- Three schools of moral philosophy
- Value theory : What is the good life? What is worth pursuing for its own sake? How do we improve our lot in life?
- 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 actions that should never be done under any circumstances?
- Metaethics : what is the status of moral claims and advice? Can ethical theories, moral principles, or specific oral 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?
- Constraints on morality / starting points for morality
- Neither the law nor tradition is immune from moral criticism
- Everyone is morally fallible
- Friendship is valuable
- We are not obligated to do the impossible
- Children bear less moral responsibility than adults
- Justice is a very important moral good
- Deliberately hurting other people requires justification
- Equals ought to be treated equally
- Self-interest isn't the only ethical consideration
- Agony is bad
- Might doesn't make right
- Free and informed requests prevent rights violations
- Moral reasoning = (Set of reasons, conclusions these reasons are meant to support)
- Two major errors
- Arrive at wrong conclusion by false premises
- Arrive at right conclusion by wrong arguments
- In best arguments, truth of the premises guarantees truth of the conclusion
- Sound arguments : logically valid + all premises true
- Moral agents : entities that can control their behavior through moral reasoning
- Instrumental goods : things that are valuable because of the good things they bring about
- Intrinsically valuable : things that are worth pursuing for their own sake, even if it brings nothing else in its wake
- A good life will contain many elements that are good for their own sake
- Hedonism : a life is good to the extent that it is filled with pleasure and is free of pain (not physical pleasure, attitudinal pleasure)
- Justifications for Hedonism
- It justifies "there are many models of a good life", since there are many paths to happiness
- Places emphasis on personal authority and everyone who denies happiness to be ultimate good are wrong
- Explanation is limited : happiness is intrinsically valuable is an axiom
- Enjoyment enhances the quality of life -- irrespective of physical pleasure (e.g. masochists may enjoy physical pain)
- Paradox of happiness : more one tries to pursue it, lesser the chances of acquiring it
- Evil Pleasures
- False happiness
- Two "worlds" : hedonism says two situations with equal amounts of happiness are equally good, but other factors may decide one to be better than the other
- Autonomy : hedonism does not account for autonomy. Brave New World.
- Life's trajectory : life of incremental happiness better than incremental unhappiness
- Multiple harms : harms may be caused by something that not necessarily causes sadness
- Desire Satisfaction Theory : something is good for you if it satisfies your desires, only if it satisfies your desires, and because it satisfies your desires
- Objective theory of human welfare : what contributes to a good life is fixed independent of individual desires and opinions
- Motivation argument : something is only good for us if we can be motivated to pursue it
- Justifies pursuit of self-interest
- Satisfaction of desires may not be necessary for promoting one's welfare
- Satisfaction of desires may not be sufficient for promoting one's welfare
- Desires based on false beliefs
- Disinterested and other-regarding desires
- Disappointment
- Ignorance of Desire Satisfaction
- Impoverished Desires
- Paradox of self-harm and self-sacrifice
- Desire theory is reluctant to criticize our desires and hold them up to an objective standard of value
- Assumptions underlying dependence of morality on religion
- Religious belief is needed to get us to do our duty
- Morality must be created by someone, and God is by far the best candidate for the job
- Religious wisdom is the key to providing us with moral guidance
- Unreliably moral : someone fearing God's wrath for sins and tempted by God's bribes for good deeds
- Divine Command Theory : An act is morally required because it is commanded by God, and immoral just because God forbids it
- Two major flaws
- Morality is dependent on God
- Are actions moral because God commands them, or does God command us to do actions because they are moral?
- Euthyphro argument : God's judgement does not make a neutral action into an immoral one, it is something about the action itself that God recognizes and thus declares it immoral
- Natural law theory : actions are right if they are natural and wrong if they are unnatural. People are good or bad to the extent that they fulfill their nature
- Promises of natural law theory
- It explains how moral standards should depend on something other than human opinion
- It easily explains why morality is specially suited for human beings (and not animals etc since it is not their nature)
- It has a clear account of origins of morality
- It solves the problem of "how to gain moral knowledge"
- Natural law theory lets one derive how we ought to be, from how we are
- The ultimate origins of our impulses are irrelevant to the morality of our actions