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Explore the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic values, factual vs. moral statements, and the assessment of persons and actions based on intentions and consequences. Learn how values and ethics intertwine in decision-making processes.
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Extrinsic value vs. Intrinsic value • If something has an intrinsic value, it has the value by itself. • It has the value not because it can be used as a means to acquire any other things. • If something has an extrinsic value, it has the value because it can be used as a means to acquire other things that have value. • E.g., money, pen, computer, chair (actually most artifacts)
Some Kinds of Intrinsic Values • Personal • E.g., I like spicy food, and you hate spicy food. • Aesthetical • E.g., I like classical music, and you like pop music. • Ethical/Moral • E.g., Killing is wrong, and helping others is good.
Factual Statements vs. Moral Statements • Factual Statements • Represent states of affairs of the world. • Represent relations between states of affairs of the world—natural laws. • We determine their truth by observation or experiments.
Moral statements • Represent and express our moral values on actions or characters. • Prescribe actions • e.g. You should not play Facebook all day long. • Moral laws prescribe actions to everyone. • How can we determine their truth?
Which of the following are moral statements? • You can save her life. • This action is offensive. • Cleaning this toilet is your responsibility. • Everyone has a right to freedom of speech. • The factory should reduce its damage to the environment. • She has made a promise to help him. • He is very sad because his wife has left him.
Relations bet. factual statements and moral statements • Can factual statements deduce moral statements? • Does “John is the father of the child” deduce “John should take care of the child? • Does “You can save the child from drowning” deduce “You should save the child from drowning?”
Some philosophers think that no factual statements by themselves can deduce value statements. • According to them, if you attempt to deduce a value statement from a factual statement, you commit a “categorical fallacy.”
However, it seems that some factual statements can deduce value statement. • E.g.: • “This being has high intelligence” deduces “This being has a right to live.” • “You are not able to do X” deduces “You should not promise to do X.”
Can moral statements entail factual statements? • Does the statement “Superman is courageous” presupposes such facts about Superman? • Does “You ought to help her” entail “You can help her”?
It is likely that every value statement implies certain factual statements.
Two Kinds of Moral Judgment • Assessment of Persons: • We make moral judgments on a person’s character based on her actions. • Attributes include: • good/neutral/bad (evil) • Ethical/neutral/unethical • Moral/neutral/immoral
Assessment of Actions: • We also apply the attributes we apply to a person to an action. • But we have special attributes for actions: • right/neutral/wrong (a matter of degree) • morally permissible/morally impermissible (a matter of all-or-nothing)
Exercise • Translate the following statements in terms of moral permissibility: • It is not wrong to do X. • Everyone should X. • It is right to do X.
Assessment of Persons • We Judge a person’s character based on her intentions behind her actions. • E.g.: • If Peter helps others for their own sake and Paul helps others for getting return, Peter is a better person than Paul.
Assessment of Actions • We judge the goodness/badness of actions based on their intention. • E.g.: • If you try to help me fix my computer for my own sake but you fail in fixing it, your action is still good. • If you help me fix my computer in order to get my help in the future, you action is neutral.
More examples: • A white racist sells poisonous wine in order to kill many blacks. • A man sells wine in order to earn money although he knows that the wine is poisonous. • A man sells poisonous wine in order to earn money and he does not know that the wine is poisonous. But he should know this fact given the information available to him (e.g., he would know this if he investigated the source of wine.)
The actions are bad in different degrees because the agents have different intentions. • In fact, the persons’ intentions determine what their actions are, murder or manslaughter.
We also judge the goodness/badness of actions based on their consequences. • E.g.: • If you can save someone’s life with a small sacrifice, letting her die is bad even if you do no intend her death. • Stealing is bad even if the thief does not intend the victim to suffer.
We judge the rightness/wrongness of an action based on its consequences. • Good consequences include saving lives and enhancing happiness or well-being. • Evil consequences include causing death, pain, suffering, etc. • If an action is not wrong, it must result in more good than evil. • E.g.: An action that saves 1 person but kills 2 persons is impermissible.
However, the rightness/wrongness of an action does not depend on its actual consequences. • E.g.: Drunk driving is morally impermissible even if it has not harmed anyone luckily. • Rather, it depends on the action’s rationally expected consequences. • This is because when we talk about “rightness/wrongness,” we are concerned with actions at the level of policy.
Philosophers are still debating whether the rightness/wrongness (or moral permissibility) of an action depends on the intention behind the action. • We will exam this issue under the topic of “Thought Experiments”.
The rightness/wrongness of an action also depends on whether it preserve or violate others’ rights (權利). • Actions not violating others’ rights are not wrong.
However, an action may still not be wrong even if it violates or limits someone’s rights in order to protect others’ rights. • E.g., abortion may not be wrong even if it violates the right to life of the fetus. • E.g., In order to protect the rights of minorities, the government may limit certain rights (e.g., the right of speech and the right of ownership) of the majority.
Different kinds of rights • Liberties • To say that a man has a right in the sense of a liberty is to say that no one can demand him not to do the thing which he has right to do. • E.g.: One has a liberty right to use a public area, such as a campsite in the country park. • However, preventing others from using the area by preoccupying it is permissible.
Claim-rights • Positive rights • if someone has a positive right to X, others have a (positive) duty provide X to her. • I.e.: It is wrong to fail to provide X to her. • Negative rights • if someone has a negative right to X, others have a (negative) duty not to prevent her from getting X. • I.e.: It is wrong to prevent her from getting X.
Moral Arguments • A moral argument is an argument the conclusion of which is a moral statement. • To argue the moral permissibility of an action is to form a moral argument.
4 Types of Moral Arguments • Arguments based on moral principle • Structure: Action a has feature X (e.g., killing an innocent person). Principle: It is immoral to do something with feature X. Therefore: a is immoral. • Problem: it is difficult to find a principle without exceptions.
2. Arguments based on good-and-evil caculus. • Actions resulting in more evil than good are wrong. • However, some actions resulting in more good than evil are still judged to be morally impermissible. • E.g.: Killing a person in order to use his organs to save 5 people is wrong.
3. Arguments based on rights • E.g.: Same-sex marriage should be recognized because (1) its recognition does not violate anyone’s rights and (2) homosexuals should have the same rights as heterosexuals.
4. Arguments from analogy • We will discuss this in the next topic.
