Objective midterm exam review

philosophy of that subject, for example, philosophy of art, philosophy of physics, philosophy of economics

WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY

GREEK ROOTS ---LOVER [PHILO] WISDOM [SOPH]

PHILOSOPHY is—QUESTIONING

PHILOSOPHY is QUESTIONING/ CLARIFYING LIMITS/VERY BASIC TENETS OF A SUBJECT

bad,

applied ethics studies ethical dilemmas, issues, and questions as they arise in various practical or professional contexts;

normative ethics studies general theories and principles of ethics that can be applied to practical situations;

meta-ethics studies the meaning of ethical concepts, theories, and principles.

just theories] so branch of PHILOSOPHY

Philosophers never in it for the money—you get to see what left wing folks think about business of technology.

Philosophers do logic—clear paths to discussion, persuasion, and argumentation—giving you a voice when you need to raise ethical issues
Teach you to QUESTION your own assumptions
about your ethics

by power of government.
Laws usually reflect many of a society’s moral values.
Laws give us society’s rules of ethical conduct..
Laws can even change a society’s moral values

Laws, however, are not ethics
Often, rules of law are a minimum of ethical conduct.
Some actions may be legal but unethical
Some actions may be ethical but illegal.

relative to particular societies or cultures.

Ethics is mere social convention or custom

BUT, ETHICS IS NOT
MERE SOCIAL CONVENTION OR CUSTOM.
Relativism does not allow for a global human culture
Relativism does not allow for ethical progress
Relativism does not allow for criticism of one’s own
culture’s ethical practices

Hobbes (1588-1679)–
man in a state of nature has the right to do what is necessary to protect himself and to get what he can get however he can get it—every man for himself.
But this is not a desirable life for most, so men give up their natural right to those [government.] who contract to bring peace and protection.

had a right to harm another’s “life, health, liberty, or possessions.”
Humans in State of Nature are cooperative--opposite of Hobbes’ view.
Also, Govt. does not over-ride society or individual rights—govt. must be accountable.
Property & value are created by LABOR.
When we mix our labor with the natural world, we blend part of ourselves with that labor—that’s how we come to own property, ethically.

John Locke (1632-1704)

others--

Human Rights --all human beings have some basic moral rights—
right not to be killed
the right not to be harmed
the right to liberty

Rights entail duties. No duty, no right.

Declaration of Independence—specifies inalienable rights—to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.
Prima facie rights- some rights contradict, given certain circumstances, and when this arises, some rights become secondary and are then obviated

do whatever we want as long as we do not violate someone else’s rights. (just a few)
Free speech
let alone in the bedroom
not to be spammed

RIGHTS a justified claim to a certain kind of treatment from others--

to help from others or to be left alone by others.

We only have the basic negative right to freedom from coercion—the right not to be forced to do things against our will.
Only time we can rightfully be forced to do something against our will is when we are forced to stop coercing others.
But this extreme libertarianism fails to see that, given so much freedom for everyone, then Hobbs’s state of nature would seem to follow
--one person’s freedom usually restricts someone else’s freedom

of people AND the least harm.

Consequentialism—examines the ethical results of an action, not the ethical mindset that caused the action

- Bentham--"the “pleasure principle"--the greatest happiness of the greatest number-- is the foundation of morals and legislation."

“The ability to suffer, not the ability to reason, be the benchmark of how we treat other beings.”

distinction between lower and higher pleasures—
”Better to a human miserable than a pig satisfied.”

each case.
rule utilitarians--consequences should be judged in terms of rules that can be applied in general for similar cases.

Ethical Theories and Principles--UTILITARIANISM

a skeptic, he questioned everything.
He maintained we have no good reason to believe the sun will come up tomorrow.

In ETHICS Hume maintained that there is absolutely NO FACT we could learn about the world or about ourselves that COULD TELL US WHAT WE OUGHT TO DO or what we should VALUE.

Nothing about the way the world IS can tell what we OUGHT do.

This is known as the problem of ‘IS-OUGHT DERIVATION’

Kant’s ethics is an attempt to prove Hume wrong

Kant’s ethics is an ‘IS-OUGHT DERIVATION’

fact about us that counts

Given this fact, that humans are Rational beings, does this tell us what we ought to do? If you are good at logic puzzles you’ll be impressed by how he gets to ought.

How to get to OUGHT? He thinks about it quite a bit, this is his life—and . . .

There is another truth to consider, what the word “OUGHT” really means.

“OUGHT” means a rule you must follow.

IMPERATIVE-- absolute must with no exceptions

Since Kant is so into logic and reason, THE categorical imperative is a rule of logic and non-contradiction.

what you do you could will as a universal rule.

Notice what he has done here. He takes the concept of OUGHT as a rule that has to be followed, absolutely no exceptions, and he says, well, that IS what we ought to follow --rules that no RATIONAL person could disagree with—clever.

EXAMPLE--if murder is okay in one case, could you make it a universal rule? That means everyone one would murder everyone, always, but that’s not possible—there wouldn’t be anyone around to keep it up

.

EXAMPLE—if everyone lied all the time, then we’d all know they always mean the opposite of what they say, so nobody could lie.

greatest moral good can be “nothing else than
the conception of law in itself,

and never merely as means

therefore
VERSION 2 treat all persons as ends and never merely as means
BUT be careful--almost impossible to prove version 2 as is
--you have to have a smoking gun
nothing can be called good without qualification except a good will
the good will—doing things out of sense of duty to do the right thing.

FORMS OF JUSTICE
COMPENSATORY—fair compensation for loss due to wrong action of others.
RETRIBUTIVE—fair punishment or penalties for wrong-doers
DISTRIBUTIVE-- fairly distribute social & economic benefits and burdens

DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE: distribute benefits and burdens equally.
EGALITARIAN-there are no relevant differences among people
Distribute benefits and burdens equally
ARISTOCRACY
Distribute benefits according to merit
CAPITALIST
distribute benefits and burdens according to work effort
distribute benefits and burdens according to productivity
distribute benefits and burdens according to market demands
SOCIALIST (work effort & productivity can also be socialist)
distribute benefits according to need
distribute burdens according to ability

imperative—suppose this—then we ought
Counterfactual-an imaginary situation used to persuade in favor of a theory
RAWLS’ VEIL OF IGNORANCE
Imagine a group of people assembled in a room to create a goverrnment and laws
Imagine also that everyone in this group has severe amnesia and cannnot see themselves or others
They also cannot feel themselves or others

to educational level, blind to gender, blind to sexual orientation, blind to religious affiliation, blind to special needs,
Rawls maintains that if we made laws & governments, or if we examined fairness under this veil of ignorance, we would logically end up with his system
Bridges ‘suppose’ to ought

to :
PRINCIPLE 1. Each person has equal RIGHT to most extensive LIBERTIES compatible w/ liberties for all—(negative rights)
We’d be concerned that we all get enough basic freedom
PRINCIPLE 2. Distribute benefits and burdens so that both :
B. Offices and positions are open to all—EQUAL OPPORTUNITY
We’d be concerned that we have chance to having some control over what happens—if we want to have that control
A. GREATEST BENEFIT possible arises for the least advantaged
We’d be afraid we might be the worst off, so we’d want to make those as well off as we could
PRINCIPLE 1 over-rides PRINCIPLE 2-we’d be most concerned that we get basic liberty
B over-rides A.—chance to improve –hope to rise above being at the vvery bottom is more important than being a little better off at the very bottom.

good moral characters or work to become virtuous people.

Some virtues—

courage honesty charity
humility patience loyalty
justice forgiveness integrity.

Aristotle –Ancient Greek Philosopher

Aristotle’s ethics-- -virtues come from habit-

habit comes from-- education, training, and practice

ARISTOTLE’S GOLDEN MEAN --a balance between extremes

“a mean between 2 vices, one of excess and the other of deficiency”

Example—[reckless=excess of courage] & [cowardice=deficiency of courage]

Non-consequentialist

Aristotle’s main virtues—justice, courage, temperance, and prudence

and regards.
COMMUNITARIANISM we need community and we have responsibilities to our community.
Caring Relationships with individuals and with our communities matter, and can outweigh rights and utility.
problem—fine line between favoritism/prejudice and special commitments and regards for our caring relationships

Ethical Theories and Principles-- CARING ETHICS

us what we OUGHT DO. NO BRIDGE FROM IS TO OUGHT
Kant’s categorical. imperative—attempt to bridge the is-ought gap
STRONG SENSE of caring –bridging is to ought
caring for others is the foundation for ethical principles and theories.
For example,, we believe that people have the right to not be murdered because when someone is murdered, our ‘hearts go out’ to them—we sympathize with the pain, the needs, and the lives of others.

Ethical Theories and Principles-- CARING ETHICS

to care, and we need caring responses from others—a fact about human nature—gives us ought--
We ought to maximize happiness, observe rights and duties, because we care
Individuals need caring relationships and they need communities, even in state of nature,
So Hobbes’ view of state of nature is wrong.,
but
Our caring varies—some care more, some less .
Those who feel no such caring are missing the core of ethical value
We sympathize more for strangers who are most vulnerable, or most in need of caring from others.

ethical
utilitarian-everyone is better off-
but capitalists use any non-capitalist means to further their profit, breeding monopolies
making Smith wrong.

MARXISM (BACKGROUND)

When you combine your labor with raw materials, something of you is in the product.
Labor accounts for most of the property value of an object,
As long as you don’t waste this property, it’s yours
Money is durable property, doesn’t get wasted
Property precedes government and government cannot "dispose of the estates of the subjects arbitrarily."
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and shape the wood—value added is labor value—surplus value.
Through labor the wood becomes something different than a piece of a tree. It becomes art. or a tool, or furniture, etc.
Man’s labor in Capitalist society is seen as just another form of raw material—like the wood.
But man’s energy and talent invested in that wood is more than just raw material—it is a part of the man himself—an extension of him.

capitalist steals 5 of those hours—it’s how capitalist turns a profit.
Machine makes labor more productive—where once it took 20 hours to make a shoe, with use of machines it takes 2 hours.
Worker is paid just what he needs to get by. He receives none of the extra value from productivity of his work.
Machinery is used to distance man from his labor—through assembly line, etc., he no longer can say—this is my work—it is work of a team.
Because worker doesn’t own the machine or the raw materials, he cannot directly claim the 5 hours extra that the capitalist keeps.

dehumanized.
Whereas work was once skilled labor w/ obvious product—labor is now piecemeal drudgery or capitalist manipulation of humans (management etc.)
Because man’s labor is exploited—he never gets what his labor is worth. He is forced to work at alienating labor

MARXISM

used to steal labor
Engels maintains that machine development & production causes supply/demand problems for capitalism
Technological innovation creates an army of unemployed
An army of unemployed means fewer who can afford the goods the capitalist produces—supply of products increases but demand for products falls

Silicon Valley.
The whole industrial and commercial world, production and exchange among all civilized peoples, are thrown out of joint about once every 10 years.
Commerce is at a stand-still
the markets are glutted
products accumulate
hard cash disappears
credit vanishes
factories are closed
bankruptcy follows upon bankruptcy
the mass of the workers are in want of the means of subsistence, because they have produced too much of the means of subsistence;. The stagnation lasts for years

allow for liberation from capitalism and proprietary machine ownership
Engels predicts government eventually will evolve into a worker-owned state—advanced government allows for end of private property
State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; The State is not "abolished". It dies out

will have a world where overseeing of technology and technologically-driven distribution of goods will be the pattern of society
The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production.