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ethics_overview.pptxEthics: A Brief Introduction
Our objective:
Understand the nature of ethics and acquaint ourselves with several ethical theories
Learn to distinguish between moral and non-moral issues
Learn to reason and evaluate issues from an ethical perspectie
Ethics is the branch of philosophy concerned
with questions of right and wrong:
What makes an action morally good, right?
Where do ethics come from?
How do we distinguish between moral and non-moral actions?
Is ethics simply human creation, or is there some non-human basis?
Are there situations in which one can disregard one’s commitment to moral obligations-not to lie or cheat, keep one’s promise?
Ethical theories:
Consequentialism Non-Consequentialism
Utilitarianism Duty ethics (Kant)
Virtue ethics (Aristotle)
Care ethics (feminist approaches)
Social Contract Theory: “Morality consists in the set of rules, governing behavior, that rational people will accept, on the condition that others accept them as well.”
Utilitarianism
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Utilitarianism
The rightness or wrongness of actions is determined by the results they produce.
A consequentialist theory, it is less concerned with personal character or motives but looks instead to the consequences of decisions that are made.
Consequences are important and can be measured in terms of utility, according to philosophers.
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved
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Utilitarian Approaches
Maximize human welfare?
A utilitarian analysis looks at benefits and harms for not just individuals and everyone affected by the decision, in this case, not to vaccinate.
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Greatest Happiness Principle:
This principle holds that "actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure."
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Bentham
Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832); social reformer under an extreme English legal system.
To Bentham, the measure of right and wrong is discovered by assessing the greatest happiness of the greatest number.
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Bentham
Bentham believed:
that we should look to the total amount of human happiness generated by any human project,
that we all count equally,
and that our choices are equally valid.
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved
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Mill
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873); strong believer in individual rights and an early advocate of women’s suffrage.
Wrote Utilitarianism, a short but powerful statement of the doctrine.
“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”
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Mill
Higher and lower pleasures matter critically to Mill so knowledge of happiness relies on being able to discern experiences relative to one another.
Act and Rule Utilitarianism
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Act utilitarians believe that whenever we are deciding what to do, we should perform the action that will create the greatest net utility. In their view, the principle of utility—do whatever will produce the best overall results—should be applied on a case by case basis. The right action in any situation is the one that yields more utility than other available actions.
Act Utilitarians
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Rule utilitarians adopt a two part view that stresses the importance of moral rules. According to rule utilitarians, a) a specific action is morally justified if it conforms to a justified moral rule; and b) a moral rule is justified if its inclusion into our moral code would create more utility than other possible rules (or no rule at all). According to this perspective, we should judge the morality of individual actions by reference to general moral rules, and we should judge particular moral rules by seeing whether their acceptance into our moral code would produce more well-being than other possible rules.
Rule Utilitarians
Peter Singer
Peter Singer (1946- ); a leading proponent of preference utilitarianism.
Singer believes that the ethical project has to begin with the belief that we cannot favor ourselves and that our interests are inevitably linked with those of others.
As a result, we must take into account how our actions affect everyone potentially affected by them.
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Challenges to Utilitarianism
Problems with calculation
Autonomy
Impartiality
Probabilities
Defining Happiness
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Summary
Several advantages to adopting a utilitarian approach:
Gives us the possibility of coming to definitive answers to moral questions;
It is straightforward and clear;
It relies on results that are open to public scrutiny.
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Summary
However, because it relies on outcomes, it is only as strong as the methods we have to judge them.
There is difficulty in calculating utility functions and trying to weigh them.
Because they are based on consequences, utilitarian theories require us to justify acts and thus provide a strong basis for individual choice and social policy.
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Welfare System - Help for US Citizens
Federally funded and governed US welfare began in the 1930's during the Great Depression. The US government responded to the overwhelming number of families and individuals in need of aid by creating a welfare program that would give assistance to those who had little or no income.
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Case Study:
Ethical dilemma surrounding Edward Snowden’s actions.
Did Edward Snowden act ethically when he leaked NSA secrets to the press?
Did he have an overarching duty towards the security of the United States or to defend our civil liberties, as he claims (some may disagree with the premise that he is defending civil liberties at all)? Is leaking an ethical way to defend civil liberties? If not, what are other ways?
