LDSP 442 Final Exam Study Guide

Justification for norm-differentiation: Personal Relativism/Subjectivism

Moral beliefs are based on the individual’s perception; right or wrong is subjective.

Justification for norm-differentiation: Cultural Relativism/Conventionalism

Moral beliefs are based on the group’s perception; right or wrong is determined by cultural norms.

Justification for norm-differentiation: Moral Exceptionalism

Leaders are seen as morally "special"; their position justifies different moral standards.

Barbara Kellerman

Author of Bad Leadership: What It Is, How It Happens, Why It Matters; says self-interest explains why leaders lead and followers follow.

Kellerman: What constitutes "bad" leadership?

Ineffective leadership (failure to deliver results) and unethical leadership (morally wrong behavior).

Kellerman: 7 Types of Bad Leadership

Incompetent, Rigid, Intemperate, Callous, Corrupt, Insular, Evil.

Incompetent Leadership (Kellerman)

Lacks will or skill to lead; fails to achieve goals (example: President George W. Bush during Hurricane Katrina).

Rigid Leadership (Kellerman)

Stubborn; refuses to adapt to new ideas or feedback (example: Mary Meeker at Merrill Lynch during the dot-com bust).

Intemperate Leadership (Kellerman)

Lacks self-control; indulges personal desires recklessly (example: Mayor Marion Barry’s drug scandal).

Callous Leadership (Kellerman)

Uncaring; ignores the needs and suffering of others (example: Enron executives ignoring employees and investors).

Corrupt Leadership (Kellerman)

Lies, cheats, or steals for self-interest (example: Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal).

Insular Leadership (Kellerman)

Disregards those outside their own group (example: U.S. government’s slow response to the Rwandan Genocide).

Evil Leadership (Kellerman)

Commits atrocities; inflicts severe intentional harm (example: Slobodan Milošević and ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia).

Immanuel Kant: Categorical Imperative

Discover moral truth through reason; act only according to maxims you can will as universal law.

Kant: Perfect and Imperfect Duties

Perfect duties must always be followed (e.g., no lying); imperfect duties allow flexibility (e.g., helping others).

Kant: Humanity Principle

Always treat people as ends in themselves, never merely as means.

Kant: Autonomy

Self-rule; each person legislates moral laws for themselves ("Kingdom of Ends").

Kant vs. Hume

Major debate: Kant focused on reason as the source of morality; Hume focused on emotion/feeling.

Kant (Deontology)

Duty and moral rules; right if it follows a moral law, regardless of outcome; Categorical Imperative (act according to universal laws); truth discovered through reason.

Mill (Utilitarianism)

Outcomes and consequences; right if it maximizes overall happiness; Greatest Happiness Principle (maximize pleasure); truth discovered through experience.

John Stuart Mill

Major figure in Utilitarianism; big discussion between Mill and Bentham; advocate of act utilitarianism.

Utilitarianism

Belief that the value of an action is determined by its utility; "greatest good for the greatest number of people"; attributed to Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill.

Act Utilitarianism

Utility is applied directly to each alternative act in a situation of choice.

Rule Utilitarianism

By reason, we know there are rules for action that tend to produce the greatest good for the greatest number.

Principle of Morality (comparison)

Kant = categorical imperative; Mill = greatest happiness principle; Bentham = principle of utility.

Bernard Williams

Critic of Utilitarianism; argued that it leads to conclusions that clash with our intuitions about right and wrong.

George and Jim Cases

Thought experiments used by Bernard Williams to highlight problematic implications of Utilitarianism.

Remote Effects

Distant or long-term impacts or repercussions for a decision.

Psychological Effects

Psychological or invisible effects of a decision.

Precedent Effects

Doing something because someone else has done it before; psychologically effective but not always morally valid.

Price

Scholar who discusses cosmopolitan vs. communitarian moral theories.

Cosmopolitan Moral Theories

Moral theories where particular group ends are subordinate to broader human welfare or the "greater good."

Greater Good/Cosmopolitanism

Leaders justify breaking rules because they believe their ends are morally superior and broadly applicable.

Epistemic Concerns for Cosmopolitan Leaders

Challenges of knowing which ends and means truly serve the greater good.

Cosmopolitan Moral Theories

Utilitarianism/Greatest Happiness Principle focus not on individual happiness but collective happiness.

Mill and Rule-Breaking

Mill warns that breaking rules leads to a disposition to lie, making lying easier and more common over time.

Price on Rule-Breaking

Price argues utilitarianism is better served by a disposition to promote utility than merely telling the truth.

Mill on General Practice

Mill grounds disutility in the general practice of lying rather than in individual lies; breaking moral rules can still be wrong even if utility is maximized in a particular case.

Transformational Leadership and Mill

Leaders focus more on end values (liberty, justice, equality) than on modal values (honesty, fairness, responsibility).

Mill vs. Burns on Leadership

Mill doubts leaders can know when to break rules for the greater good; Burns is confident they can.

Gary Yukl: Characteristics of Managerial Effectiveness

High energy and stress tolerance, self-confidence, internal locus of control, power motivation, achievement orientation, low need for affiliation, emotional stability, personal integrity.

Virtue and Hexis

Virtue is an active, reasoned habit (hexis), developed through conscious action and practice, not nature alone.

Function Argument

Virtues are qualities that enable fulfilling our function (ergon) — human flourishing (eudaimonia) through rationality.

Eudaimonia

Human flourishing achieved by living in accordance with virtue.

How Virtues Are Acquired

Intellectual virtues through teaching; moral virtues through habit and practice; not innate but natural to develop.

Virtue Mean

Virtue is a balance between vices of deficiency and excess.

Voluntary Actions

Actions taken freely with knowledge and choice.

Involuntary Actions

Actions done due to force (external compulsion) or ignorance (internal lack of knowledge).

Non-Voluntary Actions

Actions done out of ignorance without regret afterward; neither voluntary nor involuntary.

Culpable vs. Non-Culpable Ignorance

Culpable ignorance results from negligence; non-culpable ignorance is honest lack of knowledge.

Situationism (Price)

Critique that situations, not character traits, primarily determine behavior; strong form says traits don't exist.

Price on Virtue and Leadership

Investigates whether effective leaders are morally special; focuses on traits supporting eudaimonia, not just success.

Price’s Two Virtues for Leaders

Emotional stability and maturity; involve appropriate actions, thoughts, and feelings per Aristotle's broader vision of virtue.

Personal Integrity

Acting consistently with one’s values; authenticity with respect to values; values must be good. For Aristotle, this is not a virtue but a consistency that characterizes a virtuous life.

Plato on Intemperance

Intemperance threatens leadership in two ways: self-rule and rule by others; excessive pleasure overtakes reason and leads to irrational behavior.

Vice of Intemperance

Occurs when the passionate or appetitive part of the self breaks loose from reason, resulting in irrational behavior.

Intemperance in Classical Tradition

1) Justice in the city (obedience, submission to authority) as a virtue of followership; 2) Justice in the soul (self-governance) as a virtue of leadership and followership.

Callicles' View of Happiness

Believes happiness is the continual satisfaction of desires or pleasure (hedonism).

Socrates on Callicles’ Happiness

Compares a hedonistic person to a leaky jar or someone always itching without relief; argues they are never satisfied.

Machiavelli

Father of modern political philosophy; advocates deceit and unscrupulous means to secure power; advises princes to act “according to necessity.”

Machiavelli on Ego-Centric Leadership

Emphasizes using immoral means for desired ends (glory and survival); advocates “seeming over being” (impression management).

Machiavelli on Seeming vs. Being

Leader must appear virtuous and successful; public perception matters more than actual virtue.

Milgram Experiments

Studied how far people would go in obeying authority, even to the point of hurting others; shows the power of authority in influencing behavior.

Milgram’s Critique (Price)

“Contrived conditions” make virtues exceedingly rare; leaders need to guard against acting without virtue in leadership situations.

Hannah Arendt: Banality of Evil

Holocaust survivor; Eichmann, a Nazi leader, was motivated by personal gain, not belief, showing that evil can be carried out by ordinary people.

Banality of Evil

The idea that evil is not committed by monsters but by ordinary people, like Eichmann, who are detached from their actions.

Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE)

For others, we over-attribute actions to character and underplay situational factors; for ourselves, we overplay situational factors and underplay character.

Correspondence Bias

We assume a person’s actions directly reflect their character, regardless of context.

Bentham - Principle of Utility

Maximize pleasure and minimize pain; act utilitarian; all pleasures are equal; truth through reason.

Mill - Greatest Happiness Principle

Acts are right if they promote happiness; rule utilitarian; distinguishes higher and lower pleasures; truth through experience.

Aristotle - Virtue Ethics

Focus on developing virtues to fulfill human purpose (eudaimonia) through rationality and good reasons.

Function (ergon) Argument

Virtues are the qualities that allow a being to fulfill its function or purpose, leading to flourishing.

Hexis

An active disposition inclined toward virtuous action when relevant, involving conscious thought and reason.

Virtue Development

Intellectual virtues develop through teaching and time; moral virtues develop through habit (ethike).

Normative Ethics - Key Assumption

Assumes there is one ultimate standard of moral conduct, either a rule or set of principles.

Deontology

Focuses on duty and responsibility regardless of outcomes; “what is the right thing to do?”

Virtue Ethics

Focuses on the character and kind of person you are; actions are guided by virtues.

Consequentialism

Judges actions based on their outcomes or consequences.

Vice of Intemperance

Excessive pleasure overtakes reason, leading to irrational behavior (Plato).

Sophrosyne (Virtue of Temperance)

Soundness of mind and orderly behavior; balancing desires with reason.

Being Ruled by Others Well

Obeying authority justly; a virtue of good followership (justice in the city).

Self-Governance

Ruling one’s own desires with reason; a virtue necessary for both good leadership and followership.

Culpable Ignorance

Ignorance for which a person is morally blameworthy. It typically results from negligence, carelessness, or willful avoidance of information they had a duty to know

Non Culpable Ignorance

Ignorance for which a person is not morally blameworthy. They could not have reasonably known the information, despite acting responsibly

Garrett Hardin

Ecologist who warned about overpopulation; known for "Tragedy of the Commons" and Hardin’s First Law of Human Ecology.

Hardin’s First Law of Human Ecology

"We can never do merely one thing. Any intrusion into nature has numerous effects, many of which are unpredictable."

Hardin’s View on Helping the Poor

Believed it is a moral duty to refrain from aiding the poor to avoid worsening overpopulation and resource strain.

Hardin’s Three Metaphors

Cowboy Economy (limitless, wasteful resources), Spaceship Earth (cooperative use of limited resources), Lifeboat Earth (limited capacity for survival).

Criticism of Spaceship Earth Metaphor

Hardin argued it is misleading because there is no central captain; also called the UN a “toothless tiger.”

Lifeboat Ethics

The idea that rich nations must protect themselves and their resources by limiting immigration and foreign aid.

Tragedy of the Commons

The depletion of shared resources when individuals act in their own self-interest.

Ratchet Effect

The idea that food aid prevents natural population checks, leading to larger future crises because the aid cannot be reversed.

Peter Singer

Australian moral philosopher and Princeton professor, known for applied ethics and utilitarianism.

Singer’s Argument on Global Poverty

We are morally obligated to prevent suffering if we can do so without sacrificing something equally important.

Drowning Child Analogy

Example by Singer showing that personal inconvenience is not a valid excuse to avoid helping others in need.

Singer on Others’ Inaction

Argues that the fact others are not helping does not reduce our own moral responsibility to act.

Moral Mediocrity

The tendency to match one’s moral behavior to the average behavior of peers, avoiding extremes of good or bad.

Danger of Moral Mediocrity

Leads to complacency; highlights the importance of choosing good moral influences.

Enlightenment Assumption

Belief that societal progress will naturally follow the acquisition of knowledge.

Steven Pinker

Psychologist who argues for optimism, citing increased accountability for bad leadership and greater societal transparency.