awesome-awesomeness/html/ethics.html

<h1 id="awesome-ethics"><a href="#Awesome-ethics">Awesome
ethics</a></h1>
<p>A curated list of awesome ethics</p>
<p>Contributions and criticism are welcome. (See:
https://github.com/HussainAther/awesome-ethics/blob/master/contributing.md)</p>
<h1 id="table-of-contents"><a href="#Table-of-contents">Table of
contents</a></h1>
<ul>
<li><p><a href="#What-is-ethics">What is ethics?</a></p>
<ul>
<li><p><a href="#Meta-ethics-Metaethics">Meta-ethics
(Metaethics)</a></p></li>
<li><p><a href="#Applied-ethics">Applied ethics</a></p></li>
<li><p><a href="#Normative-ethics">Normative ethics</a></p></li>
</ul></li>
<li><p><a href="#Reading">Reading</a></p>
<ul>
<li><p><a href="#Normative-ethics">Normative ethics</a></p></li>
<li><p><a href="#Issues-in-normative-ethics">Issues in normative
ethics</a></p></li>
<li><p><a href="#Consequentialism">Consequentialism</a></p></li>
<li><p><a href="#Deontology">Deontology</a></p></li>
<li><p><a href="#Virtue-ethics">Virtue ethics</a></p></li>
<li><p><a href="#Meta-ethics-Metaethics">Meta-ethics
(Metaethics)</a></p></li>
<li><p><a href="#Moral-judgement">Moral judgement</a></p></li>
<li><p><a href="#Moral-responsibility">Moral responsibility</a></p></li>
<li><p><a href="#Moral-realism-and-irrealism">Moral realism and
irrealism</a></p></li>
<li><p><a href="#Research-ethics">Research ethics</a></p></li>
</ul></li>
</ul>
<h1 id="what-is-ethics">What is ethics?</h1>
<figure>
<img src="8bitthought.png" title="Thoughts" alt="Why?" />
<figcaption aria-hidden="true">Why?</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ethics is approximately about the questions to do with the nature,
content, and application of morality, and so is the study of morality in
general.</p>
<p>Questions of moral language, psychology, phenomonenology (see above),
epistemology, and ontology typically fall under metaethics.</p>
<p>Questions of theoretical content, what makes something right, wrong,
good, bad, obligatory, or supererogatory typically fall under normative
ethics.</p>
<p>Questions of conduct related to specific issues in the real world to
do with business, professional, social, environmental, bioethics, and
personhood typically fall under applied ethics. These can be things like
abortion, euthanasia, treatment of non-human animals, marketing, and
charity.</p>
<p>Ethics has been divided traditionally into three areas concerning how
we ought to conduct ourselves.</p>
<h2 id="meta-ethics-metaethics">Meta-ethics (Metaethics)</h2>
<figure>
<img src="partingbrain.gif" title="Into the mind we go"
alt="How Cartesian." />
<figcaption aria-hidden="true">How Cartesian.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Metaethics is occasionally referred to as a “second-order” discipline
to make a distinction between itself and areas that are less about
questions regarding what morality itself is. Questions about the most
plausible metaphysical report of moral facts or the link between moral
judgment, motivation, and knowledge are questions can be described as
such, and so are metaethical questions. There are several rough
divisions that have been created to introduce metaethics adequately.
Either of these distinctions should be sufficient for getting a distant
sense of what metaethics is.</p>
<h3
id="metaethics-as-the-systematic-analysis-of-moral-language-psychology-and-ontology">Metaethics
as the systematic analysis of moral language, psychology, and
ontology</h3>
<p>In Andrew Fisher’s <a
href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Metaethics.html?id=VbiNZwEACAAJ">Metaethics:
An Introduction</a>, an intro book Fisher at one point playfully thought
of as “An Introduction to An Introduction to Contemporary Metaethics,”
we get this:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Looking at ethics we can see that it involves what people say: moral
language. So one strand of metaethics considers what is going on when
people talk moral talk. For example, what do people mean when they say
something is “wrong”? What links moral language to the world? Can we
define moral terms?</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Obviously ethics also involves people, so metaethicists consider and
analyse what’s going on in peoples’ minds. For example, when people make
moral judgements are they expressing beliefs or expressing desires?
What’s the link between making moral judgements and motivation?</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Finally, there are questions about what exists (ontology). Thus
meta-ethicists ask questions about whether moral properties are real.
What is it for something to be real? Could moral facts exist
independently of people? Could moral properties be causal?</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Metaethics, then, is the systematic analysis of:</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<ol type="a">
<li>moral language;</li>
<li>moral psychology;</li>
<li>moral ontology. This classification is rough and does not explicitly
capture a number of issues that are often discussed in metaethics, such
as truth and phenomenology. However, for our purposes we can think of
such issues as falling under these broad headings.</li>
</ol>
</blockquote>
<h3
id="metaethics-as-concerned-with-meaning-metaphysics-epistemology-and-justification-phenomenology-moral-psychology-and-objectivity">Metaethics
as concerned with meaning, metaphysics, epistemology and justification,
phenomenology, moral psychology, and objectivity</h3>
<p>In Alex Miller’s <a
href="http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0745646581.html">Contemporary
Metaethics: An Introduction</a> (the book Fisher playfully compared his
own introduction to), Miller provides us with perhaps the most succinct
description of the three:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[Metaethics is] concerned with questions about the following:</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<ol type="a">
<li>Meaning: what is the semantic function of moral discourse? Is the
function of moral discourse to state facts, or does it have some other
non-fact-stating role?</li>
<li>Metaphysics: do moral facts (or properties) exist? If so, what are
they like? Are they identical or reducible to natural facts (or
properties) or are they irreducible and sui generis?</li>
<li>Epistemology and justification: is there such a thing as moral
knowledge? How can we know whether our moral judgements are true or
false? How can we ever justify our claims to moral knowledge?</li>
<li>Phenomenology: how are moral qualities represented in the experience
of an agent making a moral judgement? Do they appear to be ‘out there’
in the world?</li>
<li>Moral psychology: what can we say about the motivational state of
someone making a moral judgement? What sort of connection is there
between making a moral judgement and being motivated to act as that
judgement prescribes?</li>
<li>Objectivity: can moral judgements really be correct or incorrect?
Can we work towards finding out the moral truth? Obviously, this list is
not intended to be exhaustive, and the various questions are not all
independent (for example, a positive answer to (f) looks, on the face of
it, to presuppose that the function of moral discourse is to state
facts). But it is worth noting that the list is much wider than many
philosophers forty or fifty years ago would have thought. For example,
one such philosopher writes:</li>
</ol>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>[Metaethics] is not about what people ought to do. It is about what
they are doing when they talk about what they ought to do. (Hudson
1970)</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>The idea that metaethics is exclusively about language was no doubt
due to the once prevalent idea that philosophy as a whole has no
function other than the study of ordinary language and that
‘philosophical problems’ only arise from the application of words out of
the contexts in which they are ordinarily used. Fortunately, this
‘ordinary language’ conception of philosophy has long since ceased to
hold sway, and the list of metaethical concerns – in metaphysics,
epistemology, phenomenology, moral psychology, as well as in semantics
and the theory of meaning – bears this out.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Two small notes that might be made are:</p>
<p>“Objectivity” is standardly taken to mean mind-independence. Here, it
almost seems as if it’s cognitivism that the author is describing, but
it’s made clear by the author noting that (f) presupposes facts that
when Miller says “correct,” Miller means “objectively true.” This is a
somewhat unorthodox usage, but careful reading makes it clear what
Miller is trying to say.</p>
<p>“Moral phenomenology” is often categorized as falling under normative
ethics as well, but this has little impact on the veracity of this
description of metaethics.</p>
<h2 id="applied-ethics">Applied ethics</h2>
<p>Applied ethics is concerned with what is permissible in particular
practices. In Peter Singer’s <em>Practical Ethics,</em> Singer provides
some examples of what sorts of things this field might address.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Practical ethics covers a wide area. We can find ethical
ramifications in most of our choices, if we look hard enough. This book
does not attempt to cover this whole area. The problems it deals with
have been selected on two grounds: their relevance, and the extent to
which philosophical reasoning can contribute to a discussion of
them.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>I regard an ethical issue as relevant if it is one that any thinking
person must face. Some of the issues discussed in this book confront us
daily: what are our personal responsibilities towards the poor? Are we
justified in treating animals as nothing more than machines- producing
flesh for us to eat? Should we be using paper that is not recycled? And
why should we bother about acting in accordance with moral principles
anyway? Other problems, like abortion and euthanasia, fortunately are
not everyday decisions for most of us; but they are issues that can
arise at some time in our lives. They are also issues of current concern
about which any active participant in our society’s decision-making
process needs to reflect.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>….</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>This book is about practical ethics, that is, the application of
ethics or morality — I shall use the words interchangeably — to
practical issues like the treatment of ethnic minorities, equality for
women, the use of animals for food and research, the preservation of the
natural environment, abortion, euthanasia, and the obligation of the
wealthy to help the poor.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So what does the application of ethics to practical issues look
like?</p>
<p>We can take a look at two of the issues that Singer brings up —
abortion and animal rights — to get a sense of what sort of evidence
might be taken into consideration with these matters. Keep in mind that
this is written with the intention of providing a sense of how
discussions in applied ethics develop rather than a comprehensive survey
of views in each topic.</p>
<h3 id="abortion">Abortion</h3>
<p>In Rosalind Hursthouse’s <a
href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2265432">Virtue Theory and
Abortion</a>, Hursthouse gives a summary of the discussion on abortion
as to do with the struggle between facts about the moral status of the
fetus and women’s rights.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>As everyone knows, the morality of abortion is commonly discussed in
relation to just two considerations: first, and predominantly, the
status of the fetus and whether or not it is the sort of thing that may
or may not be innocuously or justifiably killed; and second, and less
predominantly (when, that is, the discussion concerns the morality of
abortion rather than the question of permissible legislation in a just
society), women’s rights.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Judith Jarvis Thomson, in <a
href="http://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil160,Fall02/thomson.htm">A
Defense of Abortion</a>, Thomson addresses a common version of the
former consideration, refuting the slippery slope argument.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Most opposition to abortion relies on the premise that the fetus is a
human being, a person, from the moment of conception. The premise is
argued for, but, as I think, not well. Take, for example, the most
common argument. We are asked to notice that the development of a human
being from conception through birth into childhood is continuous; then
it is said that to draw a line, to choose a point in this development
and say “before this point the thing is not a person, after this point
it is a person” is to make an arbitrary choice, a choice for which in
the nature of things no good reason can be given. It is concluded that
the fetus is, or anyway that we had better say it is, a person from the
moment of conception. But this conclusion does not follow. Similar
things might be said about the development of an acorn into an oak
trees, and it does not follow that acorns are oak trees, or that we had
better say they are. Arguments of this form are sometimes called
“slippery slope arguments”–the phrase is perhaps self-explanatory–and it
is dismaying that opponents of abortion rely on them so heavily and
uncritically.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Nonetheless, Thomson is willing to grant the premise, addressing
instead whether or not we can make the case that abortion is
impermissible given that the fetus is, indeed, a person. Thomson thinks
that the argument that fetuses have the right to life and that right
outweighs the right for the individual carrying the fetus to do as they
wish with their body is faulty, but notes a limitation.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>But now let me ask you to imagine this. You wake up in the morning
and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A
famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney
ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available
medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to
help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist’s
circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be
used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director
of the hospital now tells you, “Look, we’re sorry the Society of Music
Lovers did this to you–we would never have permitted it if we had known.
But still, they did it, and the violinist is now plugged into you. To
unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it’s only for nine
months. By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely
be unplugged from you.” Is it morally incumbent on you to accede to this
situation? No doubt it would be very nice of you if you did, a great
kindness. But do you have to accede to it? What if it were not nine
months, but nine years? Or longer still? What if the director of the
hospital says. “Tough luck. I agree, but now you’ve got to stay in bed,
with the violinist plugged into you, for the rest of your life. Because
remember this. All persons have a right to life, and violinists are
persons. Granted you have a right to decide what happens in and to your
body, but a person’s right to life outweighs your right to decide what
happens in and to your body. So you cannot ever be unplugged from him.”
I imagine you would regard this as outrageous, which suggests that
something really is wrong with that plausible-sounding argument I
mentioned a moment ago.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>In this case, of course, you were kidnapped, you didn’t volunteer for
the operation that plugged the violinist into your kidneys.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Thomson goes on to address this limitation and goes back and forth
between the issue of the fetus’s and carrier’s rights, but Hursthouse
(see above) rejects this framework, noting in more detail that we can
suppose that women have a right to abortion in a legal sense and still
have to wrestle with whether or not abortion is permissible. On the
status of fetuses, Hursthouse claims this too can be bypassed with
virtue theory.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What about the consideration of the status of the fetus-what can
virtue theory say about that? One might say that this issue is not in
the province of any moral theory; it is a metaphysical question, and an
extremely difficult one at that. Must virtue theory then wait upon
metaphysics to come up with the answer?</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>….</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>But the sort of wisdom that the fully virtuous person has is not
supposed to be recondite; it does not call for fancy philosophical
sophistication, and it does not depend upon, let alone wait upon, the
discoveries of academic philosophers. And this entails the following,
rather startling, conclusion: that the status of the fetus-that issue
over which so much ink has been spilt-is, according to virtue theory,
simply not relevant to the rightness or wrongness of abortion (within,
that is, a secular morality).</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Or rather, since that is clearly too radical a conclusion, it is in a
sense relevant, but only in the sense that the familiar biological facts
are relevant. By “the familiar biological facts” I mean the facts that
most human societies are and have been familiar with-that, standardly
(but not invariably), pregnancy occurs as the result of sexual
intercourse, that it lasts about nine months, during which time the
fetus grows and develops, that standardly it terminates in the birth of
a living baby, and that this is how we all come to be.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is worth noting that Hursthouse’s argument more centrally gives
her conception of what virtue ethics ought to look like rather than how
we should go about abortion, and so to avoid it clouding her paper, she
never takes any stance on whether one should think abortion is or is not
permissible.</p>
<p>Thomson’s argument appears to be rather theory-agnostic whereas
Hursthouse is committed to a certain theory of ethics. A third approach
is intertheoretical, an example of which can be found in Tomasz
Żuradzki’s <a
href="https://philpapers.org/archive/URAMIM.pdf">Meta-Reasoning in
Making Moral Decisions under Normative Uncertainty</a>. Here, Żuradzki
discusses how we might deal with uncertainty over which theory is
correct.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>For example, we have to act in the face of uncertainty about the
facts, the consequences of our decisions, the identity of people
involved, people’s preferences, moral doctrines, specific moral duties,
or the ontological status of some entities (belonging to some
ontological class usually has serious implications for moral status). I
want to analyze whether these kinds of uncertainties should have
practical consequences for actions and whether there are reliable
methods of reasoning that deal with the possibility that we understand
some crucial moral issues wrong.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Żuradzki at one point considers the seemingly obvious “My Favorite
Theory” approach, but concludes that the approach is problematic.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Probably the most obvious proposition how to act under normative
uncertainty is My Favorite Theory approach. It says that “a morally
conscientious agent chooses an option that is permitted by the most
credible moral theory”</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>….</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Although this approach looks very intuitive, there are interesting
counter-examples.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Żuradzki also addresses a few different approaches, some of which
seem to make abortion impermissible so long as there is uncertainty, but
perhaps this gives a good idea of three approaches in applied
ethics.</p>
<h3 id="animal-rights">Animal rights</h3>
<p>In the abortion section, the status of the fetus falls into the
background. Thomson says even given a certain status, the case against
abortion must do more, Hursthouse says the metaphysical question can be
bypassed altogether, and Żuradzki considers how to take multiple
theories about an action into account. But it seems this strategy of
moving beyond the status of the patient in question cannot be done when
it comes to the question of how we ought to treat non-human animals, for
there’s no obvious competing right that might give us pause when we
decide not to treat a non-human animal cruelly. In dealing with animal
rights, then, it appears we are forced to address the status of the
non-human animal, and there seem to be many ways to address this.</p>
<p>In Tom Regan’s <a
href="http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-m/regan03.pdf">The Case
for Animal Rights</a>, Regan, who agrees with Kant that those who are
worthy of moral consideration are ends-in-themselves, thinks what
grounds that worthiness in humans is also what grounds that in non-human
animals.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We want and prefer things, believe and feel things, recall and expect
things. And all these dimensions of our life, including our pleasure and
pain, our enjoyment and suffering, our satisfaction and frustration, our
continued existence or our untimely death - all make a difference to the
quality of our life as lived, as experienced, by us as individuals. As
the same is true of those animals that concern us (the ones that are
eaten and trapped, for example), they too must be viewed as the
experiencing subjects of a life, with inherent value of their own.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Christine Korsgaard, who also agrees with a Kantian view, argues
against Regan’s view and thinks non-human animals are not like humans.
In <a
href="http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~korsgaar/CMK.FellowCreatures.pdf">Fellow
Creatures: Kantian Ethics and Our Duties to Animals</a>, Korsgaard makes
the case that humans are rational in a sense that non-human animals are
not, and that rationality is what grounds our moral obligations.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>an animal who acts from instinct is conscious of the object of its
fear or desire, and conscious of it as fearful or desirable, and so as
to-be-avoided or to-be-sought. That is the ground of its action. But a
rational animal is, in addition, conscious that she fears or desires the
object, and that she is inclined to act in a certain way as a
result.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>….</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>We cannot expect the other animals to regulate their conduct in
accordance with an assessment of their principles, because they are not
conscious of their principles. They therefore have no moral
obligations.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Korsgaard, however, still thinks this difference that makes the sense
in which humans and non-human animals should be considered fundamentally
distinct still leaves room for animals to be worthy of moral
consideration.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Because we are animals, we have a natural good in this sense, and it
is to this that our incentives are directed. Our natural good, like the
other forms of natural good which I have just described, is not, in and
of itself, normative. But it is on our natural good, in this sense, that
we confer normative value when we value ourselves as ends-in-ourselves.
It is therefore our animal nature, not just our autonomous nature, that
we take to be an end-in-itself.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>….</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>In taking ourselves to be ends-in-ourselves we legislate that the
natural good of a creature who matters to itself is the source of
normative claims. Animal nature is an end-in-itself, because our own
legislation makes it so. And that is why we have duties to the other
animals.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So Regan thinks that we can elevate the status of non-human animals
up to something like the status of humans, but Korsgaard thinks there is
a vast difference between the two categories. Before we consider which
view is more credible, we should consider an additional, non-Kantian
view which seems to bypass the issue of status once more.</p>
<p>Rosalind Hursthouse (again!), in <a
href="http://www.hackettpublishing.com/pdfs/Hursthouse_Essay.pdf">Applying
Virtue Ethics to Our Treatment of the Other Animals</a>, argues that
status need not be relevant for roughly the same reasons as the case of
abortion.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In the abortion debate, the question that almost everyone began with
was “What is the moral status of the fetus?”</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>….</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>The consequentialist and deontological approaches to the rights and
wrongs of the ways we treat the other animals (and also the environment)
are structured in exactly the same way. Here too, the question that must
be answered first is “What is the moral status of the other animals…?”
And here too, virtue ethicists have no need to answer the question.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So Hursthouse once again reframes the argument and grounds her
argument in terms of virtue.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>So I take the leaves on which [Singer describes factory farming] and
think about them in terms of, for example, compassion, temperance,
callousness, cruelty, greed, self-indulgence—and honesty.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Can I, in all honesty, deny the ongoing existence of this suffering?
No, I can’t. I know perfectly well that althrough there have been some
improvements in the regulation of factory farming, what is going on is
still terrible. Can I think it is anything but callous to shrug this off
and say it doesn’t matter? No, I can’t. Can I deny that the practices
are cruel? No, I can’t.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>….</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>The practices that bring cheap meat to our tables are cruel, so we
shouldn’t be party to them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Żuradzki’s argument in <a
href="https://philpapers.org/archive/URAMIM.pdf">Meta-Reasoning in
Making Moral Decisions under Normative Uncertainty</a> becomes relevant
once more as well. In it, he argues that if between the competing
theories, one says something is wrong and one says nothing of the
matter, it would be rational to act as if it were wrong.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Comparativism in its weak form can be applied only to very specific
kinds of situations in which an agent’s credences are not divided
between two different moral doctrines, but between only one moral
doctrine and some doctrine (or doctrines) that does not give any moral
reasons. Its conclusion says that if some theories in which you have
credence give you subjective reason to choose action A over action B,
and no theories in which you have credence give you subjective reason to
choose action B over action A, then you should (because of the
requirements of rationality) choose A over B.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Once again, we see a variety of approaches that help give us a sense
of the type of strategies that applied ethicists might use. Here, we
have arguments that accept and reject a central premise of the debate,
an argument that bypasses it, and an argument that considers both views.
Some approaches are theory-specific, some are intertheoretical, and
while it was not discussed here, Singer’s argument from marginal cases
is theory-neutral.</p>
<p>Other issues will differ wildly, they will rely on different central
premises, have arguments such that intertheoretical approaches are
impossible, or have any number of other variations on the similarities
and differences between the discussions on the two topics just
discussed. However, this gives some idea, hopefully enough to build on
if one chooses to look deeper into the literature, of how discussions in
the area of applied ethics go about.</p>
<h2 id="normative-ethics">Normative ethics</h2>
<p>Normative ethics deals very directly with the question of conduct.
Much of the discipline is dedicated to discovering ethical theories
capable of describing what we ought to do. But what does ought mean? In
different contexts, while ought tends to deal with normativity and
value, it does not always deal with ethics. The oughts that link
aesthetics and normativity are not obviously the same as the oughts that
we’re dealing with here. The questions of what oughts exist in normative
ethics have a great deal to do with concepts like what is “permissible”
or “impermissible,” what is “right” or “wrong,” or what is “good” and
“bad.” It should be contrasted with how people do act, as well as the
moral code of some person or group. These are not what normative ethics
is about, but rather what genuinely is correct when it comes to how we
ought to live our lives. For now, we can roughly divide the main
theories of this area into three categories, though these are not the
only categories: consequentialism, deontology, and virtue theory. As
noted, there are other theories, and there are even other problems in
normative ethics as well, but these three types of theories will be
detailed below as well as what we should take from an understanding of
the three categories.</p>
<h3 id="ethics-as-grounded-in-outcomes-consequentialism">Ethics as
grounded in outcomes: Consequentialism</h3>
<p>Consequentialism is a family of theories that are centrally concerned
with consequences. Consequentialism, in ordinary practice, is used to
refer to theories rooted in classical utilitarianism (even when the
theory is not utilitarianism itself), ignoring certain theories that
also seem grounded solely in consequences such as egoism. The
aforementioned classical utilitarianism that serves as the historical
and conceptual root of this discussion entailed a great deal of claims,
laid out in Shelly Kagan’s <a
href="https://westviewpress.com/books/normative-ethics/">Normative
Ethics</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>that goodness of outcomes is the only morally relevant factor in
determining the status of a given act. the agent is morally required to
perform the act with the best consequences. It is not sufficient that an
act have “pretty good” consequences, that it produce more good than
harm, or that it be better than average. Rather, the agent is required
to perform the act with the very best outcome (compared to
alternatives); she is required to perform the optimal act, as it is
sometimes called. the agent is morally required to performed the act
with the best consequences. The optimal act is the only act that is
morally permissible; no other act is morally right. Thus the
consequentialist is not making the considerably more modest claim that
performing the act with the best consequences is—although generally not
obligatory—the nicest or the most praiseworthy thing to do. Rather,
performing the optimal act is morally required: anything else is morally
forbidden. the right act is the act that leads to the greatest total
amount of happiness overall. the consequences [are evaluated] in terms
of how they affect everyone’s well-being…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And of course, these can be divided even further, but what’s salient
is there appear to be a great many more claims entailed in this
classical form of utilitarianism than one might think first glance:
classical utilitarianism is an agent-neutral theory in which acts that
actually result in the optimal amount of happiness for everyone is
obligatory. By understanding all of these points, we can understand how
consequentialism differs from this classical utilitarianism and thus
what it means to be consequentialist.</p>
<h4 id="the-limits-of-contemporary-consequentialism">The limits of
contemporary consequentialism</h4>
<p>Many of these claims don’t seem necessary to the label
“consequentialism” and give us an unnecessarily narrow sense of what the
word could mean.</p>
<p>It seems desirable to want to broaden the scope of the term then, and
in fact, this hasn’t only been done simply to help understand
consequentialism, but to defend against criticisms of consequentialism.
In Campbell Brown’s <a
href="http://www.research.ed.ac.uk/portal/files/12473535/BROWN_C_Consequentialize_This.pdf">Consequentialize
This</a>, we get a brief description of one motivation behind radical
consequentializing:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You—a nonconsequentialist, let’s assume—begin with your favorite
counterexample. You describe some action…[that] would clearly have the
best consequences, yet equally clearly would be greatly immoral. So
consequentialism is false, you conclude; sometimes a person ought not to
do what would have best consequences. “Not so fast,” comes the
consequentialist’s reply. “Your story presupposes a certain account of
what makes consequences better or worse, a certain ‘theory of the good,’
as we consequentialists like to say. Consequentialism, however, is not
wedded to any such theory…In order to reconcile consequentialism with
the view that this action you’ve described is wrong, we need only to
find an appropriate theory of the good, one according to which the
consequences of this action would not be best. You say you’re concerned
about the guy’s rights? No worries; we’ll just build that into your
theory of the good. Then you can be a consequentialist too.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So, Brown says, this is what has just occurred:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Instead of showing that your nonconsequentialism is mistaken, the
consequentialist shows that it’s not really nonconsequentialism; instead
of refuting your view, she ‘consequentializes’ it. If you can’t beat
’em, join ’em. Better still, make ’em join you.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Is this a good strategy? Brown thinks not, for it weakens the
consequentialist’s claim.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It might succeed in immunizing consequentialism against
counterexamples only at the cost of severely weakening it, perhaps to
the point of utter triviality. So effortlessly is the strategy deployed
that some are led to speculate that it is without theoretical limits:
every moral view may be dressed up in consequentialist clothing…But
then, it seems, consequentialism would be empty—trivial, vacuous,
without substantive content, a mere tautology. The statement that an
action is right if and only if (iff) it maximizes the good would entail
nothing more substantive than the statement that an action is right iff
it is right; true perhaps, but not of much use.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So not too broad, not too narrow, and not too shifty. We want some
sort of solid and only sufficiently broad meaning to jump from. Brown
goes on to define what he thinks consequentialism minimally is and three
limits must be placed upon it.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>whatever is meant by ‘consequentialism’, it must be intelligible as
an elaboration of the familiar consequentialist slogan “Maximize the
good.” The non-negotiable core of consequentialism, I shall assume, is
the claim that an action is right, or permissible, iff it maximizes the
good. My strategy is to decompose consequentialism into three
conditions, which I call ‘agent neutrality’, ‘no moral dilemmas’, and
‘dominance’ As usually defined, a theory is agent-relative iff it gives
different aims to different agents; otherwise it’s agent-neutral. By a
moral dilemma, I mean a situation in which a person cannot avoid acting
wrongly…Consider, for example, a theory which holds that violations of
rights are absolutely morally forbidden; it is always wrong in any
possible situation to violate a right. Suppose, further, that the
catalog of rights endorsed by this theory is such that sometimes a
person cannot help but violate at least one right. Then this theory
cannot be represented by a rightness function which satisfies NMD, and
so it cannot be consequentialized. [Dominance] may be the least
intuitive of the three. It requires the following. Suppose that in a
given choice situation, two worlds x and y are among the alternatives.
And suppose in this situation, x is right and y wrong. Then x dominates
y in the following sense: y cannot be right in any situation where x is
an alternative; the presence of x is always sufficient to make y
wrong.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And there we have it, a definition of consequentialism. Not only
that, but this definition is formalized in the paper as well. Can we
safely say, then, that this is the definition of consequentialism? The
most comprehensive, elucidating, uncontroversial in the field? Certainly
not! In fact, <a
href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Ethics/wiki/faq#wiki_m2_what_are_some_consequentialist_positions_that_would_be_excluded_by_brown.27s_definition">it
leaves out several significant forms of consequentialism</a>, but this
formulation of consequentialism captures many concepts important
consequentialism, sufficient for further discussion over the three
families. This disagreement over the definition might bring a new set of
worries to the mind of any reader. The problem of disagreement will be
discussed in <a
href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Ethics/wiki/faq#wiki_2.4_are_these_taxonomic_imperfections_bad.3F_how_do_we_get_over_vague_definitions">another
section</a>.</p>
<h3 id="ethics-as-grounded-in-moral-law-deontology">Ethics as grounded
in moral law: Deontology</h3>
<p>Deontology is another family of theories whose definition can wiggle
through our grasp (there’s a pattern here to recognize that will become
important in a later section). Once more, Shelly Kagan’s <a
href="https://westviewpress.com/books/normative-ethics/">Normative
Ethics</a> offers us a definition of deontology as it is used in
contemporary discourse: a theory that places value on additional factors
that would forbid certain actions independently of whether or not they
result in the best outcomes.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In defining deontology, I have appealed to the concept of a
constraint: deontologists, unlike consequentialists, believe in the
existence of constraints, which erect moral barriers to the promotion of
the good…it won’t quite do to label as deontologists all those who
accept additional normative factors, beyond that of goodness of results:
we must add further stipulation that in at least some cases the effect
of these additional factors is to make certain acts morally forbidden,
even though these acts may lead to the best possible results overall. In
short, we must say that deontologists are those who believe in
additional normative factors that generate constraints.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Kagan goes on to explain why of the various definitions, this one is
best. That explanation will not be detailed here, but let’s keep this
tenuously in mind as we dive into one of the deontological theories to
give us a sense of what deontology entails. It would be absurd if these
constraints were arbitrary, nothing more than consequentialism combined
with “also, don’t do these specific things because they seem icky and I
don’t like them,” so we will take a look at one of the prominent
deontological theories: Kantianism.</p>
<h4 id="kants-first-formula">Kant’s First Formula</h4>
<p>In Julia Driver’s <a
href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Ethics.html?id=WzBtzTATyBMC">Ethics:
The Fundamentals</a>, Driver introduces us to deontology through Kant’s
moral theory, saying this of the theory:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Immanuel Kant’s theory is perhaps the most well-known exemplar of the
deontological approach…whether or not a contemplated course of action is
morally permissible will depend on whether or not it conforms to what he
terms the moral law, the categorical imperative.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There’s a tone here that seems noticeably different from
consequentialist talk. Permissibility as conforming to moral law could
still be consequentialist if that law is something like “maximize the
good,” but this description seems to indicate something else. To figure
this out, we need an explanation of what “the categorical imperative”
means. In Christine Korsgaard’s <a
href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/creating-the-kingdom-of-ends/8C5CA1EFA210C42260A94D02494FD498">Creating
the Kingdom of Ends</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Hypothetical imperatives [are] principles which instruct us to do
certain actions if we want certain ends…</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>….</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Willing something is determining yourself to be the cause of that
thing, which means determining yourself to use the available causal
connections — the means — to it. “Willing the end” is already posited as
the hypothesis, and we need only analyze it to arrive at willing the
means. If you will to be able to play the piano, then you already will
to practice, as that is the “indispensably necessary means to it” that
“lie in your power.” But the moral ought is not expressed by a
hypothetical imperative. Our duties hold for us regardless of what we
want. A moral rule does not say “do this if you want that” but simply
“do this.” It is expressed in a categorical imperative. For instance,
the moral law says that you must respect the rights of others. Nothing
is already posited, which can then be analyzed.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>We now have a fairly detailed description of what the distinction
between a hypothetical and categorical imperative is, with fine examples
to boot. Note that already, it’s clear this theory can’t be
consequentialized according to Brown, but we must go further to remove
any doubt as a result of controversy over Brown’s formulation. Korsgaard
goes on to explain what is necessarily entailed as a part of the
categorical imperative in her description of Kant’s first formula.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If we remove all purposes — all material — from the will, what is
left is the formal principle of the will. The formal principle of duty
is just that it is duty — that it is law. The essentially character of
law is universality. Therefore, the person who acts from duty attends to
the universality of his/her principle. He or she only acts on a maxim
that he or she could will to be universal law (G 402).</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>….</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>But how can you tell whether you are able to will your maxim as a
universal law? On Kant’s view, it is a matter of what you can will
without contradiction…you envision trying to will your maxim in a world
in which the maxim is universalized — in which it is a law of nature.
You are to “Ask yourself whether, if the action which you propose should
take place by a law of nature of which you yourself were a part, you
could regard it as possible through your will” (C2 69)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Already, upon encountering this first formulation of the categorical
imperative, we have now well established that any limit on
consequentialization would leave Kant’s moral theory able to resist it.
For one, the rightness or wrongness of actions is conforming to moral
law such that the outcomes are no longer centrally a point of
consideration. This does not mean we have deprived ethics of
consequences, as Kagan points out in <a
href="https://westviewpress.com/books/normative-ethics/">Normative
Ethics</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[the goodness of outcomes] is a factor I think virtually everyone
recognizes as morally relevant. It may not be the only factor that is
important for determining the moral status of an act, but it is
certainly one relevant factor.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Kantianism is notwithstanding deciding the status of actions not on
the sole basis of outcomes. As well, it fails Brown’s dominance
formulation.</p>
<p>The two other formulas are not within the scope of this section, nor
is evidence for Kant’s theory. The purpose of detailing Kantianism at
all was to demonstrate deontology as conforming to moral law in a manner
distinct from consequentialism. As well, it is sufficient to remind
ourselves that there is a massive amount of evidence for each of these
types of theories without having to detail it in this section for this
theory in particular. As well, there are other types of deontological
theories, also with a great deal of evidence. Scanlon’s moral theory and
Ross’s moral theory are other prominent examples of deontology.</p>
<p>We are now left with a fairly strong sense of what deontological
theories look like. There is some imprecision in that sense, this will
be discussed in <a
href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Ethics/wiki/faq#wiki_2.4_are_these_taxonomic_imperfections_bad.3F_how_do_we_get_over_vague_definitions">another
section</a>. For now, we must move on to address virtue ethics.</p>
<h3 id="ethics-as-grounded-in-character-virtue-ethics">Ethics as
grounded in character: Virtue Ethics</h3>
<p>Virtue ethics, the final family of theories described in the section
on normative ethics, is predictably concerned primarily with virtue and
practical intelligence.</p>
<h4 id="virtue">Virtue</h4>
<p>A virtue is described as lasting, reliable, and characteristic in
Julia Annas’s <a
href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/intelligent-virtue-9780199228775">Intelligent
Virtue</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A virtue is a lasting feature of a person, a tendency for the person
to be a certain way. It is not merely a lasting feature, however, one
that just sits there undisturbed. It is active: to have it is to be
disposed to act in certain ways. And it develops through selective
response to circumstances. Given these points, I shall use the term
persisting rather than merely lasting. Jane’s generosity, supposing her
to be generous, persists through challenges and difficulties, and is
strengthened or weakened by her generous or ungenerous responses
respectively. Thus, although it is natural for us to think of a virtue
as a disposition, we should be careful not to confuse this with the
scientific notion of disposition, which just is a static lasting
tendency…</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>….</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>A virtue is also a reliable disposition. If Jane is generous, it is
no accident that she does the generous action and has generous feelings.
We would have been surprised, and shocked, if she had failed to act
generously, and looked for some kind of explanation. Our friends’
virtues and vices enable us to rely on their responses and behaviour—to
a certain extent, of course, since none of us is virtuous enough to be
completely reliable in virtuous response and action.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>….</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Further, a virtue is a disposition which is characteristic—that is,
the virtuous (or vicious) person is acting in and from character when
acting in a kindly, brave or restrained way. This is another way of
putting the point that a virtue is a deep feature of the person. A
virtue is a disposition which is central to the person, to whom he or
she is, a way we standardly think of character. I might discover that I
have an unsuspected talent for Sudoku, but this, although it enlarges my
talents, does not alter my character. But someone who discovers in
himself an unsuspected capacity to feel and act on compassion, and who
develops this capacity, does come to change as a person, not just in
some isolated feature; he comes to have a changed character.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Virtue ethics, then, is centered around something that is roughly
this concept. Note that any plausible theory is going to incorporate all
of the concepts we’ve gone over on normative ethics. We can go back to
Kagan’s Normative Ethics from above, where he notes the relevancy of
consequences in every theory.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>all plausible theories agree that goodness of consequences is at
least one factor relevant to the moral status of acts. (No plausible
theory would hold, for example, that it was irrelevant whether an act
would lead to disaster!)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Similarly, other theories will have an account of virtue, as Jason
Kawall’s <a href="https://philarchive.org/archive/KAWIDOv1">In Defense
of the Primacy of the Virtues</a> briefly describes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Consequentialists will treat the virtues as character traits that
serve to maximize (or produce sufficient quantities of) the good, where
the good is taken as explanatorily basic. Deontologists will understand
the virtues in terms of dispositions to respect and act in accordance
with moral rules, or to perform morally right actions, where these moral
rules or right actions are fundamental. Furthermore, the virtues will be
considered valuable just insofar as they involve such tendencies to
maximize the good or to perform right actions.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So it is important to stress then that virtue is the central concept
for virtue ethics, and is no more simply a theory that makes relevant an
account of virtue any more than consequentialism is any theory that
makes relevant an account of consequences. One way we can come to
understand virtue ethics better is by understanding a specific kind of
virtue ethics, theories which satisfying four conditions laid out by
Kawall:</p>
<blockquote>
<ol type="i">
<li>The concepts of rightness and goodness would be explained in terms
of virtue concepts (or the concept of a virtuous agent).</li>
</ol>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<ol start="2" type="i">
<li>Rightness and goodness would be explained in terms of the virtues or
virtuous agents.</li>
</ol>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<ol start="3" type="i">
<li>The explanatory primacy of the virtues or virtuous agents (and
virtue concepts) would reflect a metaphysical dependence of rightness
and goodness upon the virtues or virtuous agents.</li>
</ol>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<ol start="4" type="i">
<li>The virtues or virtuous agents themselves – as well as their value –
could (but need not) be explained in terms of further states, such as
health, eudaimonia, etc., but where these further states do not require
an appeal to rightness or goodness.</li>
</ol>
</blockquote>
<p>It should be emphasized again that this describes only some theories
in this family, but they are good theories to focus on because much of
the discussion around these theories would be representative of
discussion around virtue ethics in general.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is worth stressing that not all theories that could plausibly be
understood as forms of virtue ethics would satisfy the above conditions;
the current goal is not to defend all possible virtue ethics. Rather, we
are examining what might be taken to be among the more radical possible
forms of virtue ethics, particularly in treating the virtues as
explanatorily prior both to rightness and to goodness tout court. Why
focus on these more radical forms? First, several prominent virtue
ethics can be understood as satisfying the above conditions, including
those of Michael Slote, Linda Zagzebski, and, perhaps (if
controversially), Aristotle’s paradigmatic virtue ethics. Beyond this,
many of the arguments presented here could be taken on board by those
defending more moderate forms of virtue ethics, such as Rosalind
Hursthouse or Christine Swanton (against those who would attempt to
argue for the explanatory primacy of the right or of the good, for
example). Thus the range of interest for most of these arguments will
extend beyond those focusing on the more radical approaches.</p>
</blockquote>
<h4 id="practical-intelligence">Practical intelligence</h4>
<p>Practical intelligence can be described much more briefly to get a
sense of its meaning across. In Rosalind Hursthouse’s <a
href="http://www.hackettpublishing.com/pdfs/Hursthouse_Essay.pdf">Applying
Virtue Ethics to Our Treatment of the Other Animals</a>, we get a brief
description of the role of practical intelligence.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Of course, applying the virtue and vice terms correctly may be
difficult; one may need much practical wisdom to determine whether, in a
particular case, telling a hurtful truth is cruel or not, for
example…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Julia Annas elaborates to greater detail in “Intelligent Virtue”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The way our characters develop is to some extent a matter of natural
endowment; some of us have traits ‘by nature’—we will tend to act
bravely or generously without having to learn to do so, or to think
about it. This is ‘natural virtue’, which we have already encountered.
Different people will have different natural virtues, and one person may
be naturally endowed in one area of life but not others—naturally brave,
for example, but not naturally generous. However, claims Aristotle, this
can’t be the whole story about virtue. For one thing, children and
animals can have some of these traits, but in them they are not virtues.
Further, these natural traits are harmful if not guided by ‘the
intellect’, which in this context is specified as practical wisdom or
practical intelligence (phronesis). Just as a powerfully built person
will stumble and fall if he cannot see, so a natural tendency to bravery
can stumble unseeingly into ethical disaster because the person has not
learned to look out for crucial factors in the situation. Our natural
practical traits need to be formed and educated in an intelligent way
for them to develop as virtues; a natural trait may just proceed blindly
on where virtue would respond selectively and in a way open to novel
information and contexts.</p>
</blockquote>
<h3 id="ethics-as-maximizing-happiness-utilitarianism">Ethics as
maximizing happiness: Utilitarianism</h3>
<p>In the famous Trolley problem philosopher Philippa Foot introduced in
the 1960s, you have the ability to pull a lever to divert a train from
running over five tied-up people lying on the tracks. If you pull the
lever, the trolley will be redirected onto a side track, and the five
people on the main track will be saved. However, there is a single
person lying on the side track.</p>
<p>According to classical utilitarianism, pulling the lever would be
permissible and more moral. English philosophers Jeremy Bentham and John
Stuart Mill introduced utilitarianism as the sole moral obligation to
maximize happiness. As an alternative to divine, religious theories of
ethics. Utilitarianism suffers from the idea of “utility monsters,”
individuals who would have much more happiness (and therefore utility)
than average. This would cause actions to skew towards and exploit
maximizing the monster’s happiness in such a way that others would
suffer. Since philosopher Robert Nozick introduced the “utility monster”
idea in 1974, it has been discussed in politics as driving the ideas of
special interest groups and free speech - as though securing these
interests would serve the interests of the few experiencing much more
happiness than the general population.</p>
<h4
id="are-these-taxonomic-imperfections-bad-how-do-we-get-over-vague-definitions">Are
these taxonomic imperfections bad? How do we get over vague
definitions?</h4>
<p>It might be tempting to read all of this and think there’s some sort
of difficulty in discussing normative ethics. In general, academic
discourse does not hinge on definitions, and so definitions are not a
very large concern. And yet, it might appear upon reading this that
ethics is some sort of exception. When philosophers talk about
adaptationism in evolution or causation in metaphysics, the definitions
they provide seem a lot more precise, so why is ethics an exception?</p>
<p>The answer is uninterestingly that ethics is not an exception. It is
important to avoid confusing what has been read here as some sort of
fundamental ambiguity in these theories. Consider Brown’s motive for
resisting consequentialization as a response to Dreir’s motive for
consequentialization.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’ll close by drawing out another moral of my conclusion, related to
something Dreier says. Dreier’s motivation for consequentializing is
that he wants to overcome a certain “stigma” which he says afflicts
defenders of “common sense morality” when they try to deny
consequentialism. To deny consequentialism, he says, they must claim
that we are sometimes required to do less good than we might, but that
claim has a “paradoxical air.” So defenders of commonsense morality, who
deny consequentialism, are stigmatized as having a seemingly paradoxical
position.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>….</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Dreier thinks the way to avoid the stigma is to avoid denying
consequentialism. If we consequentialize commonsense morality, then
defenders of commonsense morality need not deny consequentialism. If I’m
right, however, this way of avoiding the stigma doesn’t work…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Note that this is entirely orthogonal to the plausibility of any
particular theory. Whatever stigmas exist makes no difference on whether
or not some particular theory happens to be correct. It may prove useful
to helping beginners gain a sense of what they’re talking about, but
beyond pedagogical utility, it’s disputed that this distinction actually
tells us, at a very fundamental level, what these theories are all
about.</p>
<p>In Michael Ridge’s <a
href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reasons-agent/#WhyDisMat">Reasons
for Action: Agent-Neutral vs. Agent-Relative</a>, Ridge points out one
of the alternative distinctions that might have a more prominent role in
describing what fundamentally distinguishes these theories.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction is widely and rightly
regarded as a philosophically important one.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>….</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>The distinction has played a very useful role in framing certain
interesting and important debates in normative philosophy.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>For a start, the distinction helps frame a challenge to the
traditional assumption that what separates so-called consequentialists
and deontologists is that the former but not the latter are committed to
the idea that all reasons for action are teleological. A deontological
restriction forbids a certain sort of action (e.g., stealing) even when
stealing here is the only way to prevent even more stealing in the long
run. Consequentialists charge that such a restriction must be
irrational, on the grounds that if stealing is forbidden then it must be
bad but if it is bad then surely less stealing is better than more. The
deontologist can respond in one of two ways. First, they could hold that
deontological restrictions correspond to non-teleological reasons. The
reason not to steal, on this account, is not that stealing is bad in the
sense that it should be minimized but rather simply that stealing is
forbidden no matter what the consequences (this is admittedly a stark
form of deontology, but there are less stern versions as well). This is
indeed one way of understanding the divide between consequentialists and
deontologists, but the agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction, and in
particular the idea of agent-relative reasons, brings to the fore an
alternative conception. For arguably, we could instead understand
deontological restrictions as corresponding to a species of reasons
which are teleological after all so long as those reasons are
agent-relative. If my reason not to steal is that I should minimize my
stealing then the fact that my stealing here would prevent five other
people from committing similar acts of theft does nothing to suggest
that I ought to steal.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>….</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>If Dreier is right [that in effect we can consequentialize
deontology] then the agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction may be
more important than the distinction between consequentialist theories
and non-consequentialist theories.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The section goes on to detail several ways we can look at this issue
so we can understand the importance of this distinction and what it can
tell us about the structure and plausibility of certain theories. So
while the typical division between consequentialist, deontological, and
virtue ethical theories can be superficially valuable to those getting
into ethics, it is important to not overstate the significance of these
families and their implications.</p>
<h1 id="reading">Reading</h1>
<h2 id="normative-ethics-1">Normative ethics</h2>
<ul>
<li><p>Julia Driver <a
href="https://books.google.com/books?id=tpfZX3D20L0C">Ethics: The
Fundamentals</a>. 2006.</p></li>
<li><p>Michael Sandel <a
href="https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780374532505">Justice: What’s the
Right Thing To Do?</a>. 2010.</p></li>
<li><p>James Rachels and Stuart Rachels <a
href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-elements-of-moral-philosophy-james-rachels/1121343445">The
Elements of Moral Philosophy</a>. 2014.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Includes a minimal definition of normative ethics as a whole.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Mark Timmons <a
href="https://books.google.com/books?id=qWGp1iK9IlAC">Moral Theory: An
Introduction</a>. 2012.</p></li>
<li><p>Bernard Williams <a
href="http://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/philosophy/philosophy-general-interest/morality-introduction-ethics-2?format=PB#z1FOHMiLj72P35vu.97">Morality:
An Introduction to Ethics</a>. 2012.</p></li>
<li><p>Shelly Kagan <a
href="https://westviewpress.com/books/normative-ethics/">Normative
Ethics</a>. 1997.</p></li>
<li><p>Michael Ridge Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on <a
href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reasons-agent/">Reasons for
Action: Agent-Neutral vs. Agent-Relative</a>. 2017.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>In this entry, Ridge lays out another way of categorizing theories in
normative ethics in an accessible manner.</p>
<h2 id="issues-in-normative-ethics">Issues in normative ethics</h2>
<ul>
<li><p>Christopher Heathwood <a
href="http://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/welfare.pdf">Welfare</a>.
2010.</p></li>
<li><p>Roger Crisp Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on <a
href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/well-being/">Well-being</a>.
2017.</p></li>
<li><p>Michael Zimmerman Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on <a
href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/value-intrinsic-extrinsic/">Intrinsic
vs. Extrinsic Value</a>. 2014.</p></li>
<li><p>Dana Nelkin Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on <a
href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-luck/">Moral Luck</a>.
2013.</p></li>
<li><p>Stephen Stich, John Doris, and Erica Roedder <a
href="http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~stich/Publications/Papers/Altruism.pdf">Altruism</a>.
2008.</p></li>
<li><p>Robert Shaver Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on <a
href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/egoism/">Egoism</a>.
2014.</p></li>
<li><p>Joshua May Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on <a
href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/psychego/">Psychological Egoism</a>.
2011.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2 id="consequentialism">Consequentialism</h2>
<ul>
<li>William Shaw <a
href="https://books.google.com/books?id=nb88LtgGnMAC">Contemporary
Ethics: Taking Account of Utilitarianism</a>. 1999.</li>
</ul>
<p>About the best introduction that one can find to one of the
consequentialist theories: utilitarianism.</p>
<ul>
<li>J.J.C. Smart and Bernard Williams <a
href="https://books.google.com/books?id=J0w3ER2fWv4C">Utilitarianism:
For and Against</a>. 1973.</li>
</ul>
<p>An introduction to the debate over utilitarianism.</p>
<ul>
<li>Campbell Brown <a
href="http://www.research.ed.ac.uk/portal/files/12473535/BROWN_C_Consequentialize_This.pdf">Consequentialize
This</a>. 2011.</li>
</ul>
<p>An influential work that lays out a decent strategy for keeping
consequentialist theories of ethics distinct from other theories.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Walter Sinnott-Armstrong’s Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
entry on <a
href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consequentialism/">Consequentialism</a>.
2015. A</p></li>
<li><p>William Haines Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on <a
href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/conseque/">Consequentialism</a>.
2006.</p></li>
<li><p>Chapter 3 and 4 of Driver (see above). 2006.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2 id="deontology">Deontology</h2>
<ul>
<li>Christine Korsgaard <a
href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/creating-the-kingdom-of-ends/8C5CA1EFA210C42260A94D02494FD498">Creating
the Kingdom of Ends</a>. 1996.</li>
</ul>
<p>A good introduction to and strong defense of Kantianism.</p>
<ul>
<li>John Rawls <a
href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674000780&amp;content=reviews">A
Theory of Justice: Revised Edition</a>. 1999.</li>
</ul>
<p>Rawls’s revolutionary work in both ethics and political philosophy in
which he describes justice as fairness, a view he would continue to
develop later on.</p>
<ul>
<li>Robert Audi <a
href="https://press.princeton.edu/titles/7750.html">The Good in the
Right: A Theory of Intuition and Intrinsic Value</a>. 2005.</li>
</ul>
<p>A significant improvement and defense of one of the most influential
deontological alternatives to Kantianism: Rossian deontology.</p>
<ul>
<li>T.M. Scanlon <a
href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674004238">What We
Owe to Each Other</a>. 2000.</li>
</ul>
<p>Scanlon, one of the most notable contributors to political and
ethical philosophy among his contemporaries, provides an updated and
comprehensive account of his formulation of contractualism.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Larry Alexander and Michael Moore Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy entry on <a
href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-deontological/">Deontological
Ethics</a>. 2016.</p></li>
<li><p>Chapter 5 and 6 of Driver (see above). 2006.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2 id="virtue-ethics">Virtue ethics</h2>
<ul>
<li>Rosalind Hursthouse <a
href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2265432">Virtue Theory and
Abortion</a>. 1991.</li>
</ul>
<p>Hursthouse’s groundbreaking and accessible work on virtue theory.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Julia Annas <a
href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/intelligent-virtue-9780199228775">Intelligent
Virtue</a>. 2011.</p></li>
<li><p>Jason Kawall <a
href="https://philarchive.org/archive/KAWIDOv1">In Defense of the
Primacy of the Virtues</a>. 2009.</p></li>
<li><p>Rosalind Hursthouse Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on
<a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-virtue/">Virtue
Ethics</a>. 2016.</p></li>
<li><p>Chapter 7 of Driver (see above). 2006.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2 id="meta-ethics-metaethics-1">Meta-ethics (Metaethics)</h2>
<ul>
<li><p>Andrew Fisher <a
href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Metaethics.html?id=VbiNZwEACAAJ">Metaethics:
An Introduction</a>. 2011.</p></li>
<li><p>Alexander Miller <a
href="http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0745646581.html">Contemporary
Metaethics: An Introduction</a>. 2013.</p></li>
<li><p>Mark van Roojen <a
href="https://www.routledge.com/Metaethics-A-Contemporary-Introduction/van-Roojen/p/book/9780415894425">Metaethics:
A Contemporary Introduction</a>. 2015.</p></li>
<li><p>Geoff Sayre-McCord’s Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on
<a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/metaethics/">Metaethics</a>.
2012.</p></li>
<li><p><a
href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-Metaethics/McPherson-Plunkett/p/book/9781138812208">The
Routledge Handbook of Metaethics</a>. 2017.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>This is probably a more difficult read than the others, but it is
incredibly comprehensive and helpful. There are many things in this
handbook that I’ve been reading about for a long time that I didn’t feel
confident about until reading this. Certainly worth the cost.</p>
<ul>
<li><a
href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-ethical-theory-9780195147797?cc=us&amp;lang=en&amp;">The
Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory</a>. 2005.</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="moral-judgement">Moral judgement</h2>
<ul>
<li>Michael Smith <a
href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A1009976621075">The
Moral Problem</a>. 1998.</li>
</ul>
<p>A must read for those who want to engage with issues in moral
judgment, functioning both as a work popularly considered the most
important in the topic as well as a great introduction.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Chapter 3 of Miller (see above). 2013.</p></li>
<li><p>Connie S. Rosati Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on <a
href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-motivation/">Moral
Motivation</a>. 2016.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2 id="moral-responsibility">Moral responsibility</h2>
<ul>
<li><p>P. F. Strawson <a
href="http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/P._F._Strawson_Freedom_&amp;_Resentment.pdf">Freedom
&amp; Resentment</a>. 1962.</p></li>
<li><p>John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza <a
href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Perspectives_on_Moral_Responsibility.html?id=0ncN3TuDQ7cC">Perspectives
on Moral Responsibility</a>. 1993.</p></li>
<li><p>Timothy O’Connor and Christopher Franklin Stanford Encyclopedia
of Philosophy entry on <a
href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/">Free Will</a>.
2018.</p></li>
<li><p>Michael McKenna and D. Justin Coates Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy entry on <a
href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/">Compatibilism</a>.
2015.</p></li>
<li><p>Kadri Vihvelin Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on <a
href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/incompatibilism-arguments/">Arguments
for Incompatibilism</a>. 2017.</p></li>
<li><p>Andrew Eshelman Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on <a
href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-responsibility/">Moral
Responsibility</a>. 2014.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2 id="moral-realism-and-irrealism">Moral realism and irrealism</h2>
<ul>
<li>Stephen Finlay <a
href="http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~finlay/Moral%20Realism.pdf">Four Faces of
Moral Realism</a>. 2007.</li>
</ul>
<p>A very popular Philosophy Compass paper that lays out very simply
what moral realism is without arguing for or against any position.</p>
<ul>
<li>Terrence Cuneo <a
href="https://books.google.com/books?id=ROrnCwAAQBAJ">The Normative
Web</a>. 2007.</li>
</ul>
<p>An obligatory text laying out the popular companions in guilt
argument for moral realisms.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Smith (see above). 1998.</p></li>
<li><p>Enoch (see above). 2011.</p></li>
<li><p>Chapter 8, 9, and 10 of Miller (see above). 2013.</p></li>
<li><p>Shafer-Landau (see above). 2005.</p></li>
<li><p>Katia Vavova <a
href="https://philpapers.org/archive/VAVDED.pdf">Debunking Evolutionary
Debunking</a>. 2013.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Here, Vavova provides a very influential, comprehensive, and easy to
read overview of evolutionary debunking arguments, in which she also
takes the liberty of pointing out their flaws.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Geoff Sayre-McCord Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on
<a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-realism/">Moral
Realism</a>. 2015.</p></li>
<li><p>Chapter 3, 4, 5, and 6 of Miller (see above). 2013.</p></li>
<li><p>Mark van Roojen <a
href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-cognitivism/">Moral
Cognitvism vs. Moral Non-cognitivism</a>. 2013.</p></li>
<li><p>Richard Joyce Moral <a
href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-anti-realism/">Anti-realism</a>.
2015.</p></li>
<li><p>Sharon Street <a
href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747-9991.2009.00280.x/full">What
is Constructivism in Ethics and Metaethics?</a>. 2010.</p></li>
<li><p>Christine Korsgaard <a
href="https://tannerlectures.utah.edu/_documents/a-to-z/k/korsgaard94.pdf">The
Sources of Normativity</a>. 1992.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Korsgaard’s brilliant description, as well as her defense, of a form
of Kantian constructivism.</p>
<ul>
<li>Carla Bagnoli <a
href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/constructivism-metaethics/">Constructivism
in Metaethics</a>. 2017.</li>
</ul>
<h1 id="research-ethics">Research ethics</h1>
<h2 id="websites">Websites</h2>
<p>National Center for Professional and Research Ethics (NCPRE) –
https://www.nationalethicscenter.org/</p>
<p>National Science Foundation Office of Inspector General –
http://www.nsf.gov/oig/index.jsp</p>
<p>Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP) –
http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/</p>
<p>Office of Research Integrity (ORI) – http://ori.dhhs.gov/</p>
<p>Online Ethics Center for Engineering and Research –
http://onlineethics.org/</p>
<p>Project for Scholarly Integrity –
http://www.scholarlyintegrity.org/</p>
<p>Resources for Research Ethics Education –
http://research-ethics.net/</p>
<h2 id="email-lists">Email lists</h2>
<p>RCR-Instruction, Office of Research Integrity – send a request to
askori@hhs.gov to subscribe</p>
<h2 id="journals">Journals</h2>
<p>Accountability in Research –
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/08989621.asp</p>
<p>Ethics and Behavior –
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/10508422.asp</p>
<p>Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics –
http://www.ucpressjournals.com/journal.asp?j=jer</p>
<p>Science and Engineering Ethics –
http://www.springer.com/philosophy/ethics/journal/11948#8085218705268172855</p>
<h2 id="news-publications">News publications</h2>
<p>The Chronicle of Higher Education – http://www.chronicle.com/</p>
<p>Nature – http://www.nature.com/</p>
<p>Science – http://www.sciencemag.org/</p>
<p>The Scientist – http://www.thescientist.comNature –
http://www.nature.com/</p>
<p>Science – http://www.sciencemag.org/</p>
<p>The Scientist – http://www.thescientist.comNature –
http://www.nature.com/</p>
<p>Science – http://www.sciencemag.org/</p>
<p>The Scientist – http://www.thescientist.comNature –
http://www.nature.com/</p>
<p>Science – http://www.sciencemag.org/</p>
<p>The Scientist – http://www.thescientist.com</p>
<h2 id="ethical-theory">Ethical theory</h2>
<p>Frankena, William K. 1988. <strong>Ethics</strong>. 2nd
ed. Prentice-Hall, Inc.</p>
<p>Rachels, James, and Stuart Rachels. 2009. <strong>The Elements of
Moral Philosophy</strong>. 6th ed. McGraw-Hill Companies.</p>
<h2 id="books">Books</h2>
<p>Beach, Dore. 1996. <strong>Responsible Conduct of Research</strong>.
John Wiley &amp; Sons, Incorporated.</p>
<p>Bebeau, Muriel J., et al. 1995. <strong>Moral Reasoning in Scientific
Research: Cases for Teaching and Assessment</strong>. Poynter Center for
the Study of Ethics and American Institutions. Source: Order or download
in PDF format at http://poynter.indiana.edu/mr/mr-main.shtml.</p>
<p>Bulger, Ruth Ellen, Elizabeth Heitman, and Stanley Joel Reiser,
eds. 2002. <strong>The Ethical Dimensions of the Biological and Health
Sciences</strong>. 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press.</p>
<p>Elliott, Deni, and Judy E. Stern, eds. 1997. <strong>Research Ethics:
A Reader</strong>. University Press of New England. See also Stern and
Elliott, <strong>The Ethics of Scientific Research</strong>.</p>
<p>Erwin, Edward, Sidney Gendin, and Lowell Kleiman, eds. 1994.
<strong>Ethical Issues in Scientific Research: An Anthology</strong>.
Garland Publishing.</p>
<p>Fleddermann, Charles B. 2007. <strong>Engineering Ethics</strong>.
3rd ed. Prentice Hall.</p>
<p>Fluehr-Lobban, Carolyn. 2002. <strong>Ethics and the Profession of
Anthropology: Dialogue for Ethically Conscious Practice</strong>. 2nd
ed. AltaMira Press.</p>
<p>Goodstein, David L. 2010. <strong>On Fact and Fraud: Cautionary Tales
from the Front Lines of Science</strong>. Princeton University
Press.</p>
<p>Harris, Charles E., Jr., Michael S. Pritchard, and Michael J. Rabins.
2008. <strong>Engineering Ethics: Concepts and Cases</strong>. 4th
edition. Wadsworth.</p>
<p>Israel, Mark, and Iain Hay. 2006. <strong>Research Ethics for Social
Scientists: Between Ethical Conduct and Regulatory Compliance</strong>.
SAGE Publications, Limited.</p>
<p>Johnson, Deborah G. 2008. <strong>Computer Ethics</strong>. 4th
ed. Prentice Hall PTR.</p>
<p>Korenman, Stanley G., and Allan C. Shipp. 1994. <strong>Teaching the
Responsible Conduct of Research through a Case Study Approach: A
Handbook for Instructors</strong>. Association of American Medical
Colleges. Source: Order from http://www.aamc.org/publications/</p>
<p>Loue, Sana. 2000. <strong>Textbook of Research Ethics: Theory and
Practice</strong>. Springer.</p>
<p>Macrina, Francis L. 2005. <strong>Scientific Integrity: Text and
Cases in Responsible Conduct of Research</strong>. 3rd ed. ASM
Press.</p>
<p>Miller, David J., and Michel Hersen, eds. 1992. <strong>Research
Fraud in the Behavioral and Biomedical Sciences</strong>. John Wiley
&amp; Sons, Incorporated.</p>
<p>Murphy, Timothy F. 2004. <strong>Case Studies in Biomedical Research
Ethics</strong>. MIT Press.</p>
<p>National Academy of Sciences. 2009. <strong>On Being a Scientist: A
Guide to Responsible Conduct in Research</strong>. 3rd edition. National
Academy Press. Source: Order from
http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12192</p>
<p>National Academy of Sciences. 1992. <strong>Responsible Science, Vol.
1: Ensuring the Integrity of the Research Process</strong>. Source:
Order from http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=1864</p>
<p>National Academy of Sciences. 1992. <strong>Responsible Science, Vol.
2: Background Papers and Resource Documents</strong>. Source: Order from
http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=2091</p>
<p>Oliver, Paul. 2010. <strong>The Students’ Guide to Research
Ethics</strong>. 2nd ed. McGraw-Hill Education.</p>
<p>Orlans, F. Barbara, et al., eds. 2008. <strong>The Human Use of
Animals: Case Studies in Ethical Choice</strong>. 2nd ed. Oxford
University Press.</p>
<p>Penslar, Robin Levin, ed. 1995. <strong>Research Ethics: Cases and
Materials</strong>. Indiana University Press.</p>
<p>Resnik, David B. 1998. <strong>The Ethics of Science: An
Introduction</strong>. Routledge.</p>
<p>Schrag, Brian, ed. 1997-2006. <strong>Research Ethics: Cases and
Commentaries</strong>. Seven volumes. Association for Practical and
Professional Ethics. Source: Order from
http://www.indiana.edu/~appe/publications.html#research.</p>
<p>Seebauer, Edmund G., and Robert L. Barry. 2000. <strong>Fundamentals
of Ethics for Scientists and Engineers</strong>. Oxford University
Press.</p>
<p>Seebauer, Edmund G.. 2000. <strong>Instructor’s Manual for
Fundamentals of Ethics for Scientists and Engineers</strong>. Oxford
University Press.</p>
<p>Shamoo, Adil E., and David B. Resnik. 2009. <strong>Responsible
Conduct of Research</strong>. Oxford University Press.</p>
<p>Shrader-Frechette, Kristin S. 1994. <strong>Ethics of Scientific
Research</strong>. Rowman &amp; Littlefield Publishers, Inc.</p>
<p>Sieber, Joan E. 1992. <strong>Planning Ethically Responsible
Research: A Guide for Students and Internal Review Boards</strong>. SAGE
Publications, Inc.</p>
<p>Sigma Xi. 1999. <strong>Honor in Science. Sigma Xi, the Scientific
Research Society</strong>. Source: Order from
http://www.sigmaxi.org/resources/merchandise/index.shtml</p>
<p>Sigma Xi. 1999. <strong>The Responsible Researcher: Paths and
Pitfalls. Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society</strong>. Source:
Order from http://www.sigmaxi.org/resources/merchandise/index.shtml or
download in PDF format at
http://sigmaxi.org/programs/ethics/ResResearcher.pdf</p>
<p>Steneck, Nicholas H. 2007. <strong>ORI Introduction to the
Responsible Conduct of Research. Revised ed</strong>. DIANE Publishing
Company. Source: Order from
http://bookstore.gpo.gov/collections/ori-research.jsp or download in PDF
format at http://ori.dhhs.gov/publications/ori_intro_text.shtml.</p>
<p>Stern, Judy E., and Deni Elliott. 1997. <strong>The Ethics of
Scientific Research: A Guidebook for Course Development</strong>.
University Press of New England. See also Elliott and Stern, eds.,
Research Ethics: A Reader.</p>
<p>Vitelli, Karen D., and Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh, eds. 2006.
<strong>Archaeological Ethics</strong>. 2nd ed. AltaMira Press.</p>
<p><a href="https://github.com/HussainAther/awesome-ethics">ethics.md
Github</a></p>