Hello everyone. This is Daniel and this is the second lecture in our unit where we are discussing what is ethics, how does it work as a discipline and talking about some background concepts uh and assumptions and ideas that will be in play in the more applied units of the course when we're talking about specific technological issues. Okay, so uh let's get right into it. Let me put my tea bag in a cup. Okay. Um so last lecture um in last lecture we uh were discussing this uh thesis of cultural relativism which is a thesis about where morality comes from. It's a thesis about what makes moral claims true. And remember that I was trying to convince you that this thesis is false. Now, I didn't replace the thesis with a positive theory about where morality comes from. And the reason I didn't do that is because first of all, it's very difficult to do that. And second of all, this is not that sort of class. Uh if you're interested in that, you should take a metaeththics class or another uh philosophy class. We just don't have the time to do it. Although it's very interesting and I have views about it and if you'd like to talk about it, come come, you know, speak with me in office hours. Anyway, um so we ended with this kind of like working assumption of like look um let's just assume that uh you know moral beliefs or moral claims are not just uh determined by what people think about morality. We can't solve moral questions just by taking a poll. And let's assume that uh there's either objective moral truths or more or less universal moral truths. That's going to be just a working assumption. in this class. Now, the question you might be asking at this point is, well, look, I mean, if we don't solve moral questions by taking a poll, how do we go about determining what is morally right and wrong? How do we go about conducting um, you know, moral theorizing in a rigorous way? Well, that's what I want to talk about now. And actually before we get into that, I want to like just break up um just kind of mention very briefly to you something that's been kind of implicit in my discussion. Uh namely um the different branches of uh ethics. So within ethics there are three different branches. Um the the branches of or subd disciplines of of ethics are metaethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics. Metaethics is is what we've just been doing. Metaethics is the attempt to understand the presuppositions and commitments of ethical thought, talk, and practice. Uh what makes moral claims true? What does it mean to say that something is good or bad? Are all moral truth objectives? That's that's metaeththics. We're not doing that primarily in this class because this is just not that's not our topic. Um another branch of ethics is what's called normative ethics. Normative ethics is the attempt to specify values or guidelines or theories that explain how one ought to live, how one ought to treat others and so and so on. It's the attempt to develop a framework for thinking systematically about ethical questions that we might have in the real world. This is going to be relevant to this question of how do we conduct ethics? Like one way in which you can go about answering moral questions that you have in the real world is by appealing to frameworks or theories of morality that guide you toward specific sorts of answers in principled ways. Okay. Um so I mean normative ethics you're the normative ethicists are interested in questions like look when is an action right or wrong in this kind of general sense when is a person blamew worthy what principles if any out to God or conduct that sort of thing as I said our main our main interest is in applied ethics which is the application of ethics to practical problems so uh applied ethicists are interested in questions like is it immoral to eat animals do we have a moral obligation to vote is lying wrong um what's the ethical impact act of social media on our relationships to others, that sort of thing, right? Should we use bio-engineering technologies to enhance our children? That that's the sort of question that applied ethicists are interested in. Um, now, okay, applied ethicist um or applied ethics is related to these other disciplines in ways that I've already sort of been suggesting, right? So, for example, um if you develop a systematic theory of morality that can help you generate answers about really specific questions you have, and we're going to talk in a future lecture about different theories of ethics, how those can be used in applied ethics, and what the arguments for and against them are. But the relationship is a relationship of influence isn't only top down like it isn't as if metaeththics influences normative ethics and normative ethics influences applied ethics but not the other way. Um you know our intuitions about applied questions, our intuitions about spec the morality of specific actions or specific things in human life can influence the theories we develop. And so there's a there's actually a you know at higher levels of of this discipline. So there's actually like a two-way relationship between um each of these subd disciplines, right? So applied ethics, normative ethics, the theories we develop influence our answers to applied ethical questions. that the answers that we are intuitively attracted to or upon reflection adopt in response to applied ethical questions can also put pressure on us to alter our our normative theories or you know adopt new normative theories and so on. Now this not this may not make a lot of sense right now depending on how much background you have in ethics. We're going to talk about what normative theories are, what they look like and so on. So just bear with me if if some of this um is a little bit over people's heads. But what I'm going to do now in for the remainder of this lecture is just talk about like for all of these subd disciplines including applied ethics. What does the methodology look like? What are our central methodological tools? What does theorizing as a philosophical ethicist or as an academic ethicist actually look like if it doesn't involve taking a survey to see what people's opinions are about morality and then drawing conclusions on the basis of that? Well, um you know what what is this? What is ethics? That's the question we're answer. I mean uh there are kind of different ways of characterizing ethics. I mean, what's one thing that's kind of funny about philosophy in general, and that includes subdisciplines of philosophy like ethics, is that there's not only a lot of disagreement within those disciplines, but there's also a lot of disagreement about what the discipline even is. It's kind of a joke, a telling joke that if you ask, I don't know, 20 philosophers what philosophy is, you're probably going to get 20 different answers. And the philosophers are going to start arguing with one another about um about about how to characterize philosophy. And so there are very there's very little that you can non-trivially and uncontroversially say about what philosophy is and also what ethics is. There's actually a discipline called metaposophy um which is just basically the study of like what is philosophy and how does it work. There's even meta metaphilos which is the study of metaphilosophy and uh you know similarly there are questions in like meta ethics. Okay but anyway so with all that being said I mean what what is how do we actually like characterize ethics in like the most abstract non-controversial way? Well I think there are two ways to do this. Uh the first way to characterize ethics as a discipline is by speaking about the sorts of claims that ethicists are interested in. I want to distinguish now between three different types of statements or three different types of facts, three different types of claims. I'm going to assume that you know this distinction going forward. So this is something you should definitely write down and commit to memory. The distinction is between what we can call descriptive claims, normative claims, and evalative claims. Normative here means something different than it would normally mean in like a statistics class. So pay close attention. A descriptive claim is just a claim that purports to describe things as they actually are. Right? So there are literally an infinite number of all of these, but I'll give you some examples. The moon orbits the earth. That's just a claim that purports to describe the world as it actually is. The moon is made of green cheese. That's a false claim, but it purports to describe the world as it actually is. So, it's descriptive. People sometimes get murdered. Um, murder rates are falling over time. Those are both descriptive claims, right? Okay. We can distinguish this type of claim, this type of statement, this type of purported fact from normative and evalative claims. A normative claim essentially is a claim about how things ought to be. A normative claim in some sense says something about how things should be or how things ought to be. So there are also an infinite number of these, but I'll give you some examples. You should not commit murder. You should call your mother on her birthday. Those are both normative claims. I'll give you some other examples. um you should not stick your finger in a wall socket. That's a normative claim. It's a claim about how you ought to act. One thing I want you to notice about that claim that I just mentioned is that it does not appear to be moral. Although it is nevertheless normative. What I mean by that is if you stick your finger in a wall socket, you're not doing anything immoral. You're just doing something stupid. And so when I say you should not stick your finger into a wall socket, I'm not saying it's immoral to do so, but I'm saying that in some sense you shouldn't. The sense that's in play there is like prudential. Like if you care about your own well-being, you should not do this. Something like that. I'll give you another example. Um, you know, you should put your fork on the right side of your plate. Maybe it's supposed to be the left side. Again, that's a that's a normative claim, but it's not a moral claim. It's a claim of etiquette. It only applies to you if you care about etiquette. Okay? But what all of these claims have in common, everything from you should not murder to you should put your fork on the right side of your plate, is that they're saying something about how things things ought to be rather than just purporting to describe things as they actually are. By the way, it seems as if like descriptive claims, normative claims can be true or false. You should murder the next stranger you see on the street. that claim appears to be false, right? Um just like the moon is made of green cheese uh is false. So there is there are like structural similarities between normative claims and descriptive claims. Um the the last type of claim that I want to talk about is just an evaluative claim. It's exactly what it sounds like. This is a claim that evaluates something. Murder is very bad. Now, this is like the one and only time I'll ever say this in this class, but I don't want you to overthink this distinction or these distinctions between these different types of claims. If you think really hard about it, you will, you know, you might just start start to like get confused about what the distinction, especially between descriptive and evalative claims are. Because if I say murder is very bad, aren't I just describing the world? Aren't aren't I just saying something about what the world is like? namely that this type of action has the property of badness. Okay, there are kind of complications about the boundaries between these claims, but I want you to kind of just squint and see that there clearly is a difference. Um, okay, so one way of characterizing ethics is in terms of its ultimate subject matter. Ethics relies upon descriptive claims but mostly concerns itself with normative claims and also sometimes evalative claims. And this is one thing that roughly speaking distinguishes ethics from science in that scientists are mostly interested in describing the world as it actually is. Whereas ethicists are interested in describing the world as it should be or in trying to determine um how the world should be. Okay. So ethicists certainly concern themselves with descriptive claims. I mean if you want to know whether social media is a toxic influence on society, you have to know things about how social media actually affects us. In other words, you have to know descriptive facts about social media and its impact on us. But like the our the reason we're concerned with those sorts of facts um has something to do with the normative. Okay. So that's one way of characterizing ethics in terms of like the subject matter or what we're ultimately concerned about. But what how do we actually go about trying to establish normative claims? Well, our central methodological tool in ethics is argumentation. And this is another thing that distinguishes ethics and other philosophical subdisciplines from science, at least most sciences. Now, of course, every area of intellectual inquiry uses arguments in one way or another, but most scientific disciplines are empirical, meaning that their central methodological tool is observation. Right? Right? If you want to describe the world as it is, you have to actually observe the world. And then you craft theories that make all your observations hang together in a coherent way which is explanatory and has predictive power. Okay. Um so you're going to use argumentation in that process. But like observation is the main thing. Not so with uh ethics and philosophy. With ethics and philosophy, our primary tool is argumentation. Now, ar the word argument is a bit ambiguous. It can refer to an event. It can refer to like a conversation that people have where they're they're like fighting with one another. That's not exactly what I mean here. Um what I mean by an argument is a group of statements in which some of the statements which we call the premises are intended to rationally support another of the statements which we call the conclusion. Okay. So sorry, I'm going to close this window. Okay, I'm back. Um so we try basically the the way in which ethics works is we try to establish moral claims by offering premises that first of all if true provide reason to believe the conclusion the claim in question and second of all uh are either independently plausible already accepted by the audience or supported by another argument. That's it. We give arguments um that provide logical support for normative conclusions where the premises in our arguments are um again already accepted by the audience or supported by other arguments that we have. Now, this is a little bit of an abstract characterization, and I think that the best way to actually appreciate what's going on in ethics as a discipline is to look at an example. And so, I'm going to show you an example of a very famous argument in applied ethics that is interesting for a couple of reasons. One reason that it is interesting is that it has a special characteristic that I think marks an exciting philosophical challenge. Namely, the premises of the argument are all really plausible independently if you just look at them in isolation and all look fairly innocuous if you look at them in isolation. But taken together, the premises lead to a radical and surprising conclusion. So that's the mark of an exciting argument in my opinion. Um, in addition, uh, this argument is interesting because the conclusion is like pretty serious and pretty radical. In fact, makes a claim on all of us basically that, uh, we are much much more immoral than, uh, we intuitively or common sensically think. and that like the demands of morality are much higher than we might ordinarily think. Anyway, so uh what I want to do is I want to show you the argument premise by premise. Um motivate them one by one, talk about the structure and um then I'll leave it to you to think about and uh there are a lot of uh you know if this were an inerson class we would spend a lot of time talking about this argument. Um I'll just leave it with you. Uh I I'm going to want to let you sit with it and you know if you want to um if you want to talk about it you should come to office hours because I would be very interested in doing it and actually um later on when in a future lecture when we talk about normative theories you're there's going to be a resonance with this argument that we're looking at now although this argument is not going to explicitly invoke any theories of morality. Um, the other thing I'll say is for the uh, you know, kind of logic uh, chompers, the logic geeks out there, the argument as I I as I'm presenting it, um, is not completely logically airtight. Um, but that's because I've simplified it. It can be made airtight. And what that essentially means is that in order to reject the conclusion, you must reject one of the premises. you cannot simultaneously reject the conclusion which you are very much going to want to reject and uh accept all of the premises. What's a little bit tricky is that all the premises as I said earlier are fairly plausible um and you know it doesn't seem like uh we should reject it either. Okay. Anyway, let's look at the argument. So this argument is associated with Peter Singer who's a famous utilitarian. um you may have uh heard of them. If not, don't worry about it. This is from a a paper called famine, affluence, and morality. Okay. Premise one. If you can prevent something very bad from happening without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, then you are morally obligated to do it. Okay, let me unpack this and just motivate a little bit before we move on to the second premise. So, first of all, what do I mean by moral obligation? We're going to talk a lot about moral obligation uh periodically in this class. And it's important to know the difference between what it means to say that you're obligated to do something and just saying that you should do something. So when we say you should do something, um we just mean there are like reasons in favor of it that speak in favor of it, maybe fairly strong reasons. When we say that you are obligated to do something, we mean that you are required to do it. It's not just that you like it would be nice for you to do it. It's not just that maybe there's, you know, a strong sense in which the reasons support doing it. It's just that actually what we're saying when we say you're obligated to do something is that if you don't do it, you're doing something wrong. Right? So we're talking about here, we're talking here about requirements. Okay? Now implicit in this premise is um this notion of like a proanto obligation. Uh we're going to talk more explicitly later about um different types of obligations. Um but I just want to flag this now. Um so typically when we say that you're obligated to do something, we mean that you are defeasively defeasably required to do that thing. Uh this is not to say that there are no situations in which you are freed from that obligation. When we say that you are morally obligated to do something, almost always what we mean if we're speaking in general terms is that under normal circumstances, you are required to do this thing. Okay. Um yeah. So anyway, we'll talk more. So protanto or or primmaasi um both essentially mean defeasible. This will become important down the line. Um okay. So what is the idea behind this statement? Well, look, I mean, let me just give you an example, Peter Singer's example that he uses to motivate this general claim about moral requirement and to make it seem intuitive. Let's suppose that you go to the mall and you buy the most beautiful pair of suede shoes for, I don't know, $1,000. They're very expensive shoes. But let's say that you got them on sale. They're normally $10,000, a lot of money, and you're very excited about them. And the only unfortunate thing is that these shoes, which you bought at a nice discount with a lot of money, are a little bit tight. You know, they're not uncomfortable, but they take a while to get on and off. and you uh put on your new shoes and you uh go strolling along a path next to a lake. Let's say you're going to a party to show off your shoes. You really care about your shoes and so on. And it's quite peaceful on this path. You're listening to the birds. You're listening to, you know, the turkeys rustling in the grass. And you also, as you're strolling, hear a little splash just in your ear. Just splash splash splash splash. And you're like, "Oh, it must be a nice duck that's hanging out in the pond." And and you look over into the pond, and no one else is in sight, but what you see is a child drowning, a child drowning in the pond, maybe at a few feet of water. And you realize that if you do not immediately wade into this pond and pluck this child out of the water, then they are certainly going to die and there's nobody else around at all. You are the only one who could potentially do this. Now, there's no risk to yourself because the child is drowning only in a few feet of water and you you're just capable of uh going and picking them up. Um, but you do realize that you don't have time to take off your very fancy suede shoes. Remember I said they were a little tight. You bought them on sale. Uh, which is great, but um, it takes a while to get them on and off. And if you take the time to get your shoes off, the child will have died. Okay. Now, here I'm describing a thought experiment to you. Um, you know, we talked about those in the last last lecture. They're useful in thinking about morality. Let me just add one final parameter to it and then I will bring us back around to this premise and this argument. Let's assume that you know somehow that you will not be compensated by anyone for rescuing this child. It will be a thankless task. You're not going to get the key to the city. Uh you know you're not going to be able to set up a you know a GoFundMe page and get reimbured for your shoes. You're just going to lose your shoes. Now here's the question. Are you morally required to wade into the lake and save your child despite the fact that it will end up ruining your new shoes? Or is it permissible to just uh whistle and keep on walking? I don't know about you, but I think it's pretty obvious that you are morally required to wait into the water and save your save the child that's drowning despite the fact that you have to sacrifice your shoes to do it. Now you might think otherwise but yikes. I mean if so okay well let's assuming that you are morally required. What explains that? Something like this principle. Here's a situation where you can prevent something very bad from happening namely the premature death of a child without thereby sacrificing something of comparable uh moral importance. Now, you do have to sacrifice something that's important, namely your shoes. Those are expensive. You care about them. But that's not nearly as important from a moral point of view, from the cosmic point of view, as saving a child. Okay. Okay. Well, anyway, that's that's the idea behind this principle. Okay. Um, pre premise two, you can prevent someone from dying by donating your vacation money to an efficient mosquito net charity. Now let me just explain this. Um there there are different ways of evaluating the effectiveness of charities. As you all probably know, many charities are basically scams. Many charities are extremely inefficient because they have a lot of overhead. They pay their administrators lots of money. They spend money on causes that really aren't that important. Uh but one way of measuring the effectiveness of a charity is in terms of how many dollars it takes to save a life. And some charities according to that criterion are very effective and efficient. And the most uh effective charity according to that criterion is this real charity that takes money, purchases mosquito nets and provides them for people in malariastricken areas that want those mosquito nets. And it turns out that providing people with mosquito nets nets to cover their beds at night really does prevent people from dying from malaria. And the numbers, I mean, as inflation progresses and so on, change, but basically the numbers are about $400 to $5,000 for every I mean, it used to be about, last time I checked, it was like $3,500, but I'm assuming it's gone up $3,800. It's about $5,000 now, I think, as far as I know. Okay. But it's it's around a vacation price, you know, like a decent vacation cost about that much. Um, what that means is that let's just say $5,000. For every $5,000 this charity receives, one fewer person dies from malaria in the world. And uh if this charity does if I'm choosing between giving $5,000 to this charity or not, um there's very good reason for thinking that if I don't give that money to charity, one more person will die in the world as a result of malaria. Um okay, premise three. uh preventing someone's death is much more important than your vacation. Okay. What does this mean exactly? Well, I don't know. Um it doesn't it doesn't mean that you know preventing some stranger's death is more important to you than preventing your vacation. Maybe you don't give a at all about strangers and their lives. What it means is that from a moral point of view, it's more important to prevent someone's death than for you to be able to go on vacation. Here's a way of illustrating it. I mean, suppose that I have a button. Imagine this coaster is a button. And if I press the button, two things will happen. First of all, a random stranger in the world will drop dead. And second of all, another stranger in the world will get to go on a fairly nice vacation. If you come into my office one day and you see me just pressing the button over and over and over again, you're probably going to ask me to stop. You're probably going to be like, "What the are you doing? Uh, stop pressing the button." Um, why? Because although I am producing some good in the world, I'm allowing someone to go on vacation, I'm also killing people and the bad far outweighs the good on a moral calculus, right? Or in the sort of moral scales. Um well, if you agree with that, then that suggests that you agree that like look, allowing someone to um uh you know, enabling someone to go on vacation is not nearly as important as saving someone's life. Okay. All right. Look, if you agree with that in the abstract, then it seems like it should apply to you, too. I mean, you're you're not cosmically special. Um, it's not as if your vacations are any more important than anyone else's, right? Um, and so that suggests that your vacation, even if you care more about it than saving a stranger's life, is not in fact in a sense that matters for morality more important than saving someone's life. Okay. Now, I just want to preempt a few things. I mean, you might one thing you might be thinking is like, look, uh maybe if maybe the stranger that dies is like a serial killer, in which case that'll be great. Um so I don't that's true. That is a possibility, but um it's extremely unlikely. First of all, I mean, most people are normal people and their lives are valuable and it's bad if they die. It's tragic if they die prematurely. Second of all, I mean, just notice that look, I mean, every stranger on you see on the street could potentially be a serial killer. That doesn't mean that you are permitted to just stab a knife into their chest, right? I mean, unless you have specific reason to think this person is actually a danger to others, you know, they have a right that prevents you um from killing them. Uh anyway, so I mean that's not perfectly analogous to what we're talking about, but I'm just making the point that like you the fact that someone might be a serial killer um given all that you know doesn't mean that this possibility is relevant to your evaluation of whether their death would be bad because the vast majority of people are not serial killers. Also, by the way, if I'm pressing this button, yeah, I might be killing a serial killer, but I also might be sending a serial killer on vacation. So, you might think the two things kind um balance out. Uh the other thing you might be thinking is, well, look, I mean, yeah, I should give money to charity, um but look, if I don't go on vacation, my life will be ruined. I mean, I I have to go on vacation every once in a while. I have to be able to recharge in order uh to continue living. Here's the thing, though. Um, you can go on vacation by just staying at home, sitting on the couch, eating Cheetos, and watching Netflix, which cost almost no money. Frankly, that sort of thing can be more recharging in many situations and for many people than, you know, the alternative, which is spending a bunch of money on an international vacation. So, I mean, I just I say that as a suggestive remark um to maybe preempt some objections you you might initially have, although I think something uh is going wrong with this argument and maybe it's premise three. Um, personally, I doubt it. Okay, let me just uh get to the conclusion. We'll talk about the structure and then I'll leave you to think about this. So all of these premises taken together look fairly independently plausible but uh sorry all these all these premises individually look fairly plausible but taken together they imply something fairly radical namely that you are morally obligated to donate your vacation money to an efficient mosquito net charity. Why? Well if you're deciding about whether to go on vacation or whether to donate your money to charity you have an opportunity to prevent something very bad from happening. namely a stranger dying um by sacrificing something but not something of comparable moral importance, not something that's um nearly as important as saving a life, namely your vacation. So if we buy premise one and we buy premise two and three, then it seems like we're obligated to donate our vacation money to an efficient mosquito net charity or some other very efficient charity. Um, now the the other thing I want to say about this argument before we look at the structure is that if you think about it a little bit, you're going to see that it generalizes way beyond vacation. And so I just invite you to kind of reflect on that. I mean, you can substitute any sort of um expensive purchase like going to Calpali rather than to a community college like um which is what I did by the way. Went to community college, state school, never paid for anything. Um, and I'm doing okay. Um, you're probably paying a lot of money to go to Kpali when you could have done something cheaper and sent the extra money to to charity. Um, but look, I don't want to harp on you. I just went I just got back from a vacation. It was very expensive. I have a great um TV setup in my home. I spent thousands of dollars on it and yeah, someone died as a result of that. um like I could have spent that money to save someone's life who someone who will die because I didn't choose to spend that money that way. So you see how this kind of generalizes. Okay. But anyway, let's just talk about the structure here. Um notice that this uh moral argument has all three types of claims in it. It has normative claims, it has descriptive claims, it has an invalidative claim. Premise one might look like a like a descriptive claim, but it's really a normative claim. saying if you can prevent something very bad from happening then you are morally required to do it you really should do it and if you don't do it you're doing something wrong that's a normative claim purpose two is just a descriptive claim it's just a claim about cause and effect look if you donate a certain amount of money um you know you can save someone's life you will save someone's life um yeah of course there's some statistical chance that you know that doesn't actually make a difference but that's true of almost every action for almost every action and your intended outcomes have some probability but not a 100% chance of occurring. Um so it's a claim about cause and effect. It's just a descriptive claim about the world and about efficiencies of charities and so on. Premise three is a devalative claim. Uh it's just a claim about goodness and badness, the relative goodness and badness. And the conclusion here is normative. It's saying look, you are obligated not to go on vacation. Okay. Um, so like I said, I mean, this argument is making a claim on you. And you, you know, one thing I invite you to do, um, on your own is kind of just think through, well, look, do I accept the conclusion? And the extension of the conclusion that I was gesturing at. If so, it suggests that, well, we're all acting pretty poorly by the standard of morality, and we're required to do a lot more than we actually do. Um, but look, I mean, if you don't accept that conclusion, you got to reject one of these premises, and I'm sorry, but it can't be the second one. It is it really is true that like you can save someone's life by donating basically the money you would spend on a vacation to an efficient charity. So, what's the false premise? Is it premise one and premise three? Well, um, I'm not sure. Maybe you have an idea. But one thing I just want to note is you can't reject one of these premise premises by just saying you don't like it. You have to give me a reason for thinking that the premise is flawed or false. Once you start doing that, you're doing philosophy. That's how philosophy works. We give arguments like this. Someone else responds by giving a reason for thinking or an argument for thinking one of the premises are false and then we're off to the races. Okay? And that's what we're going to be doing essentially throughout this this whole uh class. Anyway, I hope that makes some um sense. I want to I guess end the lecture here and um next time we will talk about different normative theories and again these are going to be frameworks for thinking about right and wrong and uh we'll talk about how those can feature into moral arguments how they can be argued for what problems there are what limitations there are for theories and uh you know we'll be familiar with them enough to encounter them in our applied ethics readings and understand them. Okay that's all for now. Um, looking forward to seeing you all soon. I'll talk to you later.