Three main areas of Moral Philosophy:

1. Value Theory

2. Metaethics

3. Normative Ethics

Although S.L. doesn’t mention this the other main area of moral philosophy is called “applied

ethics” or “moral problems” as he calls them in the reader.

Political Philosophy is another major area of moral philosophy, although this is sometimes

considered it’s own disciple.

In this course we will spend our time focusing normative ethics, applied ethics, and

metaethics, and although we will not specifically cover political philosophy some of the issue

we discuss will be related to central issues in political philosophy. Normative ethics, applied

ethics, and metaethics are most commonly considered the three main areas of moral

philosophy.

Normative Ethics:

 Normative is defined as relating to or determining or prescribing norms

attempts to offer a theory that explains what one ought to do

 A normative ethical theory tells us what actions are right and what actions are

wrong

 The most famous normative ethical principle that we are all familiar with is the

golden rule, “treat others as you would treat yourself”

 We will cover the three most popular contemporary approaches to normative

ethics Utilitarianism, Kantian Ethics, and Social Contract Theory.

Applied Ethics

 Applied ethics is the application of normative philosophical principles to moral issues

that we face in society. Abortion, Euthanasia, Capital punishment, poverty, animal

rights, etc. are examples of applied issues that philosophers have spent time on recent

philosophical history.

 In this class we will cover abortion, poverty, and animal rights.

Metaethics

 Metaethics looks at the foundations of ethical inquiry.

 In metaethics we ask questions like:

o Are there any moral facts?

o Is anything right or wrong?

o What makes an action right or wrong?

o Is God necessary for morality?

The development of Morality (From Convention to Reflection)

Conventional morality as the name suggests are the morals arose out of conventions through

ages or even time immemorial. We might or might not know reason for them, but still they

occupy in our moral code of conduct. A very general example is standing up of students

when teacher enter a class. It is less out of respect and more out of these conventional codes.

Often we try to speak less in front of our elders, or speak in low tone and soft too, these are

the conventions that nobody told us but we learned them through observations, by watching

our elders do the same.

Reflective morality is a concept that binds the morality to notion of generation and changes in

the society. Such codes of morality are simply our reflection of any individual or society as a

whole. With each generation and sometimes even in a single generation there is a specific

change in these codes. They might even be completely flipped to be suited by the society. Or

even at same time among different societies. For example, killing animals is immoral in some

community but is perfectly normal in some other.

Conventional morality is inheritance by nature. We inherit from from our family, society and

so on. In the previous answer, Prashant provided a good example of respecting elders and not

to raise your voice against them.

think, so it is a morality that is derived out of thinking. That means applying reason on

morality, more so for the inherited morality. For example, a father who is a drunkard,

irresponsible and lazy, distorts the peace of a family. Do you still apply conventional morality

which says pay respect and keep your voice low when speaking to your elders? This is where

reflection is required, reason has to be deployed and life has to be examined.

"The unexamined life is not worth living" - Socrates.

Kohlberg's theory of moral development (Stage 6), talks about an individual maturing into

conscience decision making based on logical comprehensiveness, universality and

consistency. I think this is moral decision making based on internalized processing, including

thinking.

In summary, conventional morality was created and existed for a good purpose, that is to

uphold the units family and society. Therefore, it still should be protected for the original

cause that was intended. Whenever, deviation creeps in, reflective adjustment and judgment

should be bestowed by the thinking person - as we are.

Importance of Freewill

ETHICS AND FREE WILL VARIETIES OF RESPONSIBILITY T.M. SCANLON* At

least three kinds of “responsibility” may seem to be threatened by the possibility that all of

our actions and attitudes are caused by factors outside us, over which we have no control:

personal responsibility, moral responsibility, and substantive responsibility.

1 Personal responsibility is threatened by the possibility that all our actions and attitudes are

caused by factors outside us, if this would mean that our actions would not be “ours” in the
sense required for them to have significance for us. We might seem to be mere puppets, or

prisoners, of our circumstances.

2 Moral responsibility is threatened by the possibility that our actions and attitudes are caused

by factors outside of us, if this would mean that we could not properly be praised or blamed

for these actions or attitudes, because they would not be “up to us” in the required sense.

Substantive responsibility is threatened by the possibility that all our actions are caused by

factors outside of us over which we have no control, if this would mean that we would lack

the kind of control over these actions that is required if they are to affect our moral

obligations to others, and others’ obligations to us. Our promises might not be binding

because they were not entered into freely. Our decisions to forego certain benefits, or to take

certain risks, may not reduce the obligations of others to help us because these decisions were

not made voluntarily.3 Each of the last two threats might rightly be called a threat to moral

responsibility, but they seem to me to be distinct. To separate them, I reserve the term moral

responsibility for the former – the one concerned with blame. I refer to the latter as a threat to

substantive responsibility because it has to do with the content of our obligations. A number

of different responses to these threats are mentioned in Justice for Hedgehogs. One response

is that we cannot help seeing ourselves as actually making choices, and cannot help assigning

significance to them, even moral significance.4 The claim is that it is not possible that

theoretical beliefs about the causes of our actions could undermine this significance.5 A

second response is that the best explanation of cases in which it is generally recognized that

agents are not responsible for their behavior – such as actions done in ignorance or under

hypnosis, and actions by young children – is that this is simply not the case.6 These agents

are causally responsible for their actions, but their actions might be morally excusable or

justifiable nonetheless because of external factors.7 Neither of these responses is by itself

compelling. As to the first, even if it is true that when we are engaging in the process of
deliberating and deciding we cannot help seeing this process as something that makes a

difference and has moral and ethical significance, it is not clear what follows from this. It

might simply be the case that this is an unshakable illusion. As for the second response, it

seems to me quite clear that outside causes are not the best explanation for most excusing or

justifying conditions. But the idea that such causes undermine moral responsibility may have

other sources. Whatever these sources may be, however, if blame requires a kind of freedom

distinct from the kind of freedom required by other forms of evaluation – such as an

assessment of artistic talent – there must be something about the nature of blame itself that

explains this fact. Thus, a satisfactory resolution of this issue must begin with an adequate

characterization of blame, from which we can see why blame requires a certain form of

freedom, if indeed it does. More generally, a satisfactory resolution of any of the three

problems I have listed must start from an account of the values involved – an account of the

kind of significance that our own actions and attitudes have for us, an account of the nature of

moral blame, or an account of how substantive obligations are created and transferred by

voluntary actions – on the basis of which it can be seen whether or not these forms of

significance require some form of freedom. What incompatibilists seek to show is that it

follows from the best understanding of these values that the forms of significance in question

require a kind of freedom that we do not have if our actions are caused by factors outside us,

over which we have no control. What compatibilists seek to show is that according to the best

understanding of these values, this is not the case.8 This latter interpretive task is undertaken

in Justice for Hedgehogs. 9 Of the three kinds of responsibility I have mentioned – personal

responsibility, moral responsibility, and substantive responsibility – the first appears to be the

most fundamental. Whatever the exact nature of blame, it would seem to depend in large part

on the attitudes expressed in an action. Further, there would seem to be a close relation

between the conditions that make an attitude “belong to an agent” in the way required to
make it significant for him or her and the conditions required to make an attitude “belong to

an agent” in the way required to make it significant for others. Similarly, it would seem that

the reasons why an agent’s obligations are sensitive to his or her choices would depend on the

reasons for those choices being significant for the agent. So, I will focus initially on the first

of my three cases, the kind of significance I call personal. This is in line with the strategy of

Justice for Hedgehogs, which is to start with ethics – what it is for an individual to live a

good life – rather than with morality – what we owe to others.10 According to Justice for

Hedgehogs, there are two “ethical principles about how to live not, just in themselves, moral

principles about how to treat other people”11: I shall . . . call the first the principle of self-

respect. Each person must take his own life seriously: he must accept that it is a matter of

importance that his life be a successful performance rather than a wasted opportunity. I shall

call the second the principle of authenticity. Each person has a special, personal responsibility

for identifying what counts as success in his own life; he has a personal responsibility to

create that life through a coherent narrative that he himself has chosen and endorses.

Together the two principles offer a conception of human dignity: dignity requires self-respect

and authenticity.12 Authenticity, Dworkin continues, “is an ethical concept: it makes two

demands. First, it assigns each person a non-delegable responsibility for identifying and then

pursuing his own conception of what it is to live well, to give structure to his life through

values he endorses that sustain a coherent narrative of living.”13 However, it also demands

another kind of responsibility: The second principle of dignity demands . . . that I accept

judgmental and liability responsibility in appropriate circumstances. People who blame their

parents or other people or society at large for their own mistakes, or who cite some form of

genetic determinism to absolve themselves of any responsibility for how they have acted,

lack dignity because dignity requires owing up to what one has done. “The buck stops here”

is an important piece of ethical wisdom. The second principle also requires taking
responsibility in a different, more material, way: dignity requires that I not expect others to

subsidize my decisions by bearing their financial or other costs. I do not take responsibility

for my own life if I demand that others absorb the cost of my choices: living well means

making choices, and that means choosing a life with an eye to the consequences of that life

that I should bear myself.14 Responsibility, in this latter sense requires two capacities: First,

to be responsible people must have some minimal ability to form true beliefs about the world,

about the mental states of other people, and about the likely consequences of what they do.

Someone who is unable to grasp the fact that guns can harm people is not responsible when

he shoots someone. Second, people must have, to a normal level, the ability to make

decisions that fit what we might call the agent’s normative personality: his desires,

preferences, convictions, attachments, loyalties and self-image. Genuine decisions, we think,

are purposive, and someone who cannot match his final decisions to any of his desires, plans,

convictions or attachments is incapable of responsible action.15 In Justice for Hedgehogs,

these theses are put forward as ethical duties – principles we must follow – and as claims

about what is required in order to be an agent who is responsible for his or her attitudes and

actions. For present purposes, however, I want to consider them in a slightly different light,

as an account of the kind of life that a person has reason to want to live, in which his or her

actions and attitudes will have the distinctive personal significance of being his or hers. We

can then take this account as a basis for considering what kind of freedom is required in order

for an agent to have such a life. Put in this way, the thesis of Justice for Hedgehogs is this:

what a person has reason to want is an authentic life – one that accords with and reflects the

decisions he or she makes about how to live, and in which these decisions themselves reflect

his or her desires, plans, and convictions and are based on true beliefs about the world. The

crucial thing about this conception is that – apart from the part about true belief –

requirements of an authentic life have to do only with the relations among an agent’s mental
states – his or her plans, desires, convictions, decisions, beliefs, intentions, and so on – and

the actions that flow from them. Dworkin is not concerned about the causal antecedents to

one’s attitudes, beliefs, etc.16 His thesis is that as long as an agent’s life has the required

shape, the mental events that are parts of it belong to him or her in the full sense required for

them to be meaningful and significant. In particular, the significance of our decisions to us

does not require that they not be caused by factors outside us. But why not? Two reasons

seem to be offered, so closely related that they are really just positive and negative sides of

the same point. Put positively, the point is that what gives decisions their significance for us –

what makes them ours – is that they are reflective of our felt desires, plans, convictions, and

so on – that is, of our actual psychological states.17 Put negatively, it is that decisions that

were independent of our actual, present psychology would be based on nothing that would

give them meaning for us, or make them ours in any meaningful sense.18 A “self” detached

from our actual, empirical psychology, would be empty. I find these points entirely

convincing.19 However, we should consider why they might be resisted. It can be agreed, I

think, that whether our actions are caused by outside factors or not, any decision that is

meaningful for an agent will have to be based on current values, plans, and desires of the

agent that, at the moment of this decision, are not being questioned but are held fixed

(although they might be called into question and re-evaluated at another time). Decision and

re-evaluation is always piecemeal. What an incompatibilist would see as a threat is the

possibility that these processes of deciding and re-evaluating are themselves determined by

factors outside of us, over which we have no control. Why should this be a threat to the

meaningfulness, for us, of our attitudes? It might be because these outside factors could force

us – so to speak – to reach certain conclusions, overriding our own judgment. But, as Hume

pointed out long ago, this is a mistake. The factors in question determine what our judgment

is; they do not override it.20 A second way in which outside causes might threaten the
meaningfulness of our decision-making process would be if the effectiveness of these causes

indicates that our normative judgments are influenced or even controlled by factors that are

normatively irrelevant. Yet, this does not follow either. The fact – if it is a fact – that our

mathematical judgments are determined by factors outside of us does not mean that these

judgments are affected by factors that are irrelevant to the mathematical correctness of the

conclusions we reach, and there is no reason to think that this is necessarily so in other cases.

Even if the account of ethical responsibility I have sketched is adequate, however, the

question remains whether the conditions that Justice for Hedgehogs holds to be sufficient for

ethical responsibility (what I call personal responsibility) are also all that is required in order

for it to be appropriate to blame agents for their actions and choices, and all that is required to

make those choices significant in altering an agent’s obligations to others. In order to answer

this question, as I said, we need to have some account of what blame involves, and how

obligations are determined. Justice for Hedgehogs does not go into much detail about these

issues. I want to elaborate, however, on one claim that it does make and to consider some

implications of this elaboration that may depart somewhat from the book. The claim I have in

mind is in a passage I quoted earlier: The second principle of dignity demands . . . that I

accept judgmental and liability responsibility in appropriate circumstances. People who

blame their parents or other people or society at large for their own mistakes, or who cite

some form of genetic determinism to absolve themselves of any responsibility for how they

have acted, lack dignity because dignity requires owing up to what one has done. “The buck

stops here” is an important piece of ethical wisdom. The second principle also requires taking

responsibility in a different, more material, way: dignity requires that I not expect others to

subsidize my decisions by bearing their financial or other costs. I do not take responsibility

for my own life if I demand that others absorb the cost of my choices: living well means

making choices, and that means choosing a life with an eye to the consequences of that life
that I should bear myself.21 The underlying point here seems to me correct and important.

Insofar as an individual regards her actions under certain circumstances as belonging to her in

the sense required to be meaningful for her life, she cannot deny that these actions are

significant for other people’s reactions to her, and for their relations with her; nor can she

deny that they have implications for her obligations to them – at least not on the ground that

they are not hers in the required sense. But from the fact that she cannot object to blame, or to

obligations that are held to follow from her actions, on this particular ground, nothing follows

about whether she has to accept responsibility for any particular action in either the moral or

substantive sense. The fact that any attitude that occurs in the mental life of a person who has

the two capacities – the “ability to form true beliefs about the world” and the “ability to make

decisions that fit what we might call the agent’s normative personality”22 – belongs to her

still leaves open questions of blame and the shifting of responsibilities. In one sense, this is

obvious. Good actions as well as bad actions are attributable to an agent; but the fact that an

action belongs to an agent leaves open the question whether blame or some other attitude is

appropriate.23 The point I have in mind goes beyond this. According to Justice for

Hedgehogs, a person is in control of his or her actions in the way required for moral

responsibility if he or she possesses the two capacities I have described.24 Dworkin remarks

that this idea of control is very different from the one underlying the incompatibilist’s

understanding, where the question is whether an external force was strong enough to

overcome the will’s “normal causal role.”25 But this may not make clear how different the

two conceptions are, insofar as it leaves the impression that they are simply two different

conceptions of the kind of control an agent must have over his or her attitudes in order for

them to belong to him or her in the relevant sense. The more radical position I have in mind

(which may or may not be Dworkin’s) is that the two capacities – although they are

conditions required in order for an agent to be the kind of being toward whom we can stand
in the relations that make blame and obligation make sense – are not conditions whose

fulfillment in every given case makes an attitude or action attributable to an agent. Under this

position, having the capacities that Dworkin mentions to a normal level26 does not mean that

they always work. Further, in order for attitudes to belong to an agent in the sense required

for blame, they need not be ones that the agent could control through the use of these general

capacities. A person can be blamed for attitudes and actions that were, or would have been,

quite resistant to her better judgment. The fact that she had these contrary judgments would

complicate the picture of what she is like, and could therefore modify the kind of blame that

is appropriate, but it does not change the fact that the recalcitrant attitudes belong to the agent

– they are part of what he or she is like. If an agent has the two capacities that Dworkin

describes, then every attitude that occurs in his or her mental life belongs to him or her in the

relevant sense, whether or not the attitude could be controlled by the exercise of those

capacities.27 Conditions that are often said to modify responsibility, such as ignorance of

fact, duress, and even, I would say, many forms of mental illness, do not have this effect

because they make the action one that does not belong to the person. Instead, what they do is

to affect what an action or attitude that belongs to the person indicates about him or her. By

this, I mean not what it indicates about him or her as a disembodied self, but what it indicates

about that person’s actual overall empirical psychology – about what he or she will feel and

do on other occasions. An action performed in ignorance, or under duress belongs to the

agent in the full sense; under some description, it is his or her intentional action, performed

for some reason. The question is, what does the action tell us about the agent more generally?

In some cases, such as hypnosis or brain stimulation, perhaps, the answer is that the action

tells us nothing: any agent would have done the same in response to this treatment. But in

most cases, the answer will be a matter of degree, or rather of difference. Willingness to

perform an action that causes injury when one is under the influence of a false belief about its
consequences is something different from willingness to do so with full knowledge of its

effects. Willingness to cause harm under duress indicates something different from

willingness to do so for fun or for profit. I am not certain that this is the position that Dworkin

means to hold. But if it is, this makes clear why in his view it is the relations among an

agent’s attitudes, rather than their causal antecedents more generally, that is crucial for

responsibility.