After having taught an Ethics course at Alaska Pacific University for a number of years, and now at the University of Alaska Anchorage as well, I have found myself sufficiently dissatisfied with the commonly available textbooks and ethics readers to write my own. Whether it will end up as anything more than a personal reference and teaching tool is neither here nor there because my purpose in composing it is my conviction that it will serve the education of my students and I have already been employing it to that effect for two years now. Anyone with interest is welcome to request the whole compilation as a PDF, for which I have included the table of contents below. A general introduction to the subject of ethics will be the topic of this essay, followed by introductions to several schools of thought.
Often the words with which we are the most familiar are among the most difficult to define precisely. The study of ethics, or moral philosophy, is fraught with such words. “Good,” “bad,” “immoral,” “virtuous,” “evil”—none of these terms would give us pause if we encountered it in a sentence, and yet we would likely find ourselves extremely hard-pressed to articulate just what they mean. This might seem inconsequential: “everyone knows what the words mean,” we might think, and merely shrug off the difficulty. We would, of course, be partly correct in our appraisal. And yet, history reveals that divergent understandings of such concepts can be the cause of the most severe conflicts. Nineteenth and twentieth century proponents of eugenics assured their critics that their policies of selective breeding of human beings were consistent with the findings of “settled science” and they certainly did not think they were advocating something “bad” or “immoral.” A very similar conflict arises today in respect to questions of pre-birth screenings for birth defects and CRISPR genetic engineering. From one side, proponents of such manipulation argue that they are applying scientific intelligence to improve on the accidental results of natural selection. Opponents might counter that the consequences of such interference are unknown and therefore present unconscionable risk, and moreover, human beings ought not to “play God.”
If we are to have any hope of addressing such conflicts instead of arguing vicariously on the basis of science or sectarian religion, for instance, it is necessary that both sides be able to articulate the value structures that underpin their moral judgements. By “moral judgements,” I mean judgements that concern questions of value which directly inform our actions and way of living in the world. Axiomatically, everything we do is for the sake of some perceived or conceived good. That we can be mistaken about the veridicality of our perceptions and conceptions only proves the rule. In this way, ethics can be thought of as a study of the Good. By the same token, ethics is a study of the principles that constitute both the Good and its opposite, together with the practices and ways of life by which we engage with these principles. Above I gave the example of genetic engineering of human embryos as another extremely difficult issue that does not promise to go away by itself. Among the primary benefits of studying ethics is to develop a vocabulary to communicate in a meaningful and effective way about such questions. Without such a possibility of communication, any disagreement must either remain unresolved or decay into violence.
In the last paragraph, I suggested that ethics is related to questions of value which directly inform our actions and way of living in the world. It is important to note that “value” in the penultimate sentence is a qualitative and not a quantitative designation. Sometimes the word “value” is used quantitatively, as in the sentence “despite receiving inside information that the stock’s value would plummet the following day, Ernie’s moral scruples would not allow him to short-sell his shares even for the sake of earning a few thousand dollars.” Consider, as an example of the qualitative use of “value,” if this sentence followed the one above: “Ernie was a man of value.” Thus, we can see that, with a few exceptions, it is the qualitative designation of “value” that is pertinent to ethics and the quantitative one is not relevant to questions of moral philosophy except tangentially. For this reason, Google’s algorithms, though they may eventually succeed in predicting fluctuations of the stock-market, will not deliver us from the challenge of confronting moral questions. In fact, AI risks sabotaging our ability to respond to such questions if we cannot keep the above differentiation of qualitative and quantitative value clear for ourselves. Fundamentally, anytime we seek to defer our moral reasoning to computers, we are outsourcing our moral responsibility onto the programmers of those computers, since the computer itself is just an interface that functions as a sort of vicarious presence of whoever wrote that computer’s code. In this way, ethics is fundamentally a concern of human beings; an account that we must settle within and amongst ourselves. Studying ethics can provide us with conceptual tools to aid us in this process and allow us to live, both as individuals and as members of families and communities, in a way that are consistent with value. And moreover, we are actually telling the story of our lives with every word we speak and deed we undertake. To live is to write the biography of the self and the world. Again, studying ethics can help us to become more deliberate and inspired authors. Thus, to paraphrase Socrates in Plato’s Republic, we ought not to think of ethics as merely an academic discipline: “it is no small affair, but how to live.”1
Throughout history, the greatest minds have struggled to formulate a theory of ethics. “Theory” is meant to indicate an explicit principle or set of principles that both captures the essence and meaning of the phenomenon in question, and also allows us to perceive instances of the same phenomenon and to adjudicate between borderline cases. Until Newton formulated his universal theory of gravitation in the late seventeenth century, the essence of the phenomenon of an apple falling from a tree had neither been articulated, nor had its connection with the moon’s orbit around the Earth been perceived. Newton’s theory of gravitation offered both an explanation of the phenomenon of gravitation as well as a condition for the perception of other instances of the same phenomenon. Similarly, an adequate theory of ethics is meant both to answer the question “what makes something good?” and thereby also confer on us the ability to recognize all instances of good things. In this way, the theory serves both as a concept and a capacity. Conversely, lacking a theory of ethics, we would be bereft of the ability to understand and perceive phenomena relevant to it in life.
This collection will present a selection of the primary ethical theories that great thinkers from various traditions through history have offered by way of an answer to the question “what makes something good?” I have organized the selections topically rather than chronologically in an attempt to more effectively illustrate the fundamental principles that are at stake. That being said, I believe that a diachronic study of ethics could offer a compelling picture of an evolution of consciousness transpiring over millennia of human civilization. That, however, is not the subject of this book.2 I have opted to divide the section of this book that treats normative ethics into five parts, corresponding with five basic ethical theories. The reader familiar with other textbooks common to this discipline may be surprised that I have introduced an extra category along with the “industry standards” of utilitarianism-consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics. I believe that I can justify my decision on the basis of my presentation of each of these theories, which I will lay out at the beginning of each section.
On a prior occasion sub umbra coronæ, which is, “under the shadow of the Crown,” I have recorded these lectures which are also pertinent to the theme of this piece.
Plato, Republic, 344d-e: “Do you think it a small matter that you are attempting to determine and not the entire conduct of life that for each of us would make living most worthwhile?”
The interested reader is kindly referred to The Redemption of Thinking, which is a published version of the present authors doctoral thesis.
Look at you... you are so young, and so bright!! it warms my heart to see all that you have accomplished and your drive to teach the rest of us! I love your work and appreciate you so much.. thanks for being such a bright light in such a world! Wish I was closer I would love to take one of your classes. Until next time, Amy.
Thank you for putting this together, it all informs! I've shared some of this with you on posts a year or two ago, but with additional depth here now.
While ethics have a universal underpinning that is constantly being challenged, value judgments shifting to the times and those in power, I have leaned into the more specific area of bioethics for these times.
You share about the ethics of CRSPR and other emergent biotechnology that our times are facing. This piece gets into the ethics of Newgenics, that covers that and other related fields and ethical challenges of modern genetics, pointing to what is arguably the worst decision the US Supreme Court has ever made, Buck v. Bell. Which, tellingly, remains the law of the land.
Buck v. Bell, American Eugenics, and the Bad Man Test:
Putting Limits on Newgenics in the 21st Century
Minnesota Journal on Law and Equity, January, 2020
https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1622&context=lawineq
The bioethics of the "Three generations of imbeciles is enough" ruling:
https://bioedge.org/uncategorized/buck-v-bell-one-of-the-supreme-courts-worst-mistakes/
This is a 225-page treatment of public health ethics. Even gets into infectious disease. It claims to be the work product of the "Good Stewardship" model of bioethics. It's really the rationalization and justification for collectivist authoritarianism, aka Communism.
Public health: Ethical Issues
Nuffield Council on Bioethics, November, 2007
https://www.nuffieldbioethics.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Public-health-ethical-issues.pdf
[Note: Nuffield Council on Bioethics is largely funded by Wellcome Trust. Itself an offshoot of Glaxo-Wellcome pharmaceuticals. No ethical conflict that I see in that (sarc.) A peer of The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, WEF Zero-Covid founding member that advocated for strict, totalitarian Chinese-style lockdowns during the pandemic, and for future declared public health emergencies.]
This article published in the American Journal of Law and Medicine asserted it was ethical to impose heavy-handed mandates based in psychological manipulation and deception for the greater good of a pandemic health emergency. Ethically aligned with Wellcome Trust/Nuffield Council on Bioethics:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-journal-of-law-and-medicine/article/abs/infected-by-bias-behavioral-science-and-the-legal-response-to-covid19/16F48C9C6608D62F5303B367C7352F2E
Bioethics. As in Anthony Fauci's wife, Christine Grady, being the Chief Bioethicist at the National Institute of Health. Pushing vaccines made by the same pharmaceutical corporations that fund her office. No ethical conflict that I see in that (sarc.)
https://openthebooks.substack.com/p/the-house-of-fauci-how-dr-christine
https://thenationalpulse.com/2022/05/18/fauci-wife-authors-paper-supporting-vaccine-pressure-campaigns/
And since so much of the incoherent, inexplicable, inconsistent and unscientific directions that authorities and public health officials have been spreading since 2020 has really been based in deception, manipulation, lies, wrapped up as a pseudoscience, Behavioral var. there's actually the ethics of lying that is studied and understood. Ethical lying, it's considered:
https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/27970/chapter-abstract/211610866?redirectedFrom=fulltext
https://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/lying/lying_1.shtml
https://www.thoughtco.com/the-ethics-of-lying-2670509
https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-decision-making/lying/
https://hbr.org/2014/06/lets-be-honest-about-lying
There even was a discussion within the British Parliament about the ethics of deception, manipulation, lies, wrapped up as a pseudoscience, Behavioral var. to make public policy in December, 2012
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201012/ldselect/ldsctech/179/17917.htm
Point is, I suppose if there is a point in this, that ethics are so subjective and nebulous to be rendered meaningless in any kind of finding of fact in a judicial setting. Those who become experts, Chief Ethicists, Chief Bioethicists, are able to massage any and all actions into an ethical construct with enough creativity and imagination. Which is why thousands of years after the sorts of ethical debates presented in your share, there's no universal agreement to be found. It all simply becomes a matter of who's imposed will prevails. And there can be no perfectly evolved man or set of man's rules and guidelines that even a very powerful and fast machine can compute and produce a definitive edict stating "Ethical" or "Unethical." Bias of the user, data, algorithms can never be eliminated; there's too many "in the eye of the beholder" biases to overcome. Will-to-power becomes the regulator of ethics at the end of the day. The judgement of ethics comes when the history books are written. By the victors.