Dr Frankena Moral Value Responsibility Need a normative

Dr. Frankena: Moral Value & Responsibility ä Need a normative theory ä Normative meaning - standard or guide ä Morally good or bad things are: ä persons, groups of persons, traits of character, dispositions, emotions, motives, and intentions ä Nonmorally good or bad things are: ä physical objects like cars, paintings, knowledge, freedom, government, and so forth. PEP 570: Frankena, Chapter 4

Historically, morality concerned with: ä Cultivation of certain disposition, or traits of character. ä virtues - not wholly innate: they must all be acquired, at least in part, by teaching and practice or perhaps by grace ä honesty, kindness, conscientiousness. ä Morality not rules or principles, but rather the cultivation of such dispositions, i. e. . , Plato and Aristotle PEP 570: Frankena, Chapter 4

Leslie Stephen: Morality is Internal ä Moral law is truly a rule of character. ä Ethics of Virtue: ä Aretaic Judgments ä Actions are secondary, what is important is the motive or trait. ä motives, intentions, and actions PEP 570: Frankena, Chapter 4

Hume ä When we praise any actions, we regard only the motives that produce them. The external performance has no merit. . all virtuous actions derive their true merit only from virtuous motives. ä In other words, what is important is judgments about agents and their motives o PEP 570: Frankena, Chapter 4

Hume: 3 kinds of ethics of duty ä Trait Egoism ä Virtues that are most conducive to one’s own good or welfare ä Trait Utilitarianism ä Virtues are those traits that promote the greatest amount of good, or ä benevolence is the basic or cardinal moral virtue ä Trait Deontological ä certain traits are morally good simply as such PEP 570: Frankena, Chapter 4

Difference between obligation and virtue. . . ä Principles of Duty ä We ought to promote good ä We ought to treat people equality ä We ought to tell the truth ä We ought to be responsible ä Trait is a disposition, habit, quality, or trait, which an individual either has or seeks to have. PEP 570: Frankena, Chapter 4

Values Principles Obligations Actions PEP 570: Frankena, Chapter 4

What are the moral virtues? ä They cannot be derived from one another ä All other moral virtues can be derived from or shown to be forms of them ä Plato and Greeks though they were four cardinal virtues: ä wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice ä Christianity has seven: ä faith, hope, love, prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice - first three theological, last 4 human PEP 570: Frankena, Chapter 4

Cardinal Virtues - Frankena & Schopenhauer ä Benevolence ä Justice ä All other virtues can be derived from these two. PEP 570: Frankena, Chapter 4

Is morality primarily a following of certain principles or as a cultivation of certain traits. Difficult to know what traits to encourage if we did not subscribe to principles PEP 570: Frankena, Chapter 4

What then would be the difference between a principle of beneficence and the virtue of benevolence. PEP 570: Frankena, Chapter 4

Kant: That Principles without traits are impotent and traits without principles are blind. PEP 570: Frankena, Chapter 4

An Ethics of Virtue: ä Point of acquiring these virtues ä not further guidance or instruction ä not to tell us what to do ä but to ensure that we will do it willingly ä Must not only move us to do what we do, ä They must also tell us what to do PEP 570: Frankena, Chapter 4

Moral Ideal ä Ways of being rather than doing ä wanting to be a person of a certain sort ä wanting to have a certain trait of character ä Socrates, Jesus the Christ, Martin Luther King, Mohammed Gandhi PEP 570: Frankena, Chapter 4

Dispositions to be Cultivated ä Cardinal, First Order Virtues: ä Benevolence and Justice ä Corollaries, ä Truth, honesty, keeping promises, fidelity, which are all acquired and fostered. ä Second Order Virtues ä Conscientiousness ä Intellectual Traits Disposition to find and respect the relevant facts and a disposition Frankena , Chapter 4 to think clearly ä PEP 570:

Whole Point: ? ? ? Values Principles Obligations Actions PEP 570: Frankena, Chapter 4

Should an action be judged right or wrong because of its results; the principle it exemplifies, or because of the motive, intention, or trait of character is good or bad? PEP 570: Frankena, Chapter 4

What is moral? Reasonable view. . ä is that one’s actions are morally good if it is at least true that, whatever the actual motives in acting, the sense of duty or desire to do the right is so strong that it keeps one trying to do one’s duty. PEP 570: Frankena, Chapter 4

Moral Responsibility • • Three Kinds of cases for moral responsibility 1) X is a responsible person, meaning to say something morally favorable about his character. 2) X is and was responsible for a past action 3) X is responsible for Y when Y still is to be done. PEP 570: Frankena, Chapter 4

Case 1: X is responsible • • In this case, responsible is known to be trustworthy or dependable with sound judgment. Meaning what morally? PEP 570: Frankena, Chapter 4

Case 2: • X is and was responsible for a past action. • Responsible is being the source or cause of • something happening PEP 570: Frankena, Chapter 4

Case 3: • X is responsible for Y to be done. • Responsible is the condition of being • accountable to act without guidance or • personal authority PEP 570: Frankena, Chapter 4

Responsibility • In Case 1 and 3, we are accountable for actions; we have obligations because of previous commitments. . . hence is a straight normative judgment of obligation. PEP 570: Frankena, Chapter 4

Responsibility • Normative judgment: making a decision based on a norm or standard. In this case, the standard is based on an obligation to a certain principle (to be responsible) from the value: responsibility PEP 570: Frankena, Chapter 4

Related Issues ä Coercion ä Freedom and Choice ä Determinism PEP 570: Frankena, Chapter 4

Coercion ä Absence of coercion ä not only direct by indirect, i. e. , modeling, manipulation, that affect alternatives ä Liberty - choice between alternatives ä importance of education enlarges the capacity of choice and decisions. Important precondition of existence of freedom. PEP 570: Frankena, Chapter 4

Free Will and Determinism • Free will: you have choices that you can make based on your values. • Determinism: every event, including human choices and volitions, is caused by other events and happens as an effect or result of these other events. PEP 570: Frankena, Chapter 4

Determinism ä The general philosophical thesis which states that for everything that ever happens there are conditions that given them nothing else. ä ethical determinism ä logical determinism ä theological determinism ä physical determinism ä psychological determinism PEP 570: Frankena, Chapter 4

Ethical determinism ä ä actions are determined by an apparent good. . no man can set as the object of his choice something that seems evil or bad to him. opponent: The evident fact of incontinence. A man’s desires or appetites are in conflict with his reason, precisely in the sense that he desires something that is bad for him. Aristotle. PEP 570: Frankena, Chapter 4

Logical Determinism ä Men’s wills are fettered, that nothing is real in in their power to alter. ä Fate determines all. No man’s destiny is in any degree up to him. ä Everything he ever does is something he could never have avoided. . it is idle to speak of free will. PEP 570: Frankena, Chapter 4

Psychological Determinism ä Christian Theology, a concept arose that a perfectly good god, omniscient, and omnipotent, the entire world and everything in it, down to the minutest detail, are absolutely dependent for existence and character from Him. ä Divine Power and Predestination. PEP 570: Frankena, Chapter 4

Physical Determinism ä Events are determined by eternal and immutable laws of nature. ä A move away from people making decisions, or god writing out the decisions to the decisions are really not decisions at all. PEP 570: Frankena, Chapter 4

Psychological Determinism ä All voluntary human action is caused by the alternate operation of motives, desires, and aversions. . . which are varieties of physical forces. ä The immediate cause of a voluntary motion is an act of will, but it is never free, it is caused. . . by psychological training. Hobbsian thought PEP 570: Frankena, Chapter 4