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Philosophical ethics
Based mainly on “Computer Ethics”, D. Johnson, Prentice Hall 2001
and Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia
CS480 Computer Science
Seminar
Fall, 2002
A little background: the origin of ehtics
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Ethics: a branch of philosophy that
– attempts to define what is good for the individual and for society.
– tries to establish the nature of obligations, or duties, that people owe themselves
and each other.
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Human nature
– people do not willingly do what is bad for themselves but may do what is bad for
others if it appears that good for themselves will result. It has always been
difficult to define what is good and how one should act to achieve it. Some have
said that pleasure is the greatest good (see Epicureanism). Others have pointed
to knowledge, personal virtue, or service to one's fellow human being.
Individuals, and whole societies, have performed outrageous criminal acts on
people, and they have found ways to justify doing so on the basis of some
greater "good."
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Ethical relativity versus ethical absolutism
– Difficulty in deciding what good and obligation are has led moral philosophers to
divide into two camps: ethical relativity and ethical absolutism
– One camp says that there are no definite, objective standards that apply to
everyone. People must decide what their duties are in each new situation.
– Others have said that there are standards that apply to everyone, that what is
good can generally be known. If the good is known, the obligation to pursue it
becomes clear.
Absolutism solution
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The lack of standard for what is good
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Aristotle solution
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Aristotle realized that what people desire they regard as good but there can be no standards
at all.
two types of desire: natural and acquired.
Natural desires: are those needs that are common to all human beings such as food
and shelter. Beyond these, people also have a desire for health, knowledge, and a
measure of prosperity. By being natural, these desires, or needs, are good for
everyone. Since there can be no wrong basic needs, there can be no wrong desire
for these needs.
Desires other than natural: These are not needs but wants. It is at the level of
wants that the nature of good becomes clouded. People with sound judgment should
be able to decide what is good for them, and this sound judgment comes with
experience. Young children have little experience of what is good or bad for them, so
they must be guided by parents and other adults. Mature adults (as a rational
being), however, should be able to decide what is good for them, though history
demonstrates that this is not always the case.
Need to decide what is good for others as well as for themselves. That is, they
expect that goods for them apply equally to other people. To be able to treat others in
the same way one treats oneself, Aristotle said it is necessary to have the three
virtues of practical wisdom: temperance (moderation and self-restraint), courage, and
justice.
Relativist solution
• Relativist views
– Relativists do not believe that there are self-evident moral principles that
are true for everyone. They say that people's moral judgments are
determined by the customs and traditions of the society in which they
live. These may have been handed down for centuries, but their age
does not mean they are true standards. They are simply norms that a
certain society has developed for itself. What is right is what society
says is right, and whatever is considered good for society must be right.
– The pragmatism view: One of the leading pragmatists, John Dewey,
claimed that moral problems arise out of a conflict of impulses or
desires, and the goal of moral deliberation is to find a course of action
that will turn this conflict into harmony. A choice is right if it leads to a
solution of the specific conflict, but there is no absolute right or good, as
every successful solution gives rise to new problems that must be
evaluated on their own terms.
– The existentialism view: All individuals have their own life situations. No
two are identical, for everyone else is part of the environment in which
decisions must be made. All choices involve risk. There are no
principles or standards that are right for all people at all times. New
situations demand new approaches. What was once valid may be
inappropriate now.
Common Moral Elements
• Most societies--from the ancient to the modern period--share
certain features in their ethical codes. Some of these have
applied only within a society, while others have been more
universal.
– customs or laws forbidding murder, bodily injury, or attacks on personal honor
and reputation. Property rights also exist in some form almost everywhere.
– rules that define elementary duties of doing good and furthering the welfare of
the group. Within the family, mothers look after their children, and men support
and protect their dependents. In turn, grown-up children are expected to provide
care for their aging parents. Helping more distant relatives is also considered a
duty in some places, depending on the extent of kinship ties.
– In societies where the major religions--Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and
Buddhism--are predominant, the duty of helping the needy and the distressed
has been implanted. These obligations extend beyond family to acquaintances
and even strangers. Telling the truth and keeping promises are also widely
regarded as duties, though they are sometimes withheld from strangers.
In the last 200 years, modern nations have evolved a kind of universal ethic that
originated with ideas about human rights to life, liberty, and property that developed
during the period of the Enlightenment. Whether honored in practice or not, there is
at least an acceptance of the notion that the lives of human beings are meant to be
improved by abolishing disease, poverty, and ignorance.
Interesting articles this week
BusinessWeek, 10-14-2002, “digital Media: “don’t
Clamp down too Hard” by H. Green
• Entertainment companies want the government
to mandate technology that would control how
digital TV shows are copied and distributed.
• Lots of armor on CDs, books, and movies could
spook buyers and stifle innovation.
• Since the defunct of Napster, file-sharers are
installing Kazaa, a neo-Napster, at a rate of 4
copies per second!
http://www.Digital-consumer.org
Functions of ethics
• ETHICS AND MORALITY:
– How to behave toward oneself and toward other
individuals is a matter of making choices
– Aristotle had a better term--practical wisdom: it was
concerned with action, both on the part of the
individual and on the part of society.
– Aristotle divided practical wisdom into two parts:
moral philosophy and political philosophy. He defined
them together as a "true and reasoned state of
capacity to act with regard to the things that are good
or bad for a man."
Why study philosophical ethics:
• Concepts and theories of philosophical
and ethical analysis can
– help articulate the reasons for moral beliefs.
– these beliefs can be critically evaluated in
terms of plausibility, coherence, and
consistency.
– provide common grounds for rational
discussion.
Philosophical analysis is an
iteration/ongoing process
• It involves the process known as dialectic:
– Expressing a claim.
– Putting forward an argument or reasons for
the claim.
– Critically examining the argument.
– Reformulating and critiquing claim and
arguments until they become coherent and
consistent.
Dialectic illustrated with a simple
example
• Claim: euthanasia is wrong.
• Argument: human life has the highest value, it
should never be ended intentionally.
• Articulation: What if the person is terminally ill
and in extreme pain or what if the person suffers
from severe brain damage? Is intentional taking
a human life wrong in war situation? What about
capital punishment?
• Reformulation of the claim and arguments:
under certain circumstances, euthanasia may be
acceptable, e.g., if the case of brain death.
Branches of Moral Philosophy
• Descriptive ethics: examines and evaluates ethical behavior of
different peoples or social groups.
• Normative, or prescriptive ethics: is concerned with examining
and applying the judgments of what is morally right or wrong, good
or bad. It examines the question of whether there are standards for
ethical conduct and, if so, what those standards are.
• Comparative ethics: is the study of differing ethical systems to
learn their similarities and contrasts.
In modern developed societies the systems of law and public justice
are closely related to ethics. It is possible for law to be neutral in
moral issues, or it can be used to enforce morality. The prologue to
the United States Constitution says that insuring domestic tranquility
is an object of government. This statement is morally neutral. Such
laws as those passed to enforce civil rights, however, promote a
moral as well as legal commitment
More on descriptive ethics
• Descriptive statements are statements that
describe a state of affairs; they are
empirical claims that can be verified or
proven true or false by examining the state
of affairs described.
• Descriptive ethics examine morality as an
empirical phenomenon; it does not tell us
what is right or wrong; nor does it tell us
what to do or not to do.
More on normative, or
prescriptive ethics
• Normative, or prescriptive ethics is concerned
with examining and applying the judgments of
what is morally right or wrong, good or bad. It
examines the question of whether there are
standards for ethical conduct and, if so, what
those standards are.
• Empirical facts are not alone sufficient to justify
normative claims, e.g., the observation that
many people copying proprietary software does
not such an act is morally acceptable.
Ethical relativism
• “What is right for you may not be right for me”,
suggesting that there is no universal moral norm.
• Ethical relativists often cite a number of descriptive facts
– Cultures vary in what is considered right or wrong.
– Moral norm for a given society changes with time.
– A person’s view on right or wrong is the result of the upbringing
of the person.
• Problems with ethical relativism
– It is not possible to use relativism to guide one’s action.
– It is not easy to judge the impact of one’s action on the society.
– It is not easy to resist or rebel against evil actions of individuals.
Utilitarianism
• What make the behavior right or wrong
depends wholly on the consequences.
• The basic principle: Everyone out to act so
as to bring about the greatest amount of
happiness (consequence) for the greatest
number of people.
• happiness:
Enjoying, showing, or marked by pleasure,
satisfaction, or joy.
Utilitarian principle
• Happiness is the ultimate intrinsic good, because it is
valuable in its own sake; everything else has only
secondary or derivative (instrument) value.
• Morality must be based on creating as much of this good
as possible. All action should be evaluated in terms of
their utility for bringing about overall happiness of the
society, not just maximize one’s own happiness.
• Legislators and policy makers should seek policies that
produce good consequences.
• Utilitarianism captures part of the idea of relativism:
decision may depend on situation, e.g., to ban lawn
watering when the water becomes scarce or to hide the
true situation (lie) to a person suffering a terminal
disease.
Critique of utilitarianism
• Is sacrificing the happiness of a few justifiable for the
greater amount of overall happiness? (e.g., killing one
and uses his/her organs to save ten?)
• Some utilitarians asserts that long term consequences
must be taken into account. The practice mentioned
above would produce fear in people that net happiness
is diminished rather than increased.
• But others utilitarians concede that there are going to be
some repugnant practices for the sake of greater overall
happiness.
• Utilitarianism is inadequate in handling the distribution of
benefits and burdens, e.g., distributing body organs to
patients waiting for transplant (who has the priority?
Should those who seem to have more social values?)
• Despite its deficiency, utilitarianism does provide a
systematic account of many of our moral notions.
Deontological theories
• Deontology: the study of moral obligations.
• The principle inherent (motive) in the action determines right or
wrong morally. If the action is done in a sense of duty and if the
principle of the action can be universalized, then the action is right,
e.g., if one tells the truth out of respect for others, the action is
moral; if one tells the truth for fearing of getting caught or for an
award, then the action is morally unworthy.
• Kant’s moral theory: “categorical imperative” --- human beings is the
ends and should not be treated as means to an end, e.g., intentional
killing is wrong even in extreme situations because it means using
person merely as a means and does not treat the human beings as
valuable in and of himself. (Self-defense is unintentional, thus is
excused from being immoral.)
• Instead or happiness, the capacity for rational decision making is the
most important quality of human beings. People could be moral
beings without the capacity of being rational. What morality requires
is that we respect each other as valuable.
Implication of deontological theory: rights
• Since individuals must be respected as valuable, each
must have rights such as not to be killed, enslaved, or
be interfered with in certain ways.
• Rights
– Negative rights: rights require constraint by others, e.g., right not
to be killed.
– Positive rights: others have the duty to something to or for the
right holder, e.g., feed hungry people from starvation, medical
service for the those who cannot afford, etc. (some philosophers
have argued that individuals only have negative rights.)
– Legal rights: rights created by laws.
– Moral rights: as known as natural or human rights are claims
independent of laws. Such claims are usually embedded in
moral theory of human nature.
Rights and social contract theories
• Reason (being rational) would lead
individuals to live according to certain
rules and/or lead to a government to
enforce these rules even though this may
involve giving up some individual freedom.
• The agreement to these rules create
obligations which are the basis of moral
obligation.
John Rawl’s social contract theory in 1971
• Proposed ideas about a just social contract between
individuals.
• Individuals or groups are self-interested and therefore
will be influenced by their own experience and their own
situation in thinking about social fairness and justice. As
a result, Rawl proposes that justice has to be blind in a
certain way.
• Rawlsian justice
– Each person should have an equal right to the most extensive
basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others.
– Social and economic inequalities should be arranged so that
they are both (a) reasonably expected to be to everyone’s
advantage and (b) attached to positions and offices open to all.
• Rawlsian principles of justice aims to assure each
individual would have liberty and opportunity and a fair
shot at a decent life.
Traditional virtue ethics
• Virtues that have been associated with being a “good” person; it
addresses the question of moral character.
• List of possible virtues
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Temperance
Courage
Justice
Benevolence
Generosity
Honesty
Tolerance
…
• What are the characteristics of being a good computer professional?
– ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct
– The Software Engineering code of Ethics and Professional Practice
The Software Engineering code of
Ethics and Professional Practice
Eight principles:
• Public: act in the interest of public.
• Client and employer: act in the best interest of client
and employer.
• Product: meet highest professional standards possible.
• Judgment: maintain integrity and independence in their
professional judgment.
• Management: be professional and ethical.
• Profession: advance the integrity and reputation of the
profession.
• Colleagues: be fair and supportive of their colleagues.
• Self: participate in lifelong learning and promote an
ethical approach to the practice of the profession.
Homework
• Chapter 2: 1-4, 6, 7, 10, 12, 13, 15
Some interesting quotes about
philosophers
• “To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate
some one else’s type of thinking.” William James (1842–1910),
U.S. psychologist, philosopher.
• “As an example of just how useless these philosophers
are for any practice in life there is Socrates himself, the
one and only wise man, according to the Delphic Oracle.
Whenever he tried to do anything in public he had to
break off amid general laughter. While he was
philosophizing about clouds and ideas, measuring a
flea’s foot and marveling at a midge’s humming, he
learned nothing about the affairs of ordinary life.” Desiderius
Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)
Some interesting quotes about
philosophy
• “To have no time for philosophy is to be a true
philosopher.” Blaise Pascal (1623–62), French scientist,
philosopher.
• Unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.
Henry B. Adams (1838–1918), U.S. historian.
• “Philosophy consists very largely of one
philosopher arguing that all others are
jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should add
that he also usually proves that he is one
himself.” H. L. Mencken (1880–1956), U.S. journalist.