PHIL 440A ETHICS

Talbott, 5 credits

This course will focus on contemporary discussions of important issues in philosophical ethics. In the first half of the course, the main issue to be discussed will be: What are we doing when we make a moral judgment? This will lead to a discussion of the question: What are we doing when we make judgments about what it is rational to do? This will lead to a consideration of various types of moral and normative realism and anti-realism. In the second half of the course, we will discuss various substantive ethical theories, including utilitarian ethics, social contract ethics, virtue ethics, and feminist ethics. There will be a Midterm Exam and a Final Exam. Each exam will include an in-class portion and a take-home portion. The take-home portion will be a 5-page essay. No prerequisites, but PHIL 240 or at least one other course in philosophy is recommended. Meets I&S Requirement.

Texts: Louis P. Pojman, Ethical Theory (5th ed.) and a photocopied reader.

IMPORTANT TERMINOLOGY

NORMATIVE TERMS are terms that have ACTION-GUIDING [PRESCRIPTIVE/ PROSCRIPTIVE] force.

Some common normative terms are: ought; duty; obligation; permissible; and forbidden. When applied to actions, appropriate and inappropriate are normative terms. [Note that not all NORMATIVE terms are MORAL terms. For example, ought can be used in a NON-MORAL, PRUDENTIAL sense, as in: One ought to eat nutritious foods.]

NORMATIVE MORAL TERMS are NORMATIVE TERMS with MORAL ACTION-GUIDING force.

EVALUATIVE TERMS are terms that express approval or disapproval.

Some common evaluative terms are: good; bad; excellent; and awful. EVALUATIVE TERMS can express moral approval or disapproval, but can also express other types of non-moral approval or disapproval (e.g., The statement that apples taste good is a non-moral evaluative statement).

PURELY DESCRIPTIVE TERMS are terms that are NOT NORMATIVE and NOT EVALUATIVE.

PURELY DESCRIPTIVE STATEMENTS are statements that contain only PURELY DESCRIPTIVE terms (no NORMATIVE or EVALUATIVE terms).

NORMATIVE/EVALUATIVE STATEMENTS are statements that include at least one normative/evaluative term. For example, moral statements about what one ought or ought not to do (e.g., the statement that one ought not to steal or the statement that one ought to tell the truth) are NORMATIVE, because they contain the NORMATIVE term ought. [Note that not all normative statements are moral. See above, for an example of a normative prudential statement.]

[Note that Normative/Evaluative statements can contain SOME Purely Descriptive terms, but Purely Descriptive statements cannot contain ANY Normative/Evaluative terms.]

METAPHYSICS AND EPISTEMOLOGY

Metaphysics Deals With The Nature Of Reality--How Things Really Are.

Epistemology Addresses How We Can Have Knowledge Or Justified Beliefs.

Questions of Moral Metaphysics: Are there objective moral values? Are there universal moral truths?

Questions of Moral Epistemology: If there are objective moral values or universal moral truths, can we ever have moral knowledge or justified moral beliefs? If so, how?

A QUESTION OF MORAL METAPHYSICS

Can there be purely descriptive necessary and sufficient or even only sufficient conditions for moral wrongness (or rightness)?

Question: Wrong ó [PD] ?

[PD] à Wrong? Wrong à [PD]

Hume and Moore's answer: No.

Utilitarians' Answer: Yes

Consider Act Utilitarianism:

-(Maximizes Overall Utility) ó Wrong

Maximizes Overall Utility ó Right

The failure of utilitarianism has reinforced the view that there is no logical analysis of MORAL—or more generally, NORMATIVE—TERMS in purely descriptive terms.

MORAL EPISTEMOLOGY: TWO PARADIGMS FOR MORAL REASONING

1. TOP-DOWN REASONING:

Reasoning from Moral Norms or Principles and other Acceptable Premises to a Moral Judgment about a Particular Case (a Particular Moral Judgment).

For religious traditions with an infallible moral authority, all moral reasoning is Top-Down. Enlightenment philosophers assumed that all reasoning was Top-Down, from infallible premises. I refer to this model of reasoning as the Proof Paradigm.

2. BOTTOM-UP REASONING:

Begin with judgments about particular cases. Find the moral norms or principles that best EXPLAIN our particular moral judgments about actual and hypothetical cases. We don't prove anything, but rather try to figure out what it makes the most sense to believe.

Bottom-Up Act Utilitarianism

Maximizes Overall Utility [MOU] ó Right [R]

What is the status of this principle? For a bottom-up act utilitarian, it would be an explanatory principle. The bottom-up act utilitarian would ask us to think of acts that we consider right and acts that we consider wrong. Then s/he would point argue that act utilitarianism explains the difference between the two kinds of act, because the right acts are acts that maximize overall utility and the wrong ones are acts that do not.

EQUILIBRIUM MODEL OF REASONING

Equilibrium Reasoning is both Top-Down and Bottom-Up. In Equilibrium Reasoning, our main reason for accepting a moral principle is usually that it seems to provide a good explanation of particular cases. When we accept a moral principle on this basis, we can then reason Top-Down from that moral principle to a particular moral judgment, but the moral principle is not regarded as infallible. If we discover a particular moral judgment that the principle conflicts with, we must either give up the particular moral judgment or give up the principle. The decision about which to give up is based on what makes the most sense.

In this course we don't prove anything. We use equilibrium reasoning to try to find principles that explain our judgments about particular actual and hypothetical cases. When someone proposes such a principle, we consider its deductive implications and try to find counterexamples to it. If we decide that there is a counterexample to a proposed principle, we don't give up trying to find an adequate principle. We use counterexamples as clues to help us formulate better explanatory principles.

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