1. Morality and moral systems
    • Rules of conduct
        • Rules for individuals
        • Rules for social policies
    • Principles of evaluation

2. Justifying rules for moral systems
    • Religion – teachings of religious leaders
    • Philosophical ethics – appeals to reason
    • Law – codes determined by constitutions and legislation

3. Discussion stoppers
    • People disagree on solutions.
        • They also agree on many things.
    • Who am I to judge?
        • Sometimes we have to make judgments.
    • Ethics is a private matter.
        • Morality is essentially a public system.
    • Morality is a matter for individual cultures.
        • Do in Rome as the Romans do.

4. Why ethical theories are needed
    • Follow the golden rule.
        • Doesn’t cover when others have different desires.
    • Follow your own conscience.
        • Some people think it all right to fly airplanes into towers.

5. Consequence based ethical theories
    • Bentham (1748-1832) and Mill (1806-1873)
    • What results from an act
    • The ends justify the means
    • Principle of social utility measured by the resulting amount of happiness
    • Intrinsic vs. instrumental values.

6. Utilitarianism
    • Act utilitarianism – Act is good if it results in the greatest good for the greatest number.
        • What happens to minority?
    • Rule utilitarianism – Act is good if it comes from following rules that bring good to greatest number.
        • Should we base ethics on happiness and pleasure?

7. Duty-based ethical theories – Deontological theories
    • Kant (1724-1804) – Duties and obligations that people have to one another.
    • People have rational natures
    • People should never be treated as means to the ends of others
    • Each individual has the same moral worth

8. Rule deontology
    • Kant’s categorical imperative
    • Rules that all individuals should be treated as ends in themselves and not means to an end.
    • Rules that can be universally binding for all people.
    • One person or group should not be privileged over all others.

9. Act deontology
    • Ross (1930) - Problem if two conflicting moral duties
    • When conflict, consider individual situations
    • Prima facie (self-evident) duties.
        • Honesty, justice, helpfulness
    • Actual duty – What to do when have conflicts
        • Use rational intuitionism.
    • Weigh evidence to decide course of action in particular case

10. Contract-based ethical theories
    • Hobbes(1588-1679) – Premoral state
        • State of nature where all free to do as like
    • People establish formal legal code
    • In each person’s self-interest to develop system with rules
    • Objections – Depends only on formal legal rules
    • Difference between ‘doing no harm’ and ‘doing good’.

11. Rights-based contract theories
    • Jefferson (1776) and Aquinas (1225-1274)
        • Natural rights or inalienable and self-evident rights
    • Legal rights – positive rights and negative rights
    • Negative rights – privacy, no interference in right to vote
    • Positive rights – education (in US through 12th grade)

12. Character-based ethical theories
    • Virtue ethics - Plato (427?-327 BCE) and Aristotle (384-322 BCE)
    • Development of good character traits and habits
    • Be a moral person rather than just follow rules
    • Agent-oriented rather than action or rule-oriented
    • Develop character traits such as kindness, truthfulness, honesty, trustworthiness, helpfulness, generosity, and justice
    • More likely to work in homogeneous societies rather than our pluralistic one
    • Consequences often should be taken into account

13. Single comprehensive theory
    • Rawls (1971) and Moor (1999) – Just-Consequentialist Theory
    • Start with core values – ‘Do no harm’
    • Support justice, rights, and duties – ‘Do your duty’
    • Settle conflicts – two steps
        • Consider situation impartially without regard to specific case – choice between ethical vs. unethical policies
        • Consider consequences of specific case – choice between better vs. worse policies
    • Consider whether problem is disagreement about facts rather than value differences.

14. Moor’s ethical framework
    • Deliberate from an impartial point of view
        • Does it cause any unnecessary harm?
        • Does it support individual rights, duties?
    • Select the best policy from the set
        • Weigh the good and bad consequences
        • Distinguish between disagreements about facts vs. disagreements about values