Read comments then answer questions, due in 24 hours

Explain why relativism and egoism pose a challenge to the possibility of rational discussion in ethics. Using the readings in our text and my Weekly Comments, show how these doctrines might be challenged.

Feminist Care Ethics might be seen as a challenge to Kantian Ethics.  Explain with reference to the readings in our text and my Weekly Comments.

Feminist Care Ethics might be seen as a form of Virtue Ethics with the major difference being a disagreement about the nature of human excellence and the virtues necessary for acting ethically.  Explain with reference to the readings in our text and my Weekly Comments.

Explain the Trolley problem and the differences in the ways that utilitarianism, Kantian deontology, and Virtue Ethics would address the problem. Base your answer on the readings in our text and my Weekly Comments.

Both Utilitarianism and Kant's deontological ethics sometimes lead to morally horrendous actions related to the sanctity of human life.  Kantian ethics is able to avoid the morally horrendous actions that can be justified using Utilitarianism, while Utilitarianism can avoid the morally horrendous actions that accord with Kantian ethics. Virtue ethics, though, would not have the same sorts of problems addressing issues discussed in the text, such as torturing terrorists if it were necessary to save lives, the Trolley Problem, killing an innocent person to save the lives of others, lying or making a false promise to save the lives of others.  Explain with reference to the readings in our text and my Weekly Comments, using specific examples of the types of cases that would provide problems for each of the theories.

Week 2: Ethical Relativism Ethical Relativism is the claim that moral views are relative to the culture in which one lives or to the individual (also called Subjectivism). Many people declare themselves to be ethical relativists, but very few actually believe it to be true in practice. Often people are simply trying to avoid getting into an argument when they say that their ethical positions are just opinions. If it was true that you should avoid arguments about ethical issues, you would have to believe that there are good moral or possibly prudential reasons for not getting into arguments with others, that it was good for everyone to avoid conflict about controversial issues, which means that it is simply correct to be tolerant, making you opposed to relativism. Since you would be claiming that tolerance is a virtue that everyone should accept. In other cases, you may be concerned with ethnocentrism, the practice of imposing your views on others. But then, you would have to believe that being ethnocentric is morally wrong and that there are good moral reasons for not being ethnocentric. All of the people in the class took tolerance to be a moral virtue, some claiming that it is a result of cultural relativism. But you can’t derive a universal value from cultural relativism. And Daesh (ISIL, ISIS) and the Taliban would disagree, claiming that tolerance would lead people astray in their (correct) religious beliefs. We normally expect that people will give reasons for their moral positions if asked. It would be very strange if someone said that they believed in human sacrifice; but it would be even stranger, if they could give no justification for the practice, saying “It’s just how I feel.” What you eat and what you like in art could easily be a matter of taste or cultural upbringing (although there may be moral issues here too, as we will see later in the semester); but we would normally think that it would be strange if someone justified their moral beliefs on these grounds. If it were impossible to criticize the views of others, it would be impossible to criticize my own views, and thus, impossible for me to become more morally mature. Or it would be impossible for someone to convince me that I was morally wrong about an issue. How, then, can we explain the fact that people within our society have fundamental differences on issues like the death penalty and abortion, and that societies in the past believed that slavery and human sacrifice were morally acceptable. One solution is to claim that the differences between people and civilizations are not as great as some people claim. Every culture, for example, differentiates murder from other forms of justifiable killing. Every culture differentiates between humane and inhumane punishments. The guillotine was considered a more humane form of execution than beheading by axe. In the United States, lethal injection is considered more humane than other forms of execution. So, some of the differences can be explained as conceptual, rather than moral. Each of these societies valued humane execution but differed on what would count as being humane. Some of the debate over abortion can also be seen as conceptual, what is to count, morally speaking, as a person? Solitary confinement at Eastern State Penitentiary was considered at the time more humane than other forms of punishment. However, it actually drove prisoners crazy. So, some of the differences can be traced to differences in questions of fact. Does the death penalty actually deter criminal behavior? Will a wall built along the Mexican border actually make American society safer? A good deal of the debate about the environment hinges on the question of global warming, and on the effects on the economy of addressing the issues of global warming, factual questions. Everyone believes in fairness. However, they may disagree as to what actually counts as being fair. (This will be discussed later in the semester.) Here, there may be both conceptual and factual questions at issues. Does allowing affirmative action level the playing field or does it give African-Americans an unfair advantage? We all also have a vested interest in believing that what is in our interest is also what is moral. So that we are emotionally pulled in directions that are not necessarily moral but tend to think that what is in our self-interest is also moral. Then, there are also other emotional reasons that might cloud thinking rationally about ethical issues. We may have been raised to believe in certain values, and tradition can play an important role in our emotional life and actions. Traditional interpretations of religious texts that enshrine the values of previous cultures could play a more important part than thinking rationally about ethical issues. So, the traditional interpretation of biblical and Quranic injunctions about homosexuality might prevent us from looking at the issue impartially. What I have presented is Pojman’s argument against relativism. This course is designed to help people acquire the tools that will allow them to make judgments more rationally. Even if we do not achieve agreement on specific moral issues, we should be able to agree on the basis for our disagreements, which are often conceptual or factual, or which may be based on emotional or self-interested reactions, rather than morally justified reasoning. Of course, some of the disagreements could be the result of people applying different ethical theories to justify their decisions. We will be discussing alternative ways of justifying moral decisions in weeks 3-7. Most students got Pojman wrong because they did not understand his strategy, a strategy that is commonplace in philosophy and the legal system. Pojman strategy is to think of every possible argument in favor of relativism and then show why each of them is wrong. In law courts, defense lawyers don’t have to prove their client innocent, they only have to show that the prosecutor hasn’t proved his case. So, rather than offering an argument in favor of their client’s innocence, they will pick apart the prosecutor’s case. Students are used to the dopey five paragraph essays taught in English classes that have a thesis and an argument in favor of that thesis, or textbooks that just present the material that they expect you to memorize. In philosophy, we take opposing arguments seriously and try to prove them wrong. So, when you are reading philosophy, you have to keep in mind that authors may be presenting arguments that they are then going to criticize. Read carefully. While Pojman is concerned with the way that relativism can undermine ethical discourse, Lachs is concerned with the way that dogmatism can undermine ethical discourse. Dogmatism is the view that there is only one correct ethical position, typically the one that the dogmatist holds. Pojman is not arguing for dogmatism. He recognizes that there may be good reasons why people might differ from one another in their ethical choices. Likewise, Lachs is arguing for a limited relativism, not that there is no rational basis for making ethical decisions since he clearly recognizes at least one universal ethical principle, toleration. Where Pojman and Lachs differ is that Lachs would say that the sorts of commonalities that Pojman finds are just too vague to supply meaningful answers to ethical questions. However, as we will see, Lachs too has problems with finding answers to many of the ethical problems we will discuss this semester. Lachs begins, though, with dogmatism. Dogmatism, he claims is very ego satisfying, which makes it a very easy doctrine to accept. If the principles of ethics are obvious to anyone who would seriously consider them, and if my ethical positions are the one true ethics, then ethical decisions are really easy. I don’t have to worry about the complexities of moral debate. I don’t have to worry about taking the wrong side of an ethical dispute. It makes intellectual life easy. However, Lachs argues, if there are dogmatists who differ from one another, then they have no way of deciding which is correct. Each could say that their ethical choices are self-evident. Nor are there any principles that would allow us to decide between rival ethical positions. If we try to base our moral principles on what society tells us, we face the problem that there are different societies (and subcultures) that have differing ethical positions. Also, societies are constantly changing, so the dogmatist would have to be constantly changing his or her position to accord with the current rules of society. Human nature doesn’t provide a criterion, because we differ from one another in significant ways. Nature itself can’t provide a criterion, because nature does not have purposes. It is morally neutral. Finally, following God’s purposes and laws has several problems. First, of course, there are important differences of opinion even within individual religions as to what God commands of us. Then, we have the problem that if something is good simply because God commands it, then God’s commands are perfectly arbitrary. God could have commanded anything, and God could have a change of mind in the future. If God commands certain things because they are good, though, then there must be some criterion that God is using to determine what is good, and human beings would not need to follow God’s command, but could simply consult the same criterion used by God. However, Lachs has already shown that there does not appear to be any basis for this objective criterion. Instead, Lachs recommends combatting egoism and being tolerant of other views. He claims that there is no one lifestyle that is correct for all people and, following John Stuart Mill’s argument in On Liberty, argues that each person should be free to determine their own lifestyle without interference by others unless their actions cause harm to someone else. However, while this might solve the problem of busybody dogmatists who want to impose their own lifestyle on other people, it doesn’t solve many of the most important ethical issues we face today, social policy issues. The Supreme Court ruled that since there is serious disagreement as to when the fetus becomes a person (both within religions and on secular grounds), the decision about abortion should be left to individuals and their consciences. This would seem to accord with Lachs’ principle. However, those who believe that the fetus is a person would argue that harm is being done to another person (the fetus), so these decisions should not be left up to the individual. Lachs’ principle would not help us here. Likewise, it doesn’t help us to determine a fair distribution of the benefits of society, or punishment for crimes, or what we should do about the environment, or how we should treat animals, all topics that we will be discussing this semester. Lachs’ principle works best with individual lifestyle issues, rather than social issues, although we might say that someone who chooses to devote their lives simply to partying, drugs, and alcohol is leading an undesirable life for a human being and is, in fact, living a life fit only for a pig. This criticism is based on Virtue Ethics, which we will study later in the semester. One thing he recommends, which is consistent with the theology of the Abrahamic religions, is combatting egoism, as a fundamental principle of ethics. Next week, we take up the issue of egoism, which is a challenge to ethical discourse, trying to understand both the appeal of egoism and its defects as a psychological and as an ethical theory.

Week 3: Egoism A significant number of students gave their own opinions or reactions in response to the Writing Assignment. They do not belong there. In the Writing Assignments, I am asking you to explain the text, nothing more, nothing less. I will not ask for your own opinions, reactions, or approval. These all belong in the Discussions. I know that English teachers have often asked you to include your opinions and reactions. However, that is not typical of Academic Discourse in any discipline. In the Writing Assignments, I am asking you to do something that is standard in philosophical discourse, explain a text. By the end of the semester, you should be able to play one author off against another. However, even then, philosophical discourse discourages you from interjecting your own opinions. In this case, I asked you to explain Pinker’s theory and give the implications of that theory for the discussion of altruism and selfishness, whether you thought his theory supported or undermined altruism, not your own opinions or analyses on the topic. Several students referred to the author solely by their first name. Don’t do this. It is a convention in Academic Discourse in all disciplines that you used either the last name alone or combined with the first name. Why is this so? I have no idea. However, if you refer to the authors solely by their first names, professors will think that you don’t understand the basic rules of Academic Discourse. Darwin is a person. His theory is Darwinian evolutionary theory. Darwinian is not a person, as some people seemed to think. Last week we addressed the challenge to ethical theory that comes from relativism. This week, we address the challenge that comes from Psychological and Ethical Egoism. Psychological Egoism is a psychological theory that purports to explain how people actually make decisions about how to behave. It claims that people always behave in ways that benefit themselves, that their only motivation is self-interest. If this is true, then ethics is impossible, because ethics, at least sometimes, requires people to behave in ways that are contrary to self-interest. In fact, if you accept Kantian ethics, which we will study in a couple of weeks, the primary conflict in ethics is not about knowing what the right thing to do is; it arises because what we know is right often comes into to conflict with what is best for us. On the other hand, economists in the tradition of Adam Smith typically assume that each person is acting in his/her rational self-interest in their economic theories, based on Adam Smith’s famous work in economics The Wealth of Nations. Smith also wrote a book on ethics, though, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, in which he argues that sympathy is the basis for ethics. So, Smith sees at least the possibility of ethical behavior, although economic behavior is best analyzed in terms of self-interest. The problem with psychological egoism is that we can all think of counter-examples, where people behave selflessly or contrary to their own self-interest without any possibility of reward. And all it takes is one instance to show that the theory of psychological egoism is wrong. That is because the theory is designed to show that we always behave in this fashion. If it is shown that we are capable of acting differently, even if only occasionally, then ethics is possible, and the tendency to behave unselfishly can be reinforced by ethical or other cultural training (e.g., religion, family upbringing, patriotism). One way to challenge examples of altruistic behavior, though, is to claim that even what seem to be altruistic acts are done simply to make oneself happy. This might seem to be counter-intuitive for acts in which a person sacrifices his/her life for another person but let us consider the example of Abraham Lincoln in the textbook. Lincoln stops his carriage to save the lives of some piglets and says that this was not a result of altruism, but because their death would have made him feel bad. So, he did it to make himself feel better. But, why would he feel bad about the piglets dying, unless he felt sympathy for them? If the piglets belonged to him, then it would make sense to save them out of self-interest. Otherwise, he has no reason to care for them, other than sympathy. There is a big difference between going out of your way to save the piglet’s lives out of sympathy and watching them drown and then eating them for dinner out of selfishness. Kantian ethics would claim that whatever Lincoln said, he was really acting out of duty, that he considered it his duty to save the unfortunate pigs. Let’s look at the way sociobiology (which has evolved into evolutionary psychology) handles this problem. Steven Pinker is a Darwinian thinker, applying evolutionary theory to human behavior. In the 19th Century, Herbert Spencer used Darwinian theory as a basis for ethics, claiming that evolutionary theory supported a survival of the fittest ethics (a term not used by Darwin, Darwin used Natural Selection), everyone should simply look out for their own interests. More contemporary thinkers, though, have called that interpretation of Darwin into question, arguing that in a social species like humans, extreme selfishness would not lead to the survival of an individual’s genes. Since cooperation is necessary to survive, Reciprocal Altruism, doing things for people who do things for you, is essential to survival. Likewise, if you sacrificed for your siblings or children, your genes are more likely to be passed on through your close relatives (Kin Selection). Finally, groups that have more altruistic members have a greater chance of surviving than groups that have fewer altruistic members (Group Selection). This last form of altruism is not mentioned by Pinker, because it is controversial and only recently proposed, but it is supported by E.O. Wilson, the founder of sociobiology. The reason some people oppose it is because they argue that evolution occurs on an individual level, not a group level. But those supporting the idea argue that evolution can also have an impact on small group survival. In any case, between reciprocal altruism, kin selection, and group selection, we are genetically programmed to be somewhat altruistic. This does not mean that we are consciously thinking about the survival of our genes. What it explains is conscience, why we often feel guilty when we are acting selfishly. It explains why we act more altruistically towards relatives and group mates. However, if we have a tendency towards altruism as well as selfishness, then those desires can be trained toward ethical behavior. In other words, we have an internal conflict between acting selfishly and acting altruistically, both of which are necessary for survival and reproduction and both of which have been programmed into our genes because it allowed our ancestors to survive and reproduce. We are not simply psychological egoists. We have the type of complex internal life that makes acting ethically (or unethically) possible. Having disposed of psychological egoism, let us turn to ethical egoism. Psychological egoism is descriptive, purporting to tell us how people do behave. Ethical egoism is prescriptive, telling us about how people should behave. Now, some people try to derive ethical egoism from psychological egoism, claiming that the fact that we do behave selfishly supports an ethics of selfishness. However, if we always act selfishly, then an ethics of selfishness is totally unnecessary. We will always act selfishly regardless of what ethics tells us. Infants defecate in their diapers, but that doesn’t show that they should defecate in their diapers. Some other justification for ethical egoism is necessary. Typically, people trying to justify an ethics of selfishness argue that adopting an ethics of selfishness will lead to the betterment of society. However, this is not ethical egoism, it is utilitarianism (which we will study next week), and we could then ask the factual question of whether this sort of behavior would lead society to be better. On the surface, at least, it does appear that unselfish behavior would benefit society. So, this claim appears to be wrong. However, we have the challenge from Glaucon in Plato’s Republic. Now, this is not Plato’s position on justice. Philosophers, as I have already mentioned like to set up problems and then solve them, present the opposing side in order to refute them. Later in the Republic, Plato provides an answer to Glaucon that we will only outline here. Glaucon claims that no one would willingly act in a just manner, and people only do so, because they are subject to punishment, if they don’t. This is the basis for Social Contract theory that is later developed by Hobbes (whom you are not required to read). Social contract theory claims that society is based on a contract between self-interested individuals who are willing to give up liberty in order to guarantee security and justice. It is a rational bargain based on the rational self-interest of the people involved. Glaucon tries to show that people would prefer to be unjust, if they could get away with it, asking the question: what would you do if you could avoid any retribution for your actions? Any rational person, says Glaucon, would want to appear to be just, because that would gain them honor in society, but would secretly act unjustly to get as much as they could for themselves. They would steal as much as they wanted, and then give some of it away for the sake of appearances. After all, they could always steal more. This life would be preferable to the life of someone who appeared to be unjust but was really just. Plato is thinking of Socrates who was condemned to death by his society, although you might think of Jesus or some other martyr to a cause who was unjustly condemned by his/her society. It would seem that any reasonable person would choose the life of seeming just, but actually being unjust over the life of the just person who appeared to be unjust. Plato’s answer is that a life ruled by your passions leads one into excess, and excess is never good for you. He sees people as having addictive personalities, such that getting everything you want isn’t necessarily good for you. You should really want to eat as much as is good for you, not as much as you want. People with uncontrolled gambling, sexual, alcohol, or drug desires are not happy people. Life is like tuning a guitar. You need the right amount to produce harmony. Likewise, you need the right amount in life to produce a harmonious soul, so that peace of mind is much more important to living a happy life than having all your desires met. Aristotle, whom we will study in a few weeks, agrees. This week’s reading has brought up utilitarianism, Kantian deontological ethics, and Aristotelian virtue ethics, the ethical theories we will be discussing over the next 3 weeks.

Week 4: Utilitarianism Utilitarianism is, on the surface, a very simple ethical standard---always do what will produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number. It is the principle that underlies triage. In a situation where there are not enough medical personnel or supplies to treat all of the patients, as sometimes happens during war or in disasters, patients are classified into three categories, those who need an immense amount of immediate attention, those who need a moderate amount of medical attention, and those who only need a small amount of medical treatment and can wait without risking death or further injury. Doctors then treat those in the middle category, leaving the most severely injured to die, because by following this policy, they can save the highest number of victims. While doing a lengthy and risky operation on a member of the first group, a greater number of victims in the second group might die, who could have been treated in the same amount of time. This is something that most people recognize as fair and proper. It’s why you have such long waits in the emergency room, when you come in with minor injuries. It is a little more questionable in the case of an overcrowded lifeboat that will sink unless some people are thrown overboard. This case involves actively killing some people; but is still a case of saving the maximum amount of lives, and is generally approved of. It is what underlies the trolley problem discussed in our textbook. However, applying this standard in other cases raises a number of problems. The Ford Pinto had problems with its fuel tank such that when it was rear-ended in an accident, it had a tendency to burst into flame. The Ford Motor Company officials knew about this, but did nothing to correct it. That was because they did a utilitarian (cost-benefit) calculation. They figured out how much it would cost them to recall the cars and fix the problem and how much it was likely to cost them in lawsuits by relatives of people who died in fiery crashes. When the figure for lawsuits came out to be much less than that for fixing the problem, a utilitarian cost-benefit analysis, they decided to do nothing about the problem. Unfortunately, they did not include into the calculations how likely their actions were to be discovered and how much it would cost them in good will, if it did. However, a more important question is whether or not you can compare lives and money. Certainly, we could say that a drug that cost one billion dollars per dose and was likely to extend five people’s lives for two weeks was not worth the cost, because that money could be better spent on other medical research that would save more lives. In some cases, though, like the Ford Pinto case, we seem to be comparing apples and oranges. Jeremy Bentham, the father of utilitarianism assures us that all pleasures are equal and that all we have to do in calculate the amount of pleasure vs. the amount of pain produced, the intensity of the pleasure and pain, the duration of the pleasure and pain, the fruitfulness of the pleasure, and the likelihood of achieving the pleasure. This is what he calls the hedonic calculus. Now, one philosopher, Bernard Williams, has called into question whether we can even make these calculations. He used the example of Paul Gauguin, the famous French painter, who left his wife and children and a job as a bank clerk to go off to Tahiti to paint. At the time, he had no reason to believe that he would become a world-famous painter (although he was a competent painter in the Pont Aven style at the time) and his wife and children were reduced to poverty, as a result. However, after he returned from Tahiti, and even more so, after he died, he was considered one of the greatest artists of all time and inspired countless other artists. So, we could say that the pain that Gauguin caused his family was outweighed by his contributions to the art world. But Gauguin could not have known that at the time he left for Tahiti. Things that could be justified by utilitarianism in retrospect couldn’t be used to decide on a course of action ahead of time. This brings up questions of future generations. Are they to be counted, since all are to count as one? Do we count people who don’t exist yet in our calculations of, for example, environmental ethics? (We will be discussing environmental issues later in the semester.) It would seem that we would need to be omniscient in order to make these sorts of calculations. Since we can’t know the ultimate effects of our actions, utilitarian calculations would seem to be impossible. Let us return, though, to the apples and oranges. Can you really compare the pleasure you will get from a running a marathon with the pleasure you get from eating a good meal or the pleasure you get from watching a good movie? Is living a longer life better than eating foods you love that might shorten your life? How much longer would the life have to be to justify giving up certain foods? You could eliminate the dangers of driving by never riding in a car. Just how much safety is enough? These sorts of calculations might be difficult or impossible to calculate, certainly more difficult than when you are only comparing numbers of deaths. Even then, you might question whether someone’s life was worth more than others. A young surgeon, for example, might be someone who was likely to go on and save a large number of lives. Whereas an old philosophy professor with no living relatives, who might not have long to live, might only be looking forward to simple pleasures and declining health. Should the surgeon’s life count more than the philosophy professor’s? Then there is the problem associated with the higher and lower pleasures. Mill (and it is “Mill,” not “Mills”) in the excerpt in our text, is concerned with the fact that the pleasure of going out and getting drunk with my buddies simply can’t be compared with the pleasure of a good conversation with friends. Mill was worried that people would think that utilitarianism would lead to favoring sensual pleasures over intellectual pleasures, and, in fact, utilitarianism has been criticized for this. He argued that certain types of pleasures were qualitatively better than other, especially the intellectual pleasures. However, this raises further problems. As long as we can quantify pleasures, we can perform Jeremy Bentham’s calculations. However, once we say that some pleasures are qualitatively better than others, it is difficult to plug that into a calculation. Just how much better is an intellectual discussion than a good meal? Does watching the Super Bowl or the Final Four provide more or less happiness than reading a good book or doing rounds as a doctor? In a similar vein, Mill also responded to people who claimed that utilitarianism undermined the virtuous life. Many of you may associate the virtuous life with one that avoided the pleasures of the flesh. However, the ancient Greek word for virtue, arête, simply meant “excellence.” The virtues are those qualities that we find to lead to a good life for the person who has them, such as self-discipline, intelligence, compassion, commitment to a good cause, the ability to lead a balanced life, to make good choices in life. Now, Mill can’t say that virtue in itself is good, since he is a utilitarian. People may come to find it valuable in and of itself. However, its value is really based on the fact that it can produce happiness. So, Mill has to argue that the life of the virtue produces more happiness for an individual and society, than a life of sensual pleasure. He does this by arguing that people who are capable of leading a virtuous life choose that life over the life of sensual excess, just as those who are capable of intellectual pleasure choose those over sensual pleasures. Finally, there is the major flaw in utilitarianism associated with majority rule and minority rights. What if there is something that produces a great deal of happiness for a large number of people, but leads to severe unhappiness for an individual. Take the example from the Discussion of a healthy man who walks into a doctor’s office only to have the doctor kill him and use his organs to save five sick people who would die without them. We would (I hope) find this to be morally reprehensible. However, it could be justified on act utilitarian grounds. Some people attempted to change the problem by arguing that there might be bad effects on relatives and others. Don’t do that. The example is set up to test whether it would be morally acceptable to kill an innocent man to save the lives of many others. WHEN YOU ALTER THE PROBLEM, YOU ARE ALTERING WHAT THE PROBLEM IS INTENDED TO SHOW. Some people did, however, find this acceptable. So, let me use another particularly horrible example. Utilitarianism would condemn rape because the pain of the victim is greater than any pleasure the rapist might have. However, if the victim was unconscious and was gang-raped, the collective pleasure of the rapists might eventually outweigh the pain of the victim. And the more men who raped her, the more moral it would be. How is this any different than the trolley problem where you pull the switch killing one innocent person who would not have died, but saving five others who would have died? Suppose there was a sadist who liked to kidnap and torture unwilling people. That is something that would be condemned by utilitarianism. For certainly, the victim would get more pain than the pleasure given to the sadist. But, suppose that the sadist showed this on closed-circuit TV (so the rest of us wouldn’t know about it) to a large group of fellow sadists. The pleasure of the group, if it eventually became large enough, would outweigh the pain of the victim, whose pain would be the same whether or not it was televised, and would be independent of the number of people watching. Likewise, pedophile pornography would be moral, using utilitarian considerations, if it were widely shared among pedophiles. There is something wrong here. Torturing a person for pleasure is wrong; but it is OK as long as you televise it to a group of sadists? In the killing of healthy people to benefit others, the gang rape, and the televised sadism and pedophilia examples, we want to say that these are our bodies, and no one should kill, torture or have sex with us without our consent. However, in the triage and lifeboat examples, we might reasonably conclude that we should use utilitarian considerations. Even if it is simply a question of taking one of my kidneys to save the life of a relative, in a way that would not harm me, it is my decision as to whether or not to donate my kidney. On the other side, Peter Singer’s article in the section on Global Justice and Globalization in our textbook, argues that we are morally required to give away most of our assets to alleviate world hunger, based on utilitarian considerations. One solution to this problem is to distinguish between rule and act utilitarianism. Instead of looking at what will produce the greatest happiness in each case, rule utilitarianism looks at which rule would provide for the greatest happiness in the long run. Singer is an act utilitarian, arguing that we need to maximize the effect of each expenditure to alleviate hunger. However, one might argue that a rule allowing for property rights, combined with encouraging acts of charity or government action might provide for greatest happiness in this case. This would be rule utilitarianism. There is some reason to believe that while Jeremy Bentham didn’t distinguish between act and rule utilitarianism, he might well support the latter, because he was primarily concerned with devising laws that would provide for maximum happiness. He was, for example, a leading force in prison reform on utilitarian grounds. (Prison reform will be discussed later in the semester.) Finally, I thought I would attach a photo of myself with Jeremy Bentham when I met with him many years ago at the University of London. How is that possible you say, when he was born in 1748? Bentham was somewhat eccentric and left a large tract of land to the University of London on the condition that he be physically present at all the Board of Trustees meetings. So, he now sits in a hallway at the University of London in a glass case, fully clothed, with his hands covered in gloves. His head was removed and replaced with a wax replica, so no part of his body is showing. The head is in a safe in the trustees’ office. You can see the mummified head by googling it. It was too ghoulish for me to attach. And if you get to London, Bentham will be waiting there to meet you. He is located near the Jeremy Bentham pub, which itself has some Bentham memorabilia.

Week 5: Kant

A thief grabs an old woman’s purse while she is crossing the street intending to rob her. She holds onto the purse, and in doing so, the thief accidentally pulls the woman out of the way of an oncoming truck, saving her life, but dying himself by falling under the wheels of the truck. In a second case, a man notices that a truck is about to run over an old woman and grabs her purse intending to pull her out of the way. He saves her life but dies himself by falling under the wheels of the truck. Notice that the actions and the consequences are the same. From a utilitarian perspective, there is no difference between the two acts. However, we, and Kant would undoubtedly say that the action of the second person was moral, while the action of the thief turned out well for the woman, but would not make him a morally praiseworthy human being. The difference between the two actions is the intention of the actor. In other words, it is our motivations or intentions that make an act moral or immoral, not the consequences. Even if things turn out poorly, if, for example, both the helper and the old woman were killed, we would still say that the person was acting rightly because s/he had good intentions and his/her actions were guided by morality. This is what distinguishes Kantian ethics from utilitarianism, the focus on intentions, rather than results. For Kant, the problem in ethics is not that we don’t know what the right thing to do is, but that we don’t want to do it. This is because the right, proper, just ethical action often conflicts with our desires, our self-interest. Take the case of finding a wallet with a large sum of cash and ID in it. We know that the ethical thing to do is to return it; but it is in our self-interest to keep the money, especially if we could be assured that the person who lost the wallet would misuse the money, or use it for evil purposes. Kant was concerned with how ethics was possible in a world governed by physics that controls human psychology. If we are motivated solely by our desires, then we would never be able to act morally (the problem of psychological egoism). Consider a lion, stalking and killing a human child. It would be very strange to say that the lion had a moral duty not to kill the child, or to put the lion on trial for killing the child. However, we would consider a person who did the same thing to be morally reprehensible and would certainly put that person on trial. The difference is that we believe people are capable of behaving morally, which means transcending their immediate desires. Lions are motivated solely by their desires. They are subject to the laws of physics. Unlike lions, human beings have free will and can thus make choices. What this means for Kant is that people are capable of acting autonomously (literally according to laws of their own making). To be autonomous is, according to Kant, to be free from the influence of genes and environment, to be capable of acting for reasons other than desires. Kant distinguishes between our will, which is free, and our passions (desires), which are determined by the laws of psychology. If someone is a drug addict (or alcoholic, or glutton or sex addict, etc.), they are driven by their desires and are not free. Breaking these bad habits requires an act of the will, a recognition that what you are doing is wrong and freely choosing to break the habit. Since my will is often contrary to my desires, in this case, my desire for alcohol, etc., according to Kant, it is not subject to being determined by genes and environment. We have to presuppose that people have free will or ethics is impossible. Or, as Kant claims, since we know ethics is possible since we sometimes act in ways that are contrary to our desires, we must have free will. Kant thus uses the possibility of ethical behavior to prove that we have free will because it is only if we have free will that ethics is possible. Of course, sometimes my desires coincide with what is right to do. However, we are required not simply to act in accordance with moral laws; but out of moral duty. If I am acting in accordance with my duties, but am not motivated by the moral law, I am still not acting freely because my actions are determined by the laws of psychology. We don’t simply have to do what’s right but do it for the right reasons. If we give to charity because it makes us feel good, it has no moral worth. If we help someone out of sympathy, it has no moral worth. These are each motives that are determined by our desires, according to Kant. Of course, when our duties coincide with our desires, it is often difficult to determine whether we are acting out of duty or not. (If I promise someone to do something that I really want to do, it may be impossible to determine whether I am doing it because of my promise or because I want to do it. This is not a problem with Kant’s theory. It is just that in some situations, it is impossible to determine if my actions actually count as being moral.) Now, Kant doesn’t mean that we each make our own rules. He believes that we are required to make our rules according to reason, so that all rational beings will make the same rules, otherwise our rules would be governed by our desires. In other words, while we may all have different desires, moral rules are determined by whether we can universalize them, that is, whether we could will them to be universal moral principles without contradiction. Take the rule that you should keep your promises, except when the results of doing so leads to bad consequences. Kant says that this is contradictory because it undermines the practice of making promises. Who would accept promises from someone who you know is likely to break them if they are not advantageous? Likewise, to say that you shouldn’t steal, unless it works out better for everyone to steal in this case, undermines property rights. So, Kant believes that it is never right to steal or lie or cheat or break promises. Acting differently leads us straight into utilitarianism. However, as a result, Kant’s thinking can lead to morally horrendous consequences, which he, of course, would advise us to ignore. In the 1960s movie Dr. Strangelove, a naval officer discovers the code that will prevent the destruction of the world. He needs to call his superiors with the information and all that is available is a payphone, requiring 10 cents to operate, which he doesn’t have. (It’s the 1960s, cell phones didn’t exist and there were payphones everywhere.) He orders a sergeant to shoot the lock off of a coin box on a Coke machine to get the money he needs. However, the Sergeant is a Kantian, who replies: “I can’t do that. It’s the property of the Coca Cola company.” Kant would argue that it is never right to steal, even if the whole world is about to be destroyed. If you promise to take a package on board a plane and discover that it has a bomb in it, then you are still morally required to keep your promise and carry the package onto the plane. If telling the truth to someone would hurt their feelings, you are still required to tell the truth, even if that would destroy your friendship. These seem to be morally counter-intuitive actions. However, what Kant would say is that if you make exceptions to property laws, to promises, to lying, you undermine the entire practice. You are basically saying that you should obey property laws, keep promises, and tell the truth only when there are no bad consequences. However, that means that instead of looking at the motive for an action, you are looking at the consequences. From being a deontologist (acting according to duty) you are transformed into a consequentialist, a utilitarian. On the other hand, Kant is able to explain why we should not kill an innocent healthy man to harvest his organs. It is because everyone has to be considered an end in themselves. We should always act as if by our actions the motive of our actions would become a universal law. This is another way of saying that we should always act on principle and that principle is what duty requires of us. We may never be sure of achieving our results but acting out of duty assures us that whatever the consequences we will be acting morally. If we are using people for our own ends without considering their humanity, we are reducing them to objects to be used for our own purposes, which can never be moral. Moral law requires that we always treat human beings as human. Kantian ethics provides a basis for the claim that it is immoral for men to simply use them to meet their own desires, that it is immoral for men to objectify women by commenting on their bodies. Kant’s theory, in other words, explains the sanctity of the individual in ways that utilitarianism can’t. One further problem arises when our duties conflict. Suppose I promise my friend that I will hide him in my house and not tell anyone. Someone comes to the door and asks if he is there. Either I must break my promise or lie, both of which are immoral. The editors mention W. D. Ross, a deontologist, who has a solution to this problem, although Kant doesn’t discuss it. Ross, though, is an intuitionist, claiming that we can intuit which takes priority. This, though, is something Kant would reject. He would say that what is needed is some rule that would allow us to determine priorities.

Week 6: Virtue Ethics Virtue ethics is derived from Aristotle, who was a student of Plato. While Plato provided some of the basis for Catholic and later Protestant theology through the thought of St. Augustine, Aristotle became the philosopher of the Catholic Church through the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. By the time of the Enlightenment, Aristotle had been thoroughly rejected by secular thinkers and eventually replaced in ethical thinking by Kant and Mill. Virtue ethics was revived in the 1970s by Alasdair MacIntyre in a book called After Virtue, in which he criticized contemporary moral theory, arguing that it was incoherent, and that we needed to return to Aristotle in order to make sense of moral reasoning. While utilitarianism and Kantian deontology provide simple rules for deciding on moral actions (always maximize happiness, always act out of duty), virtue ethics claims that we need to begin with a concept of the good for human beings. That is, we need to define what makes a good life for a human being before we can decide on right actions. Virtue ethics is based on the claim that moral decisions are too complex to be captured by a simple formula. Both utilitarianism and Kantian deontology would approve of charity. However, the issue is: how much charity is a reasonable amount for an individual to give and how should charitable donations be apportioned among the recipients? No formula can give you the answer to these questions. They are a question of judgment, something that only a wise, virtuous person could answer. And reasonable people might disagree on how much charity is the right amount for a particular individual. Virtue ethics has immediate application in professional ethics, e.g., medical ethics, nursing ethics, business ethics, since it asks the question of what are the moral virtues necessary to be a good nurse, a good doctor, a good businessperson, etc.? Virtue ethics claims that rather than asking about the greatest happiness of the greatest number or whether I could universalize my maxim, the question I should be asking when treating patients or clients is: What would a good nurse do in this situation? What would a good social worker do in this situation? A good nurse or social worker is someone who has the appropriate virtues, which lead to sound judgments in each situation. You may be wondering why nursing schools want students to take a course in ethics. It is because they believe that the type of training that you receive in a course in ethics will help you develop the intellectual and moral virtues that will encourage you to act in accordance with professional ethics as a nurse. Both utilitarianism and deontology, as we saw, can, on occasion, lead to actions with horrendous consequences that most of us would find ethically unacceptable. Virtue ethics, because it looks at things case by case, can avoid this. A good nurse or social worker would never choose a path that would lead to horrendous consequences. Virtue ethics recognizes the complexity of moral issues and how sound judgment is needed in each case. Just as there are qualities that define a good nurse, Aristotle argues that there are qualities that make someone a good human being. These qualities are what he calls virtues (or in Greek, arête----excellences). The good life for a human being is one in which we develop our character, so that we make wise decisions. That is what Aristotle calls a happy life. While this may seem to be very much like utilitarianism, Aristotle has a very different concept of happiness (Eudaimonia, which is sometimes translated as wellbeing). We can see this from the fact that Aristotle claims that pleasures, in the right amount, are a part of happiness, not happiness itself, as in utilitarianism. We tend to associate happiness with a feeling. However, the ancient Athenian lawmaker, Solon, said “Call no man happy until he is dead.” Now, he did not mean that life is so bad that we are better off dead. He was claiming that we could not evaluate a person’s life until after they were dead, that we had to see a person’s entire life before we could say whether they had a happy life or not. Aristotle would agree. It is the very nature of life that pleasure is episodic, that we have pleasurable and unpleasant periods in our lives. Are we to evaluate our life based on the quantity of pleasure we had over the course of our lifetime (minus the unpleasant times)? Consider the ending of the movie Saving Private Ryan. The dying Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) tells Ryan (Matt Damon) to “earn it.” Returning to Normandy and looking at the graves of his fallen comrades as an old man, a tearful Ryan asks his wife: “Did I lead a good life?” He is not asking whether he lead a life devoted to duty or whether he had more pleasure than pain in his life, but whether he lead the type of life that would justify the sacrifice of the lives of all of these men. This is virtue ethics. It’s a Wonderful Life, is an extended argument that the good life is one of service to your community, not fame, fortune, or individual pleasure. Aristotle would argue that the happy life is not necessarily a life of pleasure, although pleasure is a part of the good life. In fact, a life devoted solely to pleasure would be considered by Aristotle, as it was by Mill, a life more suitable to a pig. Given the fact that human beings have a faculty of reason and emotional needs, the good life for a human being has to be defined in terms that will include more than physical pleasures. That would include for Aristotle civic virtues, since we are according to his analysis in the book The Politics political animals. However, there is some debate about what is to count as a virtue, dependent on the analysis of human nature. Within Catholicism, the life of a monk is considered to be ideal, to be the best life for a human being. Yet, that life is devoted to avoiding physical pleasures altogether. Aristotle would argue for the balanced life, a life that fulfilled every aspect of the human personality in the right proportions. Aristotle argues that being moral is like forming a habit, that we need to develop our character so that we habitually perform the right act. Now how do we know which is the right act to perform? Aristotle would say that we could look to role models. (What would Jesus do?) However, it is also by learning from experience. The right action for Aristotle is always a mean between two extremes. Take courage, which is the example that Aristotle uses, and which might be considered a virtue in almost all societies. Aristotle argues that courage is a mean between foolhardiness and cowardice. The virtuous person is one who knows the proper amount for him/herself. What would be courage for one person might be foolhardiness for another. In other words, what is right and proper for one person may not be right or proper for another. So, being ethical, acting in a virtuous manner, requires the development of good judgement, or in other words, practical reason. Being moral is more than just developing habitual behaviors. We need to develop the intellectual abilities to determine what counts as the proper amount. This creates a problem for virtue ethics, because virtue ethics doesn’t actually tell us what to do in any particular case. As I mentioned above, being charitable is usually considered a virtue; but exactly how much should I give to be a charitable person, and which charities should I favor? The answer to this question is a matter of judgment. But that means that reasonable people might disagree. So, there is no firm answer to the question, which means that the flexibility of virtue ethics that allows us to avoid the horrendous consequences that follow from some judgments using deontology and utilitarianism can actually turn out to be a problem for the theory. How much sacrifice should I make of things that I love to be charitable? In the movie Schindler’s List, Schindler is concerned that he did not do enough to save Jewish lives; but how do we determine how much is enough? Should Schindler be considered a traitor to his country, and thus lacking in virtue? Do we have to live up to the lives of saints in order to be said to have led a good life? This bring up another problem, defining the virtues, which may, after all, differ from society to society. A Nazi society may value following orders and obeying the will of the Leader, who embodies the will of the German nation. After the war, these were considered to be character faults which did not excuse concentration camp guards who murdered innocent people. Chastity is a virtue for Catholic priests and is also considered a virtue for unmarried people within Christianity. However, many people today would disagree. Confucian virtues were criticized by many in contemporary China as being more suitable to a hierarchical feudal society, than to a modern socialist society. Also, there is the problem alluded to by Kant. Courage in an evil person should not be considered a virtue. Bill Maher, a TV personality, incurred the wrath of the public when he criticized people for calling the terrorists who flew into the World Trade Towers cowards. He said that they were courageous, misguided, but courageous. He did not mean to imply that they had acted in a virtuous way, but that is the way people took it. Also, there is the problem of the conflict between virtues. If loyalty is a virtue, it may come into conflict with the virtue of justice. And there is always the problem of conflicting loyalties. If a doctor makes a mistake, should the nurse be loyal to the doctor, to the patient, to the hospital? Then, there is the question of whether developing my character is good only for my personal happiness or whether it is something that is good for society? It seems intuitively obvious that a society of people with good characters would bring about a good society. However, it is possible that focusing on character development might lead people to think more about themselves than others, although as I noted Aristotle considers playing a role in the life of your community to be a virtue. Also, if we look at the Trolley Problem, Utilitarianism and Kantianism give different, but definitive answers to the problem---pull the switch and don’t pull the switch respectively. Virtue Ethics does not give a definitive answer. It may be argued that it is virtuous to pull the switch and virtuous to refrain from pulling the switch. While you are busy debating what a good person would do under these circumstances, the trolley would already have run over the five people on the track. So, the argument against Virtue Ethics is that it is actually useless in guiding our ethical actions. On the other hand, it could be argued that virtue ethics gives us the flexibility to hand these sorts of situations that is lacking in utilitarianism and deontology. Some people in the class noted that there is more to leading a good life than leading a virtuous life. Aristotle would agree. He would say that you need friends, a moderate amount of wealth, a relatively long life, the ability to take part in the life of your community, among others. If you are born into a society that discriminates against you, that falsely imprisons you, that condemns you to abject poverty, that condemns you to an early death it may be impossible for you to lead a good life. However, that does not mean that there is that there is no such thing as a good life for a human being, only that such a life is not possible for some people. Finally, as the textbook notes, virtue comes from the Latin word for man. Aristotle believed that men were superior to women in such ways that women benefited from being ruled by men. Clearly, in a situation like this, the virtues associated with womanhood would be different than those associated with manhood. Feminist ethics claims that male virtues have been incorporated into what seem like neutral ethical theories, making women appear to be less virtuous. We turn to that argument next week.

Week 7: Care Ethics The editors define feminism as a movement that seeks justice for women and combats sexism. However, that would make everyone a feminist. After all, who would be in favor of sexism and injustice for women? In fact, there are many different feminisms, because there are many different conceptions of what justice demands and about what constitutes sexism. There are equality feminists, who are seeking to get greater representation of women in the professions and equal pay for equal work. However, they are often criticized by socialist feminists, who claim that while this is good for upper middle class women, it ignores the needs of working class and poor women, and argue that women can only achieve equality under a socialist society that eliminates, or at least minimizes, class differences. There are Third World Feminists who argue that other feminists have overlooked the problems facing women of color. Equality feminists are also criticized by difference feminists, who argue that men and women are fundamentally different in the way that they think and in their emotional lives. These are the feminists who have developed the theory of Care Ethics, which we are discussing this week. Finally, there are the radical feminists, who believe that the fundamental problem in society is that it is patriarchal, and it is necessary to overthrow all patriarchy and hierarchies to liberate women (and men). Within the radical feminists, there are also the lesbian feminists (not all lesbians are lesbian feminists), who argue that women need to separate from men and form their own culture, because men will never change. Carol Gilligan was a student of Harvard psychology professor Lawrence Kohlberg, who was trying to do for moral reasoning what Jean Piaget did for the development of logical reasoning in children. Piaget argued that children go through a number of stages before they arrived in late childhood at logical reasoning. Likewise, Kohlberg argued that children go through a number of stages of moral reasoning before they arrive at mature moral reasoning. The question, of course, is what is to count as mature moral reasoning. For Kohlberg, it was the justice centered reasoning found in Kantian deontology. The test he used to determine developmental level was to ask children whether a man should steal a drug his wife needed to stay alive, if he didn’t have the money to pay for it. The “correct” Kantian answer was, of course, “it is never right to steal.” However, girls more often than boys tried to find a way out of the dilemma by negotiating with the druggist. This was considered to be a lower level of moral development by Kohlberg. Some students in this class tried to deny the results, and there are some criticisms of the experimental design made by psychologists, claiming that thinking does not vary between men and women, but on an individual basis. If that were true, sociology, which is based on patterns of behavior, would be out of business. The differences were pronounced enough in her studies, though, for Gilligan to begin to question the standards being used to judge moral development. Even though they seemed to be impartial, and Kantian ethics prides itself on impartiality, Gilligan believed that the standards encoded male forms of thinking. In her book, In a Different Voice, Gilligan argued that women’s voices have been left out of the ethical debate, and that they offer an important addition and corrective to standard ethical thinking. Nel Noddings claims that contrary to what Mill and Kant believe, ethics is derived from caring relationships. We are not individuals separated from one another by rights and duties. We are constantly in relationships with other people. We are parents and children, teachers and students, members of communities in our neighborhoods, cities, states, and countries. Ethics must begin from this interconnectedness from the perspective of caring relationships, which is similar to what Aristotle claims. This is often forgotten by ethicists like Mill and Kant, whom Noddings sees as representing a male perspective. This argument is further developed by Annette Baier in our textbook. Even if you do not think that men and women think differently about ethics, there is a difference between a Care ethics and Kantian ethics. Nobody except Kant (I hope) would say that it is ethical to allow your wife to die because you are too poor to afford the medicine that would cure her, which provides a challenge to Kantian ethics. There are a variety of explanations for why women may view ethical problems differently than men. From a Freudian perspective, there is a different relationship between a man and his mother, than between a woman and her mother. Men, when they grow up, have to learn to separate themselves emotionally from their mothers, their first love objects, according to Freud, so that they can successfully have romantic relationships with other women, while women do not. Women have to identify with their mother. Those favoring a social conditioning model claim that women are often placed in positions where they are lacking in power and have to learn to negotiate in order to successfully meet their needs. In addition, women are often dealing with children, which also calls upon emotional sensitivity to others. Whatever the cause, women are often required to develop negotiation skills and exhibit an emotional sensitivity that encourages them to address moral problems in ways that go beyond simple issues of justice. Justice Ethics, Annette Baier argues, is designed for relationships between equals. In the example used by Kohlberg, it is assumed that the buyer and seller have equal standing, that the impoverished husband has equal standing to the druggist. The writer Anatole France once said that “The law in all its majesty prohibits both the rich man and the poor man from sleeping under the bridge,” which ignores the fact that the rich man has a nice house to sleep in, while the poor man may have no other place to sleep. If the druggist has a monopoly on access to needed drugs, then the situation is not one of equality between buyer and seller, and feminist ethics calls upon us to rethink the morality of the situation in light of this inequality, possibly suggesting a redesign of institutions that give one person control over the life and death of others. The Kantian language of rights, Baier argues, is inadequate to comprehend what is required of us. Likewise, Baier points to Gilligan’s claim that the language of rights is inadequate to explain the abortion controversy. Margaret Olivia Little, for example, whom we have not read, argues that to really understand the abortion decision, we have to understand the choices facing women who are pregnant and the questions they might ask, such as should I give birth to a child without a reliable partner? Without the income to support the child adequately? Without a support system in place? Should I care more about my plans for the future? On the other side, there is the question of whether I can abandon my unborn child? Would the decision to abort haunt me for the rest of my life? If I did have the child, would I be able to give it up for adoption, if that was the best alternative for the child? (We will read a feminist analysis of abortion similar to Little’s later in the semester.) These questions about the morality of abortion go way beyond questions of rights. They are derived from a world in which people are in relationships with others and have to think and care about others. This is very different than questions of autonomy, which Kant thinks of as essential to ethical thinking. He envisions a world in which there are independent autonomous individuals each interacting with other independent autonomous individuals, rather than individuals who find themselves in relationships that they did not choose, relationships of mother or father and child, spouse, brother and sister, neighbors, fellow citizens etc.---interdependent, rather than independent. The fact that we find ourselves already in relationships, feminist ethics claims, means that the autonomous individual is a fiction, and that ethics must be rethought to reflect real life situations. Finally, the Kantian vision of individuals parallels that of Aristotle, and most previous (male, of course) philosophers in finding that the function of intellect and reasoning is to discipline the unruly emotions. For Kant, remember, it is our desires that lead us away from acting morally, while it is intellect that determines our duty. This is what leads Aristotle to claim that men should rule women because men are more rational, while women are more emotional. Baier challenges that valuation of reason over emotions, arguing that what is needed is not the suppression of emotions, but the training of emotions to be sensitive and caring towards the needs of others. It is probably no accident that in her discussion of contemporary philosophers who have criticized Kantian ethics, Baier includes a number of people who have been responsible for the revival of virtue ethics in the latter half of the 20th century. There are definite similarities between feminist ethics and virtue ethics, despite Aristotle’s critique of the emotions. In fact, feminist ethics could be taken to be asking, how would a virtuous woman (or man) act in these circumstances? And then using that to decide how a virtuous person should act. Thus, feminism might be seen as rethinking the nature of the virtues. This leads to one of the criticisms of feminist ethics and difference feminism. Doesn’t difference feminism just accept Aristotle’s claim that women are less rational and more emotional than men, except for changing the valuations so that emotions are more important than reason? Equality feminists and Socialist feminists would argue that women might be more sensitive to their feelings; but that when it comes to reason, women are just as rational as men. The other criticism is that like virtue ethics, Care Ethics doesn’t really tell us what to do. It appears to be able to justify any number of courses of action. And in the case of the druggist, while it might lead to important changes in healthcare coverage in the long run, it doesn’t tell us what the poor man is supposed to do in this situation, if the druggist refuses to negotiate with him. Also, from a Kantian perspective, you can’t just add a Care Ethics to supplement it. Kant would say that this undermines his entire project of making moral judgments on the basis of reason, rather than the emotions. Once one adds emotions to the mix, acts no longer have moral worth for Kant. The whole point of Kantian ethics is to eliminate emotions from ethical reasoning. So, from a Kantian perspective, the attempt to blend the two theories doesn’t lead to a richer theory, but to an incoherent ethical theory. Finally, a number of students confused the issue of feminist ethics with the so-called double standard. Feminists, of course, oppose the double standard that says that there are different behaviors that are right for men and women. However, that is not at issue here. Here they are arguing for an ethical system that would apply equally to men and women. They are claiming that previous ethical theories have not been as morally neutral as they claim, that they have, in fact, privileged male forms of reasoning over female forms. Here, they are trying to alter ethical reasoning patterns, not overcome differences in what is considered to be ethical for men and women.