AFM311 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Reflective Equilibrium, Deontological Ethics, Consequentialism
19 May 2020
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How to use ethical theories
• Not law
• What we are supposed to do, mandate actions
o Doesn’t tell us what to do in every situation, every time
• Reflective equilibrium
o Analyze using all ethical theories
o Think about own intuitions
o Go back and forth and come to a compromised solution
Utilitarianism (consequentialism)
• Teleological (maximize something)
o Maximize pleasure and minimize pain
o Only thing that matters
• Everything you want in the world can be reduced to seeking pleasure or avoiding pain
• Moral action maximizes pleasure overall
• Utilitarian calculus
o Aggregate pleasure - aggregate pain = net pleasure
o Whichever situation causes the most net pleasure should be the most ethical
o Very difficult to measure pleasure
o Actual pain and pleasure matter, not estimates
• All pleasure and pain count for the same
o For each living thing, no special consideration for family, friends, etc.
o Extends moral consideration for non-human animals
• Criticism: the healthy bachelor
o A doctor has five patients that need five different organs
o A young, healthy patient with no family comes in for an immunization
o The patient would be a perfect match for all five patients that need organs
o If you distribute the organs, you would save five lives but kill the bachelor
o Would you kill the patient?
▪ Numbers don’t always work
▪ Intuition says we should not kill the bachelor
• Utilitarianism and inequality
o Utilitarianism only cares about aggregate pleasure
o Does not care about distribution of pleasure among participants
• Utilitarianism is not a cost-benefit analysis
o Many actions can not be quantify in money
▪ E.g. can not monetize human life
▪ Pleasure does not translate to money
o Moral theory, not a guide for business action
▪ E.g. insurance, there are no moral considerations
Deontology
• Perform actions in accordance with duty
o Emphasis on motives
• Duty is based on logic or rational thinking
o Universalization
▪ An action is moral if
• You want it to be universalized
