Ethics

Front 1

Moral Sainthood

Back 1

- Those who make every action as morally good as possible.
- One should improve the welfare of others, and not just think about themselves.
- characteristics of moral saints: treat everyone as justly and kindly as possible, be patient, don't judge, don't favor...
- Susan wolf is against this because if one is truly a moral saint then they will most likely be boring.
- If you're helping everyone else, how can you live a good life.
- Loving Saint = blind to all non moral things.Utilitarianist.
- Rational Saint - Kantian point of view...sees nonmoral things, and sometimes tempted, but they fear to pursue them.
- ideally religious.
- Interests or skills should be maximized to do the best for everyone
- utilitarian would not support moral sainthood as a universal ideal because it only works when both are happy, and moral sainthood only makes other people happy.

Front 2

Social contract - Thomas Hobbes

Back 2

political authority.
- people want social contract because they fear death, they desire things needed for a nice living, and they hope that thru their efforts they can attain them.
-Avoids chaos in society.
- These passions are what lead us to want the laws of nature.
- state of nature is governed by the right of nature- which is to preserve your life and all that you have.
- to allow political govt to keep us safe, we must all collective rationality to form the social contract.
- 3 laws of nature:
1) seek peace and defend yourself by all means
2) be willing to trade freedom for security by forming contracts.
3) Keep promises and follow social contracts. In order to prevent reverting to a state of nature, install a government.

Front 3

Rawls, a Theory of Justice

Back 3

- Definition of society - group of self sufficient ppl who act in accourdance with rules and and there is constant conflict and agreement.
- Intrests in society: everyone wants to have a life of their own and live a good life.
- conflict of this interest is that everyone wants more of everything.
- principle of social justice: to assign rights and duties so things can be fairly distributed.
- When coming up with a justice system, the only way when it can be institued is when there is no arbitrary distictions between people.
- the only way for justice to favor everyone is if you form a justice system that looks through a veil of ignorance.
1) requires equality for basic rights and duties
2) If inequalities do exist, no one should be disadvantaged in a way in which they can't live their daily lives comfortably.

Front 4

Defense of abortion

Back 4

Everyone has a right to their body. therefore, they have a right to get an abortion.

A fetus is not a human being

If a fetus hypothetically was a person from the time conception then
- Right to life
- if you own a coat and it will keep you from freezing, and another person wants that coat, you don't have a moral obligation to give it to the other person because you will freeze.

-Expanding Child- a third party can't decide, but a mother can act in self defense if threatened by the fetus by aborting it.

-violinist - right to life doesn't entail the use of another person's body.

- people seed leaves out rape and abortion.

- women's rights overide the rights of a fetus.

Front 5

On the Moral and legal status of abortion--Mary Anne Warren

Back 5

-people in a coma don't have the right to life.
her arguments of moral opposition for abortion:
1) It is wrong to kill innocent human beings
2)The embryo is an innocent human being
3)Hence it is wrong to kill the embryo

2 types of humans:
1) biological humans
2) person
makes an analogy that we would still respect highly intelligent aliens even though they aren't biological humans

- Characteristics of a human:
1)consciousness
2)reasoning
3)self motivated activity
4)capacity to community
5)concept of self-awareness
6) Moral agency

-she says infants are not humans.
- For abortion but only if it's done early.
- self contradictory in that infants are not fully human.

Front 6

Why abortion is immoral

Back 6

by killing a fetus you get rid of potential life. it has a right to life.

Front 7

Active and passive euthanasia---RACHELS

Back 7

-active - physician assisted
passive- letting die
Rachel argues there is no moral diff between the two.
- justification of letting die is to reduce harm and suffering of the patient
-conventional doctrine - to withhold treatment.
-focuses on outcome

Front 8

^ A reply to Rachels: sullivan

Back 8

The intention is better than the action.
Focuses on the intention

Front 9

famine affluence, and morality

Back 9

agrees that more affluent people are more obligated to donate to humanitarian needs.
- supererogitory - an act that is good to do but not wrong not to do.

Front 10

World hunger and moral obligation

Back 10

there is no moral obligation that one who is more fortunate has

-moral rights are divided into neg. and pos. rights.
Neg. rights are rights of non-interference (like not to be killed)
Positive rights- rights of recipience...by not giving their children up for adoption, their parents give them rights such as to be fed, clothed, and housed. They are not natural rights, they are agreed upon to give one something.

- Rights

- Deserts - farmer doesn't have entitlement to give up food because he worked hard.
if someone doesn't work hard, they shouldn't go asking for help for someone who did work hard.

Front 11

terrorism

Back 11

Walzer says it's morally wrong

Front 12

is terr. distinctively wrong - McPherson

Back 12

it's not morally wrong
- marginalizing innocent ppl - terrorist motives are political, and they have the right to fulfill their political means even if it means the loss of innocent lives.

Front 13

PORN - Longino

Back 13

1)If something is harmful or injurious to people (or if can be shown to violate people in some way), then it is immoral.

2)Pornography is harmful or injurious to people (or can be shown to violate them in some way).
longino defines porn as a representation of exual behavior, it's degraqding and demeaning. The role and status of the female is portrayed to be manipulated sexually, which gives the men the notion that women are objects and have the right to their body.
porn is degrading half the population. so how can it be legal?
dehumanizes females. leads to continuous oppression of women.

critisizing the privacy defense - if you want to control it, it would be controlling 1st amendment rights, because it is a form of speech.
- diff in making porn and distributing it, therefore the dist of porn is not protected by right to privacy.
1st argument) however, 1st amendment does not protect all forms of speech. material that defames women should not be protected by the government.
right to freedom of speech doe

Front 14

porn continued

Back 14

2nd argument) that there is no scientific findings that men objectify women due to their porn watching habit.

the major argument for the oppression of violent porn is under the harm principle in that it promotes rape and violence against women.

1)libel argument- based on the claim that porn degrades women therefore leads its consumers to believe that all women are submissive.
- to discount this claim feinberg points out that other forms of media also defame other groups in society but they are not regulated either.