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OCR Religion and EthicsYou might need to hold Ctrl to click on the following links:Natural LawSituation EthicsKantian EthicsUtilitarianismEuthanasia (Natural law & Situation ethics)Business Ethics (Kant + Utilitarianism)Meta-EthicsConscienceSexual EthicsNatural LawTelos. Aquinas developed Natural law as a form of religious ethics. Aquinas was influenced by Aristotle’s views that there is a natural end to things – everything has a purpose (telos) built into it by its nature – the final cause. We can determine something’s purpose by using our reason. By looking at and understanding an Axe, we can determine it was made to chop wood. Humans also have a purpose. Aquinas believed God created us and our nature. We can use our God given reason to figure out what our God given nature is. That will then tell us how we should live i.e ethics.Sartre’s argument that people cling to a notion of objective purpose due to their fear of having to create their own.As Sartre’s argument is psychological, it commits the genetic fallacy; assuming that the manner someone comes to believe something is relevant to its truth. Sartre could well be right that we believe in purpose because of fear, and yet there still be such a thing as purpose.Arguably, belief in purpose is merely a human projection of subjective feelings onto reality. This would make telos not only false but dangerous ethically as it allows a person to believe their subjective ethical opinion is backed up by God, which they might feel gives them the right to enforce it on others. The Catholic Church has repeatedly done that throughout history.Nonetheless this goes against the experience of the human conscience for many, which orientates around a feeling that humanity has a purpose.The Primary Precepts are the natural inclinations of human nature created by God as part of his natural law which have been distilled into ethical commands by human reason. They are: know God and live in society, reproduce and educate your offspring, protect and preserve human life and defend the innocent.Arguably what Aquinas thought was part of human nature was really just his society. This can especially be seen in the case of the precept to worship God, since there are societies like Sweden where most people are atheists – unthinkable in Aquinas’ time. It’s also possible for people to become selfish and not care about defending the innocent, which suggests that’s culturally influenced, not caused by our nature. Aquinas’ notion of an orderly society would also be radically different than todays.However, many argue that the rise of atheism is merely causing people to turn to religion in different forms e.g meditation or worshiping the state (politics). People might be made selfish by their social environment but arguably they wouldn’t have been if left to their default state which would therefore come from their nature. Even if Aquinas is correct about our human nature, it didn’t come from God, it resulted from evolution. Therefore, it lacks the moral authority and status required for the basis of an ethical theory. Just because we evolved to be a certain way doesn’t mean that is good.An argument influenced by Marxism is that the dominant power group in society defines human nature in a way that enables and justifies their privileged status. Aquinas and the Catholic Church more broadly could be accused of this, especially in the medieval times Aquinas was writing in.Secondary precepts. The primary precepts are then applied to situations or types of actions. The judgement we then acquire is a secondary precept. E.g Water Pollution. The primary precepts don’t say anything about water pollution exactly, but we can use our God given reason to apply the primary precepts to water pollution, and realise that polluting water harms innocent people and destroys human life. Arguably it even disrupts the functioning of society too. Therefore, we can conclude that water pollution is wrong. That would be a secondary precept.Synderesis is when reason is used to gain knowledge of the primary precepts. The synderesis rule is that humans have a tendency to do good and avoid evil. Conscientia is the secondary precept.Is Aquinas right to think that humans have a tendency to do good and avoid evil? Evolutionary psychologists argue that while we have evolved some positive social emotions like empathy to those in our tribe/group, we nonetheless also have evolved a negative attitude towards those we perceive to be ‘other’ or different to us. This suggests that human nature has a tendency to good in some respects and a tendency to bad in others. Furthermore, if human nature evolved and wasn’t created by a God, thus it has no moral authority and cannot be the basis for ethics.Evolutionary psychology is very controversial because it is difficult to do proper empirical experiments to test its claims. Some argue instead that there is no human nature at all. They use the evidence of how radically human culture can define and change human behaviour, suggesting that if there is a human nature it is at most insignificant. For example, violence has declined over time as society has progressed. This suggests social conditions are the cause of human goodness rather than a God-given nature.Augustine would disagree with Aquinas. The existence of concupiscence, where bodily desires overwhelm reason, suggests that our human nature has become corrupted to the point where our reason cannot be relied on to figure out God’s will.Crime and violence has massively decreased since Augustine’s time however, suggesting that we are not irrevocably cursed with a sinful nature but can be controlled and developed through socialisation.Aquinas is implying that people only do evil due to ignorance. Arguably some people seek out ignorant beliefs in order to justify evil actions, to satisfy their evil desires. The four tiers of Law. The purpose of the four tiers is to show how Aquinas thinks that human law can gain its authority by deriving from the natural and divine law which themselves ultimately derive authority from God’s nature.Eternal Law – God’s mind/nature.Divine Law – God’s revelation to humansNatural law – The moral law in human nature (telos) discernible by reason.Human law – The laws humans make Because reason plays such an important role in ethics for Aquinas, and human reason can go wrong, it follows that ethics can go wrong. We can think something is right when really it is wrong, due to errors in reasoning. This is called an apparent good, whereas it would otherwise be a real good.How could we ever know that we have found a real good then?The double effect. Aquinas argued that a single action can have two effects. So a morally good action could have a bad effect along with its good one. This could make the bad effect justifiable if certain conditions are met: 1 – the act must be morally good or neutral2 – the bad result must not be the means of achieving the good one3 – the intention must be for achieving the good effect, the bad effect unintended4 – the bad effect must not be disproportionately greater than the good effectKnowing what someone’s intention is seems an impractical standard as it’s very difficult to know.Karl Barth argued that Aquinas’ natural law theory was a false natural theology which placed a dangerous overreliance on human reason. Barth argued that if humans were able to know God, including his moral commands, through their own efforts, then revelation would be unnecessary. Since God clearly thought revelation necessary as he sent Jesus, it follows for Barth that after the corruption of the fall, human reason cannot reach God. Barth also argued that the finite has no capacity for the infinite. Our finite minds cannot access God’s infinite mind. Whatever humans discover through reason is therefore not divine so to think it is must then amount to idolatry. Barth argued idolatry leads to worship of nations and then even to movements like the Nazis. Barth believed that as humans were fallen and thereby divorced from our created nature, God is ‘hidden’, meaning beyond our reason.Tillich responds that Barth’s critique relies on the difference between our essential nature and existential nature (meaning current, post-fall nature) being so different that there remains nothing left of our essential nature. Tilich argues this is not our experience however as we have a conscience and that “even a weak or misled conscience is still a conscience”, meaning that although humans did become corrupted by the fall, nonetheless we still retain something of our essential nature by which our reason and conscience might know something of God’s natural law.However, whatever a weak and misled conscience discovers is surely not God’s morality. Also, arguably it seems that Tillich fails to respond to Barth’s argument that revelation would be purposeless if natural law ethics worked.Fletcher’s situation ethics vs Aquinas’ natural law. Fletcher rejected natural law because even though there might be a natural law, we can’t figure it out since humans disagree about what the primary precepts are because our reason is flawed so we cannot “[think] God’s thoughts after him”. It’s a straw man to suggest that natural law requires us to think God’s thoughts after him. Aquinas is clear that God’s thoughts are the eternal law, but that is distinct from the natural law which is our nature/telos that God created to have an orientation to God’s goodness. So knowing the natural law is not knowing God’s thoughts.Fletcher also claims the evidence from modern sociology of descriptive moral relativism, that morals differ across cultures, also backs this up as it’s not what would be expected if human reason could get to God’s moral truth.Arguably humans in other religions & cultures have different moral values because they made errors in their reason, perhaps because they were tricked by the devil, have not heard Christ’s revelation or simply made a mistake.Situation EthicsAgape. The importance of Agape in Christianity is drawn from Jesus saying that the ‘greatest commandment’ is to ‘love your neighbour as yourself’. Fletcher interprets that as suggesting all other commandments only have value insofar as they enable Agape.Richard Mouw argued that just because one Bible passage focuses on love that doesn’t rule out the relevance of other laws. Jesus did indeed say to love your neighbour as yourself. However, he also said many other laws. They should all be followed.Mouw doesn’t seem to address the point that loving your neighbour was proclaimed the ‘greatest’ commandment by Jesus, however. If one command is greater than another then it seems like that means it takes priority and thus the less great rule should be broken if that’s the loving thing to do.But why would Jesus have bothered to make any other commandments if agape is the only one that is ultimately matters? Perhaps by calling it the ‘greatest’ commandment Jesus meant something else, such as only that it was the one which would be relevant to the most number of situations. Legalism, situation ethics & antinomianism. Legalism is the view that people require fixed rules to follow. Antinomianism is the view that there are no rules or laws to follow at all. Fletcher claimed that his situation ethics was a middle ground. Love was the one single absolute principle which should be applied to all situations.William Barclay thought situation ethics had some validity but didn’t agree with it fully. He points out that situation ethics gives moral agents a huge amount of freedom. Barclay argued that for that freedom to be good, love has to be perfect. If there is no love or not enough then ‘freedom can become selfishness and even cruelty’. If everyone was a saint, then situation ethics would be perfect. John A T Robinson called it ‘the only ethic for man come of age’ – but Barclay argues mankind has not yet come of age and so ‘still needs the crutch and protection of law’. Fletcher thinks people don’t want the intense freedom that comes from having to decide what to do by yourself, so many are more likely to cling to a set of laws and principles given to them by others. In that case, situation ethics will work for those who are capable of enacting it but not for those who don’t, who will then fall back on legalism until society develops to a point where that proportion of the population are insignificant or non-existent, which is arguably fine for Fletcher.The four working principlesPragmatism. An action must be calibrated to the particularities of the situation. Fletcher gave the example of jews hiding from the Nazis when their baby started crying, which would reveal their hiding place. Fletcher said it’s the most loving thing to kill the baby because the situation was that they would all die anyway otherwise.Relativism. Fletcher claimed his theory “relativizes the absolute, it does not absolutize the relative”. Relativizing the absolute means that absolutes like “Do not kill” become relative to love. If it has a loving outcome to kill, such as euthanasia sometimes can, then that absolute is false relative to love. Not absolutizing the relative means that it is not total relativism where any moral claim could be justified. It is always relative to love which means that only moral claims which are valid when relative to love will be justified for Fletcher.Catholics are against pragmatism and relativism since they believe in the sanctity of life which means life has intrinsic value. This means that no matter what the pragmatic situation is, the value of life cannot be relativized. Catholics first of all argue that God commanded ‘thou shalt not murder’. Secondly, Catholics argue that society is held together because of the strength of the value we place on life. If we thought life didn’t have intrinsic value, as Fletcher claims, we might be more likely to kill each other. If we lessen the value we place on life by admitting that life can sometimes be taken, that threatens the stability of society. Positivism. Natural law and Kantian ethics are based on reason but Fletcher thought ethics had to begin with faith in love because Fletcher thought no rational answer can be given for why someone should love as it is a matter of faith in Jesus’ command to love your neighbour as yourself.Personalism. Situation ethics puts people above rules. As Jesus said “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath”. Fletcher claims this shows that Jesus knew rules could be broken if it was for the good of humanity to do so.Arguably Jesus did not mean to generalise to all commandments though. Breaking the Sabbath is one thing, breaking the commandment not to kill seems different. After all, he only explicitly specified that the Sabbath was made for man, not other commandments.The six fundamental principlesOnly love is intrinsically good. Everything else has conditional value depending on whether it helps or hurts people, but love is always unconditionally and therefore intrinsically good.The ruling norm of Christian decision is love; nothing else. Love and justice are the same, for justice is love distributed, nothing else. Love wills the neighbour’s good whether we like him or not.Only the end justifies the means; nothing else. Love decides there and then. Fletcher’s situation ethics vs Aquinas’ natural law. Fletcher rejected natural law as a ruling norm because even though there might be a natural law, we can’t figure it out since humans disagree about what the primary precepts are because our reason is flawed and we cannot “[think] God’s thoughts after him”. Fletcher also claims the evidence from modern sociology of descriptive moral relativism, that morals differ across cultures, also backs this up as it’s not what would be expected if human reason could get to God’s moral truth.It’s a straw man to suggest that natural law requires us to think God’s thoughts after him. Aquinas is clear that God’s thoughts are the eternal law, but that is distinct from the natural law which is our nature/telos that God created to have an orientation to God’s goodness. So knowing the natural law is not knowing God’s thoughts.Arguably humans in other religions & cultures have different moral values because they made errors in their reason, perhaps because they were tricked by the devil, have not heard Christ’s revelation or simply made a mistake.Fletcher thinks all humans agree with Aquinas’ synderesis rule to do good and avoid evil, but rejects that as a ‘platitude’, a meaningless statement, until it becomes decided what good and evil actually are, which people do not agree on.Aquinas would respond that the synderesis rule is not meant to be a command from God for us to obey, it is a part of our human nature which God has created in us so that we might be inclined to know and do good and avoid evil in accordance with God’s divine law.Fletcher’s situation ethics vs Protestant sola scriptura. Protestants believe that in ethical judgement we should only follow the Bible’s teachings, a view they called ‘sola scriptura’ meaning the ‘Bible alone’ is the source of moral authority, not agape. Fletcher rejected the sola scriptura of the protestant reformers. Fletcher points out the competing interpretations of the Sermon on the mount, suggesting that the Bible alone cannot give you clear enough guidance on how to act. There is no way to know whose interpretation of the Bible is correct and so by itself it’s not good enough to be a source of Christian moral principles.Fletcher argued that taking the bible literally is no solution, suggesting the “headache” of interpreting what the bible meant is far less trouble compared to trying to live as a literalist. Fletcher gives the example of ‘do not resist one who is evil’ as an example.Fletcher argues that the Bible is not a legalistic ‘rules book’ but an ‘editorial collection of scattered sayings’ which at most offers us ‘some paradigms or suggestions’. Surely Fletcher’s critique of the Bible as a source of ethics applies to Fletcher’s own inference of the importance of Agape from what Jesus said was the ‘greatest’ commandment – to love your neighbour as yourself. Isn’t situation ethics just Fletcher’s interpretation of the Bible, no better than protestant sola scriptura according to his own logic?Barclay argues that Fletcher seems to be forgetting the grace of God and its power to make bad men good. “To encourage towards permissiveness is no real cure; to direct to the grace of God is.” Barclay admits that the situationists ‘have taught us that we must indeed be flexible” but claims that “in spite of that we do well still to remember there are laws which we break at our peril”. Fletcher would respond with the question of how we know which those laws are, however. He would still maintain that love is the best guide to figuring out what to do. An illustration Fletcher uses is from Nash’s play ‘The Rainmaker’ – the rainmaker makes love to a spinster to save her from becoming spinsterised. Her brother is morally outraged and wants to shoot him, but her father says to his outraged son “you are so full of what’s right that you can’t see what’s good”.Barclay claims Fletcher doesn’t account for how people’s psychology can be the thing which provides the cure for a problematic situation so we don’t need to break a law. In the example of the woman being potentially spinstered, it ignores that many unmarried women are not made unhappy by it. Barclay also brings up the example of John Wesley and questions whether he would have so successfully founded the Methodist Church if he had been married. People’s minds can put their desires to other uses when frustrated from the normal satisfaction – this is called sublimation. We don’t need to break ethical principles to find their satisfaction. Kantian EthicsBasing morality on reason. Kant was part of the intellectual movement called the enlightenment, which was in part a reaction to religious warfare. Kant thought that if we based morality on reason we could solve this issue. Kant thought that this project could work because reason places constraints on us. This can more easily be seen in the case of mathematics. Our reason tells us that 1+1=2 and that we are being irrational if we try to claim otherwise. In fact, we can’t reason otherwise even if we wanted to. Mathematical equations are thus agreed on by everyone as we all reason the same. Kant thought the same could be achieved in morality. If you want to do something that would be impossible for everyone to do, then you must think there is something special about you that justifies your being the one who should be allowed, but reason cannot provide any such justification. You might like yourself more than other people, but that’s an emotion or attitude, not reason. Kant thought that the fact that we have reason and that other people have reason too means our reason places a restraint on us such that we cannot rationally think others are lesser than us, or indeed that we are less than others. The effect of our reason all functioning the same and placing restraints on our actions in the form of judging some of them rational and others irrational amounts, for Kant, to there being a universal moral law which each individual person’s reason can discover.A Categorical imperative is something we should do in all situations no matter the consequences and regardless of how we might feel, it is our duty. A hypothetical imperative is a moral action that a rational will adopts for reasons other than duty. As rational beings we may adopt ends that are not categorical, which makes them hypothetical. The first formulation of the categorical imperative is the first claim that we should only do something if everyone can do it. Kant says ‘Act only according to that maxim by which you could at the same time will it become a universal law’. This is the test of universalizability. The maxim of your will is the moral statement of what you want to do. The test if whether you can rationally will that everyone do what you want to do. E.g Lying – Kant thinks lying cannot be universalised because if everyone were to lie, there would be no such thing as truth anymore. However lying depends on truth, therefore by willing everyone to lie, we would be willing the undermining of the concept on which lying depends for its existence in the first place. That is inconsistent and therefore irrational and therefore a maxim involving lying cannot rationally be willed into a universal law.Kant thinks this universalisibility test is the final test of whether we have truly removed consequences and personal feelings from consideration. If we have, then all that should be left of an action is the pure action itself in the abstract as done by anyone or everyone. Therefore, once we have removed consequences and personal feelings, an action should be universalisible which is why it is a good test of its morality in Kant’s view.If a Nazi asked whether we were hiding Jews and we were, it seems Kant is committed to the view that it’s wrong to lie. That seems to go against most people’s moral intuitions.Kant would respond that each person is ultimately responsible for what they do. As a rational agent, you are responsible for what you do, and the Nazi is responsible for what they do. Lying to prevent the Nazi from killing is to act as if you were responsible for the Nazi’s action, but you are not. You are responsible for what you do, and so you should not lie.Kant’s picture of humanity as atomised loci of rational agency is arguably a false one. Human beings are not as rational as he thinks. We are caught up in complex webs of social influence which we cannot escape, indeed arguably there is no meaning outside the social landscape, as Wittgentstein’s language games argued. We exist in deep connection to other people and thus to that extent in fact are responsible for each other’s actions.Kant could respond that rationality itself is able to transcend the historical cultural contingencies that admittedly do define each person but cannot define nor determine their reason.The first formulation it seems could be abused. What if someone decided they wanted to steal, but edited their maxim from ‘I can steal’ to ‘someone with 6 letters in their name can steal’. This maxim could be universalised because if only a minority of people steal, the concept of property on which stealing depends would not be undermined by only a few people stealing.Kant responds that this is a misunderstanding of his theory. What must be universalised is the maxim of your will. The will of the person who wants to steal has nothing to do with the number of letters in their name. Therefore the maxim they are attempting to put forward for universalization is not really the maxim of their will, which is simply that they want to steal.What if someone for some reason really did think that the number of letters in their name meant that they should be allowed to steal though?Kant would suggest they are being irrationalThe second formulation of the categorical imperative – Kant says ‘Always treat persons, whether others or in yourself, always as an end, never as a means’. This essentially means ‘don’t use people, or abuse yourself’. Our reason makes us a rational agent and thereby no better or worse than anyone else inasmuch as they are also rational agents. Rational agents have and seek goals which Kant called ‘ends’. To treat a person as if they were a mere means to an end is irrational as it contradicts the fact that they have their own end. Your treating them as a means is dependent on your viewing yourself as a rational agent who adopts means to achieve ends, but denying that another rational agent has their own ends is to contradict the basis on which you attempted to use them in the first place; that you are a rational agent who adopts means to achieve ends. It’s like suggesting that denying the intrinsic value of another human being amounts to denying your own. Kant claimed that all rational agents are therefore ends in themselves.Wouldn’t this second formulation prevent being able to pay others for services as that would be using them as a means?Kant responds that it’s acceptable to pay people for services, e.g. being waited on at a restaurant, as long as you are respectful since that amounts to an acknowledgement that they have chosen to provide the service for their own end.Arguably this fails to address the immoral inequality and disparity in society. Exploitation might be what caused a person to adopt a low paying job as their end. Consider the case of prostitution. Arguably being respectful to a prostitute does not compensate for the exploitation that caused their having to accept that line of work. Kant recommends freedom and autonomy, but this is the activist’s critique of freedom; it ignores structural causes of inequality.The third formulation of the categorical imperative – kant argues that if everyone followedKant’s ethics we would live in a ‘kingdom of ends’. Kant argued we should behave as if we did.Kant rejected consequentialism in ethics. He argued that the consequences can’t really be what matters for morality since we cannot control and therefore be responsible for the consequences of our actions. Kant was a Deontologist who argued it was the action and intention that matter.Just because we can’t control consequences completely, does that mean they don’t matter ethically? Also, consequentialism isn’t arguing we can completely control the consequences, just that we should consider them when acting. Furthermore, we can control consequences to a degree. Shouldn’t we therefore be responsible for them to that degree?Kant argued that virtue would only be necessarily joined with happiness to achieve the summon Bonum in an afterlife For Kant, a Good will is one which has the right attitude morally. We should leave out personal feelings/desires and just do ‘duty for duty’s sake’. Eg if a friend is in hospital, we should go and visit them not out of empathy but because it’s our duty. Kant believed morality could rest on rationality. He argued that to be a human is to be in possession of a ‘rational will’. Since all humans have access to this rationality, a kind of equality and uniformity and absolutism can be generated for ethics. All humans rationally accept that 1+1=2. Kant hoped that by embedding morality in reason and rationality rather than something like God, all humans could come to the same moral views if only they could be led by their rationality. This is why Kant argued we should be led by our duty be our only motivation. However if the friend asked us why we were there and we said our duty they might feel offended. This is not an accurate understanding of the nature of human relationships. We need our feelings and desires, it’s what makes us human. We would be suspicious of someone who gave to charity without feeling empathy. If a parent claimed to help their child out of duty rather than love, we would find that disturbing. Therefore having the appropriate emotion regarding an action seems part of our conception of a good moral character but Kant seems unable to recognize this.Bernard Williams claims it is inhuman to desire moral judgement to be free from emotion and an ethic like Kant’s which recommends it is therefore immoral. For example, giving money to charity because you feel empathy for suffering people seems like a moral act, but Kant would regard it as non-moral.Kant would back up his theory however by arguing that something is either right or wrong regardless of how a person might feel about it. Those who think it morally good to give money to charity out of empathy are actually committing themselves to the claim that the goodness of the act consists in their feelings of empathy, at least in part. If they asked themselves why it was good to give money to suffering people, however, satisfying the empathetic feelings of the giver would generally not be considered a reason. The deservedness of the receiver of charity is not thought by anyone to depend on the presence of feelings of empathy on the part of the giver. Therefore, those who think it morally good to give to charity out of empathy should recognize, Kant would argue, that the goodness of their act does not depend on their feelings. Acting out of feelings is therefore failing to act morally. If not wrong, arguably it is at least impractical to expect humans to be able to prevent their emotions from affecting their moral judgements. We might think it appropriate to praise someone for having a morally developed character if they find doing good actions pleasurable because they are more likely to do good in the future.Kant would reject this because it’s a hypothetical imperative and because he thinks duty is the only appropriate motive.One could go further and suggest that the distinction between rationality and emotion is actually invalid. Plato and much of Christian thought sees human rationality as being supernatural in some sense, derived from God, aimed higher than the world at intellectual abstract rational ideas, at war with the body which anchored rationality in the mere physical world with animalistic feelings. Kant clearly thinks something like this, but is it true? Are emotions and thoughts really separate things? Kant regards humans as able to act on purely rational grounds, but what if the human will is not as rational as he thinks, or hopes?The three postulatesFreedomImmortalityGodUtilitarianismAct utilitarianism. Jeremy Bentham invented the first form of Utilitarianism – Act utilitarianism. He was one of the first atheist philosophers and wanted to devise a morality that would take into account that new understanding of what it meant to be human. No longer considering ourselves as a special part of creation, just another part of nature. Bentham argued ‘Nature has placed us under the governance of two sovereign masters, pleasure and pain’. So it is the nature of the human animal to seek pleasure and avoid pain, so that’s all there is for morality to be about. Bentham devised the principle of utility:‘An action is good if it leads to the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people’Utilitarianism is consequentialist – it argues what makes something good is the consequences it leads to. This seems to justify bad actions – e.g multiple people gaining pleasure at the suffering of an individual seems to be the greatest happiness for the greatest number.One could try to argue that the psychological suffering of victimised people lasts their entire life and therefore outweighs the pleasure.Just scale up the number of people gaining the pleasure then and make the victimised person die – like gladiators in Ancient Rome providing pleasure to the tens of thousands in the crowd.Utilitarianism only views the consequences of actions as good, not the character (integrity) of the person who performs them. This goes against the intuition that a person can be a good person. It also has the bizarre effect that e.g stabbing someone could be good if after being rushed to hospital it was found, coincidentally, they had a brain tumour. Or someone who attempts to do good but bad consequences result which were unforeseeable, such as the priest who saved Hitler’s life when he was a child.Mill responds firstly that a person’s character does matter because it will determine their future actions. The stabber should be condemned for his motive because that will prevent them stabbing others in future. The priest should be forgiven because he’s not likely to do anything bad in the future as his character is good. Secondly, Mill argues that having a good character helps you become happy. Motives and character therefore do matter ethically, though not intrinsically but only insofar as they result in good consequences, in line with consequentialism.Hedonic Calculus. The principle of utility holds that the ‘greatest’ pleasure is the goal of ethical action. It follows that a method for measuring pleasure is required. Bentham’s hedonic calculus is far too time consuming to be of practical use.Mill thought getting that reasonable expectation for every single action was still too impractical, since happiness is ‘much too complex and indefinite’. Instead Mill proposes using rules since society has, over time, figured out what causes happiness. We should go with those rules except in cases when they come into conflict with each other. Then we should apply the principle of utility to that particular case. In most cases we won’t be required to do such impractical calculating however.We can’t acquire the information the hedonic calculus needs in advance. We can’t know the consequences of our actions. The butterfly effect is a concept from chaos theory which states the flapping of a butterfly’s wings might cause a hurricane half way across the world. Future actions are incalculable in such a complex world.Bentham argues that an action is right regarding ‘the tendency which it appears to have’ to maximise happiness. So, we actually only need to have a reasonable expectation of what the consequences will be. So Bentham responds to the criticism that we can’t predict the future by claiming we don’t need to predict it perfectly.Rule utilitarianism. Mill proposed rule Utilitarianism, which replaces ‘action’ with ‘rule’ in the principle of utility so ‘A rule is good if following it leads to the greatest happiness for the greatest n umber’. This supposedly solves the problem of Act utilitarianism justifying bad actions because the rule to not harm people unless they harm you, for example, if followed would lead to the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Therefore even though in a particular situation it might give a majority of people involved pleasure to break that rule, the rule is justified and enforced at the level of society rather than individual actions/situations, therefore it would be overruled.The moral basis of human rights is deontological in that human rights are intrinsically good. This seems incompatible with consequentialist ethics like Utilitarianism, which argue that something is only good not because of anything intrinsic but depending on whether it leads to happiness. So, Utilitarianism could never say ‘X is wrong’ or ‘X is right’. They can only say that ‘X is right/wrong if it leads to/doesn’t lead to – the greatest happiness for the greatest number’.In that case they couldn’t say ‘torture is wrong’. In fact, if 10 people gained happiness from torturing one person, a Utilitarian it seems would have to say that was morally right as it led to the greatest happiness for the greatest number. When a majority of people decide, for their benefit, to gang up on a minority, that is called the tyranny of the majority.Rule utilitarianism attempts to solve those kinds of issues. The rule ‘do not torture’ will result in a happier society than one which follows the rule ‘do torture’, therefore Mill can overrule individual cases where torture might result in happiness. Mill does not believe in rights. He thinks that everyone should be free to do whatever they want except harm others. The justification for this freedom from harm is not that people have a ‘right’ to be unharmed, but that it is for the greatest happiness for the greatest number that we live without harming each other. So while Mill doesn’t believe in intrinsic rights, he proposes rules which seem identical in their ethical outcome.Utilitarianism argues that we should do whatever action leads to the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. It does not consider an individual’s particular emotional ties to their family or friends as relevant to that ethical calculation. E.g most parents would save their child’s life over the life of two random people. However, Utilitarianism would not regard that as the most moral action as saving two rather than one would lead to the greatest happiness. Therefore it seems to be against the foundation of familial relationships.if no one had a family, people would be much less happy therefore perhaps it is worth the unhappiness caused by our relative exclusion of those who are not our family.But, if you think about how much parents in the west spend on their children, if half that money were given to charity instead, actually the amount of suffering that reduced might outweigh the happiness the world feels by its having family relationships.If you were in a burning building and had a choice between saving a child and an expensive painting, which would you choose? Most people on first hearing this scenario would say the child, but utility based ethics seems to suggest that saving the painting is better because we could sell the paining for enough money to save the life of a hundred children.Giles Fraser argues that saving the painting suggests a lack of sympathy for the childWilliam MacAskill responds that actually saving the painting suggests a more cultivated sympathy which is able to connect to the many more children elsewhere who are in just as much need of saving and outnumber the single child there now.A utilitarian might disagree with MacAskill and argue that if on a global scale all humans acted against their immediate empathetic concern for the sake of the greater good then we might as a species quickly lose or erode our empathy in general. The consequences of that might be a reduction in happiness, social bonds and perhaps even will to help others.MacAskill might respond that the cultivated sense of sympathy he defends would not cause those negative consequences.Arguably it is simply unknown what the consequence of radically changing our ethical perspective might have at the level of society, however.Higher & Lower Pleasures. Mill claimed Bentham’s act utilitarianism was too hedonistic and focused on animalistic pleasures unduly. Mill claimed ‘it’s better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied’. So quantity of pleasure is not better than quality. Mill devised higher & lower pleasures to deal with this. Lower pleasures are pleasures of the body like food, sex and drugs. Higher pleasures are pleasures of the mind like poetry, reading, philosophy, music. Lower pleasures have to be repeated constantly in order to get pleasure from them, but higher pleasures have a lasting effect on the mind capable of appreciating them, making it more happy intrinsically, therefore being worth more. Euthanasia (Natural law & Situation ethics)Voluntary vs non-voluntary euthanasia. Voluntary euthanasia is when a person has the mental capacity to want to be euthanized. Non-voluntary euthanasia is when someone does not have that mental capacity. If they are in a coma for example, or braindead.Active vs Passive euthanasia. Active euthanasia is when the person is killed by some positive action such as lethal injection, usually by a Doctor. Passive euthanasia is when no one performs an action which results in the death of the person but they are left to die by natural means, either by the result of their illness if they have one or simply by removing life-support machine equipment or even stopping giving them food. The death takes longer and unless they are unconscious in a coma or braindead, is more painful. However, the moral difference is that no one performed an action of killing them.Sanctity of life is that all life has intrinsic value. This argument is often based on belief that life is a sacred gift from God. “Your body is a temple of the holy spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God. You do not belong to yourself” (1 Corinthians 6:19). Genesis also states that humans were made in the image and likeness of God. This means deliberately ending life is always wrong and so euthanasia is always wrong.Archbishop Fisher makes a secular argument for life having intrinsic value – that it makes the most sense of our choices if it did. If you observe the way humans interact with each other, such as having hospitals, traffic police, firemen congratulating new parents and sending birthday cards, overall there’s so much that we do that looks to him like we treat each other as if life had intrinsic value. Fisher suggests that if we see someone drowning, we would not hesitate to consider if perhaps that person should be alive or not. Fisher’s argument has the interesting effect that it could count against euthanasia regardless of whether there actually is an intrinsic value to life. If he is right that it simply is the case that our society is predicated on treating each other as if life has intrinsic value, then it could have a negative effect on us to start allowing euthanasia in some cases.Fisher is arguably cherry-picking examples which prove his case but ignoring those cases which are not that uncommon where ordinary people in fact treat each other as if the value of life was dependant on things like quality of life or autonomy.Fletcher argued that the ‘indicators of humanhood’ are self-awareness, self-control, a sense of the future and past, the capacity to relate to others, have concern for others, communication and curiosity.Peter Singer agrees with Fletcher, simplifying the list to rationality and self-consciousness. Singer distinguishes between ‘humans’ (members of our species) and ‘persons’ (rational self-conscious beings). Humans are members of our species, but not all humans are persons. Singer argued that belief in the sanctity of life of members of our species (humans) was based on ‘Christian domination of European thought’, especially belief in an afterlife and that God had ownership of us, his creation. Singer argued that since those theological tenants are no longer accepted, we should re-evaluate the ethical precept they conditioned into us as well.Paul Badham believes there is a Christian case for euthanasia. He points out that Jesus’ self-proclaimed most important rule was to love your neighbour as yourself. If someone greatly suffering repeatedly requests to die, it seems to fulfil Jesus’ command to grant their request out of love since that’s how we’d like to be treated in that position.The ethical nature of the situation of a person requesting euthanasia might be an invalid application for Jesus’ rule however, since the person suffering might have their rationality affected, so although we might indeed also request euthanasia in their position that is only because our rationality would be similarly affected. So just because we would want to be euthanised as well doesn’t make it right because it doesn’t deal with the argument that there are or can be aspects of the suffering experience which cause irrationality such that we shouldn’t want to. ‘Would want to’ does not entail ‘should want to’.Quality of life refers to how happy or unhappy a life is. Proponents of the quality of life in relation to euthanasia regard it as a valid ethical consideration because they think that life has to be of a certain quality in order for it to count as worth living. Peter Singer believes the quality of life to be an important factor in euthanasia. He goes as far as recommending non-voluntary euthanasia for children whose potential quality of life is low, such as due to an incurable condition like spine abifida.Terminal illness is the most common reason for euthanasia as the person is going to die anyway often after a period of suffering.incurable physical illness such as cluster headaches are simply extremely painful and have no cure, reducing quality of life. Other incurable physical illness such as locked in syndrome almost completely paralyse a person which make them incapable of committing suicide even if they wanted to. incurable mental illness raises the issue of whether there is a kind and degree of mental illness which sufficiently impinges on the mind such that a rational choice to die cannot be made. Someone might be suffering considerable from an incurable mental illness, but if their ability to make informed rational choices is undermined by their illness, pro-autonomists would argue they shouldn’t be given euthanasia, while quality of life advocates might decide they should be. In Belgium euthanasia is legal for people who don’t have a terminal illness but have an incurable and severe mental illness. Even young people in their 20s have been euthanized for this reason. If they have tried everything including every medication available, euthanasia is seen as a last resort. Autonomy is the freedom of people to make their own choices. Those who think euthanasia can be justified on these grounds either think autonomy has intrinsic ethical value (Nozick) or they think that it has consequentialist value (Mill & Singer). If autonomy is a valid ethical principle for euthanasia then it must supersede the consideration of the sanctity of life.J. S. Mill played a vital role in shaping political liberalism which defines all western democracies. Before the enlightenment, people were thought of as cogs to be fitted into the machine of society. Religion told people what to think, say and do. Mill, however, thought that society would be happier and make more progress if the underlying ethos of civilisation radically shifted from a collectivist model to one based on individuality. Mill thought that society should not try to enforce a certain way of life on its citizens but merely stop people from harming each other. People should be the ultimate sovereign authority over their own life. Mill gave a number of arguments for this, including that individual people are in the best position to judge what is best for them and have the greatest motivation to ensure they live the best lives possible. Mill also argued that people are not like sheep in that they have different personalities and temperaments. If left free, people will run experiments in living which will result in a wealth of public knowledge about the better or worse ways to live, which future free people will be able to draw on in their own free choices and experiments, thus progressing the well-being of society at a greater rate than if that autonomy were not granted.Mill therefore would think it good to allow an individual to choose euthanasia, however Mill is not an absolutist about autonomy – he would make an exception for people who have legal obligations such as young children, debts or those of unsound mind as they have no motivation to ensure they live the best life possible and cannot rationally make a choice. Fisher argues that it’s too simplistic to assert autonomy as ethically supreme as this ignored the negative effect of contemporary culture on people which might make them desire euthanasia. the reason many people want to die, Fisher argues, is that our culture values efficiency, beauty and productivity so highly. Those unable to succeed are marginalized and feel unhappy; some of them wish to die as they feel like failures. To suggest that helping them die is the solution is seen as grotesque to many Christians because the obvious solution to them is changing the goal of culture away from success and money towards love, Jesus and God. For them, euthanasia is the clearing away of those our society has deemed failures. Yet those situation ethicists who believe in euthanasia for depressed people think they are acting out of love and kindness, not realising they are actually acting as the executioners for our merciless profit and success-driven society.Singer responds that people who receive euthanasia in Oregon are disproportionately white, educated and not particularly elderly, so euthanasia does not especially target vulnerable people.Mill would certainly not say that any choice an individual makes regarding their own life must automatically on that basis be good but that it is for the “greater good of human freedom” that they not be prevented. It is much better for society to bare the consequences of the mistakes people make in their attempt to think and act for themselves than, in its attempt to think and act for them, leave them in an undeveloped state from which no progress may be made. This is Mill’s argument for autonomy. As Utilitarians are consequentialists, Mill and Singer do not think autonomy has any intrinsic value, they think that respecting people’s autonomy has good consequences.Nozick draws on Kant’s formula of humanity that we should treat all humans never merely as a means but always also an end in themselves. Nozick claims this justifies the libertarian principle of ‘self-ownership’ which holds that people have the right to total freedom from external coercion. That would include freedom from state laws or any individual that attempted to prevent euthanasia from being chosen.The idea of self-ownership arguably assumes, as Kant arguably also does, that humans are not simply unique combinations of socially conditioned influences. It’s hard to see humans as capable of perfect autonomy when they are all born and raised in a society and subject to the influences therein, perhaps even being nothing more than the sum total of those influences.Arguably Mill’s less radical notion of autonomy survives this objection as it merely draws on the good consequences of treating people as if they had autonomy, rather than making any claim about an intrinsic right to autonomy which is dependent on an arguably utopian picture of human rationality. Mill can readily admit the existence of cases or aspects where autonomy is either non-existent or produces negative effects as Mill can still fall back on his foundational claim that nonetheless overall it is for the greater good that people treat each other as if they had autonomy.Peter Singer says he is not an absolutist about autonomy as he doesn’t want to make it easy for people to end their lives when they have a treatable condition or when they might easily recover. Singer also gives the example of a young person who is suicidality depressed due to relationship issues as an exception to the autonomy principle as we can ‘safely predict’ that they will come to view their life as worth living again and the value of that ‘overrides’ the temporary violation of their autonomy to deny them euthanasia. Singer agrees with Mill’s argument that the individual who is in the best position to judge what is best for them and whether the potential value of their future life is of sufficient worth to make continuing to live the best choice for them. The young love-sick person is clearly not making that rational calculation however. An autonomous choice therefore has to be not only sane but also rational.The slippery slope is a common argument which suggests that if we allow something in some extreme case, it won’t be long until we allow it in a less extreme case and so on until it’s allowed in all cases. Archbishop Anthony Fisher argues that if we allow euthanasia for the reason of quality of life for terminally ill people then we are committed to the view that euthanasia is about reducing suffering, but then we have no basis for resisting extending this principle to young people with incurable mental or physical illnesses or even babies and small children who have conditions that will cause them suffering. We could even suggest a further case, where adults who are suffering are killed without their permission to increase the happiness of society.Fisher also argues that allowing euthanasia for the reason of autonomy is also vulnerable to the slippery slope issue as there is no way to reasonable restrict the principle of “freedom to die” to the hard cases. If we grant that people have the autonomous freedom to die, how can we then deny it in cases where someone wishes to die when they shouldn’t? Fisher claims that wherever euthanasia is legalised, it is extended to more and more people as that is where the logic of autonomy or quality of life arguments lead. In Holland euthanasia was legalised for the terminally ill but 10 year later was legalised for babies in cases of severe illness where both parents consented. However genetic screening allowing mothers to know if their baby has a condition before its born and aborting it meant the post-birth non-voluntary euthanasia numbers dropped from 15 in 2005 to 2 in 20010.Singer responds that there is no creep of euthanasia becoming more widespread. He points out how in Oregon it’s only one in three thousand deaths that received euthanasia. Business Ethics (Kant + Utilitarianism)Business ethics is the question of which form of business is ethical. This domain of ethics involves political philosophy.Centrists believe capitalism is necessary but has downsides like exploitation and income inequality which should be addressed through corporate social responsibility and taxes.LibertarianismLibertarians believe capitalism is morally good because it is simply the result of freedom and protection of rights. They believe in very low taxes and that the government should only run things like the police. Businesses are private property. Capitalism is the aggregate result of voluntary free choices to engage in trade amongst free citizens. Capitalism is just the result of freedom. You may not like the result, but what right have you to tell others how to live?Nozick (Libertarian) argues for self-ownership. Your life is your life. What you make with your own two hands is your property. If someone else takes it without your consent, that is theft, even if it is a government trying to tax you. Nozick claimed that taxes were slavery as the time you had to work for the income taken as taxes was effectively your working for no money which, being involuntary, is the definition of slavery.Milton Freidman (libertarian) argues that the only cases where the masses have escaped from extreme poverty are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade and they are worst off in the societies that depart from that. The only alternative to capitalism is for a government to control the market, but Friedman points out that no one is angel-like enough for that role.Friedman argues that this is because capitalism is based on voluntary co-operation. Governmental attempt to control the markets by law has good intentions but requires forceful co-operation. “The bad moral value of force triumphs over good intentions”. “Whenever you try to do good with somebody else’s money, you are committed to using force”. Freidman argues that power has a corrupting influence which causes those we appoint to regulate the market to either corrupt it for their own benefit or simply become an inefficient bureaucracy, taking salary for work that has little or no benefit to society. Freidman issues a challenge by way of proof of this – to name for him a government run organization which was discontinued due to failure.“The most harm of all is done when power is in the hands of people who are absolutely persuaded of the purity of their intentions”.Scandinavian countries have high taxes but are the healthiest societies across many dimensions. So it just looks like Friedman is wrong, perhaps he was too focused on the extreme case of communism but his argument doesn’t apply to democratic socialism. However Scandinavian countries are small and have had some economic luck such as finding large oil reserves.Some argue that high taxes on wealthy people are justified because they don’t need so much money and we have people living in poverty who do need it.Friedman argues that wealthy people use their money to re-invest in their businesses, which provides jobs for those poor people. He points out that 100 years ago everyone was much worse off. The increase in productivity and wealth overall, including the quality of life of the poorest in western societies, has resulted from giving people economic freedom to profit from innovation, which has made some people very rich but has improved society dramatically overall.Friedman also argues that intractable poverty is not capitalism’s fault but the result of government failure to provide good schools and the minimum wage which cuts the bottom rung off the economic ladder, leaving those at the bottom no way to get on it.Freidman’s point is that people look at the few who are wealthy and think they can just redistribute their wealth to those who have nothing, but Freidman argues that is to fail to see how that would involve taking away the motivation to earn wealth in the first place, which in a capitalist system is satisfied by innovation and progress which overall pushes society forward. People today live like kings lived a few hundred years ago, e.g. warm baths. It is entrepreneurs which really drive technology and the economy to progress which results in an increasing standard of living. The more entrepreneurs the faster we will progress. The greater the financial incentive for entrepreneurial success, the more there will be. The lower the taxes, the greater the financial incentive.Marxism is a philosophical, economic and political theory invented by Karl Marx. Marxists believe capitalism is inherently exploitative and bad for human well-being, so it should be replaced by a communism where the means of production are publicly owned. Alienation is the negative state of mind the working class get into when the majority of the profits from their labour go to their boss. This causes them to feel detached and alienated from their own work which, since it defines so much of their life, reduces their well-being. Commodity fetishism is when people treat products they buy as the ultimate or only sources of value. This results from capitalism since money is the ultimate value of time, attention and labour.Consumer culture refers to the way that individuals in capitalist economies tend to have being a consumer as part of their identity. This causes some of their self-worth and purpose to be linked to purchasing objects, feeling personal pride if they have the latest gadget and jealousy if their friend or neighbour gets it before them. Much of western culture seems to be superficial such as celebrity culture which inspires people to buy products to look a certain way. Is this the result of capitalism and is it good for people? Corporate social responsibility is the question of whether a business has any ethical responsibilities, or whether it is ethical for it to just be concerned with making money. Potential objects of corporate social responsibility of businesses are:Employees – exploitation, minimum & living wage, health & safety provisions, redundancy protections/laws, labour unions.Customers – product guarantees/warranties, return policies, truth in advertising, advertising of addictive products, advertising to children.Taxes – Whether businesses have a responsibility to ‘give back’ to the society by funding government institutions like schools and hospitals.The environment – pollution of air and water, destruction of the natural habitats of wildlife, deforestation, animal testing.The community – giving to charity.Marxists reject corporate social responsibility as an insufficient attempt to address the excesses of capitalism. Some Marxists regard CSR as enabling of capitalism, since by encouraging a slightly healthier version, people might feel less will to overthrow it. They might view CSR as hypocritical window dressing. For example, Tim Cook the CEO of Apple made a speech where he talked about how his platform would be against white supremacy, yet Apple continues to exploit people in third world countries.CSR: Employees – exploitation is when a business treats employees’ in a bad way the employees have no choice but to put up with as they are in a state of desperation with no other job options, usually due to the poverty of their society. It is considered exploitation because the business is profiting from the desperation of those who will do anything to feed their family. The business is able to get away with paying their employees a wage lower than the actual value their labour would be worth in a free market.Primark example. A factory in Bangladesh evacuated because of health and safety concerns, however it then said it would not pay its employees for a month if they didn’t return the next day. So the employees returned, and the next day the factory collapsed on them killing over a thousand of them. Primark were also found to be supplied by exploitative factories in the third world that used child labour and paying people very little for extremely long hours. In response to this, Primark cut ties with those suppliers. However arguably the more ethical thing to do would have been to keep those suppliers but actually pay a fair wage to them.Kant on exploitation. Kant would be against employers treating their employees as means towards their end of profit. He would argue that only a work environment which treated employees with respect as an autonomous rational agent can be moral. This seems to rule out any sort of exploitation.Arguably this would make business impossible. An employer only hires an employee if their business is benefitted by that employee, which requires that the employer acquire a benefit of profit from the employee. It’s hard to see how this doesn’t count as using someone as a means to your end.Kant would respond with the example of a waiter. Kant says it’s ok to be waited upon in a restaurant as long as you treat the waiters with respect and dignity. So maybe this means Kant is ok with an employer – employee relationship as long as there is respect. This seems to still rule out exploitation but still allows non-exploitative businesses to be possible.However, being waited on is merely the result of having more money and social power than the waiter. Being respectful is almost an insult in that context because it’s like pretending that you didn’t gain money exploitatively. All money gained by capitalism is exploitation so they are a waiter because you exploited them.Utilitarianism on exploitation. Act utilitarianism would be for exploitation in the cases where it led to the greatest happiness for the greatest number and against it in those cases where it did not. If the happiness gained by the people who got cheap products by shopping at Primark outweighed the suffering of the workers exploited to make those products, it seems Bentham would be in favour of that.Bentham is clearly happy to sacrifice an individual for the gain of others, as long as that gain to others outweighs the loss to that individual. Whereas Kant regards individuals as having intrinsic value as an end in themselves so he would never think anyone has a right to sacrifice any individual for others, even if it was for the greater good. For Bentham, the idea of natural rights is ‘nonsense on stilts’.Mill’s rule utilitarianism might be against exploitation however, if he judged a society to be better for having a rule against exploitation. If all cases of exploitation in total cause more suffering than happiness, then Mill would argue ‘do not exploit people’ would be a good rule because following it will cause the greater good for society than its opposite ‘exploit people’. In that case, Mill would overrule those particular cases where happiness was gained by exploitation.William MacAskill argues that although sweatshops are ‘horrific’, nonetheless thinking that boycotting western companies which sell products produced in sweatshops will help the workers there makes the assumption that they have a better opportunity to make a living elsewhere but “sadly that’s just not the case”. If you boycott sweatshop produced goods ‘all you are doing is taking away the best working opportunity that these people in very poor countries have’. It seems a utilitarian should accept this argument, but Kant would not.CSR: Employees – minimum & living wage.Minimum wage is when the government sets a certain amount as the lowest an employee can be paid by law. A living wage is the amount required for a person to live, which might be more than the minimum wage depending on whether they have dependents or where they live e.g London is more expensive to live in.William F Buckley “To say that somebody should receive more money than he is now making and to pass a law to that effect is not in fact to give him a job for more money but it may very well be to cause unemployment”Milton Friedman argues that minimum wage laws cause unemployment. If the government makes it the law that a business has to pay its workers more, for that business to retain its profitability it will simply demand more productivity from the lowest paid workers it employs in return for the higher wage it is now forced to pay them. Many of those workers will be unable to, due to lack of experience or skill, be productive enough, and will therefore be fired. Free market economists argue that low paid work is important as it gives people their first step on the economic ladder where they can gain valuable experience and skills which can allow them to get a higher paid job in the future. Minimum wage laws simply cut off the bottom rungs of the economic ladder, making it harder for those at the bottom of society to get a job, so it hurts the people it is trying to help.However some jobs are so exploitative and worthless as experience that they do not count as a rung on the economic ladder from which someone might advance on the basis of. Also experience does not enable people to get into jobs which require education, an increasing issue in our mind economy. Friedman might counter that someone should save their money on a lower paid job to pay for their education and get qualifications.CSR: TaxesObama in his ‘you didn’t build that’ speech pointed out that businesses benefit from schools and infrastructure which they didn’t build, but therefore successful people didn’t get there ‘on their own’.Thomas Sowell: “Did the taxpayers, including business taxpayers, not pay for that road when it was built? Why should they have to pay for it twice? … Pious talk about ‘giving back’ distracts our attention from the cold fact that politicians are taking away more and more of our money and our freedom”CSR: The community - charityInnocent smoothie gives 10% of all their profits to charity. Pret-a-manger give their food away to charities at the end of the day. On the label of each sandwitch they sell, they advertise this fact and state ‘it’s the right thing to do’. On the one hand this seems like an excellent ethical outcome. However some would be sceptical and suggest these businesses only do this so they can advertise themselves attractively to customers. Do those intentions matter ethically?T Sowell: “Those who have helped the poor the most have not been those who have gone around loudly expressing ‘compassion’ for the poor, but those who have found ways to make industry more productive and distribution more efficient, so that the poor of today can afford things that the affluent of yesterday could only dream about”.CSR: Customers T Sowell: “Competition does a much more effective job than government at protecting consumers.”Kant’s shopkeeper example as an example of a business’s responsibility to its customers.Globalisation – the phenomenon where businesses are now global entities spanning multiple countries and continents. This allows them to do offshore outsourcing – where they build products in factories in third world countries. This moves jobs from western countries to those countries which has made many industry workers unemployed. Is that ethical? Does giving people jobs in other countries outweigh that? Should a business care about the community it’s in, or people of the world generally?Businesses that are global tend to take over or overrule the culture of third world countries. Lots of the world is now covered in McDonalds. Is that ethical? Should cultures be respected, or does only profit matter? Perhaps one culture is best and so its businesses should take over the world? After all, if people choose to be customers of it, they are arguably choosing for it to replace whatever businesses their culture had created.Does globalisation mean some businesses are too powerful? Since money = power, and some businesses can be so large thanks to globalisation, perhaps they are becoming more powerful than governments, which could be problematic since they aren’t accountable to anyone as they aren’t democratically elected. Unless we try to argue that people voluntarily choosing to buy from a business counts as a vote somehow?Whistleblowing – Whistleblowing is when someone at a company leaks information to the public and press about the wrongdoings of a company. The question is whether this is ethical, since the company might suffer financial losses, go bankrupt and make people unemployed. It might depend on the situation, for example is the harm the business’s secret immoral activities significant enough to justify the negative consequences of whistleblowing, or does the public have a right to the truth no matter what those consequences perhaps?There are different things that might be whistleblown which have different ethical considerations.Violations of privacy (e.g. Edward Snowden)Things people might find disgusting if they knew, like how chicken nuggets are made.Things people might find immoral if they knew, like factory farming businesses, which do not allow video recording of their practices for that reason.FraudMistreatment of workersWhat if the company is doing some positive good? Utilitarianism would weigh that against the bad the company did whereas Kant would not. Utilitarianism on Whistleblowing. Act utilitarianism holds that whistleblowing is morally right depending on the situation. If whistleblowing causes more happiness than not whistleblowing, then it is morally good, if it causes more suffering then it is morally wrong.A utilitarian would not recognise any moral value in the claim that society deserves to know the truth, in this case about what happens to a business. They would calculate the happiness or suffering produced by knowing that truth and only on that basis decide whether society should know it.Kant on Whistleblowing. Kant thinks lying cannot be universalised and is therefore always wrong. Kant goes as far as to claim lying is wrong even in the case where you are considering lying to a prospective murderer about where their victim is. So, he would certainly also be against lying to cover up negative business practises, even if that truth being brought to light resulted in the failure of the businesses and employees who may have done nothing wrong nonetheless losing their jobs. It is your duty never to lie. However what if no one ever asked you about your businesses negative practices? If your business was doing something so clandestinely negative that no one would even think to ask you about it, you might be able to get away with never having to lie about it. As long Kant would not have some other objection such as if the negative thing was using people as a means to an end, it seems Kant would be unable to claim that whistleblowing was your duty in this case. This is called lying by omission - not revealing the truth but only because no one thought to ask you about it. Adam Smith’s invisible hand theory – Free market capitalism – The free market is the view that markets work best the more free from government intervention they are. Adam Smith claimed it works so well it’s as if it were guided by an ‘invisible hand’.The idea is that humans are greedy and self-interested. So, the best system to put them into is one which harnesses and makes use of that greed. The free market supposedly does this, since the only way to satisfy your greed is to provide value for other people in the form of goods and services they want to buy from you. T Sowell: “It is amazing how many of the intelligentsia call it ‘greed’ to want to keep what you have earned, but not greed to want to take away what somebody else has earned, and let politicians use it to buy votes”. T Sowell: “The key feature of communist propaganda has been the depiction of people who are more productive as mere exploiters of others.Is it really true that human nature is greedy and self-interested and so needs this model though?Should the government never intervene in markets? What about when businesses pollute the environment or sell addictive products? Kant on Adam Smith & the Free Market: If it’s really true that human nature is partly selfish and greedy, then arguably only the free market is universalisable. It may be impossible to create business any other way. However, Kant thought we should disregard much of our nature, especially our emotions and personal feelings so arguably selfish greed falls under that category. In that case, if interfering in free markets is a duty, the moral thing is to disregard our greedy nature and just do our duty.However, Kant might instead argue that free markets are just the result of the freedom of rational agents adopting ends. After all, a free market is composed of people who are all engaging in voluntary transactions. A large business like Apple could not exist unless customers chose to go and buy its products. Those customers are arguably adopting the purchasing of an iPhone as their end, just as those who work at Apple regard selling their products for profit as their end. Government interference would then be interfering in the voluntary ends chosen by rational agents, which would amount to using them as a means to the government’s end, violating the second formulation of the categorical imperative.Kant assumes people are rational beings, however. What if people are drawn to purchase products through clever psychologically manipulative advertising? Shouldn’t it then be the job of the government to control advertising so people aren’t manipulated?Utilitarianism on Adam Smith & the Free Market. Act Utilitarianism would be in favour of the free market if it led to the greatest happiness for the greatest number. If there was some particular industry – like factories – which caused damage to people by creating toxic fumes or polluting the surrounding environment, Utilitarianism would calculate whether that harm was outweighed or not by the benefit of the happiness produced by the sale of their products, and would find it morally correct to prevent that business from polluting if the harm was greater.Rule Utilitarianism would try to find rules which could govern all such behaviour. If the rule ‘allow pollution’ caused more harm than ‘don’t allow pollution’ then pollution would be considered morally wrong. Mill believed in the Harm Principle which states that the only legitimate use of government power is in the prevention of people from harming other people. So if a business is harming someone, Mill would argue it is morally right for the government to interfere and prevent that. Whereas an Act utilitarian might allow that harm to occur, if the benefit to society is greater in that individual case. For example, if a business were polluting one river and causing hundreds of people in a village to have unclean water, but was producing products which made thousands of people so happy that their happiness outweighed the unhappiness of the village, Act utilitarianism would think that morally right. Mill would be against it, however, as he thinks it is for the overall happiness and good of society that no one be allowed to harm anyone else.Meta-EthicsMeta Ethics is a branch of Philosophy which developed quite late in intellectual history, starting a little with Hume but not really getting going until G. E. Moore who recognized the possibility of asking not what is good but what good is. Kant’s ethics, Aquinas’ natural law, Utilitarianism and so on were before Moore and all make a claim about what good is, but meta-ethics deals much more exclusively with that question of what good is, which opens up a domain of philosophical investigation ‘above’ standard ethics (hence ‘meta-ethics’) in which competing meta-ethical theories each provide argument for what they claim good actually is.There are two main aspects to meta-ethics:LinguisticWhat is the meaning of ethical language? Cognitivism - ethical language expresses beliefs about reality which can therefore be true or false.Non-cognitivism - ethical language expresses some non-cognition like an emotion, does not attempt to describe reality and therefore cannot be true or false.MetaphysicalWhat is the actual nature of morality in reality? Realism vs anti-realismRealism: The view that moral properties exist in reality.Anti-realism: The view that moral properties do not exist in reality.Normative ethics are ethical theories which attempt to devise a system by which we can distinguish right from wrong, e.g Utilitarianism, Kant’s ethics, Natural law, Situation Ethics, etc. Normative ethical theories all have a Meta-ethical core from which they proceed. For example, utilitarianism claims that goodness = happiness. That is a meta-ethical view about what goodness is. Once Utilitarianism has established that, it goes on to create the hedonic calculus and so on, making a system by which we can decide how we ought to act, which is the normative part of theory.Ethical Naturalism – is the view that goodness is something real in the world. Ethical language is meaningful as it describes some real property in the world. So ‘X is good’ is essentially the same type of statement in terms of how it is true as ‘X is made of wood’. It is made true by facts in the world. Utilitarianism claims that goodness = pleasure or happiness. Pleasure and happiness are natural properties (at least if you don’t believe in a non-natural soul). Meta-ethically, Utilitarianism is therefore a form of naturalism, moral realism and cognitivism.The linguistic claims of Utilitarian naturalism are straightforwardly that ethical language is cognitivist as it functions no differently to expression of any other type of belief about reality. To describe the color of the table, I say ‘the table is brown’. This is an indicative sentence expressing a belief about reality. The ethical language ‘stealing from a bank is good’ is no different for the utilitarian naturalist. It is an indicative sentence and a proposition about reality which will be either true or false depending on whether that particular action of stealing leads to the greatest happiness for the greatest number.Bentham’s Utilitarian naturalism: “Nature has placed us under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do … a man may pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while”. Bentham’s argument is that it is our human nature to seek pleasure and avoid pain, so that’s all there is for morality to be about. We just are the kind of thing which cannot help but find pleasure good and pain bad. Bentham claims we could try to pretend otherwise but cannot escape this nature. As this is a fact of our nature, it is therefore a fact that goodness = pleasure.Mill’s proof of utilitarianism attempted to prove that happiness was the one thing that people wanted for its own sake. He drew an analogy with sight, claiming that the only evidence for something being visible is that it is seen, and so the only evidence for something being desirable is that it is desired. The proof that happiness is desirable is therefore that it is desired. It follows for Mill that because he has proved that happiness is desirable, it therefore ought to be desired and so utilitarian naturalism is true.G. E. Moore argued that Mill commits the fallacy of equivocation here, which is when you use a word which has two meanings and fail to make it clear which meaning you intend in a way that damages your argument. ‘Visible’ does just mean ‘can be seen’ but to suggest it is analogous to ‘desirable’ is to equivocate as ‘Desirable’ could mean ‘capable of being desired’ but also ‘should be desired’. Mill has proved that people are capable of desiring happiness but not that happiness should be desired, so he has failed to show that goodness = happiness.Mill isn’t claiming absolute proof however. As an empiricist, Mill is looking for evidence. While it’s certainly the case that people can actually desire what they should not desire, nonetheless if there is something that everyone desires i.e. happiness, then that is evidence which makes it reasonable to infer that happiness should be desired. Hume’s law criticises naturalism. Hume said philosophers talk about the way things are and then jump with no apparent justification to a claim about the way things ought to be. Hume claimed this was a fallacy as is-statements do not entail ought-statements.?Hume argues that you could be aware of all the facts about a situation yet if you then pass a moral judgement, that clearly cannot have come from ‘the understanding’ nor be ‘the work of judgement’ but instead come from ‘the heart’ and is ‘not a speculative proposition’ but an ‘active feeling or sentiment’. This looks like an argument against realism but also against cognitivism and for non-cognitivism, specifically emotivism.To illustrate, take the example of abortion. Some argue that because a foetus develops brain activity at a certain time, it’s wrong to do abortion past that point. However, that inference has a hidden premise; that it’s wrong to kill something which has brain activity. It’s a fact that the foetus has brain activity, but that it’s wrong to kill something with brain activity does not seem like a fact nor derived from a fact. We might try and justify that further by suggesting that it’s wrong to kill human life or cause pain and so on. However, while it’s factual that there is such a thing as the ending of human life and the causing of pain, is it a fact that doing such things are wrong? We can easily imagine what sort of evidence establishes that ‘pain can be caused’ is a fact, but it’s not easy to see how to do that to establish that ‘it’s wrong to cause pain’ is a fact. Bentham does think that certain is-statements entail ought-statements but and gives an argument for that. He do not simply ‘leap’ from is to ought without justification, so as long as his argument works they could be considered to solve Hume’s is-ought gap.The open question argument is Moore’s main argument against naturalism.If goodness were identical to some natural property like happiness as utilitarians claim, then the statement 'Goodness is happiness' should be equal in meaning to 'happiness is happiness'. If A and B are identical, then they should be interchangeable such that 'A = B' should mean the same as 'B = B'. However, Moore argued that since a naturalist is claiming that goodness is a natural property (like happiness) then 'Goodness = X natural property' must be a synthetic statement about the world, yet 'happiness = happiness' is analytic. A synthetic statement cannot be equivalent in meaning to an analytic one, therefore they do not have the same meaning and therefore cannot be identical.A question is closed if it shows ignorance of the meanings of the terms involved to ask. A question is open if it does not display ignorance of those meanings to ask it. Since 'Goodness = X natural property' for a naturalist would be synthetic, one could be acquainted with the subject (goodness) but not the predicate (X natural property) and therefore would not necessarily be displaying ignorance of the terms involved to ask the question. Therefore, it will always be an open question whether goodness really is X natural property as we can always meaningfully and intelligibly ask the question 'is goodness really X natural property?'Some have argued that Moore’s argument is merely a case of the paradox of analysis. The reason for its failure is clearer when applied to the case of water and H2O. If H2O = water, then H2O = water should be equal in meaning to H2O = H2O. Yet the former is synthetic and the latter analytic. Moore’s logic seems to imply that water cannot be equivalent in meaning to H2O.W.D. Ross defended intuitionism from this criticism, arguing that in cases other than ‘goodness’, such as the water and H2O example, proper understanding of the definition of water as H2o will lead one to realise that ‘water = H2O’ is actually analytic. In that case, H2O = water is equivalent in meaning to H2O = H2O, and therefore water does = H2O. However due to Moore’s claim that ‘goodness’ cannot be defined, that cannot be done with goodness. No amount of understanding of the term ‘goodness’ can make you think that ‘goodness = happiness’ is equivalent to ‘happiness = happiness’.Arguably Moore can only prove that the linguistic concepts of goodness and happiness are distinct concepts that cannot be identical. Metaphysically, the property of goodness and the property of happiness could still be non-analytically identical. The concepts may be non-identical, but in this universe they might happen to be identical. For example, there is a possible world in which water is not H2O, so the concepts ‘water’ and ‘H2O’ are not analytically identical but do have synthetic identity in this universe. The same might be true of goodness and happiness in this universe. The distinct concepts of ‘goodness’ and ‘happiness’ when instantiated as properties in this universe might happen to refer to the same property. So, Moore’s proof of conceptual distinctness (analytic non-identity) does not rule out the synthetic property identity of goodness and happiness.Moore’s naturalistic fallacy was influenced by Hume and went on to argue that goodness can't be equated with any natural property (like happiness) as any attempt to do so commits the naturalistic fallacy. Moore claimed that we can’t define goodness. We can’t say what goodness is. It is like the color yellow - you can't describe or define yellow, you just experience it and can only point to yellow things. What is yellow? What does it look like? Just yellow... Moore says the same is true for goodness. Therefore, goodness can't be a naturalistic thing as naturalistic things can all be defined. So, we experience goodness, which Moore clams is due to a faculty of intuition.Moore’s Intuitionism holds that when we observe or reflect on a moral situation, such as someone stealing, our intuition gives us the proposition ‘stealing is wrong’, depending on the consequences. This isn’t reducing morality to some subjective feeling however. Just as all humans have no choice but to perceive the color yellow when looking at a yellow thing, Moore thinks humans have no choice but to apprehend the truth or falsity of a moral proposition when observing or reflecting on the relevant moral situation. He thinks this occurs because we apprehend ‘non-natural properties’. Intuitionism is cognitivist as Moore thinks that ethical language expresses a belief about the non-natural reality, which is based on an intuition. Moore is criticised for having an indulgent metaphysics of non-natural properties existing in a supersensible realm being somehow apprehended by a mysterious faculty of intuition. How could he possibly prove any of this?Moore responds by making an analogy between his non-natural notion of ‘goodness’ and numbers, saying that neither ‘exist’ but do have ‘being’ in some way. Moore says there is no supersensible reality. By ‘intuitive’ he only meant not inferred from other kinds of knowledge like logical or natural truths.Mathematics has other sources of verification however, such as its use in physics and engineering. It’s possible goodness functions similarly to maths, but does it? Moore is claiming both that there are truths which are neither natural nor logical truths which can be accessed in a non-empirical way. This is unacceptable to empiricists who would question how Moore could possibly know this. Isn’t it more evidence based and simpler to claim instead that intuitions come merely from upbringing and social conditioning, thereby making them subjective, anti-realist and relativistic?Moral disagreement. Not everyone has the same intuition about what is ethically good or bad. How can Moore explain moral disagreement if everyone has intuitive access to objectively true moral propositions?Moore firstly argued that people often fail to be as clear as possible in their ethical propositions. Moore secondly argued that the process of figuring out ethical truth required fitting your intuited moral propositions together which must be coherent, thereby requiring you to use reason which thereby provides room moral disagreement.Pritchard, an intuitionist, responds that moral disagreement occurs because some are less morally developed than others.But consider The Pope, the Dali lama, and Peter singer. All are very morally developed people, yet all differ radically in their conception of ethics. This could suggest that intuitions just come from culture and upbringing rather than a non-natural reality. That is the view of moral relativism.Moral relativism is the view that people’s intuitions about ethics do express cognitive truth claims, but that their ethical views are only true or false relative to an individual or culture, so true ‘for them’. Mackie argues that relativism is a better explanation of moral disagreement between different cultures than Intuitionism. People have moral intuitions, but they come from their culture or individual mind, they are not perceptions of a non-natural reality. Mackie thought that people spoke as if their ethical intuitions were objectively true but that there are no moral facts for them to be true about, so all ethical language is false. Mackie was a cognitivist but also an anti-realist.There are a set of core moral principles similar in all societies however, such as prohibitions on stealing and murder. This could suggest there is some absolutist moral truth that humans are somehow apprehending.Arguably societies have similar views on murder and stealing because a society which allowed such actions would fall apart and cease to exist. So societies have that core similarity because of practical necessity, not because of absolutist objective moral truths.Emotivism (non-cognitivist & anti-realist)Hume claimed that “reason is the slave of the passions”. There are everyday examples which illustrate this. When someone criticises your deeply held personal belief, your mind instantly starts thinking of counter-responses. If it cannot think of anything, it starts getting angry and projecting negative psychological motivations into the critic. This looks like your mind has pre-conceived feelings and the role of reason and rationality is merely to provide ad hoc rationalisations to serve our prejudices. Our mind is more like a lawyer than a scientist. This suggests emotivism is true because the cognitive part of the mind is a slave of the non-cognitive part which means that our ethical language is fundamentally expressing non-cognitions.Jonathan Haidt is a psychologist who argues that Hume was certainly right to think that the emotions influence our reasoned moral judgements, but claims that Hume went too far to call reason a ‘slave’ of the passions. Haidt instead argued that the emotions are like an elephant and reason is like a human riding on top of the elephant. For the most part, the elephant will just go wherever it likes, dragging the rider along with it. However the rider can exert some influence over the elephant, especially by paying careful attention to the sort of things that motivate the elephant. Hume’s theory of motivation holds that belief alone cannot motivate action as you need a desire for that – beliefs only providing knowledge of how to achieve that desire. This would rule out purely cognitive states as sufficient for motivating moral action and therefore ethical language must contain at least some non-cognitive element.It could be that ethical language expresses a belief which might cause desires which then motivate action. The ethical language is purely cognitive as it expresses only beliefs which then have secondary non-cognitive effects on us. However, this doesn’t explain why some beliefs motivate desires in some people but not others. If the belief has this secondary non-cognitive effect, shouldn’t it have that effect in anyone who believes it? McDowell responds that beliefs cause desires which then motivate action depending on the mind of the person, specifically their moral outlook and general understanding of how to live (virtue). That explains why the same belief causes a desire in some who might be virtuous but not others who might not be.Ayer agreed with G.E Moore's naturalistic fallacy argument, that 'goodness' could not be identical with any natural property. However, Ayer disregarded Moore's 'non-natural' properties solution as unverifiable. Ayer thinks we are therefore left with the position that there are neither natural nor non-natural moral properties in reality, so anti-realism is true. Ayer’s anti-realism relies on the success of Moore’s arguments against naturalism therefore, however, as his own theory only specifically targets intuitionism.Ayer accepted the fact-value distinction that Hume’s is-ought gap implied. Ayer also thought the connection between moral judgement and motivation and the connection between motivation and feeling, made it most plausible that emotions were the best candidate for explaining the psychological function of ethical language and its unverifiability. Unlike subjectivism which claims we are describing or reporting our feelings, Ayer thinks we are expressing them when using ethical language.Boo/hurrah theory. Ayer concluded ethical language was meaningless according to his verificationist theory of meaning,?since it can't be empirically verified nor is it analytically true. Ayer proposed that rather than attempting to describe reality, ethical language really expresses emotion. Saying 'X is good' is really akin to hitting ur toe on a chair and saying 'oww'. The meaning of 'oww' is that it expresses - it connects to - the part of your mind that feels pain. That feeling of pain is not a cognitive belief that could be true or false. It's the same with ethical language says Ayer - it connects to and expresses non-cognitive emotions, not cognitive beliefs. So 'X is wrong' is really 'boo to X', or 'X is good' is really 'hurrah to X'. Ayer’s metaphysical claims rely on the success of Moore’s arguments against naturalism. Utilitarian naturalism. If Bentham is correct in his metaphysical claims then naturalism is true which makes the metaphysical anti-realist position of emotivism false.The verification principle has the problem that it can't verify itself, so verificationism looks to be incoherent.Ayer claimed that his emotivism would survive even if verificationism and positivism failed. This is because he argued that ethical language was unverifiable because it was not fact stating. Ayer's claim is that there is nothing more to ethics than expressing emotion. It follows that there is no objective?truth nor falsity in ethics. Different people are not good or bad, they just have different emotional associations. Hitler had a particular emotional association towards Jews. There's nothing more that can be said, no way to say Hitler was 'really wrong', just that one might have a different emotional reaction than him.?Some bring up this sort of point as a criticism against emotivism since if this was believed by everyone then the world might descend into anarchy and chaos if there are no?objective ethical principles. This criticism in a way misses the point of meta-ethics however. Meta-ethics is just trying to determine what rightness and wrongness are. We may not like the result, it may indeed lead to the destruction of the world. But that doesn't mean it's incorrect. The science behind nuclear bombs may well end up destroying the world, but that doesn't mean it's incorrect. If ethics really is mere expression of emotion, then we can't disprove that merely by pointing out what would be the consequence of everyone believing that as an argument against its truth.Moral disagreement. Ayer’s dealing with Moore’s issue of moral disagreement simultaneously serves to defend emotivism from a criticism and provide an argument in its favour. Subjectivism is the view that ethical language reports or describes subjective feelings. Moore criticised subjectivism as being unable to explain moral disagreement. Two different subjective feelings cannot ‘disagree’ because they are not representations of objective reality. Ayer states that the impossibility of moral dispute follows from his emotivism too which means Moore’s argument from moral disagreement also applies to his theory. Two different emotions cannot be said to disagree. Ayer admits that people do engage in disputes which are ‘ordinarily’ thought of as disputes about value and have what can sound like rational arguments on either side of what seems like a debate. If ethical language were really just an expression of emotion, that should not be possible.Ayer claims that he can answer Moore’s critique by claiming that “one really never does dispute about questions of value”. Ayer claims that moral disagreements are either genuine disagreements about non-moral facts or not genuine disagreements. Ayer points out that when we disagree with someone morally, we ‘admittedly resort to argument’ to win them over to ‘our way of thinking’, but our arguments do not attempt to show that they have the ‘wrong’ ethical feeling towards a situation which they have ‘correctly apprehended’. Ayer claims that his analysis showing the impossibility of moral disagreement provides support for his claim that ethical language is not fact stating, since disagreement about facts is possible.Imagine persuading someone who was selfish to give to charity, however. They might well correctly apprehend all the relevant facts but still prefer to keep their money for themselves. The charity worker might then entreat the selfish person to empathize more with the suffering of others.Ayer could regard such entreating as not an argument, however. Statements such as ‘think of the children’ are not arguments nor what we properly understand to be a rational position in a dispute about something supposedly objective.Mackie’s arguments for cognitivism and against non-cognitivism. Mackie claims that objectivism about values has ‘a firm basis’ in ordinary thought and the meaning of ethical language. While he thought that metaphysically Moore was wrong to think ethical terms intuited some non-natural reality, nonetheless in moral contexts ethical terms ‘are used as if it were the name of a supposed non-natural quality’ (my emphasis).Mackie regarded emotivism as ‘part of the truth’ as it explains why ethical language is motivating of action, but claims it’s a ‘very natural reaction’ to non-cognitivism to “protest that there is more to ethics than this, something more external to the maker of moral judgements, more authoritative over both him and those of or to whom he speaks, and this reaction is likely to persist. Ethics, we are inclined to believe, is more a matter of knowledge and less a matter of decision than any non-cognitive analysis allows.” Naturalism satisfies this demand. Linguistically, however, naturalism only seems to allow for a purely descriptive and ‘inert’ ethical statements, which Mackie thinks ethical language clearly involves more than, e.g. motivation.Mackie illustrates his view with the case of a scientist doing research on bacteriological warfare who is in a state of moral perplexity, wondering whether it would be wrong of them to do such research. Mackie claims such a person would ultimately want to ‘arrive at some judgement about this concrete case. While his emotions and prescriptions will be part of the subject of the judgement, no such relation between the scientist and their proposed action will be part of the predicate. What they want to decide is not whether they really want to do the work, whether it will satisfy their emotions, whether they will have a positive attitude towards it in the long run, or whether the action is one they can happily, sincerely and rationally recommend or prescribe in all relevantly similar cases. What they ultimately want to know is whether this action is ‘wrong in itself’. Mackie thinks this is how ethical language is really commonly used. Mackie concludes that ‘ordinary moral judgements include a claim to objectivity, an assumption that there are objective values’. ConscienceThis module is divided into religious views on the conscience and psychological views on it.Religious views on conscienceAugustine had perhaps the simplest view, which is that the conscience is simply the voice of God speaking to us, telling us what is right and wrong. Psalm 51 'create in me a clean heart o god and put a new and right spirit within me'. Augustine claimed conscience isn't enough to make one virtuous, we also need God's grace. The ethical role of conscience for Augustine is therefore that it is a direct line to an?objectively true ethics.Different people's consciences tell them different things. Every Nazi soldier had 'God on our side' written on their belt buckle. However, Augustine could reply that God telling different people different things might be some part of his plan, which we simply can't understand.Christians like William Wilberforce disagreed with the privileging of conscience over the bible which they believed should be the primary source of ethics. However, Augustine could reply that if conscience really is the voice of God, surely it should have primacy over anything else? However, what about the situations when the conscience goes directly against the teachings of the church or bible? Couldn't we sometimes be mistaken or deluded about what we think our conscience is telling us? E.g mental illness, brain hallucinations, fasting, drugs, alcohol, the devil.Aquinas - believes all humans have a 'tendency to do good and avoid evil - the synderesis rule. Aquinas believed the conscience was an innate faculty given to us by God. We then develop this faculty throughout our life through synderesis and conscientia. Synderesis is our innate ability to know the primary precepts.?Conscientia is the application of them to new moral situations in the form of judgements. Aquinas said that reason plays a role in all stages of this process. Because human reason is fallible, the conscience thereby becomes fallible. We could be mistaken for example when we don't know a moral rule (mistake in synderesis)?or when we?don't?know that a general rule applies to a certain situation (mistake in conscientia). While Aquinas acknowledged that conscience can be mistaken through normal human reason errors, it could also be deliberately corrupted.Aquinas says conscience is reasoning used correctly to see what God sees as good, it is not just a voice inside us.Copleston argues that Aquinas is wrong to think conscience only involves reason - it also involves emotion. If so, this could potentially disrupt the ethical importance Aquinas placed on it. While reason can go wrong and therefore be corrected, if it is emotion that guides the conscience, it's hard to see how that could be corrected or even accurately described as correct or incorrect.The Bible says that we should “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding”. This suggests that Aquinas is wrong to think we should rely on our reason. Aquinas vs Augustine on human nature. Augustine thought human nature tended towards evil whereas Aquinas thought it tended towards good. Concupiscence.Arguably Augustine is wrong to think concupiscence is an essential part of our nature because people commit less crimes in modern society. Is it really true that there is a human nature which seeks to do good and avoid evil? What about violence embracing cultures like Nazism?Aquinas could respond that even in those cases, the problem is that errors in reasoning have led their good human nature astray. Nazi’s truly believed in ancient Nordic blood myths which they thought established their racial superiority, for example. But couldn’t we respond again that perhaps evil people actually seek these ideologies out because it gives them an excuse to be evil. In that case, they weren’t innately good people confused by an incorrect ideology, they were innately evil people who invented or cleaved to an ideology that gave that evil expression. Aquinas was not as aware of different cultures as we are today. As we now know, there are vastly different moral beliefs across cultures which suggests that there is not an innate God-given ability of reason to discover the natural law. Freud would argue that society conditions our moral views.However there do seem to be some core similarities between the moralities of different cultures such as not killing for no reason and rules about stealing. Moral thinkers from different cultures came up with similar moral prescriptions such as the golden rule to treat others as you would like to be treated, which can be found in ancient Chinese Philosophy, Hinduism, Judaism and Christianity.This might have resulted from a biologically evolved morality rather than one designed by a God however, which would mean it might carry no ethical weight for Aquinas’ purposes.Alternatively, cross-cultural morality might result merely from the basic requirement of a society to function. If anyone could kill or steal from anyone else for no reason whenever they wanted, it’s hard to see how a society could exist. That might create an existential pressure which influences the moral thinkers of a society, yielding prescriptions such as the golden rule. Cross-cultural ethics therefore has a practical reality as its basis, not God and not or not only evolution, notwithstanding the supernatural ascriptions of some moral thinkers who simply weren’t aware that their creativity was actually channelling more mundane pragmatic interests.A Marxist-style argument against Aquinas would be that those with power often claim human nature is such that society ought to be organised in a way which benefits them. Aquinas and the Catholic Church could be accused of this.Karl Barth argued that Aquinas’ natural law theory was a false natural theology which placed a dangerous overreliance on human reason. Barth argued that if humans were able to know God, including his moral commands, through their own efforts, then revelation would be unnecessary. Since God clearly thought revelation necessary as he sent Jesus, it follows for Barth that after the corruption of the fall, human reason cannot reach God. Whatever humans discover through reason is therefore not divine so to think it is must then amount to idolatry. Barth argued idolatry leads to worship of nations and then even to movements like the Nazis. Barth believed that as humans were fallen and thereby divorced from our created nature, God is ‘hidden’, meaning we cannot find him.Tillich responds that Barth’s critique relies on the difference between our essential nature and existential nature (meaning current, post-fall nature) being so different that there remains nothing left of our essential nature. Tilich argues this is not our experience however as we have a conscience and that “even a weak or misled conscience is still a conscience”, meaning that although humans did become corrupted by the fall, nonetheless we still retain something of our essential nature by which our reason and conscience might know something of God’s natural law.However, whatever a weak misled conscience discovers is surely not God’s morality. Also, arguably it seems that Tillich fails to respond to Barth’s argument that revelation would be purposeless if natural law ethics worked.Psychological views on the conscienceFreud thought the conscience was just the result of psychological forces that science could understand. Freud believed the mind was divided into the Id (our unconscious animalistic desires), Ego (Our conscious decision-making self) and the Super Ego (the part of us that stores the values we introjected ((unconsciously adopted)) from authority figures during childhood and is the source of our moral feelings). When a desire bubbles up from the unconscious Id into our conscious Ego, we become aware of wanting to act on it, but our Super Ego then tells us whether the values of our society allow it. If so, we can act on it. If not, we have been conditioned to repress that desire, which Freud thought responsible for many mental problems. The ethical implications is that conscience is not the voice of God in us, it is just what our society wants from us. Our society might be good or bad, therefore our conscience is not the best guide if Freud is right. Furthermore there might not even be a ‘good or bad’, if morality is merely the conditioning of societies on its members.Freud was influenced by Nietzsche who argued that human conscious mind (what Freud called the ego) developed by necessity when humans underwent the radical change from hunter-gatherer to farmer. Our natural animalistic instincts (What Freud called the Id) were of less use to us in the new environment of society, in fact they were a hinderance as they called on us to behave in ways that would make society fall apart. Consciousness emerged as the space in-between our instincts and the outside world as a mediator which had to decide which instincts to act on and which not to. The Strength of Freud is that he attempts to be an empirical scientist, meaning he bases his views on evidence and reason rather than faith. However, Freud has been criticised by contemporary psychologists for not being empirical enough. Karl Popper criticised Freud’s theory for being ‘unfalsifiable’ as it could not say what would prove it wrong. This means it is not true empiricism.If Freud is right then the conscience just tells us what authority figures have conditioned us to feel, it does not provide objective morality. That doesn’t mean it is false, however.Freud seems to contradict himself when he claims that those who do not regulate their id well are ‘maladaptive’, however, as that seems to smuggle in a value judgement which would thereby be inconsistent with his lack of objective morality. It is true that a mentally ill person is maladaptive to our society, but to suggest that is ‘bad’ is to presuppose that our type of society is ‘good’. How do different societies come to have similar rules over e.g. murder and theft? There are a set of core moral principles similar in all societies. This could suggest there is some absolutist moral truth that humans are somehow apprehending, perhaps from a God.Arguably societies have similar views on murder and stealing because a society which allowed such actions would fall apart and cease to exist. So, societies have that core similarity because of practical necessity, not because of absolutist objective moral truths.Alternatively, evolution could provide the explanation for that. Dawkins claimed that humans evolved a moral sense because we evolved in groups and developed social emotions like empathy. This suggests Freud is wrong to think that the conscience is completely socially conditioned since part of it is biological. However it does not suggest Freud is wrong to think the conscience can be explained in naturalistic terms, it’s just expanding the range of naturalistic explanations that together account for the conscience.Piaget was a contemporary psychologist who developed better empirical methods of experiment than Freud. He studied the development of children and argued that there occurs a fundamental shift in the nature of ‘conscience’. Before the age of 11 children have what he called heteronomous morality. This means they merely associate actions as bad because of the influence of their authority figures like parents. For example, an 8 year old child dangerously runs into a road and their parent yells at them. The child will learn not to do that again, but not because they have cognitively understood that running into the road will cause them injury or death which would be a bad thing, but because they merely associate the action of running into the road with the loud scary noise of their parents shouting occurring. After 11 year old however, Piaget argued that the autonomous morality develops in children, where they can begin to have abstract cognitive moral beliefs about how one ought to act and why.If Piaget is correct and the conscience develops over time, this seems to argue against the possibility of it being the voice of God in us, since God’s commands are eternal and unchanging – they do not develop over time. Aquinas’s theory might be safe from this criticism however, since their theory of conscience involve its development over time.Augustine could potentially respond by arguing that God speaks to young children differently than older ones, though this seems a bit far-fetched. It also seems to misunderstand Piaget’s view. The Heteronomous morality is not merely a voice ‘in a different way’, but really a non-cognitive purely associative part of the mind. The strength of Piaget is that his work is based on empirical evidence, not faith.Sexual EthicsThere are two kinds of arguments religious people make regarding sexual ethics:1 – Biblical. God commands that some sexual behaviour is wrong.2 – telos. This style of argument is found in Aquinas’ natural law and Catholicism. God designed sex in a particular way to be between a man and a woman within marriage. In that case, going against our nature will make us unhappy.Homosexuality. The Bible on Homosexuality.The old testament (Leviticus) states that homosexual acts are punishable by death.Some theologians regard that chapter of Leviticus as a ‘holiness code’ which stopped being applicable after Jesus’ sacrifice. Leviticus also contains rules against eating shellfish or wearing clothes of both cotton and wool at the same time, which most Christians do not follow, including the Christians who think homosexuality is sinful. That is an inconsistency.Pro-LGBT Christians point out that all the commandments are fulfilled by loving God and loving others, and that the bible tells us not to judge people.Arguably they are using a secular version of love and projecting that onto GodThey also argue that ancient tribal societies needed sexual ethics which kept the traditional family structure together as that would most efficiently enable children to be born and raised, to follow the commandment to ‘go forth and multiply’. However, in modern times, society is no longer in so desperate a state so arguably the commandments against homosexuality no longer apply.This assumes God’s motivation. The bible doesn’t say what God’s motivation for commanding homosexuality immoral is however, so that is just speculation. Humans feeling like they can speculate about God’s intentions is dangerous.Sodom and Gemorah are often pointed to as showing that God is against homosexuality. Pro-LGBT Christians respond that homosexual acts are never mentioned as the crimes of the inhabitants of that city, it is a failure to take care of the poor and lack of hospitability that is mentioned.When discussing marriage, Jesus claims it is between a man and a woman.Telos: The Catholic Church on homosexuality.Aquinas regarded homosexuality as unnatural because it required a divergence from what he thought was the natural mode of sex. This means the homosexual orientation, though feeling natural to homosexuals, cannot be so. Aquinas thought that not all inclinations were natural in the sense that they were part of God’s natural law.The catechism of the catholic church claims that homosexuality is against the natural law as it divorces sex from the gift of life and is thus against God’s design.Pope Ratzinger argued that “Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder.Stephen Fry (secular) responded that religion is repressive of homosexual feelings: “It’s hard for me to be told that I’m evil, because I think of myself as someone who is filled with love … with 6% of all teenage suicides being gay teenage suicides, we certainly don’t need the stigmatization, the victimization that leads to the playground bullying when people say you’re a disordered morally evil individual.”Augustine said ‘Love the sinner hate the sin’. Many Christians claim only to be against homosexual acts, since that is all the bible mentions, not the homosexual orientation. So Christians respond that they don’t claim Fry is evil only that his homosexual actions are evil.Bishop Barron argued that if the first and only message gay people hear is that they are ‘intrinsically disordered’ then the Church has a serious problem. The first message is that gay people are a ‘beloved child of God … invited to a full share in the divine life’Christopher Hitchens (secular) rejects the kind of arguments Augustine and Barron make as ‘revolting casuistry’ and claimed that this supposed separation of sinner from sin was absurd in the case of homosexuality since their homosexual actions come from their nature. He claimed that homosexuals are not condemned by the Church for what they do but for what they are and that the Church have no moral standing to criticise the sexual behaviour of others because of its complicity in the paedophile priest scandal. Hitchens claims the Catholic Church’s position is: “You’re a child made in the image of God? Oh no you’re not, you’re a faggot and you can’t join your church and you can’t go to heaven.” Hitchens rejoinds that: “This is disgraceful. It’s inhuman. It’s obscene, and it comes from a clutch of hysterical, sinister virgins who’ve already betrayed their charge in the children of their own Church. For Shame.”Bishop Barron would respond that all humans have desires which God’s law prohibits.However, when the entire object of someone’s natural sexual orientation is defined as sinful it seems homosexuals are especially condemned.Gay conversation therapy involves a range of ‘treatments’ from talking through the ‘problem’ of homosexual feelings with a therapist to electroshock therapy. The scientific basis for this therapy is highly questionable. Is it ethical to subject people to this, considering that in some parts of the world they will be ostracised by their community and even family if they don’t? Is that social coercion ethical? Anti-homosexuality arguments:The rate of suicide, drug use, mental illness and homelessness among homosexual people is higher than it is for heterosexual people. Some argue this shows it is an immoral lifestyle and should be condemned.Isn’t this the result of a homophobic culture telling them they are bad?Two parents who are of the same sex – two fathers or two mothers. Some argue a child is at a disadvantage without having either a mother or a father, because each provides a certain kind of parenting role. If so, should that mean homosexuals should be denied adoption rights?Some argue that when you get a bunch of males who find each other sexually attractive together, you of course get extreme promiscuity and hedonism. Traditionalists argue that this leads to unhappy lives and relationships. There is evidence that homosexual relationships do not last as long at heterosexual ones.Pre-marital sex – Is it right to have sex before marriage, or not? What should the age of consent be? There are statistics which show that people who wait to have sex until they are married are more likely to have a happy marriage – what conclusion should we draw from this? Is there anything problematic about separating sex and love? But can’t love exist outside marriage? Arguments from evolutionary psychology suggest that it might be especially harmful to women to have pre-marital sex.Evolution stuff and the two reproductive strategies for men vs the one for women. Men programmed to sleep around, women programmed not to.Studies show that those who wait for marriage to have sex are more likely to stay together, have increased relationship satisfaction, better communication and more sexual enjoyment.Early 21st century youth culture is sexualised to a degree many Christians find concerning. Hook-up culture influences young people to regard sex as an opportunity for higher social status. Extra-marital sex Fletcher points to the example of adultery, often thought absolutely wrong. He explains the case of a mother trapped in a prison work camp during a war. The only conditions of release are either disease or pregnancy, so she asked a guard to impregnate her, thus committing adultery. She was released, her family ‘thoroughly approved’ of her action and loved the resulting child as their own. The implication is that wrongness is not absolute, it depends on the situation.Some Christians argue that sex was designed by God to join man and woman as ‘one flesh’ in a loving marriage. Having sex outside of that erodes the soul because your flesh becomes one with multiple people.Hanna Rosin, a secular feminist, argues that hook-up culture gives women freedom and confidence. “for most women the hook up culture is like an island they visit, mostly during their college years … but it’s not a place where they drown.” She argues the best research shows that women ‘benefit greatly from living in a world where they can have sexual adventure without commitment or shame and where they can enter into temporary relationships that don’t get in the way of future success”. Women who choose a variety of sexual partners and steer clear of pesky relationships ‘manage their romantic lives like savvy head-hunters’. Bishop Barron responds that freedom, confidence and self-reliance are only valuable if we use them to seek the good. He points out there is an ‘almost complete lack’ of reference to the moral and ethical setting for sex, the purpose and meaning of sex or religious context for sexuality, which he concludes is irrelevant to Rosin who only cares about women becoming free, confident head-hunters, which Barron finds revealing as a phrase as it suggests a self-interested ego disconnected from external objective good which thereby turns inward and cares only about itself in a self-absorbed and finally destructive way. Barron argues this is the reason for the ‘deep sadness’ that comes out of the hook-up culture.There are statistics which show that the younger someone is when they first have sex and the more sexual partners they have while young, the more likely they are to be homeless, drug addicted and mentally ill.Even if these statistics showed that premarital sex was the cause of such negative quality of life, that would not prove that going against the design of sex by a God was the reason for that. There could be other explanations such as evolutionary psychology or cultural prejudice/conditioning, which Ockham’s razor would prefer. Nonetheless, if it is true that people are psychologically harmed by having sex too young, that seems to count against the morality of premarital sex regardless of whether it’s due to going against God’s will or design.These statistics do not even show that premarital sex is the cause of negative quality of life however. It could be the case that the younger someone who first has sex is, the more likely it is that what drove them to have sex was some pre-existing mental condition or negative life circumstance such as poverty or abuse, which would then be the actual cause of the later negative quality of life. The sexual behaviour would then be at most an exacerbating influence and only in their case would it be so, because it was for them a symptom of underlying issues. Those who engage in promiscuity for healthier reasons will not be damaged, goes this interpretation of the data.Freud: religious repression of sexual behaviour causes mental illnessFreud thought that traditional Christian attitudes towards sex resulted in repression which was the cause of mental illness in society. Nietzsche made the further point that Christianity not only represses desire but encourages people to view their natural desires as evil, adding an additional negative psychological twist. The modern secular attitude towards sex embraces Freud’s views, thinking that sex is a natural biological desire which shouldn’t be a source of shame but of hedonistic opportunity for pleasure and even spiritual fulfilment.Arguably Christianity’s repression of sexual desire made more sense in ancient times when humans were more animalistic, less socialised, less domesticated. Strict rules and harsh penalties might have been effective then. However today arguably humans have developed to the point where they can be trusted with more freedom. Stephen Fry, a gay writer and speaker, argues that the paedophile priest scandal was influenced by the Church’s repressive attitude towards sex, pointing to “the twisted, neurotic and hysterical way that [the Church] leaders are chosen; the celibacy, the nuns, the monks the priesthood. This is not natural and normal.”Fry is suggesting that the sexual repressiveness of the Church causes it to act terribly. This is the idea Freud and Nietzsche had – that repressed desires often come out in other ways, sometimes negatively so.Bishop Barron responds by pointing out that the vast majority of child sex abusers in the general population are not celibate so it’s an invalid inference to connect the two in the case of priests.However Barron arguably misses the point of the objection, which is that paedophilia like tendencies might be caused by all sorts of sexual dynfunctions, of which celibacy may only be one.Fry then responds to the Church’s claim that they are not repressed, modern secular society is simply oversexualised.“They will say we with our permissive society and rude jokes are obsessed [with sex]. No, we have a healthy attitude. We like it, it’s fun, it’s jolly. Because it’s a primary impulse it can be dangerous and dark and difficult. It’s a bit like food in that respect only even more exciting. The only people who are obsessed with food are anorexics and the morbidly obese, and that in erotic terms is the catholic Church in a nutshell.”Fry is claiming that secular attitudes towards sex are healthier.Private vs public refers to the debate between liberal and authoritarian political philosophies. Typically, liberal thought claims a sharp distinction between public and private life and recommends that what people do in their private life be of no interest to the state or law, unless harm is caused to others. Authoritarian thought however claims that there are some practices which the state has a duty to prohibit even in the private lives of individuals, even if they are hurting no one but themselves, or indeed no one at all, because authoritarians think the consequences of widespread practice of the offence in question will be harmful to the society, to the public.The Wolfenden report was an important government report which recommended that the duty of the law be confined to activities which offend against public order, not private morals, which are no business of the law. Although the report was specifically about homosexuality, it sparked debate about the purpose of legislation related to private acts generally.The Wolfenden report claimed that “not all sins are properly given the status of crimes … to say this is not to condone the wrongness of the acts, but to put them in the realm of private moral responsibility”.Barclay points to examples of homosexuality, divorce and birth out of wedlock as issues the laws have relaxed around. He claims “the trouble is that once a thing is not forbidden, it may be felt not only to be permitted but to be encouraged … what the law permits, it approves.” Barclay views the problems of modern society as regarding how to balance the tension between immorality and illegality. He thought the solution is to discover what Jesus meant when he said, “love your neighbour as yourself”.Lord Devlin made secular authoritarian arguments that homosexuality should be subject to social norms and legislation. He claimed that society has the ‘right to eradicate’ vices so ‘abominable’ that their ‘mere presence is an offense’.Devlin’s first argument is that society has the right to protect itself. Devlin claims the purpose of the law is to guard against threats to the existence of the society. A society cannot survive without some moral standards of the sort which are imposed on all. He claims ‘history shows’ that loosening moral bonds is ‘often the first stage of disintegration’. A society is not held together ‘physically; it is held by the invisible bonds of common thought’. Since a society has a right to continue existing it must therefore have a right to impose some moral standards by law. If the feelings of an ordinary average person are of ‘intolerance, indignation and disgust’ then that is an indication of potential danger to the social fabric should those feelings not be backed by law.Arguably Devlin makes the assumption that when a majority feels something to be immoral that they are likely correct.Devlin would respond that his argument is actually not dependent on a majority being correct or incorrect, only that when public morality is challenged, regardless of whether it is correct or incorrect, the stability and survival of society is also challenged.H. Hart argues it is absurd to claim that the survival of society is threatened by the practice of something widely considered extremely immoral and disgusting and points out that Devlin offers no evidence for that.Devlin responds that he didn’t mean any perceived immoral practice threatened society’s existence, but that it’s sometimes possible.He provides no evidence for the case of homosexuality being such a case however.Devlin’s second argument is that the majority has a right to follow its moral views in defending its social environment from change it opposes. If homosexuality were not subject to public norms or legislation, the social environment, especially the nature of the family, would change in ways difficult to foresee. The environment in which people live and raise their children is affected by the behaviours and modes of relationships that other people engage with in their private life. The private therefore affects the public, which gives grounds for subjecting private life to public norms or legislation if the private practice sufficiently threatens a public good for which it is worth the cost to human freedom to protect. The implication is that the traditional family may be such a public good.Legalising and normatively accepting homosexuality arguably has not caused the damage to the family that secular thinkers like Devlin and some religious leaders like Archbishop J Welby worried that it would. There is no evidence that children raised by homosexual parents are worse off, for example.Nonetheless, Devlin is arguably right at least to point out that community is an important part of human society. Community is arguably dependent on shared bonds.However, communities can change and indeed should progress. Devlin’s argument seems to make that difficult in any area, not only homosexuality. While community is dependent on shared bonds, Mill’s view that they can be freely chosen or not by different individuals is arguably sufficient for cohesion and clearly allows for change.Archbishop Ramsey backed the Wolfenden report. He thought homosexual acts were ‘always wrong’ because he thought they involved the wrong use of human organs. Ramsey argued, however, that laws against homosexuality “do not help morality”, since they prevent homosexuals from getting the help he thought they needed, whether pastoral or psychological, to either change their orientation if possible or help them control themselves so they stop acting on it if not.Although Ramsey respected the private lives of homosexuals, he arguably still contributes to their suffering by pushing the view that there is something wrong with them. In fact his argument for backing the private morality tenant of the Wolfenden report seems to depend on that better serving his desire for the curing or controlling or homosexual behaviour.Ramsey thought that the role of the Church in society was changing due to secularisation, which would cause the separation of ‘sin’ from ‘crime’, which Ramsey thought both ‘inevitable and right’.Historian S Brewitt-Taylor thinks Ramsey was unjustified in claiming secularism was inevitable however, pointing to the diverse ways in which religious communities exist globally. The myth of the inevitability of secularism was part of its cultural force and even swept up people like Ramsey.J. S. Mill, a secular liberal, argues that the fact that something is religiously wrong, when used as motivation for legislation, can ‘never be too earnestly protested against’ since ‘it remains to be proved that society or any of its offices holds a commission from on high to avenge any supposed offence to omnipotence, which is not also a wrong to our fellow creatures. The notion that it is one man’s duty that another should be religious was the foundation of all the religious persecutions ever perpetrated and if admitted would fully justify them’.Mill discusses what for most Christians is considered immoral extra-marital sex – polygamy, which is allowed in the Mormon faith. He notes the language of ‘downright persecution’ traditional Christians use when discussing it, many of whom express “that it would be right, only that it is not convenient, to send an expedition against them and compel them by force to conform to the opinions of other people”.However, Mill argues that even if some genuinely suffer due to their sexual practices, as long as there is consent amongst all those involved, so long as those who suffer due to the practices do not seek aid from other communities and are allowed ‘perfect departure’ from their community, then he ‘cannot admit that persons entirely unconnected with them ought to step in and require that a condition of things with which all who are directly interested appear to be satisfied should be put an end to because it is a scandal to persons some thousands of miles distant who have no part or concern in it.”Mill thought that sending missionaries is acceptable though: ‘let them send missionaries, if they please, to preach against it, and let them by any fair means, of which silencing the teachers is not one, oppose the progress of similar doctrines among their own people’. Mill thought that people should be free to do as they like as long as they do not harm others. This includes consensual sexual behaviours which are private, however people are also free in public to attempt to persuade others of which sexual norms to follow, though that persuasion can only take the form of argument, never force nor legislation. Mill’s conception of society is of individuals each pursuing what seems good to them, their only universal bond being the wrongness or illegality of harming others.Devlin thought instead that society was held together by the bonds of ‘common thought’ which, if loosened, would cause social dissolution. The price of society is bondage to a common morality.Mill thought his harm principle was required to prevent the dissolution of society, so arguably Mill and Devlin only disagree about which common morality is required for society to exist, not whether one is required.“The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental or spiritual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest”. – J S Mill ................
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