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Lecture 12 - Utilitarianism and its Critiques [February 17, 2011]
Chapter 1. What is a Moral Theory? [00:00:00]
So what I want to do in today's lecture is to shift gears somewhat from what we've been talking about in the first unit of the course. As you know, the first unit of the course was focused on a set of texts that were concerned with what is involved in human flourishing. And though our opening text, Glaucon's challenge from Plato's Republic, concerned itself with morality and the way in which morality contributes to human flourishing, we haven't, up until this point, given much attention to what philosophers have had to say about the nature of morality. And so goal in this unit is, in an incredibly accelerated fashion, to introduce you today and next Tuesday to two of the most prominent moral theories in the Western tradition and then in the remaining sessions before March break to talk to you about some of the empirical research about these questions.
And I know we have a wide range of backgrounds in this class. Some of you are now taking your first philosophy course. Some of you have taken an entire course on ethics. And so I've tried to pitch the lecture in such a way that it brings everybody up to speed, but that it does so in a way that I hope won't bore those of you who have encountered this before. In particular, to make up for the fact that there's very little empirical psychology in this lecture I have six polling slides. So those will come in in the middle of the lecture right when all of you are zoning out because you got two hours of sleep last night. So even if you don't pay attention for the first part, you'll get to vote in the middle.
All right, so what is it that moral philosophy sets out to do? What is it to provide a philosophical account of morality? What moral philosophy is is the systematic endeavor to understand moral concepts and to justify moral principles and theories. That is: moral philosophy, even if it ends up giving a non-systematic answer to how it is that morality works and what it is that morality does, does so within the endeavor of thinking systematically about the nature of morality. What do I mean by morality? I mean that moral theories aim to provide accounts of terms like "right" and "wrong," "permissible" and "impermissible," "ought" and "ought not," "forbidden," "good," "bad," and the like — and to provide an account of the behaviors to which those terms apply. It is fundamentally, to remind you of a terminological distinction that we've made before, a normative as opposed to a descriptive enterprise. Philosophical moral theory doesn't aim to tell us how people act. It aims to tell us how people ought to act if they wish to conform to the constraints that morality places on them.
In particular, moral philosophy is concerned with providing a principled answer to three kind of questions. The first kind of question we encountered already in the context of Glaucon's Challenge. It's the question of moral motivation. “Why should we want to act in keeping with what morality demands of us?” And in a minute I'll give you a sense of the range of answers that have been provided to that question. So the first question that moral philosophy asks is why would we even want to be moral. It then asks the particular question, "What should we do insofar as we seek to act morally?" And about that we've had very little to say so far. We know that according to Aristotle, to be brave, one acts as the brave one does.
Chapter 1. What is a Moral Theory? [00:00:00]
So what I want to do in today's lecture is to shift gears somewhat from what we've been talking about in the first unit of the course. As you know, the first unit of the course was focused on a set of texts that were concerned with what is involved in human flourishing. And though our opening text, Glaucon's challenge from Plato's Republic, concerned itself with morality and the way in which morality contributes to human flourishing, we haven't, up until this point, given much attention to what philosophers have had to say about the nature of morality. And so goal in this unit is, in an incredibly accelerated fashion, to introduce you today and next Tuesday to two of the most prominent moral theories in the Western tradition and then in the remaining sessions before March break to talk to you about some of the empirical research about these questions.
And I know we have a wide range of backgrounds in this class. Some of you are now taking your first philosophy course. Some of you have taken an entire course on ethics. And so I've tried to pitch the lecture in such a way that it brings everybody up to speed, but that it does so in a way that I hope won't bore those of you who have encountered this before. In particular, to make up for the fact that there's very little empirical psychology in this lecture I have six polling slides. So those will come in in the middle of the lecture right when all of you are zoning out because you got two hours of sleep last night. So even if you don't pay attention for the first part, you'll get to vote in the middle.
All right, so what is it that moral philosophy sets out to do? What is it to provide a philosophical account of morality? What moral philosophy is is the systematic endeavor to understand moral concepts and to justify moral principles and theories. That is: moral philosophy, even if it ends up giving a non-systematic answer to how it is that morality works and what it is that morality does, does so within the endeavor of thinking systematically about the nature of morality. What do I mean by morality? I mean that moral theories aim to provide accounts of terms like "right" and "wrong," "permissible" and "impermissible," "ought" and "ought not," "forbidden," "good," "bad," and the like — and to provide an account of the behaviors to which those terms apply. It is fundamentally, to remind you of a terminological distinction that we've made before, a normative as opposed to a descriptive enterprise. Philosophical moral theory doesn't aim to tell us how people act. It aims to tell us how people ought to act if they wish to conform to the constraints that morality places on them.
In particular, moral philosophy is concerned with providing a principled answer to three kind of questions. The first kind of question we encountered already in the context of Glaucon's Challenge. It's the question of moral motivation. “Why should we want to act in keeping with what morality demands of us?” And in a minute I'll give you a sense of the range of answers that have been provided to that question. So the first question that moral philosophy asks is why would we even want to be moral. It then asks the particular question, "What should we do insofar as we seek to act morally?" And about that we've had very little to say so far. We know that according to Aristotle, to be brave, one acts as the brave one does.
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