LDSP midterm Flashcards
Value Theory
- All branches of moral philosophy, social and political philosophy, aesthetics, and sometimes feminist philosophy and the philosophy of religion
- A broad category that includes
ethics
-Considerations of
Good, better, best
Right, wrong, good, bad,
Where values come from,
Intrinsic and instrumental value,
Monism and pluralism,
Relationship between what is valuable to what we ought to do
Ethics
-Moral philosophy
-Involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior
Various topics:
Good, bad, right, wrong
Ought and ought not
Moral beauty
Character
Virtue, vice
Moral dilemmas
Flourishing, suffering
Rights, what is ‘owed’ to one another
Freedom
Natural law
Laws of nature pertaining to humans
Metaethics and its various theories
Meaning of moral language
Moral realism
-Moral facts that are true
Moral Anti-Realism
-There are no objective moral values
- different views of Moral Anti-Realism
—- Nihilism
——— There are no objective values because there are no moral truths; Nothing matters
—-Skepticism
——— No moral beliefs are certain
—-Non-cognitivism
———Moral statements are not true or false because they aren’t propositions
——— different kinds
————–Emotivism
——————-Moral statements are expressions of one’s emotions toward a thing
————–Prescriptivism
——————-Moral statements are expressions of direction for someone else’s behavior
—-Relativism
———Cultural relativism
————–Moral values are relative to different societies
———Subjectivism
—————Moral values are relative to individuals
*Normative ethics
–Moral rules or systems
–How we ought to act
–Deontology/Kantian
—–Duty
—–Regardless of consequences
–Virtue ethics
—–traits/virtues
—–Emphasizes the virtues, or moral characters
–Consequentialism
—–Results of your actions
—–Don’t think about the actions
Consequentialism
Results of your actions
Don’t think about the actions
Deontology
Duty
Regardless of consequences
Judge the morality on the basis of choices made, not the end results
Is opposed to consequentialism
Some choices cannot be justified by their effects
No matter how good their consequences, some choices are morally forbidden
Virtue Ethics
traits/virtues
Emphasizes the virtues, or moral charactres
Stabe qualities of your person
To be a good person is to have certain qualities and perform certain actions and not to have certain qualities or perform certain actions
E.g. Plato, Aristotle, Anscombe, Annas, Miller
Applied Ethics
Medical ethics
Business ethics
Environmental ethics
Sexual ethics
Leadership ethics
Criteria - to be an applied ethical issue, it must be:
Controversial
–Significant disagreement
Distinctly moral
Examples
–Abortion
–Infanticide
–Animal rights
–Environmental concerns
–Capital punishments
–Nuclear war
Plato
429-347
Wrote about everything
Wealthy Athenian
Founded the Academy
Wrote in dialogue
Philosphy is a living conversation
That’s what Socrates said
Socrates’ was strongly opposed to written philosophy
Socrates’ is the lead interlocutor in all but one of Plato’s dialogues
Plato’s views don’t equal Socrates’ views
Euthyphro
Piety
–Reverence, purity
First definition
–Piety is doing what I’m doing right now
Second definition
–Piety is what’s pleasing to the gods
Third def
–Something that’s loved by all the gods
Wrong
–Is it pious because the gods love it
Or do the gods love it because it’s pious
Foruth def
–Kind of justice that cares to the gods
Kind of justice that cares to the gods
Wrong
–Can’t take care of the gods
Values – Rokeach
(1) the total number of values a person possesses is relatviely small
(2) all men everywhere possess the same values to differrent degrees
(3) values can be organized into value systems
(4) the antecedents of human values can be traced to culturee, society, and its institutions, and personality
Source of humans values
(5) the consequences of human values will be manifested in virtually all phenomena that social scientists might consider worth investigating and understanding
——————————————–
(1) Intuitively appealing yet capable of operational definition
Common sense
Come up with a definition that can be measured
(2) value concepts should be distinguishable from other concepts (like attitude)
Difference between value and social norm
Value
Something you value
Beliefs
Social norm
Something society values
Actions
What you do on a collective basis
(3) it should avoid employing circular, undefined terms (ought)
(4) the study of values should, itself, not be a value-laden inquiry
Individual and supraindividual
Supraindividual =df more than one person
Supraindividual level
–Guide decisions about organizational goals, allocation of resources, formation of new policies
Individual level
–Help us to have priorities, make decisiosn about occupational goals and interests, how to spend money, for whom to vote
Terminal and instrumental
Terminal values
–goal
Instrumental
–means to that end
Value hierarchies
Organizations of values
Permit us to resolve the conflict
Moral Lives of Babies
Children are born with an innate sense of morality
–Limitations
—-We and they
——It’s groupish
It groupish
Local
Show preference for people who look like them and those who are infront of them
What difficulty peersisted in pursuing these questions in the lab?
Difficulty of testing
No language access
Behvaiorally limited because they can’t fully control their limbs
How did they get around these limitations?
Babies can control their eyes
What babies ar ecapable of
Mimesis
–Immitate
Emotional exchange
–Smiling at someone when they smile at you
Emotional contagion
–If someone’s sad, they get sad
They have some grasp of how people think and why they act as they do, anticipating that people will “move rationally in accordance with their beleifs and desires”
When slightly older, they try to assuage people’s pain
Helping behavior
Toddlers help without any prompting, encouragment, or reward
What babies are capable of, morally speaking
Basic understanding of right and wrong
–Show pereference for good
Agents, subjects, patients
Agents
- Free will to act on morals
Subjects
–Can be held responsible
–Like a toddler/kids, dog
–Not held responsible like an adult would be
–Lack the freedom of robust agency
Patients
– Passive
– But can suffer harm
– Like infants
Values universalism
Even if there is common ground, there is also some not-common ground, which seems to be the source of the conflict.
Two cultures can have common values, held in a different priority.
Two cultures can have common values but express them in different ways.
What we profess as our values and how we act often pull apart. These values may not be action-guiding.
Some values
Love
Truthfulness
Fairness
Freedom
Unity
Responsibility
Tolerance
Respect for life
Moral foundations theory
An explanation for why morality varies so much across cultures yet sitll shows many similarities and recurrent themes
-Care/Harm
—Kindness
-Fairness/Cheating
—Justice
-Loyality/Betrayal
-Authority/Subversion
-Sanctity/degradation
-Liberty/oppression
Relativism
-Denies that there is any such thing as absolute tuth or goodness and claims that all truth and goodness are relative to the person or group who believes it
-No universal truth
-No falsehood
Can’t be a relativist
Cultural relativism (conventionalism)
–Moral values are relative to different societies
Subjectivism
–Moral values are relative to individuals
Man is the measure
Nothing beyond experience
-I am the arbitrary of good and bad
Consequences of man is the measure
-Highlights the importance of sense perception
—-if i think the world is a certain way, it is
—-If you think the world is a certain way, it is
-Error is impossible
-False belief is impossible
-There is no public, common, or objective world
-There is nothing about which to agree or disagree
-There is no truth
Arguments against relativism
A relatviist cannot speak out any moral judgements, because they must admit that the same thing can be morally right and morally wrong at the same time
If moral relativism is argued in the name of tolerance, then tolerance is considered to be a superior or universal moral value
-Contradicts the very definition of moral relativism
There are some core values that have been accepted by all cultures
-Every society has some kind of rule to limit violence
We can justify our values (use caution)
-Some core values are intuitively obvious (intuition)
–Random torture is wrong
Self refuting
Views that seem like relativism that are not
Skepticism
-All beliefs are uncertain
-No belief is justified
-I don’t know
-Sometimes we’re attracted to skepticism if we believe people are too confident in the absolute truth of what they believe
-Skepticism does not deny that some beliefs are (absolutely) true, it denies only that we can ever be sure which beleifs these are
Different people can be justified in holding different beliefs
-Based on what you know, you might be justified in believing something, while someone else is jsutified in believing something else. Maybe you one of you is wrong, or it’s a situation with a common value, executed in a different way
-Ex. 18th century - when something burns, it loses a substanced called “phlogiston”
People sometimes hold conflicting beliefs without any of them being wholly mistaken because they see different aspects of the same reality
-Climbing a mountain image
Fallibilism
-We might always be mistaken in what we believe
-You might think something is true and be wrong about it. That’s fine. -That’s not relativism because there’s still an assumption of the truth of the matter
Close/open/fair mindedness
Close mindedness
-Don’t want your ideas challenged
Open mindedness
- Leave open the possibility of having new ideas challenged, not committed
Fair mindedness
-Receptive to new ideas, a just thinker, eager to listen to others
–This is a virtue (an excellence)
–Get it by practicing this
-This does NOT mean you have no commitments
*Leadership exceptionalism and norm differentiation
Leadership exceptionalism
-You’re special
–Rooted in person or position
Norm differentiation
- Allowed to do things that other people can’t
Justifications for norm-differentiation
because he has his own morality. (leadership as norm-differentiating)
because she does not care about morality. (leadership as amoral or potentially instrumental)
because he could. (leadership as power-conferring)
because she is special. (leadership as trait-dependent)
because we said he could. (leadership as consensual, to a certain extent)
because she had to. (leadership as responsive to necessity)
because he has special obligations to his group. (leadership as partial)
because it was for a higher cause. (leadership as impartial*)
Upbringing and leadership exceptionalism
Norm differentiation is caused by moral ignorance (for privileged) about the scope of morality
Morality and our natures (Kellerman)
we are not good, not strictly bad
Act on self interest
Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Machiavelli
Hobbes
- Humans are naturally savages
-subdued by social contract
Locke
- Humans have self preservation; and reason
- we are relatively peaceful
Rousseau
-amour de soi – self-love in terms of survival and comfort
-amour-propre – inherently relational self-love
- Humans in natural state are morally neutral and peaceful
-Mostly solitary individuals acting according to instincts (e.g. hunger) and desire for self-preservation.
Machiavelli
-Leadership - a tradeoff of freedom for security
- not naturally political
What motivates leadership
self interest
Character traits
Relatively Stable:
We exhibit these qualities over a period of time, not just once or twice or for a short season
Cross-situational consistency:
We have them across multiple situations
e.g. not just honest while paying your taxes but in nearly all situations
Dispositional:
To have a trait means to be disposed to act in accordance with that trait over time and across situations
Thresholds:
If we have a quality to a certain degree, we have that quality.
Normative
–Ought to be something
–Can change
Moral traits
–Emotions
Non-moral traits
–Non-emotional
–Intellectual virtues
Different kinds of traits
non-normative
- can’t change
Non-Character Traits
—a non-normative personality trait
—— like exoversion
Non-Personality Traits – non-psychological or dispositional
Ineffective versus unethical leadership
Ineffective leadership
—-Can’t get group goals accomplished
—-Failed to produce the desired change
—-Certain traits
Unethical leadership
—-Bad person
—-Violate normal norms
Fundamental attribution error
People fundamentally ignore or underestimate situational influences on others’ behavior
Immanuel Kant
Creator of Deontology
Comes from humble family
Deontology
We are morally obligted to act in accordance with a certain set of principles and rules regardless of outcome
We know these duties through reason
Supreme principle of morality
Categorical imperative
-Supreme principle of morality
Imperative
-A command
-2 kinds
–Hypothetical
—–Command conditionally on your having a relvant desire
–Categorical
—-Command unconditionally
Two kinds of imperatives
Hypothetical
—–Command conditionally on your having a relvant desire
Categorical
—-Command unconditionally
Perfect versus imperfect duties
Perfect duties
—–One must always do
Imperfect duties
—–One must not ignore but admits of multiple means of fulfillment
–2 types
—–Duty of self-improvement
—–Duty to aid others
3 versions of categorical imperative
Universal Moral Law
Treat people as Ends
—-Treat others and own self as ends
—–Individuals capabiltiy of leading life should be organized
Kingdom of Ends
—–Imaginary state whose laws protect individual autonomy
“War and Massacre” thesis
There are limits on what can be done to an enemy even its for the sake of overall good.
–Certain actions are forbidden even in war.
Consequences for leadership
Target of hostility and means of hostility
limits on what we can do in war, and who we can do it to
making decisions on the basis of the few or the many–how, in Nagel’s assessment–acting for the many results in inhuman actions
Failures of conception/willing
Failure of conception
—-It does not make sense rationally to make a particular maxim
—-strict/perfect duty
———lying
Failure of will
——Maybe we can think about it, rationally without contradiction, but we can’t will it. This means it can’t be a maxim either
——Braod/imperfect duty
