10: Three Classic Theories

Question 1

What are the three classic theories?

Answer 1

1. Aristotle’s virtue-based ethics
2. Kant’s duty-based ethics
3. Mill’s utilitarianism

Question 2

What is Aristotle’s chief work of ethics?

Answer 2

Nichomachean Ethics

Question 3

What is the function (end, aim, purpose) of the good according to Aristotle?

Answer 3

• “The good has roightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.”
• Happiness!
  
  • What is happiness?
    
    • “the many do not give the same account as the wise”
    • the answer varies

Question 4

Happiness depends on what your view of life is. What are the three conceptions/types of life?

Answer 4

1. Pleasure (the masses, the “vulgar”)
   
   • life of enjoyment
   • the sensual type of life
2. Honor (the wealthy)
   
   • political type of life
3. Man’s chief good (for Aristotle)
   
   • “leading a good life”
   • life of thought, contemplative life
   • in pursuit of knowledge

Question 5

What is man’s chief good for Aristotle?

Answer 5

• Happiness is “activity of soul in accordance with perfect virtue”
  
  • soul = that part of us that makes us capable to reason

Question 6

How is happiness achieved according to Aristotle?

Answer 6

• We use reason in order to discover what we OUGHT to do

Question 7

What are the requirements to achieving happiness?

Answer 7

• Some external goods
  
  • Necessities of life
    
    • shelter, food, clothing
• Action
  
  • practice something rather than receiving
  • doing just things, brave things, we become just and brave
• Use of reason
  
  • reason is the essence of the soul
  • • Virtue
  • two types

Question 8

What are the two kinds of virtue?

Answer 8

1. Intellectual virtue (“theoria”)
   
   1. Highest intellectual virtue is contemplation.
      
      • The desire to know for the sake of knowledge
   2. attained mainly through teaching
2. Moral virtue (“praxis”)
   
   1. they are determined by a rational principle
      
      1. “the golden mean”
   2. attained mainly through doing virtuous acts

Question 9

What is the golden mean?

Answer 9

• “The mean between the extremes”
  
  • between deficiency and excess, which are both vices
  • using reason to discover what the mean is
  • Fear: over confident/mean: courage/cowardice

Question 10

Who was Immanuel Kant?

Answer 10

• German
• Epistemology: Critique of Pure Reason
• deontological ethics (duty-based ethics)
  
  • Foundation of the metaphysic of morals

Question 11

What are duties?

Answer 11

• What is their ontological status?
  
  • It is some action I should but might not do.
• The is/ought problem:
  
  • It doesn’t follow that we ought to do something because they are done that way.
  • The fact that things are done one way does not follow that they are ought to be done that way.

Question 12

What is Kant’s understanding of duty?

Answer 12

• the moral worth of an action lies NOT in its expected effect, but from the duty upon which moral actions are engendered.
• two kinds of duties:
  
  • to ourselves
    
    • fulfill your potential
    • develop your faculties
    • secure one’s own happiness
  • to others
    
    • to keep our promises
    • to render assistance

Question 13

How do we determine our duties according to Kant?

Answer 13

• By religion? which one?
• By intuition? whose intuitions?
• By reason? Yes!
  
  • via reason each person can determine what are its duties.

Question 14

What is Kant’s rational principle?

Answer 14

• The Categorical Imperative
  
  • “act only on that maxim [rule of action] whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should be a universal law.”

Question 15

What are the two conditions of the categorical imperative?

Answer 15

• You should act in accordance with duty, and you know that doing such-and-such is your duty if and only if
  
  1. you are willing to allow everyone to do such-and-such
  2. you feel that doing such-and-such should be an unconditional universal law binding on the will of every rational person (you and they must do this)

Question 16

What, then, is a categorical imperative?

Answer 16

• A command which does possess universality, and as such, is not grounded upon subjective interests.
• A moral duty willed by a person for its own sake, not for the sake of the agent

Question 17

What is Kant’s hypothetical imperative?

Answer 17

• a command in the form of a hypothetical proposition (if… then), and is usually formulated for some specific reason.
• Kant does not consider such imperatives to be applicable to morality, since they may be predicated solely upon subjective inclinations, not universal duty.

Question 18

What are some problems of Kant’s categorical imperative?

Answer 18

1. All form of consequentialist thinking involve and implicit criticism of Kant because he simply ignored the consequences (which are irrelevant)
2. Categorical imperative is a purely formal principle, it fails to tell us what they should actually be.
3. Kant held that moral rules are absolutely binding in all circumstances
   
   1. Murderer is there to kill your friend. “Is your friend in the house?” What will you say?
   2. Kant says that you must tell the truth

Question 19

Who was John Stuart Mill?

Answer 19

• british
• political philosophy, logic, philosophy of science, ethics
• outspoken feminist
• essay “Utilitarianism” (1863)

Question 20

What is the rational principle in utilitarianism?

Answer 20

• GHP (greatest happiness principle)
  
  • “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.”

Question 21

What is happiness for utilitarians?

Answer 21

• a utility - names the positive effects of actions
  
  • the maximization of pleasure and the absence of pain

Question 22

What is the “quantitative” sense of “greatest happiness principle”?

Answer 22

1. Whose happiness matters? the individual
   
   1. No.
   2. What maximizes happiness to the greatest number of people. Your happiness is irrelevant.
2. “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness in the greatest number of people, and wrong as they tend to produce unhappiness in the greatest number of people.”

Question 23

What is the “qualitative” sense of “greatest happiness principle”?

Answer 23

• “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote the highest kinds of happiness in the greatest number of people, wrong as they tend to produce unhappiness in the greatest number of people.”
• “highest kinds of happiness” is not sensual happiness

Question 24

What are the two types of utilitarianism?

Answer 24

1. Act utilitarianism
2. Rule utilitarianism

Question 25

What is act utilitarianism?

Answer 25

• the view that we should think about actions one by one, consider the expected consequences of each action, and in light of the felicific calculus, perform the “act” that maximizes happiness for the greatest number of people.
• Problems?
  
  • takes too long
  • what happens if the majority is wrong?

Question 26

What is rule utilitarianism?

Answer 26

• the view that we should think about actions in terms of the consequences of adopting certain rules, and in light of the felicific calculus, act in accordance with the “rule” that maximizes happiness for the greatest number of people.