introductory ethics for a general audience

1. Values and Reasons
Engaging in Ethics

3. Goals
• Help make sense of the language of ethical discourse (e.g.,
“right”, “obligation”, “duty”, “good”, “value”)
• Provide some background of historical contributions to the
study of ethics
• Restricted for time to Western ethics – plus it makes most
sense given our commonsense morality is from this culture
• I will not discuss which ethical theory is The Right Theory
• Instead, I will show how classical ethical theories reflect our
divergent ways of thinking about morality
• This will only be a quick primer – many more views of ethics
will be left unexplored
• We’ll look at some dilemmas, esp. life or death high-stakes
ones, which throw some issues into sharp relief. The same
lessons apply to our more everyday engagement with ethics

4. The Heinz Dilemma
A woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There
was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a
form of radium that a researcher in the same town had recently
discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the researcher
was charging ten times what the drug cost him to produce. He
paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of
the drug. The sick woman's husband, Heinz, went to everyone he
knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about
$1,000, which is half of what it cost. He told the researcher that
his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay
later. But the researcher said: "No, I discovered the drug and I'm
going to make money from it." So in desperation Heinz broke into
the man's lab to steal the drug for his wife. Is what he did wrong?
Explain.

5. Solving the Heinz Dilemma
• Heinz struggles with simultaneous conflicting demands which
ask him to respect:
• His wife’s right to treatment
• Her desire to live
• The pharmacist’s property rights
• The law
• Others’ rights to the medication
• Fairness

6. Moral Thinking
• In considering what we should do, or shouldn’t do, we reach
for reasons, values and principles.
• Much of what we rely upon is commonsense morality.
• But moral disagreements show that commonsense morality
isn’t one unified set of values and principles, what is
considered commonsense is itself diverse, even in relatively
homogenous social groups.

7. Engaging in Ethics
• Think of ethics as an engagement in discussions about values,
specifically moral values.
• Ethics is not simply an academic exercise aiming at the correct
theory of right and wrong.
• Ethics, in descending order of abstraction
• Metaethics
• Normative ethics
• Applied Ethics

8. Values
• Values are simply those things that matter to us, things we
care about.
• e.g., fun, peacefulness, beauty, health, fairness, winning,
pleasure, equality, dignity
• Obviously, not all of us care about these to the same degree in
the same way at the same time.
• We have no agreed-upon way to prioritize these values, and
each of us ranks them differently in different situations.

9. Non-Moral Values

10. Beauty and Comfort
• My brother-in-law’s girlfriend values beauty (as she interprets
it) over comfort.
• He values comfort over beauty.
• When they live apart, each can choose which couch to buy.
• But when they move in together, they have to decide which
couch to keep.

11. Moral Values
• Now fairness and equality enter the picture, since they
recognize they have equal say in furniture selection (or not),
and each expects to be treated fairly in the decision.
• Moral values: those values that are concerned with what we
owe each other, and ourselves.
e.g., fairness, dignity, equality, respect, trustworthiness,
responsibility

12. When Moral Values Diverge
• The big values are often ones we agree upon, in principle at
least.
• But how they are interpreted by different parties within a
context is where disagreement lies.
• For example, no one who takes a position on the morality of
abortion thinks that human life or personal autonomy has no
value.

13. The Promise of Ethical
Engagement
• This means that engaging in a discussion about ethics is
promising – if deep down we share similar values, perhaps we
can find a way agree about a particular case, or find a
compromise that satisfies everyone.

14. Logging
• Clashes between environmentalists and the logging industry
• Logging industry – loggers have a right to earn a living, and
consumers have a right to purchase the goods produced by the
industry
• Environmentalists – we have a duty to act as stewards of the
Earth, both for our own futures and the future of other living
creatures

15. Creative Solutions
• The way to begin to solve problems such as this is through
dialogue.
• Understanding how another party sees the area of concern is
a crucial step towards finding a creative solution or
compromise.
• This requires us to avoid certain roadblocks though.

16. Roadblocks to Doing Ethics
• Dogmatism: “I’m right, and anyone who can’t see that is a
fool”
• Relativism: “It’s all a matter of personal opinion anyway.
There’s no one right answer”
• Grasping for Facts: “There are experts who can answer our
question, so let’s ask them or look up the answer”

17. Dogmatism
• Those who are entrenched in a particular position tend not to
listen. In fact, they won’t listen, because listening suggests
that there might be reasons to doubt their position.
• Dogmatists often don’t argue for their positions – they state
their conclusions, but not their reasons for it. This is because
to offer reasons for your position implies that your position
needs defending – it’s an admission that your position is not
self-evident.
• Sometimes it’s best to stubbornly defend your position, but
not at the cost of failing to listen to others.

18. Relativism
• Usually when we look around us, we see that other people have
different values, especially when we look beyond familiar cultures.
• This opens our minds up, and helps us see that others have different
values, which is a good thing.
• But if we take this to the extreme, and conclude that values are purely
relative, i.e. they never have an objective basis, we shut down ethical
engagement.
• In a discussion about the ethics of abortion, someone once said “well,
it’s all a matter of personal opinion, so what is there to talk about?” The
message seems to be: “I’m uncomfortable talking about this – can we
change the subject?” Relativism shuts down discussion, and so blocks
ethical engagement. And in this case, leaving it up to personal opinion
is taking a position – it’s called being pro-choice.
• Also, relativism is hugely impractical. Since moral values have to do with
what we owe each other, and what we are owed, they need to be
resolved somehow. If we’re deciding how to distribute raises to the
employees of a company, we have to make a decision. To shut down
discussion is to do nothing at all, which is itself a decision.

19. Grasping for Facts
• Sometimes a discussion about values turns to a discussion about facts – what
does science tell us about global warming? What does the newspaper’s editorial
policy say about unnamed sources?
• Facts are essential, of course, but ethical discussion is blocked when we seek
facts to the exclusion of discussing values.
• This often happens because facts are seen as public and objective, and we have
methods for determining what the facts are. To that extent they are easier to
discuss.
• Normative/descriptive: sometimes it is useful to distinguish normative claims
from descriptive ones. A descriptive claim, as its name suggests, describes how
things are. So a fact is expressed by a descriptive statement. Normative claims,
however, prescribe how thing should be. Ethics is generally a normative
enterprise, investigating what we ought to do or how we should be.
• When a discussion of ethics turns purely descriptive, you know you’re avoiding
discussion of values.
• A noteworthy species of Grasping for Facts is the tendency to cite the law or
policy documents. The law might prohibit certain behavior, but that doesn’t end
ethical debate. After all, Heinz, in breaking in the lab, breaks the law, but that
doesn’t mean that the ethical question is answered. Instead the law, and any
policy, should reflect what is ethically appropriate, not the other way around.
Laws and policies are good starting points for discussion, but not ends.

20. Diversity
• In any matter of moral significance, you’ll find a diversity of
opinions, and diverse values expressed.
• These are an opportunity for engagement, not a roadblock to
it.

21. The Role of Reason
• If we share common core values, at least at a fundamental level, how do
we connect them to the particular situation or problem we are
discussing?
• This is where reason comes in. The ability to think rationally is
something we have in common.
• Contrast this with religious principles: we can’t assume that others will
share our religious beliefs, so even if our religious beliefs clarify how
values are to be prioritized or applied in specific cases, that is not a basis
for resolving moral questions outside of the community of religious
believers.
• The study of ethics can be largely characterized as the attempt to
structure moral values by building a rational framework. Oftentimes
this amounts to finding a fundamental moral principle that can be
universally applied to resolve moral questions.
• We will look at several traditional and influential theories, and some of
their strengths and weaknesses.
• Again, the goal is not to choose the One True Theory, but instead to
explore them as a means of understanding our broader moral thinking.

22. The Role of Emotion
• Using reason doesn’t imply that we must be cold and
objective, however. Sometimes people dismiss others as “too
emotional”, as if being cold and objective is the ideal way to
engage in ethics, and that emotion and fact are opposed.
• But this misses the point – ethics is about our values, and
values are what we care about, and care is an emotion.
• Not only that, but emotions arise from reflecting on facts, and
you can feel strongly and consider facts at the same time.
• So feeling emotional about an issue is entirely appropriate.
• What is dangerous is only feeling emotional, without
considering facts. (Stephen Colbert calls this “Truthiness” - it’s
what you feel in your gut, not what you think in your head)

23. Grouping Values
• We find general agreement as to what the values are, but
people differ about their application or priority in any given
situation.
• One way to see how this difference is by looking at how values
are grouped together:
• Goods (happiness, pleasure, harmony, peace, etc.)
• Rights (respect for dignity of others, fairness, justice, respecting
civil and human rights)
• Virtues (character, integrity, acting as a good person should,
acting responsibly, honestly, loyally, etc.)

24. Focusing on Goods
• Hospital emergency rooms use triage as a method to appropriately
offer treatment to patients. This is a way of focusing on goods – we
have limited medical resources, and they can be most effectively
deployed by treating first those in greatest need of them and those
who will receive the most benefit.
• What do we look at? The expected consequences of each proposed
action.
• This is a benefits/harms model, and is a little like doing a
cost/benefit analysis.
• The Heinz dilemma: What would the consequences be of stealing
the medicine? (wife survives, druggist loses $200 of value, and
$2000 of opportunity, druggist might improve security at some cost,
in both time and money, and increased concern over the safety of
his store. Neighbors might have increased concern voer crime in the
area)

25. Utilitarianism
• The most common form of consequentialism is utilitarianism,
which summarizes morality by one fundamental principle:
• The right action is the one that maximizes aggregate utility, on
balance and over time.
• But what is utility?
• Hedonistic Utilitarianism: pleasure & absence of pain
• Most hedonistic utilitarians recognize that pleasure comes in
many forms, so they are not merely considering sensual
pleasures.

26. Utilitarianism’s Strengths
• Equality – utilitarians generally count everyone as equal
• Progressiveness – utilitarianism has often been at the
forefront of what we think of as morally progressive
movements, such as the abolition of slavery, women’s
suffrage, and vegetarianism
• Highest Values are Very Nearly Universal – happiness, pleasure
and the reduction of suffering are very nearly universal values
• Forward-looking – utilitarianism is future-oriented – it looks at
future outcomes, not past events

27. Utilitarianism’s Weaknesses
• Equality & Impartiality – it appears that it’s morally appropriate to
be partial to some individuals in one’s life (saving a stranger’s child
vs. saving your own child)
• Massively impractical – the consequences of any action are so far-
reaching as to be practically impossible to predict
• Extremely demanding – an act as ordinary as buying a pair of shoes
looks to be immoral, given that the money you spent on the shoes
could have provided needed medical care to infants in a developing
nation.
• No room for permissible or superogatory acts – for a utilitarian, an
action is either the right act, or it is wrong. There is no room for
permissible actions, and there’s no room for going above and
beyond the call of duty, doing good that morality does not require of
you. Every good act is obligatory.
• Forward-looking – Utilitarianism makes one equally responsible for
bringing about a good outcome, irrespective of one’s past
involvement or others’ involvement

28. Is There a Limit?
• One implication of utilitarianism is that any type of action
could, in some circumstances, be morally justified, even
obligatory.
• We generally believe torture is wrong. But for many
utilitarians, there are no blanket prohibitions on types of
action. Torturing a suspected terrorist might be appropriate,
especially if doing so might reveal important information, such
as what the terrorist’s organization is planning.
• Some utilitarians have been criticized for sanctioning actions
that sound as if they cross a moral line, such as infanticide in
some circumstances.

29. Deontological Theories
• Focusing on the Rights category of values brings us to another
class of theories: Deontological
• They generally identify what is morally right with what duty
requires of us and what is morally wrong with what duty
prohibits.
• This is cashed out in various ways by different theorists, so
we’ll look at the most prominent historical deontologist,
Immanuel Kant.

30. Kantian Ethics
• Kant held that the right action is guided by what he called the
Categorical Imperative. He said it can be stated in more than one
way:
• Act only on that maxim which you can at the same time to will to be
universal law.
• Always treat others as ends in themselves, never merely as means.
• Roughly, what the first means is that the rule that you adopt when
you choose to act must be a rule that can be adopted by everyone,
so that your action is compatible with their adopting the same rule.
This is sometimes known as Universalizability.
• The second means that you treat others as individuals with their
own projects, interests and autonomy, and these have as much
worth for them as yours do for you. To treat another as an
instrument to serve your own interests is wrong.

31. Example: The False Promise
• You ask for a loan from me, promising to pay me
back Friday, when you know you can’t do it.
• Your maxim: I will make a promise I know I can’t
keep when it will benefit me.
• Can this be universalized? No.
• This would mean that we live in a world in which
everyone makes false promises when it benefits
them, but this would be a world in which promises
are empty and not accepted. So it’s a world in which
you can’t use a false promise at all.
• It violates the second formulation as well: in lying to
you, I treat you as a means to my own end. To treat
you as an end in yourself, I should tell you the truth
– that I need the money, but I wont’ be able to repay
you. You can then take that information and
autonomously make a decision based upon your
own reasoning and values.

32. Deontology’s Strengths
• Deontological views also allow that some acts are permissible
– they can be chosen, or not, and this is up to the individual.
• They make room for superogatory acts as well – one can go
beyond one’s duty, and even act heroically.
• They are in some circumstances less demanding than
utilitarianism, since an act such as buying shoes may be
permissible, if one’s duty is not to first help those in need at all
times, but something more manageable
• Deontology generally treats duties as duties to others, rather
than duties to bring about outcomes, making it more
relational than utilitarianism, and explaining accountability.

33. Deontology’s Weaknesses
• Duties sometimes apparently conflict, since there is no one
core duty. Deontology sometimes struggles with determining
how to resolve conflicts among duties.
• Deontology is inflexible – if one has a duty not to torture
innocents, then there are no circumstances in which torturing
an innocent is morally permitted.

34. Virtues
• There is another, ancient, ethical perspective, known as virtue ethics.
• Consider the following story: Marta is a newspaper reporter, covering local
politics for Metro section of her paper. She is a single mother, with two school-
aged children, and her job allows her the flexibility to work around her children’s
schedules. Unfortunately she was laid off recently due to budget cutbacks,
following further subscription sales losses at the paper. She gets a job offer from
another company, who publishes a celebrity gossip magazine, and she is told her
duties will include finding “juicy” celebrity stories, especially those involving
public officials, some of whom she has good working relationships with. She
knows that some of this work will involve getting close, if not crossing, lines of
personal privacy, and some of the methods used by some reporters in this line of
work she finds suspect. Still, if she doesn’t take the job, someone with fewer
moral qualms will likely take it, and if she says yes, she will have some control
over how the job is done. Plus, the money is good and she will still have the
flexibility of her old job.
• Should she take the job?
• Here if we say no, why? Does she have a duty of some sort? The consequences
to all involved seem to favor her taking the job, if anything.
• Perhaps the value we’re looking at here is personal integrity.

35. Which Question Comes First?
What
makes an
action
good?
What
makes a
person
good?

36. Aristotle
• One of the earliest, and still most prominent, virtue theorists
was Aristotle.
• He said that every thing has a function, and we, as human
beings, also have a function.
• Our function is to live our lives in accordance with rationality.
In this case, he means by using our wisdom and judgment to
conduct ourselves in a manner consistent with our humanity.
• Aristotle held that a good thing is one that performs its
function well, i.e. one that is virtuous or excellent at
performing its function.
• Though this is rather high-minded and abstract, Aristotle had
practical lessons in mind.

37. Habit and Practice
• What characterizes the good person, says Aristotle, is that her
actions express the mean – acting neither in excess, nor in deficit.
• One who is not virtuous will be prone to get angry too easily (be
irascible) or never be moved to anger (be insensible). The virtuous
person will get angry the right amount in the right circumstances.
• The way we acquire virtue is through habit. Repetition and practice
instill in us a good character, or, if we make bad choices, a bad
character.
• Importantly, Aristotle says that ethics is not a science of hard-and-
fast rules. It is inexact, and so determining what is right is a matter
of exercising good judgment in the situation.
• Like a good critic uses practice and study to improve her judgment
of paintings, so does a virtuous person practice to improve judgment
of actions. Neither’s wisdom is replaceable with a set of rules.

38. Virtue Theory’s Weaknesses
• Hard to apply to a specific situation – given that the goal of
Virtue theory is not to answer the question “What is the right
action in this circumstance?”, the theory doesn’t give us a
clear answer to moral dilemmas much of the time.
• Self-centered – though the virtues themselves, particularly
those such as magnanimity and generosity, can be outward-
looking, the theory itself centers on the individual agent, and
his or her goodness. Some object that this is the wrong
orientation for a moral theory.
• An action might express one virtue, yet violate another one.
There should be a set of prioritized virtues or a few basic
virtues that help resolve conflicts.

39. Returning to Values
• Where does this leave us?
• We can think of a moral situation from many different perspectives,
and some familiarity with contrasting theories can enlighten us or
give us fresh perspective.
• Back to Heinz:
• Utilitarian perspective: Stealing the drug will have some good effects
(saving wife’s life, saving money) and some bad effects (loss of
money for Heinz, fear of further break-ins might increase security
costs for researcher, fear of other burglaries will affect other
researchers)
• Kantian perspective: Heinz is not treating the researcher as an end in
himself, but only as a means to Heinz’s end. The researcher has
rights that Heinz violates by stealing.
• Virtue perspective: Stealing runs contrary to the virtue of honesty,
but obtaining the drug conforms to the virtue of caring for one’s
loved ones. Perhaps identifying how the act conforms to the virtue
of justice will decide.

40. Final Thoughts
• Here are some questions about any ethical dilemma:
• Who (or what) are the potential stakeholders? What interests do
they have that might be affected by potential actions? How might
they be harmed or benefited?
• What rights might be in play, and whose rights? What duties do
these rights impose on others? What interests do the rights
protect?
• What would a good person do in a situation such as this? Are the
circumstances such that a good person would judge the situation
as one in which a different action is appropriate? Does the action
being considered reflect the action of a good character, or a
person of integrity?
• I hope you have found this useful, and it provided you with
some tools to engage in ethics not only here today, but after
you leave as well.