Philo Exam Notes

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Could Euthyphro has instead said that the holy is holy because it’s loved by the gods?

No, because then there would be no answer for the why question.

- Descriptive claims:

- are about the world.

- start with information from the world, and from that information we form beliefs and ideas.

- In making descriptive judgments we attempt to state what is the case or report on how the world is.

Normative claims:

- When we make evaluative judgments we attempt to state not what is the case (as we do with descriptive claims), but rather, what should be the case and how the world can be better.

Descriptive claims generally state facts about the world. Whether the claim is true or false is an empirical question. Ethical claims on the other hand, make an evaluative statement.

- Rationalism:

- Human reason is powerful enough to determine the content of morality

- Contrasts with the DC theory

- the view that regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge.

- Holding that reality itself has an inherently logical structure, the rationalist asserts that a class of truths exists that the intellect can grasp directly.

- There are, according to the rationalists, certain rational principles—especially in logic and mathematics, and even in ethics and metaphysics—that are so fundamental that to deny them is to fall into contradiction. The rationalists’ confidence in reason and proof tends, therefore, to detract from their respect for other ways of knowing.

- Utilitarianism

- Utility, in a philosophical context, refers to what is good for a human being.

- Utilitarianism is a moral theory according to which welfare is the fundamental human good.

- Welfare may be understood as referring to the HAPPINESS or well being of individuals.

- Utilitarianism is most commonly a theory about the rightness of actions; it is the doctrine that, from a range of possibilities, the right action is the action which most increases the welfare of human beings or sentient creatures in general.

- Of the many moral theories now called utilitarian, all share this claim that MORALITY ought to be concerned with increasing welfare.

- Consider long term as well as short term consequences

- What makes happiness the morally relevant feature of outcome?

Bentham says by relying on science and the fact that people seek pleasure and avoid pain

- Bentham thinks that the fact that happiness is subjective strengthens his argument because he wouldn’t be dealing with nonscientific reasons.

- Bentham advocates being objective (ideal observer)

Four Components of Utilitarianism:

- Consequentialism:

- Utilitarianism is one species of consequentialism.

- The idea that the moral rightness of, for example, an action is determined in terms of the value of its consequences, in terms of the goodness (or badness) brought into existence.

Objections to consequentialism:

- The constraints objection:

- Utilitarianism says that sometimes the morally right action is one that violates generally accepted constraints on what we can do

Ex: if a group of people agreed that the right thing to do is imprisoning an innocent person, utilitarianism would say imprison him. This, however, violates a general notion of of not imprisoning an innocent person.

- Hedonism:

- According to classical utilitarianism, assessing consequences is exclusively a matter of considering the amount of happiness brought about by an action.

- Classical utilitarianism endorses hedonism.

- Hedonism is the view that happiness is the only intrinsic good and that unhappiness is the only intrinsic bad.

Measuring pleasure (Bentham):

- Intensity

- Duration

- Certainty

- Propinquity

- Fecundity

- Purity

Problems:

- Quantitative but not qualitative.

John Mill: quality of pleasure matters as much as quantity.

- Is intrinsic state all that matters?

Thought experiment: Experience Machine

- Aggregationism:

- Aggregationism implies that we should ignore the distribution of the welfare that we are bringing about, and simply maximize its total sum in aggregate.

- That is, if one outcome will produce more welfare, but distributes it very unequally, and another will produce less, but distribute it more equally, it is, according to Aggregationism, the first outcome that we ought to choose.

- Egalitarianism:

- Equal distribution of happiness

- The ideal observer:

- One common tactic among consequentialists, particularly those committed to an altruistic (selfless) account of consequentialism, is to employ an ideal, neutral observer from which moral judgments can be made.

- Utilitarianism, in common with other forms of consequentialism, relies on the perspective of such an ideal observer.

- The particular characteristics of this ideal observer can vary from an omniscient observer, who would grasp all the consequences of any action, to an ideally informed observer, who knows as much as could reasonably be expected, but not necessarily all the circumstances