1. 250: week of 18 Jan.
A. Replies to pmail

2. pmail
Student: I personally think there is no difference between them
[practical judgment and moral judgment]. Over time, people
themselves have created boundaries. If there is any difference
between the two, it is probably the resulting consequence.
Sometimes the results of our actions have great long lasting
emotional affects. And usually, decisions that involve emotions, are
greatly debated and are seen as moral issues.
DrC: I think Singer was assuming on page 9 that practical
judgment is a matter of rationally pursuing one's interests. This idea
is formalized in economics as maximizing one's utility profile. Singer
thinks we morally ought not to do this. We should allow rational
self-interest to be constrained by the Golden Rule.

3. What form of address
do you prefer?
I prefer DrC (Doctor C), which to my ear
sounds somewhat familiar but also sounds
respectful of my position, not to mention my
age. But some students call me Wes, and it
doesn’t bother me. In 400-level courses it’s
the norm. I’m reminded of the French
courses I’m taking, in which some professors
encourage us to use the familiar form of
address (“tu”) while others prefer the polite
form (“vous”). [gallic shrug]

4. Singer: Does Marxism avoid relativism?
Singer, 5M, “Marxists adapted....” On the Marxist view Singer is
discussing, the dominant moral ideas of any historical period are
relative to economic conditions. As these are different from time to
time and from place to place, the dominant moral ideas are different.
This is *cultural* relativism about morality, and some people construe
that as tantamount to moral relativism, period. But the Marxists
assumed that all these societies were progressing toward economic
conditions that would enable a classless society, and the moral ideas
of that society would be the ideal ones, reflecting freedom from
economic necessity and its distorting effects, and reflecting the full
flowering of human "species powers", as Marx put it. (If you detect the
influence of the Ancients on such Marxist doctrine, I think you wouldn't
be wrong: the human species has a purpose or *telos*, and history
tells the tale of humanity's gradually fulfilling it.)

5. A human death has impact on others, whereas
this is not true of animals. This is why human
beings are valuable, animals are not.
Singer doesn’t deny that a human life may be
preferred to an animal life because of
`impact’, but he does deny that a human life
may be preferred simply because it is a
human life, or because a human interest is at
stake.

6. pmail
I am not suggesting that an animal life is more important than human
(or that human deaths do not have a great impact because we are
social creatures), but that they are of equal value because they are
both a life. Yes humans have evolved incredible cognitive abilities, but
an evolutionary perspective would suggest that under different
conditions we could all be sentient bunnies hopping about. Let us
assume for a moment that a human being’s death does automatically
have more effect than an animal’s, does this really suggest that
humans are more “valuable” because of this? Are we then to assume
that an infant is less valuable than an adult, because its death may
affect a smaller number of people and it has not yet had time to make
a true “impact” on the world? If we are uncomfortable making such a
claim about infants, than how can we make such a claim about
animals?

7. Crito: Aren’t laws a human creation, rather than
something absolute and objective?
There is a fundamental issue in the
philosophy of law between natural-law
theorists and legal positivists, corresponding
to the distinction that you are drawing. The
positivists are typical of the Moderns: for
them, law is “black letter law”, law on the
books, created by legislators. Plato belonged
to a natural-law tradition that flourished
among the Ancients in various forms.

8. Terminology
Axiomatic (11B16): An axiom is something self-evident, or taken as
self-evident by a given theory. That ‘each counts for one and none
for more than one’ is axiomatic for utilitarians.
A mysterious realm of objective ethical facts (8T8): Singer seems
to have in mind Plato’s view (“the theory of Forms”). But belief in
moral facts (moral realism) can be understood less extravagantly.
For instance, one contemporary thinker identifies moral facts with
physical states of the world.

9. pmail
Student: To my understanding, preference utilitarianism states that an
ethical action is one that furthers the overall goal (preference) of that
individual making the action. What I do not understand is that if
Singer is a preference utilitarian, then how could he put as much
weight on the interests of others (as a utilitarian is to do), if they may
not play a role in furthering his end goal?
DrC: Preference utilitarianism maximizes collective preference
satisfaction, not satisfaction of any given individual’s preferences.

10. Frankena: Should emotion be excluded from
practical judgments?
We are invited to reflect on saving one’s mother or a stranger, on a
psychiatrist’s choice between wanting her patient to go to jail for
raping her and understanding that it’s not the patient’s fault, etc.
Such cases indicate perhaps that a categorical divide between
reason and emotion is untenable, but an account is needed of the
relation between evidence and feeling: about the weight that
emotion should have vis-à-vis the evidence. If Reason discovers a
smoking gun, so to speak, then Emotion shouldn’t demand a “not
guilty” finding. (Other things being equal!) Maybe Emotion should
either (1) “break ties” or (2) “tip the scales” when the hypothesis it
favours is plausible (and as plausible as competing hypotheses).

11. Crito: Is justice more valuable than children, or
life, or anything else?
In Singer’s terms, Plato and Socrates were
“speciesists”. Human lives are valuable, at
least when they are just, but the lives of
beasts are not. When someone is unjust,
however, his soul is degraded and in
disarray. He becomes tantamount to a beast,
or worse. So concern about one’s soul, and
the justice of it, is quite fundamental.

12. Crito: Weren’t the laws of Athens just, whereas the application of the
laws to Socrates by the democratic court were the source of injustice?
This is a plausible distinction. But I was
trying to draw implications about civil
disobedience, so I suppose I must defend the
view that the law includes not just abstract
statutes and such, but the their application
to cases. If the latter are unjust, then, no
matter how noble the statutes, civil
disobedience may be justified. [gallic shrug]
This wasn’t Socrates’ view. He thought a
citizen accepts the law as a “package deal”.

13. B. Singer 2, “equality
and its implications
“The principle that all humans are equal is
now part of the prevailing political and
ethical orthodoxy.” (16B4)
“...once we question the basis of the principle
that all humans are equal and seek to apply
this principle to particular cases, the
consensus starts to weaken.” (17T2)

14. 19 - 21
“I doubt that any natural characteristic,whether a `range
property’ or not, can fulfil this function, for I doubt that there is
any morally significant property that all human beings possess
equally.” (19B10)
“This means that we weigh up interests, considered simply as
interests.... This provides us with a basic principle of equality: the
principle of equal consideration of interests.” ((21T10)

15. 22 - 24
“Equal consideration of interests is a minimal
principle of equality in the sense that it does
not dictate equal treatment.” (23B3)
“...the principle of declining marginal utility, a
principle well-known to economists....” (24B12)

16. 25 - 31
“IQ is important in our society.” (29B16)
“Equal status does not depend on
intelligence. Racists who maintain the
contrary are in peril of being forced to kneel
before the next genius they
encounter.” (31B7)

17. 33- 39
“The sex roles that exist today are, on this
view, an inheritance from these simpler
circumstances, an inheritance that became
obsolete once technology made it possible for
the weakest person to operate a crane that
lifts fifty tons....”
“So equality of opportunity is not an
attractive ideal. It rewards the
lucky....” (39B5)

18. 40 - 41
“If ... the basis of equality is equal
consideration of interests, and the most
important human interests have little or
nothing to do with these factors, there is
something questionable about a society in
which income and social status correlate to a
significant degree with them.” (40T10)
“...the problem of `socialism in one
country’....” (41T11)

19. 42 - 43
“This [rewarding effort] is quite different
from paying people for the level of ability
they happen to have, which is something
they cannot themselves control.” (42T3)
“So do we have to abolish private enterprise
if we are to eliminate undeserved
wealth?” (43B10)

20. 44 - 53
“It [affirmative action] may be the best hope
of reducing long-standing
inequalities....” (45T5)
“By giving equal consideration to the
interests of those with disabilities, and
empathetically imagining ourselves in their
situation, we can, in principle, reach the right
answer....” (53B13)

21. C. How not to answer moral questions, Tom Regan
“... if what she said were true, what Jack
said would have to be false.” (26T12)
“One’s `credentials’ can be established in the
case of moral judgments only if there are
independent ways of testing the truth or
reasonableness of moral judgements.” (29B8)

22. God and morality, Steven
M. Cahn
“But why is it wrong? Is it wrong because
God says it is wrong, or does God say it is
wrong because it is wrong?” (31B4)

23. pmail
31b4. Cahn presents a dichotomy here that could easily be false. I have heard it argued that
what is good/right/true in the world is an out flowing of God's character. Does this response
hold water?
Promising. I hope you can break this venerable frame. Would you also say that bad things are
expressions of God's character? Nozick for example in _The Examined Life_ speculates that the
Holocaust corresponds to a severe depression that God suffered.
32t18-21. It seems the case to me that what molds a person's character to more fully desire morality is
punishment which follows instruction. Cahn assumes this not to be the case here but does not state
his assumption. Do you agree, or am I missing something?
I see what you mean. Cahn should say something to address your point. He could start, maybe, by
distinguishing what's necessary to morality itself and what's necessary in order to be motivated to
obey it.