How do you know if an action is moral or not? What is morality, and does it exist? Where
does moral knowledge come from? These are questions that concern themselves with Ethics.
Ethics, also called moral philosophy, is the branch of philosophy that involves systematizing,
defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior.
This video will serve as an easy-to-understand introduction to ethics and the three significant
areas of study within ethics, which are:
metaethics, which deals with the foundations and nature of moral values, properties, and
words, Normative ethics, which deals with systems of morality and questions how one
ought to be and act morally, and Applied ethics which deals with what a person is obligated
(or permitted) to do in specific situations, analyzing controversial present-day moral
questions concerning abortion, euthanasia, animal rights, and more.
To begin analyzing what’s right and wrong and who is moral in the world, it makes sense
to understand where morality comes and what it fundamentally is. So that’s, so we’ll
go over metaethics first.
According to philosophers Richard Garner and Bernard Rosen there are three kinds of meta-ethical
problems. These are #1. What is the meaning of moral terms judgments?
( a question involving moral semantics) #2. What is the nature of moral judgments?
( a question involving moral ontology) #3. And How may moral judgments be supported
or defended? (a question involving moral epistemology).
To help explain metaethics as easily as possible, it helps to analyze it from two main viewpoints:
Cognitivism & Non-Cognitivism.
Cognitivism claims that ethical statements are propositions, or statements or assertions,
and can be either true or false.
Cognitive moral statements are divided into three main sections: Moral Realism, Subjectivism,
and Error Theory.
The concept of moral realism states that there are objective good and bad features to the
world which these propositions are about. Simply put, there are specific good and bad
rules that apply to everyone no matter what.
Realists can be said to be ethical naturalists or ethical non-naturalists.
Ethical naturalism means that ethical claims can be expressed as natural properties without
the use of ethical terms. For instance, something like “bad” can be reduced to some natural
property.
Ethical naturalists may equate ‘badness’ with pain and ‘goodness’ with wellbeing.
So if we studied how pain is inflicted in a person, we would be investigating the moral
concept of badness.
A popular ethical naturalist, neuroscientist Sam Harris, has written how inflicting intense
suffering on anything conscious is objectively morally wrong. He often uses the analogy of
putting your hand on a hot stove. Touching the stove will undeniably be painful, something
everyone can agree on, and can be used to form a basis of good and bad.
In other words, he’s equating badness with the suffering of conscious creators.
There appear to be a few philosophical problems with ethical naturalism. Namely, the issue
of deriving ‘ought’ from ‘is’, a philosophical problem introduced by the philosopher David
Hume also known as the is-ought problem.
Hume said that people take how things are or empirical facts about the world, and use
them to derive moral conclusions illogically. He believed people move too readily from observations
of facts to moral judgments. According to Hume, there shouldn’t be any connection
between empirical facts and values.
Also, ethical non-naturalists hold there are objective and irreducible moral properties
(such as the property of 'goodness').
Moral philosopher G.E. Moore detailed, for example, how we just know the color blue by
intuition, we know things like ‘good’ and ‘bad’ just by seeing them.
Of course, if it were that easy and true, there wouldn’t be so many moral disagreements.
Moral realists may also believe morality and objective moral rules are handed to us by
a deity, like the Judeo-Christian God.
On the opposite side of realism is Moral Subjectivism, a type of moral anti-realism, which states
moral statements are made true or false by individuals or groups of individuals like
specific cultures.
In this case, there is no objective good and bad, only individuals or groups of individuals
determine what is moral.
Under thsi view, one can be an individual subjectivist or a cultural subjectivist.
Individual subjectivism means only individuals themselves determine what is moral.
Here don’t have to account for a deity or some objective fact that provides our moral
grounds. But it leaves us with startling conclusions, like, for example, the murder of millions
under Hitler was morally good. We have an opinion that it is not, but to Nazis, that
was something that had to be done for some sort of moral greater good. Because there’s
absolutely no objectivity, who’s to say who’s morally right?
One can also be a cultural subjectivist, meaning that morals and ethics are made up by us and
come from within us, and societies will treat those morals as the correct ones. I’ve also
heard this view referred to as moral conventionalism or moral constructivism.
Where individual subjectivism states that others can’t judge morals, cultural subjectivism
states that, yes, morals can be judged by different cultures and each cutlre will treat
their morals as the correct one.
An individual subjectivist who personally thought Hitler was bad wouldn’t bother to
have a conversation to convince them they are unethical since there is no real “good”
and “bad,”. In contrast, one using cultural subjectivism would think you can sit down
and help them come to the right, or your, moral conclusion.
There’s also Error Theory, another form of moral anti-realism that holds that although
ethical claims do express propositions, all such propositions are false. There’s no
such thing as moral truth so all moral statements are all wrong, hence the error.
Now, cognitivist approaches are contrasted with non-cognitist views of morality, which
state ethical statements are not propositions and thus have no truth status. It’s another
type of moral anti-realism that states we can’t know anything about morality. Therefore
there’s no point in trying to determine right and wrong statements.
One non-cognitivist theory called Emotivism, endorsed by A.J. Ayer, a key figure in the
logical positivist movement, holds that ethical sentences merely express emotions.
For example the statement “lying is wrong” appears to be about a factual description
of something.
But Ayer claimed when someone makes a moral statement like lying is wrong, they are just
expressing an emotion, not a claim. Saying “lying is wrong” is more like saying,
“Boo on lying. That makes me feel upset!”
Prescriptivism, defended by R. M. Hare, holds that moral statements function like universalized
imperative sentences. Simply put, moral statements are just giving a command. “Lying is wrong”
is really just, “Hey you! Don’t Lie!”
Which view is correct? Well, that depends on moral epistemology, another major part
of metaethics that deals with how moral knowledge is possible and derived.
To make a moral claim about reality, one must have evidence to support the premises. For
instance, to claim that morality is objective and derived from a God, one would have to
demonstrate how one could get moral knowledge from a God if one exists in the first place.
There are rational arguments about the various moral stances, including that morality can
be known a priori or reason alone like Plato and Immanuel Kant argued for.
There’s also empirical evidence to support moral statements and theories. For example,
studies into the nature of the mind show the existence of neuromodulators, or special chemicals
in the brain, that influence moral decisions like oxytocin. This type of evidence can go
toward supporting a specific theory of morality, too.
Normative ethics picks up where metaethics leaves off. While metaethics studies the nature
of morality and what it is, normative ethics studies systems of morality and standards
of right and wrong actions.
There’s one ultimate criterion of moral conduct in normative ethics, usually being
a set of rules or principles.
Most systems of ethics can be categoriezed as three main types, which I’ll go over
now which include Deontology, Consequentialism, and Virtue Ethics.
Deontology is the theory that the morality of an action should be determined by whether
the action itself is right or wrong under a series of rules.
Deontology is also referred to as rule-based ethics and there have been numerous formulations
of it. I’ll touch on one of the most popular from the philosopher Immanuel Kant.
Kantian Ethics argues that the only truly good thing is the will or motive of a person
and how they act, not what happens after they act.
In his Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, Kant formulated something he called ‘The
Categorical Imperative’ in which formulation of it states
“Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should
become a universal law.”
In other words, we should come up with and live by certain rules, or categorical imperatives,
no matter what.
We figure them out by asking ourselves whether we would want to live in a world where everyone
takes the same particular action we’re about to take.
Kant argued that if a psychopath or killer wanted to kill your friend, and your friend
hid inside your house, if the murderer knocked on your door and asked if your friend were
hiding there, the morally correct thing to do would be to say, “Yes, he’s here.”
We can all agree that we wouldn’t want to live in a world where we lie to each other.
Therefore, according to Kant, honesty is a categorical imperative we have to follow,
even if it ends in the death of our innocent friend.
But, perhaps it’s better to construct a moral system to live by that depends on the
consequences of actions rather than someone’s personal intent?
That’s what the ethical theory of consequentialism would have us believe. It’s the theory that
the consequences of one's conduct are the ultimate basis for any judgment about the
rightness or wrongness of that conduct.
Consequentialist theories are sometimes called teleological theories, from the Greek word
telos, or end, since the end result of the action is the sole determining factor of its
morality.
The most popular consequentialist theory is utilitarianism, an ethical theory that states
that the most moral action is one that maximizes happiness and well-being for the affected
individuals.
It was developed by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill in the 18th century and states
actions should not be considered good or bad in and of themselves, but only in reference
to their utility (or usefulness in achieving happiness).
For example, imagine we were walking home with some food and encountered five homeless
people needing food. We only have enough food to really stop one of them from being hungry
that night. If we spread out the food equally, no one would feel fully fed, but no one would
starve that night either.
Say each of them currently feel happiness on a scale of two out of ten. Being fully
fed would raise that to eight out of ten, while getting a little food that night would
be a four out of ten.
What's the most moral thing to do?
If you said to spread out the food so it’s equal and everyone gets some, that’s utilitarianism.
There’s more utility, or happiness if everyone is a little more satisfied than if just one
person is feeling satisfied.
In this example, we’re talking about something called ‘act utilitarianism,’ which refers
to how moral an individual’s actions are. Later versions of utilitarianism include rule
utilitarianism, negative utilitarianism, and others.
But, perhaps being moral is more about good habits of character rather than actions and
consequences. This view is what’s referred to as Virtue Ethics, the normative theory
that m emphasizes the virtues or the moral character of an individual.
Here, we place less emphasis on learning rules, and stressing the importance of developing
good habits of character.
Virtue ethics is one of the oldest types of normative ethics with roots in ancient Greece.
In his Republic, Plato outlined what were later called the cardinal virtues: wisdom,
courage, temperance, and justice.
The philosopher Aristotle argued that most virtues fall between two extremes which we
ought to avoid. For example, if you have too much courage, you will become brash, but too
little and you’ll be cowardly.
Finally, the third main branch of philosophy is Applied Ethics which consists of the analysis
of specific, controversial moral issues.
Today applied ethics is usually sorted into various subbranches that deal with specific
topics such as medical ethics, business ethics, environmental ethics, or sexual ethics.
Examples of applied ethical issues in say, medical ethics, is the embryonic stem-cell
research controversy or ending life support debate. An example in another field, say environmental
ethics, is shutting down specific emissions-producing businesses to stop global warming.
What exactly makes a moral issue an applied ethical one, though?
First, the issue needs to be controversial in there is nowhere near a consenses to a
correct moral answer. For example, the issue ‘theft is wrong’ is generally agreed upon
and wouldn’t fit into this category.
Secondly, it needs to be a direct moral issue. For example, certain tax laws or zoning laws
may be controversial but aren’t directly moral in nature.
Theoretically, applied ethics should be the easiest branch of philosophy to do. By the
time an applied ethical issue is presented, issues of metaethics and normative ethics
would have been sorted out. We theoretically should know where morality comes from, what
it is, and the best normative theory of conduct.
All that’s left to do is simply consult the ethical theories rules on the matter and
the issue is solved.
Of course, today there is no accepted metaethical view and many normative ethical views which
conflict with one another leading to the major disagreement and controversy we see today.
So the debate about what’s ethical and what’s not rages on just as it did long ago with
the Greeks.
Whether there is a most rational or most correct moral view at this time is a topic I can cover
another time.
Of course there’s far more to ethics than what was covered in this little video. But,
hopefully, this served as a good introduction to this very important branch
of philosophy.