PHILOSOPHY

A TEXT WITH READINGS

12th EDITION
Manual Velasquez
Chapter 7: “Ethics”

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 Outline of Topics in Chapter 7
• 7.1 What Is Ethics?
• 7.2 Is Ethics Relative?
• 7.3 Do Consequences Make an Action
Right?
• 7.4 Do Rules Define Morality?
• 7.5 Is Ethics Based on Character?
• 7.6 Can Ethics Resolve Moral
Quandaries?
CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS
 7.1 What is Ethics
• As the opening pages indicate, we face many
personal moral choices about issues.
• We are also confronted with public decisions we
must make as a society – for example, whether
to allow abortions, whether to force unwed
fathers to support their children, etc.
• Ethics is the study of morality. It is a branch of
philosophy that tries to determine what things in
life are morally good and which actions are
morally right.
CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS
 Ethics and Morality
• Although ethics focuses on morality, it is not the
same as morality.
– Morality consists of the standards that an individual or
a group has about what is right and wrong or good
and evil.
– Ethics is a reflective investigation of moral standards,
with an aim to testing whether they are reasonable
and justified, or need to be questioned and possibly
revised.

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 7.2 Is Ethics Relative?
• The social sciences also study morality, but
through a descriptive or factual investigation of
moral behavior and beliefs.
– These social sciences are concerned with how people
in fact behave or what people in fact believe about
moral right and wrong.
• Ethics focuses on how people ought to behave
or what people ought to believe about moral right
and wrong.
• This distinction is important for understanding
cross-cultural moral diversity.
CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS
 Two Kinds of Relativism
• The recognition of cross-cultural differences in moral
standards has led many social scientists to embrace
descriptive relativism.
– This is the claim that different societies or cultures have
different moralities and that what the people of one society
or culture believe is morally wrong
• Descriptive relativism is often confused with ethical
relativism.
– This the view that moral right and wrong depends on a
person’s society or culture.
– There has been a lively disagreement about whether
ethical relativism is true.
CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS
An Argument for
Ethical Relativism
1. If there were a single set of “correct” moral standards of
right and wrong by which everyone should live, then the
moral standards people use to determine right and
wrong would not differ from one society to another.
2. But the moral standards people use to determine right
and wrong clearly differ from one society to another (as
descriptive relativism holds).
3. Therefore, there is no single set of correct moral
standards of right and wrong by which everyone should
live.

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 Clarifying Ethical Relativism
• The anthropologist Melville J. Herskovits offers a
version of this argument that makes three
separate claims.
– No moral system can be said to be “absolutely valid,”
i.e., there are no moral standards that all people
ought to live by.
– What is right or wrong for a person is whatever that
person’s culture or “traditions” say is right or wrong.
– The moral standards a person accepts are acquired
through a process of “enculturation.”

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 Criticisms of Ethical Relativism
• Problems with ethical relativism include:
– (1) It implies that moral standards cannot be
criticized.
– (2) It assumes (falsely) that just because societies
differ in the moral standards they accept, therefore
there is no correct group of moral standards.
– (3) It rules out the possibility of disagreement over
right and wrong.
– (4) Ethical relativists are wrong to claim that no
universal, cross-cultural moral values exist.

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 Criticism is not Possible
• According to ethical relativism, the moral norms
of my society define what is right or wrong for
me.
– Therefore, the theory would rule out criticisms of the
moral norms of a society.
– It would also require that one conform to those norms.
– In Herskovits’ words, what is demanded is “conformity
to the code of the group”.

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 Misinterpreting Disagreement
• The philosopher James Rachels makes another
criticism:
– “The fact that different societies have different moral
codes proves nothing. There is also disagreement
from society to society about scientific matters: in
some cultures people believe that the earth is flat, and
that evil spirits cause disease. We do not … conclude
that there is no truth in geography or in medicine.
Instead, we conclude that in some cultures people are
better informed than in others. Similarly, disagreement
in ethics might signal nothing more than that some
people are less enlightened than others.” (462-463)

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 No Universals?
• Ethical relativists may also assume too quickly
that there no moral standards that all societies
recognize.
– Reflect on the fact that if any society is going to
survive, its members will have to accept some moral
standards about how they should behave toward one
another.
• For example, wouldn’t any society collapse if its members
don’t recognize the moral standard to refrain from arbitrarily
murdering their neighbors?
– How might differences about infanticide mask an
underlying area of agreement? (463)

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 The Value of Tolerance
• Ethical Relativism is often motivated by a
concern about appreciation and tolerance of
differences.
– These is a legitimate concern: some societies may
have hit upon moral outlooks that are much better
responses to the world than our own.
– We should, then, be tolerant and respectful of those
different moral outlooks.
– On the other hand, appreciation and tolerance does
not rule out thoughtful, informed criticism.
•
CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS
 7.3 Do Consequences Make an
Action Right?
• In the tragic situation of Matthew Donnelly,
afflicted with a painful and incurable cancer,
Harold Donnelly said that he did not feel that
killing his brother was immoral.
– It was much better for his brother to die than to suffer
the terrible consequences of continuing to live.
– He appealed to the consequences as a justification
for what he felt he had to do.

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 Defining Consequentialism
• Consequentialism defines the morality of an
action by its good or bad consequences.
– Consequentialists weigh the amount of non-moral
good and the amount of non-moral bad that an action
produces.
• They don’t count morally good or bad consequences as this
would make the theory circular
– The morally right action is the one that produces more
good (or less bad) non-moral consequences
compared to any other action that could be performed
in its place.

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 Two Kinds of Goods
• According to consequentialists, the rightness or
wrongness of our actions depend on how much
intrinsic good they produce and how much intrinsic
evil they diminish.
– An intrinsic good is good in itself.
– An instrumental good is good for something else.
• Consequentialists offer competing accounts about
which goods are intrinsically good.
• They also disagree about whether the goods to be
considered are personal or social in nature.

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 Hedonism
• Hedonists like Epicurus claim that the
intrinsically good consequences are those that
produce pleasure, whereas bad consequences
are those that produce pain.
– Epicurus enjoined us to focus on those pleasures that
are pure, and don’t produce pain.
• He claimed that a life of sensory moderation, with many
friends was best suited to produce pleasure.
– Other consequentialists disagree with Epicurus,
holding that intrinsic goods include not just pleasure
but also knowledge, power, beauty, or love.

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 Ethical Egoism
• Hedonism raises the question about whether we
should we think only about the consequences
affecting us individually, or those affecting
everyone involved.
• Ethical egoism limits our attention to the
consequences that affect us individually.
– Ethical egoism recognizes that our actions have
consequences that can be good or bad for us.
– So, ethical egoism says that an action is morally right
when it produces more good consequences for ourselves
than any other action we might perform.

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

An Argument for Ethical Egoism
• Harry Brown argues that the belief that you
should put the happiness of others ahead of
your own happiness is false.
– He claims that you should put your own happiness
ahead of the happiness of others because everyone
else always puts their own happiness ahead of the
happiness of others.
– “In fact, we can’t avoid a very significant conclusion:
Everyone is selfish. Selfishness isn’t really an issue,
because everyone selfishly seeks his own
happiness.” (467)

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 Psychological Egoism
• Browne’s argument relies on a view about
people that is called “psychological egoism”
which holds that people always act out of self-
interest.
– Ethical egoism holds that people ought to act out of
self-interest, while psychological egoism holds that
people always act out of self-interest (whether they
ought to or not).
– Browne is arguing that since psychological egoism is
true, it follows that you (and everyone else) ought to
always act out of self-interest.

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 Criticisms of Ethical Egoism
• Some philosophers criticize the assumption of
psychological egoism.
– For example, James Rachels argues that merely
because we are doing what we want, it does not follow
that what we want is to advance our own interests. If
what we want is to advance the interests of others,
then when we do what we want we are not acting
selfishly.
• Kurt Baier (1917-2010) argued that in situations
where one’s desires conflict with the desires of
others, ethical egoism implies ethical
prescriptions that are contradictory.
CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS
 Utilitarianism
• In contrast to ethical egoism, utilitarianism
asserts that the standard of morality is the
promotion of good for everyone.
• For utilitarians a morally right action is one that
produces more good or fewer bad
consequences for everyone.
– Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) and John Stuart Mill
(1806–1873) are the classic proponents of
utilitarianism.

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 Bentham’s Utilitarianism
• Like Epicurus, Bentham claims pain and
pleasure govern us in all we do.
– He articulates a “principle of utility” which says that
morally right actions are those that increase the
happiness or pleasures of the community.
– He argues that the pleasures and pains our actions
produce for everyone should be measured so that we
can choose the one that produces the greatest
quantity of pleasure or the least quantity of pain for
everyone affected by the action.

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 Measuring Pleasure
• Bentham suggests that pleasures and pains can
be measured by their intensity, duration,
certainty, their tendency to produce additional
pleasures or pains, etc.
– Critics have wondered what yardstick we can use to
measure pleasures and pains.
– For example, suppose one kind of pleasure (e.g., the
pleasure of drinking a beer) is as intense, as long, as
certain, etc., as another kind of pleasure (e.g., the
pleasure of listening to a Beethoven symphony); must
we conclude they are equally valuable?

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 Mill’s Utilitarianism
• Mill accepted the principle of utility but tweaked it
a bit.
– He argued that the quality of pleasures and pains is
as important as their quantity when determining what
one ought to do.
– He argued that it is the value of higher quality
pleasures that should be maximized – not lower
quality.

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 Higher and Lower Pleasures
• Mill faces the objection that most people prefer
the “lower” pleasures of sex, food, and drink,
over the “higher” pleasures of, say, listening to a
Beethoven symphony.
– He answers this objection by arguing that the value of
two kinds of pleasures depends on the preferences of
those who have experienced both.
– In such instances, people would prefer the higher
over the lower pleasures because they would rather
be “a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied.”

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 Two Version of Utilitarianism
Act Utilitarianism
• Act utilitarianism identifies
morally right actions with
particulars act that
produces more pleasure
and less pain for
everyone.
– This is similar to Bentham’s
version of the theory
– Act utilitarianism seems to
sometimes require
injustices and rights
violations.
CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS
Rule Utilitarianism
• Rule utilitarianism holds
that we should act so that
the rules governing our
actions are those that will
produce the greatest
happiness for everybody
– This is similar to Mill’s
version of the theory.
– Rule utilitarianism is
supposed to not have the
wrong implications that act
utilitarianism does.
 Problems with Rule
Utilitarianism
• First, there is the problem of trying to figure out the
consequences of promoting one rule over another.
– How can we know that one rule will have better social
consequences than another?
• Second, rules that allow for exceptions seem to promise
more happiness than rules that don’t, but such rules are
problematic.
– For example, wouldn’t the rule “We should never punish people
for something they didn’t do, except in those instances where
punishing them will leave everyone else better off” be better than
“We should never punish people for something they didn’t do?”
– But allowing for exceptions opens rule utilitarianism to the same
objections raised against act utilitarianism.

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 Implications
• Many people believe that, despite these
problems, utilitarianism provides a powerful
analysis of ethics.
– How would you apply utilitarianism to the moral issues
raised at the beginning of this chapter: our sexual
behavior?
– How do Richard Taylor’s and The Ramsey
Colloquium’s application of utilitarian principles to
sexual ethics differ?

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 7.4 Do Rules Define Morality?
• Nonconsequentialist theories maintain that the
morality of an action depends on factors other
than consequences, such as following rules and
doing one’s duty.
• We’ll consider three kinds of
nonconsequentialism:
1. Divine command theory
2. Natural law ethics
3. Kantian ethics.

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 Scriptural Divine
Command Theories
• For all divine command theorists, morality is
independent of what any individual thinks or
likes and what any society happens to sanction.
– God establishes moral laws; they are eternally true
and are universally binding on all people, regardless
of whether everyone obeys them.
– Such God-established laws are generally interpreted
in a religious tradition and are often expressed in that
religion’s sacred scriptures.
• E.g., the Ten Commandments

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 Which Divine Command
Should We Heed?
• Different sacred scriptures exist within different
religious traditions – for example, Judaism,
Christianity and Islam.: Which one expresses
what God commands?
– There is some overlap in what each says: For
example, both Judaism and Islam say that God
commands us to respect our parents.
– However, they differ in many respects about the
specifics of what God commands.
– How are we to know which of these scriptures is right
or which one we should follow?

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 A Dilemma
• In light of Plato’s Euthyphro (see chapter 1),
Scriptural Divine Command Theory raises a
deeper, more fundamental problem in the form
of a dilemma:
– Are actions right because God commands them, or
does God command them because they are right?
– Why does this question present a dilemma for the
adherent of this theory? Why is each way of resolving
the dilemma not fully satisfactory? (478)

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 Natural Law Ethics
• Natural law ethics is a second version of Divine
Command Theory.
– It focuses on the claim that human nature has certain
natural tendencies and that morally right actions are
those that follow these natural tendencies.
– Because God created these tendencies, following
them is doing what God intended us to do.

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 Stoic Natural Law
• The Stoics, followers of the school of thought
originally founded by Zeno around 300 BCE,
held a natural law ethic.
– For example, they believed that there is a kind of
universal natural order in the world put there by God
that the human mind can discover.
– To the extent that humans live according to this
universal order, as it is exhibited in their own human
nature, they will flourish and be happy.
– This natural order can be discovered through the use
of reason.

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 Thomistic Natural Law
• Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) also argued that
reason can discover God’s commands by
reflecting on human nature.
– Aquinas held that because God created the universe,
the laws that govern it are divinely imposed on it.
– In particular, God imposed on human beings certain
“natural laws” through the natural inclinations that He
built into human nature when He created humans.

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 Natural Inclinations
• Morality arises when our reason becomes aware
of the “natural inclinations” that God built into
human nature.
• By reflecting on these natural human inclinations, we
can discover the specific goods that God commands
humans to promote: human life, family, knowledge,
and an orderly society.
• Actions are morally right when they aim at securing
these goods, and they are morally wrong when they
aim at destroying these goods.

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 Applications: Taking Life
• Aquinas held that suicide was immoral., but not
merely because the Christian scriptures say that
it is wrong to take one’s life.
– Instead, Aquinas argued that human nature has a
built-in inclination to desire life.
• How would a natural law theorists deal with life
and death issues such as saving a life by taking
another life, in self-defense?
– Explain how the principle of double effect could be
applied to resolve this dilemma?

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 Criticisms and Implications
• Critics have wondered why we should be morally
obligated to pursue the goods that our natural
inclinations seek.
– Why are our inclinations the measure of what is
naturally good for us? Isn’t it possible that we might
be naturally inclined to things that are not necessarily
good for us?
• What is the criticism centering on conflicts
among fundamental goods?
• What the implications of natural law theory are
for sexual ethics? (482-484)
CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS
 Kantian Ethical Theory
• Although Immanuel Kant was a deeply religious
man, he rejected divine command theories of
ethics as well as utilitarian theories.
– Kant held that a person should exercise ‘“autonomy of
the will,” and choose for herself the moral principles
that she will follow.
– The trouble with divine command theories and
utilitarianism is is that they are heteronomous: they
enjoin someone (God) or something else (the desire
for pleasure) to decide the moral principles that one
will follow.

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 The Good Will
• The “will,” for Kant, is our ability to choose what
we will do and the reasons on which we will act.
• Kant argued that a person with a good will does
what is right
– Not because it will produce such and such
consequences, or satisfy his inclinations.
– But because he believes it is his moral duty to do it.
– “Duty is the necessity of acting from respect for a law”
and “a law is an objective principle valid for every
rational being and a principle on which everyone ought
to act.” (486)

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 The Categorical Imperative
• Kant concludes that a person has a morally
good will when the person does what is right
because he believes it is what everyone in a
situation like his ought to do.
– He summarizes this in “the categorical imperative”: I
ought never to act except in such a way that I can will
that my maxim should become a universal law.
– A maxim is the reason a person in a certain situation
has for doing what he does; that maxim would
“become a universal law” if every person in a similar
situation chose to do the same thing for the same
reason.
CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS
 Four Scenarios
• Explain each of Kant’s four practical examples of
the categorical imperative:
– Perfect duty to oneself.
– Perfect duty to others.
– Imperfect duty to oneself.
– Imperfect duty to others.
(487-488)
• What are the two aspects of the categorical
imperative?
CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS
 Two Aspects of the
Categorical Imperative
• Kant’s examples show that the categorical
imperative really has two aspects.
• It says that I should never do something for a
certain reason unless
– (1) it is possible for everyone to do the same thing for
the same reason;
– and (2) I am willing to have everyone do the same
thing for the same reason, even toward me.

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 The Second Version of the
Categorical Imperative
• While there is only one categorical imperative
principle, Kant believed we could express it in
more than one way.
– Kant thought every person has a fundamental dignity
that gives the person a value “beyond all price.”
– Thus, it is wrong to use people or to manipulate them
without their consent to satisfy our own personal
desires.
– He expressed these ideas in these words: Act so that
you always treat people as ends in themselves, and
never merely use them as means.

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 Four Scenarios
• How does Kant illustrate this version of the
categorical imperative in the following
examples?
– Strict duty to oneself.
– Strict duty to others.
– Meritorious duty to oneself.
– Meritorious duty to others.

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 Interpretation
• For Kant, to respect a person as an end is to
respect her capacity to freely and knowingly
choose for herself what she will do.
– To treat a person as a means is to use the person to
achieve my personal goals.
– Thus, this second version says that we should treat
people only as they freely and knowingly consent to
be treated, and not merely use them as a means to
our own goals.
– What sorts of actions does this rule out? (491)

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 Conflict and Implication
• Explain why Kant’s theory is vulnerable to the
objection that it can’t handle conflicts among
duties. Give an example.
• What are the implications of Kant’s theory for
sexual ethics?
(491-491)

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 Buddhist Ethics
• Buddhist ethics is not reducible to any of the
ethical theories we have thus far considered:
– As opposed to consequentialist ethics, It doesn’t aim
at advancing the individual’s or society’s happiness –
although it is concerned with freeing sentient beings
from suffering.
– It is not an ethic of duty, either, whether this be
conceived in terms of divine command theory
(Buddhism is nontheistic) or Kantian duty (there is no
categorical imperative in Buddhism).

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 Two Generalizations
• There are two generalizations that drive
Buddhist ethics.
1. Volitional (voluntary) actions are considered
supremely important because, according to the law
of causation (karma), they determine our destiny.
We are what we voluntarily do.
• What we have done will determine what we will become.
1. Ethics is not a set of obligations or duties, but a form
of embodied wisdom that liberates us individually
and collectively from suffering.

• CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 The Four Noble Truths
• The Four Noble Truths articulates the
importance of suffering:
1. All existence involves suffering.
2. Suffering is caused by craving: greed, aversion and
delusion.
3. Freedom from craving and thus suffering is possible.
4. The way to freedom is the Noble eightfold path.
• This involves cultivating (1) correct understanding, (2)
correct resolve, (3) correct speech, (4) correct conduct, (5)
correct livelihood, (6) correct effort, (7) correct mindfulness,
and (8) correct concentration.

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 Implications
• For Buddhism, ethical conduct is an aspect of
the eight fold path.
– Walking the path implies an ethical way of life: ethics
is a condition of liberation; on the other hand, ethics
as wisdom and compassion emerge from walking the
path.
– What are the implications of Buddhist ethics for
sexual ethics? (496)

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

7.5 Is Ethics Based on Character?
• With the exception of Buddhism, all of the
theories we’ve considered focus on principles or
rules that define the actions we are morally
obligated or have a moral duty to perform.
– Philosophers such as Alasdair MacIntyre argue that
ethics should not be concerned primarily with rules
about what one should do, or how one should act, but
with the virtues that make us morally good persons.
– This approach to ethics is sometimes called virtue
ethics.

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 Aristotle’s Theory of Virtue
• In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle wrote that
human beings can be happy only if they fulfill
their basic “function.”
– That is, humans can be happy only if they fulfill the
capacities of their human nature in an excellent way.
– The capacity of reason is unique to being human so
Aristotle humans should act with reason.
• That is, we humans will be happy only if we have the ability to
act with reason in the various circumstances of our life.
• Because the ability to do something well is a virtue, Aristotle
concludes that humans will achieve happiness only by
developing their virtues.

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 Aristotelian Virtue
• For Aristotle, a virtue is the ability to be
reasonable in our actions, desires, and emotions,
and to be reasonable is to act with moderation.
– For example, courage is the ability to deal with fear in
a moderate way and not in an excessive or deficient
manner; temperance is the ability to respond to
pleasures in a moderate way.
– Aristotle calls the moderate way “the mean.”
– He believes that having such virtues is the key to
happiness because these virtues enable us to act as
humans were meant to act.

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 Learning to be Virtuous
• We are not born with such abilities, he points
out, but acquire them by training in our
communities.
– In particular, we acquire them in youth by being
trained repeatedly to respond to situations in a
reasonable manner.
– As Aristotle puts it, we become virtuous by being
trained to act virtuously in the appropriate situations
until it becomes a habit.
– Over time, we acquire virtues and learn to take
pleasure in acting virtuously.

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

The Implication for
Judging Actions
• We shape our moral character through the
actions we choose; our character in turn
influences the actions we choose.
• To assess the moral rightness or wrongness of
moral behavior, then, we must look at the kind of
character that the behavior produces, and the
kind of character that such behavior expresses.
• How does Janet Smith approach the issue of
adultery using virtue theory? What are the limits
of this analysis? (500-501)
CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS
 Friendship
• Aristotle and other philosophers have argued that
the ability to form friendships is an essential
component of living morally.
– Indeed, Aristotle thought friendship is a kind of virtue
that is essential to human life.
– He thought that friendship occurs when each friend
wishes good for the other, both are aware of this, and
each does so because he believes the other is good,
pleasurable, or useful.
– True or complete friendship requires wishing good for
each other because of the good each sees in the
other.
CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS
 Love and Friendship
• True or complete friendship requires that each
friend wishes good for each other.
• In such cases, each friend loves the other for
what he is, not for what he provides; such
friendships require time, familiarity, and trust.
• The three traditional kinds of love are:
• philia (brotherly love);
• eros (passionate love);
• and agape (unconditional love).

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 What is Love?
• Limiting love to the love between two people, we
can say that all forms of love involve minimally
some strong, positive regard for the other, as we
see their goodness or value.
– These sorts of attitudes are also characteristic of non-
loving attitudes such as liking respecting, and
admiring,
– There are at least four views on what else love
involves…

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 Four Views of Love
1.The Relationship View
2.The Emotion View
3.The Union View
4.The Creative View
• After explaining each of these, raise one
objection or shortcoming about each of
the views (503-505)
• Which view do you like the best and
why? CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS
 Male and Female Ethics
• Although Aristotle and other virtue theorists have
not placed love at the center of ethics, recently,
several philosophers have explored the
differences between the way that men and
women think about ethics, arguing that
something akin to love should be included in any
adequate theory of ethics.
– Some have argued that men tend to focus on issues
that an ethics of principles emphasizes, whereas
women tend to focus on issues regarding care and
concern, in the context of an ethics of virtue.
CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS
 Carol Gilligan
• The psychologist Carol Gilligan was one of the
first women to argue that men and women
approach ethics differently, and that women are
not ethically inferior to men.
– Gilligan’s work is a response to the views of her
teacher, Lawrence Kohlberg, a psychologist whose
work seemed to imply that women, on average, were
less morally developed than men are.

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

Kohlberg’s Theory of
Moral Development
• Kohlberg claimed to show that moral
development moves through three levels:
1. a preconventional level, focused on the self;
2. a conventional level, focused on being accepted by
a group and accepting the group’s conventional
morality;
3. a postconventional level, focused on moral
principles.
– Kohlberg’s research showed that most women
seemed to remain at the less advanced conventional
level.
CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS
 Gilligan’s Critique
• Gilligan highlighted a serious flaw in Kohlberg’s
work: He had developed his stages of moral
development by studying mostly men.
• Consequently his theory really describes how
men’s morality develops and not how women’s
morality develops.
– Gilligan then argues that women do not advance to
Kohlberg’s third level of male development, because
they advance instead to a third level of female
development that Kohlberg’s theory ignores.

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 The Importance of Care
• Based on her own studies of women, Gilligan
argued that what is distinctive about the morality
of women is their focus on caring and
relationships
• She articulates her own three stages:
– (1) a stage in which women are overly devoted to
caring for themselves;
– (2) a stage in which women are overly devoted to
caring for others;
– and (3) a stage in which they achieve a balance
between caring for self and caring for others.
CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS
 Nel Noddings
• While Gilligan argues that women’s care-
centered approach is not inferior to men’s ethics,
other feminist philosophers have taken a more
radical stand.
– For one such thinker, Nel Noddings, the ethical
person is the person who cares for another specific
individual during an actual encounter with that unique
person and who manifests her concern for that
specific individual through loving deeds.
– In such relationships, the caring person does not
consult abstract principles or universal rules.

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 Becoming a Caring Person
• Noddings claims that as a person grows and
acquires the capacity to care for others as well
as for herself, she forms a picture of her ideal
self as a caring person.
– Ethical behavior arises when one feels caring for
another person and freely chooses to act on this
feeling, motivated by the desire to live up to the ideal
of being a caring person
– “The source of ethical behavior is, then, in twin
sentiments—one that feels directly for the other and
one that feels for and with the best self…” (507)

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 Exploring Care and Virtue
Ethics
• What are two criticisms of the care-centered
approach to ethics?
– How do you suppose Gilligan or Noddings would
respond to these?
• Explain the author’s four conclusions regarding
the strengths of virtue ethics as compared to
rule-based approaches.
(508-510)

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 7.6 Can Ethics Resolve Moral
Quandaries?
• In light of the overview of major ethical theories,
we should now ask this question: How should
we use these theories in our own moral lives?
– Although all the theories have shortcomings, each of
the theories identifies aspects of our behavior that we
should take into account:
• the pleasures and pains our actions will cause;
• the basic goods our nature prompts us to pursue;
• the obligations we believe all humans should live up to;
• and the virtues and vices our actions both express and
develop.

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 Complexity
• Applying the four kinds of theories sometimes
leads to conflicting outcomes.
– One should expect this in a world like ours, where all
situations are complex with multifaceted moral
features.
– Each theory will pick out a different subset of these
features and use them to decide what to do.
– In light of this complexity, we should keep in mind
John Dewey’s insight that the “zeal” for a unitary view
in moral philosophy has limited its usefulness.

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 The Worth of Ethical Thought
• This does not mean that these different
approaches to ethics are useless.
– By considering each of the theories in turn, and
asking what each of them would say about a moral
issue, we can come to a full and informed
understanding of all the factors that we should take
into consideration when making moral decisions.
– But in the end, as Dewey notes, “each human being
has to make the best adjustment he can” among
these various theories.

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS

 Two Quandaries
• Abortion and euthanasia are two complex moral
issues. (511-520)
– How do each of the moral theories outlined in the
chapter illuminate these issues? What features of the
issue do they bring to foreground?
– What differing conclusions do they imply, and why?
– Is there any way to resolve the differences?
– Which approach makes the most sense to you?

CHAPTER SEVEN: ETHICS