Download PHIL 2525 Contemporary Moral Issues

Lec 5
Chapter 3:
Subjectivism
Ethics in the news…


“Armed with a majority, the Harper
government is setting out to refashion
Canada’s justice system with a
sweeping crime bill to toughen
punishments for a range of offenders,
from drug dealers to sexual predators to
what Justice Minister Rob Nicholson
calls “out-of-control young people.”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/sweeping-conservativecrime-bill-only-the-beginning/article2173915/
Ethics in the news…

Texas conservatives reject Harper's
crime plan

'Been there; done that; didn't work,' say
Texas crime-fighters

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/10/17/pol-vp-milewskitexas-crime.html?cmp=rss
Ethics in the news…

"If passed, C-10 will take Canadian
justice policies 180 degrees in the wrong
direction, and Canadian citizens will
bear the costs.”
Tracy Velázquez, executive director of the Washington
based Justice Policy Institute.
Ethics in the news…
Conservatives in the United States'
toughest crime-fighting jurisdiction —
Texas — say the Harper government's
crime strategy won't work.
 "You will spend billions and billions and
billions on locking people up," says
Judge Creuzot of the Dallas County
Court. "And there will come a point in
time where the public says, 'Enough!'
And you'll wind up letting them out."

The main points of Protagoras’
moral skepticism:
1.
There is no ultimate moral truth
2.
Our individual moral views are equally true
3.
The practical benefit of our moral values is
more important than their truth
4.
The practical benefit of moral values is a
function of social custom rather than
nature
William Graham Sumner:

We learn [the morals of our society] as
unconsciously as we learn to walk and
hear and breathe, and [we] never know any
reason why the [morals] are what they are.
The justification of them is that when we
wake to consciousness of life we find the
facts which already hold us in the bonds of
tradition, custom and habit.”
David Hume 1711 - 1776

Simple subjectivism...

‘morality is a matter of
sentiment rather than
fact…’

A sense like our other
senses...filtering our
experience...
David Hume 1711 - 1776

Moral judgements are
really only expressions of
our feelings…

Morality by tummy ache?

The agent: the person doing (or not
doing) the action

The receiver: the person directly
affected by the action

The spectator: the person watching
and judging the action
Hume's moral theory:

Agents perform actions.

Receivers experience pleasure or pain.

Spectators sympathetically experience the
pleasure or pain.

The moral spectator's sympathetic pleasure or
pain constitutes a moral assessment of the
agent's character trait, thereby deeming the trait
to be a virtue or a vice.
Hume's moral theory:

Agents perform actions.

Receivers experience pleasure or pain.

Spectators sympathetically experience the
pleasure or pain.

The moral spectator's sympathetic pleasure or
pain constitutes a moral assessment of the
agent's character trait, thereby deeming the trait
to be a virtue or a vice.
Hume's moral theory:
The agent performs an act
The receiver either benefits or suffers
The spectator judges what he sees
 If the spectator approves, the act was moral
 If the spectator disapproves, the act was immoral
Also important:
Moral actions stem from character:
 Virtuous
 Vicious
Sympathy is the key...
3.3.
Hume: simple subjectivism...
“defines virtue to be
whatever mental action or
quality gives to a spectator
the pleasing sentiment of
approbation; and vice the
contrary.”
Simple Subjectivism seems good
and easy and tolerant...
But it has traps:
1. It cannot account for moral
disagreement
Simple subjectivism seems good
and easy and tolerant...
But it has traps:
1. It cannot account for moral
disagreement
2. It implies that we’re always right
Simple subjectivism seems good
and easy and tolerant...
But it has traps:
1. It cannot account for moral
disagreement
2. It implies that we’re always right
3. It makes morality itself a useless
concept
Simple subjectivism seems good
and easy and tolerant...
But it has traps:
1. It cannot account for moral
disagreement
2. It implies that we’re always right
3. It makes morality itself a useless
concept
4. It reduces moral choices to mere likes
and dislikes
3.4.
The Second Stage: Emotivism
Emotivist Thesis:

moral judgments -- though they have the
surface grammar of statements -- are
really disguised commands.
3.5: Rachels responds:
Moral judgments must be
supported by reasons...
 If you like peaches, you
don’t have to defend
your preference
 But if you like torturing
cats, you should have a
reason
3.5: Rachels’ counterproposal:
There are moral facts...
 It's a false dichotomy to think
 Either…there are moral facts in the same
way that there are facts about stars and
planets
 Or…"values" are nothing more than the
expression of subjective feelings.
Maybe there’s a third way...
3.5: Rachels’ Third Way:
"Moral truths are truths of reason:

that is...a moral judgment is true if it
is backed by better reasons than the
alternatives."
P 41
Conventional ethical subjectivism

If we are all our own moral arbiters, how
can there be any ‘morality’?

Conventionalism tries to blunt the
harshness of that by requiring ‘social
acceptance’
Traps here also...

Hitler had social
acceptance for his
invasion of Poland

George Bush had
social acceptance
for his invasion of
Iraq
3.7 The Question of Homosexuality...
Rachels’ conclusion...
 moral
thinking and moral conduct are
a matter of weighing reasons and
being guided by them
 in
focusing on attitudes and feelings,
Ethical Subjectivism seems to be
going in the wrong direction
Leopold and Loeb 1924

Clarence Darrow
for the defence
Charles Manson
Ashley...
Ashley
Ashley
Ashley
Katie Thorpe
Attendance
question…
What do you
think of
actions like
this?