Basic Ethics

Michael Boylan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367638757
• eBook ISBN: 9781000296044
• Topic: Filosofia
• Subtopic: Storia e teoria della filosofia

Basic Ethics presents for a wide range of students and other interested readers the questions raised in thinking about ethical problems, the answers offered by moral philosophy, and the means to better integrate into both the reader's world and personal life. It takes up what the author calls a "worldview theory," which shows readers how to begin with the values and understanding of the world that they already possess in order to transition from there to new levels of increasing ethical awareness. Updates to the third edition include the more thorough integration of feminist ethics into the principal theoretical traditions, a new chapter on the ethical responsibility to be well informed of current events, expanded coverage of human rights, and additional opportunities on how to use ethical reasoning in thinking about one's own life and about public policy.

Key Features:

• Links personal values to a philosophical treatment of the major ethical theories
• Presents ethics in the context of social/political issues that face our nation and the world
• Challenges the student to react to the presented material through critical exercises that may be used as weekly assignments and can form the basis of class discussion and evaluation.
• Engages the student to think about underlying issues first (in the basic questions) before presenting the most popular solutions (in the basic answers)
• Invites the reader to make up her own mind on how to formulate an ethical theory that will help her in her own life
• Offers a 16-chapter format to fit into most college-semester calendars
• Presents an overall structure that establishes foundational problems in ethical theory in the first section of the book that are variously addressed by the different ethical theories in the second section of the book
• Highlights key terms to help the reader grapple with issues raised (which are reviewed and defined in a final Glossary)
• Includes a final chapter designed to help students comprehend the book in its entirety.

Updates to the Third Edition:

• Highlights new research on human rights and their relevance to ethical thinking and contemporary moral issues
• Integrates feminist ethics into the principal theoretical traditions: virtue ethics, ethical intuitionism, and some versions of deontology
• Provides new coverage of "fake news" and the moral responsibility to be well and accurately informed of current events
• Expands opportunities to use ethical reasoning in thinking about one's own life and about public policy.

Part I

The Basic Questions

Chapter 1

Living in a World of Values

In this Chapter

I.Who We Are and What Do We Value?3

II.What Is Ethics?4

III.The Individual: Metaethics, Normative Ethics, and Applied Ethics6

IV.The Society: Social and Political Ethics10

Key Terms16

End of Chapter Exercise16

Notes17

I. Who We Are and What Do We Value?

We begin our examination “in the middle of things.” We are of various ages. We are female or male, theistic or agnostic or atheistic, lovers of opera or the latest pop music. We all vary greatly in who we are: who we think we are and what others judge us to be. All of us come to these pages with our own personal stories. When one considers all this diversity, it seems amazing that we are able meaningfully to talk with each other about anything.

It is my contention that rational discourse implies a common body of knowledge to which each party refers when examining some subject.¹ One of those common areas of knowledge might be various agreed scientific facts about the world. Another may be various common values we hold. In some ways, the former connects us to almost all other people (because it implies universality) while the latter connects us only to those who share our values (i.e., the defined community is necessarily smaller).

The community of those who agree about the truths of science is large. As a result of this, many value the conclusions of science. We trust our lives to surgeons and physicians who prescribe treatments based upon this common body of knowledge.

Communities of people who hold other sorts of values are generally smaller than the community of those who agree about the truths of science. Be that as it may, it is probably the case that these smaller communities of particular values may say more about who we are and how we relate to others, than anything else about us. What are these values and how do we come to possess them? This is obviously a question that is best dealt with by developmental psychology. However, generally we can say that some of these values are given to us and some we choose for ourselves.

There are many values which each of us holds. We value goods having to do with our work and how it is carried out. We value goods that are tied up in our recreation. We are also particular about our family values and those of other communities in which we reside (such as the city, county, state, and nation—as well as the Boy and Girl Scouts, Churches, Mosques, and Synagogues, etc.). This book is interested primarily in those values called ethics. We will try not to forget those other values (because they are always important), but before we make an effort at integration (see Chapter 16: “Formulating Your Own Answers”), it will be necessary to get through some basic concepts and then to explore some ways people have expressed ethical value.

II. What Is Ethics?

There is some disagreement about this. The various answers are given in Part II of this book. Some view ethics as all about intuiting what is true from some other realm. Others think that it is a conventional linguistic/cultural exercise at descriptivism. Still others (including this author) believe that it is about realistic assessments about the world that inform upon the grounding of normativity. Thus, for this author, ethics is the science concerning the “right and wrong” of human action. My definition from moral realism means that ethics is first a “science.” By “science” I mean an activity which is studied rationally and systematically and whose conclusions seek to be exact.

Second, it concerns “right” and “wrong.” These terms refer to judgments that assign praise or blame. In the case of ethics, these judgments are usually assigned to people or to actions according to some standard. Just what this standard is and how it is justified is a source of some controversy.

Third, the subject matter in question is human action. This does not mean that other types of actions may not come into the examination, for example animals, trees, and the oceans, but these other entities only come into question inasmuch as they are objects of human action. Thus, it may be a question of ethics how a human treats a dog, a forest, or a waterway, but it is not a question of ethics how dogs treat each other, or how trees interact, or how the molecules of water collide. This is because it is assumed² that humans are the only rational creatures (meaning, roughly, that they exhibit characteristics of deductive and inductive logic which are expressed in an operationally observable set of behaviors which can be classified as a language—viz., that such behaviors exhibit (at least) syntax and grammar),³ and that this rationality is empowered with some modicum of free choice about what we do.

Because of this ability to rationally choose, we acquire ownership of and responsibility for the reasonably foreseen consequences of our actions. It is due to this ownership and responsibility that “good” or “bad” are assigned as value judgments according to some recognized “norm” which applies to all (or at least to some) people. In short, human action refers to humans interacting with humans or with anything else in such a way that we assume it originated from free rational choice.

Such a definition eliminates many types of things. First, it eliminates speculations that are not primarily systematic or rational. These systematic and rational justifications can be termed “good reasons for acting.” What would be eliminated by such a restriction would be justifications based solely upon emotion, desire, or mere whimsy (though reason and emotion working together would fit).⁴

Second, it does not pertain to anything to which a neutral or merely descriptive depiction might apply. This might include actions such as “combing one's hair” or “whether to place the new picture on the right or the left wall.” These activities are distinguished because they do not affect others in their sphere of action nor would they affect the self through violation of essential duties to the self. I do not diminish another nor myself (generally speaking) if I should choose the spaghetti or the linguini for my dinner entrée.⁵

Third, it does not apply to non-human entities (animals, vegetables, and minerals) except as they come into contact with humans.⁶

Fourth, it does not apply to actions that are not the result of free, rational deliberation. Thus, if one is coerced into certain actions by physical or severe psychological means, one is absolved from moral responsibility along some kind of sliding scale representing diminished capacity.⁷ For example, if I strap you down and overpower you and then take your hand and make you push “the button” for a nuclear attack, you are not responsible for the results—for you could not have done otherwise. On the other hand, if you were somewhat—or even greatly influenced by someone but nevertheless you could have done something to prevent some action that you would have then committed, then I think that some responsibility rests upon you. This is because moral responsibility rests upon the free choice to do otherwise. This is not an “all or nothing” proposition. Therefore, according to a sliding scale one is proportionally responsible according to how free one really was.

Ethics really requires at least two agreements about freedom: (a) the metaphysical understanding that we are positively free to commit certain actions and (b) the ethical consideration about how we are to understand limitations on this freedom respecting our blame for committing this or that action.

These aspects of definition need to be supplanted by the rationale for thinking about ethics at all. WHY SHOULD WE STUDY ETHICS? The answer to this question is somehow embedded in the purpose of our humanity: we are rational, purposive beings living together. Sometimes these purposes conflict. When this happens we can respond in one of two ways: (a) we can “muscle out” the other party so that our will can reign supreme; or (b) we can introspectively consider the ground of human action and act according to our best understanding of the proper mode of conduct.

But why should we introspect? This is certainly one of the most essential questions humans must consider. I have always been influenced by the dictum of Socrates: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” It is the contention of philosophical ethics that each of us has a duty to examine himself or herself. It is not enough to exist like a piece of driftwood floating on the sea of life. This is because free, rational deliberation is an essential part of our ability to be autonomous individuals. And unless we are autonomous agents, there is no real participation in ethics. When there is no real participation in ethics, we give up a fundamental aspect of what it means to be a human being.

It is a fundamental feature of who we are as people that we participate in ethics such that we are diminished without such participation. None would choose to be diminished, thus none would choose to deny this duty to himself or herself.⁸ Nonetheless, we know that many fail in this. What are we to say about such people? How can we justify our judgments?

These are just two questions for which we will seek answers as we develop our exploration into ethics and values.

III. The Individual: Metaethics, Normative Ethics, and Applied Ethics

The above discussion has raised a number of questions that need answers. These answers require a reasoned and systematic response. Each of these basic inquiries begins with our own experience and can be phrased in the form of questions of increasing generality:

1. A particular moral problem arises such as, “What should I do when my pre-natal testing shows that I am carrying a Downs Syndrome baby?”
2. To answer (a) implies recourse to a norm by which I can assess my options via-à-vis the “rightness” and “wrongness” of said actions. What is the standard by which we will judge human action as good or bad? How do we know that the standard we have set out is the correct standard?
3. To answer this last query, we need to establish a group of principles by which the process of (b) can be critically evaluated itself, in order to ascertain whether the standards in (b) are ones we should adopt for ourselves.

These principles should address the further questions of:

1. How do we arrive at the standard?
2. What is the range and scope of the standard?
3. What formal characteristics should a good standard possess?

In the box above, (a), (b), and (c) constitute different sorts of questions that all deal with the right and wrong in human action—but they address different issues. They begin from our personal experience with a moral problem. The struggle to solve the problem...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• List of Boxes
• Preface
• PART I The Basic Questions
• PART II The Basic Answers
• PART III Putting It All Together
• Glossary
• Index