Contents
- Introduction to Moral Philosophy2
- Utilitarianism; information and activities9
- Kantian ethics; information and activities21
- War - introduction to topic. 31
- Utilitarianism and War33
- Kantian Ethics and War36
- Punishment - introduction to topic. 38
- Utilitarianism and Punishment43
- Kantian Ethics and Punishment47
- Euthanasia - introduction to topic. 51
- Utilitarianism and Euthanasia56
- Kantian Ethics and Euthanasia58
Int 2 Moral Philosophy Outcomes
Outcome 1
Demonstrate an understanding of normative moral theories.
Performance Criteria
(a)Describe the difference between consequentialist and deontological approaches to moral judgements.
(b)Describe specific normative moral theories.
(c)Describe the approaches taken when these theories are applied to moral issues.
Outcome 2
Critically examine normative moral theories.
Performance Criteria
(a) Compare and contrast normative moral theories.
(b) Describe the similarities and differences in approach when addressing moral issues.
(c) Refer to moral issues as part of this examination.
Higher Moral Philosophy Outcomes
Outcome 1
Demonstrate an understanding of normative moral theories.
Performance Criteria
(a) Describe specific normative moral theories.
(b) Refer to moral issues as part of these descriptions.
Outcome 2
Critically analyse normative moral theories.
Performance Criteria
(a)Explain the reasoning and assumptions on which specific normative theories are based
(b)Explain the implication of these theories when making moral judgements.
(c)Refer to moral issues as part of this analysis.
Outcome 3
Critically evaluate normative moral theories.
Performance Criteria
(a)Explain the strengths and weaknesses of specific normative moral theories.
(b)Refer to moral issues as part of this explanation.
(c)Present a conclusion on the relative merits of specific normative moral theories.
(d)State reasons in support of this conclusion which are based on aspects already discussed.
It is of vital importance that candidates do not simply learn to describe the normative theories and the criticisms they study, but also learn to critically analyse, evaluate and apply them.
Discussion of Utilitarianism should involve consideration of the arguments for hedonism, counter arguments and an awareness of possible amendments to the theory. Analysis of Kantian ethics should involve the candidates distinguishing between the Kantian notion of duty and the more commonly understood notion of duty; and distinguishing between treating someone as a means and treating someone as a means only. Candidates should be able to consider whether supporters of the theories might have a suitable response to any criticisms that have been made of the theory.
Unit Specification — Moral Philosophy (Higher)
Introduction to moral philosophy
Moral philosophy is about making moral choices – about how people decide what is moral / immoral.
Morality is concerned with ideas of right and wrong. Making a moral choice is not like choosing something to wear; it involves choices about how we should behave and the intentions behind our behaviour. It involves what society, and we see as the correct values to have.
Think of some of the topics that might be covered under “Moral Philosophy”
What is morally right is not the same as what is legally right (although what is legal is usually thought to be moral too).
Think of something legal but you could argue is immoral
Think of something illegal but you could argue is moral
Moral philosophers look at the reasons behind decisions about what is right and wrong and debate whether these decisions are justified. This is important because if we don’t have good reasons against murder, torture etc we don’t have any real justification in condemning it.
Some people say that deciding what is right is merely a matter of taste – like deciding between tomato and brown sauce on your burger. This is something that is down to the individual to decide and you can’t criticise their decision.
Others say there is more to moral decision
making that it makes sense to discuss and debate
decisions of this nature in a way that it does not
make sense to debate the taste of sauce
(obviously tomato is best !!!).
Think of an argument to support the idea that morality is a matter of taste.
What are the possible consequences of dealing with morality like this?
Think of an argument to support the idea that morality is more than personal taste.
What are the possible consequences of dealing with morality like this?
Introduction to moral philosophy
Presuming that we can and should debate what is right and wrong, there are many answers to the question of how we should decide moral/immoral acts.
Write down as many ways of deciding what is right as you can.
Which of the ideas do you think you agree with most? Why?
Why should we be moral?
Before you came to this class, you have probably had to make at least one moral decision. Perhaps you could have taken a chocolate bar from the canteen without paying and not been caught, perhaps you promised to do something for a friend and they seem to have forgotten and you have to decide whether to remind them.
Everyday you have to choose between what you want and the interests of others, between your desires and perhaps, rules you feel you should obey.
But why should other people matter, why shouldn’t we just suit ourselves?
Answers like ‘ because it is unfair to others’ don’t always work. Some people don’t care about others. The answer ‘because the consequences will be bad for you’ might not apply if there is no way anyone will find out.
So why should we be moral?
Here is a story told by the famous philosopher Plato. It is known as the
‘Myth of the Ring of Gyges’
Moral Theories
Why are they important?
Moral theories try to give us some way of deciding why actions are right or wrong. Once we have underlying explanations about why things are right or wrong we can use these reasons to decide on particular cases.
Generally, there are two different types of moral theories.
Teleological theories:
Where moral judgements are based on the effects of an act. You decide whether an act is good or bad by looking at its consequences. This appeals to common sense, usually before people act they think about what the outcome will be.
There are different opinions about what counts as good/ bad consequences. Some people think the consequences are only good if they benefit the person acting. Others think the consequences have to benefit more people than they will harm.
Deontological theories:
Disagrees with the idea that consequences are what are important. In deontological theories whether an act is right does not depend on the consequences. There are certain acts that are right or wrong no matter what the consequences are.This appeals to the feeling that there are certain acts which are wrong even if they have a good outcome e.g. torturing children. Some people think we can decide whether acts are right by looking at the motive behind them. Others think that acts have to conform to rules for them to be right.
Teleological theories look forwards and deontological theories look backward to decide what is right or wrong.
Some people believe in only one type of theory but we quite often decide what is right and wrong using both types of theories.
Moral Theories
Decide whether these statements are teleological or deontological or
could be both. (Note that you do not have to agree with the statements).
3.
5
In Groups…
Here are some moral dilemmas. For each one decide
- What you would do
- Why you would do this
- Whether your reasons are teleological, deontological or both
Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism states that an action is right if it produces the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
What does this mean? What is the ‘greatest good?’
This is explained by the 2 men who are the most famous advocates of Utilitarianism
Jeremy Bentham
(1748 – 1832)
An Introduction to the Principles
Of Morals and Legislation
John Stuart Mill
(1806 – 1873)
Essay on Utilitarianism
So for Utilitarianism an action is right if it produces the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. Happiness for Utilitarianism is pleasure and the absence of pain.
The idea that we ought to produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number is called ‘ The principle of utility or the Greatest Happiness principle’.
To fully understand –
we need more details so
read on!
The Greatest Happiness Principle
Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness and wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.
In other words the more happiness and the less unhappiness an action produces the more morally praiseworthy it will be. Moreover, the more people we can make happy the better.
However, this seemingly simple formula for identifying right actions needs some unpacking. If we analyse this principle carefully we could say that it is in fact composed of three component principles. What the GHP is saying is that the only thing that matters is the consequences of action, the only consequence that matters is happiness or unhappiness, and the happiness of any one person doesn’t count for more than the happiness of anyone else. These three component principles are sometimes referred to as the consequentialist principle, the hedonic principle and the equity principle.
1.Consequentialism
Utilitarianism is distinguished from Kantianism by the fact that Utilitarianism is a consequentialist theory while Kantianism is a deontological one. A consequentialist theory, also known as a teleological theory, is one that claims that the moral rightness of an action is determined by the consequences that the act produces rather than basing it on the notion of duty, as deontological theorists would argue.
As Mill puts it, ‘All action is for the sake of some end and rules of action take their whole character from the ends to which they are subservient.’ For example, if someone with diabetes collapses and I save their life by giving them a sweet drink, then that action might be deemed the right one. If however I had killed them by giving them the sweet drink, when what they really needed insulin, the act would be deemed the wrong one. So by looking at consequences we are able to differentiate between different alternative courses of action in situations where we are faced with a choice. One of the main strengths of Utilitarianism is that it can help us resolve moral dilemmas where we must make a choice between competing options.
The reason Mill is a consequentialist is in part due to his empiricist outlook. Empiricists believe all our knowledge is derived from experience, a posteriori, and this must apply to moral knowledge as well as scientific knowledge. Mill therefore believes that we cannot know in advance, or a priori, whether an act will be right or wrong. We need to wait and see what the consequences will be. That’s not to say that we can’t predict the consequences, but prediction is based on past experience. If we could know which acts were right and wrong without recourse to experience then this would be a category of knowledge that didn’t depend on sense experience, and for empiricists no such category exists. For them, there is no innateknowledge within us that is present from birth.
2. Hedonism
Hedonism is the idea that pleasure is the only inherently good thing and that pain is the only inherently bad thing. Acts, which bring about pleasure, are good acts. Acts, which bring pain, are bad acts.
NOTE
Utilitarianism is not exactly the same as Hedonism because hedonism is all about getting your own pleasure.
It is important in Utilitarianism to get pleasure for as many people as possible (happiness for the greatest number).
Hedonism is the view that pleasure or happiness is the only thing worth valuing. People who live hedonistic lifestyles are often characterised as those who spend all their time eating, drinking and partying and indulging every possible pleasure. Philosophers usually use the term ‘Hedonism’ in a broader sense however, recognising that pleasures need not consist solely of bodily pleasures but could also include intellectual and aesthetic pleasures too, like reading a book or appreciating a fine painting. What the greatest happiness principle suggests is that the only consequence of any value is pleasure or happiness of some sort.
However, some moral choices don’t involve getting any happiness at all. For example, if you were dying of leukaemia and were in intense pain, should you end your own life or should you die an agonising death? Neither of these options appears to generate any happiness but on these occasions Mill would say that we should minimise pain. Jeremy Bentham famously stated, ‘… nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure’. These he believed were the twin motivators and goals of all human action.
Although it might seem psychologically accurate to claim that humans strive for happiness and the avoidance of pain, the appeal to pleasure or happiness in this theory is in fact very philosophically problematic and requires further analysis. Firstly, not all pleasures seem the same: drinking tea is a very different pleasure from seeing a movie, so how can you chose between them by measuring which is ‘greater’? Secondly, not all these pleasures seem to be particularly morally praiseworthy ends to our action: am I acting morally when I stuff myself with cake or sleep around, even if I get lots of pleasure from it and no-one is harmed? We therefore need some means of distinguishing different types of pleasure from one another and ascertaining their relative values. Bentham and Mill suggested subtly different approaches for doing this.
3. Equity
For Utilitarians the pleasure and pain of everyone is equally important.
Every person counts for one and only one.
If your happiness is increased by +10 by doing something but the happiness of others is increased by +100 if you do something else then you should do the ‘something else’.
If we based our criterion on the form of hedonism that is concerned only with one’s own pleasure and pain, we would be left with different consequentialist normative theory known as ethical egoism, the view that we should pursue our own self-interests.
However, once we add the principle of equity we arrive at the greatest happiness principle: that we should perform those acts which generate the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people. This adds a more altruistic dimension to Utilitarianism in that it can now account for actions which help others rather than ourselves.
It is important however not to be misled by this articulation of the greatest happiness principle and be aware of its implications for individuals and society as a whole. Firstly, the difference between Utilitarianism and egoism means that following the Utilitarian path will not always guarantee your own happiness. The notion of equity implies that there might be occasions when I will be obliged to perform actions which don’t benefit me as an individual at all. For example, if you were the only millionaire in a town and you lived as a recluse, you might be obliged to pay a greater percentage of your income in tax than everyone else in the town to pay for services that you personally never use.
Secondly, maximising the total benefit is not the same as maximising the number of people who benefit: it may not always be a ‘great number’ of people who are made happy by an act. Both Bentham and Mill believed in trying to achieve the greatest aggregate happiness and this aggregate can be achieved a number of ways. For example, either the majority could all receive a little happiness or a small number could be made extremely happy. So long as the aggregate happiness is maximised, there is nothing wrong with minority interests being served on certain occasions. For example, if we had one million pounds to give away as a lottery prize, it would probably generate greater aggregate happiness to give one hundred people ten thousand pounds each than to give one million people one pound each.
Why should we aim for happiness?
Think about what you want out of life – Money? Fame?
A happy marriage?These seem reasonable hopes but we could ask what we want things like these for?
We wouldn’t, however, ask someone who said they wantedto be happy in life –What do you want happiness for? We do not feel the need to justify happiness in the same way that we try to justify wanting money etc.
Happiness is something, which is worth having for its own sake.
JS Mill says that people think of happiness as something ultimate to aim for. When we look at what people think is important we find that the reason they find these things important is because they think they will lead to human happiness.
If you go along with this – the Utilitarian ideal of maximising the general happiness seems a good way to decide what is the right thing to do.