to these rules is completely optional
1. People have a reason to do something only if doing it will get them what they care about
2. Doing their mora

Hypothetical imperatives

- imperatives (commands) are commands of reason
- command us to do whatever is needed in order to get what we care about
- ex: trying to lose twenty pounds then that requires me to forgo icescream

Categorical imperative

- rational requirements that do not depend on what we care about
- requirements of reason that apply to everyone who possess reason (everyone everyone able to reflect on the wisdom of her actions/ use the reflects to guide her actions)
- command us to do

Argument for the Irrationality of Immorality:

1. If you are rational then you are consistent
2. If you are consistent, then you obey the principle of universalizability
3. If you obey the principle of universalizability then you act morally
4. Therefore, if you are rational, then you act morally
5. T

Robbery

- Kant can show that when a thief robs a bank in order to gain riches, that it is immoral. Because if everyone acted on that maxim there would be no money in the bank to steal, and the thief's goal could not be achieved

Integrity

living in harmony with the principles you believe in
- problem is that people of integrity may still be doing wrong (refusing to make an exception of myself is no guarantee that my principles are morally acceptable) -- consistency is not worthless but it

Absolute moral duties:

- Kant thought that certain sorts of actions are never permitted (lying)
- he never provides an argument for the claim that the moral rules that prohibit such as things as lying and killing are absolute (closest thing was that moral considerations are mor

Moral duties can conflict with other moral duties

- if they do they can't all be absolute
- we can't decide whether an act is right or wrong until we know its maxim

Moral agents-

things we think are capable of performing moral actions
ex: we have no problem saying that of an adult human (Smith did a bad thing)
- of rational thought (believes morality is a kind of rationality)

Moral nonagents

- ex: chair, dog (can they really be capable of evil) babies
cannot do things that are good or bad, not capable of morally accessible behavior

^ he wants to know why moral agents are held to the same moral rules

- he says the easiest way to explain that is that morality is just an implication of rationality and so if you are a moral agent because you are rational then that explains why all moral agents are obligated to follow the same moral rules
- then any perso

- This is what it is to be rational: David Hume?

If some agent x desires y, and believes that y if and only if z, then, all things being equal, x wants z
- does what he thinks he has to do to achieve his conflicting desires
- Kant's response: these things in nature are hypothetical (hypothetical imperat

Autonomy and Respect

- slavery: Hare suggests the utilitarian view that denied that anything is intrinsically wrong with slavery, but that what matters is the actual results of the slave system

Kant's principle of humanity:

- Always treat a human being (yourself included) as an end, and never as a mere means
- humanity: was not thinking of all members of the species homo sapiens but he was referring to all rational and autonomous beings
- treating someone as an end: treating

Being autonomous : means being a self-legislator

- decide for themselves which principles are going to govern their life
- can resist temptation, check animalistic urges and decide whether or not you want to indulge them

Human being's dignity: Kant

1. the immorality of a fanatic's actions (regard despised opponents as mere obstacles to the achievement of their goals)
2. importance of autonomy explains why slavery and rape are always immoral
- slavery treats the oppressed without regard for their goa

Kant rejects happiness as the ultimate value

- he says it has no value if it is experienced as a result of wrongdoing
- but says that good will is the only thing that is valuable

Good will

1. the ability to reliably know what your duty is
2. steady commitment to doing your duty for its own sake
- we see what we are required to do and we do it for that very reason
- no calculations of costs/benefits, worry about impressions, enemies we may g

Reason

- can reveal your moral duty and motivate you to obey it
- if a specific emotional makeup is needed to gain moral wisdom, then such wisdom might be out of reach for many of us.

Downgrades desires/emotions for reasons

- denies the claim made by Hume that our motivations always depend on our desires
- Kant thought that we could do things even if we didn't want to do them and even if we didn't think they'd get us anything we wanted
- that dutiful actions motivated by emo

5 problems with the principle of humanity

1. The notion of treating someone as an end is vague, and so the principle is difficult to apply
2. The principle fails to give us good advice about how to determine what people deserve
3. The principle assumes that we are genuinely autonomous, but that a

Vagueness

- of the notion of treating someone as an end often makes it difficult to know whether our actions are morally acceptable
- need a better test of rationality and autonomy deamands

Determining Just Deserts

- is it always appropriate to give people what they deserve?
- kant thought so, even if it is not going to benefit anyone
- Kant's partial reply to the problem of vagueness
- LEX TALIONIS (an-eye-for-an-eye principle): law of retaliation, tells us to trea

Fails of Lex Talionis

1. Lex cannot explain why criminals who intentionally hurt their victims should be punished more than those who accidentally cause the same harm
- suggestion: determine it by the moral corruption, but this would abandon lex
2. it cannot tell us what many

Punishment in regards to moral concerns:

- practice of plea bargains, parole, executive clemency, suspended sentences and pardons
- all treat people more kindly than they deserve

Suppose:

1. maintaining a system of punishment required so much money that we had to sacrifice funds for schooling, health programs and national defense (therefore punish less so we have more resources for other needs)
2. punishing criminals this much were to incr

Are we autonomous?

- that we are free to choose which principles to live by and able to govern our actions by our choices
1. either our choices are necessitated or they are not
2. if they are necessitated, then they are out of our control, and so we lack autonomy
3. If they

Moral Luck

- Kant says that we are rightly praised or blamed only for what we can control
ex: missing a passing car in my side mirror, pure luck that my inattention didn't cause a (possibly fatal) accident, many people are not so lucky and their negligence results i

Scope of the Moral Community

- those Kant does not include: infants, severely mentally ill, mentally retarded, nonhuman animals, plants, ecosystems = because they lack rationality and autonomy (Kant says they have no intrinsic moral importance so we owe them no moral concern)

principle of humanity standard form

1. If the principle of humanity is true, then animals have no rights
2. If animals lack rights then it is morally acceptable to torture them
3. Therefore, if the principle of humanity is true, then it is morally acceptable to torture animals
4. It isn't
5

Kant's 3 formulations of categorical imperative-

^ he says they are all equivalent
the prevailing opinion is that they are not equivalent though

principle of humanity (part of comparative)- always treat a human being as an ends and not a means

- by human being Kant doesn't just mean genetic human being but an autonomous rational creature
- see difference between means and ends in above princ. definition
- ex: if you have a broken pipe in your house, and you call a plumber, you hit him over the

offshoot of principle of humanity

- Kant says what makes something a human being = self-determining autonomy and rationality
- uses this to explain why humans inherently value things better than other animals
- Kant says the kind of infants that Singer talks about don't have the value tha

Normative theories need the theory of the good and the theory of the right

Normative theories need the theory of the good and the theory of the right

Kant's objection that happiness is the only thing that is inherently morally good.

- ex: if happiness or pleasure is what is inherently good then if a serial killer kills someone and is happy about it then it is better than when a serial killer kills someone and isn't happy about it (when you kill someone and are not happy about it it i

If Kant is right,
Then you are only praiseworthy if you act from the goodwill

- do right thing no matter what your desires are
- "moral fetish"
- do your duty because you believe them to be your obligations

If beliefs sometimes make us do actions, why don't they all?

- Kant says that there is a special property about the moral content in a belief that motivates you

Kant's eye for an eye (theory for justice)

- rape a rapist example (problem for Kant's theory)
- not clear what to do for victimless crimes (like cheating on your taxes)
- relies upon the idea that in some sense we determine our own actions
- there are reasons to think that there are very obvious

moral luck- sometimes the morality of our actions is determined by something outside of our control

- both smith and brown go drinking and drive home. Smith makes it home okay but Brown hit a kid on the way home cause he was in the street, it seems like what Brown did was worse, but they did the same act (the one differentiating factor was the kid was t

Proceduralism:

- the correct moral views are those that emerge from the correct procedure
- tells us that we should not begin moral inquiry by assuming (slavery is wrong or generosity is right), make no moral assumptions at this stage
- want to show us how to arrive at

Contractarianism: the view that morality is based on a social contract

- laws are just if and only if they reflect the terms of a social contract that free, equal, and rational people would accept as the basis of a cooperative life together
- actions are morally right if and only if they are permitted by rules that free, equ

see chart in gmail notes

The Prisoner's Dilemma:
- mounting competition over a scarce resource, many trying their best to increase their share of it, rational yet if everyone stopped being so selfish each person would be better off
- ex: fishermen over using lake
- better off by

Thomas Hobbes- founder of modern contractarianism

- magnum opus: Leviathan, to imagine a situation in which there was no government, no central authority, no group with the exclusive power to enforce its will on others
- called this state of nature
- thought this was the worse place you could ever be

State of nature-

- "war of all against all, in which the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."
- cooperation is a sham and trust is non-existent
- the escape = beneficial rules that require cooperation and punish betrayal, and an enforcer who ensures

Advantages of Contractarianism: (1)

- morality is essentially a social phenomenon
- nothing other than special rules of cooperation (need at least two people for it)
- this is why we have no self-regarding moral duties (duties that apply only to oneself), when actions have no bearing on oth

Advantages of Contractarianism: (2)

- explains objectivity of morality
- in this view, moral rules are objective so moral rules do not come from government/humans/god but they are the set of rules that would be agreed to by people who are very like us only more rational and wholly free and

Morality and the Law:

- justifies a basic moral duty to obey the law: it enables us to escape from the state of nature and to gain from all of the good things that come from a stable/peaceful society (work in our own self-interest), our obedience to the law supports the instit

Contractarianism and Civil Disobedience:

- governments must earn the allegiance of their citizens by making their lives better off than they would be in a state of nature
- some cases of civil disobedience involve doing illegal activities
- powerful because: protestors took the law into their ow

Social Contract problems and prospects

- situation : the Fool has made a deal with someone and the other person has already done what he's promised to do. Should the Fool keep his side of the bargain anyway?
- most say no (to take the money and run) but this is immoral...though people get away

Free-rider problem

when lots of people are cooperating in a way that brings some common good.
- so long as enough people are chippin in, this benefit can be enjoyed by all even those who refuse to help out (free-riders)
- get free ride by exploiting the efforts of others wi

Hobbes and rationality

- all about how much gain you can reasonably expect from an action
- can be highly rational in some cases to break your promises or let others make all the sacrifices

Hobbes and a well-ordered society

- one that offers reliable threats against breaking mutually beneficial rules
1. No matter who you are, or what circumstances you find yourself in, it is always rational to act justly
2. It is always rational to be a just person- the sort of person who va

The role of consent

- a contract is a commitment, a promise given in exchange for some expected benefit
- tacit consent (most of us have agreed to obey the law... not signing a contract or stating it out loud but we have offered this)
- expressed through silence and a lack o

Consent argument

1. We have a duty to obey the law only if we have consented to do so
2. Many have not given their consent to obey the law
3. Therefore, many people do not have a duty to obey the law

On behalf of premise 1:

- supporters say that governments can be abusive so their power can be justified if it respects the will of its citizens and that requires that they consent to being governed
- those against say: you hate your country and reject its basic laws, you only r

Disagreement among the contractors

- what if contractors can't reach a deal about the conditions under which a nation should go to war or the kind of aid we owe to the poor?
- Rawls said: make every contractor a clone of every other, behind the veil of ignorance all your distinguishing fea

The Scope of the Moral Community

- Utilitarians say: anyone or animal who can suffer harm has rights and deserves respect
- Kantians say: anyone who is rational and autonomous (but kittens are not rational and cannot be rational.. seems wrong to torture a kitchen though)
- Contractarians

Contractors

1. Potential threats and potential benefactors
- They can return out good deeds, but also dish out nasty treatment in response to being harmed
2. They are our equals
- roughly the same powers as we do, including powers to help us and to hurt us
3. We must

Problems with the social contract theory:

- when you ask the question why be moral?
- you may think you always have some reason to be moral
- you may think you have an overriding reason, should always be moral
- show that reasons work because you have a moral reason to do y, epistemic reason to d

Immoral or moral

- if people would agree to them or not
- is strange to say that because some people would follow these rules ... that you would be obligated to do things you didn't consent to do
- we don't think that we should have to obey contracts even if when we read

implicit consent

- to social contract may be enough to get some agreement
- kidnapped and stuck in a house in the woods (all of the doors are unlocked) and you don't leave (implicit consent)
- but lets say the reason why you don't leave is that there are wolves surroundin

If a theory has a false implication then it is wrong.

- the best we can do is see if we are justified in believing that it is false
- what is a false implication of a moral theory?
- test it by the intuitive merit of their implications
- are intuitions factive or not?
- if they aren't factive you have to ask

Intuition defined

- nondeductive intellectual seeming that something is the case

Ethical Pluralism: Prima Facie Duties and Ethical Particularism

- monistic: defending the idea that there is just a single absolute moral rule
- pluralistic: defend the existence of at least two fundamental moral rules, and each is non-absolute (in some cases it is morally acceptable to break them)
- W.D. Ross: first

Prima facie duty

-an excellent, non-absolute, permanent reason to do or refrain from something
- to keep one's word, be grateful for kindness, avoid hurting others
- each duty may sometimes be overridden by other duties (example: sometimes need to break a promise to do wh

To say that there is a prima facie duty of beneficence

1. There is always a strong reason to benefit others
2. This reason is fundamental, and cannot be derived from any more basic reason
3. This reason may sometimes be outweighed by competing reasons
4. If this reason is the only moral reason that applies in

The advantages of Ross's View on pluralism

- ability to accommodate our sense that there is more than just a single fundamental moral consideration

We are sometimes permitted to break the moral rules

- we all accept that there are circumstances in which it is morally acceptable to break a promise, allow harm to others etc.

Moral Conflict

- duties conflict when they can't all be fulfilled
- ex: duty to attend work but your daughter is sick and you have to stay home
- when they conflict we say in the end that you are absolutely required to show up at work and are also absolutely required to

Moral Regret

- when moral claims conflict and we can't honor them all we think that it is right to feel regret at having to give up something important
- when one takes priority over the other, the lesser duty doesn't just disappear it has some weight though it is not

Addressing the Anti-Absolutist Arguments

- Disaster prevention: claims that any moral rule may be broken if that is what it takes to prevent a catastrophe (therefore no moral rules are absolute) --- Ross agrees with this
- irrationality: charges that absolutism is inconsistent since the values a

A problem for Ross's view

- if there are no absolute moral rules then each moral rule may sometimes be broken
- but when?
- ex: sometimes it is morally more important to be honest with people than to spare them the hurt feelings that honest may cause (sometimes not.)

Knowing the Fundamental Moral Rules

1. Skepticism: no rule can stand alone, infinite regress (never-ending chain of questions and answers... since there is no stopping point none of the claims along the way can be justified)
2. Coherentism: we can justify any moral claim by showing that it

Self-Evidence and the Testing of Moral Theories

- if Ross is right we use our deepest commonsense beliefs, some of which will be self-evident, as the way to test moral theories

Knowing the right thing to do

- Ross said that our actual, all-things-considered moral duty on any given occasion is not something that is self-evident
- things get tricky with more than one intrinsic value (you have to maximize goodness and minimize badness)
- the absence of a decisi

Ethical particularism

- they reject absolutism
- they reject monism
- deny the existence of any prima facie duties
- they say that something's moral importance depends entirely on context
- often use non-moral examples to soften us up to their core idea

Problems with Ethical Particularism

1. Its Lack of Unity: felt unsure of having several fundamental moral rules not just one
2. Accounting for Moral knowledge: provides no guidance for gaining moral knowledge, we lack rules to tell us how to figure out our moral duty in specific cases, whic

Some things possess permanent moral importance

- seems that there is always some reason for regret when we commit injustice even if injustice really is the way to go in a given case
- claim that we can never know in advance, independently of context is false

Virtue Ethics

- focus on moral character
- what makes for a desirable human life?

The standard of Right Action

- An act is morally right just because it is one that a virtuous person, acting in character, would do in that situation
- actions are not right because of their results or because they follow the rules but because they are done by someone of true virtue

Form of ethical pluralism

- single ultimate standard (do what the virtuous person would do) but there are many cases where this advice is too general to be of use
- When rules conflict we should follow the lead of the virtuous person
- room for critical discussion about who is vir

Moral Complexity

- virtue ethicists reject the idea that there is any simple formula for determining how to act
- they follow Aristotle in saying that ethics is a complex, messy area of decision-making and requires emotional maturity and sound judgment
- problem with the

Moral Understanding

- species of practical wisdom
- examples of wisdom: being able to fix a car engine, play an instrument, ==
- requires training and experience
- know how to read people, be familiar with troubles people can go through, understand personality issues that pr

Moral Education

- gained through training, experience and pratice
- impulse is not enough (will only occasionally lead to the appropriate action)
- virtue is not inborn, takes time to acquire/right environment and teachers
- Aristotle said this happens the most in our yo

The Nature of Virtue

- goal of moral education is to make ourselves better people
- these people know what to do, when to do it, and why their actions are important
- this is a character trait not a habit or tendency to act in a certain way
- to have a virtue is to see things

Virtue and the Good Life

- eudaimonia: translates as happiness or flourishing (Aristotle thought we all seek it)
- Aristotle argued that virtue is an essential element in a good life (agreeing with Plato)
- but unlike him he thought that virtue does not guarantee a good life, it

Objections
- Tragic dilemmas:

virtue ethicists say that actions that would be done by a virtuous agent, acting in character are morally right and such actions when motivated by virtue deserve our praise, tragic dilemmas are when a good person's life will be ruined no matter what she d

Objections
- Does it offer adequate moral guidance?

- critics say it fails to provide enough help in solving moral puzzles
- ex: see your best friend's husband cozying up to another woman.. do you tell?
- honesty is a virtue, but being a busy-body and rushing into judgement are vices
- what about breaking

Objections
- Is it too demanding?

- what if a person sets a standard of excellence that is almost impossible to reach?
ex: Gandhi's hunger strike
- virtue ethicists say that you need to consider the circumstances..who argues for these extreme measures?

Objections
- who are the moral role models?

- who are the moral role models?
- we currently pick them based on how well they live up to our pre-existing assumptions about what is right and wrong
- solution - relativism, the idea that appropriate role models will differ from person to person or cult

Conflict and Contradiction

- what if the virtuous people or role models disagree what to do in a situation? If one would act one way and the other another than both actions appear right
- solution= insist that there is only one virtuous person or insist that every virtuous person a

The priority problem

-first figure out what our duty is, then define a virtue as a character trait that moves us to do our duty for the right reasons
- ex: to understand the nature of the virtue of generosity, we determine that giving to others in need is right and then defin

Divine Command theory weakness

- virtuous people can either have or not have good reasons for their actions
- if they lack good reasons then their actions are arbitrary and can't possibly serve as the standard of morality
- if they do have good reasons to support their actions then the