{"id":941,"date":"2025-03-14T18:46:02","date_gmt":"2025-03-14T18:46:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppscphi1012ethics\/?post_type=part&p=941"},"modified":"2025-03-14T18:46:02","modified_gmt":"2025-03-14T18:46:02","slug":"part-four-applied-ethics","status":"publish","type":"part","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppscphi1012ethics\/part\/part-four-applied-ethics\/","title":{"raw":"PART FOUR: APPLIED ETHICS","rendered":"PART FOUR: APPLIED ETHICS"},"content":{"raw":"

At this point\u00a0we have explored many different approaches to the fundamental questions of philosophical ethics. We have examined how these different approaches account for and justify basic moral principles, and we have looked at how well-founded each of them was as a philosophical theory. But given such an abundance of theories we may be left wondering about how things might play out in real world cases where we must make decisions about what exactly the right thing to do might be. Do we just pick whichever theory we like, or which leads us to the results we want and then claim justification for our views? We could do that, but then that would require a willingness to leave out of account the various philosophical failings of many of the theories we have encountered. I won\u2019t rehearse these various failings here but in general I have tried to make the case that an adequate account of ethics must avoid two things.\u00a0First, an adequate ethics\u00a0cannot be based on appeals to some sort of external authority. Whether this appeal is to culture, God or nature doesn\u2019t really matter since all these supposed sources of ethical norms inevitably leave us scratching our head and wondering\u00a0why<\/em>\u00a0exactly we should ever do what it is that they demand of us. It is always up to us as to whether to listen to any authority, and this depends crucially on what it is that we ourselves want.<\/p>\r\n

Secondly, however,\u00a0ethics can also not simply be based on appealing to what it is that we want. Self-interest, whether in the crude and explicit form endorsed by egoism or in the more socially filtered versions at the basis of Social Contract Theory and Utilitarianism, is not in the end capable of giving us a reason to be ethical, since ethics involves putting our own interests aside, not for a greater payoff later but for another being now. Showing why we should ever do this and how we even can is the great challenge of philosophical ethics. This challenge is simply not met by showing how I can scratch my itches best by scratching yours, because sometimes that is just not possible. Morality can involve genuine sacrifice and renunciation of selfish desires and maybe even requires it in some cases.<\/p>\r\n

But then if ethics can\u2019t be based\u00a0on what others want of us, nor on what we ourselves want, what on earth is left for it to be based on? Well, as I have tried to show in the last chapter, ethics might be based on something else, what we have\u00a0good reasons\u00a0to want in the first place. \u201cReason\u201d here is not intended as some sort of mysterious force out there that is supposed to magically solve all of our problems, but simply as a shorthand for our ability and need to tell ourselves a truly convincing and coherent story about how we are living our lives. Reason is nothing but the demands that thinking beings make on themselves to live lives that harmonize, where we don\u2019t ignore inner contradictions in our intentions, where we don\u2019t neglect to consider the clash between what we expect for ourselves and require of others. This to my mind is the central insight of Kant\u2019s approach to ethics and also what is expressed in such more contemporary ideas as \u201cUniversal Human Rights,\u201d and appeals to the unique dignity of moral agents. Kant agrees with Socrates that the unexamined human life is not worth living since it is not truly a human life failing as it does to live up to our capacity to reflect on and account for ourselves on terms that truly make sense to us ourselves. What Kant adds to Socrates is just some sense of how exactly we might proceed to examine ourselves and what constraints this self-examination imposes on how it is that we go about determining what exactly we should do.<\/p>\r\n

This is still, however,\u00a0just a bare-bones account of what ethics really looks like because the real lives within which ethical decisions must be made by us real people are messy and complicated. We still have to be able to put this general approach, as well as our knowledge of the inadequacies of the other various lines of thinking we have encountered into practice, and this can be a hard thing to do. But practice requires practice and so the best thing is just start examining different kinds of situations and dilemmas that we may face in the real world and see what sense we can make of them given all we have seen so far, and that is what we will be doing in this part of the book.<\/p>\r\n

Debates about justice and rights are often, unavoidably, debates about the purpose of social institutions, the goods they allocate, and the virtues they honor and reward. Despite our best attempts to make law neutral on such questions, it may not be possible to say what\u2019s just without arguing about the nature of the good life.

\u2014Michael Sandel,\u00a0Justice<\/em><\/p>\r\n

As we proceed,\u00a0we should keep in mind what is at stake here. We are not simply looking for some technical means of solving problems once and for all. Instead, the point of applied ethics is to develop our capacity to think about what it is that we consider a good life in the first place.<\/p>\r\n

In the following chapters\u00a0we will look at several topics in applied ethics in the light of the various theories we have been examining. It turns out that under the surface of many debates in applied ethics there are competing ethical theories and commitments. What makes these debates ethics debates, and not policy debates about the pros and cons of some topic or other, is that both sides appeal to something that seems like it has a legitimate moral claim to our allegiance. In many cases the major arguments can be roughly divided between those that follow utilitarian ideas and those that appeal to Kantian ethical ideals and principles, but that is not always the case and the particularities of each topic often present obstacles to this simple dichotomy. We will see how the different debates we have already examined on a purely theoretical basis play out for each topic.<\/p>\r\n

The topics\u00a0we will examine are euthanasia; individual liberty and the legality of recreational drugs; crime and punishment; ethics and non-human animals; and environmental ethics. Each of these are huge topics and we will only be able to give a bare outline of some of the major ethical issues and argumentative strategies employed by backers of different sides of each issue. The point of this part of the book is to provide a brief overview of some of the major lines of argument in each case. It is my hope that this will be an inspiration for further exploration of these topics.<\/p>","rendered":"

At this point\u00a0we have explored many different approaches to the fundamental questions of philosophical ethics. We have examined how these different approaches account for and justify basic moral principles, and we have looked at how well-founded each of them was as a philosophical theory. But given such an abundance of theories we may be left wondering about how things might play out in real world cases where we must make decisions about what exactly the right thing to do might be. Do we just pick whichever theory we like, or which leads us to the results we want and then claim justification for our views? We could do that, but then that would require a willingness to leave out of account the various philosophical failings of many of the theories we have encountered. I won\u2019t rehearse these various failings here but in general I have tried to make the case that an adequate account of ethics must avoid two things.\u00a0First, an adequate ethics\u00a0cannot be based on appeals to some sort of external authority. Whether this appeal is to culture, God or nature doesn\u2019t really matter since all these supposed sources of ethical norms inevitably leave us scratching our head and wondering\u00a0why<\/em>\u00a0exactly we should ever do what it is that they demand of us. It is always up to us as to whether to listen to any authority, and this depends crucially on what it is that we ourselves want.<\/p>\n

Secondly, however,\u00a0ethics can also not simply be based on appealing to what it is that we want. Self-interest, whether in the crude and explicit form endorsed by egoism or in the more socially filtered versions at the basis of Social Contract Theory and Utilitarianism, is not in the end capable of giving us a reason to be ethical, since ethics involves putting our own interests aside, not for a greater payoff later but for another being now. Showing why we should ever do this and how we even can is the great challenge of philosophical ethics. This challenge is simply not met by showing how I can scratch my itches best by scratching yours, because sometimes that is just not possible. Morality can involve genuine sacrifice and renunciation of selfish desires and maybe even requires it in some cases.<\/p>\n

But then if ethics can\u2019t be based\u00a0on what others want of us, nor on what we ourselves want, what on earth is left for it to be based on? Well, as I have tried to show in the last chapter, ethics might be based on something else, what we have\u00a0good reasons\u00a0to want in the first place. \u201cReason\u201d here is not intended as some sort of mysterious force out there that is supposed to magically solve all of our problems, but simply as a shorthand for our ability and need to tell ourselves a truly convincing and coherent story about how we are living our lives. Reason is nothing but the demands that thinking beings make on themselves to live lives that harmonize, where we don\u2019t ignore inner contradictions in our intentions, where we don\u2019t neglect to consider the clash between what we expect for ourselves and require of others. This to my mind is the central insight of Kant\u2019s approach to ethics and also what is expressed in such more contemporary ideas as \u201cUniversal Human Rights,\u201d and appeals to the unique dignity of moral agents. Kant agrees with Socrates that the unexamined human life is not worth living since it is not truly a human life failing as it does to live up to our capacity to reflect on and account for ourselves on terms that truly make sense to us ourselves. What Kant adds to Socrates is just some sense of how exactly we might proceed to examine ourselves and what constraints this self-examination imposes on how it is that we go about determining what exactly we should do.<\/p>\n

This is still, however,\u00a0just a bare-bones account of what ethics really looks like because the real lives within which ethical decisions must be made by us real people are messy and complicated. We still have to be able to put this general approach, as well as our knowledge of the inadequacies of the other various lines of thinking we have encountered into practice, and this can be a hard thing to do. But practice requires practice and so the best thing is just start examining different kinds of situations and dilemmas that we may face in the real world and see what sense we can make of them given all we have seen so far, and that is what we will be doing in this part of the book.<\/p>\n

Debates about justice and rights are often, unavoidably, debates about the purpose of social institutions, the goods they allocate, and the virtues they honor and reward. Despite our best attempts to make law neutral on such questions, it may not be possible to say what\u2019s just without arguing about the nature of the good life.

\u2014Michael Sandel,\u00a0Justice<\/em><\/p>\n

As we proceed,\u00a0we should keep in mind what is at stake here. We are not simply looking for some technical means of solving problems once and for all. Instead, the point of applied ethics is to develop our capacity to think about what it is that we consider a good life in the first place.<\/p>\n

In the following chapters\u00a0we will look at several topics in applied ethics in the light of the various theories we have been examining. It turns out that under the surface of many debates in applied ethics there are competing ethical theories and commitments. What makes these debates ethics debates, and not policy debates about the pros and cons of some topic or other, is that both sides appeal to something that seems like it has a legitimate moral claim to our allegiance. In many cases the major arguments can be roughly divided between those that follow utilitarian ideas and those that appeal to Kantian ethical ideals and principles, but that is not always the case and the particularities of each topic often present obstacles to this simple dichotomy. We will see how the different debates we have already examined on a purely theoretical basis play out for each topic.<\/p>\n

The topics\u00a0we will examine are euthanasia; individual liberty and the legality of recreational drugs; crime and punishment; ethics and non-human animals; and environmental ethics. Each of these are huge topics and we will only be able to give a bare outline of some of the major ethical issues and argumentative strategies employed by backers of different sides of each issue. The point of this part of the book is to provide a brief overview of some of the major lines of argument in each case. It is my hope that this will be an inspiration for further exploration of these topics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"parent":0,"menu_order":3,"template":"","meta":{"pb_part_invisible":false,"pb_part_invisible_string":""},"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-941","part","type-part","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppscphi1012ethics\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppscphi1012ethics\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppscphi1012ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/part"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppscphi1012ethics\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":946,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppscphi1012ethics\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/941\/revisions\/946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppscphi1012ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppscphi1012ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=941"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppscphi1012ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}