Moral Decision Process Flashcards
Rule Utilitarianism
An act is morally right if it complies with rules that, if everyone follows, will lead to the most happiness. This avoids objections of Act Util. (The rule forbidding torture of children will clearly cause more happiness is everyone followed it than the rule allowing torture of children). Also, we don’t need to work out the consequences of each act in turn to see if it is right.
Objections:
1) Rule utilitarianism amounts to rule-fetishism. If breaking a rule would create more happiness, we should be able to break it.
Preference utilitarianism
Singer: We shouldn’t maximise pleasure, but focus on the satisfaction of people’s preferences. It is easier to know whether someone’s preferences have been satisfied. It can be right to satisfy someone’s preferences even if they don’t know, e.g. I can want you to look after my ant farm after I die. You should still look after my ants, not kill them, even though I cannot gain any pleasure for this.
Objections:
1) Kant: Happiness (or satisfying people’s preferences) is not always morally good. For example, the happiness child abusers get from hurting children is morally bad. There must be some other standard than happiness for what is morally good.
Deontology
Moral rights, duties and principles (not based on consequences) are required to make ethical decisions.
Ross: Self-evident 7 types of duty - fidelity, reparation, gratitude, justice, beneficence, self-improvement and non-maleficence.
Aquinas: We know what is good through human insight.
Kant: Moral principles can be derived from practical reason alone.
Whenever we make a decision, we act on a maxim. Maxims are Kant’s version of intentions.
Morality is a set of laws - rules, principles - that are the same for everyone and that apply to everyone.
Categorical Imperative - ‘Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.’ ‘Never treat a person as a means to an end.’
Three Postulates -
Autonomy (Power of a priori reasoning),
Immortality (The reward for a dutiful life),
God (The source of the objective law).
Motivation
At the heart of deontology is the idea of ‘good will’, a will that intends and chooses what is right BECAUSE it is right - one’s duty - to do so. The clearest case of this is when we do something we don’t want to do, because we feel we ought to.
Kant: Analogy of the 2 shopkeepers who both give the correct change.
1) First is honest because he is scared of being caught if he tries to cheat his customers.
2) Second is honest because it is morally right to be honest.
First shopkeeper doesn’t act from duty, the second does.
Objection:
Many philosophers object to the idea that we should be so concerned with ‘doing the right thing’. Surely, if I do something nice for you, like visit you in hospital, because I like you, that is a morally good action. Putting duty above feelings in our motives is somehow inhuman.
Kant: He is not trying to stop us from being motivated by our feelings. When we are choosing what to do, how we feel should not be as important as what is morally right to do i.e. you only need to be willing to refuse to help your friend if that involved doing something morally wrong.
Practical Wisdom/Virtue Theory
Practical wisdom (Phronesis): The capacity to make informed, rational judgements without recourse to a formal decision procedure.
Knowledge of what to do is so practical that it can’t be taught, but requires experience. To know what is good, you must first acquire virtues of character. It is possible for everyone to achieve Eudaemonia.
Aristotle: Golden Mean. Excess vs. Vice. Certain emotions are normal under different circumstances. Knowledge of how to react to different situations is learnt from experience.
Objections:
1) Relativistic: We cannot agree what the key virtues are, they differ from culture to culture e.g. Al Qaeda thinks it is virtuous to be a suicide bomber. One person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter and hero.
2) Conflicting virtues: What happens when virtues conflict, for example, when honesty and kindness conflict, or honesty and loyalty to one’s friends?
Act Utilitarianism
Bentham: ‘Greatest happiness principle’. Hedonic Calculus. An action is right if it leads to the greatest happiness of all those it affects, i.e. if it maximises happiness. Otherwise, the action is wrong. Happiness is the sole criterion.
Objections:
1) How do we know which accounts on will cause the most happiness?
2) No type of action is ruled out as immoral. If torturing a child produces the most happiness, then it is right to torture a child.
3) Too demanding. If I buy a CD, I could have given the money to charity to give people food, which would technically create more happiness. People are always going to need food more than I need music.
4) People need rules! If you allow people to lie, steal etc and trust their judgement that they won’t do it, this could become too great a temptation.
