Lec 5 Chapter 3: Subjectivism

Ethics in the news…  “Armed with a majority, the Harper government is setting out to refashion Canada’s justice system with a sweeping crime bill to toughen punishments for a range of offenders, from drug dealers to sexual predators to what Justice Minister Rob Nicholson calls “out-of-control young people.”  crime-bill-only-the-beginning/article /

Ethics in the news…  Texas conservatives reject Harper's crime plan  'Been there; done that; didn't work,' say Texas crime-fighters  texas-crime.html?cmp=rss

Ethics in the news…  "If passed, C-10 will take Canadian justice policies 180 degrees in the wrong direction, and Canadian citizens will bear the costs.” Tracy Velázquez, executive director of the Washington based Justice Policy Institute.

Ethics in the news…  Conservatives in the United States' toughest crime-fighting jurisdiction — Texas — say the Harper government's crime strategy won't work.  "You will spend billions and billions and billions on locking people up," says Judge Creuzot of the Dallas County Court. "And there will come a point in time where the public says, 'Enough!' And you'll wind up letting them out."

The main points of Protagoras’ moral skepticism: 1. There is no ultimate moral truth 2. Our individual moral views are equally true 3. The practical benefit of our moral values is more important than their truth 4. The practical benefit of moral values is a function of social custom rather than nature

William Graham Sumner:  We learn [the morals of our society] as unconsciously as we learn to walk and hear and breathe, and [we] never know any reason why the [morals] are what they are. The justification of them is that when we wake to consciousness of life we find the facts which already hold us in the bonds of tradition, custom and habit.”

David Hume  Simple subjectivism...  ‘morality is a matter of sentiment rather than fact…’  A sense like our other senses...filtering our experience...

David Hume  Moral judgements are really only expressions of our feelings…  Morality by tummy ache?

 The agent: the person doing (or not doing) the action  The receiver: the person directly affected by the action  The spectator: the person watching and judging the action

Hume's moral theory:  Agents perform actions.  Receivers experience pleasure or pain.  Spectators sympathetically experience the pleasure or pain.  The moral spectator's sympathetic pleasure or pain constitutes a moral assessment of the agent's character trait, thereby deeming the trait to be a virtue or a vice.

Hume's moral theory:  Agents perform actions.  Receivers experience pleasure or pain.  Spectators sympathetically experience the pleasure or pain.  The moral spectator's sympathetic pleasure or pain constitutes a moral assessment of the agent's character trait, thereby deeming the trait to be a virtue or a vice.

Hume's moral theory: The agent performs an act The receiver either benefits or suffers The spectator judges what he sees If the spectator approves, the act was moral If the spectator disapproves, the act was immoral Also important: Moral actions stem from character: Virtuous Vicious

Sympathy is the key...

3.3. Hume: simple subjectivism... “defines virtue to be whatever mental action or quality gives to a spectator the pleasing sentiment of approbation; and vice the contrary.”

Simple Subjectivism seems good and easy and tolerant... But it has traps: 1. It cannot account for moral disagreement

Simple subjectivism seems good and easy and tolerant... But it has traps: 1. It cannot account for moral disagreement 2. It implies that we’re always right

Simple subjectivism seems good and easy and tolerant... But it has traps: 1. It cannot account for moral disagreement 2. It implies that we’re always right 3. It makes morality itself a useless concept

Simple subjectivism seems good and easy and tolerant... But it has traps: 1. It cannot account for moral disagreement 2. It implies that we’re always right 3. It makes morality itself a useless concept 4. It reduces moral choices to mere likes and dislikes

3.4. The Second Stage: Emotivism Emotivist Thesis:  moral judgments -- though they have the surface grammar of statements -- are really disguised commands.

3.5: Rachels responds: Moral judgments must be supported by reasons... If you like peaches, you don’t have to defend your preference But if you like torturing cats, you should have a reason

3.5: Rachels’ counterproposal: There are moral facts...  It's a false dichotomy to think Either…there are moral facts in the same way that there are facts about stars and planets Or…"values" are nothing more than the expression of subjective feelings. Maybe there’s a third way...

3.5: Rachels’ Third Way: "Moral truths are truths of reason:  that is...a moral judgment is true if it is backed by better reasons than the alternatives." P 41

Conventional ethical subjectivism  If we are all our own moral arbiters, how can there be any ‘morality’?  Conventionalism tries to blunt the harshness of that by requiring ‘social acceptance’

Traps here also...  Hitler had social acceptance for his invasion of Poland  George Bush had social acceptance for his invasion of Iraq

3.7 The Question of Homosexuality...

Rachels’ conclusion...  moral thinking and moral conduct are a matter of weighing reasons and being guided by them  in focusing on attitudes and feelings, Ethical Subjectivism seems to be going in the wrong direction

Leopold and Loeb 1924  Clarence Darrow for the defence

Charles Manson

Ashley...

Ashley

Katie Thorpe

Attendance question… What do you think of actions like this?