LESSON 1:

Ethics: also known as moral philosophy- is the branch of knowledge concerned with answering following
questions:

1. what our guiding ideals should be

2. what sort of life is worth living
3. how we treat people

Core area of moral philosophy:

1. Value theory: What is the “good life”? What is worth pursuing for its own sake? How do we
improve our lot in life?
Happiness or getting what we want??

2. Normative ethics: What make an action or a person morally good? What are our fundamental
moral duties? Which character traits count as virtues, which as vices, and why? Who should our
role models be? Do the ends always justify the mean, or are there certain types of action that
should never be done under any circumstances?

3. Metaethics: Is objectivity in ethics really possible? What is the status of moral claims and
advice? Can ethical theories, moral principles, or specific moral verdicts be true? If so, what
makes them true? Can we gain moral wisdom? If so, how? Do we always have good reason to do
our moral duty?
Asks about the status of ethical claims rather than about their content.
We have all views about what is right and good.
 Are these just matters of taste?
 Is moral authority based on personal approval? Social customs? God’s commands?
 Is morality in good working order or just a convenient fiction that keeps us in our place?

Skepticism about ethics:

The deeply controversial view: morality is all make-believe, all moral standards are correct only
relative to individuals or societies

Mistake to assume morality is a fiction or personal or cultural opinion is the ultimate measure of
what is right and wrong

 Must follow the arguments where they lead

People base their skepticism on following considerations:

1. Individuals constantly disagree about what’s right and wrong, and societies do, too. If there
were some objective truth in ethics, then we should expect all ready smart people to agree
on it. They don’t. So there is no objective truth in ethics
2. There are universally correct moral standards only if God exists. But god doesn’t exist, so
ethics is just a “human construct”
3. Science tells us the truth about the world, and science says nothing about what’s right and
wrong. Because nothing really is right or wrong
 4. If there were a universal ethic, then that would make it okay for some people to impose
their own views on others. But that’s not okay at all. Therefore, there is no universal ethic
5. If there were objective moral rules, then it would always be wrong to break them. But every
rule admits of exceptions; no moral rule is absolute. That shows that we do make up the
moral rules after all.

 Every single one of these arguments is problematic.

 Cannot assume the skeptics about morality are right

Right attitude to take about ethics: open our minds to new and challenging ideas; resist the diagnosis in
ethics;

Ethical starting points

There are reasonable constraints that can guide us when thinking about how to live:

- Neither the law nor tradition is immune from moral criticism. The law does not have
the final word on what is right and wrong. Neither does tradition. Actions that are
legal, or customary, are sometimes morally mistaken. (cheating on a spouse is not
illegal but immoral; voicing criticism of a dictator is illegal but not immoral)
- Everyone is morally fallible. Everyone has some mistaken ethical views, and no
human being is wholly wise when it comes to moral matters
- Friendship is valuable. Having friends is a good thing. Friendships add value to your
life. You are better off when there are people you care deeply about, and who care
deeply about you.
- We are not obligated to do the impossible. Morality can demand only so much of us.
Moral standards that are impossible to meet are illegitimate. Morality must respect
our limitations
- Children bear less moral responsibility than adults. Moral responsibility assumes an
ability on our part to understand options, to make decisions in an informed way,
and let our decisions guide our behavior. The fewer of these abilities you have, the
less blameworthy you are for any harm you might cause.
- Justice is a very important moral good. Any moral theory that treats justice as
irrelevant is deeply suspect. It is important that we get what we deserve, and that
we are treated fairly.
- Deliberately hurting other people requires justification. The default position in
ethics is this: do no harm. It is sometimes morally acceptable to harm others, but
there must be an excellent reason for doing so or else the harmful behavior is
unjustified
- Equals ought to be treated equally. People who are alike in all relevant respects
should get similar treatment. When this fails to happen- when racist or sexist
policies are enacted, for ex- then something has gone wrong
 - Self-interest isn’t the only ethical consideration. How well-off we are is important.
But it isn’t the only thing of moral importance. Morality sometimes calls on us to set
aside out own interests for the sake of others.
- Agony is bad. Excruciating physical or emotional pain is bad. It may sometimes be
appropriate to cause such extreme suffering, but doing so requires a very powerful
justification
- Might doesn’t make right. People in power can get away with lots of things that the
rest of us can’t. That doesn’t justify what they do. That a person can escape
punishment is one thing-whether his actions are morally acceptable is another.
- Free and informed requests prevent rights violations. If, with eyes wide open and no
one twisting your arm, you ask someone to do something for you, and she does it,
then your rights have not been violated- even if you end up hurt as a result

This short list isn’t meant to be exhaustive -> could be make longer

Items on this list are beyond criticism. Each one is very plausible. Without scrutiny, it is perfectly
reasonable to begin out moral thinking with the items on this list

Many of these claims require interpretation in order to apply them in a satisfying way.

What is morality?

There is no widely agreed-on definition of morality.

It is centrally concerned with protecting peoples’ well-being, with fairness, justice, respect for
others, virtue, responsibility, rights liberties, social cooperation, praise and blame.

Better understand morality by contrasting its principles with those that govern the law, etiquette, self-
interest, and tradition

Morality is something different from the law. Some immoral acts are not illegal; some illegal acts
are not immoral. But certainly, many laws require what morality requires, and forbid what
morality forbids. That a legislature passed a bill is not enough to show that the bill is morally
acceptable.

Same imperfect fit when it comes to standards of etiquette. Forks are supposed to be set to the
left of a plate, but it isn’t immoral to set them on the right. Good manners are not the same
thing as morally good conduct. Morality sometimes requires us not to be polite as when
someone threatens your children or tells you a racist joke. -> Standards of etiquette can depart
from those of morality.

Same with standards of self-interest. Plausible starting point: morality sometimes require us to
sacrifice our well-being, and that we can improve our lot in life by acting unethically.
 Distinct from tradition. A practice has been around a long time does not automatically make it
moral. Morality sometimes requires a break with the past (when pp called for the abolition of
slavery or allowing women to vote)

Conventional morality: the set of traditional principles that are widely shared within a culture or society.
These principles are the result of human decisions, agreement and practices. Can differ from society to
society.

Independent, critical morality: does not have its origin in social agreements; is untainted by mistaken
beliefs, irrationality or popular prejudices; can serve as the true standard for determining when
conventional morality has got it right and when it has fallen into error

Moral reasoning

Involves: a set of reasons and a conclusion that these reasons are meant to support. (argument)

An argument: any chain of thought in which reasons (premises) are offered in support of a particular
conclusion

Not all arguments are equally good.

It is easy to mistake one’s way when it comes to ethical thinking

Moral reasoning should have two complementary goals: getting it right, and being able to back up our
views with flawless reasoning. (we want the truth, both in the starting assumptions we bring to an issue
and in the conclusions we eventually arrive at, and want to make sure our views are supported by
excellent reasons)

Two tests for good moral reasoning: avoid false beliefs and the logic of our moral thinking must be
rigorous and error-free.

Good reasoning, in ethics, must avoid false beliefs if we are to have any confidence in its conclusions

But it is possible to develop moral argument that fail, even though every single one of their premises is
true. This failure is a failure of logic.

Example:

1. Heroin is a drug
2. Selling heroin is illegal
3. Therefore, heroin use is immoral

This is moral argument. It is a set of reasons designed to support a moral conclusion. Both of premises
are true. But they do not adequately support the conclusion -> logic structure is to blame

The logic of an argument is a matter of how its premises are related to its conclusion

In the best arguments, the truth of the premises guarantees the truth of the conclusion => LOGICALLY
VALID
Three -part test for logically valid

1. Identify all of an argument’s premises

2. Imagine that all of them are true (even you know some are false)
3. Suppose all of the premises were true, could the conclusion be false? If yes, the argument is
invalid

Validity is a matter of how well an argument ‘s premises support its conclusion

But validity is a matter of the argument’s structure. It has nothing to do with the actual truth or falsity of
an argument’s premises or conclusion. Indeed, valid argument may contain false premises and false
conclusions

Example:

1. John Quincy Adams was either the 8th or 9th U.S. president
2. John Quincy Adams was not the 8th U.S. president
3. Therefore, John Quincy Adams was the ninth U.S. president

This reasoning is logically flawless. -> a valid argument. But first premise is false. -> still a bad argument.

IMPORTANT: We need arguments that have two features:

1. They are logically watertight (valid)

2. All of their premises are true
 At that time, these arguments are known as SOUND argument

SOUND ARGUMENT ARE THE GOLD STANDARD OF GOOD REASONING

Not all moral arguments are equally good. Some rely on false premises; some rely on invalid reasoning.

Example:

1. It is morally acceptable for non-human animals to kill and eat other animals
2. Therefore, it is morally acceptable for human beings to kill and eat non-human animals

This argument is invalid as the premise is not adequately support the conclusion (conclusion is still be
false). The truth of the premise is not enough to guarantee the truth of the conclusion since what is
morally acceptable for animals may not be morally acceptable for us.

But this unsound, bad argument still may contain true conclusion, just poor defending to prove it

We can modify to make it a logically perfect form:

1. If it is morally acceptable for non-human animals to kill and eat one another, then it is
morally acceptable for humans to kill and eat non-human animals (underlying assumption)
2. It is morally acceptable for non-human animals to kill and eat one another
3. Therefore, it is morally acceptable for humans to kill and eat non-human animals

This argument is logically perfect (valid) but unsound because premise 1 is not true due to 4 reasons

a. Animals that eat other animals have no choice. We do

 b. A carnivore’s survival depends on its eating other animals. Our does not. Some are
vegetarians who do not need to eat animal
c. None of the animals we routinely eat are carnivores. They don’t eat other animals. So if their
behavior is supposed to guide our own, we should eat only plants
d. It is implausible to look to animals for moral guidance. Animals are not moral agents- cannot
control their behavior -> no moral criticism, no moral duties. But we are moral agents

There is no foolproof method that can perfectly sort true claims from false ones. The absence of a
perfectly reliable test for truth does not mean that all claims are equally true, or that truth is in the eye
of the beholder. What we need is investigation with our good sense and good judgement

The role of moral theory

A great deal of philosophy is done at a pretty high level of abstraction

Moral philosophy is primarily a matter of thinking about the attractions of various ethical theories. They
are bound to look beyond the details of specific cases and try to find the deepest truths about our
subject matter- how to live. Such truths are wide-ranging and apply to countless cases.

Moral theorizing is the result of a perfectly natural process of thinking (questioning beings, interested in
seeking out ever-deeper explanations of things

They want to look for a perience => we are searching for increasingly general moral principles with the
power to explain more unifying explanation, an account that can coherently organize the various
aspects of our thinking and expand more cases

Ex: revealing a patient’s confidential info => someone might challenge our view, we would cite a moral
rule to back it up: revealing such info is wrong because it betrays a trust => But why? We might say such
actions fail to show respect for the person who has been betrayed => But why?... => asking why lead us
to general principles

So far, there are four principles:

1. Don’t impose unnecessary harm

2. Be nice to others
3. Act justly
4. Tell the truth

Moral philosophers remain dissatisfied unless they can offer a truly comprehensive theory that will unify
and impose order on our thoughts

Looking ahead
Lession 1

BECOMING AWARE OF OUR DEEPEST MORAL COMMITMENTS

You might be wondering how it is useful to think about the above situations, which
are, after all, out of the ordinary and, hence, very likely not situations you will ever
find yourselves in (the first pair are fictional, the third and fourth real but quite
unusual).

You are not, however, being asked to consider these situations to prepare yourselves
for the remote possibility that you will one day be in them. Rather, for right now, you
are being asked to imagine yourselves in them as a thought experiment whose aim is
to help you come to an awareness of your own deepest moral beliefs and
commitments.

The questions “What should you do in this situation?” and “Why do you think you
should do that?” compel you to articulate your moral point of view. If you found that
answering these questions was easy for you, then your moral beliefs are likely very
clear in your mind. If, however, you found it difficult to answer these questions, here
is another question that may help you become aware of your moral orientation: Why
exactly do you find making a decision in the given situation so difficult?

All of this is meant to lead you back to the most basic moral principles underlying
your thoughts, judgements, and actions. While - hopefully - you may never have to
apply them in situations like the ones in the above dilemmas, you in fact do apply
them, or at least you feel like you ought to apply them, in real-life situations.
Furthermore, you probably judge others according to these principles.

Given that your moral beliefs are so basic to your self-understanding, your
understanding of others, and your conduct, it is useful to try to come to as clear an
awareness of them as possible. One of the aims of this course is to help you do so.
But this is not the only aim ...

CRITICAL REFLECTING UPON OUR DEEPEST MORAL COMMITMENTS:

FROM MORALS TO ETHICS
Once you have arrived at some clarity concerning your own moral orientation, the
next question - which is a question of ethics - is this: Are there good reasons for
being committed to the moral principles to which you are in fact committed?
The mere fact that you are committed to moral principles is not in and of itself a
good reason for your being committed to them. Is the fact that someone believes
that the earth is flat in and of itself a good reason for his or her believing it? In this
case, belief is not its own justification. Why is it different in the case of moral beliefs?
At the very least this last question requires an answer if you want to rise above
unreflective, uncritical belief and commitment when it comes to your moral
commitments.

Many of us have the moral commitments we do because they were cultivated in us

by our care-providers and earliest educators. From the standpoint of ethics,
however, this is not sufficient justification for the moral commitments we have.
While the moral education our parents, teachers, spiritual leaders, and so on gave us
might be entirely legitimate, legitimacy does not automatically stem from the fact
that our parents, teachers, spiritual leaders, and so on gave us that education.

Many people, however, seem to think otherwise - at least this is what is implied
whenever anyone says, in defence of his or her moral commitments, something like:
“That is what I was taught.” What if what you were taught is partially or entirely
wrong? Unless you have good grounds for supposing that your earliest educators
were infallible, you cannot escape this possibility.

Finally, more often than not our moral commitments are rooted in
wider cultural values. The problem of the possibility of error, however, remains a
problem at this level of justification. How do you know that your cultural values are
legitimate? You don’t, unless you are of the view that cultures cannot possibly be
wrong when it comes to moral standards.

(At this point it should be mentioned that that there is a standpoint according to
which either individuals or cultures are morally infallible: moral relativism. We will
consider this standpoint in some detail later in the course. For now, however, we will
assume that justifying moral commitments requires more than appeals to personal
beliefs or authoritative sources.)

WHAT IS ETHICS?
People tend not to think that morality and ethics amount to the same thing, but
there is a difference between them, one that is presupposed in both your textbook
and in every lesson of this course. Morality encompasses standards or principles that
prescribe and proscribe (or prohibit) behaviour on the grounds that the former are
meaningfully identified as right and good while the latter are meaningfully identified
as wrong or bad. Ethics, by contrast, is a branch of philosophy concerned with the
status, justification, and systematization of morality. In short, ethics amounts to
critically reflecting upon morality.

Ethics is traditionally divided into sub-disciplines concerned with different but

related topics. Your textbook and this course are largely structured according to
three of those sub-disciplines (the same list appears on page 2 of your textbook):

1. Value theory: What is the good life? What is worth pursuing for its own sake?
How do we improve our lot in life?
2. Normative ethics: What are our fundamental moral duties? Which character
traits count as virtues, which as vices, and why? Who should our role models be?
Do the ends always justify the means, or are there certain types of action that
should never be done under any circumstances?
3. Meta-ethics: What is the status of moral claims and advice? Can ethical
theories, moral principles, or specific moral verdicts be true? If so, what makes
them true? Can we gain moral wisdom? If so, how? Do we always have a good
reason to do our moral duty?  (Shafer-Landau, 2018, p. 2)

Value theory focus on the good, which is the ultimate aim of morality. There are
different views of what the good amounts to from a moral point of view. Ancient
ethics understood the good life as the happy life, but some varieties of modern
ethics distinguish between moral goodness and happiness, claiming that we are
obliged to do the right thing even if it makes us less happy. This will be the focus of
Lesson Two.

Very broadly speaking, normative ethics has to do with moral prescriptions. One

variety of normative ethics is act-focused and stresses the importance of establishing
fundamental principles of moral conduct. Another thinks that determining virtues
and moral states of character is more important than establishing principles of
conduct. For most of this course we will focus on different varieties of normative
ethics.

Finally, there is meta-ethics, an extremely important and very interesting branch of

ethics that focuses on whether or not morality refers to something real or whether it
is a delusion, and on the status of moral claims.  Are they ever true? And, if so, what
makes them true? We will be focusing on meta-ethical standpoints after considering
value-theory and before moving on to normative ethics. Specifically, we will be
considering the relationship between morality and religion, egoism, relativism, and
something called moral nihilism.

FOUR CATEGORIES OF MORAL ACTION

This lesson began with four moral dilemmas. It will end with a summary of four
categories of moral action. The categories do not correspond to the dilemmas in any
straightforward sense, but you might want to ask yourself, for each possible choice in
each of the dilemmas: Under what category of action does the choice fall?

It might seems like there are only two kinds of action from an ethical point of view,
right actions and wrong actions, but this is not so. Here are four different kinds of
action that ethicists have identified:

Morally obligatory actions: these are actions possessing positive moral value that we
are morally obliged to perform. We are in the wrong if we don't do them. Example:
Returning a borrowed item.

Morally impermissible actions (i.e., immoral actions): these are actions that

morality prohibits us from performing. We ought not to do them, and we are in the
wrong if we do perform them. Example: Murder.

Morally permissible actions (i.e., morally neutral actions): these are actions that
morality neither obliges us to perform nor prohibits us from performing. They
possess no moral value whatsoever, either positive or negative. In other words, we
are not doing anything morally right or wrong if we do them. Example: Growing and
maintaining an Edwardian hipster beard.

Supererogatory actions: these are actions that possess positive moral value that we
are nevertheless not morally obliged to perform. Doing them is morally good, but we
are not doing anything wrong if we don't do them. Another way of thinking about
them is in terms of going above and beyond the call of duty. Example: Running into a
burning structure on the verge of collapse to save someone trapped inside.