Week 4 Notes

Lecture 20
Situation Ethics: Love is the way!
• Pioneered by Joseph Fletcher in the Western tradition.
• Neither rules/laws nor rigid theories can form the basis the ethical domain, it is only love
and acts emerging from the spirit of love that lay the foundation of ethics.
◦ People might be skeptical or cynical what to do when we take ethical decisions.
◦ One can take decisions through intuitions or not by much deep thinking, but it there
is structure to it even if one is not aware of it.
◦ Most decisions come from cosmology, which is pre theoretical. Not in the form of
astronomy but in terms of the society. One develops this cosmology without
knowing one has it.
◦ A religious person for example would be a deontologist. One may take decisions
without knowing why one is taking those decisions.
◦ By knowing what ethical route one is taking, one can be more thoughtful of one s
decisions.
• Love is understood as 'agape' or selfless love.
◦ This is different from romantic love (eros)
• Term coined in the Christian tradition, but can be applicable to many traditions.
◦ This is also observed int he Bhakti Marg in the Indian Tradition
• Ethical theories are rigid and often present counter intuitive output. Laws are clearly blind to
the situation.
◦ If as a deontologist you have inviolable rules, it will be very rigid and may be
counterintuitive. However, sticking to this principle may cause immense harm to
someone. Then does the idea of beneficence be in contrast to the idea of saying the
truth always.
◦ Laws sometimes do not take into consider the situation of the person. Eg. Student
coming late to class due to a protest outside.
• Perhaps a vital component of ethical domain is neutralized out by ethical theories - the
uniqueness of the situation and the perspective of the agent.
◦ Uniqueness of situation and perspective of the agent are overlooked.
◦ Uniqueness is metaphysical and perspective is epistemological
• These two parameters along with the spirit of love lay the 'situation ethics' view of the
ethical domain.
• It is not the laws that are applied, but the spirit in which a value decision is made, is that
matters.
• When confronted with a value dilemma, the agent assesses the situation, its particularities
and a resolution is arrived which seems the most compassionate/or out of love.
◦ Take the uniqueness of the situation into account, only then a resolution is arrived at.
◦ The judge has the power to look into the situation of the crime. Hence he/she
becomes a situation ethicist.
 ◦ E.g. there are two thieves who steal some money. One is a repeated offender and one
is a first time offender who does it to meet an immediate need at home.
Are Situation Ethicists (SE) relativists?

• No.
• It might appear that each agent is entitled to arrive at his or her own decision, thereby there
being no absolute decision, it is all perspectival. (Allegation)
• This is incorrect. According to SE, love is the single guiding principle and if not
intentionally made ambiguous in application, there would be no variation in decisions in
identical situations. (Retort)
• 'Love relativizes the absolute, it does not absolutize the relative' Joseph Fletcher
◦ This is by incorporating the situation.
Virtue Ethics
• 'What is the right thing to do?' Versus 'What sort of a person should I be?'

◦ Aristotle in the west and some Indian ethics also takes this into consideration.
◦ Eg. One person enjoys violent video games while one does not.
◦ Eg. Pornography has been termed as a victim less crime. People are roleplaying
intimate sessions. Each person is pretending, yet when one person is enjoying such
acts how can we morally assess them?
◦ Eg. Two patients are paralysed and are lying next to each other in a hospital. One is
grateful to the caregiver and one is hateful to the situation.
◦ If you think that these people in these examples are different, then you accept the
theory of virtue ethics.
• Character/ Motive more important than rules/principles or consequences of an action.

◦ This is the difference between act based and agent based.

• From 'act-based' to 'agent-based'

◦ Act is what takes place and agent is the person through which the act flows.
◦ What should be the basis of the moral judgment?
• A malicious person may still have it within his power to perform actions that don't reflect
that malice. But the malice exists. How would you assess this?

• The question to ask is What sort of a person ought we to be?' rather than How to decide on
which act is to be chosen?

◦ Virtue ethicists claim that the former is more basic than the later
◦ What should I be? vs What act should I do?
• We, as moral agents do not need a theory to give us the right course of action or a subset of
principles/formulae to arrive at the right action.

• What we need is to know about what kind of a person we ought to be - and the answer to
this question will also determine the actions we do, the choices we make.

• Character of the agent is prior to the actions of the agent. Actions flow from the character,
thus character is the cornerstone of moral theorizing.

◦ Eg the judge also takes int o account the character of the agent in pronouncing the
judgment
◦ Character is more close to being human While laws are abstractions that are out
there.
Lecture 21
Ethics in the Indian tradition. Applied Ethics:
Issues and Dilemmas.
Applied Ethics: Issues and Dilemmas.
• Autonomous vehicles or driverless cars.
◦ Can we allow autonomous cars on roads?
◦ Responsibility- Who will be responsible in case something goes wrong.
▪ In an autonomous driver. He/She can take responsibility or the car had a
manufacturing defect.
▪ AI driven learn through more data as they drive more. Who will take
responsibility in this case.
• The hedone chair
◦ The Hedone chair is a chair plugged in to our nervous system and we are given
pleasurable sensations. Given your nutritional needs are met
◦ Eg. Brain in vat, Drugs, Matrix
◦ A hedone chair is probably not reality and a simulation. This also connects tot he
virtual world or video games.
◦ This gives us the thrill of it without the risk of it
◦ Even after having a simulated experience in the meta verse for example, after being
unplugged there feels something is missing. That is the risk
◦ What is common in these sort of examples is that one can bypass the no pain, no
gain” principle
• Why are drugs prohibited?
◦ If they are beneficial in certain medical cases can be permitted?
• Taxes: Do the rich owe anything to the poor
◦ Do the rich owe something to the poor?
◦ Needs of less affluent parts of society are met by forced contributions from affluent
parts of society
◦ Eg Robert Nozick calls taxation as slave labour
◦ This is a hard right perspective
• Capital punishment
◦ Can the state take away a person s life?
◦ The value question is - can people improve, can one be forgiven, how much can a
person be punished for his/her crime
◦ Eg a criminal develops amnesia can they be absolved for their crime
◦ From the perspective of the criminal he/she will be punished for an act they are not
cognizant of.
◦ This leads us to the question, how important is memory to agency?
• Do grown children owe anything to their parents
◦ Children were never asked to be born and therefore children are not investments to
yield return. Children should do something to their parents but it is not obligatory
• What do citizens owe to the nation? Immigration and emigration
 ◦ We are all born with a citizenship. A citizenship which the child does not get to
choose. If that is the case do we need to be loyal to it?
◦ Some countries welcome immigrants just by depositing money.
◦ Why should one be loyal to one s nation
◦ These are choices one has not made but one has to be committed to it
• Reservation policy: affirmative action and duties of reparation
◦ Does one generation inherit the consequences of the acts of the previous generation?
◦ If your ancestors have built a house for you, you played no role in that. You also
inherit the advantages as you inherit the disadvantages
◦ Does the oppressor owe something tot he oppressed even in the next generation?
◦ Duties of reparation is invoked in affirmative action
◦ To compensate for earlier oppressions, each next generation tries to reach breakeven
• Sexuality and Morality
◦ Is there anything moral about sexuality?
◦ The Uniform Civil Code also looks into certain sexual relations and whether they
should be
◦ Is marriage as an institutional recognition of the union of two people, is it an
unnecessary condition. If two people choose to be together should the state and
society be involved
• Freedom of Speech and Privacy
◦ Over time the definition of privacy has also changed
◦ Freedom of speech has changed due to social media. Concepts like cyber bullying
and trolling
• Suicide
◦ Does one have the right to take one s own life.
◦ Individual and communitarian. One s life is not completely built by you and not
completely owned by you.
◦ Some countries consider suicide as legal
Lecture 22
A Classical paper in applied ethics
Famine, Affluence, and Morality -Peter Singer

Singer, Peter. "Famine, Affluence, and Morality." Philosophy & Public Affairs, vol. 1, no. 3, 1972,
pp. 229-43. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2265052.

This made an actual change in the real world from the route of academia

The Context:
• Written in 1971 - famine in East Bengal (Now Bangladesh)
• Formation of Bangladesh, independence from Pakistan Constant poverty, cyclone & civil
war
• A sudden high intensity demand on a fledgling government (Bangladesh) with very limited
resources and located in one of the resource starved regions of the world.
• In no way, the author understands the situation to be fatalistic.
• What do the others do? What ought to be done by others? In individual & collective
capacity.
The Situation then:
• At the individual level, people have not responded in the magnitude required. Some
exceptions.
• At the governmental level, assistance has not come at the massive levels required for
sustained assistance.
• A comparison of the expenditure of the governments; and that is taken as the indicator of the
reflection
• Generally, this emphasizes the almost perpetual situation of the world where there is
suffering and affluence coexisting with not enough transfer of resources taking places. The
relatively well resourced prioritize the utilization of their resources and Singer finds fault
with this prioritization - both at the individual and collective level.
◦ The Bangladesh instance is part of a broader pattern. Which is - why is there
suffering through out the world and this co exists with affluence. But there is not a
transfer at the level of individuals or governments.
• What the well-resourced owe to the ill-resourced, if anything at all?
Assumptions:
• ... suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care are bad.'
• 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.
◦ Which measn that my luxury is of less moral importance than my neighbours
problems
◦ therefore I ought to be transfering my resources to the others who lack it
• The above principle is crucial, apparently appealing but implying great changes, if applied:
• Proximity, (both in spatial or relational terms) from the event becomes immaterial
 ◦ To see someone closer to suffer is more painful than to be aware that someone is
suffering thousands of kilometres away
• The actions (assumed or actual) of others, 'similarly placed' ought not to make a difference
to one's actions.
◦ Just because sonmeone else is donating should not have an effect on your decision
Numbers lessen obligation:
• As in the described situation, there are a large number of agents who could act to make a
difference; but does this possibility reduce the moral onus on each agent?

• Why should I give more than anyone else in my situation?

◦ If so many people can alleviate the poverty that I can, why am I the only one doing it
• If everyone in my situation makes a contribution of XX currency units, the crisis is solved,
so I should contribute XX?

◦ Whether others contribute or not should not influence our decision

• The premise is in the form of an hypothesis where as the conclusion is given a factual status
- that's the fallacy!

• Utilitarian reading: 'if everyone does what he ought to do, the result will not be as good as it
would be if everyone did a little less than he ought to do, or if only some do all that they
ought to do.' Excess sacrifice would be a waste - unnecessary suffering caused, including the
deficiency at the donor's end!

• "The result of everyone doing what he really ought to do cannot be worse than the result of
everyone doing less than he ought to do, although the result of everyone doing what he
reasonably believes he ought to could be.

Duty and Charity:

• Questioning the traditional moral categorization

• Singer points out that the traditional distinction between duty and charity as untenable.

• The charitable person is praised but the one who is not, is not condemned - conspicuous
consumption alongside penury does not raise eyebrows - the Indian experience with
inequality.

◦ Do donate is not an act of charity but an act of duty

◦ Charity should be given the status of duty
• 'Supererogatory' acts debunked - it is not okay, but positively wrong not to perform the
hitherto regarded 'supererogatory' acts

◦ Supererogatory acts are excellent if you perform them but not condemnable if you
dont
◦ Eg giving alms to a beggar, if you do it its great, if you don t you are not
condemnable
• A call to redraw the distinction between duty & charity - the current demarcation is not
correct and needs to revised. The transfer of surplus resources to acute scarcity is
morally necessary.
 • Implications of redrawing the distinction:

◦ This distinction keeps the domain of duty limited but rigid, expanding it would
supposedly make all the tenets weaker the entrants from charity into duty would
weaken the existing tenets in the duty domain.
▪ This raises the bar of duty too high and people may fail to live up tot eh
satndards
◦ Moral tenets are shaped by the local societal needs - from the localized context,
extraneous participation does not enhance localized needs, and may instead be a
drain on local stability.
• These may be explanation of the built difference between duty & charity, but does this
provide a justification?

• Singer answers in the negative:

• The moral point of view requires us to look beyond our society - trans-perspectival

• and, it is quite feasible with the means available now.

• Sidgwick & Urmson argue 'that we need to have a basic moral code which is not too far
beyond the capacities of the ordinary man, for otherwise there will be a general breakdown
of compliance with the moral code.

• "Where should we drawn (sic.) the line between conduct that is required and conduct that is
good although not required, so as to get the best possible result?'

◦ Eg a cess on education is closer to Singer s conception

• How do prevalent moral standards affect the decisions people take?

• If it does, then the locus of the change is from the collective, not only within!

• A call to revise moral standards!

• A moral binary? Will such a massive increase in moral expectation unsettle & weaken the
existent norms?

◦ Are we becoming too idealistiic by mandating such thing on others

Conclusions:
• An attempt for moral revision
• Suffering is an evil - axiomatic.
• In this case it is not fatalistic, and, can be positively alleviated by the action of other.
• The balance is how much do the 'others' relatively value the alleviation of the suffering
which may not be proximate.
• Redraw the distinction between duty & charity
• Thin supererogatory!
◦ Charity should be mandatory in such cases
Lecture 23
Ethics in the Indian Tradition
• This is an exhaustive subject on its own, we are looking at a very brief introduction to how
moral thinking has taken place in the Indian tradition.
• We are looking at the Classical Indian Ethical Thought:
• Text: Tiwari, Kedar Nath. Classical Indian Ethical Thought. 1998. 1st ed., Motilal
Banarsidass, 2007.
The Vedic View
• Externalistic view of morality.
• Rta (the cosmic order) is supreme and needs to be followed, all else is wrong.
◦ An example of teleology.
◦ There is a cosmic purpose and one ought to act according to that
◦ It needs to be followed all else is wrong
• 'Right and wrong have no sanction of the inner character or motive…..Sin is regarded
simply as disobedience of the commands of of a god...' (P.26)
• Mostly externalistic with little 'consideration of inner motive or intention of the doer for
judging his act to be right or wrong.' (P.26)
◦ Motives are not given the enough weightage
The View of the Smrtis
• "The Dharmasastras also preach externalistic ethics where inner motive or intention of the
does does hardly seem to constitute the rightness or wrongness of the action done by him.'
(P.26)
◦ Dharma has many interpretations. One of them is to do the right hting
◦ Dharma is what one has to do in a particular situation
• Occasional mention of inner virtues.
◦ intention is rarely mentioned. Virtue ethics
• 'Purity of motive and intention is also necessary for doing moral acts; only overt acts will
not do.' (P.26)
◦ Motive is necessary but not all
The Upanisadic View
• Inner dispositions start becoming important.
• 'Sin is not merely failure to do the right, but failure to let good intention to act. Actions do
not bind, what binds is the evil disposition.' (P.27)
◦ Upanishads have more philsophical dispositions
Nyaya - Vaisesika View
• …righteousness and unrighteousness are the qualities of the self and not of the objective act
which is prompted by the self. This is why it is the purity or impurity of our intentions
(abhisandhi) which constitutes the rightness or wrongness of our actions.' (P.27)
◦ Intentions are goiven due importance here.
• Intention becomes crucial to moral thinking and judgement.
The Mimamsa View
• *… rightness and wrongness are objective categories and they have nothing to do with
subjective motives or intentions. (P.28)
• Accidental acts are also culpable - intention does not matter.
◦ Even if one intentionally commits a morally loaded act one is responsible for it.
• Vidhis and nisedhas (Thats which is forbidden) are the dos and don'ts to be followed
meticulously.
The Bauddha and Jaina Views
• 'Actions are good or bad not in terms of the external consequences they produce, but the
inner motive which prompts them.' (P.28)
• Not only intentions but Consequences do matter.
Some characteristics of Indian Moral Systems
• Importance to both social and individual aspect of ethics.
• The outlook of most Indian Moral systems is spiritual - the spiritual goal is moksa.
◦ Carvakas do not follow this. For them Death is the end of life
• Indian moral systems have a strong metaphysical basis, ethics is integrated with
metaphysics.
◦ For most Indians philosophical schools metaphysics is connected with ethics.
• Authority as a crucial source of (moral) knowledge.
• Practical, aims to create an accessible code of conduct for living life.
• Humanistic
◦ keeps humans at the centre of their conceptualization
Ethics and Epics
Any talk of ethics cannot but include the Epics. The epics are a fertile conceptual resource for
extracting and exacting philosophical perspectives that may provide a more grounded and rooted
introduction to ethical problems. The epics route to moral philosophizing is not only a potent
philosophical discourse but also a discourse that is rooted in context and makes for a very engaging
and profound philosophical exercise even in the domain of ethics. The epics are definitely our
cultural heritage and have influence in more ways than apparent.

EPICS AS NARRATIVES: Taking stories seriously

'A telling of some true or fictitious event or connected sequence of events, recounted by a narrator
to a narrate (although there may be more than one of each). Narratives are to be distinguished from
descriptions of qualities, states, or situations, and also from dramatic enactments of events (although
a dramatic work may also include narrative speeches). A narrative will consist of a set of events (the
story) recounted in a process of narration (or discourse), in which the events are selected and
arranged in a particular order (the plot). The category of narratives includes both the shortest
accounts of events (e.g. the cat sat on the mat, or a brief news item) and the longest historical or
biographical works, diaries, travelogues, etc., as well as novels, ballads, epics, short stories, and
other fictional forms. Baldick, Chris. The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Oxford University
Press, 2008. (p.219)

Consider Narrative to be picturing a wholistic picture of the world order from a first person view.
The power of stories is to entertain as well as teach

Narrative: The Oral Tradition

The passing on from one generation (and/or locality) to another of songs, chants, proverbs, and
other verbal compositions within and between non-literate cultures; or the accumulated stock of
works thus transmitted by word of mouth. Ballads, folktales, and several different versions, because
each performance is a fresh improvisation based around a 'core' of narrative incidents and formulaic
phrases. The state of dependence on the spoken word in oral cultures is known as orality. Baldick,
Chris. The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Oxford University Press, 2008. (p.240)

Knowledge is passed on from one generation to another verbally. Like seen in religious institutions

The relationship between memory and understanding come out in the oral tradition of passing
knowledge. This ables the person to pick relevant things form one s memory when confronted with
a situation.

What are the Epics?

• 'Epics' is not just a genre in literature, but a classic that has survived the test of time and is a
significant perspective on the civilization.
• The epics pose a question that is essentially and eternally human - a rendition of the human
predicament - and regional or temporal retellings are only the contextual answers to these
human questions.
◦ They last so long because they connect to the human predicament.
◦ Every generation can make sense of it and connects to it.
◦ The knowledge in it surpasses time
• Taking from Paul Merchant, an epic is the animated history or a lived experience history of
the land - a subjective/phenomenological method to resurrect the past in its totality
exceeding the resurrection of dead artefacts from excavations.
◦ Epics are not brute facts but tell us how life preceded
◦ Eg Archeology is a science and an art. The dating of it is science and to interpret it in
its time is the art of it.
• The epics are a scaffolding to understand ourselves, an interrogation to reveal the here and
now, and self-revelation is the precursor to any meaningful change.
• A civilisational interrogation to enlighten the human condition of the present - and using a
part of this interrogation to think about the moral questions and the philosophizing that
follows.
◦ When we look at an epic, we find characters valuing various virtues in various
situations
• The epics are not a set of answers, rather a set of questions that each epoch has to answer for
itself, in light of the various answers (versions and retellings) that have occurred earlier -
across time and space. It's supposed ambiguity is not its weakness, but strength - the ability
to connect and interrogate varied epochs.
◦ Regional retelling incorporate the local context and makes it more understandable.
The Oral tradition - incorporating context
• There is a strong view that the epics are carried by the oral/tradition and hence inexact.
◦ Whther it actually happened is irrelevant. If it was factual it still owuld not add
anymore than it does.
 ◦ This is because its purpose is not historical but to interrogate society
• The oral tradition can be a strength rather than weakness - for the oral tradition keeps the
text 'alive; alive to the context - the oral tradition incorporates the context.
• As Skinner Et al. put it in Mohanty (2002): "The idea of the truth about the past,
uncontaminated by present perspectives and concerns ... is a romantic ideal of purity which
has no relations to any actual inquiry." (p.287)
• Mohanty, J. N. Reason and Tradition in Indian Thought: an Essay on the Nature of Indian
Philosophical Thinking. Clarendon Press, 2002.
The idea of 'India' as a nation cannot be comprehensively explicated without referring to the various
epics that constitute the nation.

As A. Raghuram Raju points out:

• In contrast, the constituents of the Indian nation are family, region, bhasha, the past, and so
on. Hence, to understand the nation in India, unlike a nation in the West, it is necessary to
acknowledge its contents. In sum, focussing on the constituents of the Indian nation would
reveal the non-derivative aspects of Indian nationalism.' Raghuramaraju, A. Philosophy and
India Ancestors, Outsiders, and Predecessors. Oxford University Press, 2013.
In conclusion:
• The epics serve as rich stimuli for any civilisation to interrogate itself and to attain a clarity
on itself that is possible only in the big picture that can be painted with the epics. The
facticity or historicity of the epics has little to do with its significance - it is a civilisational
rendition, a story of the human condition, not the laying out of historical facts.
• This profoundness of the epics can be tapped to bring out moral philosophizing which is
conceptually rich and contextually connected.
In any tradition we ought to look at the epics, because they bring out the moral philosophising of
the tradition