1. ATS1371 Life, Death, and Morality Semester 1, 2015
Dr Ron Gallagher
Tutorial 12 (that’s all folks)
Virtue Ethics, Ethical Relativism
And the exam

4. GOOD FRIDAY NO TUTORIAL
DON'T FORGET Weekly Reading Quizzes
(x 0.5% bonus each) Mondays 10am, weeks 2-11.
Note: The section you need to read for the quiz is the one indicated for the week beginning the day the quiz is due. (Not the week just gone past.)

5. Assessment Summary
Within semester assessment: 60% Exam: 40%
Assessment Task
Short Answer Questions:
AT1.1:(5%), 400 words due Wed 18th March
AT1.2:(10%), 400 words due Wed 15th April
AT1.3:(15%), 600 words due Wed 6th May
AT2: Essay words due Wed 20th May
Weekly Reading Quizzes (x 0.5% bonus each) Mondays 10am, weeks 2-11.
Examination (40%)

6. Question from Sample Exam (on Moodle)
Rights, utilitarianism, and trolleys
1. What is the idea of stringency for a right? Illustrate the idea with two different rights that might be of different stringency.
2. What should a utilitarian think about rights? Do rights really exist? Would it ever be justified, for a utilitarian, to respect rights, even if that led to a worse outcome overall?
3. What is Thomson’s preferred account of why it is permissible to pull the lever in TROLLEY? Does the account succeed?
4. Utilitarians seem to be committed to some surprising conclusions about the morality of killing. Illustrate one or two of these conclusions, and try to explain why the utilitarian has such a surprising view.

7. Question from Sample Exam (on Moodle)
Self-defence
5. Describe Michael Otsuka’s position with respect to using violence in self-defence against innocent persons. Explain his reasons for his view.
6. “Killing an innocent threat in self-defence is wrong, but excusable”. Explain this claim, and discuss its plausibility.
7. What is the Hobbesian rationale for a liberty-right to engage in self-defence? What will the Hobbesian likely think about harming innocent threats in self-defence?
Speciesism, animals, and equality
8. What is Singer’s “principle of equality”? How would our behaviour towards animals have to change if we were to adopt this principle? Why?
9. Does the principle of equality give a good explanation of what is wrong with racism? Why/why not?
10. For Singer, the morality of taking an animal’s life depends in part on whether the animal is a person. Explain why this makes a difference.

8. Question from Sample Exam (on Moodle)
Abortion
11. “Conventional liberal views on abortion are untenable. Either we must accept that infanticide is no worse than abortion, or we must adopt a very conservative anti-abortion view.” Discuss why a philosopher might think this is true.
12. “Judith Thomson’s violinist case shows only that women have a right to remove a fetus from their bodies. Therefore her argument is not a successful defence of abortion.” — Discuss both of the following: (i) Why might someone say this? (ii) Is this view correct?
13. Discuss the idea that abortion is wrong because of the potential properties possessed by the fetus (such as the potential for personhood, or autonomy, or some other morally significant property). Does this idea provide a good reason to think that abortion is morally wrong?

9. Question from Sample Exam (on Moodle)
Cultural relativism and moral methodology
14. How would you characterise the difference between virtue ethics and the approaches we have been looking at in most of the unit?
15. Is there a conflict between the virtue of being a good parent and the principle of equality? Explain your answer.
16. What is cultural relativism? If cultural relativism is true, does it have any implications for how we should treat people from other cultures? In particular, should we be tolerant of people from other cultures?
17. “If moral relativism is true, then people who appear to disagree with one another about morals are actually talking past one another”. Explain this claim. Is this a good objection to moral relativism?

10. Cultural relativism and moral methodology
14. How would you characterise the difference between virtue ethics and the approaches we have been looking at in most of the unit?
15. Is there a conflict between the virtue of being a good parent and the principle of equality? Explain your answer.

11. 3 Key Features
Consequentialism and rights-based theories share these features:
1. That morality requires impartiality (in the POE sense)
2. They either focus on what kind of action is in question or the effects of the action in particular circumstances (e.g., killing, giving to charity, etc.).
3. These theories will tend to explain virtues--good character traits--partly in terms of good actions/good effects.
Virtue ethics challenges these assumptions

12. Possessing a Virtue/Vice?
Question: Suppose two women go shopping. Both have some money leftover due to certain items being on special. Because of this they both end up giving the leftover money to a homeless man. Do they both display the virtue of generosity?
Possessing Virtue: To have a virtue is to have a…
Stable traits of character or mind,
Generous people vs generous acts
Typically involving dispositions to think, feel, and act in certain ways in certain circumstances,
If one dislikes being generous, or
If one doesn’t think the generosity of an action counts in favor of doing it, or
If one wouldn’t regularly choose to act generously when there is occasion to do so (and no good reason to refrain),
Then….
Person Evaluation vs Act Evaluation
Virtues are the primary basis for judging the overall moral goodness or worth of persons (as opposed to actions).

13. 16. What is cultural relativism
16. What is cultural relativism? If cultural relativism is true, does it have any implications for how we should treat people from other cultures? In particular, should we be tolerant of people from other cultures?
Cultural relativism holds that ethical values vary from society to society and that the basis for moral judgements lies in these social cultural views.
Individual relativism holds that ethical values are the expression of the moral outlook of the individual.
A cultural relativist can hold that tolerance is good only insofar as tolerance is already a virtue in a given society. There is no reason for intolerant societies to change.

14. WHAT IS RELATIVE TRUTH? KEY TEST FOR RELATIVISM:
The truth value of the sentence can change, relative to
the context in which it is uttered.

15. AN ARGUMENT FOR CULTURAL RELATIVISM
(P) Different cultures have different moral beliefs and moral practices.
Therefore
(CR) All value judgements, all statements of right and wrong, are true or false relative to one’s culture.

16. RESPONSES TO THE ARGUMENT (1)
1. Cultural practice does not necessarily determine moral fact. For example, many of us think that some cultures were morally misguided.
2. Even if cultural practices determine some moral facts, there is still the possibility that some moral truths are absolute.
Consider different burial practices.
Nurturing children
Respecting parents
Inflicting pain just for the fun of it.

17. 17. “If moral relativism is true, then people who appear to disagree with one another about morals are actually talking past one another”. Explain this claim. Is this a good objection to moral relativism?
An individual relativist has no reason to listen to the different views and arguments of others, for there is no reason to think such views are objectively superior.
Problem for individual relativism
Individual relativism suggests morality is relative to my perspective as an individual. But what if I am inwardly conflicted on a moral question? Either I’m doing something wrong—which is hard to reconcile with individual relativism—or individual relativism cannot tell me what I ought to believe

18. MORAL DISAGREEMENT
Suppose I am arguing with someone from another culture about the morality of drinking alcohol.
ME: Drinking alcohol is not immoral.
STRANGER: You are wrong! Drinking alcohol is highly immoral.
How does this dispute translate into culturally relative language?

19. MORAL DISAGREEMENT
ME: “Drinking alcohol is not immoral in my culture”.
STRANGER: “You are wrong! Drinking alcohol is highly
immoral in my culture”.
This makes what the Stranger is saying look silly. We are not
disagreeing at all. Compare:
“There are legal pubs in Melbourne”.
“You are wrong! There are no legal pubs in Tehran”.
How do we make sense of the notion of moral disagreement? Disagreement requires a shared subject matter.
How do we explain the notion of moral reflection?
Sometimes we sit and think to ourselves if what we are doing really is right. We are not at that time trying to find out what the majority of a culture believe. This makes nonsense of the notion of moral reflection.

21. The difference between individual and cultural relativism: both views hold there is not objective right and wrong .
Cultural relativism holds that ethical values vary from society to society and that the basis for moral judgements lies in these social cultural views.
Individual relativism holds that ethical values are the expression of the moral outlook of the individual.
Problems for cultural Relativism
With which group should my views coincide? My extended family, state, culture etc? Different groups to which I belong can morally disagree.
If society changes its views, why should this change morality? If 52 percent support a war but later only 48 percent do, why should this change the war’s claim to justice?

22. Problem for both cultural and individual relativism
Both seem to imply that relativism is more tolerant than objectivism, but in neither case is this true. A cultural relativist can hold that tolerance is good only insofar as tolerance is already a virtue in a given society. There is no reason for intolerant societies to change. Similarly, an individual relativist has no reason to listen to the different views and arguments of others, for there is no reason to think such views are objectively superior.
Problem for individual relativism
Individual relativism suggests morality is relative to my perspective as an individual. But what if I am inwardly conflicted on a moral question? Either I’m doing something wrong—which is hard to reconcile with individual relativism—or individual relativism cannot tell me what I ought to believe