PHIL 1740: Exam 1 (Units 1 & 2)

Morality

The norms and judgements concerning right and wrong, good and bad.

Ethics

The critical study of morality through reasons, arguments, and conceptual analysis.

Validity

A valid argument cannot have true premises and a false conclusion.

Soundness

Validity + true premises

Obligatory

Actions that a moral agent is strictly required to perform.

Permissible

Actions that are morally allowed or acceptable to do. They are optional, meaning performing them is not wrong, and refraining from them is not wrong.

Prohibited (Impermissible)

Actions that a moral agent is strictly required NOT to do.

Supererogatory

Actions that go "beyond the call of duty" - they are morally good and praiseworthy, but not strictly required.

Absolute Principle

A principle that has no exceptions

Prima Facie Principle

A binding principle UNLESS it is outweighed.

Subjective Relativism

An action is morally right if an individual person approves of it or believes it is right.

Cultural Relativism

An action is morally right if a culture approves of it or believes it is right.

Moral Objectivism

There are universal moral principles and truths that are valid for all people, regardless of what individuals or cultures think or feel.

What is the argument from cultural disagreement?

Moral disagreement supports cultural relativism because cultural disagreement about morality suggests no objective moral standards exist.

What is the objection to the cultural disagreement argument?

Disagreement does not eliminate a fact of the matter; different practices may reflect different nonmoral beliefs.

What is the argument from tolerance?

We should endorse cultural relativism on the grounds that it, unlike moral objectivism, encourages tolerance of other cultures.

What is the objection to the argument from tolerance?

It does not follow from relativism; an intolerant culture would make intolerance right. To claim that tolerance is always morally valuable would require claiming that morality is objective.

Gillon’s Four Principles

Autonomy, Beneficence, Non-Maleficence, Justice

Autonomy

Respect deliberated self-rule: disclosure, consent, confidentiality, refusal, capacity.

Beneficence

Promote benefit and net patient welfare: whose good and which conception of benefit?

Non-Maleficence

Avoid causing harm: kind, magnitude, probability, distribution of resources.

Justice

Fairly adjudicate competing claims: resources, rights, equal treatment, morally relevant differences.

Scope of Principle

To whom or what does a principle apply? Agreement on a principle may conceal disagreement about fetuses, families, future people, animals, or communities.

Four Principles Argument and Limitation

P1: If a case involves several relevant prima facie principles, each must be considered.

P2: Many bioethical cases involve several relevant prima facie principles.

C: Therefore, many bioethical cases require consideration of each relevant principle.

Limitation: The principles supply shared vocabulary and structure, not an algorithm. THey do not specify or rank themselves.

Fan’s Critique: Target (Principlism Across Cultures)

The claim that autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence, and justice form a culture-transcending common morality.

Fan’s Critique: Constitutive Rule vs. Regulative Principle

Constitutive Rule: In context C, doing X counts as Y; there is a practice-embedded meaning.

Regulative Principle: Directs conduct or promotes a value

Fan’s Critique: Argument

Universal common morality would be present in all cultures, but principlism invokes principles that are Western and liberal, not found universally.

Fan’s Critique: Conclusion

INCOMPLETENESS ARGUMENT

Principlism neglects principles found in other cultures, e.g., respect for relationships.

Fan’s Critique: Supporting Example

CASE OF MRS. C.

Shows direct disclosure and individual authority versus family-mediated disclosure, filial protection, and relationship. Invoked to show that principlism is incomplete.

Tsai’s Reply: Concept vs. Conception + Supporting Example

Concept: A category used to classify or reason.

Conception: A particular interpretation of that concept.

Tsai claims that there is a shared concept but difference conceptions between cultures.

Example: Greeks and Callatians express respect for the dead through incompatible practices (burning vs. eating)

Tsai’s Reply: Two-Dimensional Personhood in Confucian Ethics

Vertical: Self-direction, reflection, self-cultivation.

Horizontal: Roles, dependence, altruism, responsibilities.

Tsai’s Reply: Argument for Compatibility

Four principles are identifiable within Confucian ethics; vertical dimension supports autonomy; horizonal dimension supports beneficence and non-maleficence; yi supports justice.

Tsai’s Reply: Central Question

Are relational considerations a distinct principle omitted by principlism, or culturally shaped conceptions and specifications of the four principles?

What is Nagel’s conclusion regarding death?

DEPRIVATION ACCOUNT

Death is bad for someone because it deprives them of a continuation of life that would be good for them.

What are Nagel’s three puzzles?

Non-Suffering Puzzle

No-Subject Puzzle

Pre-Natal Non-Existence Puzzle

Nagel’s No-Suffering Puzzle

How can death be bad if it is not experienced?

Requiring experience overgenerateds (e.g., unexpected betrayal, ridicule, unnoticed loss of adult capacities).

Nagel’s No-Subject Puzzle

How can death harm someone who no longer exists?

Nagel denies that the person must exist when the circumstances making the loss bad obtain (e.g., posthumous betrayal).

Nagel’s Pre-Natal Non-Existence Puzzle

Why fear post death but not pre-natal existence?

Later years could have been additional years of the same life; a substantially earlier birth would have involved a different person. Death can remove a possible continuation without birth removing an earlier part of the same life.

Williams: Categorical vs. Conditional Desires + Significance

Categorical Desires: Desires that give a person reason to continue living (e.g., a desire to be a professor).

Conditional Desires: Desires that are premised on already being alive (e.g., drinking water to stay alive).

Death is a misfortune for the deceased if it frustrates categorical desires.

Williams: Makropulos Case

Endless life with a fixed, recognizably human character and range of desires eventually produces boredom, repetition, and exaustion.

Williams: The Dilemma

Either categorical desires (what make you, you) and character remain sufficiently stable and are eventually exhausted, or they change so radically that future life becomes disconnected from the reasons for which the present person wants to survive.

Objection to Williams and His Reply

Objection: Gradually developing new categorical desires may preserve numerical identity and continually renew reasons to live.

Williams’ Reply: Identity alone may not have made that future answer to one’s present reasons; this reply remains controversial.

Thomson: Grant for his Argument + Question

Grants: Regarding abortion, the fetus is a person, has moral status, from conception

Question: Does personhood plus a right to life establish a right to another person’s bodily support?

Thomson: Stance

Even if the fetus has a right to life, it doesn’t follow that it has a right to use the mother’s body.

Thomson: Supporting Example

THE VIOLINIST CASE

Violinist has a right to life, but supporting individual has a right to their body. It is still permissible to unplug, thereby killing the fetus, as the right to one’s body trumps the violinist’s right to life.

Conflict b/w right to ones body and a right to life.

Thomson: Right to Self Defense + Example

An innocent threat may be resisted.

THE TINY HOUSE CASE

You are in a house with a rapidly expanding baby. If you do not kill the baby, you will die. Thomson concludes that you should not have to wait for death, you should be allowed to protect yourself.

Thomson: View on Third Parties + Example

Third parties need not pretend that the body belongs equally to both parties.

THE COAT CASE

Thomson: The Responsibility Objection + Examples

Voluntary sex (without protection) and known risks may generate responsibility.

BUGLAR CASE: Just because you leave a window open doesn’t mean the burglar is allowed to rob you.

PEOPLE SEEDS CASE: Imagine a world where people are born from seeds and they come into your house and take root on your drapes. You should be allowed to remove them/stop their growth in your space.

Taking a risk does not always grant another a right to bodily or property use.

Thomson: Outlook on Aid and Rights

Refusal to help may be indecent without violating a right.

Thomson: Good Samaritan

A person who goes out of their way to help someone in deep distress.

Highly praised; above and beyond standard moral duty.

Thomson: Minimally Decent Samaritan

A person who does the bare minimum required by basic human decency to help someone in need.

Thomson: Moral Requirement

An action or standard behavior that a person is morally obligated to perform.

We are morally required to be minimally decent samaritans but not good samaritans.

Thomson: Enforceable Claim

The ability to justly force someone else to comply or provide aid.

A right to life is not an enforceable claim to use another person’s body without consent.

Thomson: Legal Compulsion

The act of being forced by law or state authority to perform a specific action under the threat of penalty.

Law is rarely used to force people to be even minimally decent samaritans, but anti-abortion laws compel pregnant individuals to act as good samaritans.

Thomson: Qualified Conclusion

Personhood does not establish that every abortion is impermissible. Some abortions may still be indecent or unjust; a right to detach is not a right to ensure death after viable detachment.

Warren: Objection to Existing Abortion Defenses

Appeal to property rights is equated to rights over one’s body; Warren says that these are not sufficiently strong to justify killing something with moral status.

Warren: Equivocation Objection

‘Human’ can mean (1) genetically Homo sapiens or (2) a person with full moral standing.

Standard anti-abortion arguments equivocate between ‘wrong to kill innocent humans’ and the genetic sense.

Warren: Five Traits of Personhood + Idea

1.) Consciousness

2.) Reasoning

3.) Self-Motivated Activity

4.) Open-Ended Communication

5.) Self-Concept or Self-Awareness

A cluster, not five individually necessary conditions.

Contends: Fetus lacks these traits, so it is not a person.

Warren: Potentiality

Potential personhood may supply limited moral weight, but an actual person’s rights take priority. Resemblance, viability, and genetic humanity do not by themselves establish full rights.

Warren: Potential Objection to His Argument + Response

Objection: Does this account exclude newborns or profoundly cognitively disabled humans?

Response: Newborns are not persons, but there are other reasons not to ‘destroy’ them.

Marquis’s Anti-Abortion Strategy + Why

Strategy: Set aside personhood. Explain what normally makes killing wrong, and then ask whether that explanation applies to fetuses.

Why: Biological humanity is too broad. Personhood accounts are too narrow. Loss of valuable future explains the wrongness of killing newborns and individuals with cognitive disabilities without treating cancer cells as victims.

Marquis: Rivals with Two Accounts

DESIRE ACCOUNT: Fails when someone lacks a desire to live

DISCONTINUATION ACCOUNT: Past experiences do not explain why future agony can make mercy killing permissible, or why a past of agony makes killing impermissible.

Marquis: Thoughts on Contraception

No non-arbitrarily identifiable subject is killed: not one sperm, one ovum, two separate gametes, or one actual sperm-ovum combination.

Contraception fails to create vs. abortion deprives an existing subject.

EXCEPTION: the copper IUD as it allows fertilization but not implantation.