Week 1 - Readings Part 1

How to Define Ethics

• There are dozens of definitions of ethics out there, some of them are pretty good, and some are pretty bad. Let me give you a technically correct definition: ethics is the study of if and how to justify moral judgments (Later on in the course I'll give you one that you will actually remember)
• This definition, like most definitions, raises new questions, such as "What is a moral judgment?" And, "What does it mean to justify a moral judgment?" And, "How do we know whether moral judgments can be justified?"
• The answers to these and other questions will be clear by defining three important terms: ‘moral judgment,’ ‘ethical reasoning,’ and ‘moral theory.’
• Also, sometimes people like to make a big deal about the difference between morality and ethics. I don’t think there is an important difference. In English, we use interchangeable terms such as “moral reasoning” and "ethical reasoning," “moral values” and “ethical values,” “immoral” and “unethical,” etc, etc, etc. Those terms mean the same thing, and I will not hold a distinction in this class. Having, I do want to be consistent with the phrases "moral judgment," "ethical reasoning," and "moral theory" just because it makes it difficult to understand what someone means where they are not consistent with their terminology. The specific definitions of those three terms are as follows:

The Basics of “Moral Judgments” 

• A moral judgment is a particular kind of statement. So a good place to begin is to think about statements in general. There are four main kinds:

1. Description: "The door is shut."
2. Question: "Is the door shut?"
3. Expression: "I prefer shut doors."
4. Prescription: "You should shut the door."

• A question is a statement that requests information, while an expression (in this sense) is a statement of personal preference. A descriptive statement is an attempt to state how the world is.
• In contrast, a prescriptive statement is an attempt to state how the world should be. This is why prescriptive statements use words of value, such as “good,” “bad,” “right,” “wrong,” “should/not,” “ought/not.”
• Many prescriptive statements are obviously not moral in nature. For example, “You should not use the small fork first at dinner,” or “It would be wrong to wear white socks with dress shoes.” It would be odd to find someone who insisted that those matters were about morality.
• However, most of us believe that certain prescriptive statements are moral, such as “You should not murder that person,” or “Stealing is wrong.” Throughout the quarter, I will consistently call these moral judgments. So the definition of a moral judgment: a prescriptive statement that is morally important. I know, not very helpful, right?
• Is it a problem that we do not know the difference between a morally important prescriptive statement and one that is not? Not really, because people draw that line differently depending on which moral theory they think is true. Obviously, we cannot do that right now, but the important thing at this point is to agree that there is a difference, rather than what that difference actually is. 
• The next issue: once we have a prescriptive statement that we believe is morally important (that is, once we have a moral judgment), how do we know if it is true? That is a matter that must be decided by ethical reasoning:

The Basics of “Moral Theories”

• Definition of a moral theory: a theory about the nature of moral judgments. Each theory will tell you whether and how to engage in ethical reasoning. There are 10 main moral theories as I count them
• I believe that the best way to think about moral theories is to divide them into families of moral theories. You do this by asking the question of each moral theory: “What is the goal of moral judgments?”
• There are four possible answers to the question about the goal of moral judgments, and hence four families of moral theories. I'll describe those on the next page.