Ethics Exam 3 - 11/25

Contemporary Ethics

Rosalind Hursthouse

Published an article called “Virtue Ethics”

Thinks Aristotelians have an edge over Kantians and Humeans because of their conception of the emotions

Born in 1943 in the UK (still alive today).

Philippa Foot

Wrote many articles treating issues in metaethics

Known for contributing to the revival of Aristotelian virtue ethics in contemporary philosophy 

Best known for inventing the Trolley Problem. 

(Born October 3rd, 1920 in Owston Ferry)

Bernard Williams

Leading influence in philosophical ethics in the latter half of the 20th century

Rejected the codification of ethics into moral theories that views such as Kantianism and Utilitarianism

Born in Essex in 1929

Applied Ethics

Applying ethical theories/moral principles to practical issues.

Metaethics

Theoretical questions about ethics and that it concerns the nature of MORAL CONCEPTS; it’s about the foundation of morality or the nature of moral concepts; the concept we use to do moral philosophy (concept of good and Kosgards whole paper is about it)

one is about language

Normative Ethics 

first order questions, questions about what a good action is, what the right and wrong action is. 

Moral psychology

It has to do with the thoughts, feelings and behaviors of moral agents. 

one is about the mind. 

The claims that emotions are morally significant are…

1. The virtues (and vices) are morally significant.

2. The virtues and vices are dispositions not only to act, but to feel and react.

3. The virtuous person will have correct feelings and reactions.

Hursthouse thinks the virtuous person is NOT someone who…

has been inculcated into racism or educated to racism.

Hursthouse thinks the virtuous person will…

have correct feelings of reactions and that they will treat everyone with justice, regardless of their identity.

Killing vs. Letting Die

You ARE the agent who initiates a fatal sequence.

Killing vs. Letting die

You are NOT the agent who initiated the fatal sequence.

there is a fatal sequence but you’re not the agent who initiated it, it was happening independently of your agency. 

Instrumental goodness’s contrary in Kosgaard’s text…

is between ends/final goods and means/instrumental goods.

NOT the contrary to intrinsic

Moral Luck

Has to be contingent, an accident, it has to be more than one way things could go. 

Is the Oedipus Rex story considered moral luck?

No because it’s already been determined prior to it’s happening by the gods; it was fated.

Moral Realism

There are moral facts

Morality is objective

there are moral propositions that are truth apt.

Truth apt

capable of being true or false

Moral Proposition

It’s a statement about morality that’s capable of being true or false, it often contains thick and thin terms.

Killing is wrong.

Ethical Naturalism (Railton)

Railton is an ethical naturalist and moral realist; thinks that either moral facts are natural facts or that morality is natural in some way, or thinks that moral facts supervene on ethical facts.

Supervenience

it’s contingent upon in a way; for a moral or ethical fact to supervene on a natural or social fact is to say that, that fact is present because of this underlying fact.

Thunder can’t be there without lightening

(it’s there because the other thing is there and it wouldn’t be true otherwise)

Moral facts are NOT…

Brute facts, they supervene on other kinds of facts.

Intrinsic goodness

The location of the source of the value is inside.

Extrinsic goodness

The location of the source of the value is external. 

Anger in Sartre 

It’s a kind of filter on the world, it’s an experience of something that is a certain way, it’s intentional object presents itself to the angry subject a particular way. 

Anger in Sartre is DIFFERENT from the views that we started with…

that it inherently involves revenge, that is incoherent, that the payback is the point, that its physiological, that it’s a judgement.