ENV100: LECTURE 4 3rd OCTOBER 2013
ENV100: LECTURE 4
3rd OCTOBER 2013
Introduction to Ethics -
Ethics: is a branch of philosophy and is the study of morals and values. There are religious ethics and professional ethics as well. Ethics is to morality as geology is to rocks. It is hard to avoid this everyday usage. In this class, the focus is on the history of philosophical reflection on ethics. Ethics, the term, is used as a synonym for morality but this is not the case technically. There is a difference b/w morals and values.
Morals: what is right/wrong? What are the rules that govern your behavior? Don’t lie, cheat or steal
-
Ethics is the study of morality, the systematic study of human moral behavior, a systematic reflection on the customs and habits of a group of people
Important distinctions one needs to make -
Description vs prescription: it is important to distinguish from ‘what is’ vs ‘what ought to be’. It is often assumed that the way human life/society is structured is how it has ‘always been’ structured. Eg: in Toronto, homelessness wasn’t always as prevalent as it is today. There had been structural, economical and political changes that led to homelessness in North America. Therefore, it is important to see ‘what is’ from ‘what ought to be’.
-
Law vs morality: something may be legal (eg slavery in the 1800s) but may not be moral. Henry David Thoreau made that distinction and said that just because it is legal does not make it acceptable or moral.
Law sets the minimum standards for morality and is subject to some form of violent punishment
Ethical obligations extend well beyond legal morals.
Eg: killing a person is illegal and will be arrested. But are you legally compelled to help a homeless person? Will you be arrested if you do not help? Are you ethically bound?
It is also true that sometimes a law can be immoral and acts of civil disobedience aren’t necessarily employed to rectify it
Eg: Thoreau (video and his essay on civil disobedience) saw Mexico being attacked by USA as completely immoral and refused to pay tax to support the Mexican-American war. He talked about the role of civil disobedience. Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi are major exponents of civil obedience, objection to immoral laws
-
It is imperative for people to have the freedom to choose b/w ‘what is’ and ‘what ought to be’. Ability to choose allows us to make ethical decisions.
-
Fact vs value: important to distinguish good moral decision making as something depending on facts and values. You can have excellent values but can still make poor moral judgments because your facts may be wrong. You can also be able to understand thoroughly all the different details of a moral problem but still make poor judgment because you don’t see the moral issues clearly or your values are faulty. This pertains to the thoughts of David Orr who said that just because we are educated about an issue doesn’t necessarily mean we will make the right ethical decision.
How to develop moral character: Character or virtue ethics & Discernment -
Character and virtue ethics: For Aristotle, ethics wasn’t simply about choosing good over evil. The real concern in ethics was your character and how character was shaped over time by practicing good values/acts habitually till its no longer a thought process (a habit of the heart)
These virtues aren’t taught in a classroom but learnt by repetition
For the ancient Greeks, stories were important to develop moral character so much so that Plato talked about censoring the story plot if the story involved immoral acts
Acts in the media portray good and evil, but how does that shape your character?
-
Discernment: it is not always about making the correct decision but rather it lies in being able to discern/see the real problem at hand that needs to be resolved. Sometimes we allow complex and technical dimensions overcrowd the moral issue.
Discerning moral issues is as important as the technical dimensions
For many people, discernment is largely an issue of the character
Eg: Aldo Leopold discerning a limitation of ethics and trying to extend it beyond the ethical framework, which is not sufficient to focus on human relationships. He believes that a new ethic, the land ethic, be evolved.
Two types of strands for moral reasoning or problem solving: Teleological (or consequentialist) OR Deontological (or non-consequentialist) -
Teleological approach: comes from the Greek word meaning ‘end’ or ‘objective’. In this type of reasoning, a moral decision is based its outcome or consequence. Regardless of what the action might be, actions are moral to the degree to which they lead to the desired goal. Eg: a branch of this is utilitarianism, which states that the proper end for moral action should be the greatest happiness or the greatest good or the greatest number. This determines whether something is moral or not. Moral decision-making is thus a calculation of what actions will produce the greatest happiness/pleasure and the least pain. Might giving a happy pill (that led to no harmful effects) to everyone be moral (drugging a population)? This type of reasoning suggests results, rather than underlying values or premises.
-
Deontological approach: this is related to ‘what ought to be’, determined by moral laws and principles (which are written or sometimes unwritten). Regardless of the effects or consequences, this method holds certain actions as wrong in and of itself. There are acts that are always wrong, no matter what, and you can’t justify them in terms of a higher value. Eg: rape, cheating, killing animals for sport. That is a categorical imperative.
A strand of the deontological approach is the Categorical Imperative
Categorical imperative was designed by Immanuel Kant
It requires the decision maker to be willing to make an individual action into a universal moral law (what if everybody did this, what if everyone could cross the street whenever they wanted to)
It acts as if your individual action could become a universal law. Therefore, a person must use reasoning to determine the universal implication of their individual action. Determining the appropriate rules is important.
Kant suggests that the only rule that governs actions is a (…??)
Eg: informing people of what is going to happen if they choose to participate in a research (give them a written consent form) is a direct result of Immanuel Kant and his categorical imperative
Kant said that morally, you cannot treat a human being as a means to an end. Have to treat them as a person in and of itself. You don’t use people as a means to an end and not an end of himself/herself. Eg: it is wrong to flirt with someone in order to get a third person’s attention.
This is a command that needs to be categorically followed.
Another strand of the deontological approach is the Divine Command.
^ this relates to an authority higher than human beings. Relevant for anyone with a religious background. God provides rules in the form of scripture and rules often triumphs over the other human laws coming from other sources (parliament, municipality). The only action that’s necessary is obedience to those laws. It is not necessary for one to understand all the reasoning behind the Divine laws. Consequences of the obedience are not an issue (I will be faithful to the laws no matter what). In Christian belief, we are so fallen that we can’t ever understand what’s right, so we have to follow the Commands. This type of approach says that certain actions have to be followed no matter what (like categorical imperative).
Challenges to these sorts of moral reasoning: Subjectivism and Cultural Relativism -
Subjectivism: states that morality is determined, ultimately, by the individual. Everyone has the right to believe what he or she wants to believe in. Most fear subjectivism, however, because it seems to lead towards a type of nihilism and an absence of a sense of right vs wrong altogether.
-
Cultural relativism: states that all ethics are culturally and relatively determined. Moral systems are based on culture and moral values/acts of one culture cannot be used to challenge or critique the moral values of another culture. In this sense, there is no sense of understanding of a universal morality that exists trans-culturally from human to human. Critics highlight this approach’s failure to recognize truly universal values and that it has its own logical inconsistency.
-
Conscientious wrongdoing?
-
Situation ethics which is different from categorical imperative: your situation helps determine your ethical view point
-
Love for your spouse/parents/children is an important concern (Ethics of care, it is situational): justifies breaking an entry somewhere, personal love triumphs deontological moral views. Would you go help the children of a poor nation if called for the greater good or stay with your mom who is terribly ill? This could be a valid moral choice, because the bond of care with the person is a special one, which overrides other ethical concerns.
The Land Ethic: the dawn of environmental ethics -
An evolution of ethics from the traditional strains of thinking. We have an emergence of a new relationship to nature. Through the industrial revolution, through the cold war, through the rising technological power, the nature of the human-nonhuman relationship is changing. One person to discern this is Aldo Leopold.
-
He was a conservation biologist, graduate work in forestry, well-known for his evolution of the land ethic. He said that a thing is right when it tends to maintain the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. He is beginning to see the incredible effects of the human changing the landscape and worries that there is no
ethical or philosophical statement that can provide a curveball away from what’s happening. That it is okay that we are destroying the earth? That’s why we need a new moral law. -
He builds on the ideas of Henry David Thoreau, as Thoreau begins to see the intrinsic value of nature. It is not just external instrumental value. The value of nature needs to be expressed ethically.
-
Leopold used to shoot wolves for the government. He was following the law and shooting wolves (difference b/w law vs morality) and eventually led him to write his essay ‘Thinking like a mountain’. Green fire in the wolf as she was dying led him to believe that there was something much powerful than he realized and that maybe what he’s doing is not right at all. He starts thinking like a ‘mountain’, meaning that killing wolves mean more deer but more deer means they will over-populate and over-graze the trees on the mountain and then they’d have to go kill the deer! He then begins to reflect more largely and holistically on the biotic community, rather than individual species.
-
Leopold says that unless we develop love and admiration for the land, we will destroy it (expand our ethics to ethics of care).
Precautionary Principle -
Definition:
-
Traditionally, if there isn’t any hardcore scientific evidence to a policy, then the project gets the green signal. But, there have been many instances where scientific research couldn’t predict/definitively prove all the ecological and environmental consequences.
-
This principle emerged as a way to incorporate uncertainty into decision making, capturing the old idea of being prudent. Need to take into consideration and analyze data that even hint at indications that would harm ecology.
-
Eg: Quebec flooding. The Cree’s mercury levels were dramatically high, because the high amount of organic material being dumped into the waters was getting decomposed by microorganisms that produced mercury as a byproduct. This was
bio-magnified up the food chain, getting into the fish and ultimately, the people. This was something scientists couldn’t see but there were indications. -
It builds on Aldo Leopold’s notion of the biotic community as a framework for ethics.
-
Internationally getting accepted by countries.
-
There is suggestive evidence that what we’re doing to the environment is really harmful but that’s being ignored. So, implementing the principle needs to occur.
-
Environmental thinking has started to impact policy making.
Video (YouTube: American engineers in 1956-Chevrolet/General Motors corporation documentary) -
Depicts an engineer’s relationship with nature.
-
What makes an engineer: college degree, curiosity, scientific aptitude, ability to solve practical problems, courage to accept constant challenges to solve problems that perplex, to make the world a better place
-
“The roar of rushing water was just a sound, a waste of turbulent energy until it was transformed into a source of hydro-electrical power to lead the way to progress.”
-
“Constant challenge to produce what people desire and want. An engineer helps to accommodate the increasing population size and to enable the highest standard of living, making use of plastics, metals, stones, fibers, timbers and glass for homes and stores and factories. Blessings of construction and invention and mass production made possible by engineers. The resources of nature and its requirements to people are a challenge to every engineer, working to build the industry of USA.”
-
^ Gives a feeling that an engineer is almost God-like in trying to take over nature. Words to describe water implied that they’re like wasted areas until they become “the bearers of burden and movers of men”. All this energy was wasted until we built these dams. Gives a sense that nature doesn’t have any intrinsic value until it is manipulated by humans to enable human ends.
-
In the mid 1950s, culturally and politically the Cold War in the USA with Soviet Union is occurring. USA had the highest standard of living in the world at that time.
It was part of American democracy through their engineering. There was a vision of using nature for our democratic progress. -
You see scientific engineering and cultural values all coming together in this documentary for engineers. It says that there is progress but the underside like poverty, pollution, racism etc isn’t really talked about.
-
What is the human role in nature? Are we at war with nature? Are we trying to control nature?
3rd OCTOBER 2013
Introduction to Ethics -
Ethics: is a branch of philosophy and is the study of morals and values. There are religious ethics and professional ethics as well. Ethics is to morality as geology is to rocks. It is hard to avoid this everyday usage. In this class, the focus is on the history of philosophical reflection on ethics. Ethics, the term, is used as a synonym for morality but this is not the case technically. There is a difference b/w morals and values.
Morals: what is right/wrong? What are the rules that govern your behavior? Don’t lie, cheat or steal
-
Ethics is the study of morality, the systematic study of human moral behavior, a systematic reflection on the customs and habits of a group of people
Important distinctions one needs to make -
Description vs prescription: it is important to distinguish from ‘what is’ vs ‘what ought to be’. It is often assumed that the way human life/society is structured is how it has ‘always been’ structured. Eg: in Toronto, homelessness wasn’t always as prevalent as it is today. There had been structural, economical and political changes that led to homelessness in North America. Therefore, it is important to see ‘what is’ from ‘what ought to be’.
-
Law vs morality: something may be legal (eg slavery in the 1800s) but may not be moral. Henry David Thoreau made that distinction and said that just because it is legal does not make it acceptable or moral.
Law sets the minimum standards for morality and is subject to some form of violent punishment
Ethical obligations extend well beyond legal morals.
Eg: killing a person is illegal and will be arrested. But are you legally compelled to help a homeless person? Will you be arrested if you do not help? Are you ethically bound?
It is also true that sometimes a law can be immoral and acts of civil disobedience aren’t necessarily employed to rectify it
Eg: Thoreau (video and his essay on civil disobedience) saw Mexico being attacked by USA as completely immoral and refused to pay tax to support the Mexican-American war. He talked about the role of civil disobedience. Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi are major exponents of civil obedience, objection to immoral laws
-
It is imperative for people to have the freedom to choose b/w ‘what is’ and ‘what ought to be’. Ability to choose allows us to make ethical decisions.
-
Fact vs value: important to distinguish good moral decision making as something depending on facts and values. You can have excellent values but can still make poor moral judgments because your facts may be wrong. You can also be able to understand thoroughly all the different details of a moral problem but still make poor judgment because you don’t see the moral issues clearly or your values are faulty. This pertains to the thoughts of David Orr who said that just because we are educated about an issue doesn’t necessarily mean we will make the right ethical decision.
How to develop moral character: Character or virtue ethics & Discernment -
Character and virtue ethics: For Aristotle, ethics wasn’t simply about choosing good over evil. The real concern in ethics was your character and how character was shaped over time by practicing good values/acts habitually till its no longer a thought process (a habit of the heart)
These virtues aren’t taught in a classroom but learnt by repetition
For the ancient Greeks, stories were important to develop moral character so much so that Plato talked about censoring the story plot if the story involved immoral acts
Acts in the media portray good and evil, but how does that shape your character?
-
Discernment: it is not always about making the correct decision but rather it lies in being able to discern/see the real problem at hand that needs to be resolved. Sometimes we allow complex and technical dimensions overcrowd the moral issue.
Discerning moral issues is as important as the technical dimensions
For many people, discernment is largely an issue of the character
Eg: Aldo Leopold discerning a limitation of ethics and trying to extend it beyond the ethical framework, which is not sufficient to focus on human relationships. He believes that a new ethic, the land ethic, be evolved.
Two types of strands for moral reasoning or problem solving: Teleological (or consequentialist) OR Deontological (or non-consequentialist) -
Teleological approach: comes from the Greek word meaning ‘end’ or ‘objective’. In this type of reasoning, a moral decision is based its outcome or consequence. Regardless of what the action might be, actions are moral to the degree to which they lead to the desired goal. Eg: a branch of this is utilitarianism, which states that the proper end for moral action should be the greatest happiness or the greatest good or the greatest number. This determines whether something is moral or not. Moral decision-making is thus a calculation of what actions will produce the greatest happiness/pleasure and the least pain. Might giving a happy pill (that led to no harmful effects) to everyone be moral (drugging a population)? This type of reasoning suggests results, rather than underlying values or premises.
-
Deontological approach: this is related to ‘what ought to be’, determined by moral laws and principles (which are written or sometimes unwritten). Regardless of the effects or consequences, this method holds certain actions as wrong in and of itself. There are acts that are always wrong, no matter what, and you can’t justify them in terms of a higher value. Eg: rape, cheating, killing animals for sport. That is a categorical imperative.
A strand of the deontological approach is the Categorical Imperative
Categorical imperative was designed by Immanuel Kant
It requires the decision maker to be willing to make an individual action into a universal moral law (what if everybody did this, what if everyone could cross the street whenever they wanted to)
It acts as if your individual action could become a universal law. Therefore, a person must use reasoning to determine the universal implication of their individual action. Determining the appropriate rules is important.
Kant suggests that the only rule that governs actions is a (…??)
Eg: informing people of what is going to happen if they choose to participate in a research (give them a written consent form) is a direct result of Immanuel Kant and his categorical imperative
Kant said that morally, you cannot treat a human being as a means to an end. Have to treat them as a person in and of itself. You don’t use people as a means to an end and not an end of himself/herself. Eg: it is wrong to flirt with someone in order to get a third person’s attention.
This is a command that needs to be categorically followed.
Another strand of the deontological approach is the Divine Command.
^ this relates to an authority higher than human beings. Relevant for anyone with a religious background. God provides rules in the form of scripture and rules often triumphs over the other human laws coming from other sources (parliament, municipality). The only action that’s necessary is obedience to those laws. It is not necessary for one to understand all the reasoning behind the Divine laws. Consequences of the obedience are not an issue (I will be faithful to the laws no matter what). In Christian belief, we are so fallen that we can’t ever understand what’s right, so we have to follow the Commands. This type of approach says that certain actions have to be followed no matter what (like categorical imperative).
Challenges to these sorts of moral reasoning: Subjectivism and Cultural Relativism -
Subjectivism: states that morality is determined, ultimately, by the individual. Everyone has the right to believe what he or she wants to believe in. Most fear subjectivism, however, because it seems to lead towards a type of nihilism and an absence of a sense of right vs wrong altogether.
-
Cultural relativism: states that all ethics are culturally and relatively determined. Moral systems are based on culture and moral values/acts of one culture cannot be used to challenge or critique the moral values of another culture. In this sense, there is no sense of understanding of a universal morality that exists trans-culturally from human to human. Critics highlight this approach’s failure to recognize truly universal values and that it has its own logical inconsistency.
-
Conscientious wrongdoing?
-
Situation ethics which is different from categorical imperative: your situation helps determine your ethical view point
-
Love for your spouse/parents/children is an important concern (Ethics of care, it is situational): justifies breaking an entry somewhere, personal love triumphs deontological moral views. Would you go help the children of a poor nation if called for the greater good or stay with your mom who is terribly ill? This could be a valid moral choice, because the bond of care with the person is a special one, which overrides other ethical concerns.
The Land Ethic: the dawn of environmental ethics -
An evolution of ethics from the traditional strains of thinking. We have an emergence of a new relationship to nature. Through the industrial revolution, through the cold war, through the rising technological power, the nature of the human-nonhuman relationship is changing. One person to discern this is Aldo Leopold.
-
He was a conservation biologist, graduate work in forestry, well-known for his evolution of the land ethic. He said that a thing is right when it tends to maintain the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. He is beginning to see the incredible effects of the human changing the landscape and worries that there is no
ethical or philosophical statement that can provide a curveball away from what’s happening. That it is okay that we are destroying the earth? That’s why we need a new moral law. -
He builds on the ideas of Henry David Thoreau, as Thoreau begins to see the intrinsic value of nature. It is not just external instrumental value. The value of nature needs to be expressed ethically.
-
Leopold used to shoot wolves for the government. He was following the law and shooting wolves (difference b/w law vs morality) and eventually led him to write his essay ‘Thinking like a mountain’. Green fire in the wolf as she was dying led him to believe that there was something much powerful than he realized and that maybe what he’s doing is not right at all. He starts thinking like a ‘mountain’, meaning that killing wolves mean more deer but more deer means they will over-populate and over-graze the trees on the mountain and then they’d have to go kill the deer! He then begins to reflect more largely and holistically on the biotic community, rather than individual species.
-
Leopold says that unless we develop love and admiration for the land, we will destroy it (expand our ethics to ethics of care).
Precautionary Principle -
Definition:
-
Traditionally, if there isn’t any hardcore scientific evidence to a policy, then the project gets the green signal. But, there have been many instances where scientific research couldn’t predict/definitively prove all the ecological and environmental consequences.
-
This principle emerged as a way to incorporate uncertainty into decision making, capturing the old idea of being prudent. Need to take into consideration and analyze data that even hint at indications that would harm ecology.
-
Eg: Quebec flooding. The Cree’s mercury levels were dramatically high, because the high amount of organic material being dumped into the waters was getting decomposed by microorganisms that produced mercury as a byproduct. This was
bio-magnified up the food chain, getting into the fish and ultimately, the people. This was something scientists couldn’t see but there were indications. -
It builds on Aldo Leopold’s notion of the biotic community as a framework for ethics.
-
Internationally getting accepted by countries.
-
There is suggestive evidence that what we’re doing to the environment is really harmful but that’s being ignored. So, implementing the principle needs to occur.
-
Environmental thinking has started to impact policy making.
Video (YouTube: American engineers in 1956-Chevrolet/General Motors corporation documentary) -
Depicts an engineer’s relationship with nature.
-
What makes an engineer: college degree, curiosity, scientific aptitude, ability to solve practical problems, courage to accept constant challenges to solve problems that perplex, to make the world a better place
-
“The roar of rushing water was just a sound, a waste of turbulent energy until it was transformed into a source of hydro-electrical power to lead the way to progress.”
-
“Constant challenge to produce what people desire and want. An engineer helps to accommodate the increasing population size and to enable the highest standard of living, making use of plastics, metals, stones, fibers, timbers and glass for homes and stores and factories. Blessings of construction and invention and mass production made possible by engineers. The resources of nature and its requirements to people are a challenge to every engineer, working to build the industry of USA.”
-
^ Gives a feeling that an engineer is almost God-like in trying to take over nature. Words to describe water implied that they’re like wasted areas until they become “the bearers of burden and movers of men”. All this energy was wasted until we built these dams. Gives a sense that nature doesn’t have any intrinsic value until it is manipulated by humans to enable human ends.
-
In the mid 1950s, culturally and politically the Cold War in the USA with Soviet Union is occurring. USA had the highest standard of living in the world at that time.
It was part of American democracy through their engineering. There was a vision of using nature for our democratic progress. -
You see scientific engineering and cultural values all coming together in this documentary for engineers. It says that there is progress but the underside like poverty, pollution, racism etc isn’t really talked about.
-
What is the human role in nature? Are we at war with nature? Are we trying to control nature?
