Download Ethics and Moral Values

Ethics and Moral Values
Clark Wolf
Iowa State University
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Philosophical approaches to ethical
choice and reflection…
“The problems of philosophy involve questions in which
we are all (or should all be) deeply interested at the
most basic level. They are important to us as we make
decisions about what to believe, and how to be critical
of our own naively held beliefs. Philosophical
investigation may help us to determine what kinds of
choices we should make, and what kind of person to
be. It may help us to understand and justify our belief
(or disbelief) in God. It may help us to form a rational
life plan, and to better understand our own motives
and fears. Philosophical questions are important to us
as we try to understand what we are and to determine
our place in the scheme of things. And they are
important to us as we try to choose right actions in a
complicated and difficult world, and to find meaning in
our lives. These are not trivial projects.”
Identifying Ethics: Principles of ethics
should provide us guidance as we make
choices in a complicated world. Ideally, an
account of ethics should help us to identify
moral principles and morally relevant features
of the choices we face.
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There is no simple “recipe” for ethical
decision making. Philosophical and
religious theories about ethics do not
remove our need (obligation?) to
exercise deliberative judgment and to
evaluate alternative values that are at
play in concrete cases.
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Ethics: Ethical codes of conduct
instruct us on what we ought or ought
not to do. Typical ethical theories or
ethical codes include basic principles
that are intended to be used to guide
conduct.
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Values: Values underlie ethical
codes. For any ethical code, we can
evaluate it by considering the values
that support it.
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Values and Wants: The things we
want are usually among the things we
value, but values and wants are
different. It is possible to want what
one does not value, and possible to
value what one does not want.
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Role of Religious Belief in Ethics: For
those of us who have religious beliefs,
often these beliefs are intimately tied to our
values and to the ethical principles we
accept. But it would be a mistake to
suppose that ethical values are simply
religious values—at least, the relationship is
more complex than people sometimes
realize.
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Any time says that we should do X
because it is what God wants us to do,
it is appropriate to consider the
reasons we have for thinking that this
is what God wants. Once we ask this
question, we’re doing philosophy.
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Question: Are Ethical Judgments
Relative, Subjective, and
Incomparable?
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Relative: Different people make
different judgments, and the
evaluative judgments people make are
wholly relative to the values that they
hold.
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Subjective: “Different people just
have different values, and there is no
way to argue or reason about the
evaluative assumptions that lie behind
different ethical judgments or choices.
There are no evaluative facts in the
way that there are facts about the
physical universe.”
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Incomparable: There is no way to
compare the judgments of different
people, and no one's evaluative
judgments are any better than the
evaluative judgments of anyone else.
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Claim: If it were true that ethical
values are all relative, subjective, and
incomparable, then talking about
ethics would be useless.
Why might one believe this?
Is it true?
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Claim: Because we have many values
in common, discussions in ethics
often involve appeals to commonly
shared values.
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Claim: Often discussions in ethics
involve appeals to values one believes
that others accept, or values one
believes that others have reason to
accept.
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Ethical argument and discussion
requires an informed and sympathetic
understanding of other people’s values
and other people’s point of view. We
get no where if we simply preach our
own values without making an effort
to understand others.
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One Form of Ethical Argument: Elicit a
value judgment by coming to an
understanding of some of the values
another person holds. Then show
that the value in question has
implications that are not consistent
with the persons actions.
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Example: Robert Nozick on
Vegetarianism. (Hand-out.)
Ethical Arguments
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Argument: A set of statements, some
of which serve as premises, one of
which serves as a conclusion, where
the premises are intended to provide
evidence for the conclusion.
Ethical Arguments
When presented with an argument,
one may either
1) Accept the premises and the
conclusion
2) Reject the premises
3) Argue (or show) that the conclusion
does not follow from the premises.
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An Example of an Ethical
Argument:
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Hand-out: Argument for Vegetarianism and
Limitations on Animal Testing
Do you accept the premises? If not, which
premise do you reject or find questionable?
Does the conclusion follow from the
premises?
Example: Peter Singer
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1) Suffering and death from lack of food, shelter,
and medical care are bad.
2) Singer's Principle: Two versions.
Version i) 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.
Version ii) If it is in our power to prevent something
very bad from happening, without thereby
sacrificing anything of moral significance, we ought,
morally to do it.
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Example for Singer’s Principle: If I'm
walking past a shallow pond, and I see
a child drowning in it, I ought to wade
in and pull the child out.
COST: Muddy Clothing.
BENEFIT: Child's Life.
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Extending the Argument:
“Whenever we spend on ourselves or
our loved ones money we could use to
address the more pressing moral issue
of absolute poverty, we are violating a
moral principle that we accept.”
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Notice that Singer’s argument is an
appeal to our integrity. He is not
simply preaching his values and
applying them (perhaps
inappropriately) to us.
Basic v. Derivative
Obligations
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Some obligations derive from other
more basic obligations. For example,
obligations of citizenship may be
based on our obligation to be fair,
responsible, and respectful of other
people with whom we interact.
Basic and Derivative
Obligations
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When obligations can be derived from
others, the more basic obligations
have a kind of “priority” over the
derived obligations.
Basic and Derivative
Obligations
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Question: Is there an identifiable set
of fundamental obligations, such that
all our real obligations can be derived
from that set?
Basic Values: The Josephson Proposal:
 Trustworthiness
 Respect
 Responsibility
 Fairness
 Caring
 Citizenship
W.D. Ross’s List of Prima Facie Duties:
1) Duties that rest on previous acts of my own
a) Promises.
b) Duty to rectify previous wrongs.
2) Duties that rest on previous acts of others (Duties
of gratitude).
3) Duties of justice (Ross interprets this as a duty to
endeavor to bring the distribution of pleasure or
happiness in line with merit.)
4) Beneficence- Duty to benefit others.
5) Duty to improve one's own virtue or intelligence.
6) Duty not to injure others.
Joel Feinberg’s List of Basic Obligations:
1) Fidelity- Obligation to keep promises.
2) Veracity- Obligation to tell the truth, or (or better-- not to tell
lies).
3) Fair Play- Obligation not to exploit, cheat, or "free load" on
others
4) Gratitude- Obligation to return favors
5) Nonmaleficence- Obligation not to cause harm, pain or
suffering to others,
6) Beneficence- Obligation to help others in distress, at least
when this involves no great danger to oneself or to third
parties.
7) Reparation- Obligation to repair harms to others that are
one's fault.
8) Obligation not to kill others (except in self-defense).
9) Obligation not to deprive others of their property.
10) Obligation to oppose injustices, at least when this involves no
great cost to oneself.
11) Obligation to promote just institutions and to work toward
their establishment, maintenance, and improvement.
Finding an appropriate list of basic
obligations may seem like a
philosophers’ game. But the business
of making appropriate ethical decisions
is not a game. One practical goal of
such a list is that it may help us to
make appropriate decisions in
complicated circumstances.
What more basic values are involved?
Helping out on your father-in-law’s farm, you
discover that he has ceased to use
appropriate environmental precautions. His
plow patterns are leading to excessive soil
erosion and excessive pesticide run-off.
There is reason to believe that his unsafe
practices are significantly contributing to
groundwater contamination, and that
erosion from his fields is
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Ethics and ethical decision making are not
simply the province of philosophers or
ethicists. Our choices reveal our values to
the world. These values are either
unreflective and shallow, or reflective and
deep.
Philosophical deliberation should help us to
make our values and choices deep and
thoughtful. Maybe this makes it more likely
that our choices will be the right ones.