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Philosophy Notes Ethics Notes

Ethics Positions Summary Notes

Updated Ethics Positions Summary Notes

Ethics Notes

Ethics

Approximately 99 pages

Notes made for the Ethics paper at the University of Oxford.

Each set of notes brings together in detail all the major areas needed to write a first-class essay on the subject. Key arguments and positions from both primary and secondary sources are summarised clearly: perfect as a basis for an exam essay or as a primer on the subject.

Includes a detailed summary of the arguments from - and the interpretation of - Kant's 'Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals', as well as the most common o...

The following is a more accessible plain text extract of the PDF sample above, taken from our Ethics Notes. Due to the challenges of extracting text from PDFs, it will have odd formatting:

Contents

Agent-centred morality 3

Projectivism 3

Quasi-realism 3

Particularism 3

Virtue ethics 3

Mackie’s comment on the virtue-ethical position 3

Virtue 4

Phronesis 4

Eudaimonia 4

Cognitivism 4

Non-cognitivism 4

Internalism 4

Externalism 5

Supererogation 5

Egoism 5

Psychological egoism 5

The argument for psychological egoism 5

Rejecting the argument for psychological egoism 5

The confusions of psychological egoism 6

Psychological egoism as an empty doctrine 6

Ethical egoism 7

Arguments for Ethical Egoism 7

Argument from knowledge of the self 7

Argument from common practice 7

Arguments rejecting ethical egoism 8

Kurt Baier’s ‘conflict’ argument 8

The lesson from Baier’s conflict argument: self-defeating 8

An argument against ethical egoism underlying morality 9

Baier’s inconsistency argument 9

Rachels’ argument from non-discrimination 10

Rachels’ argument and moral alienation 10

Ethical egoism and moral non-realism: ducking Rachels’ argument 10

Other problems for ethical egoism 11

Consequentialism 11

Forms of consequentialism 11

Utilitarianism 11

Utilitarianism 11

Arguments for utilitarianism in general 11

Objections to act utilitarianism 12

Objections to rule utilitarianism 12

Objections to utilitarianism in general 12

Bernard Williams’ objections in ‘Morality’ 12

Realism 13

Anti-realism 14

Morality 14

Rachels’ ‘minimum conception of morality’ 14

Theory of self-interest 14

Local vs global theories 14

Summative theories 14

Types of theory of self interest 14

Hedonistic: narrow and preference 14

Desire-fulfilment: unrestricted, success theory 15

Objective list 15


Agent-centred morality focusses on the obligation of an agent to bear responsibility for their own actions. According to this view, the agent ought never to do harm – to be responsible for causing harm – even if that harm is caused to mitigate or prevent the harm caused by another.

Proponents: Thomas Nagel.

Projectivism is the view that, as David McNaughton puts it in ‘Moral Vision’, “we project, as it were, our valuational response on to the object of our experience so that the response becomes an integral part of that experience (p.78).”

Proponents: Simon Blackburn.

Quasi-realism attempts to explain features of our moral thought that appear to support realism on a non-cognitivist basis. As David McNaughton puts it in his ‘Moral Vision’, “according to the quasi-realist our present moral thought is not infected with error. Non-cognitivism does indeed unmask an error, but it is not in our moral thought but in the conclusions we are tempted to draw from it (p.99).” The quasi-realist, then, attempts to present an alternative ontology to realism that still grounds our moral practice.

Particularism is the view that disavows the notion of moral principles. According to the particularist, our moral actions and reactions must be sensitive to the particular situation before us, and need not admit of any generalisation to similar cases. In his ‘Moral Vision’, David McNaughton emphasises that for the particularist, such generalisations are at best unhelpful, and at worst harmful.

Virtue ethics is the view that the proper approach to life and to moral problems requires that we (strive to) become the right kind of moral agent, namely a virtuous one. Rosalind Hursthouse separates out three key notions of within virtue ethics in her SEP entry ‘Virtue Ethics’: virtue, phronesis or moral wisdom, and eudaimonia or an appreciation of the good things in life.

Proponents: Rosalind Hursthouse, Aristotle, Confucius.

Mackie’s comment on the virtue-ethical position

In his ‘Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong’, Mackie notes the Aristotelian claim that the fundamental moral concern is some notion of the good, or a general end to human life, and that moral reasoning consists partly in understanding this end and partly in realising it. Mackie then distinguishes between two possible claims about the notion of good: a normative, prescriptive one (‘one ought to desire X’) and a descriptive one (‘humans in fact desire X’).

Mackie points out that one must be cautious of the slide from one to the other – he notes that the prescriptive claims often gains an (illegimate) sense of objectivity by sliding into the descriptive one. Moreover, he points out that the claim that there is an objective good would come within the scope of his anti-realist arguments (see here).

Virtue

The first key notion is virtue. As Rosalind Hursthouse puts it in her SEP entry ‘Virtue Ethics’, “to possess a virtue is to be a certain sort of person with a certain complex mindset.” Virtue goes beyond surface character traits to something deeply entrenched in its possessor. Possessing virtue leads an agent to have the right kinds of reactions to situations, to deplore badness and praise and be pleased by goodness – however one wishes to flesh out the virtues and vices inherent in each of these qualities.

Phronesis

A virtuous agent also requires phronesis: practical moral wisdom. A virtue makes its possessor good but – as Rosalind Hursthouse notes in her SEP entry ‘Virtue Ethics’ – we can be good ‘to a fault’. Taken beyond their proper extent, virtues can become faults. Phronesis, then, is the wisdom that allows us to go beyond attempting to do the right thing with no notion of its effects or context: Hursthouse uses the example of the well-meaning adolescent who, for example, buys their parents the present they themselves would like. According to Hursthouse, phronesis comes with experience of life; it allows for the appreciation of some aspects of a situation as more important than other. As Hursthouse puts it, “given that good intentions are intentions to act well or ‘do the right thing’, we may say that practical wisdom [phronesis] is the knowledge or understanding that enables its possessor, unlike the nice adolescents, to do just that, in any given situation.”

Eudaimonia

The virtuous agent, then, requires a proper understanding of how to bring about the right kind of result. But for...

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