Ethics Summary Midterm I
Week 1 – Well-being and Hedonism
Perkins – The Unnatural Mother
Woman sees dam breaking. Can choose: either save her child or spread the message to the
village and save three villages (i.e. 1500 people). Saving 1500 people is a good thing, but
saving your child is a good thing as well. Have to determine which is the right thing by
weighing these good things. One good can be outweighed by another good. There might be
overriding reasons that always win and always outweigh other goods.
According to Perkins, the woman did the right thing to save the village and not the child. One
can offer one person to save many others.
Moral duty: the right thing. All things considered, what is the right thing to do? What is the
thing one ought to have done?
Le Guin – The Ones who walk away from Omelas
Utopian place in which one child is locked up for the good of the rest of society would you
stay and use the kid’s suffering or walk away from Omelas? Does the definition of happiness
entail there cannot be suffering or at least that you know of?
Le Guin argues you have to walk away from Omela. You cannot have one person suffering
and dying for others to live in bliss.
Perkins and Le Guin don’t agree. Le Guin does not want to offer one for many, but Perkins
argues it is right to do.
Philosophical ethics is normative practical reflection. Concerned with way you ought to think
about what is right, good, permitted etc. About how you should live your life. Tries to clarify,
explain, understand, systematise and justify our moral and normative judgements.
Practical reflection:
- Practical subject: how should one live? How should one act?
- Practical conclusion: philosophical ethics has consequences for the way you live and
act.
Normative reflection: the way it ought to be.
Reason: consideration that counts in favour of something. Not every consideration is a
reason.
Public reasons: reasons others can recognise as reasons reasons must not be arbitrary &
sense of impartiality.
Right and good
Theory of the good: what we value. If we know what is good, we can know what is right.
Theory of the right: very few things can be right. Applies to actions.
Distinction between the right and the good:
, - Right applies to actions. Good applies to anything.
- Right is a duty. All things considered, you should do it. If something is right, you
should do it and get it. If something is good, you don’t have to go and get it.
- There is good, better, best, but no right, righter, rightst. Is just one right. Are multiple
goods, not just one ultimate good.
- The right is different from the good but is determined by the good.
What does it mean to be happy?
Desire satisfaction conception: you are happy when your desires are satisfied in the world.
State of the world-conception, not a mental state conception. Happiness not in experiencing
something but in world being in a certain way. Even if you don’t experience your desires
being satisfied, you are happy.
Objective list conception: just a list of things you have to have in your life. If you have them,
you are happy. You don’t need to want to have these things is objective conception. State
of the world conception. Things such as autonomy and freedom.
Hedonism
Hedonism: conception of happiness that says happiness consists in experiences. Happiness is
the experience of pleasure and the absence of pain. All about experience and mental state.
Two conceptions of happiness:
- Pleasure is more than just the absence of pain. Scale of being in pleasure and being in
pain. Might be a point zero where you are not in pleasure and not in pain.
- Happiness consists in the absence of pain. Is the point zero.
Hedonism is an objective list theory, but the list consists of only one thing: the experience of
happiness.
Types of hedonism:
- Happiness consists in the presence of ataraxia and the absence of pain (Epicurus).
- Happiness consists in the presence of pleasure and the absence of pain (J.S. Mill).
- Happiness consists in desirable consciousness (Sidgwick).
Problems for hedonism
1. Hedonism paradox
Happiness is guideline need to live your life in a way that you gain pleasure and
happiness. Friendship is instrumental to your happiness you should get out and
get some friends because they are instrumental in your happiness. But: does not
work, friendship does not work when it is just instrumental. If you follow ideas of
hedonism, you don’t get what it tells you to get. Is self-defeating.
2. Case for autonomy
In Brave New World everyone gets SOMA, a drug which makes you happy and not
care. Everyone experiences happiness, but still this seems to be a life not
recommendable. What is lacking is autonomy; people are no agents for themselves.
3. Trajectory of life
, Two lives with same experience of happiness would be equally happy lives. Life in
which first hated and then successful compared with first successful and then hated
would be equally happy. But is it? Life that ends in misery might be less pleasurable
than one that starts in misery but ends in pleasure. If so, must be something outside
mere experience of pleasure that is important.
4. Experience machine (Nozick)
Tells us who is hedonist and who is not.
Epicurus
Is a hedonist. We must exercise ourselves in things that bring about happiness. “Securing the
health of body and tranquillity of mind, seeing that is the sum and end of a happy life.”
“Pleasure is the alpha and omega of a happy life.” Is about the experience of pleasure.
Pleasure: the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the soul. Happiness is ataraxia;
peace of mind, tranquillity, absence of pain. Happiness is not a pleasurable experience, it is
just being peaceful.
Death is the absence of all pains and hence cannot be a bad thing. The only thing that can be
evil lies in experiences you cannot experience death nothing bad about being dead. If
death is a bad thing, it has to be bad because of something else than experience because we
don’t experience. “When we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not.”
Desire: mental state of shortage. Idea about how the world should be and the world is not
that. Something that is missing. When something is lacking, I am no longer at ease and in
tranquillity. Something must happen to reach ataraxia again need to get rid of desire:
- Fulfil desire.
- No longer desire it.
Categorising desires:
- Natural desires
o Necessary: e.g. food, sleep. Need to fulfil these desires.
o Non-necessary: desire for liquid is natural, but gets problematic as soon as
you specify that it must be champagne. Should get rid of these desires.
- Groundless desires: e.g. live forever, be able to fly, pi being a natural number. No way
they can be fulfilled. Should get rid of them.
But: isn’t it fine to desire something impossible as long as you don’t desire it too much?
Nozick
Main question: what else can matter to us other than how our lives feel from the inside?
People don’t want to get in the experience machine for three reasons:
- Agency: I am just experiencing something but am not actually doing it.
- Identity: I just have the experience of being a hero, but I am not one. Transformation
machine also not sufficient.
- Reality: don’t just want to have the experience of being with your loved ones, but
want to be there in actual contact with them. Result machine not sufficient.
something matters to us in addition to experience, what one is like and the results one
produces in the world. “Perhaps what we desire is to live ourselves in contact with reality.”
