Dr. Frankena: Moral Value

1
Dr. Frankena Moral Value Responsibility

• Need a normative theory
• Normative meaning - standard or guide
• Morally good or bad things are
• persons, groups of persons, traits of character,
  dispositions, emotions, motives, and intentions
• Nonmorally good or bad things are
• physical objects like cars, paintings, knowledge,
  freedom, government, and so forth.

2
Historically, morality concerned with

• Cultivation of certain disposition, or traits of
  character.
• virtues - not wholly innate they must all be
  acquired, at least in part, by teaching and
  practice or perhaps by grace
• honesty, kindness, conscientiousness.
• Morality not rules or principles, but rather the
  cultivation of such dispositions, i.e.., Plato
  and Aristotle

3
Leslie Stephen Morality is Internal

• Moral law is truly a rule of character.
• Ethics of Virtue
• Aretaic Judgments
• Actions are secondary, what is important is the
  motive or trait.
• motives, intentions, and actions

4
Hume

• When we praise any actions, we regard only the
  motives that produce them. The external
  performance has no merit..all virtuous actions
  derive their true merit only from virtuous
  motives.
• In other words, what is important is judgments
  about agents and their motives o

5
Hume 3 kinds of ethics of duty

• Trait Egoism
• Virtues that are most conducive to ones own good
  or welfare
• Trait Utilitarianism
• Virtues are those traits that promote the
  greatest amount of good, or
• benevolence is the basic or cardinal moral virtue
• Trait Deontological
• certain traits are morally good simply as such

6
Difference between obligation and virtue...

• Principles of Duty
• We ought to promote good
• We ought to treat people equality
• We ought to tell the truth
• We ought to be responsible
• Trait is a disposition, habit, quality, or trait,
  which an individual either has or seeks to have.

7
ValuesPrinciplesObligationsActions
8
What are the moral virtues?

• They cannot be derived from one another
• All other moral virtues can be derived from or
  shown to be forms of them
• Plato and Greeks though they were four cardinal
  virtues
• wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice
• Christianity has seven
• faith, hope, love, prudence, fortitude,
  temperance, and justice - first three
  theological, last 4 human

9
Cardinal Virtues - Frankena Schopenhauer

• Benevolence
• Justice
• All other virtues can be derived from these two.

10
Is morality primarily a following of certain
principles or as a cultivation of certain traits.

• Difficult to know what traits to encourage if we
  did not subscribe to principles

11
What then would be the difference between a
principle of beneficence and the virtue of
benevolence.
12
Kant That Principles without traits are
impotent and traits without principles are blind.
13
An Ethics of Virtue

• Point of acquiring these virtues
• not further guidance or instruction
• not to tell us what to do
• but to ensure that we will do it willingly
• Must not only move us to do what we do,
• They must also tell us what to do

14
Moral Ideal

• Ways of being rather than doing
• wanting to be a person of a certain sort
• wanting to have a certain trait of character
• Socrates, Jesus the Christ, Martin Luther King,
  Mohammed Gandhi

15
Dispositions to be Cultivated

• Cardinal, First Order Virtues
• Benevolence and Justice
• Corollaries,
• Truth, honesty, keeping promises, fidelity, which
  are all acquired and fostered.
• Second Order Virtues
• Conscientiousness
• Intellectual Traits
• Disposition to find and respect the relevant
  facts and a disposition to think clearly

16
ValuesPrinciplesObligationsActions
Whole Point ???
17
Should an action be judged right or wrong because
of its results the principle it exemplifies, or
because of the motive, intention, or trait of
character is good or bad?
18
What is moral? Reasonable view..

• is that ones actions are morally good if it is
  at least true that, whatever the actual motives
  in acting, the sense of duty or desire to do the
  right is so strong that it keeps one trying to do
  ones duty.

19
Moral Responsibility

• Three Kinds of cases for moral
• responsibility
• 1) X is a responsible person, meaning to say
• something morally favorable about his
• character.
• 2) X is and was responsible for a past action
• 3) X is responsible for Y when Y still is to
• be done.

20
Case 1 X is responsible

• In this case, responsible is known to be
• trustworthy or dependable with sound
• judgment.
• Meaning what morally?

21
Case 2

• X is and was responsible for a past action.
• Responsible is being the source or cause of
• something happening

22
Case 3

• X is responsible for Y to be done.
• Responsible is the condition of being
• accountable to act without guidance or
• personal authority

23
Responsibility

• In Case 1 and 3, we are accountable for actions
  we have obligations because of previous
  commitments...hence is a straight normative
  judgment of obligation.

24
Responsibility

• Normative judgment making a decision based on a
  norm or standard. In this case, the standard is
  based on an obligation to a certain principle (to
  be responsible) from the value responsibility

25
Related Issues

• Coercion
• Freedom and Choice
• Determinism

26
Coercion

• Absence of coercion
• not only direct by indirect, i.e., modeling,
  manipulation, that affect alternatives
• Liberty - choice between alternatives
• importance of education enlarges the capacity of
  choice and decisions. Important precondition of
  existence of freedom.

27
Free Will and Determinism

• Free will you have choices that you can make
  based on your values.
• Determinism every event, including human
  choices and volitions, is caused by other events
  and happens as an effect or result of these other
  events.

28
Determinism

• The general philosophical thesis which states
  that for everything that ever happens there are
  conditions that given them nothing else.
• ethical determinism
• logical determinism
• theological determinism
• physical determinism
• psychological determinism

29
Ethical determinism

• actions are determined by an apparent good..no
  man can set as the object of his choice something
  that seems evil or bad to him.
• opponentThe evident fact of incontinence. A
  mans desires or appetites are in conflict with
  his reason, precisely in the sense that he
  desires something that is bad for him. Aristotle.

30
Logical Determinism

• Mens wills are fettered, that nothing is real in
  in their power to alter.
• Fate determines all. No mans destiny is in any
  degree up to him.
• Everything he ever does is something he could
  never have avoided..it is idle to speak of free
  will.

31
Psychological Determinism

• Christian Theology, a concept arose that a
  perfectly good god, omniscient, and omnipotent,
  the entire world and everything in it, down to
  the minutest detail, are absolutely dependent for
  existence and character from Him.
• Divine Power and Predestination.

32
Physical Determinism

• Events are determined by eternal and immutable
  laws of nature.
• A move away from people making decisions, or god
  writing out the decisions to the decisions are
  really not decisions at all.

33
Psychological Determinism

• All voluntary human action is caused by the
  alternate operation of motives, desires, and
  aversions...which are varieties of physical
  forces.
• The immediate cause of a voluntary motion is an
  act of will, but it is never free, it is
  caused...by psychological training. Hobbsian
  thought