A *bad* paper on some ethical theories

 What follows is a crappy attempt at passing some academic requirement. I generally suck at requirements and I’d rather not do them. I just like the idea that I could’ve done something great if I wanted to, I just didn’t. I like that better than the harsh reality of crating something stupid and crappy. Yep, real nice and mature of me.

So, this is what happens when I cram:

I heard from one of my professors that the immortal answer of a UP student to almost any question is, "It depends." A pretty safe answer that doesn’t choose any sides until it has sufficient facts. It also allows for the moderate relativity of a situation. This statement has allowed me to join some discussions where I know virtually nothing about the topic.
    I remember "It depends." now that I am faced with questions like these:

What is the Good?
How will we know the Good?
Are we free?
Is the Good based on God’s Will, or is God’s Will based on the Good?
Is the Good relative?

    What the fudge is the Good? The meanings may be as many as the stars. There may be shallow answers, deep answers, answers that make sense, and answers that just make you scratch your head while going, "Huh?" But since this is an Ethics paper the answers are limited to the definitions of Good in the field of ethical philosophy. "It depends" comes into the picture, offering a seeming veil of objectivity as we hope to scrutinize ethical theories.

Utilitarianism

    To Utilitarians, the Good is in the same line as pleasure. Feeling pleasure and the absence of pain makes people happy; Pleasure is good. And why not? Feeling good is, in all probability, good.
    

    Of course, there are different kinds of pleasure. The pleasure of eating chocolate is different from the pleasure of seeing a grade of 3.0 on the classcard of your most dreaded subject. There are also different degrees of pleasure. Reading, for me, provides pleasure but the degree of pleasure I would feel would depend on the book. A sci-fi novel that’s just about  men blasting UFOs wouldn’t give me as much pleasure as a sci-fi novel that plays with ideas and philosophy. The kind and degree of pleasure makes for its quality. Utilitarians want high-quality pleasure, the kind that does more than stimulate the five senses, and believe that people naturally long for the more superior pleasure than an inferior one when they experience both. One of the things they say is, "Better to be a man dissatisfied, than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates unsatisfied than a fool satisfied." I guess, "Once you’ve had the best, you won’t settle for the rest." would also fit the bill.

    The Utilitarians aren’t just concerned about the quality of pleasure but also with the quantity of people who experience pleasure. The "Greatest Happiness" is concerned with the total happiness, everybody’s happiness. What they want is high-quality pleasure, available to as many people as possible.

    So now, according to the Utilitarians, an action is good depending on how it can give the greatest happiness to the greatest number of people. Which isn’t really a bad thing. It’s actually a nice thought. Who doesn’t want the world to be filled with intelligent, happy people who work for the continued happiness of each individual?

    It also allows for freedom of choice, we can easily just choose to settle for lesser pleasures usually for reasons that are understandable; no money, no opportunity,  haven’t experienced higher pleasures, logically impossible, etc. But then it also says that we are determined to choose higher pleasures over lower ones. Compatibilist? Maybe.

    With the God question… it’s relative. It would depend on what God we’d be talking about. But assuming that it is the Christian God… it would still be relative to how you would interpret Christian scripture. The Good coming from God’s will (Divine command theory) and God’s will being based on the Good are both possible and both can be compatible with the Utilitarian ideal. We’d just have the problem of hardcore people taking the Christian concept of self-sacrifice to the point of self-loathing and useless sacrifice.

    The Good is basically highest quality to most quantity. Nothing seemingly relative about that. But then people may have different ways of interpreting that. People suspected of witchcraft were burned at the stake for the utilitarian purpose of saving souls, racial prejudice is exhibited at airports for the utilitarian purpose of security. This brings us to the problem of Utilitarianism, the endless accounting of consequences which determines if an action is good or bad. The action maybe good now, but may produce bad later, only to produce more good, that will make more bad… etc.

    As I’ve said, utilitarianism is a nice idea. The only problem being, how would you know if what you’re doing will generate the greatest good? How far will you go accounting the consequences of your actions to see if they were actually for the greatest good?  Is it even sensible to do so? How would you know if the gift you give to your significant other (which makes her happy, and makes you happy since she’s happy, and makes a whole lot of people happy because you two are happy) would fall down from the table and be the unexpected cause of her dog’s death through massive head trauma? (which makes her unhappy, and makes you unhappy since she’s unhappy, and makes people unhappy… etc.)

     Another example is a short story I read about a boy who saved another boy from drowning for the utilitarian purposes of saving lives, and teaching bullies and mean kids a lesson. It was just sad that the boy he saved grew up to be Adolf Hitler. Saving  kid’s life, good; kid growing up to be Adolf Hitler, bad; so was saving the boy’s life good?
    So there, Utilitarianism, good idea, but crumbles under unpredictability.

Categorical Imperative

    One thing I remember about my Philo 1 class is Immanuel Kant. One reason was his strict adherence to schedule that people in his town set their watches according to his actions.

    "There’s Kant on his nature walk, it’s 3:30."
    "Kant’s already doing groceries? Dang, my watch is late by five minutes."
    "Kant’s already taking a bath! I’m late!"

     Another reason is  Kant’s idea of what is good.  To him, what is good is what is moral. And what is moral is what is done from duty. You do something from duty because you have to, not because you want to. What is good is moral is done from duty, is done because of obligation and not because of want. That means I’m a very moral person, writing this ethics paper.

    Kant believes in an inner, unchanging morality. Morality for him is not formed by experience but is innate and has an a priori foundation. We become moral by being rational. When we are rational, we are obligated to do what is moral. Pretty much like Socrates’ idea of knowledge. When we know it, we practice it. A quick way to determine what is rational and therefore moral is to ask whether an action you are about to do can be universalizable; is it okay for everyone to do what you are going to do? For Kant, the ends do not justify the means. To him, the means should be the ends. You do something for its inherent moral value and nothing more. If you do it for some other reason than obligation, you aren’t entirely moral. This seemingly unfeeling approach to human actions is for the prupose of mutual respect. Human beings should be treated as an end in themselves and not as means. I help you out because I have to, not because you can repay the favor.

    Concerning freedom, Kant’s thoughts on people who achieve reason, make him seem deterministic. When you are rational, you know your obligation, and you do it, period.

    With the God question, Kant never said anything about God but he believes in an unchanging a priori morality. This morality based on reason is unchanging, like mathematical principles. If there is a God, he subscribes to this morality… unless God can transcend feeble reason thought up by human beings.

    On the question of moral relativity, unchanging morality based on reason. Can you find anything relative about that? Does it even allow for relativism?

    Kant actually has a good system here. It’s appealing since it makes sense. The strict adherence to reason makes everything clear, squeaky clean even. You can’t fight cold hard reason;you do what you have to do because you need to and for no other reason. And that’s what’s wrong with it.  There is no accounting for human emotion. What are humans without emotions? You do something because a part of you also wants it. If I didn’t really care I wouldn’t be writing this paper.

Virtue Ethics

    Aristotle agrees that many things can be called good but he says that there exists a Chief Good, an ultimate good that is an end to itself. This is Happiness. We want to be happy, for no other reason. Everything we do, we do because we want to be happy. Now of course happiness itself is a word that can mean many things. Different things make different people happy. Aristotle says that a person can be happy by being virtuous. That means being excellent. In different fields, virtue can mean many things, virtuous doctors save lives, virtuous musicians perform their music well. For men as human beings, virtue is split into two: moral virtue and intellectual virtue.

    Moral virtue is for the happy everyday transactions with fellow people. It makes for good character, and a pleasing personality. You become virtuous in the moral sense by pursuing the mean, the middle ground, not too much and not too little. With the extremes of fear and confidence, courage is the mean;with pain and pleasure, the mean is temperance. Aristotle is saying that too much (or too little) of something is bad. The mean is different for everybody. Not everyone is Superman, we all have our personal limits. The point is to give the most we can, since any less would be mediocrity, but at the same time not to overstrain ourselves to do something we can’t. To gain mastery of moral virtue, the trick is habit and constant practice.

    Everybody can be morally virtuous; the more difficult is to be intellectually virtuous. Intellectual virtue can only be obtained through contemplation of rational principles. By thinking about philosophical truths and practices, one can achieve philosophical wisdom and practical wisdom. Practical wisdom guides physical actions while philosophical wisdom is more in tune with attaining complete rationality. Of the two, philosophical wisdom is better than practical wisdom for the reason that one can be self-sufficiently virtuous doing philosophical contemplation and is therefore a clearer path to happiness.

    Aristotle doesn’t say anything about a man’s choices being determined by forces he can’t control. He actually stresses choice in the contemplation of values. What is deterministic about Aristotle’s view is that of social determinism. To achieve intellectual virtue, the higher virtue, one must be able to have time for contemplation, and only the privileged has access to that. If you were born as someone from the lower class, happiness can be found through the moral virtues, but you have little to no access to intellectual virtue.

    Like Kant, Aristotle stresses rationality. Being rational will help you find your mean, and therefore the best way to go about something. There is no mention of divine forces, but as with Kant, the Divine probably move along these lines of rational morality.

    Aristotle allows the relativism of the arts and the different disciplines but stresses the importance of virtue in all acts.

    Aristotle asks us to incorporate more of the divine into our work, stressing virtue and excellence. By being virtuous, we become happy. Like other ethical systems, a nice idea. The only down side is that the clearest path to happiness only belongs to a privileged few, but I guess finding your mean or your place wouldn’t make you resentful of the privileged.

Existentialism

    The one thing existentialists repeatedly hammer into the heads of those who would care to listen is the concept of personal responsibility. Everything we do is up to ourselves. Everything we are is because we chose to be that way. After that basic principle, the existentialists seem to have branched off into their own theories based on the principle. I’m choosing to focus on Jean-Paul Sartre, since I’m more familiar with his ideas. My report was on the guy. I’m taking the easy way out.

    Existence before essence. This is the basic principle of Sartre’s existentialism. What I’ve stated in the above paragraph is a quick summary of the theory. Everything we are is a consequence of what we have done. We pop up into this world, and only after that do we define ourselves. Main statement: we define ourselves.
    This personal responsibility thing actually means that good and bad are up to us. It’s extreme relativity! The only thing to prevent people from killing off each other is the added responsibility that while we define ourselves, we also create our ideal human. Think of it as Kant’s Universality thing. I don’t kill people since that would also mean that I’m allowing people to kill me. I think.

    According to Sartre, we are definitely free. Well not free to do the logically impossible, but free to choose what to do. But what about intellectual state apparatuses? Don’t they have a hand in shaping someone’s personality? Sartre would say that you choose to be shaped, and doing that isn’t really a good idea. Going along with the thought that you aren’t in control of your life is denying your capacity for excellence.

    With the discussions of Divine Commands, Sartre doesn’t actually care. He believes that if there is a God, he didn’t set any a priori values for us to depend on. Plus the fact that we decide the divinity of things we choose to believe. Like what Abraham did the voice in his head told him to sacrifice his son. There was no way to know if it was really God or not, but he decided it was God and set out to kill his only son anyway.

    People going on saying that they hear God are described as crazy in our society. But then for them, they choose to affirm the divinity of the voices in their heads and this brings us to what’s uncomfortable about existentialism (aside from the fact that you being a failure is your fault), the extreme relativism. Since by living, we create our own ideal human, there are almost infinite variations on the idea of the ideal human. Everybody is entitled to do what they want to do, some just do it with better acknowledgement of their personal responsibility. A problem example for the existentialist found in the readings is the case of the devoted Nazi. He knows that he’s part of genocide, he freely chooses to do it, and he has no regrets. He’s an ideal example of an existentialist- except that he’s a Nazi.

    And there, we have a not-quite-definitive summary of the ethical theories of utilitarianism, categorical imperative, virtue ethics, and existentialism. “It depends,” is a wonderful viewpoint to tackle these things since you’re not forced to defend them and you’re also not forced to like them. You see them (presumably) as they are. Hopefully I’ve been as objective as possible, but I doubt it.