Discussion

Introduction

People encounter perplexing dilemmas every day and have to decide what is the right thing to do, what they should do, when there are several possibilities, any one of which--but not all of which--could actually be chosen and done. Most people, most of the time, do the best they can to make those hard decisions, but, lacking the tools, they just follow their intuition, whatever that term means to them, or the sense of right and wrong that they developed as children.

In households, businesses, schools, churches, politics, community membership clubs, and in every walk of life, more and more people are trying to solve dilemmas and discovering that they lack moral compass, so they are blown here and there, making snap judgments that do little to help them and much to draw them astray. A mere seven weeks ago, at the start of our course, you may have been in that situation. Moving forward from here to preferred future and care, may you be much better prepared than you used to be!

Having tried out the many forms of ethics that we have learned by sitting at the feet of some of the great teachers, it is now time to package for yourself an ethical statement for personal living and lifetime use. You do not have to re-invent the wheel to create this ethical statement of philosophy.

Look to the masters that we have met this term. Sort through what they taught and think about what mattered to you. Let's refresh our memory of them just briefly:

Ethics of Personal Virtue

"Each of the virtues is a state of being that naturally seeks its mean . . . relative to us." According to Aristotle, the virtuous habit of action is always an intermediate state between the opposed vices of excess and deficiency: too much and too little are always wrong; the right kind of action always lies in the mean. (Nicomachean Ethics, II, 6)

As examples from Aristotle's list of 11 virtues:

* with respect to acting in the face of danger, courage is a mean between the excess of rashness and the deficiency of cowardice;

* with respect to the enjoyment of pleasures, temperance is a mean between the excess of intemperance and the deficiency of insensibility;

* with respect to spending money, generosity is a mean between the excess of wastefulness and the deficiency of stinginess;

* with respect to relations with strangers, being friendly is a mean between the excess of being ingratiating and the deficiency of being surly; and

* with respect to self-esteem, magnanimity is a mean between the excess of vanity and the deficiency of utter humility.

Remember that virtues are not a moderated mid-point between extremes; the excess and deficiency are distortions of the virtue itself, not higher or lower quantities of the virtue.

(Kemerling, Garth. Retrieved May 26, 2009 from the Philosophy Pages website:  http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/2s.htm#eth)  (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

Struggles with Human Nature

St. Augustine held that although we feel free to make choices in life; our true nature as human beings includes a persistent disregard for what is good. In this view, we are sinners whose only hope for redemption lies in the gracious love of a merciful deity. Whatever we do on our own, Augustine would argue, is bound to be wrong; whatever we do right must be performed by God through us.

St. Thomas Aquinas worked from Aristotle's recovered writings 800 years after St. Augustine's death. He examined how conscience operated among all people and so allowed humanity to have a bit of secularity along with faith, and his ethics allows for a natural law which can be found in the heart of man.

Deontological Ethics of Duty

Immanuel Kant showed that actions and decisions are to be judged solely by their motivations and the principles or rules followed in making them so that the consequences do not matter morally. Neither the intended consequences nor the actual consequences matter morally; only the principle or rule we follow if we do the action matters morally. With his ethics, Kant developed a single criterion for making decisions. Kant's word for following a principle is maxim, and that word appears in Kant's First Formulation of the Categorical Imperative.

Kant's famous articulation of the Categorical Imperative is presented in two formulations, and it is important to remember that this is one concept presented in two formulations.

First Formulation of the Categorical Imperative (the theoretical formulation) reads: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." Second Formulation of the Categorical Imperative (the practical formulation) reads: "So act that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never as a means only."

"Duty is the necessity of an action done out of respect for the law" – not criminal or civil law but moral law. We may be inclined to desire other actions but "I should follow such a law even if all my inclinations are thereby thwarted." (Rachels, James. (1999) The Right Thing to Do (2nd ed.), Boston: McGraw Hill College, pp. 17-18.)

Moral law does not have to make us happy—often it does not, and personal struggles of duty and inclination help us grow even as they are costly.

Consequentialist Ethics of Utility

John Stuart Mill is the primary writer of Utilitarianism. There are three basic propositions in standard Utilitarianism:

"1. Actions are judged right and wrong solely on their consequences; that is, nothing else matters except the consequence, and right actions are simply those with the best consequences.  2. To assess consequences, the only thing that matters is the amount of happiness and unhappiness caused; that is, there is only one criterion and everything else is irrelevant.  3. In calculating happiness and unhappiness caused, nobody's happiness counts any more than anybody else's; that is, everybody's welfare is equally important and the majority rules."

J. S. Mill expresses Utilitarian as "… the creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness." Happiness is an outcome--the primary outcome--with other outcomes valued for the happiness they produce. (Week 5 lecture)

Social Contract Ethics

"Social contract theorists say that morality consists of a set of rules governing how people should treat one another that rational beings will agree to accept for their mutual benefit, on the condition that others agree to follow these rules as well."

Hobbes runs the logic like this in syllogism form:

1. We are all self-interested,

2. Each of us needs to have a peaceful and cooperative social order to pursue our interests,

3. We need moral rules in order to establish and maintain a cooperative social order,

Therefore, self-interest motivates us to establish moral rules." 

(Quinn, M., "The Use of Technology to Implement the Freedom of Information Act and the Moral Implications" in Ethics for the Information Age. Boston: Pearson, Addison, Wesley. )

Thomas Hobbes looked to the past to imagine a primitive "state of nature" in which there is no such thing as morality and that this human nature was "nasty, brutish, and short." Locke disagreed and set forth the view that the state exists to preserve the natural rights of its citizens. When governments fail in that task, citizens have the right--and sometimes the duty--to withdraw their support and even to rebel. Locke opposed Thomas Hobbes's view that the original state of nature was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short," and that individuals through a social contract surrender--for the sake of self-preservation--their rights.

John Locke addressed Hobbes's claim that the state of nature was the state of war, though he attributed this claim to "some men," not to Hobbes in particular. He refuted it by pointing to existing and real historical examples of people in a state of nature. For this purpose, he regarded any people not subject to a common judge to resolve disputes, people who may legitimately take action themselves punish wrongdoers, as in a state of nature. Locke's concept of the state of nature is that people will naturally cooperate so that each may pursue his or her own interests; then, they will establish systems of governing to enable the pursuit of those interests.

Locke's work in "Two Treatises of Government" is the primary source for rights theory, and his notions of rights undergird the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.

Ethics of Self-Interest

Ayn Rand wrote in the mid-20th Century, and her theory is called objectivism. Her four main precepts are:

* "Reality exists as an objective absolute – facts are facts, independent of man's feelings, wishes, hopes or fears.

* Reason (the faculty which identifies and integrates the material provided by man's senses) is man's only means of perceiving reality, his only source of knowledge, his only guide to action, and his basic means of survival.

* Man--every man--is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others for himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life.

* The ideal political-economic system is laissez-faire capitalism . It is a system where men deal with one another, not as victims and executioners, nor as masters and slaves, but as traders, by free, voluntary exchange to mutual benefit. It is a system where no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force and no man may use physical force against others. The government acts only as a policeman that protects man's rights; it uses physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use, such as criminals or foreign invaders. In a system of full capitalism, there should be (but, historically, has not yet been) a complete separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church."

Objectivism raises the question of legitimacy of altruism, asserting that self-interest undermines all possibility of legitimate self-giving behavior. In Rand's world, not only is all behavior self-interested, but it should only be self-interested.

Philosopher of the week Transcript (SEE ATTACHED)

Philosopher Lecturette Transcript(See attached)

It is difficult to apply ethics equally to all persons. One's empathy is never far away. Should it be? And how would empathy and placing a high value on swaraj work with you as a test of all you think, say, and do?

Summary Points

Here we conclude the final lecture of the course, and this week's discussion will bring you to the task of summarizing for yourself what you have learned and what has spoken to your mind and heart and writing a succinct working statement about it. This task needs to be accomplished here in Week 7, but you can expect to be working on it and refining it for the rest of your life. This is part of the unending education that you have engaged. You will need to write this out. (Hint: Expect to need this for your final examination.)

It is not often that a foundations course gets into something as deep as ethics or the creation of a personal ethical philosophy. Throughout these past seven weeks, you have grown as an individual and considered consequences, thought processes, and dilemma resolutions in ways you had never done before. The tidbits you have learned about each philosopher may have even tantalized your desire to read more about each of them and to learn more about these great people.

Perhaps you will visit a bookstore online or a library and pick up a few of the published works of some of these great authors, philosophers, religious men, and politicians. Maybe you will someday write something similar for publication.

In any event, if this course helps you solve a problem which you may otherwise have not known how to handle, and this decision somehow betters society, then the class was a success for you. Even if it simply makes you feel more comfortable making difficult decisions, then you have succeeded! Good luck in the future, and hopefully, your future will be ethical, principled, and happy.

Now, take your ethics on the road with the good wishes of all your friends at DeVry University.

"Live long and prosper."  (Vulcan salutation, from Mr. Spock, Star Trek; Gene Roddenberry, creator.)