Applied Ethics: The Philosophy of Right and Wrong

By Isabel Gois and Christopher Woodard

This book is an introduction and guide to some of the pressing contemporary problems in applied ethics. Beginning with an introduction which charts the distinctive contribution philosophy can make practical issues, it addresses six problems: What are the moral restrictions (if any) on the human consumption of non-human animals? Should we protect free speech, even where it does harm? Is abortion morally permissible? Is affirmative action ever justifiable? How should healthcare and education be fairly distributed (and who should pay)? Is consent sufficient to render a sexual act morally permissible?

The book has been expressly written and designed as an e-book, with short, easily digestible chapters, suggestions for further reading, questions to stimulate further thought and a helpful glossary. The chapters are self-contained, so can be read individually or in any order. The book as a whole serves as an ideal introduction to applied ethics, suitable for undergraduate students and any interested reader.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Nottingham
• Release date: Oct 22, 2015
• ISBN: 9780957437975

Book preview

APPLIED ETHICS

The Philosophy of Right and Wrong

Authors: Dr Isabel Gois and Dr Christopher Woodard

Editor: Dr Neil Sinclair

Producer: Tim Clarke

Project Team: Steven Stapleton and Andy Beggan

ISBN no: 978-0-9574379-7-5

Version: 1.2

Published by:

The University of Nottingham,

University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK

http://www.nottingham.ac.uk

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Copyright © The University of Nottingham, 2015

Except for third party materials (materials owned by someone other than The University of Nottingham) and where otherwise indicated, the copyright in the content provided in this resource is owned by the University of Nottingham and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike UK 2.0 License (BY-NC-SA).

About the Authors

Isabel Gois is a Jacobsen tutor for the Royal Institute of Philosophy. She is currently working on conceptions of offender rehabilitation.

Chris Woodard teaches ethics and political philosophy at the University of Nottingham. He is currently writing a book defending a form of Utilitarianism.

Acknowledgements

Preparation of this ebook was funded by JISC. It is co-authored, and not just by the two of us who wrote the text. Neil Sinclair helped edit the text and provided some of the additional features of the book (such as the glossary). Design and further editing was provided by Tim Clarke and the project was overseen by Steve Stapleton at the University of Nottingham. For all of this help, we are very grateful.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Vegetarianism

Freedom of Speech

Abortion

The Aims of Affirmative Action

Allocating Scarce Resources in Health and Education

Sexual Consent

Glossary

Introduction

This book discusses a selection of topics in applied ethics, and we hope that it will be helpful to students or any other interested reader. One way to proceed would be to jump straight in and starting thinking about the topics it discusses. But for those who would like to know what they are getting into, this chapter tries to characterise applied ethics more generally, by answering three questions. What is applied ethics? What does it aim at, and what methods does it employ? And what could we hope to gain from using these methods?

1. What is applied ethics?

Traditionally, the philosophical discussion of ethics is divided into three parts. Normative ethics is concerned with general principles or theories about ethical matters. For example, it is concerned with general theories about what makes actions right or wrong, or outcomes morally good or bad, or what makes a person virtuous or vicious. Applied ethics asks similar questions, but in a less general way, tending to focus attention on specific kinds of issue or dilemma. For example, it might consider whether suicide is morally wrong, or whether genetic enhancements of a certain kind are morally permissible, or whether anger is always a vice. There is no sharp distinction to be drawn between the questions of normative ethics and the questions of applied ethics; they ask the same kind of question, just at different levels of generality. There is, however, a different kind of question that we could ask, and which is the subject-matter of meta-ethics: when people express views about ethics, what are they doing? Are they trying to describe something? If so, are they trying to describe moral facts of some sort about rightness and goodness, or are they trying to describe their own or others’ attitudes? If they are trying to describe one of these things, are they succeeding? If they are not trying to describe something or other, what are they doing?

The traditional picture is certainly helpful, though it can be misleading. It is helpful because it points out the difference between making moral claims—which is what is done in applied ethics and normative ethics, collectively known as ‘first-order ethics’—and commenting on the business of making moral claims—which is what is done in meta-ethics, otherwise known as ‘second-order’ ethics. (Though some authors distinguish between ‘ethics’ and ‘morality’, we will use these terms interchangeably.) Something like this distinction applies in other areas, too. For example, there is a difference between doing maths and discussing what it is that people are doing when they do maths. Similarly, there is a difference between debating what makes art good or bad in general, or what makes a specific piece of art good or bad, on one hand, and debating what is going on when people engage in those discussions, on the other. First-order ethics is the business of making and debating ethical judgements, while second-order or meta-ethics is the business of trying to understand what people are doing when they are engaged in first order ethics.

The limitations of the picture have to do with the boundaries between applied ethics, normative ethics, and meta-ethics. The picture suggests more neatness than really exists. As already noted, there is no sharp boundary between the questions of applied ethics and normative ethics, just an expanding or contracting focus. It is certainly not the case that normative ethics is fundamental, supplying theories or principles that merely have to be applied to specific cases in applied ethics. The relationship between thinking about specific cases and thinking about general principles is a two-way street—and the phrase ‘applied ethics’ is, for that reason, potentially misleading.

When it comes to the relationship between first-order (applied or normative) ethics and second-order (meta-) ethics, things are more complicated. It sometimes seems obvious to students that meta-ethics is foundational, in the sense that we have to answer its questions before we can sensibly make progress in answering the questions of applied or normative ethics. That could be true, but it is not obvious; and in fact most philosophers working in these areas do not see things that way. More commonly, they think there is a greater degree of independence between the issues, so that it is possible to combine each of a wide range of first-order views with each of a wide range of second-order views. If that is correct, it must be very hard to argue soundly from meta-ethical premises to first-order conclusions. Whatever the truth about these difficult questions, though, this book will leave meta-ethics aside. Its concern is with first-order ethics, and in particular with a selection of ‘applied’ issues.

2. The aims and methods of applied ethics

The aims and methods of applied ethics are basically the same as the aims and methods most of us have whenever we think about ethical issues. Philosophers working in this area do not have special aims or methods of their own. Roughly, there are two main aims and three basic methods in applied ethics

The main aims are clarification and justification of our ethical ideas. Consider clarification first. Ethical ideas are often hard to express clearly, and much ordinary ethical thought and discussion consists of the attempt to clarify them. For example, suppose two people are discussing the ethics of euthanasia. One says, ‘human life is sacred!’, and the other responds, ‘oh, you mean that it is always wrong to kill humans’. The first person might well reply, ‘no, that is not at all what I meant!’ Both parties are trying to understand difficult ethical ideas and to clarify the ideas under discussion. One party attempts a clarification of what the other has said, but this attempt is rejected. A lot of ethical discussion is like that, and a lot of philosophical discussion in applied ethics has exactly this character.

The second aim is justification of our ethical ideas. We want to know not only what we think, but also whether what we think is correct, or is justified, or is on altogether the wrong lines. If possible, we would like to be able to justify our ideas to ourselves and to others—that is, to show that they are based on reasons that really support them. Think about how you respond when you are discussing an ethical issue with someone who seems to disagree with you. First you might check whether there is genuine disagreement, by seeking to clarify what each of you think. If the disagreement does indeed seem genuine, a natural next step is to discuss the reasons you can muster for your views. You are then focusing on the justification of your views—seeking perhaps to convince the other, or to refine your own views.

Now consider the methods we use when engaged in these discussions. When we are trying to clarify, the main method is to distinguish ideas from each other. Ideas are easily confused with each other, especially when they are hard to express in the first place. Thus in the discussion we just imagined, the statement ‘human life is sacred!’ conjured up in one person’s mind the idea that it is always wrong to kill humans, but this is not what the other had in mind at all. Her idea might have been only subtly different, and it could take considerable effort to tease out the differences. Nevertheless, doing this might be worth the effort, because it might allow each to understand the other, or even themselves, better. Philosophers like to think that they are particularly good at drawing distinctions between ideas, and philosophy probably does have quite a lot of just this sort to contribute to ethical discussion. It can help to expand our repertoire of ethical ideas and to characterise each one more precisely and clearly (for example, see Dworkin 1994 on the idea of human life as sacred). But in drawing distinctions, philosophers are not doing anything fundamentally different than is done by anyone else who is trying to clarify ideas.

When we try to justify our ethical ideas, there are two main methods we can try. The first is to draw attention to details, and the other is to draw attention to connections with other issues. In applied ethics, drawing attention to details usually means pointing out further morally relevant features of the case at hand. If we overlook some relevant feature, our judgement about the case is likely to be faulty; so we can try to avoid faults by examining the case in detail, checking that we have not missed something relevant. For example, suppose that you are discussing with a friend whether some third party should keep a promise that he made. You start out with opposed judgements: you think he should keep it, while your friend does not. You then point out a further feature: this was not merely a promise, but one about an especially serious matter. Your friend may point out another feature: he made the promise while distracted by something else, only half realising what he was saying. You go on to point out that, while that is true, others are also relying on him keeping it. The discussion is proceeding by bringing further features into view. Much ethical thought and discussion is just like that, in ordinary life and in philosophical discussions of applied ethics. Moreover, drawing attention to details is often of vital importance, and may be all that is needed to resolve disagreement or to improve our judgements.

The other method is to draw attention to connections with other issues. This might involve discussing a general moral principle or theory and its application to the case at hand. In the case of promising, someone might propose the general principle that it is wrong to break a sincerely made promise. Appealing to this principle could help in thinking about the specific case you were discussing with your friend. Of course, it is not bound to resolve disagreement or to settle the matter. You might both agree that it is a good principle, but disagree about how it applies to the case at hand, since it is arguable whether a promise made while distracted counts as sincere. Or you might disagree about whether it is a genuine principle. Seeking to cast doubt on it, your friend might ask you to consider a case in which great harm could be averted—serious injury to an innocent person, say—only by breaking a sincere promise. In light of that, you might go on to propose a slightly revised principle, such as that it is wrong to break a sincerely made promise unless necessary to avert great harm. This process of revision and refinement is another common feature of ethical thought and discussion, both inside and outside of philosophy departments. Finally, note that the broader issues to which we draw attention need not themselves be moral issues. Quite often, they may involve some other kind of issue—perhaps some straightforwardly factual question, such as how likely some consequence of an action or policy