Briefly: AS/A2 Revision Guide - Ethics and Religious Ethics

By David Mills Daniel

By the author of SCM AS/A2 Ethics and Moral Philosophy, the Briefly series and Briefly: 25 Great Philosophers from Plato to Sartre, Briefly: AS/A2 Revision Guide - Ethics and Religious Ethics is designed to help students prepare for:
- the Ethics/Religious Ethics modules in the AS/A2 level Religious Stud­ies Specifications offered by all the examination boards in England and Wales
- those aspects of AS/A2 Philosophy concerned with moral philosophy.

In 14 chapters, the book covers: metaethics; consequentialist and utilitarian ethics; deontological and Kantian ethics; virtue ethics; natural law ethics, conscience and justice; situation ethics; religious and Christian ethics; determinism and free will; abortion and euthanasia; infertility, assisted conception and embryo research; human and sexual relationships; issues of equality and human rights; war and peace; animal welfare and the environment.

Through the use of bullet points and bold type, the book is structured so as to aid revision of the key points students need to know and understand in order to answer AS and A2 questions.

Each chapter includes:
- one or more AS/A2-type questions, which students can use to test their knowledge and understanding of the content of each chapter
- a Bibliography
- a list of Useful Internet Resources.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9780993025426

Book preview

ETHICS

Books by David Mills Daniel

The SCM Press

Briefly series

Anselm’s Proslogion (with the Replies of Gaunilo and Anselm) (ISBN 9780334 040385)

Aquinas’ Summa Theologica Part 1 (God, Part I) (ISBN 9780334 040354)

Aquinas’ Summa Theologica Part 2 (God, Part II) (ISBN 9780334 040903)

Aristotle's The Nichomachean Ethics (ISBN 9780334 041313)

Ayer's Language, Truth and Logic (ISBN 9780334 041221)

Bentham's An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (ISBN 9780334 041740)

Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy (ISBN 9780334 040910)

Fletcher’s Situation Ethics: The New Morality (ISBN 9780334 041764)

Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (ISBN 9780334 040255)

Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (ISBN 9780334 041245)

Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason (The Concept of the Highest Good and the Postulates of the Practical Reason) (ISBN 9780334 041757)

Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (ISBN 9780334 040262)

Kant's Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (ISBN 9780334 040392)

Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling (ISBN 9780334 041306)

Mill's On Liberty (ISBN 9780334 040361)

Mill's Utilitarianism (ISBN 9780334 040279)

Moore's Principia Ethica (ISBN 9780334 040408)

Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil (ISBN 9780334 041238)

Plato's The Republic (ISBN 9780334 040347)

Russell's The Problems of Philosophy (ISBN 978033404 1184)

Sartre's Existentialism and Humanism (edited) (ISBN 9780334

041214)

Other books

Briefly: 25 Great Philosophers from Plato to Sartre (ISBN 9780334 042129)

SCM AS/A2 Ethics and Moral Philosophy (ISBN 9780334 041719)

David Mills Daniel (E-Books)

Briefly: AS/A2 Revision Guide - Ethics and Religious Ethics (ISBN 9780993 025426)

Briefly: AS/ A2 Revision Guide - Philosophy of Religion (to be published in 2015)

Mastering Moral Philosophy and Ethics (to be published in 2016)

Briefly: AS/A2 Revision Guide -

Ethics and Religious Ethics

David Mills Daniel

Published by David Mills Daniel (E-Books)

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,

in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,

photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of

the publisher, David Mills Daniel (E-Books).

© David Mills Daniel 2014

Published in 2014 by David Mills Daniel (E-Books)

The Author has asserted his right

under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the

Author of this Work

Kindle Edition

ISBN: 978-0-9930254-2-6

Contents

Introduction

1      Metaethics

2      Consequentialist and utilitarian ethics

3      Deontological and Kantian ethics

4      Virtue ethics

5      Natural law ethics, conscience and justice

6      Situation ethics

7      Religious and Christian ethics

8      Determinism and free will

9      Abortion and euthanasia

10     Infertility, assisted conception and embryo research

11     Human relationships and sexual ethics

12     Equality, difference and human rights

13     War and peace

14     Animal welfare and the environment

List of topics covered in this revision guide

Introduction

The purpose of this revision guide

Briefly: AS/A2 Revision Guide - Ethics and Religious Ethics is designed to help students prepare for:

· the Ethics/Religious Ethics modules in the AS and A2 level Religious Studies specifications offered by all the examination boards in England and Wales

· those aspects of AS/A2 Philosophy concerned with moral philosophy.

The structure of this revision guide

Through the use of bullet-pointed lists, indented text and bold type, the revision guide is structured so as to aid revision of the key points students need to know and understand, in order to answer AS and A2 questions.

At the end of each chapter, there are one or more AS/A2-type questions, which students can use to test their knowledge and understanding of the content of each chapter. 

The AS/A2-type questions are followed by a Bibliography and list of Useful Internet Resources. 

The content of this revision guide

Briefly: AS/A2 Revision Guide - Ethics and Religious Ethics covers the three main divisions of ethics:

·         Metaethics  (Chapter 1)

·         Normative Ethics (Chapters 2-8)

·         Applied Ethics (Chapters 9-14)

Metaethics

This sounds much more intimidating than it actually is. It is what is known as a ‘second order’ activity, which does not concern ethical principles themselves, or what we ought to do, but such issues as:

·         ethical concepts

·         ethical language and its meaning

·         the nature of moral discourse.

For example:

·         an enquiry into whether we ought always to perform actions which maximize happiness is part of normative ethics

·         an enquiry into whether ‘good’ means ‘that which maximizes happiness’ is a metaethical one.

This distinction between metaethics and normative ethics may seem artificial. Many important philosophers, such as Immanuel Kant, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill address both in their books without clearly distinguishing them. Indeed, G.E Moore, who is critical of both Mill and Bentham, maintains that many moral philosophers have often tried to answer ethical questions, without being clear about what the questions are. As a result, they have committed metaethical errors.

Chapter 1 covers:

·         definitions in metaethics

·         the question of whether there is moral knowledge

·         the key metaethical issues of the is/ought gap and the naturalistic fallacy

·         the 20th century metaethical theories of:

·         ethical intuitionism

·         ethical emotivism

·         universal prescriptivism

·         ethical descriptivism.

Normative Ethics

A norm is:

·         a rule, which governs behaviour

·         or a criterion, by which it is assessed.

Normative Ethics concerns:

·         the objects or ends, which we regard, or should regard, as good

·         the rules or principles that we adopt, or ought to adopt, to govern and/or assess our conduct.

In Chapters 2-8, Briefly: AS/A2 Revision Guide - Ethics and Religious Ethics covers the major ethical theories which appear in the AS/A2 Religious Studies specifications.

Applied Ethics

This concerns the application of normative ethical principles to ethical issues, and, in Chapters 9-14, Briefly: AS/A2 Revision Guide - Ethics and Religious Ethics covers those examined in the AS/A2 specifications.

Religion

For AS/A2 Religious Studies, candidates are required to be familiar with the main ethical principles of one religion. For reasons of space, this book deals only with Christianity, the religion chosen by a large number of schools and colleges for study at A-level.

In Chapter 7, Religious/Christian Ethics are covered in general terms, and in Chapters 9-14 the relevant Christian beliefs, teachings and ethical approaches, with particular reference to the Church of England, the Roman Catholic Church and the Methodist Church, are considered in relation to each ethical issue.

Technical terms

These are used in ethics/moral philosophy, particularly to describe the various metaethical theories. Briefly: AS/A2 Revision Guide - Ethics and Religious Ethics does not contain all of them, but several are explained in Chapter 1. The terms ‘moral’ and ‘ethical’, and their various permutations and applications, as in ‘moral realism’, ‘ethical cognitivism’, and so on, are used interchangeably in the text, and as reflects common usage. For example, we usually talk of ‘moral responsibility’, rather than ‘ethical responsibility’. However, while this book refers to, for example, ethical intuitionism, this is exactly the same as moral intuitionism.

Other resources available to students

This revision guide - which was originally intended for traditional publication, but which I have now decided to self-publish, along with a companion guide to AS/A2 philosophy of religion (which will appear in 2015) - is based on SCM AS/A2 Ethics and Moral Philosophy (David Mills Daniel and Dafydd E. Mills Daniel, London: SCM Press, 2009, ISBN 97803344041719), where all the ethical theories and issues covered in this book are discussed in detail.

My Briefly series of guides to key texts in philosophy, ethics, philosophy of religion and theology, published by SCM Press, also covers many of the ethical theories and issues discussed in this book. See the beginning of the revision guide for a full list of the books in the series and their ISBN numbers.

E-book versions of some of the texts mentioned in this book can be found on the internet.

Students should also be aware that all the examination boards publish sample questions, as well as the AS/A2 specifications, and lot of useful material is available on their websites. It is possible to obtain past papers from them, and these often remain relevant, even following specification changes.

Updating of this revision guide

A new edition of this revision guide, containing a section on business ethics, and more recent statistical information in the chapters on applied ethics, will be published in 2015. It is intended to update this revision guide at least once every two years.

Contact the author

If you have any questions or comments about the issues discussed in this revision guide, you can e-mail the author at: [e-mail]

Acknowledgements

My thanks to: Jenny, Edmund, Dafydd and Megan - for all their support and encouragement; Eleanor - for the hard work she has done preparing this book for e-publication; and the SCM Press - for the cover design.

1 Metaethics

This chapter contains:

·         Some definitions of terms used in ethics

·         The question of whether there is moral knowledge

·         The theory of forms and the form of the good

·         Plato

·         ethical error theory

·         John Mackie

·         moral facts

·         G.J. Warnock

·         Some metaethical issues

·         the is/ought gap

·         David Hume

·         ethical naturalism

·         Jeremy Bentham

·         the naturalistic fallacy and the open question argument

·         G.E. Moore

·         Some 20th-century metaethical theories

·         ethical intuitionism

·         G.E. Moore and W.D. Ross

·         ethical emotivism

·         A.J. Ayer

·         universal prescriptivism

·         R.M. Hare

·         ethical descriptivism

·         G.J. Warnock

·         AS/A2-type questions

·         Bibliography

·         Internet resources

Some definitions of terms used in ethics

Some philosophers hold that there is moral knowledge.

They believe that, just as there are empirical truths or facts, there are moral truths or moral facts, so that we can say that some things and actions are always definitely good or right, while others are always definitely bad or wrong.

The view that there are moral truths or facts, which are not subjective, or relative to individual preferences or the norms (standards) of particular societies or cultures, but based, in some sense, on the nature of things, is known as:

·         moral realism

·         or ethical objectivism.

Plato holds that there are moral truths or objective values, but that they are transcendental:

·         they exist at a different level of reality from the ordinary empirical world

·         but provide standards of goodness and rightness which should be applied and followed in it.

Plato’s ethical theory would give us moral absolutes: absolute standards for making ethical judgements and determining conduct.

So, too, would a divine command theory, which identifies moral truth with God’s commands. Søren Kierkegaard, for example, holds that these always take precedence over human ethical standards.

Other philosophers, such as the utilitarians, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, are ethical naturalists. They argue that moral truths or facts:

·         do not relate to transcendental properties

·         but to such natural properties as pleasure or happiness.

In their view:

·         pleasure/happiness is the ultimate good

·         right actions are those which promote pleasure/happiness, and wrong actions those which prevent it (see below).

Moral realists are also ethical cognitivists, who believe that:

·         there is moral knowledge

·         so ethical utterances or statements are not just expressions of opinion, but propositions which can be true or false.

For the utilitarian, a moral statement that advocates inflicting pain is simply false.

However, there is a complication, which is picked up by G.E. Moore: the naturalistic fallacy (see below).

Opposed to moral realism are:

·         ethical relativism or subjectivism

·         ethical projectionism or expressivism

·         ethical/moral scepticism.

These take their inspiration from David Hume’s famous passage about the ‘gap’ between ‘is’ and ‘ought’, which is traditionally interpreted as maintaining that it does not follow from any statement of fact (for example, that there has been a car accident on the road outside) that we ought to take some particular action in relation to it (such as going to see if we can help, or phoning the emergency services: see below).

Ethical relativism/subjectivism/scepticism is the view that:

·         there are no objective moral truths

·         moral principles or standards are relative to particular individuals or societies

·         the rightness of actions and the goodness of ends should be defined in terms of the feelings of approval they elicit.

However, it also describes the position of some utilitarians and situation ethicists, who believe that many ethical rules, including such apparently fundamental ones as those that condemn killing or theft, should only be followed if they help achieve what is held to be the ultimate good, such as maximizing happiness or doing the most loving thing.

Ethical projectivism or ethical expressivism holds that:

·         there are no objective moral standards

·         ethical judgements merely express individual moral attitudes or feelings, and/or are intended to arouse similar attitudes or feelings in others.

However, as these are being projected on to the world, people are often misled (or mislead themselves) into thinking that they correspond to moral truths, which are part of the nature of things.

This position, which includes ethical emotivism, is non-cognitivist. It contends that ethical utterances cannot be true or false, because there is no objective criterion, by which to determine their truth or falsity. 

The question of whether there is moral knowledge

Observation of the world shows that ethical principles vary from:

·         individual to individual

·         culture to culture.

Even people who share many ethical principles, as, for example, the inhabitants of western Europe and North America, attach different degrees of importance to them. However, over the centuries, some philosophers have argued that not all ethical principles are equally valid, and that some supposed ethical principles do not even qualify as such.

These philosophers believe in:

·         moral knowledge

·         moral truths

·         moral facts.

If they are correct, it will be possible to say that:

·         some things and actions are always definitely good or right

·         others are always definitely bad or wrong.

However, some philosophers take the opposite position and regard the view that there are moral truths as an error.

The theory of forms and the form of the good

In The Republic and other works, Plato argues that there are moral truths of a special kind.

Plato (c. 429-347 BC)

Plato made an immense contribution to western philosophy. After the execution of his teacher, Socrates, for undermining belief in the gods and corrupting youth, he devoted the rest of his life to teaching and writing, founding the Academy, the world’s first university, in 386 BC. He concluded (as he argues in The Republic) that states must be ruled by philosophers, who, after rigorous intellectual training, would understand the true nature of goodness and justice, and govern well. His other books include the Theaetetus, Symposium and Laws.

Philosophers must rule

·         In The Republic, Plato argues that the problems of existing states will not end until they are ruled by philosophers.

·         This is because Plato believes that states must be ruled by those who:

·         love their country

·         are intellectually gifted

·         (most importantly) have reached the very highest form of knowledge: the form of the good.

Plato’s theory of forms

·         Plato believes that there is more to the world than we can experience through our senses.

·         There are two orders of reality, and the things we experience in the ordinary, visible world acquire their identity by being (in some way) copies of:

·         the unchanging forms or essential natures of these things in an intelligible, transcendent world.

·         And only our minds, not our senses, can give us access to this intelligible, transcendent world.

·         Thus, a particular thing is beautiful or just by being a copy of, or participating in, the form, or essential nature, of beauty or justice.

·         Things in the ordinary visible world are not perfectly just or beautiful.

·         They only approximate to the beauty or justice of:

·         beauty-in-itself

·         goodness-in-itself.

·         Those who know only particular things, such as beautiful objects or just acts, and not beauty itself and justice itself, do not really ‘know’ these things.

·         They merely have opinions about them.

·         Only those who are acquainted with the forms or the essential nature of things have knowledge.

The form of the good

·         The form of the good:

·         presides over the forms in the intelligible world

·         has the same relation to them as the sun does to visible objects in the visible world.

·         The form of the good is the source of all reality, truth and goodness.

·         Only those philosophers, who have seen this, which is the essential nature of goodness, possess the highest form of knowledge.

·         They alone know:

·         what is good in itself

·         which things and actions really are good, right and just.

·         As they possess this vital moral knowledge, they are the ones who must become the Guardians of the state and govern it.

Training the philosopher-rulers

·         Trainee Guardians must undergo advanced studies to enable them to see the form of the good and gain access to moral truths.

·         Studying mathematics will shift their focus away from the world of change.

·         Dialectic, an intense programme of philosophical enquiry and discussion, will enable their minds to penetrate to the essential nature of things.

·         Those who complete this arduous process, and finally see the form of the good, will become the state’s rulers.

Assessment

·         Thus, according to Plato, the mass of people:

·         are ignorant of wisdom and truth

·         ruled by their desires

·         pursue false pleasures.

·         On the other hand, the philosopher-rulers, who have penetrated to the intelligible world of unchanging and eternal truth, will:

·         know what good itself is

·         lead lives guided by reason and knowledge.

·         Their moral knowledge will equip them to govern the state.

·         But not everyone agrees that:

·         there are two orders of reality

·         the ordinary world, experienced through the senses, is less real than an invisible, intelligible one.

·         Plato’s theory runs counter to common sense and sense experience.

·         He does not explain how the intelligible and visible worlds relate to each other.

The importance of Plato’s theory

·         We may reject:

·         Plato’s belief in an essence of goodness, located in a different level of reality

·         the view that moral knowledge/truths exist.

·         However, the message that comes through from Plato’s theory of forms is that discovering, or deciding, what is good or right requires:

·         intellectual effort

·         careful enquiry.

Ethical error theory

In his Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, J.L. Mackie argues that, as a result of Plato’s theory of forms, European moral philosophy has been misled into treating moral values as objective entities.

John Mackie (1917-81)

The Australian philosopher, John Mackie, was professor of philosophy at the Universities of Otago (New Zealand), Sydney and York, and a fellow of University College, Oxford. As well as Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (1977), his books include Truth, Probability and Paradox (1973) and Hume’s Moral Theory (1982).

There are no forms, form of the good or moral knowledge

·         Mackie rejects Plato’s view that the forms and the form of the good exist.

·         It is hard to imagine what it would mean for such eternal, objective values to be part of the world’s structure.

·         They would be totally different from anything else in the world, and would not fit into our picture of it.

·         Belief in them requires us to accept that a different level of reality, which is not accessible to our senses, exists.

·         If the forms existed, we could only become aware of them through a special faculty of moral perception or intuition.

·         This would be utterly different from our ordinary ways of knowing things.

·         There are no empirical grounds for believing that a different level of reality and a special faculty of moral perception exist.

Moral scepticism

·         Mackie’s own position is moral scepticism about any theory that there are:

·         independently-existing objective moral values

·         located in a different level of reality.

·         He rejects the theory of forms as an error theory.

·         However, its critics must recognize that Plato’s theory that objective moral values exist has been so influential that:

·         there is a general belief that they exist

·         this error is now an integral part of ordinary moral thought and language.

·         However, in arguing against it, moral scepticism can draw strength from the facts that:

·         different people and societies adopt very different ethical principles

·         these differences suggest that moral principles do not come from one source

·         the ethical principles people adopt depend on their experience and cultural factors.

Assessment

·         Mackie holds that moral realism is based on a metaphysical error.

·         Originating with Plato, it has misled people for 2,500 years.

·         As a result, it has been incorporated into our thought and language.

·         But, Simon Blackburn claims that Mackie misses the point.

·         Blackburn accepts ethical expressionism, in that:

·         when we make ethical statements, we are expressing our attitudes, and so we are not referring to objective moral truths.

·         However, when we talk about our moral attitudes:

·         we do project them on to the world, as if they are expressing moral truths, and this is not surprising as they matter so much to us.

·         Blackburn’s position is called quasi-realism.

The importance of Mackie’s theory

·         Mackie makes the crucial points that there are no empirical grounds for believing that:

·         there is a different level of reality where the forms/form of the good exist

·         human beings have a special faculty of moral perception.

·         He highlights the strangeness of the view that:

·         moral principles which guide human actions in the everyday world come from empirically unknowable, transcendent entities, the forms/forms of the good

·         and that these exist in a different level of reality.

Moral Facts

In his The Object of Morality, G.J. Warnock maintains that there are moral facts, but not transcendental moral truths, of the kind Plato proposes in The Republic.

G.J. Warnock (1923-95)

Sir Geoffrey James Warnock was Principal of Hertford College, Oxford (1971-88) and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford (1981-5). Strongly influenced by the work of J.L. Austin, he co-edited Austin’s Philosophical Papers (1961), and prepared his lectures for publication as Sense and Sensibilia (1962). His books include Berkeley (1953), Contemporary Moral Philosophy (1967), English Philosophy Since 1900 (1969) and The Object of Morality (1971).

Moral facts exist

·         Like Mackie, Warnock believes that ordinary usage suggests that moral facts exist.

·         For example, people are often said to do things which they ‘know’ are wrong.

·         But, Warnock does not think that this is an error, but a legitimate usage.

·         For Warnock, moral facts concern the actions or situations which can correctly and meaningfully be described as ‘right’ or