1. Invited Lecture by Dr. Ünsal Doğan Başkır
Faces of Good Life: Exploring Ethical Theories

2. Foundation(s) of Ethical Thinking
Ethics
moral principles that govern a person's behavior or the conducting of an activity
moral philosophy
origins  «ethos»
habit
custom
neighborhood
Ancient Foundations
moral precepts before moral philosophy
know yourself!
nothing too much!
be modest! (sophrosune)
Socrates and Socratic Tradition  «unexamined life is not worth living»

3. Socratic Tradition on Justice
Justice should be good for its own sake and for each and every member of society regardless of their power or wealth.
Just person is wise and good, and unjust person ignorant and bad.
Injustice produces internal disharmony and prevents effective action.
Just person lives a happier life than the unjust person.
(Plato, The Republic, 347a-354b)

4. Aristotle’s Classification of Sciences
Theoretical Sciences
Theoria (contemplation)
an interest in the things that cannot exist in other forms; understanding and explaining things as they are, or as they are supposed to be
mathematics & natural sciences  TRUTH
Productive Sciences
Poiesis (to make / to produce)
an interest into the things that can be different than they look; planning, designing, and creating something new
arts & architecture  BEAUTY
Practical Sciences
Praxis (to act / action)
an interest into the things that can be different than they look; understanding how to act through calculation and deliberation
acting for its own sake / the realm of freedom
ethics & politics  VIRTUE / RIGHT / JUSTICE / GOODNESS

5. Aristotle’s Method: Teleology
Telos
ultimate purpose/aim
the essential nature
What is the ultimate purpose of a person or an activity?
the relationship between seed and tree, medicine and health, strategy and victory
Justice is teleological. Defining rights requires us to figure out the telos of the social practice in question (Sandel, 2009).

6. Aristotle’s Method: Teleology
Winnie-the-Pooh
by A. A. Milne

7. Aristotle’s Method: Teleology
“… Winnie-the-Pooh is walking in the forest and comes to a large oak tree. From the top of the tree, ‘there came a loud buzzing-noise’.” “Winnie-the-Pooh sat down at the foot of the tree, put his head between his paws and began to think. First of all he said to himself: ‘That buzzing-noise means something. You don’t get a buzzing-noise like that, just buzzing and buzzing, without its meaning something. If there’s a buzzing-noise, somebody’s making a buzzing-noise, and the only reason for making a buzzing-noise that I know of is because you’re a bee’.” “Then he thought another long time, and said: ‘And the only reason for being a bee that I know of is making honey.’ And then he got up, and said: ‘And the only reason for making honey is so as I can eat it.’ So he began to climb the tree.”

8. Happiness as the Ultimate Purpose of Human Life
“[I]f there is one thing that is the end of all actions, this will be the practical good (…) Now we call an object pursued for its own sake more final than pursued because of something else (…) Well, happiness (eudaimonia) more than anything else is thought to be just such an end, because we always choose it for itself, and never for any other reason. It is different with honor, pleasure, intelligence and good qualities generally. We choose them partly for themselves; but we choose them also for the sake of happiness, in the belief that they will be instrumental in promoting it” (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1097a-b).

9. What is Happiness (eudaimonia)?
“[t]he conclusion is that the good for man is the activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, or if there are more kinds of virtue than one, in accordance with the best and most perfect one. There is a further qualification: in a complete lifetime. One swallow does not make a summer; neither does one day. Similarly, neither can one day, or a brief space of time make a man blessed and happy” (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1097b).

10. Principle Aristotelian Questions on Ethics
How to live well/a good life?
What kind of a person do I want to be?
What virtues characterize the person I strive to be?

11. The Centrality of Reason in Virtue Ethics
Human-beings are reasonable creatures
logos: reason & language
zoon logon echon / zoon politikon
the ability to make a distinction between just and unjust, good and evil, right and wrong
“The man who is isolated—who is unable to share in the benefits of political association, or has no need to share because he is already self-sufficient—is no part of the polis, and must therefore be either a beast or a god” (Aristotle, Politics).

12. Ethics and Politics: Learning by Doing
“Moral virtue comes about as a result of habit.” It’s the kind of thing we learn by doing.
Since we are able to make choices and decisions, it is always possible to form good and bad habits.
“Politics is about learning how to live a good life. The purpose of politics is nothing less than to enable people to develop their distinctive human capacities and virtues—to deliberate about the common good, to acquire practical judgment, to share in self-government, to care for the fate of the community as a whole” (Sandel, 2009).

13. Doctrine of the Mean
The only general thing that can be said about moral virtue, Aristotle tells us, is that it consists of a mean between extremes. But he readily concedes that this generality does not get us very far, because discerning the mean in any given situation is not easy. The challenge is to do the right thing “to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right motive, and in the right way” (Sandel, 2009).
Some actions/feelings admitting no mean
malice, envy, shamelessness, adultery, theft, murder

15. Utilitarianism in Context: a wind of change
late 18th and 19th Centuries
American Revolution
French Revolution
Rise of individuality and individual rights
Positivism

16. Two Kinds of Moral Reasoning
Consequentialist Moral Reasoning
locates morality in the consequences of an act
utilitarianism & (to some extent) virtue ethics
Categorical Moral Reasoning
locates morality in certain duties and principles
duty ethics

17. Utilitarianism: Jeremy Bentham
Two sovereign masters of human nature:
“Pleasure and pain govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think”.
Actions are approved when they are such as to promote happiness, or pleasure, and disapproved of when they have a tendency to cause unhappiness, or pain.
Main principles of utilitarianism:
“maximizing happiness, the overall balance of pleasure over pain”
“the greatest happiness for the greatest number”
“utility is whatever produces happiness and pleasure, and whatever prevents pain and suffering”

18. Criticisms towards Bentham’s Utilitarianism
Bentham’s understanding of utilitarian ethics
fails to respect individual / minority rights
aggregates all values and preferences in money or benefit by calculation
suggests a kind of psychological egoism

19. Jeremy Bentham: Panopticon

20. Jeremy Bentham: Panopticon

21. Utilitarianism: John Stuart Mill
“It is proper to state that I forego any advantage which could be derived to my argument from the idea of abstract right, as a thing independent of utility. I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions; but it must be utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of man as a progressive being.”

22. Utilitarianism: John Stuart Mill
Humanization of utilitarianism
Harm Principle
people should be free to do whatever they want, provided they do no harm to others
The only action for which a person is accountable to society, Mill argues, are those that affect others. As long as I am not harming anyone else, my “independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.”

23. Utilitarianism: John Stuart Mill
“Forcing a person to live according to custom or convention or prevailing opinion is wrong, Mill explains, because it prevents him from achieving the highest end of human life—the full and free development of his human faculties. Conformity, in Mill’s account, is the enemy of the best way to live.”
We need to respect individual rights and freedom of each and every person in order to pursue a good/just life.
short-run and long run utilities

24. Utilitarianism: John Stuart Mill
“The human faculties of perception, judgment, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and even moral preference, are exercised only in making a choice. He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice. He gains no practice either in discerning or in desiring what is best. The mental and moral, like the muscular powers, are improved only by being used… He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation. He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his faculties.”

25. Utilitarianism: John Stuart Mill
Distinction between higher and lower pleasures
role of pleasures to form a character / personality
qualitative approach to pleasures
“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question.”

26. John Stuart Mill on Freedom of Speech & Anti-Conformism
Dissenters usually question the value judgments of society. In this way, our ideas will be freed from turning into a dogma/prejudice, and will be proven right or wrong. Questioning process may create a social improvement.
The people who question and dissent the common values of society protect the members of the society (majority) from conformism. When conventional ideas of majority are not questioned, they will lose their meanings; and the society will lack of liveliness.
Persons learn freedom only through discussing and questioning their ideas. Free persons are able to govern themselves. The ones who do not have their own opinions and unable to question them cannot develop the capacity to be free. Therefore they will need a “father figure” to govern them. Freedom (of speech) is against paternalism.

27. Exploding gas tanks
During the 1970s, the Ford Pinto was one of the best-selling cars in the United States. Unfortunately, its fuel tank was prone to explode when another car collided with it from the rear. More than five hundred people died, and many more suffered severe burn injuries. It emerged that Ford engineers had been aware of the danger posed by the gas tank. But company executives had conducted a cost-benefit analysis and determined that the benefits of fixing it were not worth the $11 per car.

28. Case II: Exploding gas tanks
To calculate the benefits to be gained by a safer gas tank, Ford estimated that 180 deaths and 180 burn injuries would result if no changes were made. It then placed a monetary value on each life lost and injury suffered ($200,000 per life, and $67,000 per injury). It calculated that the overall benefit of not fixing the car would be about $88 million. So the company concluded that the cost of fixing the fuel tank was not worth the benefits of a safer car.