Philosophical Perspectives, Ethics (original) (raw)
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How do we know if an action is good or bad?
2020
By means of our reason, we discover what is good for us as human beings within a worldview structured by natural teleology. Natural ends provide a foundational structure for the goods that we seek in our actions. This structure of natural ends provides the backdrop against which the intellect presents an object to the will in the course of deliberation. Since this natural teleology is normative, for a human action to be good it is not enough to be so according to the will; it must be good primarily according to the reason, and herein lies the standard for moral goodness. Consequently, man’s specific task is to order his actions according to the ends of human nature by means of his reason; for reason presupposes natural principles. Aquinas’s moral theory therefore supports a derivationist conception of practical reason. An action ordered toward its due end is morally good, while an action that diverges from its due end is morally bad. Therefore, our actions are judged morally good or bad based on how we order them towards the ends of our nature.
Ideas of the Good in Moral and Political Philosophy
Introduction: My topic is the relation between ideas of the good that a person should use in assessing his or her own life and ideas of the good that figure in moral and political philosophy. Moral Philosophy, as I will understand it, is concerned with principles regulating our conduct toward one another. It is concerned both with the content of these principles-with what morality requires-and with the question of acceptance-why and to what degree we should take them seriously guides to action. Political philosophy, as I will understand it, is concerned with standards for assessing large scale social institutions that we participate in and expect others to participate in. Here again there are questions of content-what justice requires-and questions of acceptance-why we should care about justice. Answers to both questions of content and questions of acceptance seem to depend on claims about individual good, that is to say, claims about what individuals have reason to want. But it is important to distinguish between two different kinds of claims of this kind. Claims of the first kind are claims about what is good from an individual's point of view, that is to say, about what a person has reason to want in general. Claims of the second kind are claims about what a person has reason to want taking into account only 1 This paper was first presented as the Routledge Lecture at the University of Cambridge. I am grateful to members of the audience on that occasion for their comments, and to members of the audiences on subsequent occasions, including the 2014 Arizona Workshop in Normative Ethics. I am also grateful to Samuel Freeman, Frances Kamm, Christine Korsgaard, Daniel Star, to two anonymous reviewers for this volume, and especially to Derek Parfit for helpful comments and discussion. 2 effects on his or her life. Claims of the latter kind might be called claims about what is good for a person, and I will sometimes adopt this terminology. 2 The normative standpoint defined by the question of what, in general, an
Understanding morality and ethics
Understanding morality and ethics, 2021
This is an attempt to describe, in as complete a fashion as possible, the evolutionary basics of the everyday moral and ethical landscape. I describe morality by its parts, from which we can derive the following structure of evolutionary ethics including some meta-ethics. We may continue to derive further moral philosophy from this highly fruitful and empirically consistent paradigm. I introduce the idea of "the Healing Principle": the near-universal, biological pressure to thrive, survive and reproduce. This pressure - instrumental normativity - unifies morality and makes it intelligible in an elegant and parsimonious way, as it supplies the normative pressure for cooperative, fair, competitive, kin-selected/inclusive, and patriarchal/sexual normativities. Emotionally it translates into a pressure to seek pleasure. In fact, it is normative in all the three domains of psychological, biological, and social/moral well being. Normativity is should-ness or the pressure to achieve goals. Morality, and the need for moral values, principles, and virtues, are generated when we achieve our instrumental goals (thriving, surviving and/or reproducing) jointly or collectively. Goodness is defined as maximising the well being of all concerned individuals including the self, by putting the right conditions in place; or maximising the well being of the group in general; or maximising the achievement of sacred values. Edition 2 of the e-book: https://orangebud.co.uk/web\_book\_2.html - less waffle, more clarity, more philosophically advanced.
Introduction to Philosophy: Ethics
2019
We often make judgments about good and bad, right and wrong. Philosophical ethics is the critical examination of these and other concepts central to how we evaluate our own and each others’ behavior and choices. This text examines some of the main threads of discussion on these topics that have developed over the last couple of millenia, mostly within the Western cultural tradition. It considers basic questions about moral and ethical judgment: Is there such a thing as something that is really right or really wrong independent of time, place and perspective? What is the relationship between religion and ethics? How can we reconcile self-interest and ethics? Is it ever acceptable to harm one person in order to help others? What do recent discussions in evolutionary biology or have to say about human moral systems? What is the relation between gender and ethics? The authors invite you to participate in their exploration of these and many other questions in philosophical ethics.
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At some point in early human history primitive peoples developed their own carefully preserved customs and traditions (concepts of what for them was good or bad). In short, they evolved their own morality, their own ethics, which set the rules of conduct in the tribe or group. Certain behaviours were penalised because they were considered wrong and indicated weakness of character. Also, owing to the fractal nature of tribal kinship, any member who carried out a shameful act, also hurt the tribe. Unethical acts were minimised by the tribal belief that its tribe's welfare was watched over by their dead ancestors, who took revenge on any wrongdoers, and, in some cases, the whole tribe. Thus, they were kept in line by fear; the concept of the all-seeing eye of an over lording figure came to be.
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