Ethical Thought

Divine Command Theory - To be ethical, you have to follow God intrustuctions

• God is the Origin and Regulator of Morality : Exodus 20
• Right and Wrong are Objective Truths based on God's Will:  William of Okham said 'With him everything becomes right solely solely becoause he wants it to'
• Moral Goodness is acheived by complying with DCT: When Adam and Eve where expelled from the Garden of Eden.
• Divine Command is a requirment of God's Omnipotence: If he didn't have complete control over morality, something else' must have control, meaning sometthing would be more power full then God.
• Divine Command is an Objective Metaphysical Foundation of Morality:They are moral facts which lie beyond the physicla world, show they are not testable.
• Modified DTC: Robert Adams avoisd the two horns of the Euthyphro Dilemma by stating the God is omnibelevent.

Challenges:  Euthyphro Dilemma - 'Is conduct right because the Gods command it or is do the Gods command it' (MDCT, William Okham)

The Arbitarness Problem - Morality is dependent on God's whims eg Joshua & Abraham and Issac (MDTC)

The Pluralism Problem - There is so many religions, its is hard to choose which God to follow.

Virtue Theory - defining a good person and what virtues make a person good.

Aristotle and Virtues - Virtues are good qualities which lead to Eudaimonia. He belived there were 2 types of virtues, Intellectual Virtues (developed thhrough training) and Moral Virtues ( developed through habit). The right way to act is the golden mean, which is the perfect balence between 2 extremes eg Courage between rashness and Cowardice. The Golden Mean created 3 types of people: Sophron - naturally live in the mean, Enkrates- tempted but has will power to say in the mean, and Akrates - cant live in the mean. Aristotle also said people learn from good role models who train and exercise ttheir virtues until it is automatic eg Nelson Mandela.

Jesus' Teahcings on Virtues- The Sermon on the Mount shows the Beatitudes representing the kind of people and actions that will go to Heaven. The Beatitudes are seen as Jesus' virtues eg Hungry and thirst for righteousness and Pure in Heart. Jesus says those will be blessed who give to charity without praise and Jesus promises God's reign to those who are humble about God.

Challenges

• Virtues are not a practical Guide to Moral Behaviour - fails to be action guiding and give a clear way how to behave ( Use role models eg Nelso Mandela with courage, wisdo and patience)
  
• Issues with cultural relativism - morality is different in different communities eg Al Queada (VT is about the person rather then character)
• Virtues can be used for immoral acts - virtues can clash eg a crimnal needs courage (You need to be good person=good actions)

Ethical Egoism - everything we do is in self-interest as opposed to altruism (Max Stirner)

• Our actions are done for self interest : eg Love makes us happy
• Rejection of Material Gain: Drive for money borought by capitalism
• Unioin of Egoists: eg marriage is based on mutual pleasure and enjoyment, whne it ends you can walk away.
• 3 stages of development: The realistic stage of childhood (controlled by outward forces), The idealistic stage of youth (controlled by conscience and reason) and the egositic stage of adulthood, ( escape from external ad internal controll)
• Owness - The result of being free from internal and external constraints. 'I am my own, only when I m the master of myself'

Challenges

• Destruction of communtiy ethos - we will concentrate on our selves rather then the community
• Social Injustices - by thinking of yourself leads to other peoples suffereing eg Phillip Green
• A form of Bigotry - it divides people causing discrimination 

Naturalism - Moral statements are objective and cognitive.

• Moral statements can be anaylsed using the natural world: Naturalists believe goodness can be measured and translated into facts. Ethical terms can be defined and proven like mathmatical and scientific terms, thus meaning they are verifiable and falsifiable. Morals can be based on the same kind of observation of the world as used in science.
• James Rachels: changes the word wrong to mean interests rather then pain eg 'it is in our best interests to look after our eyesight' rather then 'it is wrong to not look after our eyes'
• F.H Bradley: Ethical statements show propositons which can be proved true or false. He siad we know objectively and can teast empirically ethical propositions , eg honesty is good. Moral objectives are determind through self-realisation and one's position in soicety, and we should learn from our community to know our station and its duties.

Challenges

• Hume's Is-ought Gap: we cannot move from an objective factual statement to a subjective moral one.
• G.E Moore Naturalistic Fallacy: cannot identify goodness with a natural quality.
• G.E Moore's Open Question Argument:defining moral terms with natural properites questions whether the natual propertise are moral.

Intuitionalism - we know what is right and wrong because it is in our intuition.

G.E Moore: a non-naturalist and believed moral judgements couldn't be proven empirically and that you can't define goodness using natural terms (naturalistic fallacy). He is regarded as a teleogolical intuitionalist because he relies on the consequences of actions on our intuition in order to know what is right or wrong. He uses the 'open question argument' to defend his argument, saying you can't define good using natural terms as it leaves the question whether the natural terms are good.

H.A Prichard: believed in 2 types of thinking, General Reasoning (looking at the facts) and Moral Intuition (decides what to do) eg the issue of abortion, reasons collects data on the matter, and intiution determines what to do. He said that peope have different morals becuase some peoples intuition is more developed and mature.Prichard said if there are conflict in obligatipn, you need to look at the situation and see whats best. Intuition teaches 3 main things: There are real objective truths, they can only be defined by moral truths and humans can discover these using their minds.

Challenges

• There is no proof that moral intuition exists - moral intuition is superfically attractive eg Lieing
• Intuitive truths can differ widely - Jeff McMahon eg segritation in America (development of intuition)
• No obvious way to solve conflicting intuitions - different people come to different conculsions when facing an ethical problem eg immigration (look at the best solution)

Emotivism - sediment/feeling are the source of right and wrong

• Ethical statements are neither verifiable nor analytic: Hume showed this through the 'is-ought gap'. AJ Ayre said meaningful statements have to be verified synthetically (sense) or analytic (definition).Moral statements are not true by definition and cannot be observed through sense, showing they are not fact or knowledge.
• Made to express joy or pain: They express our feelings about something or someone, eg lying. Ayer says 'I am merely expressing certain moral statements' and that they serve no real purpose as they are an expression.
• Expressed to be persuasive: C L Stevenson said the purpose of a moral statement is to persuade someone what is right/wrong about an action.

Challenges

• No basic Moral Priniciples can be established: if all behaviour is just how we feel, we can never learn anything thing.
• Ethical Debate becomes a pointless activity: moral judgement is a command trying to influence others eg politician
• There is no universal agreement that se actions are wrong: Rachels, Ayer is wrong to remove reason from judgement