Morality

What is Morality?

• Deceptively easy question

•A means of determining right and wrong

Utilitarianism

•Morality is the greatest good for the greatest number of people

•Morally good actions produce the greatest utility

•Utility is typically happiness or pleasure

Jeremy Bentham

•First real utilitarian philosopher

•All actions are motivated by pursuit of pleasure•The Hedonic Calculus

John Stuart Mill

•Mental pleasures are greater than physical pleasures•The Harms Principle: “That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.”

Rule Utilitarianism

•Calculating utility for every action is a lot of work!•Instead, evaluate the utility of rules, then follow the rules

•Solves some of the more pressing issues with utilitarianism

Negative Utilitarianism

•Do the least harm to the least number of people•Pain is a greater motivator than pleasure•Problem of painless euthanasia

Pros of Utilitarianism

•Everybody understands utilitarian calculus •Weighing impacts in round is easy

•Relatively simple to run and works with a large variety of cases and impacts•It just works

Cons of Utilitarianism

•Very hard to quantify happiness

•Who’s happiness do we prioritize?

•Majoritarian abuses

•Making people happy isn’t always the best course of action

Utilitarianism in Healthcare

Consequentialism

•Morality of an action is based on its consequences•An ends based framework. Also referred to as Teleology

Variants of Consequentialism

•Rule Consequentialism

•Mohist Consequentialism• State level consequentialism

•Ethical altruism• Auguste Comte• Best consequences for everybody else

Deontology

•Actions are moral in and of themselves

•Adherence to rules or duties determines morality•Means not ends

•Intentions and motives, not outcomes

Deontology Variants

•Contractarianism•Morality determined through social pressures and outside influences, like contracts•Divine command theory

•Rights Theory

Pros of Deontology

•Allows you to discount consequentialist impacts

•You don’t need to defend plans or implementation

•Gives you a clear definition of morality

Cons of Deontology

•Layperson’s understanding of deontology can be limited

•Moral grey areas

•What happens when duties conflict?

•Often collapses into utilitarianism

Deontology in Healthcare

Immanuel Kant

•Attempted to apply practical reason to morality

•German philosopher born in 1724

•Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals

•Hypothetical duties are not morally binding

The Categorical Imperative

•Act only according to that maxim by which you can also will that it would become a universal law. • Moral actions are intrinsically good •The only thing we can know is good is will

The Categorical Imperative

•Humans are independent moral agents who are ends in and of themselves

•“Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end”

Pros of Kant

•Absolute morality, clear positions and definitions•You can disregard edge cases and hypothetical situations

•Avoids a number of subjective or relativistic criticisms of morality

Cons of Kant

•Could I lie to a Nazi?

•Conflicting universal claims

•Universal moral systems are unrealistic, nobody actually follows them

•Why is Kant’s view of what morality should be universal?

Moral Relativism

•Morality is dependant on the individual or social group

•Subject to cultural and social pressures

•Can differ wildly from person to person, place to place

Descriptive relativism

•Moral disagreements exist

•It’s not up to us to condemn or praise different moral systems

•Default position for most anthropology and sociology

•Not a common debate position

Normative Relativism

•Not only do moral disagreements occur, but you should tolerate those who disagree with you•Of course that might just be your opinion•This is the kind of relativism that makes morality more or less meaningless

Ethical Egoism

•People ought to act in their own best interest •Who better to know what I need than Me?•I can’t know what you need, and shouldn’t try to

•More in the Capitalism lecture

•James Rachels, Ayn Rand

Pros of Moral Relativity

•Morality can be meaningless!

•Multiple moral definitions can exist simultaneously•Allows you to disregard moral impacts

•Very high specificity

Cons of Moral Relativity

•Morality can be meaningless!

•If moral relativity is true, moral definitions are hard to justify

•Might force you to admit some awkward things

Relativity and Healthcare

Moral Skepticism•We can’t know enough about morals to make accurate moral judgments

•Doesn’t disallow the existence of absolute moral truth

•Epistemological skepticism: Moral beliefs don’t respond to evidence

•Morals are similar to the beliefs of the paranoid or insane

Moral Nihilism•Basically amorality

•Even if things aren’t necessarily moral or immoral, actions can be preferable

•Expressivism: Morals have no objective truth, but are still expressed as strong opinions•Error theory: Lack of observable morals leads to no possible moral judgments, all moral proclamations are mistakes

Ethics of care

•Morality is determined by caring for individuals•Highly dependant on interpersonal relations•Feminist, doesn’t conform to a hierarchy •More details in the Feminism lecture

•Carol Gilligan

Legal Morality

•Law is a codified system of morality

•Allows high specificity and a mix of absolute and relative morality

•Laws can change and don’t always resemble modern morals

•Jurgen Habermas

Pragmatic Ethics

•Morality could do with a dose of SCIENCE!•Morals evolve through hypothesis and testing•Draws from a number of other philosophies•Mostly descriptive, has been criticized for mixing up normative and descriptive morality

Situational Morality

•Context is everything

•Can’t make blanket assertions about morality without taking circumstances into account•Not as much a unified philosophy