# Ethics for Dummies  ## Metadata - Author: [[Christopher Panza, Adam Potthast]] - Full Title: Ethics for Dummies - Category: #books ## Highlights - In fact, most of ethics and morality can be boiled down to one simple concept that can be expressed using the words should and ought. "Good" or "right" actions are actions that you ought to do. "Bad" character traits are ones you should try not to develop. "Evil" traits are those you should really try to avoid. Isn't it cool how just these two words can unify so many ethical concepts? ([Location 434](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=434)) - Tags: [[favorite]] - Your ethical conversations will make a lot more progress if you just concentrate on the "oughtiness" of things. ([Location 474](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=474)) - Just like chocolate ice cream can taste best for Chris and vanilla can taste best for Adam, for a subjectivist something can be right for one person and wrong for another. It's like people have different ethical tastes. ([Location 695](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=695)) - cultural relativism holds that no one overarching ethical truth exists and that right and wrong are relative to one's culture. ([Location 789](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=789)) - Ethnocentrism has led to a lot of pain and suffering over the years, particularly in the historical period from roughly 1500-1950 that historians call colonialism. ([Location 822](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=822)) - In fact, if cultural norms dictate being intolerant of another culture, then people in that culture may be required to be intolerant (because for cultural relativists, cultural norms set the standards). Far from supporting tolerance everywhere, then, cultural relativism seems to only encourage tolerance in cultures that are already tolerant. If cultural relativism were to encourage tolerance everywhere, it would suggest an ethical standard that transcended cultures — it would be breaking its own rule! The preceding point can be expanded to make cultural relativism look really bad. ([Location 899](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=899)) - for emotivists, you can't make ethical statements without having some kind of emotional investment in them. ([Location 1007](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=1007)) - Because different ethical theories argue that you ought to "be" ethical (virtue ethics; see Chapter 6) or "do" ethical things (consequentialism; see Chapter 7), or "follow" ethical principles or maxims (deontology; see Chapter 8), we don't make a claim about which approach is right. ([Location 1112](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=1112)) - Tags: [[favorite]] - Your human condition, Sartre would say, is one of radical freedom (making Sartre a libertarian; see the earlier section, "Libertarianism: Determinism is false, so freedom exists"). To be human, you must embrace the fact that you must choose your own direction ([Location 1436](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=1436)) - In stressing the use of universal rules and abstract principles, ethics tries to relieve you of the responsibility to continually interpret life on your own individual terms. Because Nietzsche takes that responsibility seriously, as representing a kind of vibrant health, ethics turns into a type of dreadful illness because it rejects that responsibility, leaning on rules and principles created by others. ([Location 2006](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=2006)) - For Nietzsche, specific behavior doesn't matter. It's the motivation behind the behavior that counts — it should express inner strength. It should reflect a struggle with interpreting your individual life. ([Location 2029](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=2029)) - Kierkegaard also thinks that in the end, the job of balancing these factors in your life is incredibly difficult. So difficult, actually, that doing it correctly requires the assistance of God. As a result, in order to truly live a life of integrity — which means a life that expresses who you are — you have to live in a way that acknowledges your dependence on the divine. ([Location 2080](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=2080)) - In a way, it's like virtuous people have a third eye and phronesis gives them the ability to see what needs to be done ethically. ([Location 2461](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=2461)) - To attain eudaimonia means that your life has come together as a proper whole. As it turns out, this way of coming together in a proper way only happens when human beings are living in excellent ways specific to their own natures. This, it turns out, is the aim and role of virtue. ([Location 2491](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=2491)) - In fact, as a teacher, Confucius was very demanding. Consider what he said about teaching: "If I hold up one corner of a problem and the student cannot come back to me with the other three, I will not instruct him again." Confucius isn't so much claiming that students with wrong answers aren't worth teaching; he means that students who don't come back with attempts at the answer can't be helped because they don't display a personal commitment to the project of learning. ([Location 2692](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=2692)) - Tags: [[favorite]] - When you see exemplars, they make you aware of something you lack — something you're determined to have. In this case, it's virtue and excellence. ([Location 2743](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=2743)) - Analects he says, "The rule of virtue can be compared to the polestar, which commands the homage of the multitude without ever leaving its place." ([Location 2754](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=2754)) - Virtue intuitionism: According to this view, virtues aren't necessarily a part of any good or purpose. Instead, the virtues are good because people intuitively embrace that they're the most admirable things of all. ([Location 2941](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=2941)) - These theories are known as consequentialist theories. The most famous consequentialist theory is called utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is easy to understand. In its most basic form, it argues that if you can increase the overall happiness of the world in some way, then you should. ([Location 2956](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=2956)) - As we note in the preceding section, principles are laws you apply to yourself. ([Location 3534](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=3534)) - When humans act from inclination, they basically do what any other animal would do. So for your acts to acquire ethical value, they have to spring from something other than natural inclinations. ([Location 3584](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=3584)) - But Kant thought human beings couldn't be free if they simply followed whatever the laws of nature urged them to do. ([Location 3637](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=3637)) - Act only on that maxim which you can at the same time will to become a universal law of nature. ([Location 3789](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=3789)) - In other words, don't use people in ways that they would never agree to, even when that person is yourself. ([Location 3866](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=3866)) - kingdom of ends. Such a society, if it existed, would be a kingdom in which all the citizens respect the goals of all their other fellow citizens. ([Location 3890](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=3890)) - In order to counter this sorry state of affairs, Hobbes believed that people had to alienate to the king their natural right to open up a can of whoop-ass on another human being. (To alienate a right means to give it away and not get it back.) ([Location 4225](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=4225)) - How can people alienate their rights to the president and then keep electing different presidents? John Locke, an English philosopher, came up with the missing piece of the puzzle. The secret is a different layer between the chief executive and what Locke called civil society. According to Locke (who had a tremendous impact on the thinkers behind the American Revolution), the monarch — or in the case of the United States, the president — didn't get his right to kick butt alienated to him from individuals. Instead, he got his power to enforce laws and contracts on loan from civil society. ([Location 4249](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=4249)) - Rawls thinks you'd choose a society in which men and women are treated equally and have equal opportunities to get all the valuable things in life. He thinks that people in the original position would naturally choose a maximin strategy: one that maximized the benefit to people in the worst social roles. In other words, you don't know who you'll be in the new society, so you want to make sure the worst-case scenario will be as good as possible. ([Location 4302](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=4302)) - Tom sort of possesses Joe's body, and in doing so ignores Joe's own personality, beliefs, desires, hopes, and so on. Instead, Tom just tries to think of what Tom (thinking as Tom) would do or how he would feel if he were in Joe's particular situation. ([Location 4617](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=4617)) - solve the problems of reversibility, you need a standard that stops you from inflicting your tastes on others and that shows you which preferences of the recipient of your action can be dismissed without concern. What would such a standard look like? ([Location 4671](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=4671)) - Confucius called this kind of commitment to establish and strengthen the foundation of social relationships zhong, which means "loyalty" in Chinese. This commitment refers to the positive Golden Rule. ([Location 4877](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=4877)) - Confucius called the aspect of flexibility in relationships shu. Being flexible in harmonious relationships is important because it allows you to recognize the fact that individual persons have differences that they bring to these roles, and also to recognize that situational factors can sometimes call for a less rigid approach with respect to rituals. ([Location 4903](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=4903)) - if you think universal rules and reason are important, just think of Kant (Chapter 8). If you think impartiality is important, check out Mill (Chapter 7). If you believe that agreements and contracts formed by people are essential to ethics, jump to Rawls (Chapter 9). ([Location 5092](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=5092)) - Think: Is this cultural bias of men unconsciously guiding Kohlberg's project (and most traditional ethics)? Feminists say it is. ([Location 5188](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=5188)) - Feminists think that the same type of situation happens in traditional masculine ethics with its overemphasis on a particular kind of reason, impartiality, and universal rule-following. In other words, when you think of how to treat others well, traditional ethics tends to say you should treat them the way Spock would. You respond to ethical situations as puzzles instead of concrete situations that call for an emotional investment of empathy. Traditional ethics introduces a distance between people that care ethics wants to diminish. ([Location 5258](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=5258)) - Tags: [[favorite]] - They're two very simple concepts: valuing beneficence means you try to help people, and valuing nonmaleficence means you try to avoid harming people. ([Location 5480](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=5480)) - The first is whether (and under what conditions) it's ethically permissible for a woman to terminate her own pregnancy. The second is whether it would be ethical for society to make laws about whether (and when) a woman can terminate a pregnancy. These are separate ethical questions! Just think about it: It may be unethical for a woman to have an abortion, but it also may be unethical for society to have a law against it. ([Location 5502](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=5502)) - The pro-life argument that abortion is (generally or always) ethically forbidden and that society should pass laws prohibiting it actually turns out to be quite simple. It goes like this: Persons have the right not to be killed unjustly, and fetuses are persons. Therefore, fetuses have the right (as persons) not to be killed unjustly. Societies generally don't condone murder. Abortion is unjust killing, so it's unethical and should be illegal. Not killing a fetus may make a woman's life terribly difficult (to the point of death in some pregnancies), but lots of variables in life make things terribly difficult. If one of those variables involves persons, you don't have the right to kill them in order to remove the difficulty. ([Location 5538](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=5538)) - Although pro-choice advocates offer a number of different arguments, their primary argument is fairly simple: Women, like men, have a right to say what happens within their ([Location 5556](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=5556)) - bodies. (This is the right to autonomy, which we discuss in the earlier section "Autonomy: Being in the driver's seat for your own healthcare decisions.") The way nature works, fetuses are carried within women's bodies, so women have a right to say whether a fetus stays in her body or is removed. An unintended pregnancy can be devastating to a woman with plans for her future that don't involve nine months of pregnancy and the expenses that go with it. It's her choice, and no one else can make it. To allow anything less by law would seriously compromise a woman's autonomy. Of course, not all women will choose to have an abortion when pregnant, because many want a baby or can live with having a baby. But some don't, and they have a right to take the action to end a pregnancy. ([Location 5557](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=5557)) - ethical issues arise with embryonic stem cells. Here's the problem: With today's biotechnology, researchers must destroy embryos in order to obtain the stem cells. ([Location 5687](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=5687)) - How did the world end up in this sorry state? This chapter addresses three answers to that question: conservationism, social ecology, and deep ecology, each of which sees the origin of environmental problems as being in a different place. ([Location 5827](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=5827)) - biocentrist thinks about how to morally relate to all forms of life. ([Location 6089](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=6089)) - eco-centrism, says you should be concerned with the land, the soil, water, and the very ways that physical and biological components in a specific location contribute mutually to the maintenance of that overall local environment as a whole. In other words, you should be concerned with ecosystems. ([Location 6095](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=6095)) - Having a right means possessing a claim or power to an entitlement against someone/something that needs to be respected. ([Location 6693](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=6693)) - Being right means aligning with morality, truth, or legal or social conventions. ([Location 6698](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=6698)) - Negative rights: Protecting the individual from harm ([Location 6829](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=6829)) - Positive rights: Contributing to the good of others ([Location 6872](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=6872)) - someone has a positive right to X, then the state (or indirectly, others) has a positive duty to contribute to providing what makes X possible. ([Location 6893](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=6893)) - Utilitarian theory, for example, is ambivalent, having strong reasons against and for rights. Deontology is favorable to rights talk, because it provides a foundational language for rights theorists to use. Virtue ethics, while not hostile to human rights, is marginally negative, because virtue ethicists worry that the prevalence of rights language in a society can actually be corrosive to the cultivation of virtue. ([Location 6906](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=6906)) - The argument that human rights don't exist stems from what's called legal positivism. Positivists typically believe that in order for something to be true or meaningful, it has to be verifiable. ([Location 7016](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=7016)) - Marx: Human rights are egoist ([Location 7026](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=7026)) - You want more? Work harder! This is just what the ruling class wants, according to Marx. ([Location 7039](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=7039)) - Rather, Singer means that animal suffering deserves equal consideration in ethical decisions. ([Location 7427](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=7427)) - So if you had no other option than killing your child or killing a puppy, Singer would probably say you should kill the puppy. Killing the puppy would almost certainly lead to less overall suffering in the world. This action would still be in line with the principle of equal consideration of interests. ([Location 7433](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=7433)) - Regan argues that pain and suffering aren't the only things that human beings share with animals. Also important are belief, memory, perception, and a sense of the future. He calls any being (human or not) that possesses these qualities the subject-of-a-life, and he believes all subjects-of-lives possess inherent value. From this premise, he argues that all beings that possess inherent value have rights. ([Location 7460](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=7460)) - The downside to stopping all animal experiments is a significantly higher waiting period for drugs, medical procedures, and consumer products that may leave lots of human suffering in its wake. ([Location 7513](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=7513)) - To argue for this, Plato first showed that four main virtues exist: temperance, wisdom, courage, and justice. ([Location 7741](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=7741)) - However, Mill also departed from Bentham in some ways: Unlike Bentham, he emphasized that not all pleasures are the same. Mill instead argued that some are worth more if they're associated with reason, deliberation, or socially valuable emotion. This view allowed utilitarianism to avoid a common complaint: that it was unsophisticated and oriented toward a kind of glorified animal life of pleasure seeking. ([Location 7796](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=7796)) - Note: Pigs philosooy counter - Rawls saw it as a hypothetical contract formed by society's members concerning how goods and liberties should be ideally distributed. His arguments are considered the principle check on libertarian ideologies to this day. ([Location 7817](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=7817)) - In a way, wu wei is a method for learning how to stop forcing your individual will on the world. ([Location 7878](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003M69WE4&location=7878))