ETHICS - the moral value of an action may be determined by - Normative - the agent ought to promote

Lesson 3: Relativism and Pluralism
SUBJECTIVISM
- theory that perception (or consciousness) is reality,
and that there is no underlying, true reality that
exists independent of perception
- the nature of reality is dependent on the
consciousness of the individual
- may hold that the nature and existence of every
object depends solely on someone's subjective
awareness of it
- opposite is objectivism which holds
that reality exists wholly independent of the mind
Types of Subjectivism
- Metaphysical Subjectivism - the idea that there
is no underlying, true reality that
exists independent of perception or
consciousness
- Ethical/Moral Subjectivism - the meta-
ethical belief that ethical sentences reduce to
factual statements about the attitudes and/or
conventions of individual people, or that any
ethical sentence implies an attitude held by
someone. It is, therefore, a kind of ethical
relativism
CONVENTIONALISM/ CULTURAL RELATIVISM
- may be described as a theory of moral conduct,
according to which the criteria for right and wrong
(or good and bad) conduct are based on general
agreement or social convention
how closely the action conforms to conventional
moral standards, rather than by the praiseworthiness
of the desires, thoughts, feelings, and emotions that
motivated the action. Thus, the motives for
adherence to conventional moral standards may be
morally superficial or shallow and yet satisfy the
requirements of moral conventionalism
EMOTIVISM
- English philosopher A.J. Ayer (1910 – 1989) and
the American philosopher Charles Stevenson (1908
– 1979)
- theory that claims that moral language or
judgments: 1) are neither true or false; 2) express
our emotions; and 3) try to influence others to agree
with us
- emotivists believe that moral language expresses
emotions and tries to influence others; it has no
cognitive content
- Ayer: moral language was meaningless because it
couldn’t be verified
- Stevenson: moral language didn’t have factual or
cognitive content; only emotive meaning. Moral
propositions aren’t true or false, but they aren’t
meaningless either—moral language allows us to
express emotions and we have different emotions
- emotivism presupposes that moral disagreements
are incapable of being resolved by rational
discourse. There is no way to resolve our attitudinal
disagreements unless we are persuasive enough (or
violent enough)
Lesson 4: Consequentialism: Ethical Egoism and
Utilitarianism
the self above other values; does not
attempt to describe human nature
directly, but asserts how people ought to
behave
- Rational Egoism
- Ethical Egoism
Three Kinds of Egoism
1. Psychological Egoism
- human nature as being wholly self-centered
and self-motivated
- asserts that people always act in their own
interests, and, cannot but act in their own
interests, even though they may disguise
their motivation with references to helping
others or doing their duty
2. Rational Egoism
- the promotion of one’s own interests is always in
accordance with reason
- Greatest proponent: Ayn Rand
- selfishness rejects the sacrificial ethics of
the West’s Judaic-Christian heritage on the
grounds that it is right for man to live his
own life
- selfishness is a proper virtue to pursue

EGOISM
- It judges the rightness or wrongness of actions by
- Theory that the self must be the motivation or goal
their degree of compliance with social norms or
of the action
conventional standards of morality
- Either descriptive or normative position
- Descriptive – each person has only one
- may vary in the strictness and consistency with
ultimate aim: his/her own welfare
which it demands adherence to social norms or
- Psychological Egoism
conventional standards of morality
3. Ethical Egoism Key difference between act and rule utilitarianism

! the promotion of one’s own good is in

accordance with morality
! it is held that it is always moral to
promote one’s own good, and it is
never moral not to promote it
UTILITARIANISM
- Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and John Stuart Mill
(1806-1873)
- Principle of utility
Greatest happiness principle
- act utilitarians apply the utilitarian principle directly
to the evaluation of individual actions
- rule utilitarians apply the utilitarian principle
directly to the evaluation of rules and then evaluate
individual actions by seeing if they obey or disobey
those rules whose acceptance will produce the most
utility

“The morally best (or better) alternative is that which

produces the greatest (or greater) net utility, where
utility is defined in terms of happiness or pleasure.”

“We ought to do that which produces the greatest

amount of happiness or pleasure for the greatest
number of people.”

Calculating the greatest amount of happiness:

- Pleasure minus pain
- Intensity
- Duration
- Fruitfulness
- Likelihood

2 KINDS

1. Act Utilitarianism

- whenever we are deciding what to do, we should

perform the action that will create the greatest net
utility

2. Rule Utilitarianism
Two views
- a specific action is morally justified if it conforms to
a justified moral rule
- a moral rule is justified if its inclusion into our moral
code would create more utility than other possible
rules (or no rule at all)