Moral Questions

An Introduction to Ethics

Jon Nuttall

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780745610405
  9780745610399
• eBook ISBN:
  9780745668031
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

This new introduction to ethics is written for students who are approaching philosophy for the first time.

1

Applying Philosophy to Moral Issues

Why bother with moral philosophy?

Morality is concerned with right and wrong, good and bad, virtue and vice; with judging what we do and the consequences of what we do. Moral philosophy, or ethics, is that branch of philosophy which has morality as its subject matter. It analyses the moral terms we use and the status of our moral judgements; it considers the justifications that might be given for our moral positions.

The question ‘Why concern ourselves with moral problems?’ has an obvious answer: we cannot avoid such problems since life is continually placing them in our path. We encounter them in growing up, in our working life, in raising children, in caring for aged parents, in our relationships with colleagues, loved ones and adversaries, in the opportunities and temptations we are presented with. Newspapers, radio and television are full of accounts of people who are, correctly or otherwise, presented as wrongdoers – murderers, child abusers, terrorists, armed robbers, surrogate mothers, football hooligans – or as deserving our sympathy and help – hospital patients, victims of violent crimes, of famine, of war or of natural disasters, the infirm or disabled, orphaned children. The media also contain debate and argument concerning issues on which different opinions are possible – how to combat terrorism, what level of spending on health care is needed, how much information should be made available to the public, the desirability of immunization programmes, whether capital punishment should be reintroduced, and so on.

However, although we all have a natural concern with moral questions (whether or not we are aware of, or choose to acknowledge, that concern) it does not follow that we have a natural concern with moral philosophy. Many people, when they first encounter philosophy, find it too abstract, too theoretical and too removed from everyday matters. They feel that the questions to which philosophers address themselves are too precise and the demands they make on what is to count as a satisfactory answer are too exacting. Moral philosophy may also give rise to such objections, the moral issues often appearing to be taken by a philosopher simply as starting points, with the real concerns lying elsewhere. Can we therefore expect philosophy to provide the answers, or even the means of arriving at answers, to moral problems?

I want to show that philosophy is not just an abstract concern but is a necessary tool to use if we are to gain a true insight into moral problems. We are frequently being confronted with a wide range of new moral problems (or, at least, familiar moral problems in a new guise) yet we lack the sort of framework which would enable us to give answers to these problems. This lack of a framework often leads us to dismiss rather than solve such problems; they are all too often couched in an oversimplified form because we do not have the intellectual apparatus for grasping their complexities. It is only by taking something like a philosophical approach that we can achieve a deeper understanding.

The changes contributing to moral doubts

What are the changes in modern society that have brought moral issues to the forefront? Some of them are familiar enough. The obvious ones are associated with the progress of science and the loss of religious faith. Despite the current upsurge of interest in evangelicism, there has been a steady decline in religious faith, at least in the West, over many decades and this has led to an erosion of the grounds on which many moral positions have rested. The decline in religious faith is clearly not unconnected with the success of science in providing explanations of the world around us and in appearing to make untenable some of the more simplistic religious beliefs.

Our contemporary world view is a scientific one but, unlike the religious one it replaced, morality and prescriptions for a good life do not occupy any significant place in it. It is true that the birth of scientific knowledge saw the growth of humanism and a belief in mankind’s rational powers. However, the growth of science, rather than emphasizing our rational powers, has all too often extended the means for doing evil and amplified the effects of evil actions. In a world that has seen concentration camps, the mass extermination of ethnic minorities and the invention of nuclear weapons, it is difficult to believe that we are essentially good or essentially rational; it is difficult to see that, let alone how, scientific knowledge can provide a framework for morality.

Indeed, the exact opposite seems more plausible when we remember that science includes not only the physical sciences but also the human and social sciences. These encourage us to see ourselves as animals and to interpret our moral behaviour in terms of animal behaviour, or as stimulus-response mechanisms unable to exercise free will, or as consumers and producers governed by the laws of economics. Because of the gap left by science, religion still has an appeal but, by and large, those religious beliefs that remain supply neither the metaphysical framework by which to understand the world nor the knowledge as to how to live in it. Instead they are personal beliefs, the God worshipped is a personal God and the corresponding morality is a personal morality.

A more direct consequence of the development of science and technology is our increasing control over life and death, which has both changed attitudes and presented us with new problems. Advanced weapons systems provide us with previously undreamtof powers of death and destruction; medicine, on the other hand, provides undreamt-of possibilities for postponing death. The threat of the destruction of the human species through nuclear war has hung over us for more than forty years (even if that threat seems reduced by more recent events) but in other ways death has been taken out of our everyday experience. Moreover, rapid advances in medical science have resulted in problems of defining death – when is a patient dead? – and deciding when to allow someone to die – when would a patient be best dead? Equally, there are problems with life – at what stage in the development from ovum to adult do we have a living human being with a right to life? We have the means to increase human fertility, and to allow women to give birth where previously they would not have been able to, but at the same time we have the means of preventing conception and of detecting abnormalities before birth and the means of terminating a pregnancy that would give rise to a child suffering from some defect.

Scientific knowledge and the technology developed from it have been concentrated in certain areas of the world, thus accentuating previous differences in wealth. There have always been situations where poverty and wealth exist side by side and hence, arguably, situations where the more wealthy have been presented with the question as to their responsibility to the less wealthy. The effect of a worldwide communications network, itself the product of science, is to bring into our living rooms the plight of those in other areas of the globe, yet in a way that may lead us to accept it as inevitable and to become indifferent to it – only the more horrific events are capable of catching our attention. The daily dose of disasters can make the problems appear so large that it seems they can be tackled only by institutions, with the individual able to contribute little. This may diminish our sense of responsibility to the people we encounter every day.

Thus it is possible that the developments in medical science, taken together with these other changes in society, have transformed some of our moral concepts, for example our concepts of caring, and how we view our duties towards other people and the rights we possess. When government funding of the health and welfare services falls short of expectations, political commentators bemoan the fact that we are no longer a caring society. But consider the underlying assumption as to the nature of a caring society – it is of a society in which the government carries out its duties of care. It is not so long ago that it was a family’s responsibility to care for its members – an ageing parent or a sick child was cared for at home. However, on the one hand, families no longer live together in extended groupings: increased affluence (itself the product of technological and industrial developments) has enabled offspring to move away from the parental home on reaching adulthood. On the other hand, caring can now involve a whole range of complex medical interventions: these are expensive, require specialist staff and must be carried out in specialist institutions.

Thus a caring community can no longer be simply one in which our immediate circle of family and friends looks after us. Caring has, to a large extent, become impersonal, carried out by professional staff, and the provision of care requires large amounts of money. This impersonalization of care leaves us uncertain as to what exactly our duties of care towards others are. A personal duty arises out of the demands of another person; these demands are direct but, also, are balanced against other demands on us and against our own needs. An impersonal duty lacks the direct demands, the balances are not so obvious. In fact, we have become used to not having many such personal duties and often become resentful when they are forced upon us.

The affluence that has resulted from industrialization has not so much satisfied our needs, or what we take to be our needs, as increased them; it has not so much given us a sense of security, rather it has given us more to lose. As villages have become towns and towns have become cities and cities have become sprawling conurbations, and as small firms have become large firms and large firms have become international and multinational companies, the communities of which we are a part have become less local and more impersonal. Although we are in contact with more and more people, we may be intimate with fewer. We perceive the needs of more people but feel direct obligation towards fewer. Without the sense of a local community it is difficult to see what our obligations and duties are.

The influence of philosophers on morality

As well as the changes wrought by science and technology, arguments put forward by moral philosophers have slowly permeated our moral sensibilities, in some instances replacing moral values based on religious beliefs. The moral theory which has had most impact is the utilitarianism developed initially by Bentham and Mill, although there are plenty of modern exponents. In its simplest form, utilitarianism has it that one should always act so as to promote the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Historically, there has been much discussion as to what is meant by happiness and whether there are other things preferred to happiness. None the less, a common feature of all the different versions of utilitarianism is that moral actions are judged in terms of their consequences. (Hence I shall tend to refer to a ‘consequentialist’ position.)

Within the public sphere, whether at international, national or local level, whether it involves government or industry and commerce or education or health care, it is generally accepted that decisions should be taken on the basis of foreseeable consequences. In the public sphere, the right decision is the one that brings about the best consequences – although it will often be a matter of deep disagreement as to which consequences are best (and best for whom). The general acceptance of consequentialism in the public sphere has appeared to lead many to an acceptance of the view that it is only the consequences of an action that matter in the sphere of personal morality, too. Naturally this has affected the way we see moral issues; I suggest that our moral sensitivities have been considerably impoverished.

Utilitarianism has not been the only influence. In the same way that the knowledge of other cultures has exposed us to many different forms of art, so it has exposed us to many different moral influences. However, these moral influences are encountered detached from the social frameworks which gave them meaning. If this has become true of the Christian virtues, it is even more true of the virtues of ancient Greece or the Norse sagas or the thoughts of Buddha. At the very least this has left us with an awareness of different considerations pulling us in different directions. Perhaps, indeed, our moral language has too many contradictions, contains too many unabsorbed fragments to be coherent, and our moral problems stem from trying to tie together irreconcilables.

Can philosophy help decide moral issues?

Let us look a little more closely at the ways we can expect moral philosophy to help us in our response to the changes we are faced with. One justification that is often given for involving a philosopher in moral discussions is that philosophers are trained to reason, to analyse arguments and to question assumptions. In other words, it is implied that it is not so much a knowledge of the subject matter of philosophy as the techniques of philosophizing that the philosopher brings to moral debates. The contrast can be drawn with, for example, a clergyman who is a contributor to moral debates because, in the nature of his or her vocation, he or she is bound to be involved with moral issues; all that the philosopher is thought to bring along is an analytic mind. However, although there is certainly something in this sort of answer, it does not seem sufficient. There are many disciplines whose study requires the development of analytic skills. A computer programmer, for example, is trained to analyse a problem and to think logically. However, although we are not surprised to find a moral philosopher chairing a committee on the ethical implications of foetal research, we would not expect a person to be chosen simply because he or she was a computer programmer.

Problems of the sort that interest a philosopher are frequently dismissed or ignored in the course of our everyday life; they are seen as trivial or irrelevant and attempts to treat them seriously are seen as hair-splitting or nit-picking. Unfortunately, philosophers tend not to go out of their way to dispel this image and sometimes the image has substance – philosophy is often obsessive and over-academic. However, it is also true that a philosopher’s concern to get to the bottom of a problem – the persistent ‘why?’ – can be fruitful and can result in a deeper understanding of the issues involved. What the best philosophers bring to these issues is not simply a repertoire of logical and analytical techniques but a fascination with getting to the roots of the matter. The philosopher, as it were, has the nose for unearthing the underlying problems that are overlooked by those not of a philosophical bent. The philosopher should bring not just a questioning but also a constructive curiosity.

An historical example of the impact that a philosophically motivated inquiry might have can be found in the philosophy of knowledge. The problem of trying to justify the claim that we can have genuine knowledge has occupied a central position in philosophy for much of the last four hundred years. Such a problem might appear to be too academic to be of relevance to our everyday concerns. Of course we know that tables and chairs exist. But how? We see them and touch them. But might we not be dreaming or under the influence of a drug? And what about when we leave the room and no one sees them, do they still exist? Things like tables and chairs don’t just disappear! But how do you know? Many people, when challenged as to how they can be certain of some familiar fact or other – such as the existence of the everyday objects which surround us will feel uncomfortable or, more likely, think that such a pedantic insistence on certainty, absolute certainty, is unreasonable.

However, although these concerns now seem academic, it is worth noting that at the time when doubts such as these were taken seriously by the French philosopher Descartes (often called the father of modern philosophy), science, as we know it, scarcely existed. Whereas now we are confident that we have scientific knowledge of the world and that this knowledge will continue to increase (so confident, in fact, that sceptical doubts as to the reliability of our senses do little to undermine our knowledge), in Descartes’ time it was still an open question as to whether scientific knowledge was possible at all. The lack of agreement among those engaged in scientific research, together with the evidence that suggested that our senses did not give us a true picture of the world, were seen by many as showing that science was not possible and that the only way to obtain knowledge of the world was through knowledge of its creator, that is, through knowledge of God. Knowledge of God could be obtained only through divine revelation and not by observation and experimentation. In trying to increase our knowledge of the world, Descartes and others at the time were not working within a well-established experimental tradition. In order to convince others of the truth of their scientific claims, they also had to convince them that it was indeed possible to arrive at truth by (what we now call) scientific methods – by observation, experimentation and the use of reason.

Thus attempts to acquire knowledge went hand in hand with attempts to give a convincing, affirmative answer to the philosophical problem as to whether the acquisition of knowledge in this way, relying as it did on fallible human powers, was possible. Descartes did not raise doubts as to whether we really do know anything simply in order to appear clever or to be awkward. At the time it was seen as a problem which demanded an answer and hanging on the answer was whether or not science was possible.

I suggest that we are in something like the same position now as regards moral issues. In contemporary society, many questions as to what is right and wrong appear to be genuinely open questions. It is for this reason that philosophical questions concerning morality – including radical questions such as whether there is an objective sense in which moral judgements are right or wrong – are of interest and relevance. The pursuit of moral knowledge has to go hand in hand with attempts to show that there is such a thing as moral knowledge.

In the course of the twentieth century alone, the scientific endeavour which Descartes helped to set in motion has borne many fruits, good and bad. Science has provided knowledge and so questions relating to whether we have the faculties to achieve a knowledge of the world now seem recondite – there are still philosophical problems lurking around but they are of specialist interest. In Descartes’ time it was in the philosophy of knowledge that the interests of the educated public overlapped those of the philosopher; now the philosophical problems which have a more general interest are to be found in the area of morality and moral philosophy. This is not to say that I think that moral philosophy is in a position to give the underlying basis for an established moral code, or that it ever will be, but that the concern of the philosopher to look for the basis is, at present, also a concern of those puzzled by moral issues.

Thus I see the moral philosopher as needing to take into account the doubts and uncertainties of contemporary life, whilst those having a serious interest in trying to sort out these doubts and uncertainties cannot afford to ignore the issues raised by philosophers. The need to arrive at answers to moral problems gives both an urgency and a relevance to the treatment of the philosophical issues.

Having claimed that it is, in part at least, the advances of science that have opened up new moral problems, should I not concentrate on those moral issues that have arisen directly as a result of scientific and technological advances, issues such as nuclear war or test-tube babies, genetic engineering, etc.? These issues certainly pose genuine moral problems but the changes that have taken place in society have left us with uncertainties over a much wider range of moral issues and, even more, uncertainties about the status of our judgements on these issues. The answers we might give to the more specialist problems must, if they are to carry any weight, arise out of fairly settled views about these ordinary issues. We cannot expect to decide the rights and wrongs of embryonic research if we are unclear about the rights and wrongs of the much more commonplace issue of abortion. Nor do I accept the idea that we can sort out the commonplace problems by devising theories to cope with the specialist ones.

The limitations of philosophy

At this stage a couple of words of caution are perhaps in order: first, it must be remembered that, despite w...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• 1 Applying Philosophy to Moral Issues
• 2 Giving Reasons and Making Judgements
• 3 Finding Grounds for Moral and Religious Education
• 4 Punishment and Responsibility
• 5 Sex and Morality
• 6 Pornography, Violence and Censorship
• 7 Abortion
• 8 Persons, Children and Embryos
• 9 Suicide and the Value of Life
• 10 Euthanasia
• 11 War, Terrorism and Protest
• 12 Animal Rights
• 13 Fitting Persons into Theories
• Further Reading
• Index