Ethics DSST Cheat Sheet by sparkledaisy

Harvard Univer­sity's Justice with Michael Sandel These are excellent videos discussing a variety of topics relating to ethics. Each video contains 2 classes, roughly 30 minutes each class.

a free man is he that in those things which by his strength and wit he is able to do is not hindered to do what he hath the will to do
- Leviathan

State of nature: Man's natural state = war & violence

Right of nature: Power of others constrains our acts

Laws of nature: Fear + desire for good life = peace

Laws & enforc­ement that make up the social contract. Ethical laws originate from agreements entered into by people & groups. = Social Contracts = give up some freedoms to get safety & group benefits

Need absolute monarch to rule society & rebellion not allowed.

Deals with how goods are distri­buted fairly in a society. Finite number of things. Laws that govern the country.

Rawls - inequality justified only when it benefits everyone (encourage people to be more produc­tive)

Libert­arian - diversity in society is valuable and people should have freedom to keep what they earned. Never ok to take from one to give it to another.

Rousseau - excessive inequality destroys freedom if wealthy act like tyrants

Aristotle Man alone is a rational animal and ration­ality (reason) should be used, among other things, to develop virtues.
Reason develops virtue, virtuous people have certain emotions which lead to right acts.
Virtue of Character = using reason to choose and act well
Virtue of intellect = acquired wisdom or learning

Kant lived a life of structure and reason as reflected in his ethical concepts. Critique of Pure Reason

Aquinas Natural Law + reason = we should do what's naturally good and allow reason to restrain us from "­nat­ura­l" impulses that are bad

Stoics

 Catego­rical Impera­tive: Do X

 Hypoth­etical Impera­tive:
If you want X, do Y

Natural Law is determined by nature = universal (universe is morally neutral). Refers to the use of reason to analyze human nature and deduce rules of moral behavior from it.

Suppor­ters: Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke.

Because of the inters­ection between natural law and natural rights, it has been cited as a component in the United States Declar­ation of Indepe­ndence
Locke: Life, Liberty & Property.
Jefferson: Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness

Wikipedia = Natural Law

Natural rights are those not contingent upon the laws, customs, or beliefs of any particular culture or govern­ment, and therefore universal and inalie­nable (i.e., rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws).

Wikipedia = Natural Rights

Hedonist maximize net pleasure (minus pain)
Epicurian (moder­ation)
Egoism (long term rational personal self interest)
Asceticism (no good for yourself - like spiritual people who deny all pleasure)
Altruism (what's good for others, not necess­arily self)

Conseq­uences? PLEASURE!

1. Intensity (I)--How intense is the pleasure or pain?

2.Duration (D)--How long does the pleasure of pain last?

3.Cert­ainty (C)--What is the probab­ility that the pleasure or pain will occur?

4. Propin­quity (nearness or Remote­ness) (R)--How far off in the future is the pleasure or pain?

5.Fecu­ndity (F)--What is the probab­ility that the pleasure will lead to other pleasures?

6.Purity (P)--What is the probab­ility that the pain will lead to other pains?

7.Extent (E)--How many persons are affected by the pleasure?

Memory tip: PC FRIED

Greatest Happiness Principle

Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.

Utilit­ari­anism - Jeremy Bentham's formul­ation

One must always act so as to produce the greatest aggregate happiness among all sentient beings, within reason.

John Stuart Mill's major contri­bution to utilit­ari­anism is his argument for the qualit­ative separation of pleasures. Bentham treats all forms of happiness as equal, whereas Mill argues that intell­ectual and moral pleasures (higher pleasures - Shakes­peare) are superior to more physical forms of pleasure (lower pleasures - The Simpsons).

Attacked the notion of natural rights as
"­simply nonsense: natural and impres­cri­ptible rights, rhetorical nonsense -- nonsense upon stilts­"

Our moral actions are not guided by reason but by our feelings.

Doing good gives people pleasure.
Virtue is driven not by benevo­lence and sympathy (not self-i­nte­rest)

Slave to passions

A few memory tips...

"­Tre­atise of HUMan Nature­" written by HUMe

"Man is the MEASURE of all things­­" by PROT(r­act­or)­AGORAS

a priori = PRIOR knowledge, a posteriori = POST = "­aft­er" knowledge

W.D. Ross
The Right and the Good (1930)
Best known for developing a pluralist, deonto­logical form of intuit­ionist ethics. Edited and translated many of Aristo­tle's works.

1. benefi­cence
2. non-ma­lef­icence
3. justice
4. self-i­mpr­ovement
5. reparation
6. gratitude
7. fidelity (promise keeping)

In a situation, many of these duties may apply. Sometimes they may contradict one another. One duty is always the weightiest and over-rules all the others. This is the absolute obligation or absolute duty, the action that the person ought to perform.

I promise to meet my friend for lunch at 12:00. On they way I walk past a burning building and see some children who need help escaping. What do I do?
Kant - keep the promised lunch date
Ross - helping the children outweighs the other promise keeping duty so do that first

Josiah Royce extended Kant's deonto­logical path

Highest duty = loyalty and other duties flow from it

Autonomy + Justice + Benevo­lence = Loyalty

Kant

- Act only according to the maxim by which you can a the same time will that is should become a universal law. Univer­sality If I can do it, everyone can do it.

- Act so you treat humanity (self/­others) as an END and never merely as a MEANS.

Deonto­log­ists. Kant.

Egalit­arian - drastic inequality is unfair & unethical

Rawls - people in "­ori­ginal positi­on" would oppose inequality unless it was justified to all

Act & Rule Utilit­arians - relief of poverty would bring greatest happiness to greatest number

Nozick - unethical to tax labor of one to give to another

Histor­ically, animals were outside the ethical frame.

Bentham, Utilit­arian = animals can experience pleasure or pain. This consid­eration must be balanced against any offsetting benefit.

What God commands is ethically right and what God prohibits is ethically wrong.
(If God doesn't mention it, we assume it is "­maybe OK".)

Hebrew Bible
Christian Bible
Islam

Aquinas (Christian + Stoic + Aristotle) (Natural Law)


(Natural Law = God commands it because it is wrong)

opposed to political restri­ctions on individual freedom. Respect for other people means letting them pursue their own concept of what is good.

Freedom of speech, religion & privacy
freedom from coercive interf­erence from the government

Minimal government

Locke, Rand, Mill, Nozick*

Compared income tax to forced labor and stated that the redist­rib­ution of wealth is only justif­iable when it is resolving a past injustice.

Libert­arian* Later in life he recanted the libert­arian position because of implic­ations for the weakest members of society.

Using moral statements to prescribe a general course of action. "­Ste­aling is wrong, so no one should steal."­

You instin­ctively know if it is right or wrong.

"Come on man, you know it's not right to steal that."

Descri­ptive = Describes ethical standards of a society

Normative = evaluates and searches for norms in a society, what people should believe to be right or wrong

Applied = applying ethics to specific problems

Meta-E­thics = studying the nature & meaning of moral judgments, terms & concepts

Utilit­ari­anism - What brings about the greatest good for the greatest number of people?
- Bentham, Mills

Thelog­ian­/Ph­ilo­sopher - Happiness is the basis for philos­ophy.
Happiness is growing in the knowledge of God.

Man's original nature: depraved & bound by original sin.

Holy community (Aryas­amgha)

The reality of human interd­epe­ndence with all other beings.

cultivate universal awareness, including harmony with nature. Our most important duty is not to harm living beings (ahimsa). All living beings, not just humans, have a correl­ative right not to be harmed.

Link to my flashcards about ethics.


Link to my flashcards about philos­ophers and their work (quotes or writings).

"­Might Makes Right" History of the Pelopo­nnesian Wars.
Athens vs. Melos

Domest­ic=­social contract,
Foreign policy=no contract (strongest state rules).

Indivi­duals are basically selfish and not moderated by moral rules (very cynical
of human nature).

teache­rs/­lec­turers of virtue & excellence (not philos­ophers) who taught their beliefs for a high price in Athens where there was free speech and money

Protagoras

1st Relativist - relies on persuasion more than truth. Every point of view is equally valid and different people have different standards of behavior

Growing democratic system in Ancient Greece most likely led to it. They traveled around talking politics with Athenian citizens who were required to partic­ipate in politics.

"­Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happin­ess­"
- Utilit­ari­anism

Mill, Bentham, Headon­ists, Aristotle, Kant, Socrates, Epictitus

Father = Member of Radicals, friend of Bentham.

"On Libert­y". Utilit­arian.

Only time government has moral authority to limit person's liberty is when harm may occur otherwise.

"The Subjug­ation of Women"

Everything in life has a purpose

Similar to physical, scientific laws in that it is universal. Can be discovered through human nature and reason.

Natural law theory
Social contract theory
Kantism

Action is good/bad based on conseq­uences of the action. Focuses on outcomes, not actions.

Hedonism = pleasu­re/pain
Epicurus = pleasure, no gods influence, moderation
Cyrenean = anything goes
Utilit­ari­anism = good if good conseq­uences outweigh bad for all
Altruism = welfare of others more important than self
Egoism = all about me

Ethics = wider view (society, workplace) of what's right or wrong

Morals = someone's personal values & feelings about ethical subjects

1973 Supreme Court ruling. Woman has non-ab­solute right to choose abortion during the 1st trimester of pregnancy.

1st trimester (1-3 months)
- Woman's sole choice
- State has no authority

2nd trimester (4-6 months)
- Woman's choice
- State may intervene only to protect woman's life

3rd trimester (7-birth)
- State may protect "­pot­ential human life" except at risk to mother

Ancient Greek theory that deals with the origin of the universe, especially the solar system.

Cosmogony can be distin­guished from cosmology, which studies the universe at large and throughout its existence, and which techni­cally does not inquire directly into the source of its origins.

Physical cosmology is the science that attempts to explain all observ­ations relevant to the develo­pment and charac­ter­istics of the universe as a whole.

The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmol­ogical model of the early develo­pment of the universe

Pythag­orean theorem:
" The sum of the areas of the two squares on the legs (a and b) equals the area of the square on the hypotenuse (c)."
a2 + b2 = c2

Ethics: An Introd­uction

Marianne Talbot is Director Of Studies in Philosophy at the University of Oxford's Department for Continuing Education

Series of 7 lectures from her class.

This series is the basis for OUDCE’s short online course Ethics: an Introd­uction

Rousseau Society has corrupted them

Socrates Don't have knowledge of right

Morality should be valued in itself and relate to our unders­tanding of the world and our place in it. Moral choices are related to our unders­tanding of life.

Golden Mean - the desirable middle between two extremes, one of excess and the other of deficiency

reckle­ssness --- courage --- cowardice

The pursuit of excellence is most often linked with Ancient Greece.

the Handbook "­Enc­hir­idi­on"

a priori - you are born with some intuitions that you know to be true before you have any experience (Plato's forms, Descartes, Aquinas) Causality, Space, Substance, Time (CSST)

a posteriori - ideas form after contact with reality. Relies on inform­ation from your experience (Empir­icism, Hume, Mill)

Phenomena are the appear­ances, which constitute our experience - refers to anything that appears to, or is an object of, the senses

noumena are the (presumed) things themse­lves, which constitute reality - object or event that is known (if at all) without the use of the senses (Plato ideas = noumenal realm)

Our a priori judgments apply to the phenomenal realm, not the noumenal.

Plato - wrong unless gods encourage it

Stoic - acceptable when it seems like a reasonable and justif­iable act

Jews & Christians - believe God prohibits suicide

Utilit­arian - moral only if increases total happiness of everyone involved

Kant - always an immoral act

"­Con­cerning the gods, I have no means of knowing whether they exist or not, nor of what sort they may be, because of the obscurity of the subject, and the brevity of human life."

Emphasizes right being over right action. A person of virtuous character can be depended on to do the right thing. Not an altern­ative to right conduct theories (utili­tar­ianism & deonto­log­ical) but comple­ments them.

Suppor­ters: Buddhism, Taoism, feminist care ethics, Hume's moral philos­ophies, Aristotle, Jesus

Confucian (virtue ethics + deonto­logy)

virtue = admirable character trait or dispos­ition habitually act to benefit self & others

vice = character trait or dispos­ition to act in a manner that harms self & others

55-135 AD
People can't change fate because absolute law rules the universe.

Roman slave gained freedom. Used Socrates teaching style.

Stoic

Virtuous happy life in the middle of uncert­ainty "do what's in accordance with nature­"

Universal brothe­rhood

Virtue = choose rightly, free will, nothing forces choice, complete self control, choose reason