Ethics Notes on Intuitionism and Virtue Ethics

Intuitionism

• Intuitionism is a deontological approach to ethics based on "common sense." It posits that principles guiding action are accessible through intuitions about specific cases.
• Historically, it emerges from the natural law tradition and criticisms of utilitarianism.
• Key Idea: There isn't a single principle for justifying actions; instead, a plurality of principles govern various aspects of life (e.g., justice, permissible killing, aiding the needy).
• Deontologists reject consequentialism, believing in deontological constraints on action.
• Some actions are inherently wrong, even if they maximize the overall good.
  • Example: Killing an innocent person to save 10 others. Lying, even for a good end.
• Rightness and wrongness are not merely instrumental; actions can be intrinsically wrong.
• Many deontologists aren't absolutists; they acknowledge extraordinary circumstances where typically wrong actions (like killing an innocent) might be permissible if enough lives are at stake.
• Contemporary intuitionists defend principles based on common-sense moral views without religious or metaphysical underpinnings.

Decision-Making and Imposing Harms

• Ethical theories guide how to impose harms when aiding others.
• Consequentialism considers the overall effects of actions.
• Intuitionists reject consequentialism's condoning unjust actions, like sacrificing an innocent person.
• Consequences matter morally, but aren't the only factors.
• Principles recognize constraints (prohibitions) and prerogatives (permissions) even if utility isn't maximized.

Constraints

• Constraints forbid actions, even if they prevent maximizing the good.
• It's wrong to kill in many circumstances, regardless of potential overall good.
  • Example: Killing one person to harvest organs for six others is wrong; allowing the six to die is morally preferable.
• This illustrates a morally relevant distinction between doing something and allowing something to happen.

Prerogatives

• Prerogatives allow actions that don't maximize impartial good, providing "moral space" for personal projects.

The Doctrine of Doing and Allowing

• It is important to consider two cases, first outlined by Philippa Foot. These cases are Rescue I and Rescue II.
  • Rescue I: save five people from drowning in one place or save one person from drowning in another; you cannot save all six.
  • Rescue II: save five drowning people by driving to their location, but this involves running over and killing someone in the road. Stopping to help the person in the road means the five will drown.
• Most people would agree it would be best to save the five in Rescue I, but quite the opposite in Rescue II.
• Doing something is morally distinct from allowing something to happen.
• Harming someone is considered worse than allowing a harm to happen.
• In Rescue I, saving the five and allowing the one to die is seen as not harming the one, but simply allowing the death.
• In Rescue II, running over the one to save the five is actively harming and not simply allowing death; the person would die because of your intervention.
• The moral relevance of this distinction is taken as evidence against consequentialism.
  • Consequentialism would regard Rescue I and Rescue II as morally equivalent
• Instead, make a distinction between negative and positive duties and rights.
  • Negative rights: rights to noninterference.
  • Positive rights: rights to be aided.
  • Negative rights are weightier than positive rights
• In Rescue I, two positive rights conflict; thus, saving five takes precedence over saving one.
• In Rescue II there is a conflict between a positive and a negative right; and since negative rights are weightier, we ought to avoid harming the one even if that means that we fail to aid the five.
• Warren Quinn analyzed cases similarly, noting the positive right to be aided is more easily overridden than the negative right not to be harmed by another person.
• Respect for negative rights is very important to a person's sense of moral autonomy.
• Decisions relating to personal harm must be the potentially harmed agent's to make.

Killing vs. Letting Die

• Killing seems intuitively worse than letting die.
• Consequentialists deny this due to commitment to negative responsibility.
• James Rachels argues the asymmetry is an illusion.
• When killing, horrible motives and intentions are assumed; when letting die, passivity is assumed.
• Rachels asks us to consider two contrasting cases in which relevant factors are held constant:
  • Smith stands to gain a large inheritance if anything should happen to his six-year-old cousin. One evening while the child is taking his bath, Smith sneaks into the bathroom and drowns the child, and then arranges things so that it will look like an accident.
  • Jones also stands to gain if anything should happen to his six-year-old cousin. Like Smith, Jones sneaks in planning to drown the child in his bath. However, just as he enters the bathroom Jones sees the child slip and hit his head, and fall face down in the water. Jones is delighted; he stands by, ready to push the child's head back under if it is necessary, but it is not necessary. With only a little thrashing about, the child drowns all by himself, "accidentally," as Jones watches and does nothing.
• The cases show the intuitions are affected by the agent having bad motives or intentions, or plans to carry out his intentions, and so on.
• Therefore, there is no morally relevant distinction between killing and letting die per se.
• In genuine cases of euthanasia, the motive for killing is humanitarian - it is to spare the patient much unwanted suffering.
• Many are opposed to voluntary active euthanasia, but not to voluntary passive euthanasia.
• If the view that there is no morally relevant distinction between killing and letting die per se holds up to careful scrutiny, and killing can be motivated by humanitarian acts that spare the patient much unwanted suffering, then it seems as though voluntary active euthanasia would be justified in cases in which we think voluntary passive euthanasia would be justified as well.
• Indeed, given that passive euthanasia will often involve allowing patients to starve themselves to death, or experience more suffering before they die, active euthanasia may even be morally preferable to passive euthanasia in some circumstances.
• Warren Quinn points out that Rachels's arguments only show that harming and allowing harm can both be bad-even extremely bad - but that this doesn't undercut the asymmetry since the distinction has to do with degrees of badness.
• John Harris notes that the fact that we view some lettings die as killings does serve to undercut the basic distinction. Then, the issue of how bad a particular action is can be ascertained on other grounds.

Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE)

• The Doctrine of Double Effect relies on a distinction between what an agent intends and what an agent foresees.
• Actions have intended effects and foreseen (but unintended) side-effects.
• Intending harm may be impermissible, while merely foreseeing the same harm may be permissible.
• Suppose that a general wants to knock out a munitions factory that is producing weapons for the enemy -- which will require the deployment of aircraft to drop bombs on the factory to destroy it.
• He knows that it is impossible to rule out civilian losses in these cases - he knows that some innocent people will die as a result of the bombing.
• However, he does not intend to kill any innocent civilians. Should he go ahead and bomb, or not?
• If the general truly does not intend to kill innocent civilians, but merely foresees that some will die as a result of his actions, what he's done in dropping the bomb under those circumstances is permissible.
• Consider if Maria intends to heat up some water for her tea, and to that end she wants to plug her teakettle in and turn it on. However, suppose she is also aware that a mad scientist has hooked up the outlet so that if she were to turn the teakettle on and get her hot water, as a side-effect she would electrocute 10 innocent people. Is it permissible for her to go ahead and turn the teakettle on?

Constraints placed on double effect: the following must be placed on the DDE

1. The agent acting must have good intentions and be trying to achieve a good end.
2. The agent does not want the bad consequences that he foresees; if there were any way to achieve the good end without generating the bad consequences, the agent would choose that way.
3. The bad consequences that the agent foresees are not sought by the agent, either as an end or as a means to the agent's good end.
4. The good end is in proportion to the bad consequences the agent foresees as a result of pursuing the end.

• Philosophers have pointed out that the DDE doesn't seem to really capture our common-sense intuitions in a range of cases.
  • For example, consider the well-discussed contrast between the two cases: Transplant and Hospital.
    • Transplant: killing one person to transplant his organs into five other people who need them, in order to save their lives, is impermissible.
    • Hospital: Five people are in the hospital awaiting a cure for an illness that, untreated, would kill them. The medicine they require can only be manufactured in the hospital. However, a byproduct of the manufacturing process is a toxic gas, and in this case the toxic gas would leak into the room of a nearby patient, killing him (he cannot be moved).
• If a consequentialist will argue that foreseen consequences have the same moral weight, it is important to perhaps argue that the morally relevant distinction lies between intended consequences and foreseen but undesired ones

Principles to Regulate Harm-Doing

• Deontologists argue consequentialism doesn't regard persons as inviolable.

Principle of Permissible Harm (PPH)

• Offered by Frances Kamm, stresses inviolability as grounding constraints on maximizing the good.
  • …it is permissible for (1) greater good and (ii) means that have greater good as their noncausal flip side to cause lesser evil, but not permissible to (iii) intend lesser evil as a means to greater good or to (iv) intend means that cause lesser evil as a foreseen side effect and have greater good as a mere causal effect unmediated by (ii). By "noncausal flip side," I mean that the greater good occurring is, in essence, another way of describing the situation in which the means occur.
• Consider "Hospital" again. Even though saving five is a higher numerical good, it is a “mere causal effect unmediated by (ii).”.
• The PPH does allow harm under some circumstances, so one advantage of this principle is that it is not implausibly absolutist about duties to refrain from harming others.
• But why do persons have this special status? To deontologists, persons are autonomous; they deliberate and make choices about what they are going to do. They respond to reasons.
• The fact that persons have autonomous wills makes them the appropriate objects of this sort of respect.

Criticism of Intuitionism

• Relies on uncritical intuitions without underlying theory or explanation.
• Analogous to Martha's crystal that turns red (wrong) or green (permissible) without explaining why.
• Deontologists attempt to address this by referencing values like respect for autonomous agency, but these values need clarification.
• Reliance on intuitions is problematic; intuitions can be inconsistent or incoherent.
• Responses are influenced by framing effects.
• Peter Singer's example: obligation to save a drowning baby in a puddle vs. viewing aid to starving people as supererogatory.
• Intuitionistic approaches lack a unifying theory to reconcile such inconsistencies.

Virtue Ethics

• In making moral decisions, first consider how we ought to be, emulating virtuous individuals (e.g., Gandhi).
• This isn't a rigid formula, but consideration of virtuous persons and their traits.
• Focus on concrete virtue judgments instead of abstract principles.
• Kant's view of emotion is antiseptic; emotions are only instrumentally significant.
• Dissatisfaction with abstract principles, lack of room for emotions, and impartial norms have led to virtue ethics which focuses on evaluating the agent, not merely their actions.
• Virtue evaluation has primacy -- normative concepts are defined in terms of virtue.
• Right action is defined in terms of virtue, rather than virtue being defined in terms of right action.
• Virtue ethics has been around for thousands of years and these ethicists tend to take their inspiration from Aristotle.
• Aristotle wrote the Nicomachean Ethics -- spelled out the steps to a good life.
• A good human being was virtuous in the sense that he embodied all the excellences of human character.
• It is generally agreed that virtue ethics maintains that character, human excellences, and virtues are the basic modes of evaluation in the theory, as opposed to act evaluations such as "right" and "wrong."
• One popular version of virtue ethics defines right action in terms of virtue.
• (RA) An action is right iff [if and only if] it is what a virtuous agent would, characteristically, do in the circumstances.
• Most of the theoretical weight is therefore borne by the account of virtue provided in the theory.

Aristotle's Account of Virtue

• Virtue leads to eudaimonia, or human well-being.
• Two types of virtue: intellectual and moral virtue.
• Intellectual virtues are conducive to certain kinds of knowledge, and there are two main intellectual virtues: theoretical wisdom and practical wisdom.
• Aristotle understood it to be necessary for moral virtue moral virtue involves activity that leads to well-being and it is practical wisdom that enables the agent to figure out how to act well.
  • …a man of practical wisdom is he who has the ability to deliberate…it is a truthful characteristic of acting rationally in matters good and bad for man.
• Virtue is a mean state, which means that it does not exhibit excess. And practical wisdom comes into play since it is crucial for the virtuous person in choosing the mean:
• …virtue or excellence is a characteristic involving choice, and… it consists in observing the mean relative to us, a mean which is defined by a rational principle, such as a man of practical wisdom would use to determine it.
• An individuals, such as Al, may display natural goodness, but no true virtue. Barb on the other hand, displays genuine virtue because she has chosen virtue; she has displayed practical wisdom.
• Al is operating by a kind of mindless instinct that is actually dangerous:
• .it is true that children and beasts are endowed with natural qualities or characteristics, but it is evident that without intelligence these are harmful… as in the case of a mighty body which, when it moves without vision, comes down to a mighty fall because it cannot see… just as there exist two kinds of quality, cleverness and practical wisdom, in that part of us which forms opinions…so also there are two kinds of quality in the moral part of us, natural virtue and virtue in the full sense.
• The person who is well trained, or who has been brought up well by her parents and received the right sort of education, will have developed this perceptual capacity.
• She will be able to see that a given course of action is wrong, or inappropriate, in much the same way that an interior designer can look at some rocks and tell the difference between granite and slate, and that one is good for countertops and the other for mud rooms.
• Practical wisdom is good deliberation that ends in judgments, well-considered judgments, of what we ought to do and how we ought to live.
• The brave person chooses the path between rashness and cowardice and acts accordingly he doesn't simply pass judgment on what we ought to do in his circumstances - that judgment results in action.
• Aristotle claims that virtue is a mean state, that it lies between two opposed vices. This is referred to as the doctrine of the mean.
• Virtue will lie between two extremes, each of which is a vice.
  • Bravery lies between cowardice and foolhardiness.
  • Temperance lies between gluttony and abstinence.
• Part of the mean state concerned our emotions, however, and not just our actions. The virtuous person not only does the right thing, but he does the right thing in the right way - in the right sort of emotional or psychological state.
• The virtuous person functions harmoniously - his desires and emotions do not conflict with what he knows to be right.
• The excellent human being is not conflicted; he does not suffer inner turmoil and the struggle between reason and passion.
• Rational excellence should be part of human excellence and thus a crucial component of moral virtue.
• The brand of perfectionism favored by Aristotle has been subject to considerable attack.

Historical Bias

• Aristotle held prejudices, viewing slaves and women as defective reasoners incapable of full virtue.
• Modern Aristotelian virtue ethicists (e.g., Hursthouse) reject such views, affirming equal potential for goodness.

Psychological Requirements

• Correct perceivers and actors.
• These are the ones to correctly see what is morally relevant in a given context, and they act according to the perceptual knowledge they have acquired.
• Practical wisdom is sufficient for being virtuous and it is also necessary: anyone who truly possesses the ability to deliberate well about practical matters and correctly figure out what he ought to do, and when, has moral virtue.
• If someone has one virtue, through practical wisdom, then he's going to have all of them, because the same good deliberation that underlies one virtue will underlie all of them.
• The unity of the virtues thesis: that they go together, they are united, and to have one virtue is to have them all.
• There are no courageous thieves and liars.
• There are no generous people who are cowards.
• There are no irresponsible, but noble and self-sacrificing, individuals.

Aristotle's Friendship Account

• Incorporates view of moral virtue.
• Three types of friendship:
  • Based on utility: business acquaintance.
  • Based on pleasure: fun to be around.
  • Based on virtue: can only exist between perfectly virtuous individuals.
• Perfect friendship hinges on the unity of the virtues; Aristotle does not take into account partly virtuous friends.

Impartiality

• Virtue ethics offers no foundational commitment to impartiality.
• Traits for friendship differ from those for judges or politicians.
• Hurthouse would ask herself what the virtuous person would do in the circumstances -- visit the friend in the hospital as opposed to working on the Oxfam phone line.

Problems for the Aristotelian and Neo-Aristotelian account of virtue

• Highly intellectualist.
• Traits that we intuitively think of as virtues would not qualify.
  • Think of a trait such as modesty where the person is making a mistake, an epistemic error
• Anyone has ever really been virtuous is reasonable to assume that we all make moral mistakes of some sort.
• Aristotle's correct perception view of virtue would make it the case that at least one of them the one who fails to see some morally relevant consideration with respect to capital punishment in a particular case - must lack virtue.

Aristotelian Account

• Rosalind Hursthouse is sensitive to some of the problems raised for the Aristotelian account and wants to offer a version that can avoid some of them.
• It can in fact guide our actions by providing a decision procedure as well as a criterion for act evaluation. The right action is the one the virtuous person would perform.
• Divine Command Theory suffered from a similar problem.
• Surely the virtuous person is responding to reasons that make one act morally preferable over the other available options perhaps considerations of human dignity and respect, or considerations of good consequences, or a mixture of different reasons, weighed appropriately.

Humean Virtue Ethics

• David Hume (1711-76) was another philosopher who wrote on virtue and some recent virtue ethicists have looked to his work for ideas about how to develop a virtue ethics.
• Differs from Aristotle views virtues as mental qualities that are pleasing, and they are pleasing (at least in part) because they are conducive to social utility in some respect.
• Having a virtue just means that one has a pleasing quality (with certain caveats on what counts as "pleasing").
• No heavy psychological requirements on virtue -- virtuous person needn't have wisdom or intelligence.
• Sympathy forms the basis for morality. We judge things to be morally good or bad, virtuous or vicious, on the basis of our sympathy with others.
• Some have interpreted Hume as arguing that the primary focus of moral evaluation is motives internal states of the agent associated with virtue, or having good character traits.
• Hume believed that when we make moral evaluations of people, what we are concerned most about are their motives. A person's actions just give us evidence of the person's motives
• Thus, if we had no sympathy at all with others, we would not be capable of moral judgment.

Virtue Sentimentalism

• Offered by MIchael Slote, claims that the wrong action is the one that is not properly motivated.
• Action must be motivated by warm benevolence to be motivated properly.
• This can be used to provide a theoretical underpinning to a care approach in ethics

Criticism (Virtue Ethics)

• Fails to conform to behavioral explanations from psychology.

Situationism

• Situation is the best explanation for virtuous behavior -- not character traits.
• For example, people near a fragrant bakery are more likely to change a dollar.
• Situational circumstances are much better predictors of behavior.
• If we don't need to appeal to virtues to explain behavior, they don't serve any theoretical function.
• Virtue ethicist responses:
  • Virtue ethics offers a "regulative ideal" of behavior.
  • There is no one "honesty" trait.
  • Traits have narrow circumstances to tell the truth.
• Hard to guide action.
• Problem:
  • In conflict situations, virtues may conflict and thus there needs to be circumstances on under which you should display certain virtues.
• Commits to correct perception.
• Views those who disagree as bad or lacking in virtue in heterogeneous communities.
• A Humean account is free of these objections -- virtues are pleasing mental qualities and do not make heavy requests on people's psychological state.