Phil 360 Chapter 2 Kohlbergs Stages of Moral

Phil 360 Chapter 2

Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development • Pre-conventional – Punishment and reward • Conventional – Community, family, peer, etc. role conformity – Broader social and legal conformity • Post-conventional, autonomous, principled – Self-accepted moral principles – Rational justification of moral principles involved in action

Characteristics of third level moral judgments: • Universality: What is wrong for one person would be wrong for anyone in the same or similar circumstances. • Importance: Moral judgments override concerns such as personal desire, convenience, and even legal obligations. • Praise and Blame: Moral judgments justify morally praising adherents and morally blaming deviants.

Rightness • Subjective: An action is right in the subjective sense if it is believed by an individual to be the right action. • Objective: An action is right in the objective sense it is the right action.

Ethical Subjectivism/Relativism Descriptive: • Holds that as a matter of fact, different individuals/cultures hold different moral views. • This view is probably true, but is trivial because it is so obvious. • However, its truth has no bearing on the truth of normative subectivism or relativism. Normative: • Holds that what makes something moral or not is what an individual/society believes. • There are several problems with normative subjectivism/relativism that are detailed on the following slide.

Problems with normative subjectivism • Moral relativism is either internally contradictory or else cannot say anything at all about actions (see wallet example p. 28). • If relativism is true, then moral disagreements are by definition impossible. • If relativism is true, then individuals are by definition morally infallible. • When someone changes their mind, it is not the case that they used to be right and now are wrong (or vice versa) but instead that they were right then, are right now, and that the moral status of the action changed when they changed their mind.

Problems with normative relativism • No two societies may disagree about morality, because every society is by definition morally infallible • Nobody within a society may attempt moral reform of their society. • Nobody in one society may morally criticize any member of a different society (leaving aside questions of multicultural societies)

Moral Absolutism • Loosely, Absolutism is the idea that there are such things as eternal moral facts. This is actually a pretty modest claim. It implies only the following: – Peoples’ moral views can be correct or can be mistaken – Social norms can be correct or can be mistaken • The claim that there are moral facts and the claim that someone knows what the moral facts are two different claims.

Moral Disagreements: • 4 kinds: – Radical: Irreconcilable moral differences between value systems. – Principle: various distinct moral principles can be applied and may often have similar results. – Practices: Even where principles are agreed upon, sometimes argument arises about whther some action fits a given principle or does not.

Religion • Many moral norms are traditionally religious. • If one wishes to communicate a moral judgment to someone who is not a member of their sect or religion, one must use some secular justification for that moral judgment. • The Euthyphro problem (next slide) indicates that all religious moral norms should be amenable to secular expression.

The Euthyphro problem • In Plato’s “Euthyphro” dialog, Socrates raises the question of whether what is moral because the gods command it or whether the gods command it because it is moral. • If what is moral is only so due to divine command, then what is moral is arbitrary. This is an undesirable result. • If what is commanded because it is moral, then there should be some reason that it is moral. Presumably such a reason could be stated aside from divine command.

Ethical Theories • No ethical theory is perfect, or has found universal acclaim. • However, we must proceed with the best theories that we have while working to improve them. • Many philosophers have pointed out the deficiencies of both of the major ethical theories we will discuss, but what is important to realize is that generally, philosophers only spend that kind of time examining those theories that are mostly good theories to begin with.