• Naturalists say that moral behaviour can be examined in the same way as other features of the universe – scientifically

Moral facts are not like scientific facts…

they are not facts at all

This is a starving child

I ought to do something to help

UtilitarianismUtilitarianism

Basic Insights

• The purpose of morality is to make the world a better place.

• Morality is about producing good consequences, not having good intentions

• We should do whatever will bring the most benefit (i.e., intrinsic value) to all of humanity.

The Purpose of Morality

• The utilitarian has a very simple answer to the question of why morality exists at all:– The purpose of morality is to guide

people’s actions in such a way as to produce a better world.

• Consequently, the emphasis in utilitarianism is on consequences, not intentions.

Fundamental Imperative

The fundamental imperative of utilitarianism is:

• Always act in the way that will produce the greatest overall amount of good in the world.

• The emphasis is clearly on consequences, not intentions!

The Emphasis on the Overall Good

Utilitarianism is a morally demanding position for two reasons:

• It always asks us to do the most, to maximize utility, not to do the minimum.

• It asks us to set aside personal interest.

The Dream of Utilitarianism:Bringing Scientific Certainty to Ethics

• If we can agree that the purpose of morality is to make the world a better place; and

• If we can scientifically assess various possible courses of action to determine which will have the greatest positive effect on the world; then

• We can provide a scientific answer to the question of what we ought to do.

Standards of Utility:Standards of Utility:

A History of A History of UtilitarianismUtilitarianism

Intrinsic Value

• Many things have instrumental value, that is, they have value as means to an end.

• However, there must be some things which are not merely instrumental, but have value in themselves.

This is what we call intrinsic value.

• Four principal candidates:– Pleasure

• Jeremy Bentham

– Happiness• John Stuart Mill

– Ideals• G. E. Moore

– Preferences• Kenneth Arrow

Intrinsic Value

Jeremy Bentham1748-1832

• Bentham believed that we should try to increase the overall amount of pleasure in the world.

• Pleasure is the enjoyable feeling we experience when a state of deprivation is replaced by fulfillment.

John Stuart Mill1806-1873

• Believed that happiness, not pleasure, should be the standard of utility.

• More difficult to measure

G. E. Moore1873-1958

G. E. Moore suggested that we should strive to maximize ideal values such as freedom, knowledge, justice, and beauty.

The world may not be a better place with more pleasure in it, but it certainly will be a better place with more freedom, more knowledge, more justice, and more beauty.

Kenneth Arrow

• Kenneth Arrow, a Nobel Prize winning Stanford economist, argued that what has intrinsic value is preference satisfaction.

• The advantage of Arrow’s approach is that, in effect, it lets people choose for themselves what has intrinsic value.

• It simply defines intrinsic value as whatever satisfies an agent’s preferences. It is elegant and pluralistic.

Responsibility• Utilitarianism suggests that we are responsible

for all the consequences of our choices.• The problem is that sometimes we can foresee

consequences of other people’s actions that are taken in response to our own acts. Are we responsible for those actions, even though we don’t choose them or approve of them?

• Imagine a terrorist situation where the terrorists say that they will kill their hostages if we do not meet their demands. We refuse to meet their demands. Are we responsible for what happens to the hostages?

Integrity

• Utilitarianism often demands that we put aside self-interest. Sometimes this means putting aside our own moral convictions.

• Integrity may involve certain identity-conferring commitments, such that the violation of those commitments entails a violation of who we are at our core.

Intentions

• Utilitarianism is concerned almost exclusively about consequences, not intentions.

• Intentions may matter is morally assessing an agent, even if they don’t matter in terms of guiding action.

Moral Luck• By concentrating exclusively on consequences,

utilitarianism makes the moral worth of our actions a matter of luck. We must await the final consequences before we find out if our action was good or bad.

• This seems to make the moral life a matter of chance, which runs counter to our basic moral intuitions.

• We can imagine actions with good intentions that have unforeseeable and unintended bad consequences

• We can also imagine actions with bad intentions that have unforeseeable and unintended good conseqeunces.

Who is calculating and who is included?

• The count differs depending on who does the counting

• When we consider the issue of consequences, we must ask who is included within that circle.– Those in our own group (group egoism)– Those in our own country (nationalism)– Those who share our skin color (racism)– All human beings (humanism or speciesism?)– All sentient beings

• Classical utilitarianism has often claimed that we should acknowledge the pain and suffering of animals and not restrict the calculus just to human beings.

EmotivismEmotivism

David Hume (1711-1776)

• Sentiment or feeling (emotion) is the source of right and wrong.

• If you decide to help someone in need you do so because you have feelings, not reason. Compassion has nothing to do with reason.

• You can’t go from a factual statement (an ‘is’) to a moral one (an ‘ought’)

AJ Ayer (1910-1989)Language, Truth and Logic (1936)

• When we make moral statements we are not talking about objective facts that can be known but are expressing our emotions or feelings

• Statements are only true or false as far as we agree or disagree with them

CL StevensonEthics and Language

• Developed Ayer’s ideas • Agreed with Ayer that ethical

statements are expressions of opinion• BUT also argued that these personal

opinions are not arbitrary – they are based on beliefs about the world and how we think it should be

• We disapprove of murders because we have beliefs about human worth, not just because this is a personal preference

RM HareThe Language of Morals

• Goes further than Ayer• When we make moral statements

it is because we want others to share this view

• Moral statements have a guiding role too

• We become heated during arguments because we want others to share our views

• The distinction between asserting you have a feeling and expressing that feeling.

• Examples– “I am disgusted by your behavior.”

vs. – “I am in severe pain.” vs.

“Ouch!!!!!!”

• Assertions are either true or false; expressions of feelings are not.

• The central idea of Emotivism is that, while moral claims look like assertions, they are actually expressions of feeling.

• Unlike some other emotive expressions, the emotive expressions used in ethical claims have a tendency to have a persuasive or “magnetic” effect on listeners – perhaps because of childhood conditioning.

• Emotivism draws attention to the way that moral statements depend on our own attitudes, feelings and upbringing

BUT• Emotivism does not seem to have

much substance – our use of ethical language could change from one day to the next according to our feelings

• AND moral statements are much more than just expressions of preference.

• We do not want a judge to merely express a personal preference when making a decision about a difficult case, such as whether to allow a life-support machine to be switched off.

The Main Tenets of Emotivism (I)

The primary function of ethical language is twofold:

To express the attitudes of the speaker (expressivism)

To evoke similar attitudes in others (boo-hurrah theory)

Ethical language functions differently than scientific, mathematical or other forms of descriptive language.

The Main Tenets of Emotivism (II)

Two kinds of meaning: Descriptive Meaning Emotive Meaning

Relations between the premises and the conclusions of an ethical argument are

Causal Not logical

means

Stealing is wrong

I disapprove of stealing