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Politics, Ethics and Practice summary
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Politics, Ethics and PracticeHc 1 Introduction, Ethics the basics
Facts don’t exists, data exists. Facts are interpretations of data. They are theories. Facts are
constructions, and when constructing facts you have to make choices.
The three pillars:
- Ethics: Ideally reflected in:
- Politics: Translated into bits of:
- Practice: Partly reflected in the assignments
Karl Schmitt: The political is two totally opposite parties that there cannot be found a compromise.
This should be the core of politics. Politics is now how to find compromises and how to move on with
each other.
Jonathan Wolff: What works when advising?
- Top down advice: I have gathered my knowledge, now I will apply it. Big NO
- Karl Popper: Utopian engineering: Huge plans to reform Big NO
- Jon Wolff: Philosophy is extremism: ideal theories, and they do not work Big NO
Philosophy is about outrageous ideas. Their ideas are ideal theory. This works in a lab, but not in the
real society. No one wants to change when this is not necessary.
- There is no room or time to agree or disagree: Compromise solutions are needed
- Bias for the status quo: No one want to change when this is not necessary
- Support trumps morality
But how can we work together despite different values and norms:
- Deep consensus: Not just compromise/agreement, but reasonable agreement. It is
absolutely no modus vivendi or compromise.
- Understand before you criticize: What created the current practice and what has made it
stable? Why are the ways that they are now? Why do they want to change?
- Identify causes of moral difficulties and differences: Practical, empirical problems are 100%
irrelevant. It is always about ethical and moral problems
- Then test all parties’ positions on possible changes: Identify room for maneuver and real
limits. Not in goals, but in arguments, beliefs and values
How to test positions:
- Not just look for weaknesses, but also for strengths
- Respecting the burdens of judgement: The demands of the reasonable. Everyone arguments
need to be accepted as reasonable. Even if you do not agree, you need to recognize when
they are reasonable. They are reasonable when they accept the burdens of judgement
- So, do not undermine, refute and exclude them, but find out what motivates people, what is
reasonable. This is the bottom-up consensus building
Toe be reasonable is to respect those limits:
- Do not reject ideas as unproven, but accept them as being for now unrefutably
- Do not expect others to make room for your ideas but make room for their ideas yourself
, Instead of saying, please do reasonable, say I hear you, and even though I do not agree, I
understand what you are saying. To be reasonable is though, as you somewhat have to deny
yourself, and take a step back.
The burdens of judgement are the many hazards involved in the correct (and conscientious)
exercise of our powers of reason and judgement in the ordinary course of political life:
- Empirical and scientific evidence is often complex and conflicting
- We may reasonably disagree about the relative weight of different considerations
- Concepts are vague and subject to hard cases
- The way we assess evidence and weigh values can be shaped by out total life experience
- Different normative considerations on different sides can make overall assessment difficult
- The number of values any social institution can incorporate is limited
Sticks & Carrots:
- Carrots: being reasonable in this sense is good for your soul and your wallet
- Sticks: you need this to pass assignments & the exam. ChatGPT does not understand the
reasonable, but the board of examiners does understand fraud
Ethics & Non-ethics:
- Facts do not exist, the truth is not out there. Facts are constructed
- This is where philosophy comes in:
- Correspondence: When how you describe something complies with the thing itself.
Kant, Hume and de Sade:
- From a state of something that is, you can never derive of what ought to be.
Virtue ethics:
- Aristotle, Plato, the Greeks & the Romans: Look how nature works, how things are
constructed. There is a natural things of how to go about things.
Virtue: good qualities that allow is to determine who we really are. We have qualities that enable us
to become who we are within (eikel en de eik verhaal). We have certain qualities that allow us to
flourish. The ten capabilities: Life, bodily health, bodily integrity, senses and thought, emotions,
practical reason, affiliation, other species, play, control over one’s environment. If you do not allow
these capabilities to each other, the relationship will break.
Consequentialism: What is good is what gives us good consequences, a good outcome (Helvetius).
Nudging: making people do the right thing without them noticing, but in such a way they will
afterwards think that they did the right thing.
Deontology: interested in motivation. What we should do, the right thing to do in itself. This refers
to the procedure, not the result
All these types have something in common: We look at the intention, act and result. They are
following each other up. First intention (virtue), then act (deontology), afterwards the result
(consequentialism)
Hc 2 Intermezzo
, Hc 3 Animal testing
Scientific experiments on animals: Thin & very vague between commercial & scientific research.
Same for distinction between research and other purposes. Who is going to profit.
The moral dimension of animal testing:
- Is evolves over time. 400 years ago no one cared about animal testing. Now animal welfare
is considered as morally relevant.
- We have a divided society in this. Some find animal rights absurd, and some even find
keeping dogs and cats repulsive.
- Ideal theory is radical and extreme. Therefore it is better to do this behind closed doors.
But Wolff discovered that letting people scream and shout at each other, you do not get any further.
Therefore, a pragmatic dimension is needed:
- Non-ideal theory, it is just not practical
- Look at what we are doing now, and see if we can RRR Refine, reduce and replace
Aminism: There is in every living thing a spirit
Pythagoras: We reincarnate in anything that lives.
Aristotle: The great chain of being A hierarchy of the living. Starting in hell, then trees, fishes,
animals, humans, angles. This is not from low to high intelligence, but from dirt to the heavens. The
more on top, the more important you are.
Descartes: The physical body, and our mind. The two are separate. This divide is applied to human
and animals. Animals do not have minds, just instinct. They act, no matter how difficult it is, purely
on instinct. They do not think and are considered as machines
Kant: Humans are autonomous beings. We have free will, and we are moral beings. You can not
blame a wolf from attacking you because that is nature. You can however blame a human being for
killing.
Bentham: The capacity to feel pain and joy, is the only thing that makes us moral relevant beings.
However, this is something that animals can also feel, and are therefore equally moral relevant
beings.
Utilitarianism:
- Pleasure and pain, the only neutral rule according to Bentham. Maximization of welfare or
utility. Intention act Consequence
- Peter singer: Keep animals is not a bad thing, as long as they are treated well. We should try
to not harm animals as good as possible.
- Human rights are nonsense on stilts. If you forbid something, as you may prevent utility
- Strong focus on empirical research into nerve systems What can animals feel
Deontology:
- Humans are unique. We are capable to distinguish good and evil. The rest are patients.
Rational thought and reflecting on goals, sense of morality and autonomy
- Human rights are universally necessary conditions for the protection of autonomy. Therefore
they are categorical imperatives
- The way people treat animals may tell you something about how these people treat other
people
- We are shaping our life is morally relevant. Even though we do it on automatic pilot.
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