Modern Moral Philosophy: Revision Lecture

20 April 2005

Four theories of normative ethics

1. Utilitarianism
2. Deontological ethics
3. Rights-based ethics
4. Virtue ethics

 

Utilitarianism

• Can it be defended by an argument from first principles?
• Is it consistent with our considered moral convictions?
• Could justify doing terrible things, e.g. punishing and killing an innocent person to prevent a riot.

Deontological ethics

• Ross's 'prima facie duties'.  Not simply an appeal to intuitions.  Unlike utilitarianism, recognises that
• Some duties are backward-looking
• Some duties reflect special relationships to other people.

Can rule-utilitarianism do a better job?

Williams Critique of Utilitarianism

• Utilitarianism assumes idea of 'negative responsibility'.
• Utilitarianism fails to do justice to significance of our 'commitments' - projects with which we are deeply identified.
• So it cannot make sense of the idea of 'integrity'.

Rights-based ethics

Ä Utilitarianism would justify sacrificing an individual for the greater good - fails to recognise the separateness of individual lives.  There is no 'social entity' which undergoes sacrifices for its own good.

Ä But how do we know what rights there are?  Have to appeal to deeper facts about human needs and interests.

Virtue Ethics

• The virtues are qualities which any human being needs in order to flourish.
• It is from the perspective of the virtues that we can make sense of the idea that certain outcomes are morally good states of affairs.
• But virtue ethics seems to focus too much on the agent, rather than on what we do and the other persons to whom we do it.

Moral pluralism

• We seem to have to recognise a variety of different kinds of values, which cannot all be reduced to some one fundamental kind.
• Thomas Nagel, 'The Fragmentation of Value', in Mortal Questions (1979).  Also The View from Nowhere (1986)

Nagel's Pluralism: five types of value

• Specific obligations arising out of deliberate undertakings or special relations
• Rights
• Utility
• Perfectionist ends or values, e.g. scientific discovery, artistic creation
• Commitments to one's own projects or undertakings

The different sorts of values are incommensurable - they cannot be weighed against one another on a single scale.  Contrast utilitarianism.  This seems to make some moral conflicts irresolvable.  Nagel: conflicts can only be resolved by the exercise of judgement.

Why are the sources of value irreducibly diverse?  Nagel: the diversity reflects the contrast between two different perspectives on the world - personal and impersonal.  These generate two kinds of reasons - agent-relative and agent-neutral.

• Agent-relative reasons: reasons which include an essential reference to the person who has the reason.  Personal commitments, special obligations, rights.
• Agent-neutral reasons: reasons which do not include an essential reference to the person who has the reasons.  Utility, perfectionist values.

The problem

Can we find some unifying theory, some unitary source of value?  Can we find some way of reducing the different kinds of value to some one basic kind?