Spring 2016 Ethics Course Lecture Notes

Return to Ethics

JAN 12

• First Day Notes:

• Websites in this course.
• Roster information -- fill in google form
• Main Assignments
• The Prep Cycle -- recommendations for success in the course!
• Starting the discussion about ethics. Course questions.

• To Do list:

• Send me a brief introduction through the "Tell Me" form on the wiki. (Soon, please.)
• Login to wiki for the first time and make a brief introduction on the practice page. (3 points if done by Friday.)
• After rosters are posted, login to courses.alfino and look around. Retrieve reading for Thursday (and read it).
• Browse wiki pages.

JAN 14

• a couple of mail failures: mlancaster jgenge2

Philosophical Method

Please find time to review the wiki page Philosophical Methods. Today we'll be working with the following methods:

• Theorizing from new or established knowledge
• Identifying presuppositions
• Defining terms
• Fitting principles to cases
• Counter-examples

Ariely, Why We Lie

• Assumptions: we think honesty is an all or nothing trait.
• Research on honesty with the "matrix task"

• Shredder condition
• Payment condition
• Probability of getting caught condition
• Distance of payment condition
• Presence of a cheater condition

• Priming with 10 commandments or signature on top of form
• Implications: for current and possible new approaches to limit cheating.

Method: Tips on How to report study findings

• Philosophy makes use of a wide range of evidence and knowledge. In this course you will encounter alot of psychological, anthropological and and cultural studies and theories. You have to practice the way you represent studies (as opposed to theories) and how you make inferences from their conclusions.

• observational, survey, experimental
• study setup: for observational: who were the test subjects, what were they asked to do; for survey: what instrument was used, to whom was it given?
• what conditions were tested?
• what was the immeditate result?
• what was the significance or inference to be made from the results?

Group Work A

Use a google form to report findings from your discussion of the following prompt:

• What does the Ariely research suggest about the nature of ethics or specific presuppositions one might have about the nature of morality?

Group Work B

Use a google form to report findings from your discussion of the following prompt:

• Shifting a bit from "cheating" to "lying", Start by trying to define a lie. Try to state your definition carefully in one sentence. Then identify three reasons why lying is bad. Finally, consider cases in which it is ok not to tell the truth. Can you identify a principle that might govern these cases?

JAN 19

Cooper, Chapter 1, "Intro to Philosophical Ethics"

• p. 3: definition of ethics; in terms of value conflict
• some terminology, two points about the relationship between actions and justifications:

• values of actions often reflect their context in institutional and social context.
• just as there are levels of justification for any action, there are levels of justification for any theory of ethics.

• Zimbardo; implications for ethics

Haidt, Chapter 1,"The Divided Self"

• opening story
• Animals in Plato's metaphor for soul; contemporary metaphors. metaphors.
• Mind vs. Body -- the gut brain.
• Left vs. Right -- confabulation
• New vs. Old - importance of the frontal cortex. orbitofrontal cortex in particular.
• Controlled vs. Automatic --

• Failures of Self-control [[1]]
• Haidt's "disgust" stories.

• Add in sociological dimension to consider values as socially

Small Group Work

• Use the Google form for small group discussion to report specific findings from the following question:

• Within each of the four sections of Haidt's article, "The Divided Self," remind yourselves of the main claims or points, along with things you found particularly interesting. Then try to state, in one sentence, one implication of each feature of the brain for the nature of ethics.

• Principle philosophical methods used: Speculation from new knowledge, finding entailments, finding implications.

JAN 21

Haidt, The Righteous Mind, Intro and Chapter 1

• Intro

• Track section and subsection title. The argument of the book is laid out clearly in them.

• Intuitions come first, reasoning second. The mind is divided, like a rider on an elephant, and the rider's job is to serve the elephant.

• Method Note: This is explanatory writing. Not philosophy directly. Digression on difference between explanatory and justifactory writing.

• Moral reasoning as a means of finding truth vs. furthering social agendas.

• Chapter 1

• Harmless taboo violations: eating the dog / violating a dead chicken.
• Brief background on developmental & moral psychology: p. 5

• nativists -- nature gives us capacities to distinguish right from wrong
• empiricists -- we learn the difference between right and wrong from experience
• rationalists -- circa '87 Piaget's alternative to nature/nurture -- there is both a natural developmental requirement and empirical requirement for distinguishing right from wrong.

• Piaget's rationalism: kids figure things out for themselves if they have normal brains and the right experiences. "self-constructed" - alt to nature/nurture. 7: We grow into our rationality like caterpillars into butterflies.
• Kohlberg's "Heinz story" - note problems, p. 9. (We'll look more at Piaget and Kohlberg in our next class.)

• Turiel: kids don't treat all moral rules the same: very young kids distinguish "harms" from "social conventions". Harm is "first on the scene" in the dev. of our moral foundations. (Note: Still following the idea that moral development is a universal, culturally neutral process.)

• Haidt's puzzle about Turiel: other dimensions of moral experience, like "purity" and "pollution" seem operative at young ages and deep in culture (witches). Found answers in Schweder's work.
• In what ways is the concept of the self culturally variable?

• Schweder: sociocentric vs. individualistic cultures. Interview subjects in sociocentric societies don't make the moral/conventional distinction the same way we (westerns) do. (To Kohlberg and Turiel: your model is culturally specific.) For example in the comparison of moral violations between Indians from Orissa and Americans from Chicago, it is important that group don't make the convention/harm distinction Turiel's theory would predict. That's a distinction individualist cultures make.

• Point of harmless taboo violations: pit intuitions about norms and conventions against intuitions about the morality of harm. Showed that Schweder was right. The morality/convention distinction was itself culturally variable. Turiel is right about how our culture makes the harm/convention distinction, but his theory doesn't travel well.

• Identify, if possible, some practices and beliefs from either your personal views, your family, or your ethnic or cultural background which show a particular way of making the moral/conventional distinction. (Example: For some families removing shoes at the door is right thing to do, whereas for others it is just experienced as a convention.)

Group Discussion

• Use a google form to discuss Study Question 3 and report your findings.

JAN 26

Cooper, Chapter 5: Cognitive and Moral Development

• Review of Piaget's stages of cognitive development:

• Sensorimotor, Symbolic, Concrete, Formal
• Critics: missing variability from rich vs. poor environments. (Vygotsky)
• Importance of Formal Operational level for "breaking" with situational control. (recall Zimbardo)

• Kohlberg's stages of moral development

• Preconventional, Conventional, Postconventional: review stages with each level.
• Note theoretical claim: hierarchy represents increasingly more developed ways of staying in equilibrium with environment. Where does this leave ethnicity and culture? p. 78.
• "Decentering" of ego crucial to post-conventional stage. Are we all supposed to get to this level?

• Application to My Lai massacre
• Questions for Kohlberg: Revisit Haidt's research story; should we all be postconventional moral agents? Is loyalty and a sense of authority an "inferior" basis for morality?

Singer, Chapter 1, "About Ethics," from Practical Ethics

• Ethics and religion

• Mentions Plato's dialogue Euthyphro- review core argument. Still, religion may be part of motivational structure of moral life.

• Singer's arguments against Ethics and relativism -- different versions of relativism:

• Ethics varies by culture: true and false, same act under different conditions may have different value, but this is superficial relativism. The different condition, for example, existence of birth control, are objective differences. The principle might remain the same and be objective (don't have kids you're not ready to care for)
• Marxist relativism and non-relativism: Morality is what the powerful say it is. But then, why side with the proletariat? Marxists must ultimately be objectivists about value or there is no arguement for caring about oppression and making revolution.
• Problems for relativists: consistency across time, polls could determine ethics
• Problems for the subjectivist: making sense of disagreement
• 2 versions of subjectivism that might work: ethical disagreements express attitudes that we are trying to persuade others of (close to Haidt's "social agendas"). Or, ethical judgements are prescriptions that reflect a concern that others comply.

• Singer: Ok to say the values aren't objective like physics (aren't facts about the world), but not sensible to deny the meaningfulness of moral disagreement. Ethical reasoning.
• Singer's view (one of several major positions): p. 10 - ethical standards are supported by reason. Can't just be self-interested.
• The sorts of reasons that count as ethical: universalizable ones.
• "Interests" in utilitarian thought