Reviews for Ethics

The average rating for Ethics based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-01-19 00:00:00 Ron Mcpheron Recently, I decided to delve into meta-ethics, more specifically twentieth century-meta-ethics. With the fear of over-generalizing, up to the twentieth century ethics was pretty straightforward. There were: ethics rooted in metaphysics (Christianity, Kant, Spinoza, etc.); ethics rooted in worldly consequences (hedonism, utilitarianism, etc.); and ethics rooted in common sense (Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, etc.). But after Kant, philosophy, including ethics, started to hit a brick wall. If all that can be said about ethical principles is that they’re located in a transcendent world and are hence unknowable, then all pursuit of ethics practically stops. There’s simply nothing to talk about anymore. Kant thought he had saved God, the Immortal Soul and Free Will with this transcendental world, but what he actually accomplished was the collapse of fruitful philosophy – in science, but in ethics as well. This led – again, overly simplifying things – to the pitiful state of philosophy in the nineteenth century. Old sciences progressed spectacularly (physics, chemistry, biology, etc.), while new sciences sprang up in numbers (psychology, sociology, etc.). And in ethics, all that could be concluded from the epoch ‘Plato to Kant’ was that nothing could be said anymore. This led to strange and absurd doctrines like Kierkegaard’s ‘leap of faith’ or to the bitterly empty ‘nihilism’ of a Nietzsche. The only viable ethical doctrine of the time was utilitarianism, in all its forms, but this was – partly due to its origin in British thinkers like Bentham and Mill – mainly taught in the Anglo-Saxon world. Utilitarianism, while doing away with metaphysical notions and making ethics a philosophical subject again, brought its own set of (new) problems. For example, if ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number’ is the first principle of ethics, what is happiness? Why is happiness the object and not some other state of mind? And who is included in this greatest number? All fellow citizens? All people? Future generations? The indeterminacies in utilitarianism were a fruitful starting point for new philosophical debates. It isn’t, then, strange, that from this Anglo-Saxon philosophical side there arose a renewed interest in ethics around the turn of the twentieth century. One answer came from G.E. Moore, who claimed that ethics, ultimately, was rooted in our intuition of ‘Good’. What is Good? is a question that cannot be answered either empirically or analytically, we grasp the notion of ‘Good’ intuitively. The next step is to look what object partake in this intuition. According to Moore, ‘personal affections’ and ‘beautiful objects’. Practical ethics consisted in drawing up a set of rules or guidelines that would increase these two objects in the world -according to Moore, this is the ‘good life’. But intuitionism is vague, almost as vague as the metaphysical ethics that the intuitionists (including Moore) tried to refute. Another approach to the meta-ethical quest for first principles was that offered by the logical-positivists. Highly inspired by the natural sciences, these scientists-turned-philosophers claimed that not all language is meaningful, and hence that not all statements contain truths or falsehoods. The first step in philosophy should be to draw the line. To do this, they came up with the verifiability criterion for meaning. Since logic can only offer us insights into the knowledge already contained in logical statements (i.e. add nothing new); and since empirical sciences can offer us new knowledge; if a statement can be verified empirically it has meaning. This isn’t the same as claiming this empirical statement is true, but at least it can be verified through experiment and observation. Ethics, in the logical-positivist view, has no meaning. Through linguistic analysis it can be shown that ethical statements are neither logical statements nor empirical statements, so they contain no knowledge nor meaning. According to A.J. Ayer, ethical statements are simply expressions of emotions – this view is called emotivism. The emotivist perspective on ethics then excludes ethics, again, from the domain of philosophy. So after intuitionism and emotivism, ethics again seemed to be in a tough position. Around the same time, World War II happened and in its aftermath people started to ponder how the atrocities committed by the Germans and Japanese were possible; how masses of average ‘normal’ people could be persuaded by dictators and their elites to do the most horrible deeds. In this mood of the times, ethics seemed to be more and more the subject of scientific study. A few important examples of this Zeitgeist are the Milgram-experiment, the Stanford Prison experiment and the Robbers Cave experiment – these studies all offered an understanding to obeying authority, the influence of role and position on cruel behaviour and in-group conformity/out-group hostility. Philosophy seemed, for a moment, to be out of the game when it came to ethical questions. (Not to say that philosophers didn’t think or write about ethics in this era, but they simply weren’t that influential anymore.) With Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (1977), a book written by philosopher J.L. Mackie, the old meta-physical quest was, again, taken up. Mackie is a pragmatic, realistic and nuanced thinker, who offered his own take on the question of ethical first principles. Mackie’s doctrine can be summarized as follows: According Mackie, everyday moral reasoning purports to be objective. Morality is deemed, by most people, to be an objective system. But this is false – there is no objective morality. When we study different cultures, or the same culture through time, we discover different moral systems – what is good here or now, can be bad somewhere else or tomorrow. This Mackie calls the ‘argument from relativity’. Also, if values are objective, they would be of a totally different kind than other worldly objects. We perceive world object through our sense apparatus, but what sense of faculty do we perceive moral values with? This Mackie calls the argument from queerness. So both arguments lead us to the conclusion that ethics is not a study of objective values. Why do we all believe it is, then? Because of the social needs ethical systems fulfil. We objectify values because, in doing this, we transform them into authoritative moral judgements. This objectification of values Mackie calls the ‘error theory’. We believe, erroneously, that values are objective because they are deemed to be so; our belief in the objectivity of values is a fundamental need of human beings. Alright, but this seems to beg the question. If objective values are errors due to our need for authoritative moral judgements, what explains this need? To answer this question, Mackie falls back on earlier philosophers: (Plato’s) Protagoras, Hobbes, Locke and Hume. These thinkers, although they differ widely in their thoughts on this subject, all claimed that the human condition is not fit, at least not totally, to live in social groups. Each individual is occupied by his own self-interests and this doesn’t make for good cooperation – conflicts and competition will arise. To deal with these problems, mankind invented a system of values that, if believed to objective, would accommodate peaceful relationships between people. This means that all ethical principles, and the practical prescriptions derived therefrom, contain a high degree of subjectivity. What such an ethical system of values does is to universalize a set of practical principles. Mackie distinguishes between three levels of universalization: (1) values that are independent of situation and person; (2) values that are independent in the sense of (1) plus independent of mental & physical qualities, economic resources and social status; and (3) values that are independent in the sense of (2) plus all actual points of view (such as tastes, ideals, etc.). The end product of this last stage is a system of compromises between different people with different views on how to live a good life. What Mackie does is claim ethics is, ultimately, a subjective system of values that emerges from our way of life and the conventions we’re familiar with. In other words, moral reasoning and ethical obligations are subjective conventions, which we can choose to follow or not follow. Ethics, then, is a personal decision to act according to the values we share with our contemporary fellow human beings. But what is the object of this system of values, whether it be objective or subjective? Hobbes saw ethics as a social contract, to end the war of “all against all”. Locke saw it as a social contract as well, partly in the Hobbesian sense, and partly to protect the fruits of labour of all people against usurpation by those in power (i.e. property rights). In broad outlines, Hume agreed with these views. These thinkers, then, saw ethics as the solution to very natural problems: mankind’s biology and society offers problems, of which morality is a partial solution. The other, complementary, solution is offered by law and justice – enforcing morality where morality isn’t prudent to follow. The carrot and the stick, so to speak. Mackie offers game theory as a vindication of this morality-law-distinction. Game theory predicts that the world is riddled with situations in which it is in the interests of all parties involved to act selfishly, leading to sub-optimal results for everyone. To overcome this plethora of zero-sum-games, people invent a higher power – the law – to enforce a certainty of cooperation. This certainty makes people trust in each other and mitigate conflict and competition. It’s all well to say ethics is a device that people use to objectify shared values and enforce cooperation on the self and others, but this doesn’t offer us clues to how such a system of shared values would look like. In the second part of the book, Mackie occupies himself with concretely filling in this system of ethics. To do this, he studies consequentialism and deontology. Consequentialism claims that the results of our actions are the yardstick with which to measure the goodness of our actions. But this makes consequentialist thinking, such as utilitarianism, highly flexible and indeterminate. Utilitarianism, for example, prescribes rules as guidelines for how to act in everyday life. “The greatest happiness of the greatest number” is deemed to be the ethical principle; in real life we should then calculate how much a set of alternative actions will contribute to the greatest happiness and then pick the one option that increases happiness the most. But this rather begs the question “whose happiness?” Consequentialism isn’t able to tell us how to incorporate the potential happiness of other people or future generations – for example, if I can increase the happiness of one person by sacrificing ten innocent people ot a higher level then otherwise would be possible, should I do this? Also, how do I measure this (what’s happiness? With what do I establish this?) and how I can function normally throughout the day without bogging down in endless ‘ethical calculations’. Utility calculus simply isn’t realistic and it, ultimately, leads to the absurd notion that a technological device (such as a pill) that would artificially keep us happy all the time should be developed. But we all feel that this takes away our freedom of choice, which is a key component of happiness. Deontology, on the other hand, negates these problems. It lays down absolute ethical principles to establish our ends, and tells us to carefully to evaluate the consequences of the means we pick to obtain the established ends. Deontology is an ethics of means and ends. For example, Kant claimed we should never treat people merely as means but always also as ends – if I use the services of an office clerk, I should not only use him as a means to obtain my end (receiving a form) but always also as an autonomous human being (i.e. respect his person). This is, intuitively, a much more ethical approach than utilitarianism, but it offers its own problems. For one, once the absolute principles are established the practical guidelines are, almost by definition, rigid and inflexible. Any absolutist claim of ethics stifles human individuality. Mackie tries to square the circle and synthesize his own ethical system from both consequentialism and deontology. According to him, we should (1) establish absolute principles with regard to ends; (2) establish nearly absolute principle with regard to means; and (3) thus allowing some weight to secondary, unforeseen, effects of the means we choose. In other words: Mackie wants to tell us what ends a ‘good life’ is supposed to be composed of, and leave us some room for how to obtain this ‘good life’. In general, the more a consequence of a chosen means can be foreseen by a person, the more a person is morally responsible for the effects of this consequence. Now we can see what Mackie is trying to do. He wants to establish a ‘first order morality’ which sketches the broad outlines of ethics; and then develop a ‘second order morality’ – a moral and judicial device – which fills in more concretely the ethical do’s and don’ts. Mackie’s first order morality is summed up as Thomas Jefferson’s contribution to the US Declaration of Independence: “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The pursuit of happiness as an absolute principle of ethics acknowledges human selfishness and our limited sympathies for others. Egoism and prudence aren’t suppressed (such as under religious morality) or downplayed (such as under Kant’s deontology). This, in short, is the abstract ethical framework in which Mackie has to operate. Mackie is a realist and (rightly) sees humanity not as simply a collection of individuals. Any individual is not occupied solely with himself. Any individual is part of various social groups – the family, the workplace, the city, the nation, etc. – and is partially dependent of members of all these other groups for his own happiness. Acting purely out of self-interest might be a fruitful short-term strategy, but in the long-term this will have disastrous effects. According to Mackie, each individual is located in multiple social circles – some intersecting, some not. This is a metaphoric way of claiming that society consists of cooperation, competition and conflict. Each individual partakes in all these three situations in his various groups and to various degrees. Any second order morality that is founded on the pursuit of happiness has to mitigate conflict and competition and promote a healthy amount of cooperation. Rights acknowledge egoism to a certain point, but also limit it in significant ways. So when John Locke claims property rights are the principle of ethics, he fails to make clear distinctions. It might very well be that I have right to possess the fruits of my labour, but these fruits are not totally due to my own labour. First, any product, ultimately, is tied to nature, which is a common good. Second, my labour is only possible when others create tools for me, offer me a place to work in, or start a company that I can then enter as employee. Third, the value of the fruits of my labour comes about through the interplay of society: the free market necessitates buyers and sellers. So Locke overlooks our dependency on our fellow human beings to (literally) create value and this is simply fallacious. To summarize Mackie’s ethics: the absolute ethical principle, or the end of ethics, is the individual pursuit of happiness. Morality and law constitute the restraints on our freedom of choice to obtain this end. Within this playing field, we are free to choose the means to obtain our happiness. This subjective system of values acknowledges our innate egoism, our calculating prudence and our innate dispositions; it also acknowledges our need to function in social groups and the need to mitigate zero-sum games (i.e. conflict and competition). Anyone who can participate in this social game offers some part of his freedom of choice how to obtain happiness to let society function properly and peacefully. This morality is then extended, voluntarily, to people who cannot participate in this social game, as well as to animals. Some practical consequences of Mackie’s ethics are the lack of an absolute right to life (e.g. abortion and euthanasia are allowed); war and revolution are allowed in certain cases; moral responsibility should be established along moral and judicial lines (i.e. determine the degree of intentionality of an act, directly or though negligence); leaves room for determinist and indeterminist views on our biological and psychological functioning. Also, this system of values is very nuanced on the domains of liberty (adjudication between rival claims of freedom); truth (prudence determines whether to tell the truth); agreements (the importance of moral devices to prevent conflict); and virtue (combination of conventions, personal ideas of what’s good and the use of reason). Finally, this view on ‘the good life’ stresses the need for compromises, and where these are unobtainable, the need for ‘live and let live.’ I think Mackie’s claims in Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong are the only way to go in the modern world. But not only this, I think his view on the matter is the truthful one. Religious people like to claim morality is rooted in the existence of God, but this makes morality nothing but the compliance to a dictator – benevolent or otherwise. Science simply shows morality to be a biological characteristic of sentient beings, which comes in different degrees. For example, there are many animal species that live in groups and have developed altruistic rules to help fellows in need and to feel bad about perceived injustices. Also, science shows human morality to be partially a social construct – vindicating Hobbes, Locke and Hume. Human cultures have al established rules to live by and devices to enforce these rules if necessary. And science also shows the human need for personal freedom and development. Mackie’s system of subjective values is, as far as I can tell (which is very limited), the only realistic and effective means to foster cooperation and allow for competition and conflict, while mitigating their excesses. Any ethics should acknowledge morality on the three levels mentioned: biology, culture, individual. I also view his critique on consequentialism and deontology to be spot on. Both systems of thinking are flawed and lead to absurd consequences. Consequentialism is “an ethics of fantasy” while deontology is “moral absolutism.” In short, I am extremely impressed by Mackie’s attempt to establish a humane, realistic and pragmatic system of values that averts all the problems of earlier systems. The only question (for me) that is still open, is a crucial one. Mackie claims that ethics should be founded on an absolute principle (pursuit of happiness) and the means to obtain this end should be nearly absolute (i.e. morality and law tell us what we can’t do). The rest is up to us. But he doesn’t answer the metaphysical question, which G.E. Moore called ‘the open question argument’, is happiness truly good? In other words: why should we pursue happiness in the first place? But this question seems to be so trivial that it isn’t really a valid one. We all want to be happy right? And my happiness is something different from yours, so we leave room for both of us to pursue it the way we want. Maybe the key lesson from this book is that this meta-ethical question-begging simply is unproductive and meaningless; that we should rather focus on ethics as a moral device with its particular function of managing cooperation, conflict and competition.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-06-09 00:00:00 Bob Canavan A book you have to reflect on. Essentially Mackie argues that morality cannot be objective and is subjective. The book is structured in three parts with 10 chapters. The first part examines the status of ethics. The Subjectivity of Values which he concludes: ‘Moral scepticism, the denial of objective moral values, is not to be confused with any of several first order normative views, or with any linguistic or conceptual analysis. Indeed, ordinary moral judgements involve a claim to objectivity which both non-cognitive and naturalist analyses fail to capture. Moral scepticism must therefore, take the form of error theory, admitting that a belief in objective values is built into ordinary moral thought and language, but holding that this belief is false. ‘ The following chapters cover The Meaning of Good. Obligations and Reasons ending with Universalization. The second part investigates there content of ethics with chapters on the object of morality, utilitarianism, Consequentialism and Deontology and ending with elements of a practical morality. Mackie outlines a first order moral system where he bases it around rule utilitarianism. Part 3 is on Frontiers of Ethics with the two final chapters covering determinism, responsibility and choices as well as religion, law and politics. Is he correct that morality is subjective with no means of measuring it objectively. Instead we prescribe morals to fit our desires within legal, religious, social and economic frameworks that allow us to live cooperatively and competitively. I do not know the answer but the book does challenge your perceptions about morality.