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Foundation for Ethical Theories

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Foundation for Ethical Theories
Hanover
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Posted 04/16/09 - 05:32 AM:
Subject: Foundation for Ethical Theories 		quote post
#1
Utilitarianism holds that the good is that which brings about the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number, but the theory seems to be a justification for those acts that we already know to be right and wrong. Kantian ethics works the same way. That is, we seem to already know right from wrong, and then we have come upon a theory that explains why we think that way. However, in unusual examples (for instance, should we sacrifice an innocent person to save two other people), we often question the legitimacy of the moral theory when it yields a result we find incorrect and we then tinker with the theory to give us a result that comports with our basic beliefs.

My question is: Is an immoral act simply an act that we find distateful (Hume's emotivism) that we then intellectualize and declare immoral for utlitarian (or whatever) reasons? It seems to me that our emotional reaction (as opposed to our intellectual response) to an event is primary when we decide whether the event is immoral. In addition, it seems that the emotional reaction has priority over the intellectual justification, meaning that if our intellectual justification approves of an act that we find emotionally distasteful, we will find the act immoral anyway. That is, emotion trumps the intellect when we make moral decisions and is the true foundation for our moral beliefs regardless of the intellectual justifications we create after the fact.

Thoughts?
"Nothing is impossible for the man who will not listen to reason." John Belushi, "Animal House"
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Mako
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Posted 04/16/09 - 07:03 AM:
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#2
Hanover wrote:
That is, emotion trumps the intellect when we make moral decisions and is the true foundation for our moral beliefs regardless of the intellectual justifications we create after the fact.

Thoughts?


Yes, but isn't that what we call rationalizing? Hasn't that often led to what we would typically refer to as immoral acts, even acts of horror? If it all comes down to emotions, then there are about 7 billion moral theories on our planet and where does that leave us?

Morality is in part about overcoming emotions.

I've often wondered why people subscribe to emotivism. So are you claiming that however one reacts in response to an emotion is ok? I'm not saying you are claiming that but if so, how can that possibly be? Doesn't that often lead to to horrible acts?

I would think that any moral theory worthy of being called 'moral' would obligate that actions be performed 'in spite of' or separate from one's emotional response, thereby trumping the emotion. If someone's angry with you and wants to kill you, wouldn't you rather hope that he/she has a ratinal-moral core which might overcome the negative feelings?


Merely claiming that we experience emotions arising from what we observe or experience really doesn't say much at all. Saying emotions are ubiquitous to human experience is also consistent with a theory which say for example, makes the claim that they arise from and correspond to more fundamental features such as as 'reasons/justifications' or perhaps are generated from other features which ground our broader capacity for rational agency. Such a theory could still account for the ubiquity of emotions while simultaneously maintaining that they are affective consequences of underlying structures.

I would suggest that the apparent primacy of emotions arises from the fact that emotions are more 'percussive' than reasons, which require more careful evaluation. Simply because emotions have a raw kind of immediacy to them does not necessarily imply that they should ground any moral theory.

Mako

Edited by Mako on 04/16/09 - 07:32 AM
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klubbit
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Posted 04/16/09 - 07:10 AM:
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#3
I think there's another thread discussing whether the basis for ethics is reason or intuition. You might find some useful responses there.

EDIT: Here is the link.
Hanover
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Posted 04/16/09 - 08:38 AM:
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Mako wrote:


I would suggest that the apparent primacy of emotions arises from the fact that emotions are more 'percussive' than reasons, which require more careful evaluation. Simply because emotions have a raw kind of immediacy to them does not necessarily imply that they should ground any moral theory.

Mako

I'm not just saying emotions have primacy, but they seem also to have priority. Perhaps it's not purely emotive, maybe it's intutitive, or even perhaps a priori, but my suggestion is that moral theories are devised by listing out those acts we find as "bad" and then listing out those acts we find as "good" and then we arive at an over-riding theory that explains why the acts go in the particular columns. That is, we acknowledge that murder is bad, that theft is bad, that rape is bad and then we move backwards and figure out why it is that we've said that. Utilitarianism may offer a 99% accuracy rate in properly describing the list of acts that we call "good," but it's the 1% I'm interested in. My question then is, how can we say that a result of utilitarianism is false unless we have some other more powerful theory that we're relying upon?

None of this necessarily leads to the moral relativism that you've suggested. It only asks what is the root of morality.
"Nothing is impossible for the man who will not listen to reason." John Belushi, "Animal House"
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MensRea
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Posted 04/16/09 - 01:17 PM:
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#5
It seems to me that our emotional reaction (as opposed to our intellectual response) to an event is primary when we decide whether the event is immoral. In addition, it seems that the emotional reaction has priority over the intellectual justification, meaning that if our intellectual justification approves of an act that we find emotionally distasteful, we will find the act immoral anyway. That is, emotion trumps the intellect when we make moral decisions and is the true foundation for our moral beliefs regardless of the intellectual justifications we create after the fact.

It seems troubling to me that the standard by which ethical theories seems to be judged is conformity to our intuitions. We certainly are loathe to adopt theories that have intuitively troubling consequences, whatever their foundation is. As a project, then, it seems like ethics tends to be one of rationalization rather than a sincere study of right action.

I also wonder what a genuine ethical theory should look like. At the end, we have to be able to produce normative statements. We can't logically conclude normative statements without normative premises. Normative premises have to include some value judgments. At base, then, it seems that to construct an ethical theory we have to begin with some value assumptions. For utilitarians, pleasure and pain are the relevant scale of value. We might alternatively posit that some rights are inherently valuable, or that some virtues are. I'm not sure that it's possible to come to agreement on this, however, and I'm not sure how to approach arguments regarding them. As such, I'm not sure how to universalize to any proper ethical system.
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Posted 04/16/09 - 01:26 PM:
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Wolfman wrote:
I might call into question whether utilitarianism has even any accuracy rate at all, at least in terms of morality. Ethical utilitarianism, like mathematics, deals with calculations. The difference, however, is that utilitarianism ultimately places us in a position where our only response can be "not enough information given." It would be a greivous mistake to force a solution based on insufficient data. The result is a theory that places us where we think the bullseye is, but not in it. Furthermore, can we even know where the bullseye is, or if it even exists? The number of assumptions that ethical utilitarianism makes is problematic, not only when considering an aftermath, but also in its fundamental principles. Occasionally I admire utilitarianism for its sometimes practical (although muddled) attractiveness, but I abhor it as an ethical theory.

Is it really as bad as that though? I mean, if at base we accept that maximizing utility is really the proper standard for what is ethical, then is it really fatal to the theory just to say that it's hard to perform the calculations?

There seem to be easy cases, and these are the cases we typically consider easy to condemn. Clearly the robber that shoots his victim doesn't gain more utility for the watch than his victim lost with his life, and the rapist doesn't get more pleasure in the act than his victim loses in pain and sorrow. When the math gets tricky is when we start talking about tricker ethical questions, but why should ethics always be an easy business?
Mako
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Posted 04/16/09 - 04:48 PM:
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MensRea wrote:

Is it really as bad as that though? I mean, if at base we accept that maximizing utility is really the proper standard for what is ethical, then is it really fatal to the theory just to say that it's hard to perform the calculations?


The fact that it's hard to perform the calculations makes it impractical in certain kinds of situations which require quick judgements. Morality is implicitly a practical outlook, and the required evaluations should be performable under virtually any set of circumstances by a typical, rational adult. But what about children, one might ask? Are they somehow required to make moral judgements, say at the age of 9, for example?

With children who don't yet possess their full rational capacities, we can see that moral judgements typically reduce to more or less simple commands, i.e., deontological considerations: 'You musn't do this!,' 'It's wrong to do that.' Those commands are effected by a proxy agent, typically a caregiver (I'm describing my own specific view). Now I'm not claiming that duty fully exhausts any set of moral considerations since morality should also be concerned with the preservation of a domain of rights.

My point with children is that pertaining to moral devlelopment, we typically begin with a simpler form of what will they will later develop and which will be required of them as they mature and gain a broader capacity for rationality. That 'form' requires some conception of duty, commands.

MensRea wrote:

There seem to be easy cases, and these are the cases we typically consider easy to condemn. Clearly the robber that shoots his victim doesn't gain more utility for the watch than his victim lost with his life, and the rapist doesn't get more pleasure in the act than his victim loses in pain and sorrow. When the math gets tricky is when we start talking about tricker ethical questions, but why should ethics always be an easy business?


If the recipient is 90 and has terminal cancer, is it ok to steal his Rolex?

My problem with more naive forms of utilitarianism is that it doesn't recognize the principle of the separateness of persons. An individual's utilities are merely aggregated with the utilities of others in arriving at a mathematical result. What you've presented here does not seem to be a form of utilitarianism which does recognize that separateness which I believe is essential to any viable, practicable theory of morality.


Mako


Edited by Mako on 04/16/09 - 04:59 PM
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MensRea
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Posted 04/16/09 - 05:45 PM:
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Mako wrote:


The fact that it's hard to perform the calculations makes it impractical in certain kinds of situations which require quick judgements. Morality is implicitly a practical outlook, and the required evaluations should be performable under virtually any set of circumstances by a typical, rational adult. But what about children, one might ask? Are they somehow required to make moral judgements, say at the age of 9, for example?

I'm not sure that morality is "implicitly a practical outlook." I'm also not sure that it needs to be simple to perform moral calculations quickly. Couldn't we just say that quick moral judgments are more likely to come out wrong than those that are thoroughly considered? Couldn't we just say that children are less able to make moral judgments than adults, and that as such adults should give children moral guidance? I'm not sure that the simple instructions offered to a child need to be a part of what at base constitutes ethics. We might tell a child "don't pull your sister's hair," but that doesn't necessarily translate into a fundamental duty not to pull the hair of others. It may simply be the most practical language for the parent to use to get the child to maximize utility (not cause distress to his sister).
If the recipient is 90 and has terminal cancer, is it ok to steal his Rolex?

If I'm a utilitarian, I don't have any trouble biting this bullet. We can come up with worse examples than that, however. For example, perhaps my wife has a heart and kidneys that could be transplanted to save two lives if I were to kill her. Assuming that each saved life is of equal utility to my wife, I would be doing the laudable thing to kill her (assuming there aren't lives of lower utility from which we can harvest the organs). Intuitively this is very troubling, but I'm not certain that appeal to intuition is the best form of argument. If the utilitarian argument is valid, we should be objecting to one of its premises rather than its conclusion.

My problem with more naive forms of utilitarianism is that it doesn't recognize the principle of the separateness of persons. An individual's utilities are merely aggregated with the utilities of others in arriving at a mathematical result. What you've presented here does not seem to be a form of utilitarianism which does recognize that separateness which I believe is essential to any viable, practicable theory of morality.

I don't intend to put forward any complete account of utilitarianism, I am merely objecting to the method of attacking its conclusions rather than its premises (seemingly a common method in ethics). As I understand it, utilitarianism doesn't account for the separateness of persons. Is this an objection to the utility-value premise -- that utility should account for some separateness to persons? I'd certainly be open to some such possibility. I'm not familiar with any non-naive form of utilitarianism that does.
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Posted 04/16/09 - 09:16 PM:
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Wolfman wrote:
Ethical utilitarianism makes assumptions based on uncertainty. This hardly makes for a consistent ethical system. It’s a game played fast and loose. When it comes to the weather report, I’ll take my chances with prediction; but when it comes to morality, we need something more concrete.

This seems like a vague assertion to me. Can you provide an example as to why this is a problem? I'm not sure that utilitarian assumes any more than its basic premise that we ought to pursue actions that maximize utility (some measure of pleasure vs. pain, varying depending on your flavor of utilitarianism). Perhaps the theory asks the agent applying it to "make assumptions based on uncertainty," because it asks the agent to estimate the outcome of his actions. I'm not sure that this is any different from what we normally do, however. Certainly I'm concerned with the likely results of my actions intuitively, I don't know that utilitarianism adds any undue baggage. In fact, I think it adds much less than some competing theories, such as Kantian ethics.

Wolfman wrote:
Firstly, the system can not account for the idea that some people are more important than others.

I'm not sure what you're saying. Are you saying that unequal treatment is something utilitarianism lacks, or that it can't account for why it is unequal? I am not sure that unequal treatment would actually be part of my desiderata for an ethical theory, but I think that it is prevalent in utilitarianism. The life of a young boy is, for example, more valuable than that of an old man. Presuming life is on average of positive utility, the boy has more left to live than the old man.

Wolfman wrote:
Secondly, it can not respond to the objection that some people deserve more happiness than others. Utilitarianism does not care who benefits from happiness, and it is blind in this respect. Also, ethical utilitarianism can not account for certain human values, e.g., integrity. In fact, it does not allow for it.

You're right, and this is where I think you need to attack utilitarianism. You're getting at its core value assumptions. I think you're arguing from intuition here, though. I'm not sure there's an argument to be offered that just deserts, or integrity are more valuable than maximizing utility. You're just baldly asserting that your values trump utility. I don't think this is any more of a problem with utilitarianism than it is for most any ethical theory.

Wolfman wrote:
It's not looking so good, but let's get to the meat of the matter. Ethical utilitarianism requires an objective observer in order to operate consistently. Good luck finding that confused A practical outlook on life? Sometimes. A good consistent ethical system? It will have to do better than that.

In fact, I think it would need more than that. Utilitarianism would probably require an omniscient observer to produce entirely consistent outcomes for all actions. I'm not sure that this is a problem, though. Certainly biased observers will come to different conclusions in the hard cases than objective observers will, but utilitarianism provides a standard of argument by which the case can be made that an act is moral or immoral. I don't see any reason to think ethical judgments should always be easy or obvious.
Mako
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Posted 04/17/09 - 02:22 AM:
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MensRea wrote:

I'm not sure that morality is "implicitly a practical outlook." I'm also not sure that it needs to be simple to perform moral calculations quickly. Couldn't we just say that quick moral judgments are more likely to come out wrong than those that are thoroughly considered? Couldn't we just say that children are less able to make moral judgments than adults, and that as such adults should give children moral guidance? I'm not sure that the simple instructions offered to a child need to be a part of what at base constitutes ethics. We might tell a child "don't pull your sister's hair," but that doesn't necessarily translate into a fundamental duty not to pull the hair of others. It may simply be the most practical language for the parent to use to get the child to maximize utility (not cause distress to his sister).


I apologize for the length of this reply. If you should choose to respond to it, I certainly don't expect you to respond to every point.

Ok, so you're 'not' sure that morality is implicitly practical. Could you explain why? Are you then claiming the opposite? I don't know, you simply state that you're 'not sure.'

I would say that any moral theory 'must' be practical, otherwise what's the point in holding it up as a moral theory, one which obligates(?) agents to use practical means in order to meet its requirements.
It's a rather odd, counterintuitive assumption which you don't support; you merely question the validity of your detractors' claims.


In the final analysis, any theory making normative claims against the judgements/actions of agents should be justifiable to flesh-and-blood, empirical beings such as ourselves who must at least be capable of complying with the requirements of the theory. Requirements which are too burdensome are fundamentally unjust in my view. Any burden should be justifiable reciprocally between agent and authority, and compatible with the capacity of an agent to meet that requirement.

To whom are you justifying the theory? May I assume for our purposes you're not simply suggesting that people simply submit to utilitarian rules by fiat but that you're attempting to ground it rationally in order that human agents may understand and consent to it (or not) freely?

I agree with Wolfman that the requirements of utilitarianism are unreasonable. I don't simply mean the demands are difficult, but that they're impossible and thus irrational demands. It's impossible to take into account all the future or even more immediate consequences of one's actions and it's impossible (I'm paraphrasing)to aggregate as Wolfman claimed, incommensurable values.


Whose definiton of utility should we accept? What kind of trade-offs would there be between 'total' and 'average' happiness/well-being etc.? Are we all obligated to accept the same calculus? If so, what would ground that obligation? Or is the specific utilitarian model simply handed-down from 'on high?'

In addition, how could a utilitarian adjudicator possibly assess the moral consequences of actions based upon the innumerable decisions made by people in everyday situations and how would blame/praise be apportioned based on innumerable and I would say incalculable downstream consequences?


Question: Is the use of a utilitarian calculus as a strategy merely a prudential 'suggestion' or it a non-negotiable moral requirement which obligates all universally, including the state-authority structure?

If it is indeed a 'requirement,' then the entire theory is grounded in deontological concerns. Since you do seem to be advocating a moral theory, you must also on some level be advocating normative constraints which somehow obligate individuals to act on judgements based on utilitarian considerations.

Are we obligated to always think and act in terms of cost-benefit analysis? To whom are we accountable if we don't? What are the consequences if we don't?

What are the implications of faulty moral judgements? Can people be blamed, praised, punished? If they can, then again one is making deontological assumptions concerning what individuals 'deserve' and how they can be necessarily held accountable for their actions.

Or is it rather the case that you are not making any normative claims at all? Could there possibly be a 'discretionary space' in which an agent may decide for herself whether or not to use a utilitarian calculus? I'd be interested to know the answer to that. If you're 'not' making normative claims, then I would assume an agent has the 'right' to decide for herself how she will evaluate her judgements. If an agent does have that discretionary right, then conversely others have the duty to respect that right.

My point is that either way, one can't escape a deontological foundation for utilitarianism. As it's usually presented, it's a 'mid-air' theory, one which has not been well-grounded from the start.
In addition, the fact that we do aim our theoretical justifications toward other agents implies that we also do recognize the separateness of persons which I refered to in my first reply. That recognition should be axiomatic to any moral theory. Policies based on power and dominance notoriously don't respect those boundaries of personhood.

But I still question why utilitarian considerations should even be posited as a moral theory in the first place; it seems to me that a utilitarian calculus should serve better as a merely optional strategy available to rational-moral agents, out of a field of other possible strategies rather than a required moral strategy. Assuming it as a moral requirement only constrains the freedom of individuals to evaluate and decide on judgement-sensitive matters for themselves.

Mako

Edited by Mako on 04/17/09 - 05:30 AM
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