PHIL1032 Lecture Notes PDF

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Contains complete lecture notes of all weeks from Epicurean Ethics all the way to Climate Justice. Does not contain notes on readings...

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Lecture 1: Epicurean Ethics UNIT OVERVIEW 3 Parts of Unit ● HAPPINESS and the Good Life ○ What constitutes the good life? ○ Ancient Philosophy ● GOODNESS and the Foundations of Morality ○ What makes actions morally right or obligatory? ○ Metaphysics and Normative Ethics ● Contemporary Problems of JUSTICE ○ What makes a society just and fair? ○ Applied Ethics What is Philosophy? ● Philo-sophia ○ Loving wisdom ○ Knowledge ● Way of thinking: critical, questioning, debating, justifying What is Happiness? ● For the Ancient Greeks ○ Synonymous with a good life ○ Greek word eudaimonia → happiness ■ Flourishing is a better translation ○ Happiness in a secondary sense that does not focus on feelings but rather on activities

BACKGROUND Epicurus ● Metaphysics: materialist atomism ● Epistemology: empiricist ● Method: sober thinking ○ “The starting point of this whole scheme… is good judgement.” (Epicurus & Cooper 1998: 52) ● Consequentialist This gives us the two preconditions for happiness ● There are gods but they are indifferent ● We shouldn’t worry about death

EPICURUS’ HEDONISM ●

“... so we speak of pleasure as the starting point and the goal of the happy life because we realize it is our primary native good, because every choice and aversion originates with it, and because we come back to it when we judge every good by using the pleasure feeling as our criterion.” (Epicurus & Cooper 1998: 51)

Psychological Hedonism ● Descriptive claim ○ Matter of fact ● Claim about motivation ○ “Every [act] originates with it” ● Explains human behaviour at the deepest level Ethical Hedonism ● Prescriptive claim ○ Ought to live ● Claim about what we should aim for ● What has value Questions 1. Is psychological hedonism true? 2. Even if psychological hedonism is true, is pleasure intrinsically good? 3. Should we pursue pleasure? Epicurus’ Solution ● Pain ○ “... the perceived disruption or dissolution of an organism’s natural healthy state” (O’Keefe 2010: 122) ● Pleasure ○ “... consists in freedom from bodily pain and mental agitation… not a product of one drinking party after another or of sexual intercourse… it is the result of sober thinking - namely, investigation of the reasons for every act of choice and aversion and elimination of those false ideas… (Epicurus & Cooper 1998: 51-52) ○ Kinetic Pleasure ■ Experience of pleasure ■ Physical sensations ○ Katastematic Pleasure ■ What Epicurus refers to ■ Lack of pain ■ Aponia: Physical pain ■ Ataraxia: Mental pain

ROLE OF REFLECTION: PRUDENCE ●

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How do we achieve happiness? ○ We are rational so we use our rationality to determine how to avoid pain ○ Must use JUDGEMENT (prudence) ○ Consequentialist: evaluate pain and pleasure by the consequences of our acts (both present and future) ○ Right way: katastematic pleasure sought, not kinetic pleasure ○ So: use rationality to avoid pain, to achieve aponia and ataraxia Questions 1. What causes mental pleasure and mental pain? 2. Why are mental pleasures and pains greater than physical ones? 3. How do we use rationality to achieve ataraxia? Epicurus’ Solution ○ Rational way to be happy ■ “... quantitative limit of pleasure is the elimination of all feelings of pain. Wherever the pleasurable state exists, there is neither bodily pain nor mental pain” (Epicurus & Cooper 1998: 53) ○ Aim: to avoid pain. What gives pain? ○ Desires ■ Natural and necessary desires ■ Natural and unnecessary desires ■ Unnatural and unnecessary desires ○ “The most important consequence of self-sufficiency is freedom.” (VS 77)

OTHER GOODS? ●

Pleasure is only intrinsic good. All other goods are instrumental - we pursue these goods to achieve katastematic pleasure

Companionship ● “Of all things that wisdom provides for the happiness of the whole man, the most important is the acquisition of friendship.” Sex ●

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“... so long as you do not break any laws or disturb well-established conventions or annoy any of your neighbors or wear down your body or use up your funds, you may carry out your own plans as you like. However… Sex never benefited any man, and it’s a marvel if it hasn’t injured him!” (The Vatican Collection of Aphorisms 51) More trouble than it’s worth

Justice and Virtues

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“Injustice is not an evil in itself. Its evil lies in the anxious fear that you will not elude those who have authority to punish such misdeeds.” (Epicurus & Cooper 1998:57)

Knowledge ● “We would have no need for natural science unless we were worried by apprehensiveness regarding… our failures to understand the limitations of pain and desire.” ● “... impossible to rid our anxieties about essentials if we do not understand the nature of the universe and are apprehensive about some of the theological accounts. Hence it is impossible to enjoy our pleasures unadulterated without natural science.” (Epicurus & Cooper 1998:54)

Lecture 2: Stoic Ethics Overview ● Background ● The Good Life ● Rationality ● Virtue ● Passions ● Attitudes to Other Goods ● Attitudes to Other People ● Problems Background ● Metaphysics: materialist, in a sense ● Theism: “Stoic God is immanent throughout the whole of creation… down to the smallest detail” ○ Biological, cosmos is a living thing ○ “God is identified with an eternal reason (logos) or intelligent designing fire/breath (pneuma)” ○ The universe is one cohesive thing with rules that guide it The Good Life ● “... wish that everything that comes about should come about just as it does…” ● The stoic: “... rid himself of every desire, and has transferred his aversion…” Rationality ● Antipater: “to live selecting what is in accordance with nature and rejecting what is contrary to nature continuously” ● Cicero: “we are endowed by nature… we all share in reason and the superiority that it gives us over the beasts; it is from this that all that is right and fitting derives, and it is starting from this that we inquire rationally about our duty…” ○ What makes us human is that we are capable of not pursuing our desire of pleasure ● Virtue (arete) → exercise of reason ● “Lay down from this moment a certain character and pattern of behaviour for yourself, which you are to preserve both when you’re alone and when you’re with others” (Handbook) Virtue ● Exercise of reason ● “... if you regard only that which is your own as being your own… no one will be able to coerce you, no one will hinder you, and you’ll find fault with no one…” ○ Find peace with what you can and cannot control

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Unlearn your beliefs ○ “... starting from this point, build [your beliefs] up in due order, so that nothing comes about against your wish…” (Discourses) Your peace of mind depends on you only By bettering yourself, that’s how you can help the world the best

Passions ● Passion - passio (Latin) - from pathos (Greek) ○ “Suffering, feeling, emotion, calamity,” literally “what befalls one” ● To be passive - Latin passivus = capable of feeling/suffering ● What are we doing when we feel emotion ○ “... at the heart of every frustration lies a basic structure: the collision of a wish [for the world to be other than it is] with an unyielding reality” (de Botton 2000:80) ● Death ○ “... nothing terrible, … not is in the judgement that death is terrible that the terror lies” (Handbook 5) ● We should aim for impassivity or apatheia ○ Refers to a state of equanimity in which the person is no longer troubled by the wrong things, or things beyond their control ○ Suppress the misunderstandings that we impose on the world ○ Control our emotions ● Stoic safe is ideal ○ “Sage’s virtue consists in possession not just of individual true judgements but of truth - a systematic body of moral knowledge” (Sharples 1996: 105) ● “I must die; so must I die groaning too?” Attitude to Other Good ● External goods: “indifferents” ○ Preferred and nonpreferred ● Seneca: “I will despise whatever lies in the domain of Fortune, but if a choice is offered, I will choose the better half.” (de Botton 2000:98) Attitudes to Other People

“Day by day you must keep before your eyes death and exile and everything else that seems frightening, but most especially death; and then you’ll never harbour any mean thought, nor will you desire anything beyond due measure.” “Just as a target isn’t set up to be missed, so nothing that is bad by nature comes into being in the universe.” (Handbook 27)

Lecture 3: Aristotelian Ethics BACKGROUND Audience ● Nicomachean Ethics ○ Lecture notes ● Young, well-brought up, 20+, men, going into politics Method ● Look at belief and see what puzzles & solutions emerge from them ● Ethics can stand separate from the rest of philosophy Today: virtue ethics ● Recurrence in the last 60 years ● Massive field

ARISTOTLE’S CONCEPTION OF THE GOOD LIFE What is the highest ultimate good? ● Eudaimonia ● “... both the masses and sophisticated people call it happiness, understanding being happy as equivalent to living well and acting well. They disagree about substantive conceptions of happiness…” Teleological Argument ● “... it appears to be one thing in one action or art, another in another: it is a different thing is medicine and in generalship...” ● “... if there is some one thing that is complete in itself, this would be what is being sought, and if there are several, then the most complete of these… is always chosen for itself and never on account of something else.”

WHAT IS EUDAIMONIA? ● Highest good/happiness Ergon Argument ● Ergon → function ● Something is good based on its capacity to complete its function What is the function of human beings?

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“...function of a human being to be a certain life, namely an activity of the soul and actions expressing reason, then the excellent man’s function will be to do this well and in a fine way.” Acting in accordance with reason

Virtue (Arete) - Excellence ● The account of the virtuous life of the virtuous man ○ “Virtue then is a disposition concerned with choice, lying on a mean that is relative to us, determined by reason, in the way a prudent man would determine”

ARISTOTLE ON VIRTUES Virtue (Arete) - Excellence Our soul has two parts ● Rational ● Non-Rational ○ Vegetativ8e (nutrition and growth) ○ Desires and impulses 2 Kinds of Virtue ● Intellectual ● Ethical/Character ○ How do we go about being an excellent person A person can be: ● Virtuous ● Continent ● Incontinent ● Viscous

DOCTRINE OF MEAN ● “It is a mean between two vices, one of excess and the other of deficiency.” ○ Acting virtuous is choosing between excessiveness and deficiency ● “relative to us” ● “...at the right time, on the right grounds, towards the right people, for the right purpose and in the right way…”

QUESTIONS ● What if the virtues conflict? ● Do virtues change over time?

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Is there only one model of the good life? Can there be a plurality of good lives with different conceptions of the good life? ○ Best life is a life of contemplation according to Aristotle ○ Second best is politician Does virtue ethics exhaust what we mean by morality?

Lecture 4: Religion and Ethics HAPPINESS TO GOODNESS Good Life ● What is the goal of life ● Happiness: best life given our nature ● Self-oriented? ● Virtues Good Action ● What do I need to do to be a good person? ● Morality: how can I do good/right actions? ● Other-oriented: how to interact with others who count as much as you do ● Obligations and duties Clearing the Way ● Subjectivism ○ Collapses morality down to something meaningless ○ Morality should be a set of demands we place on each other ● Impartiality ● Justifications (reasons) ● “Morality is… the effort to guide one’s conduct by reason… giving equal weight to the interests of each individual who will be affected by what one does” (Rachels 2003, p.14) ● Descriptive vs Prescriptive ● Impermissible vs permissible vs obligatory

DEFINING THE QUESTION Practical Question: ● Good/right and bad/wrong actions, given the needs of other people? ● What determines what is right or wrong? WHat is the nature of goodness and badness? ○ Foundation of morality ● Why should we act according to morality? ○ Motivation to be moral

DIVINE COMMAND THEORY ● ●

Also called theological voluntarism “He [God] is the author of the laws of morality in the same sense that He is the author of the laws of nature.” (Wielenberg 2012, p. 242)

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Foundation ○ What is the origin of moral values? Motivation ○ Why are we obligated to do what God wills or to never do what is contrary to God’s will?

Focus ● Not asking if God exists, but whether morality needs an author who determines what is right and wrong ● Metaphysical question: what is the source of moral values? ● Epistemic question: how do we know/learn/discover these moral values?

THE EUTHYPHRO DILEMMA ● ● ● ●

“... holiness [goodness] is what all the gods love, and that unholiness [badness] is what they all hate.” (Plato 2012, p. 218) “Do the gods love holiness because it is holy… or is it holy because they love it?” Does God will that X is good because it is good? Is X good because God wills that it is good?

NIETZSCHE’S CHALLENGE “God is dead, God remains dead, and we have killed him.” ● If God does not exist, then our morality seems to have no foundation ● “Karamazov’s Thesis”: ○ “if God does not exist, then all human actions are morally permissible and human beings have no moral obligations at all.” (Wielenberg 2012, p. 246) Possible Responses ● Theism ● Moral Nihilism ● Secular Humanism ● Existentialism

SECULAR HUMANISM ● ●

Meaning/purpose of life Foundation of morality? ○ History vs validity of moral belief ○ WIll we become egoists? ○ Will nothing be good or bad?

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Motivation to be moral? ○ Religious motivation vs secular motivation ○ Do we need God to be obliged to act morally?

EXISTENTIALISM “... one truly serious philosophical problem… suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.” (Camus 1993: 970) ● There is no ultimate meaning to life ● Human predicament is characterised by absurdity Absurdity Arises From: ● The human capacity for self-awareness ● “This condition is supplied… by the collision between the seriousness with which we take our lives and the perpetual possibility of regarding everything about which we are serious as arbitrary, or open to doubt” (Nagel 1979: 13) ● Existentialism: master of your own life Absurd Hero: Sisyphus ● Committing of a completely pointless life ● Creates his own meaning ● “His fate belongs to him. His rock is his thing… There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night. The absurd man says yes and his effort will henceforth be unceasing. If there is a personal fate, there is no higher destiny… For the rest, he knows himself to be the master of his days” (Camus 1979: 110)

Lecture 5: Moral Relativism ETHICS ● Moral Claim P: “It is wrong to harm innocent people” Metaethics ● What gives a moral claim authority? (foundation) ● What makes a moral claim true? (justification) ● Is a moral claim universally true? Normative Ethics ● What are the principles that underlie moral practice? (systematising morality) ● What do we value? ● What determines right/wrong action? Applied Ethics ● How should we act in specific situations? ● Applying ethical theory in practices ● Eg. bioethics

NORMATIVE RELATIVISM ● Question: Can we judge other cultures? ● Moral isolationists/Crude relativism ○ Cannot judge another culture ○ “... respect and tolerance due from one system to another forbids us ever to take up a critical position to any other culture” (Midgely 1993: 175) ● “Moderate relativism”/ “Pluralistic relativism” (Wong) ○ “... permit us to pass judgement on other with substantially different values” (Wong 1991:448) ○ Can pass judgement to other cultures but with limitation

METAETHICS: UNIVERSALISM VS RELATIVISM ● Universalism (AKA moral absolutism/moral objectivism) ○ There are absolute right and wrong answers to moral questions ○ Ie. IF a moral claim can be said to be true, then it is true absolutely and objectively ○ Moral claims hold true or false independently of cultural context ● Moral Relativism ○ There are NO universal and absolute moral truths ○ Truth or falsity of a moral claim depends upon whether that moral claim is regarded as true/false by the culture within it is made

MORAL CULTURAL RELATIVISM ● Descriptive Cultural Relativism ○ As a matter of empirical fact, different societies have different moral codes ○ Different societies have different moral codes ● Prescriptive Cultural Relativism (Moral Cultural Relativism) ○ Not only do cultures differ in their perceptions of what is morally right/wrong, there really is no such thing as culturally-independent moral truth ○ There is no objective (moral) standard that can be used to judge one societal moral code better than another (meta-ethical prescriptive claim) ● Moral Relativism vs Moral Skepticism ○ Skepticism: idea that there is no moral truth ○ Relativism: there are true claims but only pertaining to specific cultures ● Two Arguments (Cf. Gowans 2021, sect. 2) ○ Argument from disagreement ○ Argument from diversity

ATTRACTIONS OF MCR ● Acknowledgement of reality of moral diversity ● Nervousness about implications of absolutism in ethics (moral imperialism) ● It seems more plausible: moral claims don’t seem like claims that can be objectively true or false ● Perception (assumption) of entailment of principle of tolerance ●

Nussbaum points to the argument that appeals to cultural continuity, when discussing FGM: “... the constitutive role played by such inititation rites in the formation of a community and the disintegrative effect of interference.” (Nussbaum 1999: 125)

OBJECTIONS TO MCR ● Premise: Different people/cultures have different moral beliefs/codes ● Premise 2 (Made explicit): Whenever people disagree about something, there are no object facts about the matter ● Conclusion: Therefore there are no objective facts about morality ● ●

Objection 1: The MCR argument is structurally flawed/invalid What makes a good argument? ○ All the premises (reason-statements) must be true ○ The conclusion must follow from the premises validity

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Objection 2: What is culture? ○ Culture is not discrete, most people belong to multiple cultures ■ Not always in agreement ○ Cultures can change their stances on morality

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Countries changing laws

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Objection 3: Moral relativism is moral isolationism ○ Alleged normative implication of relativism ■ We can never fully understand another culture and so we can never judge the practices of other cultures (Midgley 1993: 175)

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Objection 4: Moral relativism is moral conventionalism ○ How to you justify moral beliefs if the justification is merely the culture itself ○ “Suppose in 1975 a resident of South Africa was wondering whether his country’s policy of apartheid - a rigidly racist system - was morally correct. All he has to do is ask whether this policy conformed to his society’s moral code. If it did, there would have been nothing to worry about, at least from a moral POV.” (James Rachels 2003, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, 4th Edition. Boston: McGraw Hill, 22)

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Objection 5: Moral relativism is excessively conservative

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Objective 6: MCR does not entail a principle of tolerance ○ Assumed normative implication of moral relativism ■ If there are no objective moral facts, then there is no neutral position from which to judge cultural practices as unacceptable ■ Therefore, we may not pass judgement and must be tolerant ○ “This is relativism, the anthropologist’s heresy, possibly the most absurd view to have been advanced even in moral philosophy.” (Willi...