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Summary Philosophy of Science and Ethics (AB_1217) - BSc biomedical sciences Year 2
Summary and class notes of philosophy of science and ethics of the BSc Biomedical sciences.
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NOTES: Philosophy of science and EthicsLecture 1: preliminaries and easy rescue
- Article: ‘Famine, affluence, and morality’ by Peter Singer
- Argument: A set of reasons (premises) to support a conclusion or to base a
conclusion on → A reason to believe a claim.
- Premises: If the reader disagrees with any of the arguments (premises), they have a
logical basis to reject the conclusion.
- Validity:
o If we assume that all premises are true, we must assume that the conclusion
is true.
o If we assume that one or more premises are false, we must assume that the
conclusion is false.
o Arguments are valid when they have a certain structure:
▪ 3 forms of arguments:
• Modus ponens: If A then B. A is true, thus B is also true.
• Modus Tollens: If A then B. B is not true, thus A is also false.
• Disjunctive Syllogism: A or B. A/B is not true, thus B/A is true.
- Soundness: If an argument is valid and if the premises are true.
Social sciences cannot tell us what IS morally wrong or right, it can only tell us what people
BELIEVE is morally wrong or right – Harman.
- Ethics and morality:
o Ethics: A rational way of deciding what is good for individuals or society; the
rules that a social system provides us with.
o Morality: our own principles; define what is right or wrong in ways that may
or may not be rational.
Ethics is the branch of philosophy that deals with moral issues, including questions about
what is right (or wrong) to do and other intangibles, such as whether the intentions behind
an action determine its goodness, or whether the actual outcome is what is important.
Ethics and morals relate to “right” and “wrong” conduct. While they are sometimes used
interchangeably, they are different: ethics refer to rules provided by an external source, e.g.,
codes of conduct in workplaces or principles in religions. Morals refer to an individual's own
principles regarding right and wrong.
Normative statements: what OUGHT to be the case.
Non-normative statements: What IS the case.
,Peter singer:
Singer can be considered a utilitarianist; he thinks the right action is the one that
promotes the best consequences.
- Effective altruism movement: is a philosophy and community focused on
maximising the good you can do through your career, projects, and donations.
Urges people to rescue people in need with the luxury resources they can donate.
Singer’s arguments: Part I: Duties of rescue
- Premise 1. Suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care are very
bad. (Normative Claim)
- Premise 2. The Duty of Rescue: If it is in our (people in relatively affluent countries)
power to prevent something very bad from happening, without thereby
sacrificing anything else morally significant, we ought, morally, to do it.
(Normative Claim)
- Premise 3. It is in our power to prevent suffering and death from lack of food,
shelter, and medical care from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything else
morally significant. (Non-Normative Claim)
- Conclusion 1. We ought, morally, to do that which is in our power to prevent
suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical.
To support premise 2, he uses a thought experiment. To appeal to our intuitions about a
case.
- Drowning child; walking by a drowning child in order for your shoes not to get wet/
muddy is morally impermissible according to Singer.
o Because if it is in our power to prevent something very bad from happening,
without thereby sacrificing anything else morally significant, we ought
morally to do it.
o Because shoes are not morally significant, it would be morally wrong not to
save the child from drowning. You are obligated to save the child.
o If giving something morally significant up in order to save the child, it is
permitted. You do nothing wrong by not saving the child and allowing it to
drown.
, ▪ Moral significance/ moral importance: without causing anything
else... bad to happen, or doing something that is wrong in
itself, or failing to promote some moral good.
▪ Morally bad would be to drown another child to save the drowning
child. Even though you promote a good outcome.
You can also not steal in order to save the drowning child.
If you could save the drowning child’s life by sacrificing the thing in question (clothes, nice
food, vacation, etc.)...would it be wrong for you to NOT save the child’s life?
- Singer argues that it would be morally obligated; you are not doing something noble,
you are doing just fulfilling your obligations.
Radical implications of Singer’s argument:
If you are obligated to do what is in your power to rescue those in dire need, than you
would have this duty to rescue a lot of people all over the globe.
- The effective altruism argues this.
Singer will provide arguments to objections to premise 2 and premise 3; if premise 2 or
premise 3 are false then Singer will not have provided adequate support for his conclusion
(he has not provided a sound argument).
Objections:
- Objection 1 to premise 3: ‘it is not in our power to help those in need’.
o Singer’s reply: there are charities that are effective at saving innocent
people’s lives when those people are in danger of dying from lack of food,
medical care, or shelter. And since there are these organizations/ charities
that will effectively save these people’s lives, we should accept premise 3.
- Objection 2 to premise 2: ‘proximity, don’t we have obligations to people near us
that outweigh our obligations to others far away?’
o Singer’s reply: No, if what matters is preventing harm to people, it should not
matter whether they are physically close or far away. Why would it matter
from the perspective of morality whether you are rescuing a child who is in
front of you or who is further away.
It would be absurd to say that you have an obligation to rescue the child that
is nearby, but you do not have an obligation to save the child who is across
the globe → so location/ distance does not matter, we should accept
premise 2.
- Objection 3 to premise 2: ‘ other people aren’t doing anything! Lots of other people
are able but do not prevent something really bad from happening.’. → since nobody
else is doing anything, why think that you are obligated to do it.
o Singer’s reply: This is a misleading line of argument. Just because other
people are failing to do what they are obligated to do, it does not follow that
you are off the hook. You are still obligated to do what everyone is obligated
to do, even if others are not doing what they are obligated to do. → This can
make no real difference to our moral obligations.
, Singer’s arguments: Part II: We should radically revise our moral categories.
Moral categories:
- Permissible: It is permissible to do X if and only if it is not wrong to not perform
action X.
- Obligatory: It is obligatory to do X if and only if it is impermissible to not perform
action X (when it is required to perform action X).
- Supererogatory: It is supererogatory to do X if and only if it is doing more than
morally required to perform action X.
These are the traditional 3 sorts of categories that moral philosophers use to identify/
evaluate morality of actions. However, there can be argues in which category certain actions
fall.
So, Singer want to say that it is not just that we ought to be given all this money to those in
desperate need to help them. It is also that we should radically revise these moral
categories. At the very least, the number of things that fit into ‘obligatory’ and into
‘supererogatory’ are very different (if we accept Singer’s argument, as oppose to accepting
traditional understandings of morality).
- Conclusion 1. We ought, morally, to do that which is in our power to prevent
suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care.
- Premise 4. The traditional moral distinction between duty and supererogation
implies that we are not morally required to do that which is in our power to prevent
suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care.
- Premise 5. We ought to reject distinctions that imply that we are not morally
required to do that which we are morally required to do.
- Conclusion 2. We ought to reject the traditional moral distinction between duty and
supererogation.
Meaning that according to the traditional view ‘instead of spending money on luxury goods,
giving it to people in need’ would be considered a supererogatory (charity) thing to do.
However, according to Singer, if his argument is correct, this is an obligatory thing to do. →
so something supererogatory becomes an obligation.
This would also mean that spending money on a luxury good would become impermissible.
Objections:
- Objection 4: This is too revisionary; His view implies that what we think of as morally
right or wrong is radically mistaken. People would thus argue that Singer his
argument is false and therefore they would want to reject the argument because it
has this radical implication that is in odds with societies views.
o Singer’s reply: That is his point, he says that we should change society’s views
on morality so that it aligns with the actual requirements of morality. Rather
than changing our understanding of morality so that it can form society’s
views of morality.
→ thus what morality requires and what society thinks morality requires can
be at odds. Singer suggest that like other societies that have made moral
mistakes in the past, our society has made a moral mistake when thinking
about the ethical requirement to give money to others (to help others in
need), so we need to radically revise our understanding of what morality
demands. Morality is much more demanding than we thought.
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