Philosopher's Guild: Everyone is Welcome to Gather and Discuss

[NkrumahWasRight Is Wrong]

I think it'd be a good idea to have a place to directly talk about philosophers, their philosophies and overall "schools of thought". Anything and everything goes but let's try to keep trolling to a minimum in here and discuss the merits of the philosophers and their work. I'll try to give a brief intro for those not familiar of certain things. If I bold and underline something, it denotes that the following will be a specific hypothetical that can be easily debated and are popular in philosophy.

Debates/opinions are encouraged. Most of the initial info will come from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy due to convenience and reliability. There is a lot to sift through but the bolded points help and obviously discussion need not necessarily start with Deontology v Consequentialism...I just wanted to post a huge outline for those not familiar at all or for those who need a slight sharpening of the swords. It is a central debate in philosophy, whether people are talking directly about philosophy or just their opinions on ethics and morals..

Deontology ​

"The word deontology derives from the Greek words for duty (deon) and science (or study) of (logos). In contemporary moral philosophy, deontology is one of those kinds of normative theories regarding which choices are morally required, forbidden, or permitted."

Deontological Theories and Kant
​

If any philosopher is regarded as central to deontological moral theories, it is surely Immanuel Kant. Indeed, each of the branches of deontological ethics—the agent-centered, the patient-centered, and the contractualist—can lay claim to being Kantian.

The agent-centered deontologist can cite Kant's locating the moral quality of acts in the principles or maxims on which the agent acts and not primarily in those acts' effects on others. For Kant, the only thing unqualifiedly good is a good will (Kant 1785). The patient-centered deontologist can, of course, cite Kant's injunction against using others as mere means to one's end (Kant 1785). And the contractualist can cite, as Kant's contractualist element, Kant's insistence that the maxims on which one acts be capable of being willed as a universal law—willed by all rational agents (Kant 1785).

• Agent-Centered Deontological Theories
  • According to agent-centered theories, we each have both permissions and obligations that give us agent-relative reasons for action. An agent-relative reason is an objective reason, just as are agent neutral reasons; neither is to be confused with the subjective reasons that form the nerve of psychological explanations of human action (Nagel 1986).
  • An agent-relative reason is so-called because it is a reason relative to the agent whose reason it is; it need not (although it may) constitute a reason for anyone else. Thus, an agent-relative obligation is an obligation for a particular agent to take or refrain from taking some action; and because it is agent-relative, the obligation does not necessarily give anyone else a reason to support that action.
    • Each parent, for example, is commonly thought to have such special obligations to his/her child, obligations not shared by anyone else. Likewise, an agent-relative permission is a permission for some agent to do some act even though others may not be permitted to aid that agent in the doing of his permitted action. Each parent, to revert to the same example, is commonly thought to be permitted (at the least) to save his own child even at the cost of not saving two other children to whom he has no special relation.
    • The idea is that morality is intensely personal, in the sense that we are each enjoined to keep our own moral house in order. Our categorical obligations are not to focus on how our actions cause or enable other agents to do evil; the focus of our categorical obligations is to keep our own agency free of moral taint.

• Patient-Centered Deontological Theories
  • All patient-centered deontological theories are properly characterized as theories premised on people's rights. An illustrative version posits, as its core right, the right against being used only as means for producing good consequences without one's consent. Such a core right is not to be confused with more discrete rights, such as the right against being killed, or being killed intentionally. It is a right against being used by another for the user's or others' benefit.
  • More specifically, this version of patient-centered deontological theories proscribes the using of another's body, labor, and talent without the latter's consent. One finds this notion expressed, albeit in different ways, in the work of the so-called Right Libertarians (e.g., Robert Nozick, Eric Mack), but also in the works of the Left-Libertarians as well (e.g., Michael Otsuka, Hillel Steiner, Peter Vallentyne) (Nozick 1974; Mack 2000; Steiner 1994; Vallentyne and Steiner 2000; Vallentyne, Steiner, and Otsuka 2005). On this view, the scope of strong moral duties—those that are the correlatives of others' rights—is jurisdictionally limited and does not extend to resources for producing the Good that would not exist in the absence of those intruded upon—that is, their bodies, labors, and talents. In addition to the Libertarians, others whose views include this prohibition on using others include Quinn, Kamm, Alexander, Ferzan, and Gauthier (Quinn 1989; Kamm 1996; Alexander 2004; Alexander and Ferzan 2009, 2012; Gauthier 1986).

Patient v Agent ​

• Just as do agent-centered theories, so too do patient-centered theories (such as that forbidding the using of another) seek to explain common intuitions about such classic hypothetical cases as Trolley and Transplant (or Fat Man) (Thomson 1985).
  • In Trolley, a runaway trolley will kill five workers unless diverted to a siding where it will kill one worker. Most people regard it as permissible and perhaps mandatory to switch the trolley to the siding. By contrast, in Transplant, where a surgeon can kill one healthy patient and transplant his organs to five dying patients, thereby saving their lives, the universal reaction is condemnation. (The same is by-and-large true in Fat Man, where the runaway trolley cannot be switched off the main track but can be stopped before reaching the five workers by pushing a fat man into its path, resulting in his death.)
    • One who realizes that by switching the trolley he can save five trapped workers and place only one in mortal danger—and that the danger to the latter is not the means by which the former will be saved—acts permissibly on the patient-centered view if he switches the trolley even if he does so with the intention of killing the one worker. Switching the trolley is causally sufficient to bring about the consequences that justify the act—the saving of net four workers—and it is so even in the absence of the one worker's body, labor, or talents. (The five would be saved if the one escaped, was never on the track, or did not exist.)
    • By contrast, on the intent and intended action versions of agent-centered theories, the one who switches the trolley does not act permissibly if he acts with the intention to harm the one worker. (This could be the case, for example, when the one who switches the trolley does so to kill the one whom he hates, only knowing that he will thereby save the other five workmen.)
• Patient-centered deontologists handle differently other stock examples of the agent-centered deontologist. Take the acceleration cases as an example.
• • When all will die in a lifeboat unless one is killed and eaten; when Siamese twins are conjoined such that both will die unless the organs of one are given to the other via an operation that kills the first; when all of a group of soldiers will die unless the body of one is used to hold down the enemy barbed wire, allowing the rest to save themselves; when a group of villagers will all be shot by a blood-thirsty tyrant unless they select one of their numbers to slake the tyrants lust for death.
    • In all such cases, the causing/accelerating-distinguishing agent-centered deontologists would permit the killing but the usings-focused patient-centered deontologist would not. (For the latter, all killings are merely accelerations of death.)

• Contractarian Deontological Theories

• • Morally wrong acts are, on such accounts, those acts that would be forbidden by principles that people in a suitably described social contract would accept (e.g., Rawls 1971; Gauthier 1986), or that would be forbidden only by principles that such people could not “reasonably reject” (e.g., Scanlon 2003).
  • In deontology, as elsewhere in ethics, is not entirely clear whether a contractualist account is really normative as opposed to metaethical.
  • In fact modern contractualisms look meta-ethical, and not normative. Thomas Scanlon's contractualism, for example, which posits at its core those norms of action that we can justify to each other, is best construed as an ontological and epistemological account of moral notions. The same may be said of David Gauthier's contractualism.
    • Yet so construed, metaethical contractualism as a method for deriving moral norms does not necessarily lead to deontology as a first order ethics.
    • John Harsanyi, for example, argues that parties to the social contract would choose utilitarianism over the principles John Rawls argues would be chosen (Harsanyi 1973). Nor is it clear that meta-ethical contractualism, when it does generate a deontological ethic, favors either an agent centered or a patient centered version of such an ethic.

 

[NkrumahWasRight Is Wrong]

Consequentialism and Classic Utilitarianism

​

"Consequentialism, as its name suggests, is the view that normative properties depend only on consequences. This general approach can be applied at different levels to different normative properties of different kinds of things, but the most prominent example is consequentialism about the moral rightness of acts, which holds that whether an act is morally right depends only on the consequences of that act or of something related to that act, such as the motive behind the act or a general rule requiring acts of the same kind."

• Classic Utilitarianism
  • The paradigm case of consequentialism is utilitarianism, whose classic proponents were Jeremy Bentham (1789), John Stuart Mill (1861), and Henry Sidgwick (1907) Classic utilitarians held hedonistic act consequentialism.
    • Act consequentialism is the claim that an act is morally right if and only if that act maximizes the good, that is, if and only if the total amount of good for all minus the total amount of bad for all is greater than this net amount for any incompatible act available to the agent on that occasion. (Cf. Moore 1912, chs. 1–2.)
    • Hedonism then claims that pleasure is the only intrinsic good and that pain is the only intrinsic bad. Together these claims imply that an act is morally right if and only if that act causes “the greatest happiness for the greatest number,” as the common slogan says.
  • Since classic utilitarianism reduces all morally relevant factors (Kagan 1998, 17–22) to consequences, it might appear simple. However, classic utilitarianism is actually a complex combination of many distinct claims, including the following claims about the moral rightness of acts:
    • Consequentialism = whether an act is morally right depends only on consequences (as opposed to the circumstances or the intrinsic nature of the act or anything that happens before the act).
    • Actual Consequentialism = whether an act is morally right depends only on the actual consequences (as opposed to foreseen, foreseeable, intended, or likely consequences).
    • Direct Consequentialism = whether an act is morally right depends only on the consequences of that act itself (as opposed to the consequences of the agent's motive, of a rule or practice that covers other acts of the same kind, and so on).
    • Evaluative Consequentialism = moral rightness depends only on the value of the consequences (as opposed to non-evaluative features of the consequences).
    • Hedonism = the value of the consequences depends only on the pleasures and pains in the consequences (as opposed to other goods, such as freedom, knowledge, life, and so on).
    • Maximizing Consequentialism = moral rightness depends only on which consequences are best (as opposed to merely satisfactory or an improvement over the status quo).
    • Aggregative Consequentialism = which consequences are best is some function of the values of parts of those consequences (as opposed to rankings of whole worlds or sets of consequences).
    • Total Consequentialism = moral rightness depends only on the total net good in the consequences (as opposed to the average net good per person).
    • Universal Consequentialism = moral rightness depends on the consequences for all people or sentient beings (as opposed to only the individual agent, members of the individual's society, present people, or any other limited group).
    • Equal Consideration = in determining moral rightness, benefits to one person matter just as much as similar benefits to any other person (= all who count count equally).
    • Agent-neutrality = whether some consequences are better than others does not depend on whether the consequences are evaluated from the perspective of the agent (as opposed to an observer).
  • Persistent opponents posed plenty of problems for classic utilitarianism. Each objection led some utilitarians to give up some of the original claims of classic utilitarianism. By dropping one or more of those claims, descendants of utilitarianism can construct a wide variety of moral theories. Advocates of these theories often call them consequentialism rather than utilitarianism so that their theories will not be subject to refutation by association with the classic utilitarian theory.

 

[NkrumahWasRight Is Wrong]

What's Good? Hedonistic vs. Pluralistic Consequentialisms​

• Some contemporaries of Bentham and Mill argued that hedonism lowers the value of human life to the level of animals, because it implies that, as Bentham said, a simple game (such as push-pin) is as good as poetry if the game creates as much pleasure (Bentham 1843).
• Quantitative hedonists sometimes respond that great poetry almost always creates more pleasure than trivial games (or sex and drugs and rock-and-roll), because the pleasures of poetry are more certain, durable, fecund, and so on.
• Mill used a different strategy to avoid calling push-pin as good as poetry. He distinguished higher and lower qualities of pleasures according to the preferences of people who have experienced both kinds (Mill 1861, 56; compare Hutcheson 1755, 421–23). This qualitative hedonism has been subjected to much criticism, including charges that it is incoherent and does not count as hedonism (Moore 1903, 80–81; cf. Feldman 1997, 106–24).
• Even if qualitative hedonism is coherent and is a kind of hedonism, it still might not seem plausible. Some critics argue that not all pleasures are valuable, since, for example, there is no value in the pleasures that a sadist gets from whipping a victim. Other opponents object that not only pleasures are intrinsically valuable, because other things are valuable independently of whether they lead to pleasure or avoid pain.
  • For example, my love for my wife does not seem to become less valuable when I get less pleasure from her because she contracts some horrible disease. Similarly, freedom seems valuable even when it creates anxiety, and even when it is freedom to do something (such as leave one's country) that one does not want to do. Again, many people value knowledge of other galaxies regardless of whether this knowledge will create pleasure or avoid pain.
• These points against hedonism are often supplemented with the story of the experience machine found in Nozick (1974, 42–45; cf. the movie, The Matrix).
  • People on this machine believe they are surrounded by friends, winning Olympic gold medals and Nobel prizes, having sex with their favorite lovers, or doing whatever gives them the greatest balance of pleasure over pain. Although they have no real friends or lovers and actually accomplish nothing, people on the experience machine get just as much pleasure as if their beliefs were true. Moreover, they feel no (or little) pain.
    • Assuming that the machine is reliable, it would seem irrational not to hook oneself up to this machine if pleasure and pain were all that mattered, as hedonists claim.
    • Since it does not seem irrational to refuse to hook oneself up to this machine, hedonism seems inadequate. The reason is that hedonism overlooks the value of real friendship, knowledge, freedom, and achievements, all of which are lacking for deluded people on the experience machine.
    • Some hedonists claim that this objection rests on a misinterpretation of hedonism.
    • If hedonists see pleasure and pain as sensations, then a machine might be able to reproduce those sensations. However, we can also say that a mother is pleased that her daughter gets good grades. Such propositional pleasure occurs only when the state of affairs in which the person takes pleasure exists (that is, when the daughter actually gets good grades). But the relevant states of affairs would not really exist if one were hooked up to the experience machine. Hence, hedonists who value propositional pleasure rather than sensational pleasure can deny that more pleasure is achieved by hooking oneself up to such an experience machine (Feldman 1997, 79–105; see also Tannsjo 1998 and Feldman 2004 for more on hedonism).
• Many consequentialists deny that all values can be reduced to any single ground, such as pleasure or desire satisfaction, so they instead adopt a pluralistic theory of value. Moore's ideal utilitarianism, for example, takes into account the values of beauty and truth (or knowledge) in addition to pleasure (Moore 1903, 83–85, 194; 1912). Other consequentialists add the intrinsic values of friendship or love, freedom or ability, life, virtue, and so on.
• If the recognized values all concern individual welfare, then the theory of value can be called welfarist (Sen 1979). When a welfarist theory of value is combined with the other elements of classic utilitarianism, the resulting theory can be called welfarist consequentialism.
• One non-welfarist theory of value is perfectionism, which claims that certain states make a person's life good without necessarily being good for the person in any way that increases that person's welfare (Hurka 1993, esp. 17). If this theory of value is combined with other elements of classic utilitarianism, the resulting theory can be called perfectionist consequentialism or, in deference to its Aristotelian roots, eudaemonistic consequentialism.
• Or one could hold that an act is right if it maximizes respect for (or minimizes violations of) certain specified moral rights. Such theories are sometimes described as a utilitarianism of rights. This approach could be built into total consequentialism with rights weighed against happiness and other values or, alternatively, the disvalue of rights violations could be lexically ranked prior to any other kind of loss or harm (cf. Rawls 1971, 42).
  • Such a lexical ranking within a consequentialist moral theory would yield the result that nobody is ever justified in violating rights for the sake of happiness or any value other than rights, although it would still allow some rights violations in order to avoid or prevent other rights violations.

Deontology v Consequentialism: The Criticisms

Criticisms of Consequentialism​

• None of the pluralist positions erase the difference between consequentialism and deontology. For the essence of consequentialism is still present in such positions: an action would be right only insofar as it maximizes these Good-making states of affairs being caused to exist.
• However much consequentialists differ about what the Good consists in, they all agree that the morally right choices are those that increase (either directly or indirectly) the Good. Moreover, consequentialists generally agree that the Good is “agent-neutral” (Parfit 1984; Nagel 1986).
  • That is, valuable states of affairs are states of affairs that all agents have reason to achieve without regard to whether such states of affairs are achieved through the exercise of one's own agency or not.
• Consequentialism is frequently criticized on a number of grounds. Two of these are particularly apt for revealing the temptations motivating the alternative approach to deontic ethics that is deontology. The two criticisms pertinent here are that consequentialism is, on the one hand, overly demanding, and, on the other hand, that it is not demanding enough. The criticism regarding extreme demandingness runs like this: for consequentialists, there is no realm of moral permissions, no realm of going beyond one's moral duty (supererogation), no realm of moral indifference. All acts are seemingly either required or forbidden.
• On the other hand, consequentialism is also criticized for what it seemingly permits. It seemingly demands (and thus, of course, permits) that in certain circumstances innocents be killed, beaten, lied to, or deprived of material goods to produce greater benefits for others. Consequences—and only consequences—can conceivably justify any kind of act, for it does not matter how harmful it is to some so long as it is more beneficial to others.
  • Consequentialists are of course not bereft of replies to these two criticisms. Some retreat from maximizing the Good to “satisficing”—that is, making the achievement of only a certain level of the Good mandatory (Slote 1984).
  • Another move is to introduce a positive/negative duty distinction within consequentialism. On this view, our (negative) duty is not to make the world worse by actions having bad consequences; lacking is a corresponding (positive) duty to make the world better by actions having good consequences (Bentham 1789 (1948); Quinton 2007).
  • Yet another idea popular with consequentialists is to move from consequentialism as a theory that directly assesses acts to consequentialism as a theory that directly assesses rules—or character-trait inculcation—and assesses acts only indirectly by reference to such rules (or character-traits) (Alexander 1985). Its proponents contend that indirect consequentialism can avoid the criticisms of direct (act) consequentialism because it will not legitimate egregious violations of ordinary moral standards—e.g., the killing of the innocent to bring about some better state of affairs—nor will it be overly demanding and thus alienating each of us from our own projects.

Criticisms of Deontology​

• On the other hand, deontological theories have their own weak spots. The most glaring one is the seeming irrationality of our having duties or permissions to make the world morally worse. Deontologists need their own, non-consequentialist model of rationality, one that is a viable alternative to the intuitively plausible, “act-to-produce-the-best-consequences” model of rationality that motivates consequentialist theories. Until this is done, deontology will always be paradoxical.
  • Patient-centered versions of deontology cannot easily escape this problem, as we have shown. It is not even clear that they have the conceptual resources to make agency important enough to escape this moral paradox. Yet even agent-centered versions face this paradox; having the conceptual resources (of agency and agent-relative reasons) is not the same as making it plausible just how a secular, objective morality can allow each person's agency to be so uniquely crucial to that person.
• Second, it is crucial for deontologists to deal with the conflicts that seem to exist between certain duties, and between certain rights. Kant's bold proclamation that “a conflict of duties is inconceivable” (Kant 1780, p. 25) is the conclusion wanted, but reasons for believing it are difficult to produce.The intending/foreseeing, doing/allowing, causing/aiding, and related distinctions certainly reduce potential conflicts for the agent-centered versions of deontology; whether they can totally eliminate such conflicts is a yet unresolved question.
  • One well known approach to deal with the possibility of conflict between deontological duties is to reduce the categorical force of such duties to that of only “prima facie” duties (Ross 1930, 1939). This idea is that conflict between merely prima facie duties is unproblematic so long as it does not infect what one is categorically obligated to do, which is what overall, concrete duties mandate.
    • Like other softenings of the categorical force of deontological obligation we mention briefly below (threshold deontology, mixed views), the prima facie duty view is in some danger of collapsing into a kind of consequentialism. This depends on whether “prima facie” is read epistemically or not, and on (1) whether any good consequences are eligible to justify breach of prima facie duties; (2) whether only such consequences over some threshold can do so; or (3) whether only threatened breach of other deontological duties can do so.
• Thirdly, there is the manipulability worry mentioned before with respect to agent-centered versions of deontology. To the extent potential conflict is eliminated by resort to the Doctrine of Double Effect, the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing, and so forth (and it is not clear to what extent patient-centered versions rely on these doctrines and distinctions to mitigate potential conflict), then a potential for “avoision” is opened up. Such avoision is the manipulation of means (using omissions, foresight, risk, allowings, aidings, acceleratings, redirectings, etc.) to achieve permissibly what otherwise deontological morality would forbid (see Katz 1996). Avoision is an undesirable feature of any ethical system that allows such strategic manipulation of its doctrines.
• Fourth, there is what might be called the paradox of relative stringency. There is an aura of paradox in asserting that all deontological duties are categorical—to be done no matter the consequences—and yet asserting that some of such duties are more stringent than others. A common thought is that “there cannot be degrees of wrongness with intrinsically wrong acts… (Frey 1995, p. 78 n. 3).
• Fifth, there are situations—unfortunately not all of them thought experiments—where compliance with deontological norms will bring about disastrous consequences. To take a stock example of much current discussion, suppose that unless A violates the deontological duty not to torture an innocent person (B), ten, or a thousand, or a million other innocent people will die because of a hidden nuclear device. If A is forbidden by deontological morality from torturing B, many would regard that as a reductio ad absurdum of deontology.

 

[NkrumahWasRight Is Wrong]

sorry for the formatting. i had it all as one post and am too shot to perfect it at the moment

 

[Type Username Here]

Great thread. I will catch up on it and contribute later.

 

[badhat]

I think Virtue Theory's worth a look too.

To put everything in perspective, there are three analytic forms of objective secular ethics:

Deontological Ethics (Kant), focused on rights and duties.
Utilitarianism/Consequentialism (Mill/Sidgwick), focused on maximizing happiness, or at least minimizing suffering.
Virtue Ethics (Aristotle), focused on living as a "good man".

This of course leaves off religious ethicists such as Kierkegaard, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, Buber, and Aquinas. There are also secular ethics among the Continental philosophers as well (Arendt, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard again). There are also ethical nihilists and expressivists like Nietzsche, Stirner, and Ayer. All are worth study as well, but generally the two or three mentioned is the established starting point.

 

[HideoKojima]

up'd and sub'd

 

[klutch2381]

I actually think virtue ethics/Nicomachean ethics are the most interesting moral arguments (I'd throw Ross's primae facie duties along with Bentham's utilitarianism in there as well). However, I'm also a big Aristotle fan (just think he's the most ingenious philosopher other than Kant), so take that comment with a grain of salt, perhaps.

In general, I think people are actually a moral admixture of deontological views meshed with act-utilitarianism. In our broad collective ideal of "morality," we have very rigged sense of right and wrong (e.g., killing is wrong). Moreover, if you were to press most people on this matter they may not express sentiments that deliberately state, "Killing violates the autonomy of others," or "killing uses others as a means to an end," or "killing fails the categorical imperative," which would make Kant's toes curl; but, they'd be likely to say something akin to a pared down, "Killing is just wrong," which is in-line with Kant's view of obligation and motivation. So, on one hand we have our very broad and idealistic sense of what we believe to be right and wrong, and then on the other hand we have the reality of the world -- which we encounter as extremely fluid. The world, for better or worse, doesn't always allow us to keep our ideals static. I may very well believe killing is wrong. Yet, when an armed intruder breaks into my home, I'm sandwiched between two moral ideals (i.e., killing is wrong, protecting my family) and I have to give one precedence in this circumstance. I quickly decide what to give precedence vis-à-vis utilitarian tenets. One might not calculate the felicity, utils, etc. But, we know off hand what we "think" would bring about the most pleasure (i.e. killing the intruder and protecting our family and interests).

Note: I have a problem with most moral theories because I don't think any effectively capture how problematic self-interests are in regard to doing what we perceive is the "right" thing. Psychological egoism is too simplistic and I disagree that one can never perform a truly altruistic act (I do agree it's very rare). Aristotle addresses it somewhat with the notion of "weakness of will," in his ethics, but it's not well fleshed out in my opinion.

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

Pretend that none of these "ideas" have been since updated, brehs

 

[badhat]

I actually think virtue ethics/Nicomachean ethics are the most interesting moral arguments (I'd throw Ross's primae facie duties along with Bentham's utilitarianism in there as well). However, I'm also a big Aristotle fan (just think he's the most ingenious philosopher other than Kant), so take that comment with a grain of salt, perhaps.

In general, I think people are actually a moral admixture of deontological views meshed with act-utilitarianism. In our broad collective ideal of "morality," we have very rigged sense of right and wrong (e.g., killing is wrong). Moreover, if you were to press most people on this matter they may not express sentiments that deliberately state, "Killing violates the autonomy of others," or "killing uses others as a means to an end," or "killing fails the categorical imperative," which would make Kant's toes curl; but, they'd be likely to say something akin to a pared down, "Killing is just wrong," which is in-line with Kant's view of obligation and motivation. So, on one hand we have our very broad and idealistic sense of what we believe to be right and wrong, and then on the other hand we have the reality of the world -- which we encounter as extremely fluid. The world, for better or worse, doesn't always allow us to keep our ideals static. I may very well believe killing is wrong. Yet, when an armed intruder breaks into my home, I'm sandwiched between two moral ideals (i.e., killing is wrong, protecting my family) and I have to give one precedence in this circumstance. I quickly decide what to give precedence vis-à-vis utilitarian tenets. One might not calculate the felicity, utils, etc. But, we know off hand what we "think" would bring about the most pleasure (i.e. killing the intruder and protecting our family and interests).

Note: I have a problem with most moral theories because I don't think any effectively capture how problematic self-interests are in regard to doing what we perceive is the "right" thing. Psychological egoism is too simplistic and I disagree that one can never perform a truly altruistic act (I do agree it's very rare). Aristotle addresses it somewhat with the notion of "weakness of will," in his ethics, but it's not well fleshed out in my opinion.

Isn't this just rule-utilitarianism at the end of the day?

Also, I don't think Kant would hate "killing fails the categorical imperative" in a normal, conversational sense. There are end cases where the wording around "killing" would need more specification in a formal context, but if you were approaching it like you're doing, kind of an everyday prescriptive context, I think it's a pretty good rule of thumb, deontologically. Remember, even though the CI is airtight, our ability to telescope out and see the entire context in which it's applied is imperfect, and Kant realized this.

 

[badhat]

Pretend that none of these "ideas" have been since updated, brehs

Well, sure, but there's a basic framework and common language that's used. Newton's Laws have been superseded by Einstein's Relativity, but that doesn't mean there's nothing to learn from studying Newtonian physics.

 

[NkrumahWasRight Is Wrong]

I think Virtue Theory's worth a look too.

To put everything in perspective, there are three analytic forms of objective secular ethics:

Deontological Ethics (Kant), focused on rights and duties.
Utilitarianism/Consequentialism (Mill/Sidgwick), focused on maximizing happiness, or at least minimizing suffering.
Virtue Ethics (Aristotle), focused on living as a "good man".
.

I had a whole write-up prepared for Aristotle and Virtue Ethics (alongside Epicurus, Diogenes the Cynic, Stoicism) but opted to go with what I posted instead. I have it saved though.

Some good contributions already from others. Ill be able to participate more later today.

 

[klutch2381]

Isn't this just rule-utilitarianism at the end of the day?

Also, I don't think Kant would hate "killing fails the categorical imperative" in a normal, conversational sense. There are end cases where the wording around "killing" would need more specification in a formal context, but if you were approaching it like you're doing, kind of an everyday prescriptive context, I think it's a pretty good rule of thumb, deontologically. Remember, even though the CI is airtight, our ability to telescope out and see the entire context in which it's applied is imperfect, and Kant realized this.

I actually don't like rule-consequentialism. It's soulless and banal to me. In my view, I think we have our overall sense of right and wrong and then a subset of right and wrong given the circumstance and how it relates to our own self-interests. I wasn't saying Kant would hate someone saying killing fails the CI. I was saying he'd love it. Maybe it's a southern thing, but people will say, "_____ makes my toes curl," when referencing something they really enjoy sometimes.

 

[badhat]

I was saying he'd love it. Maybe it's a southern thing, but people will say, "_____ makes my toes curl," when referencing something they really enjoy sometimes.

Yep, that makes perfect sense. I'm kind of oblivious sometimes.

 

[NkrumahWasRight Is Wrong]

Ethics/Virtue (Ancient Greeks):

Aristotle- Aristotle opens the first book of the Nicomachean Ethics by positing some one supreme good as the aim of human actions, investigations, and crafts (1094a). Identifying this good as happiness, he immediately notes the variations in the notion (1095a15–25). Some think the happy life is the life of enjoyment; the more refined think it is the life of political activity; others think it is the life of study or theoretical contemplation (1095b10–20). The object of the life of enjoyment is bodily pleasure; that of political activity is honor or even virtue. The object of the life of study is philosophical or scientific understanding. Arguing that the end of human life must be the most complete, he concludes that happiness is the most complete end. Whereas pleasure, honor, virtue, and understanding are choice-worthy in themselves, they are also chosen for the sake of happiness. Happiness is not chosen for the sake of anything else (1097a25–1097b5)....

The “highest” virtues, those belonging to the scientific or philosophical intellect, belong to theoretical reason. To concentrate on these activities one must be appropriately disengaged from active political life. While the latter description leads Aristotle to portray as possible a kind of human life that partakes of divine detachment (1178b5 ff), finally human life is an indissolvable composite of intellect, reason, sensation, desires, and appetites. For Aristotle, strictly speaking, happiness simply is the exercise of the highest virtues, those of theoretical reason and understanding. But even persons pursuing those activities as their highest good, and making them central to their lives, will need to remain connected to daily life, and even to political affairs in the community in which they live. Hence, they will possess and exercise the moral virtues and those of practical thought, as well as those other, higher, virtues, throughout their lives. Finally, integration of the moral virtues into happiness is achieved if they are not just instrumental means to happiness but a part of human happiness, while contemplation remains the most important component.

Like Plato, Aristotle is a eudaimonist in that he argues that virtue (including in some way the moral virtues of courage, justice and the rest) is the dominant and most important component of happiness. However, he is not claiming that the only reason to be morally virtuous is that moral virtue is a constituent of happiness. He says that we seek to have virtue and virtuous action for itself as well (Nicomachean Ethics, 1097b 1–10); not to do so is to fail even to be virtuous. In this regard, it is like pleasure, which is also a constituent of the happy life. Like pleasure, virtue is sought for its own sake. Still, as a constituent of happiness, virtuous action is grounded in the highest end for a human being. Thus, Aristotle bases his account of virtue and happiness in his theory about human nature. If happiness is excellent activity of the soul, the latter is understood in relation to the human function. He assumes that if one understands what the human function is one can understand what it is for that function to be done excellently (1098a5–15).

Diogenes the Cynic- Diogenes taught that a life according to nature was better than one that conformed to convention. First of all, natural life is simpler. Diogenes ate, slept, or conversed wherever it suited him and carried his food around with him (DL VI 22). When he saw a child drinking out of its hand, he threw away his cup, saying that a child had bested him in frugality (DL VI 37) (LOL). He said the life of humans had been made easy by the gods but that humans had lost sight of this through seeking after honeyed cakes, perfumes, and similar things (DL VI 44). With sufficient training the life according to nature is the happy life (DL VI 71).

He thought that the simple life not only freed one from unnecessary concerns but was essential to virtue. Besides his contempt for convention, what is most noteworthy about Diogenes as a moral teacher is his emphasis on detachment from those things most people consider good. In this emphasis, Diogenes seems to have intensified a tendency found in Socrates. Certainly Socrates could be heedless of convention and careless about providing for his bodily needs. To Plato, however, Diogenes seemed to be Socrates gone mad (DL VI 54). Still, in Diogenes' attitude, we can see at least the beginning of the idea that the end of life is a psychological state marked by detachment. Counseling the simple and uncomplicated satisfaction of one's natural instincts and desires, Diogenes urges detachment from those things held out by convention to be good.

Epicurus- While Epicurus holds that pleasure is the sole intrinsic good and pain is what is intrinsically bad for humans, he is also very careful about defining these two.

Epicurus begins by making a distinction among desires. Some desires are empty or groundless and others are natural; the natural are further subdivided into the merely natural and the necessary. Finally, the necessary are those necessary for happiness, those necessary for the body's freedom from distress, and those necessary for life itself (Letter to Menoeceus 127).

A helpful scholiast (cf. Principal Doctrines XXIX) gives us some examples; necessary desires are ones that bring relief from unavoidable pain, such as drinking when thirsty — if we don't drink when we need replenishment, we will just get thirstier and thirstier, a painful experience. The natural but not necessary are the ones that vary pleasure but are not needed in order to motivate us to remove or ward off pain, such as the desire for expensive food: we do not need to want, or to eat, expensive food in order to ward off the pain of prolonged hunger. Finally, the groundless desires are for such things as crowns and statues bestowed as civic honors — these are things that when desired at all are desired with intense and harmful cravings. Keeping these distinctions in mind is a great help in one's life because it shows us what we need to aim for. The aim of the blessed life is the body's health and the soul's freedom from disturbance (ataraxia) (128). After this austere introduction, Epicurus makes the bold claim that pleasure is the beginning and end of the blessed life. Then he makes an important qualification. Just because pleasure is the good, Epicureans do not seek every pleasure. Some lead to greater pain. Just so, they do not avoid all pains; some lead to greater pleasures (128–29).

In the Letter to Menoeceus, he claims, as a truth for which he does not argue, that virtue and pleasure are inseparable and that living a prudent, honorable, and just life is the necessary and sufficient means to the pleasure that is the end of life (132). An example of what he might mean is found in Principal Doctrines, where Epicurus holds that justice is a contract among humans to avoid suffering harm from one another. Then he argues that injustice is not bad per se but is bad because of the fear that arises from the expectation that one will be punished for his misdeeds. He reinforces this claim by arguing that it is impossible for someone who violates the compact to be confident that he will escape detection (XXXIV-V). He thereby grounds justice, understood as the rules governing human intercourse, in his moral psychology, i.e., the need to avoid distress.

The Stoics- The Stoics are well known for their teaching that the good is to be identified with virtue. By ‘virtue’ they mean such moral virtues as justice, moderation, and courage. So all that is required for happiness (i.e., the secure possession of the good, of what is needed to make one's life a thoroughly good one) — and the only thing — is to lead a morally virtuous life. In this teaching the Stoics are addressing the problem of bodily and external goods raised by Aristotle. Their solution takes the radical course of dismissing such alleged goods from the account of happiness because they are not necessary for virtue, and are not, in fact, in any way good at all.

They argue that health, pleasure, beauty, strength, wealth, good reputation, and noble birth are neither good nor bad. Since they can be used well or badly and the good is invariably good, these assets are not good. The virtues, however, are good (DL VII 102–103), since they are perfections of our rationality, and only rationally perfected thoughts and decisions can possibly have the features of harmony and order in which goodness itself consists. Since possessing and exercising virtue is happiness, happiness does not include such things as health, pleasure, and wealth. Still, the Stoics do not dismiss these assets altogether since they still have some sort of value. These things are indifferent to happiness in that they do not add to one's virtue nor detract from it, and so they do not add to or take away from one's possession of the good. One is not more virtuous because healthy nor less virtuous because ill. But being healthy generally conforms with nature's plans for the lives of animals and plants, so it is preferable to be healthy, and one should try to preserve and maintain one's health. Health is, then, the kind of value they call a preferred indifferent; but it is not in any way a good, and it makes no contribution to the quality of one's life as a good or a bad one, happy or miserable.