1. Ethics How do we judge what’s right and wrong? Where do we derive our ethics? Ans. Religion, law, inner voice?, ethical theories such as Kantism, Utilitarianism, etc. Three main parts of ethics: normative ethics, metaethics, and moral psychology. Normative ethics: deals with how we should make our ethical decisions.

2. Ethics (cont. 1) Metaethics: deals with the meaning of ethical terms, ex. Evil, good, bad, ought, should, fairness, duty, etc. Moral Psychology: What makes us do the things we do? Religion: “Is it wrong because God said it’s wrong, or did God say it’s wrong because it’s wrong?”

3. Ethics (cont. 2) (Kant, 18 th century): Rational morality, i.e. bounded for all rational minds, like science. Therefore, it is not true because we believe it, nor because God says so, and regardless of the consequences (a priori). Categorical Imperative: an act is moral iff the principle that it embodies is capable of universalization without self-contradiction.

4. Ethics (cont. 3) Criticism: free will? If things happen out of necessity, do we have free will? Is “ought” a meaningful word? We shouldn’t steal to survive? Utilitarianism (Bentham, Mills): An action is moral if it produces the greatest amount of utility (benefit) for the greatest amount of people.

5. Ethics (cont. 4) Criticism: I have a sickly uncle. He is in great pain. Because of his continual pain, he has developed resentment towards his employees. His employees work in his factory and are now miserable because of him. There life is also in danger because of shoddy safety standards. I am his only heir. If he dies, I inherit 1 million dollars …

6. Ethics (cont. 5) I know that if I killed him, I would not feel guilty and I would enjoy the money. He would not be in pain anymore. The employers would be happier. He would not be around to regret his death Should I kill him?

7. Ethics (cont. 6) Relativism (Nietzsche): There are many moralities, not one objective one. Morality is like history, we should identify different types of morality in the past. If there was one objective morality, we would have identified it by now, but there is very little uniformity between different cultures. We derive morals to promote our survival.

8. Ethics (cont. 8) Things that promote our survival and pleasure came to be called good or right, the opposite is evil, or wrong. Since the environment is different from culture to culture, so are our morals. Trying to find an objective morality is simply ethnocentrism.

9. Ethics (Cont. 9) Here in North America, how are our laws derived? Are we more Kantian or Utilitarian? What about the authors we have read so far? Are Ethics objective? Coming soon: John Rawls, Bentham vs. Mills.