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Philosophy 223
Normative Ethical Theory
Our Task
 If we are going to make any headway towards
our goal of increasing our capacity to manage
the moral dimensions of our business lives, we
have to develop answers to this question:
“What constitutes an acceptable ethical
standard for business practice, and by what
authority is the standard acceptable” (18).
 We considered (and considered reasons to
reject) two possible standards: relativism and
egoism. We also identified some features of
any theory that would be successful.
A Family of Theories
 Consequentialism is the name given to a family of more
specific normative ethical positions, all of which share
the conviction that it is the consequences of actions
which determine their moral worth.
 All of these positions are committed to the following
claims.
 Right action is to be understood entirely in terms of the
overall intrinsic value of the consequences of the action
compared with the overall intrinsic value of the consequences
associated with alternative actions an agent might perform
instead. An action is right iff its consequences would be at lest
as good as the consequences of any alternative action that the
agent might instead perform.
Implications
 There are a number of important implications
of these claims.
1. Consequentialist theories are value-based.
2. They are comparative theories. They make specific
reference to alternative actions and the rightness or
wrongness of any action is dependent on the value of
the consequences of those actions.
3. The consequentialist account of right action is a
maximizing conception.
4. Consequentialism is an impartialist ethical theory. We
have to consider the consequences for everyone and
everyone counts equally.
It’s all in the family
 The various specific forms of consequentialism
share a commitment to these basic claims.
 They differ in their Theory of The Good (19):
the identification of the value which the
ethical theory picks out.
 The TG of Utilitarianism identifies intrinsic value
with human welfare or happiness (the expression of
human welfare).
Utilitarianism
 The basic idea of U is that the rightness or
wrongness of actions is determined by the their
effect on human welfare or happiness, with
maximization and impartiality assumed.
 Measure of this effect is called Utility: the net value
of the consequences of actions.
 Result is the Principle of Utility, the theory of
right action of utilitarianism.
 An action is right iff its performance would likely
produce at least as high utility as would any other
alternative action.
What Makes You Fare Well?
 An important issue that all utilitarians must
address is how to understand human
welfare.
 Classical utilitarians (J. S. Mill, J. Bentham)
identify happiness (and thus human welfare)
with pleasure and pain.
 For this reason they are labeled Hedonistic
Utilitarians.
 How does adopting the hedonistic point of view
alter the PU?
Mill’s “Greatest Happiness
Principle”
 We can see how specific accounts of “the
good” produce specific instances of the
principle of utility by thinking about the
consequences of Mill’s identification of the
good as happiness.
 Mill’s TRA is called the Greatest Happiness
Principle, and it states, “Actions are
right…in proportion to their tendency to
promote happiness or the absence of pain,
and wrong insofar as the tend to produce
pain or displeasure” (19).
The GHP and Business
 There are some clear points of contact between
Mill’s Utilitarianism and values typically articulated
in the business world.
 The maximizing implications of U, when approached in
terms of efficiency are clearly congenial to business
interests.
 Cost-benefit analysis, risk assessment, management by
objectives are all business tools significantly influenced by U.
 The TG of classical utilitarianism is no longer as influential
as it once was, but has been replaced by a “preference
theory.”
 Finally, one particularly attractive feature of U for business
people is it’s explicit reference to measurement.
Utilitarianism in Action
 Applying consequentialism requires calculation
and comparison.
 Calculation can refer to an overt calculus or a
more informal estimation. The explicit goal of
the calculation is to identify the action/rule
that maximizes the specified value(s).
 Comparison must include all parties affected
(in a relevant or significant way) by the
proposed action.
Act v. Rule Utilitarianism
 Consideration of the role of calculation
leads to an important distinction between
Act and Rule Utilitarianism.
 Act Utilitarianism: “in all situations one ought to
perform that act that leads to the greatest good
for the greatest number” (21).
 Rule Utilitarianism: in all situations one ought to
act in accordance with the rule that leads to the
greatest good for the greatest number.
Evaluating Utilitarianism


Remember our evaluative features?
1.
Determinacy: produces normative verdicts
2.
Consistency: in normative verdicts
3.
Intuitive Appeal: verdicts should be consistent with our
intuitions.
4.
Explanatory Power: ability to account for considered moral
judgments.
How does Utilitarianism do?
Criticisms of Utilitarianism
 One sort of criticism often directed at U
concerns the difficulty of measuring the
good(s) which the theory highlights.
 This problem is often cited as an advantage of
preference utilitarianism.
 Another sort of criticism concerns U’s
inability to account for goods other than the
specified one.
 Problem of Justice
Immanuel Kant
 Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) revolutionized philosophical
ethics. Prior to Kant, people sought the origin of morality in
the natural order, in the ends proper to human beings, or in
feelings. In contrast, Kant seeks the conditions of the
possibility of morality and locates them in autonomy: the
will’s capacity for self-legislation.
 Why in a capacity of the will? Because a good will is
intrinsically good, other features of our character are
potentially turned to evil, and as a matter of psychological
fact reason is not particularly suited to produce happiness.
Deontological Ethics
 Due to its focus on the will, Kant’s ethics are
deontological: actions are morally right to the
extent that they derive from motives of duty, as
opposed to motives of inclination.
 When we think about moral obligation, he argued,
what we need to account for is its categorical
character, the fact that it commands us absolutely.
What’s with the Categorical?
 Kant is convinced that everything in nature acts
according to laws. We are unique in that we do so
consciously, in obedience to laws of reason.
 These laws of reason Kant calls imperatives.
 Following his account of obligation, Kant makes a
distinction between hypothetical and categorical
imperatives.
 A law of reason (imperative) is hypothetical when the will
is conditionally commanded relative to some end (think
prudence).
 A categorical imperative, on the other hand, commands
absolutely, that is unconditionally.
What about the TRA?
 Reflection on the categorical character of moral
obligation leads Kant to a TRA that is also his
fundamental moral principle: the Categorical
Imperative.
 Applying the categorical imperative to proposed actions
provides a principle of moral evaluation, directing us to
the right actions.
 There are a number of formulations of the CI. We are
going to look at two: one that emphasizes the moral
dignity of persons, and one that focuses on the
universalizability of moral claims.
CI: Humanity Formulation
 CIHumanity: An action is right iff the action treats persons
(including oneself) as ends in themselves rather than as
means to our ends.
 There is both a negative (don’t treat them as means)
and a positive (treat them as ends in themselves)
requirement contained in the formulation.
 The positive requirement is captured by Kant with the
notion of dignity, which all rational agents possess by virtue
of their being rational.
CI: Universal Law
 CIUniversal Law: Act always in such a way that you can
will the maxim of your action to be universal law.
 Maxim: the subjective principle of an action (In situation X,
I will do Y to accomplish Z).
 Despite the proximity of this formulation to the
Golden Rule, it is really quite different. The UL
formulation imposes a consistency requirement.
 You should only act in such a way that everyone
else should act and that it is possible for them to
act.
Criticisms of Kantian Ethics
 Some have argued that Kant’s focus on the
categorical nature of moral obligation results in an
overly narrow conception of morality.
 What is the role of moral emotions or sentiments like
sympathy?
 Another common criticism is that Kant’s ethics are
too rigorous.
 The example of lying.
Adding to Our Vocabulary
 A common moral concept that we have not yet considered is the
concept of a Right: a legal or moral claim (entitlement) to do or
refrain from doing something or to choose or not choose to have
something done to them.
 This is a particularly important concept for Business Ethics,
where it takes the form of a discussion of workplace rights.
 The ethical category of rights addresses situations when an
individual’s well being is vulnerable to the activity of others
(individuals or institutions).
1)Most of us must work.
2)Few of us control how we work (in all relevant respects).
-----------------3)Most of us are profoundly vulnerable in the workplace.
• Rights serve to protect the vulnerabilities of individuals.
•
Example: Right to Free Speech.
Rights Based Theories
 Rights Based Theories hold that rights form the
basis of obligations because they best express the a
key purpose of morality: the securing of liberties or
other benefits from rights holders (31).
 The TRA for RBT focuses on the correlation
between rights and obligations.
 If an agent has a right, then other relevantly situated
agents have an obligation relative to the right.
Different Concepts of Rights
 Given the proximity of the concept of rights
to the concept of freedom, it should not be
surprising that a distinction we recognized
as operating in the latter also operates in
the former.
 A negative right is a valid claim to liberty, and a
negative obligation requires that we not
interfere with the obligations of others.
 A positive right is a valid claim to a good or
service and positive obligation requires that a
person, organization, or state provide such goods
or services.
Different Types of Rights
 The concept of rights as it is commonly employed
applied can take four different forms.
 Contractual: based in explicit, contractually established
agreements.
 Benefits packages, Term of employment.
 Legal: based in legislative or judicial acts.
 Minimum Wage; EEOC.
 Moral: entitlements independent of any legal or
contractual specification.
 Right to work, respect, participation, safety, privacy
 Human: entitlements based in membership in the human
race (or perhaps in moral humanity).
 Kantian notion of dignity.
Criticisms of Rights Theories
 One common criticism of RBTs points to the
proliferation of rights.
 Construed merely negatively, rights seem to be limited, but
when we consider the range of positive rights, their
number expands considerably.
 Another common criticism points to the apparently
inevitable conflict between rights.
 The issue becomes how to adjudicate between these
conflicting claims.
Character vs. Acts
 Though historically speaking, Virtue Ethics is
the first systematic, philosophical ethical
position, it had until somewhat recently been
pushed aside by the other ethical theories
we’ve studied.
 One reason for this is that these other theories
have focused our attention on the ethical
evaluation of acts, while VE focuses on
character.
 There are lots of (not necessarily all good)
reasons to prefer the former.
An Ethic of Virtue
 The lack of attention (until recently) paid to VE has
the result that there is still a great deal of
disagreement about the basic structure of VE.
 We can say a few basic and uncontentious things
about such theories.
 The first and most important one is the VE reverses
the tendency that we’ve seen in other ethical
theories and makes the concepts of virtue and vice
basic.
 Right and Wrong become derivative concepts.
Virtue and Vice
 Virtue: a trait of character or mind that typically
involves dispositions to act, feel, and think in
certain ways and that is central to a positive
evaluation of persons.
 Honesty, Courage, Justice, Temperance, Beneficence
 Vice: a trait of character or mind that typically
involves dispositions to act, feel and think in
certain ways, and that is central to a negative
evaluation of persons.
 Dishonesty, Cowardice, Injustice, Intemperance,
Selfishness
A TRA for Virtue Ethics
 On the basis of the distinction between virtues and
vices, it is possible to articulate a general TRA for VE.
 An action is right iff it is what a virtuous agent (acting in
character) would not avoid doing in the circumstances under
consideration.
 If a virtuous agent would do it, the action is obligatory;
if they might do it, the action is permissible; if they
wouldn’t do it, the action is forbidden.
 “Acting in character” points to the concept of
“practical wisdom” and the significance of moral
judgment for VE.
Advantages of VE
 It is consistent with our moral intuition that
there may be more than one right answer in
the face of a moral dilemma.
 It is not inconsistent with our conviction
that traits of character are importantly out
of our control, inasmuch as they are
influences by genetics and circumstance.
 It encourages us to take a holistic view of
our moral circumstances.
Disadvantages?
 What about the virtues and vices themselves?
 Who is a virtuous agent?
 How do we know if they are “acting in character?”
 What if we lack a virtuous character?