PHI 104

Ethics

Faculty: RAK

Lecture Handout

WuperBooks.com/NSU
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Ethics
Ethics: Three definitions of ethics
─ Ethics may be defined as the normative science of the conduct of human beings living in
societies ─ a science which judges the conduct to be right or wrong, good or bad or in some
similar way.
(William Lillie, An Introduction to Ethics)
─ Ethics is a branch of philosophy; it is moral philosophy or philosophical thinking about
morality, moral problems and moral judgments. (W. K. Frankena, Ethics)
─ Ethics may be defined as philosophical inquiry into the nature and grounds of morality. (Paul
W. Taylor, Principles of Ethics: An Introduction)

The purpose of ethics

 Ethics is necessary to resist social chaos where life is horrible, impure or miserable in other words
‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’.
 Ethics is a set of rules that if followed by nearly everyone, will promote the flourishing of nearly
everyone.
 These rules restrict our freedom but only in order to promote greater freedom and well-being.
 The five purposes of ethics are:
1. To keep society from falling apart;
2. To minimize human suffering;
3. To promote human flourishing;
4. To resolve conflicts of interest in just and orderly ways;
5. To assign praise and blame, reward and punishment and guilt.

Ethics and religion

 Morality and religion both are related to duties and obligations. Both call for the exercise of
conscience. Morality as well as religion emphasizes goodness, truth and peace.
 The practice of morality need not be motivated by religious considerations. Moral precepts need
not be grounded in revelation or divine authority as religious teachings are.
 Ethics is grounded in reason and human experience.
 Religion includes wider range of duties than morality, for example, worship, rites, prayer etc. are
among the most important of religious duties but morality has only an indirect concern with
such duties in so far as they affect a man’s conduct in relation to his fellow-men.
 Religion is characteristically an emotional experience whereas morality is grounded in reason.
 Religion is knowledge based, morality is action based. For religion theoretical study of knowing
God is essential; knowledge is all important toward the behavior of the self. For morality
knowledge is for the sake of action.
 Religion has its center in God; morality has its center in man. Not to harm anyone is moral duty,
whereas, to be loyal to the supernatural God and to follow God’s commands are religious duties.

Ethics and law

 The aim of ethics and law is human welfare. Ethical rules are to secure welfare of the members
of the community; state laws act as keeping peace among the citizens of the state.
 Ethics is a normative or idealistic science which emphasizes moral values, on the other hand,
laws emphasizes on certain legality in order to maintain social security and progress of the
society. Law is always to the protection of human rights and welfare so it is with ethics.
 Both ethics and law are dependent on value in order to fulfill their aims.
 Ethics is related with voluntary actions of individual person; law is related with collection of
people.
 Ethics examines on the basis of moral value; law is based on the interest or utility of the people.
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 Ethical laws are unwritten undocumented but laws are written and documented.
 Ethical bindings are should or ought, laws are forced to be followed otherwise punishment will be
faced.

Ethics and psychology

 Ethics is a normative science of conduct of human beings and psychology is a science of behavior
of human beings as well as animal beings.
 Both ethics and psychology study voluntary, involuntary and non-voluntary behavior of human
beings.
 In order to evaluate a certain conduct ethics reviews the will, motive, intention and desires of
the individual. Ethical studies of conduct require a focus on the psychological stages of the
individual. These show similarities between the two subjects.
 But ethics is evaluative science whereas psychology is a factual science. Methods of ethics are
analytic and deductive, methods of psychology are experimental and inductive. The scope of
psychology is broader than that of ethics.
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Deontological and Consequential Theories

Deontological Moral Theory
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

His main works: Critique of Pure Reason

Critique of Practical Reason
Foundations of the Metaphysic of Morals
Kant is:
— a deontologist (believes in duty for duty’s sake).
— an absolutist (accepts unqualified, unconditional motives as good and believes in no
exception).
— a rationalist (faith on reason as the guide of morality).

The Good Will:

— For Kant, a good motive or a good will is central.
— While there are many things which we call good, a good motive is the only thing that has
intrinsic value.
— Goodness is to be found in an inner quality of will, motive or intention and not in an outward
performance or the consequences of one’s act.
— The true object of reason is to produce a will which is good in itself, since nothing else is
always and necessarily good.
— Other things, like intelligence, courage and happiness are usually good, but they may be
used so as to promote evil.
— Intelligence or courage, when used to carry out an evil purpose, may increase the evil.
— In order for the motive to be good, a man must act from a sense of duty.
— Good will alone is praiseworthy and that means acting out of pure respect for moral law.
— A good will or good motive is therefore the indispensable condition of the moral life.

The Categorical Imperative:

— The moral law expresses in the “categorical imperative”.
— The categorical imperative is a direct command to act.
— A hypothetical imperative depends upon an “if” and is conditional.
— According to Kant a hypothetical imperative is not an expression of the moral law.
— The categorical imperative is the voice of duty, the sense of “ought” within the morally
sensitive person.
— It is a priori or derived from the reason itself.
— The categorical imperative is expressed in two general rules.
— The first general rule states that “Act only on maxims which you can at the same time will to
be universal law”.
— It means that we should act in such a way that the principle for our actions could become a
universal law.
— Thus in order for an action to qualify as moral we should always be able to affirm that all
people at all times and places should follow the same principle of conduct, e.g., promise
keeping, truth telling.
— The second general rule states that “Treat every rational being including yourself always as
an end, and never as a mere means”.
— It emphasizes respect for persons and affirms that people should not be used just as
instruments or objects.
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— Lying and suicide are condemned because in both instances we are treating someone (or the
individual himself) only as a means. Here human beings are used as objects and not as
persons.
— The dignity of persons are denied when we use them as means to get the desired ends.
— Kant holds that we must treat people as ends rather than as means.

Consequential or Utilitarian Ethical Theory

J.Bentham (1748-1832) & J.S.Mill (1806-73)
— Consequentialism as an ethical theory holds that the rightness or wrongness of an action
depends not on the intentions of the person performing the action, but rather on the
consequences of the action.
— Utilitarianism is known as consequentialism.
— Utilitarianism is based on the assumption that the ultimate aim of all human activity is
happiness.
— Utilitarianism is a form of hedonism.
— According to utilitarianism an act is right if it promotes a balance of pleasure over pain.
— Utilitarianism believes that greatest happiness for greatest number is good and the reverse
is bad.
— Utilitarianism is based on two main principles: (1) the utility principle implies pleasure,
advantage; (2) the consequentialist principle implies result or end of the action.
— Utility is that property in any act or object whereby it tends to produce an advantage, a
benefit, pleasure or happiness.
— Consequence refers to the result of the action which it produces.
— Utilitarianism deals with the probable consequences of various possible courses of action in
any circumstance.
— From the various possible courses of action whichever is the most likely to bring about the most
happiness (or at least the greatest balance of happiness over unhappiness) is the right action.
— For Bentham probable consequences are calculated by hedonic calculus.
— Hedonic calculus serves the quantitative measurement for pleasure and pain experiences.
— The calculus determines some pleasure more preferable to other on the basis of intensity,
duration, certainty, nearness, fruitfulness, purity and extent.
— The quantitative measurement is provided by Bentham.
— The qualitative distinction among pleasures plays an important role in Mill’s theory.
— For Mill “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied. It is better to be
Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied”.
— For Mill quality rather than quantity of pleasure determines the moral value of any act.

Negative Utilitarianism
— States that an act which originates less pain and suffering is more ethical than producing
more pleasure.
— Emphasizes avoidance of pain and suffering than enhancement of pleasure.
— Believes in minimization of pain and suffering than maximization of pleasure.
— Believes in the prohibition of excessive and unnecessary experiments on animals.
— Puts restrictions on animal farming and meat diets.
— Encourages biodiversity on the basis of preservation and conservation policy regarding
forestry and wild animals.
— An act is good if it gives less pain and suffering to the consumers.
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Perfectionism
Perfectionism
─ Perfectionism believes in self-realization of the individual.
─ Perfection refers to perfection of character or rational control of feelings, emotions and desires.
─ According to perfectionism happiness is the goal of life which can be attained by the exercise
of the soul.
─ Happiness springs from the harmony of desires done by reason.
─ Perfectionism emphasizes the realization of the ideal rational or social self in intimate
relationship with others in society.
─ Self-realization means realization of rational self and not of the sentient self.
─ Self-realization refers to the development of personality; it consists in actualization of
immense potentialities of the self.
─ Self-realization means the achievement of health, happiness, knowledge, beauty and virtue,
which are the ideal of human life and specially achievement of that ideal which fits in with a
person’s inborn aptitudes.
─ Unfolding the aptitudes will raise him to the height of his personality through which he can
make his best contribution to the progress of humanity.
─ Self-realization of different persons depends upon the development of different aptitudes.
─ In every case it means the realization of an ideal, rational or social self in co-operation with society.
─ Self-realization is accompanied with happiness which is an index of perfection.
─ Prominent perfectionist philosophers are Plato, Aristotle and Hegel.

Die to Live
─ According to Hegel, the self must die as a narrow, personal individual and must live the
richer, wider life of the spiritual universe beyond him.
─ Hegel does not advocate the total destruction of sensibility for the higher life of the self but
control of it by reason and also transformation of it into an expression of the higher life of
reason. Self-realization can be achieved through self-abnegation.

Be a Person
─ According to Hegel, we should constitute our personality out of our individuality.
─ We should realize our higher self by subjugating our lower self.
─ Personality is the identification of a person, we should raise ourselves to the utmost to
realize our personality and also respect that of others.
─ Hegel says, be a person and respect others as person.
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Environmental Ethics
Environmental ethics
─ The study of the ethics of human interactions with and impacts upon the natural world and
natural systems; the branch of ethics concerned with practical issues (such as pollution and
biodiversity preservation) and matters of principle arising from such interactions.

Anthropocentrism (human centered)

─ A stance that limits moral standing to humans, confines the scope of morality and moral
concern to human interests and regards nothing but human well-being as valuable
intrinsically.
─ This theory holds that only humans have moral value; we do not have direct responsibilities
to the natural world.

Non-anthropocentrism
─ This theory grants moral standing to such natural objects as animals and plants.
─ This theory upholds animal rights and taking care of threatened extinction of many plant and
animals species.

Holistic theory
─ A theory which locates independent value in wholes (such as specie or ecosystems or society
as a whole) rather than in individual organisms or members of society.
─ We have moral responsibilities to collections of individuals rather than those individuals who
constitute the whole.
─ Our ethical duties are drawn to collections or ‘wholes’, e.g., species, populations, ecosystem,
etc.
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Punishment

Punishment
The goals of punishment
— The goals are several and diverse, including vindicating the law, crime prevention and offender
rehabilitation. Philosophical disputes over punishment focus on which goal is to take priority over
others and why.
— There are three theories of punishment.

Philosophers: Hume, Kant, Hegel, Bentham, Rashdall.

1.The deterrent theory

— This theory is also known as preventive punishment.

— This theory judges punishment as an example, punishment sets an example to prevent crime.
— The goal of punishment is to refrain others from doing crimes. It is said that — punishment on you
is not for stealing lamb but that no one will steal lamb in future, it is for this that you are
punished.
— This theory approves of capital punishment.
— According to the deterrent theory the purpose of punishing anyone who has done wrong is to
deter others from doing the same wrong.
─ This view treats human beings as means to the goals.
— Human beings are not lifeless objects or machines; therefore, they cannot be treated as means to
the ends.
— Moralists criticized capital punishment as creating an example to the good of others.
— Critics of the theory hold that deterrent punishment alone cannot restrain offender; punishment
frightens, instead of frightening offender raising moral sentiment in the offender rather plays
positive role in the prevention of crime.
— Moralists often object to this view of punishment because the offender is treated merely as a
means to the good of others.

2. The reformative theory.

— According to this theory the aim of punishment is to reform the character of the offender himself.
— This theory holds that inflicting pain on a man is the best way to reform him.
— It is reasonable to believe that the suffering of pain may often have a good effect on the offender.
— It has been seen that physical pain serves as a warning and a stimulus to changing one’s habits
and the pain inflicted by legal sentence may in many cases have the same effect.
— Human beings are by nature moral and obedient to laws, it is due to social mismanagement and
due to the errors in the personality or character that man violates laws and morality.
— If society can cleanse corruptions, inequalities and other social diseases which lead to corrupt a
man we may find less offenders.
— Therefore, this theory does not approve capital punishment rather upholds punishment as a
method to the reformation of the personality and character of the offender.

3. Retributive theory.

— According to this theory punishment is right in itself, that is fitting that the guilty should suffer and
justice requires punishment.
— Though punishment is evil but the theory holds that the offender should be punished than
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prosper more than the virtuous and at the expense of the virtuous.
— In this view, the function of criminal law is to punish offences or immorality in order to maintain a
kind of cosmic distributive justice.
— In its simplest form the theory holds that the aim of punishment is to make the offender suffer
what his victim has suffered.
— This theory justifies the law of ‘an eye for an eye’ and ‘a tooth for a tooth’, that is to say, equal
punishment to equal offence.
— The offender must get punishment equal to the crime.
— This theory claims ‘as you sow so you reap’ and also supports capital punishment.
— There are two types of retributive theory

weak sense of strong sense of

retributive view retributive view

Weak sense of retributive view:

— According to this type of retributive theory nature and depth of the crime as well as the situation
and other relevant matters must be considered.
— There are other factors, like, the situations, provocation, instigation, intention of the offender,
age, mental disposition etc. which are required to be accounted before taking punishment.
— The weak version does not support capital punishment.

Strong sense of retributive view:

— In the strong sense of the view it is believed that in order to punish the offender only the type and
weight of the crime should be counted.
— Other background factors of the crime must be avoided or ignored.
— The strong version supports capital punishment.
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Relativism

Relativism
 In the field of morality there is a theory which argues that moral rules are not
absolute.
 What is right in one society may be wrong in another society.
 Moral rules are variable and changeable, relative to the community, society or
culture.

Absolutism
 Absolutism, on the other hand, means ‘perfect in quality’ or ‘complete’. The term
absolute also means ‘not limited by restrictions or exceptions’.
 Absolute moral ideals are same for everyone and valid for all time. Absolutism does
not believe in cross-cultural principles of morality.

Cultural Relativism
 Moral rules vary culturally. Moral norms are said to be relative to particular cultures.
 A theory which holds that morality is relative to specific cultures is called cultural
relativism.
 Ethics deals with value questions, what is good and what is bad.
 Ethics also deals with rules of conduct.
 Regarding the judgment of conduct different societies have different rules of
conduct.
 Judgments of conduct are founded on the rules.
 Since different societies follow different norms or rules it is said that the rules which
are applicable in one society are not applicable in another society.
 Members of one society may act in conformity with rules of their own society.
Therefore, moral judgments depend on culturally defined rules.
 What is good or right depends on what one’s own society approves of and what is
bad or wrong depends on what one’s own society disapproves of.
 Relativism is the belief that good and bad are determined by the given moral rules of
a particular time and place.
 This theory of moral relativism also upholds that there are no universal absolute
moral rules.
 Moral practices are believed to be changing rules whereas absolutism believes that
moral rules are unchanging and such rules are applicable to everyone, i.e., moral
rules are universal.
 Absolute moral rules are same for everyone and valid for all time.
 Absolutism does not believe in cross-cultural principles of morality.

Descriptive Relativism
 Descriptive relativism is a sociological and empirical theory in moral issues.
 According to this theory there are certain facts about moral values which can be
empirically proved to show that all moral values are relative to particular culture.
 People of a particular culture follow norms approved by their own culture.
 A sociologist can prove such a claim empirically and holds that such rules or norms
are not universal
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 Descriptive relativism holds that moral norms vary from society to society and norms
are not common in all cultures.
 According to descriptive relativism it is wrong to say that moral norms are general
and universal.
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Rawls’s Theory of Justice

The Notion of Original Position

 This is also known as the argument of original position which Rawls has used in his book A
Theory of Justice in order to arrive at conclusions about fairness and justice.
 If you were given the opportunity to choose the principles which should govern the best
possible society you might be biased in various ways towards your own class, profession,
gender, religion, ethnicity and so on.
 Rawls here proposes a kind of thought experiment, a hypothetical situation in which all the
facts about your self are kept hidden from you behind a veil of ignorance.
 You have to imagine not knowing whether or not you have a job, what sex you are, whether
you own a family, where you live, how intelligent you are, whether you are an optimist, a
pessimist, a drug addict.
 At the same time, you have a good understanding of politics and economics, the basis of social
organization and laws of human psychology.
 You are also aware of some basic goods which are required for almost any lifestyle, and these
include certain freedoms, opportunity, income and self-respect.
 Rawls calls this situation of ignorance about your own place in society ‘the original position’.
 In this hypothetical state of the original position which principles would it be rational for
someone to adopt for the society?
 The idea of asking this question is to eliminate all the non-relevant features of our actual lives,
which otherwise tend to intrude in our assessment of what sort of society there should be.
 Rawls assumes that principles of rationally chosen under the conditions of the original position
would have a special claim to being just once, and that, other things being equal, we should
adopt them.
Two basic principles
 Rawls is in search of basic principles which shall guide our state/society so that there should
be no difference between any individuals, because in the original position all the elements that
distinguish us one from another are already been removed.
 The principles then, should be ones on which the participants would agree.
 Through this thought experiment, Rawls comes up with two basic principles, one is concerning
with liberty, the other with the just distribution of goods.
 These principles hold his basic political conclusions which are liberal and egalitarian.
1. The liberty principle
 The liberty principle states that a rational person would want that everyone in the society is
entitled to have the same right to basic liberties as anyone else, otherwise that person might
end up a victim of discrimination.
 What are these basic liberties?
 These are liberty of conscience, freedom to entertain whatever religions or secular beliefs you
may find convincing are the examples.
 The basic freedoms a state is not justified in curtailing.
 State may intervene only when one’s liberty is threatened by another.
 The rule of law is necessary to guarantee the various liberties which each member of a society
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has a right to.

2. Just distribution of goods
 Principle of just distribution of goods consists of two other principles — a) the fair equality of
opportunity principle and b) the difference principle.
 a) The fair equality of opportunity principle states that social or economic inequalities
associated with particular offices or jobs can only exist if these offices or jobs are open to
everyone under condition of fair equality of opportunity.
 No one should be excluded from, for instance, the best-paid jobs, on non-relevant grounds
such as sexual orientation or race.
 This principle of equality of opportunity includes provision of education to allow all people to
develop their talent.
 b) The difference principle insists that any social or economic inequalities should only be
tolerated on condition that they bring greatest benefits to the most disadvantaged members
of the society.
 This is an implementation of a strategy known as ‘maximin’.
 Maximin means ‘maxmise the minumum’ which explains that choose the option which gives
the best deal for the worst case.
 Consider the example of fair wages in a just society.
 Imagine two situations:
 In the first situation, most people earn a high wage, but ten percent of the population can
barely earn enough to survive.
 In the second situation, although the average standard of living is far lower, the worst off ten
percent of the population have a reasonable standard of living.
 Rawls claims that the second of the two situations is preferable because it guarantees that
everyone in the society will be achieving a reasonable standard of living, the worst off are not
that badly off.
 In the first situation, however, although there is a good chance of ending up quite well off,
there is also a significant risk of being on a wage that barely allows you to survive.
 Adopting the maximin strategy, we should minimize the worst risks, and should opt for the
second situation.
Difference Principle
The principle chosen by rational people from behind the veil of ‘ignorance’, is explained in
Rawls’s A Theory of Justice. Rawls holds that due to the veil of ignorance no one knows the
identity of the person and in this situation everyone is equal. The principle requires that social
benefits and burdens are allocated in such a way as to make the position of the least well-off as
good as it can be.
Distributive Justice
The problem is to lay down principles specifying the just distribution of benefits and burdens;
the outcome of which everyone receives their due. A common basis is that persons should be
treated equally unless reasons for inequality exist; after that the problems include the kind of
reasons that justify departing from equality, the role of the state in rectifying inequality and the
link between a distributive system and the maximization of well-being.
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Retributive (rectificatory) justice

This is the idea of seeking to balance an injustice by rectifying the situation, or by regaining an
equality that the injustice overturned. It is most simply summed up in the principle of ‘an eye for
an eye, and a tooth for a tooth’. Rectification suggests taking from the offender and giving to the
injured party, whereas retribution acknowledges that this is sometimes impossible (e.g. if the
victim is dead), but embodies the idea that an office may ‘cry out’ for punishment, and that the
moral order is out of balance until this is administered. Retributive justice could provide the
safeguard in the sense that not only the violators are identified following a fair process but also
that they are punished accordingly and the harm is repaired.