What kind of ethics

In others, it designates an action that is commendable even if not the best possible. In still others, it picks out actions that are not blameworthy even if not commendable. A virtue ethicist might choose to define one of these—for example, the best action—in terms of virtues and vices, but appeal to other normative concepts—such as legitimate expectations—when defining other conceptions of right action. As we observed in section 2, a virtue ethical account need not attempt to reduce all other normative concepts to virtues and vices.

What is required is simply i that virtue is not reduced to some other normative concept that is taken to be more fundamental and ii that some other normative concepts are explained in terms of virtue and vice. Appealing to virtues and vices makes it much easier to achieve extensional adequacy.

Making room for normative concepts that are not taken to be reducible to virtue and vice concepts makes it even easier to generate a theory that is both extensionally and explanatorily adequate. Whether one needs other concepts and, if so, how many, is still a matter of debate among virtue ethicists, as is the question of whether virtue ethics even ought to be offering an account of right action.

Either way virtue ethicists have resources available to them to address the adequacy objection. Insofar as the different versions of virtue ethics all retain an emphasis on the virtues, they are open to the familiar problem of c the charge of cultural relativity. Is it not the case that different cultures embody different virtues, MacIntyre and hence that the v-rules will pick out actions as right or wrong only relative to a particular culture?

Different replies have been made to this charge. They admit that, for them, cultural relativism is a challenge, but point out that it is just as much a problem for the other two approaches. The putative cultural variation in character traits regarded as virtues is no greater—indeed markedly less—than the cultural variation in rules of conduct, and different cultures have different ideas about what constitutes happiness or welfare.

That cultural relativity should be a problem common to all three approaches is hardly surprising. A bolder strategy involves claiming that virtue ethics has less difficulty with cultural relativity than the other two approaches.

Much cultural disagreement arises, it may be claimed, from local understandings of the virtues, but the virtues themselves are not relative to culture Nussbaum Charity prompts me to kill the person who would be better off dead, but justice forbids it.

Honesty points to telling the hurtful truth, kindness and compassion to remaining silent or even lying. What shall I do? Of course, the same sorts of dilemmas are generated by conflicts between deontological rules.

Deontology and virtue ethics share the conflict problem and are happy to take it on board rather than follow some of the utilitarians in their consequentialist resolutions of such dilemmas and in fact their strategies for responding to it are parallel. Both aim to resolve a number of dilemmas by arguing that the conflict is merely apparent; a discriminating understanding of the virtues or rules in question, possessed only by those with practical wisdom, will perceive that, in this particular case, the virtues do not make opposing demands or that one rule outranks another, or has a certain exception clause built into it.

Whether this is all there is to it depends on whether there are any irresolvable dilemmas. If there are, proponents of either normative approach may point out reasonably that it could only be a mistake to offer a resolution of what is, ex hypothesi , irresolvable. Another problem arguably shared by all three approaches is e , that of being self-effacing.

Michael Stocker originally introduced it as a problem for deontology and consequentialism. He pointed out that the agent who, rightly, visits a friend in hospital will rather lessen the impact of his visit on her if he tells her either that he is doing it because it is his duty or because he thought it would maximize the general happiness.

In its particular versions, for deontology there is the question of how to justify its claims that certain moral rules are the correct ones, and for utilitarianism of how to justify its claim that all that really matters morally are consequences for happiness or well-being.

For virtue ethics, the problem concerns the question of which character traits are the virtues. Some believe that their normative ethics can be placed on a secure basis, resistant to any form of scepticism, such as what anyone rationally desires, or would accept or agree on, regardless of their ethical outlook; others that it cannot. Virtue ethicists have eschewed any attempt to ground virtue ethics in an external foundation while continuing to maintain that their claims can be validated.

A misunderstanding of eudaimonia as an unmoralized concept leads some critics to suppose that the neo-Aristotelians are attempting to ground their claims in a scientific account of human nature and what counts, for a human being, as flourishing. Others assume that, if this is not what they are doing, they cannot be validating their claims that, for example, justice, charity, courage, and generosity are virtues.

Eudaimonia in virtue ethics, is indeed a moralized concept, but it is not only that. Claims about what constitutes flourishing for human beings no more float free of scientific facts about what human beings are like than ethological claims about what constitutes flourishing for elephants. In both cases, the truth of the claims depends in part on what kind of animal they are and what capacities, desires and interests the humans or elephants have.

The best available science today including evolutionary theory and psychology supports rather than undermines the ancient Greek assumption that we are social animals, like elephants and wolves and unlike polar bears. No rationalizing explanation in terms of anything like a social contract is needed to explain why we choose to live together, subjugating our egoistic desires in order to secure the advantages of co-operation.

Like other social animals, our natural impulses are not solely directed towards our own pleasures and preservation, but include altruistic and cooperative ones. This basic fact about us should make more comprehensible the claim that the virtues are at least partially constitutive of human flourishing and also undercut the objection that virtue ethics is, in some sense, egoistic.

One is a simple confusion. A related version ascribes bizarre reasons to the virtuous agent, unjustifiably assuming that she acts as she does because she believes that acting thus on this occasion will help her to achieve eudaimonia. On the view that the exercise of the virtues is necessary but not sufficient for eudaimonia , such cases are described as those in which the virtuous agent sees that, as things have unfortunately turned out, eudaimonia is not possible for them Foot , Either way, such heroic acts can hardly be regarded as egoistic.

This is a mistake on two counts. Firstly, justice and benevolence do, in general, benefit their possessors, since without them eudaimonia is not possible. There have been other responses as well summarized helpfully in Prinz and Miller But giving up the idea that practical wisdom is the heart of all the virtues, as Adams has to do, is a substantial sacrifice, as Russell and Kamtekar argue.

Over the past thirty-five years most of those contributing to the revival of virtue ethics have worked within a neo-Aristotelian, eudaimonist framework. However, as noted in section 2, other forms of virtue ethics have begun to emerge. Theorists have begun to turn to philosophers like Hutcheson, Hume, Nietzsche, Martineau, and Heidegger for resources they might use to develop alternatives see Russell ; Swanton and ; Taylor ; and Harcourt These explorations promise to open up new avenues for the development of virtue ethics.

Although virtue ethics has grown remarkably in the last thirty-five years, it is still very much in the minority, particularly in the area of applied ethics. However, the last decade has seen an increase in the amount of attention applied virtue ethics has received Walker and Ivanhoe ; Hartman ; Austin ; Van Hooft ; and Annas This area can certainly be expected to grow in the future, and it looks as though applying virtue ethics in the field of environmental ethics may prove particularly fruitful Sandler ; Hursthouse , ; Zwolinski and Schmidtz ; Cafaro That suggests that at least those virtue ethicists who take their inspiration from Aristotle should have resources to offer for the development of virtue politics.

But, while Plato and Aristotle can be great inspirations as far as virtue ethics is concerned, neither, on the face of it, are attractive sources of insight where politics is concerned. However, recent work suggests that Aristotelian ideas can, after all, generate a satisfyingly liberal political philosophy Nussbaum ; LeBar a.

Moreover, as noted above, virtue ethics does not have to be neo-Aristotelian. It may be that the virtue ethics of Hutcheson and Hume can be naturally extended into a modern political philosophy Hursthouse —91; Slote Following Plato and Aristotle, modern virtue ethics has always emphasised the importance of moral education, not as the inculcation of rules but as the training of character. There is now a growing movement towards virtues education, amongst both academics Carr ; Athanassoulis ; Curren and teachers in the classroom.

One exciting thing about research in this area is its engagement with other academic disciplines, including psychology, educational theory, and theology see Cline ; and Snow Finally, one of the more productive developments of virtue ethics has come through the study of particular virtues and vices.

There are now a number of careful studies of the cardinal virtues and capital vices Pieper ; Taylor ; Curzer ; Timpe and Boyd Others have explored less widely discussed virtues or vices, such as civility, decency, truthfulness, ambition, and meekness Calhoun ; Kekes ; Williams ; and Pettigrove and Others have been concerned that such an open-handed approach to the virtues will make it difficult for virtue ethicists to come up with an adequate account of right action or deal with the conflict problem discussed above.

The apparent proliferation of virtues can be significantly reduced if we group virtues together with some being cardinal and others subordinate extensions of those cardinal virtues. Possible conflicts between the remaining virtues can then be managed if they are tied together in some way as part of a unified whole Russell This highlights two important avenues for future research, one of which explores individual virtues and the other of which analyses how they might be related to one another.

Aristotle character, moral character, moral: empirical approaches consequentialism ethics: deontological moral dilemmas. Parts of the introductory material above repeat what was said in the Introduction and first chapter of On Virtue Ethics Hursthouse Preliminaries 1. In particular, competing consequentialist theories specify which consequences for affected groups of people are relevant.

Three subdivisions of consequentialism emerge:. All three of these theories focus on the consequences of actions for different groups of people. But, like all normative theories, the above three theories are rivals of each other.

They also yield different conclusions. Consider the following example. A woman was traveling through a developing country when she witnessed a car in front of her run off the road and roll over several times. She asked the hired driver to pull over to assist, but, to her surprise, the driver accelerated nervously past the scene.

A few miles down the road the driver explained that in his country if someone assists an accident victim, then the police often hold the assisting person responsible for the accident itself. If the victim dies, then the assisting person could be held responsible for the death. On the principle of ethical egoism , the woman in this illustration would only be concerned with the consequences of her attempted assistance as she would be affected. Clearly, the decision to drive on would be the morally proper choice.

On the principle of ethical altruism, she would be concerned only with the consequences of her action as others are affected, particularly the accident victim. Tallying only those consequences reveals that assisting the victim would be the morally correct choice, irrespective of the negative consequences that result for her. On the principle of utilitarianism, she must consider the consequences for both herself and the victim.

The outcome here is less clear, and the woman would need to precisely calculate the overall benefit versus disbenefit of her action. Jeremy Bentham presented one of the earliest fully developed systems of utilitarianism.

Two features of his theory are noteworty. First, Bentham proposed that we tally the consequences of each action we perform and thereby determine on a case by case basis whether an action is morally right or wrong.

Second, Bentham also proposed that we tally the pleasure and pain which results from our actions. For Bentham, pleasure and pain are the only consequences that matter in determining whether our conduct is moral. Critics point out limitations in both of these aspects. First, according to act-utilitarianism, it would be morally wrong to waste time on leisure activities such as watching television, since our time could be spent in ways that produced a greater social benefit, such as charity work.

More significantly, according to act-utilitarianism, specific acts of torture or slavery would be morally permissible if the social benefit of these actions outweighed the disbenefit. A revised version of utilitarianism called rule-utilitarianism addresses these problems. According to rule-utilitarianism, a behavioral code or rule is morally right if the consequences of adopting that rule are more favorable than unfavorable to everyone.

The same is true for moral rules against lying or murdering. Rule-utilitarianism, then, offers a three-tiered method for judging conduct. In turn, the rule against theft is morally binding because adopting this rule produces favorable consequences for everyone.

Second, according to hedonistic utilitarianism, pleasurable consequences are the only factors that matter, morally speaking. This, though, seems too restrictive since it ignores other morally significant consequences that are not necessarily pleasing or painful. For example, acts which foster loyalty and friendship are valued, yet they are not always pleasing. In response to this problem, G. Moore proposed ideal utilitarianism , which involves tallying any consequence that we intuitively recognize as good or bad and not simply as pleasurable or painful.

Also, R. Hare proposed preference utilitarianism , which involves tallying any consequence that fulfills our preferences. We have seen in Section 1. Upon that foundation, Hobbes developed a normative theory known as social contract theory , which is a type of rule-ethical-egoism. According to Hobbes, for purely selfish reasons, the agent is better off living in a world with moral rules than one without moral rules. Our property, our families, and even our lives are at continual risk.

Selfishness alone will therefore motivate each agent to adopt a basic set of rules which will allow for a civilized community. Not surprisingly, these rules would include prohibitions against lying, stealing and killing. However, these rules will ensure safety for each agent only if the rules are enforced.

Each agent would then be at risk from his neighbor. Therefore, for selfish reasons alone, we devise a means of enforcing these rules: we create a policing agency which punishes us if we violate these rules.

Applied ethics is the branch of ethics which consists of the analysis of specific, controversial moral issues such as abortion, animal rights, or euthanasia. In recent years applied ethical issues have been subdivided into convenient groups such as medical ethics, business ethics, environmental ethics , and sexual ethics. The issue of drive-by shooting, for example, is not an applied ethical issue, since everyone agrees that this practice is grossly immoral. By contrast, the issue of gun control would be an applied ethical issue since there are significant groups of people both for and against gun control.

The second requirement for an issue to be an applied ethical issue is that it must be a distinctly moral issue. On any given day, the media presents us with an array of sensitive issues such as affirmative action policies, gays in the military, involuntary commitment of the mentally impaired, capitalistic versus socialistic business practices, public versus private health care systems, or energy conservation.

Although all of these issues are controversial and have an important impact on society, they are not all moral issues. Some are only issues of social policy. The aim of social policy is to help make a given society run efficiently by devising conventions, such as traffic laws, tax laws, and zoning codes. Moral issues, by contrast, concern more universally obligatory practices, such as our duty to avoid lying, and are not confined to individual societies.

Frequently, issues of social policy and morality overlap, as with murder which is both socially prohibited and immoral. However, the two groups of issues are often distinct.

For example, many people would argue that sexual promiscuity is immoral, but may not feel that there should be social policies regulating sexual conduct, or laws punishing us for promiscuity.

Similarly, some social policies forbid residents in certain neighborhoods from having yard sales. But, so long as the neighbors are not offended, there is nothing immoral in itself about a resident having a yard sale in one of these neighborhoods. Thus, to qualify as an applied ethical issue, the issue must be more than one of mere social policy: it must be morally relevant as well.

In theory, resolving particular applied ethical issues should be easy. With the issue of abortion, for example, we would simply determine its morality by consulting our normative principle of choice, such as act-utilitarianism.

If a given abortion produces greater benefit than disbenefit, then, according to act-utilitarianism, it would be morally acceptable to have the abortion. Unfortunately, there are perhaps hundreds of rival normative principles from which to choose, many of which yield opposite conclusions. Thus, the stalemate in normative ethics between conflicting theories prevents us from using a single decisive procedure for determining the morality of a specific issue.

The usual solution today to this stalemate is to consult several representative normative principles on a given issue and see where the weight of the evidence lies.

Arriving at a short list of representative normative principles is itself a challenging task. The principles must also be seen as having merit by people on both sides of an applied ethical issue. For this reason, principles that appeal to duty to God are not usually cited since this would have no impact on a nonbeliever engaged in the debate.

The following principles are the ones most commonly appealed to in applied ethical discussions:. Applied ethics looks at controversial topics like war, animal rights and capital punishment Top. Ethics needs to provide answers. However, ethics does provide good tools for thinking about moral issues. Ethics can provide a moral map Most moral issues get us pretty worked up - think of abortion and euthanasia for starters.

Ethics can pinpoint a disagreement Using the framework of ethics, two people who are arguing a moral issue can often find that what they disagree about is just one particular part of the issue, and that they broadly agree on everything else.

But sometimes ethics doesn't provide people with the sort of help that they really want. Ethics doesn't give right answers Ethics doesn't always show the right answer to moral problems. Ethics can give several answers Many people want there to be a single right answer to ethical questions.

Ethics as source of group strength One problem with ethics is the way it's often used as a weapon. Good people as well as good actions Ethics is not only about the morality of particular courses of action, but it's also about the goodness of individuals and what it means to live a good life. Virtue Ethics is particularly concerned with the moral character of human beings. Searching for the source of right and wrong At times in the past some people thought that ethical problems could be solved in one of two ways: by discovering what God wanted people to do by thinking rigorously about moral principles and problems If a person did this properly they would be led to the right conclusion.

Modern thinkers often teach that ethics leads people not to conclusions but to 'decisions'. Are ethical statements objectively true? Ethical realists think that human beings discover ethical truths that already have an independent existence. Ethical non-realists think that human beings invent ethical truths. M Hare, Essays in Ethical Theory, Four ethical 'isms' When a person says "murder is bad" what are they doing? The different 'isms' regard the person uttering the statement as doing different things.

We can show some of the different things I might be doing when I say 'murder is bad' by rewriting that statement to show what I really mean: I might be making a statement about an ethical fact "It is wrong to murder" This is moral realism I might be making a statement about my own feelings "I disapprove of murder" This is subjectivism I might be expressing my feelings "Down with murder" This is emotivism I might be giving an instruction or a prohibition "Don't murder people" This is prescriptivism Moral realism Moral realism is based on the idea that there are real objective moral facts or truths in the universe.

Subjectivism Subjectivism teaches that moral judgments are nothing more than statements of a person's feelings or attitudes, and that ethical statements do not contain factual truths about goodness or badness. So if someone says 'murder is wrong' they are telling us that they disapprove of murder.

Emotivism Emotivism is the view that moral claims are no more than expressions of approval or disapproval. Prescriptivism Prescriptivists think that ethical statements are instructions or recommendations. Where does ethics come from? Philosophers have several answers to this question: God and religion Human conscience and intuition a rational moral cost-benefit analysis of actions and their effects the example of good human beings a desire for the best for people in each unique situation political power God-based ethics - supernaturalism Supernaturalism makes ethics inseparable from religion.

Intuitionism Intuitionists think that good and bad are real objective properties that can't be broken down into component parts. Don't get confused. For the intuitionist: moral truths are not discovered by rational argument moral truths are not discovered by having a hunch moral truths are not discovered by having a feeling It's more a sort of moral 'aha' moment - a realisation of the truth.

Consequentialism This is the ethical theory that most non-religious people think they use every day. One famous way of putting this is 'the greatest good for the greatest number of people'. Two problems with consequentialism are: it can lead to the conclusion that some quite dreadful acts are good predicting and evaluating the consequences of actions is often very difficult Non-consequentialism or deontological ethics Non-consequentialism is concerned with the actions themselves and not with the consequences.

Virtue ethics Virtue ethics looks at virtue or moral character, rather than at ethical duties and rules, or the consequences of actions - indeed some philosophers of this school deny that there can be such things as universal ethical rules. Situation ethics Situation ethics rejects prescriptive rules and argues that individual ethical decisions should be made according to the unique situation.

Ethics and ideology Some philosophers teach that ethics is the codification of political ideology, and that the function of ethics is to state, enforce and preserve particular political beliefs. Moral absolutism Some people think there are such universal rules that apply to everyone. Religious views of ethics tend to be absolutist. Why people disagree with moral relativism: Many of us feel that moral rules have more to them than the general agreement of a group of people - that morality is more than a super-charged form of etiquette Many of us think we can be good without conforming to all the rules of society Moral relativism has a problem with arguing against the majority view: if most people in a society agree with particular rules, that's the end of the matter.

Many of the improvements in the world have come about because people opposed the prevailing ethical view - moral relativists are forced to regard such people as behaving "badly" Any choice of social grouping as the foundation of ethics is bound to be arbitrary Moral relativism doesn't provide any way to deal with moral differences between societies Moral somewhere-in-between-ism Most non-philosophers think that both of the above theories have some good points and think that there are a few absolute ethical rules but a lot of ethical rules depend on the culture Top.

Pollock , p. For the purposes of this book, meta-ethics will relate to the way we look at and understand normative ethical theories. More concisely, meta-ethics concerns an interpretation and evaluation of the language used within normative ethical theories. Applied ethics describes how we apply normative theories to specific issues, usually related to work or belonging to an organization; for example, policies and procedures of organizations or ethical codes of outlaw bikers versus ethical codes of police officers.

With the overview of the three categories of ethical theories we will further analyze each ethical theory or system. Skip to content Chapter 2: Ethical Systems.