Mark I. Vuletic

Last updated 21 January 2010

This is a documentized version of the third iteration of a slideshow (with added commentary) that I show to students in my ethics classes on the first day or two. Most of my students are nonmajors, and have little or no prior exposure to philosophy, so I need to give them a very brief orientation to philosophy and to some background issues in ethics. I am not satisfied with this slideshow, so there will be new versions later, but here is what I have at the moment:

Slide 1:

The picture is a detail from The School of Athens, by the Renaissance artist Raphael. It depicts Plato (on the left), and his pupil Aristotle (on the right). Aristotle supposedly is holding one of his own works on ethics. This is not testable information, but of course you're curious.

Slide 2:

This is from an old Newsweek article written by philosophy professor Erik Wielenberg. When people find out about his line of work, they ask him what exactly a philosopher does.The quote is what he says to them. It's a pretty accurate account.

Slide 3:

There are as many views of the nature of philosophy itself as there are philosophers, if not more. Every philosopher appeals to the etymological definition of philosophy as "love of wisdom," but this doesn't tell us much, since many disciplines seek wisdom. My own view (a fairly common view, as well as the view I was taught) is that philosophy simply is the attempt to answer questions currently (and perhaps forever) beyond the reach of science, by using reason and publicly accessible evidence.

Slide 4:

This slide shows the primary subfields of philosophy, where you will find most of the questions philosophers deal with:

Logic is the study of proper patterns of reasoning, of the connection between evidence and the conclusions one might try to draw from evidence. Obviously, logic is not exclusively the domain of philosophers.

Metaphysics, roughly, asks questions about things: what things exist? What are they like? For instance, do people have free will? Are minds distinct from brains? What is time?

Epistemology asks questions about knowledge itself: what is knowledge? Can we have it? What does it take to get it?

Axiology deals with questions about value, both artistic value in the case of aesthetics, and moral value in the case of ethics.

Slide 5:

Many of you likely have drawn at least some of your positions on philosophical issues from religion. Philosophy, however, proceeds from a secular standpoint. All this means is that the starting point of philosophical inquiry is neutral with respect to religion.

The methods and conclusions of philosophy are not necessarily hostile to religion: it depends what conclusion you actually draw from the methods, and how seriously you take them. It is at least in principle possible for philosophical methods to confirm the authoritativeness of a religion, and there have been plenty of philosophers through the history of the subject who have drawn such conclusions. However, evaluating religion is far outside the province of this course, so we will, for the most part, bracket religion, and simply ask whether secular methods and data can lead us directly to answers to ethical questions. We must not, of course, make any assumptions in advance about where our inquiries will take us, or whether or not the project will even succeed.

Slide 6:

One of the most important distinctions to get clear about initially in ethics is the descriptive vs. normative distinction. Descriptive statements are statements about what is. Normative statements are statements about what ought to be. So, when we describe what people believe about right and wrong and good and evil, or how they actually behave when they have to make a moral decision, we are doing descriptive ethics. This is a matter for anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists. It is not (with a few exceptions) anything philosophers should be expected to have expertise in.

We will be working almost entirely on normative ethics. The questions we are trying to answer are related to what the right and the good actually are, not just what people believe them to be. Descriptive facts may be important data for philosophers to take into consideration, especially when they consider the moral ramifications of trying to institute particular policies, but the normative facts are the ones philosophers really are after.

Slide 7:

This slide presents what I think is a useful way of dividing up the most general stances one can take on the existence of moral facts. Most of it should be self-explanatory, but I do have two comments:

(i) Remember that when this slide talks about moral facts, it is talking about normative moral facts, not descriptive moral facts. For instance:

(a) Nihilists do not deny that people believe there are moral facts, or even that everyone might agree about what they think the content of those moral facts are; rather, nihilists deny that there actually are moral facts.

(b) Relativists do not assert merely that beliefs or customs about morality vary from one culture to another; rather, they assert that actual right and wrong may change from one culture to the next. It's not just that people in culture A will not condemn you if you commit suicide and people in culture B will; rather, the actual rightness or wrongness of your act depends on which culture you are a member of.

(ii) Let me make sure the difference between objectivism and absolutism is clear. It is possible that, in the end, the most basic moral facts (moral facts that cannot be derived from another moral fact together with non-moral circumstances) may have equal status, and may come into conflict with one another in certain situations. For instance, let's suppose that it is a basic fact that one ought to protect the innocent, and also a basic fact that one ought not kill. What happens when you are in a situation in which the only way you can protect the innocent is by killing someone? The core moral facts do not give you an answer. If such a conflict is possible (but everyone is still subject to the same moral facts), then your moral scheme is objectivist. If, on the other hand, there is no such conflict (either because all moral facts ultimately boil down to one, single, coherent moral fact, or else because the basic moral facts have a ranking of importance), then you are an absolutist.

Slide 8:

Most of you probably would not question the usefulness of ethics if there are moral facts. But what if there aren't any? Would that make this class useless? On the contrary, ethics would still have several useful functions, listed in the slide.

Slide 9:

This slide just points out that surface-level moral disagreement does not always point to a fundamental moral difference between the parties involved. Two people can behave radically differently, enact radically different policies, and make radically different claims about right and wrong, all while sharing exactly the same fundamental moral beliefs. It may simply be that the two disagree about some non-moral fact: surface-level moral beliefs arise from an interaction between core moral beliefs and non-moral beliefs about the world.

Slide 10:

This chart just points to the way theory, reason, and intuition (both general and specific) exert back and forth influences on one another. Typically, you will start only with intuitions; you will try to find a way to mesh your general and specific moral intuitions in a theory. In the process, you may find that one or both needs adjusting. There may also be one-way input from a number of other sources, such as pure reason, considerations about the properties of human nature, or even divine commands. All of these prospective sources of ethical knowledge, however, are themselves subject to philosophical evaluation.

Slide 11:

This slide just provides some suggestions for how to navigate through moral disagreement. The questions should be self-explanatory. Essentially, you are being advised to approach moral disagreement in the same way any philosophical disagreement should be approached: first, make sure you are clear about exactly what you are arguing about. Then, try to identify any logical or factual weaknesses in your respective positions. Remember, the point is not to defeat your opponent (unfortunately, things often end up that way, hence, step 5), but to reach consensus, so you should subject yourself to exactly the same critical scrutiny you give your opponent.