Effective altruism is built on the simple but unsettling idea that living a fully ethical life involves doing the most good one can. In this course you will examine this idea's philosophical underpinnings; meet remarkable people who have restructured their lives in accordance with it; and think about how effective altruism can be put into practice in your own life. All the features of this course are available for free. It does not offer a certificate upon completion.
Ethics and Rationality
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Del curso dictado por Princeton University
Effective Altruism
256 calificaciones
De la lección
Why Act Ethically?
In this last week, we circle back to some foundational questions in ethics. What is the relationship between rationality, self-interest and ethics? How demanding is morality, and why exactly should be try to live an ethical life? In this week you will also find the final essay assignment.
Conoce a los instructores
Peter SingerIra W. Decamp Professor of Bioethics
University Center for Human Values
[BLANK_AUDIO].
The implications of some of the topics we've discussed would if
you follow the argument, and if you think about the ethical implications
of those arguments that we would change the way we live
in various respects for example, in giving time or money to affect.
>> Charities?
>> So then the question might be raised, well okay, so this is what ethics
requires if I am to really live ethically, this is what I ought to be doing.
But why should I be acting ethically anyway?
Maybe I'll just go on living my life, which you know,
I find more comfortable and easy, I don't have to make
any adjustments what, what's the argument for acting ethically, even given
that I think that to act ethically would involve these particular conclusions.
So that's the question that I want to, to deal with in this last
lecture in the course and there's various approaches that can be taken to it.
One is to just reject that question, to say this is not a proper question.
This is not a question you can ask, why act ethically.
And generally, people will think that you can't ask that question think that
in saying why act ethically, you're saying why ought I to act ethically?
What ethical grounds do I have for acting ethically?
But the question already presupposes that you know what it is to act ethically.
And if you know what it is to act ethically, then you have
all the ethical reasons that you could have for doing whatever it is.
Let's say its not eating products of factory farming, then
it doesn't make sense to ask for further ethical reasons.
So in that sense you could say, you're saying why ought I to do
what I already agree that I ought to do, and that really doesn't make sense.
But I think the question can be
given a different interpretation that does make sense.
It's not that morality is necessarily overriding from all possible perspectives.
Once you decided what you ought to do
ethically then of course, that's ethically overriding; you could
say that from the point of view of morality,
of ethics that is what you ought to do.
But we could be asking as I say, if what do I have overriding reasons for doing?
And, you don't have to assume that overriding reasons are ethical reasons.
So, I think you can ask that question.
And I'd distinguish it from the question why
be rational which is a more basic question.
And I think you can see that you ask, why be rational is a question that
really is, either you could say you can't ask or it answers itself.
It pre-supposes what you are inquiring about.
Because if you ask why be rational, you're
asking for reasons for being rational and if
you're asking for reasons, you've already presupposed that
what you want is reasons for doing something.
That is being rational.
Now of course, you can imagine some senses of the term
why be rational in which that might, question might make sense.
You might think there's occasions on which you should be guided by your emotions.
Choice about who you want to be with.
We may think that's a matter of love and
not reason or I shouldn't just be entirely rational.
Tick off the check list of the desirable qualities of a life
partner and then just find somebody who meets those qualities and do it.
You might say well, here you want to be guided
by your feelings and emotions, at least to a certain extent.
But, that's not really questioning why be rational.
You're just saying there are some areas of life in which emotions are important,
and you will be more rational if you allow a role to those emotions, and if
you recognize that, for your choice of
life partner, it's important that you have positive
feelings of certain kinds, not just that
you go about something in purely rational way.
So, I think, I think why be rational is
a question that you can't intelligibly ask, but why
the ethical is different because it can fall back
to that question of give me reasons for acting ethically.
What reasons are there?
If I don't presuppose that I'm going to act ethically and
live my life ethically, what reasons are there for doing so?
Well, if the question makes sense then, we have to try to answer
it and there are 2 major ways in which we can answer it.
One is to try to show that it is rational to
be ethical, that there are always overriding reasons for being ethical.
And the second is to show that it's in our interest to be ethical.
So well, most people who ask why
be ethical are choosing between self-interest and ethics.
They're saying for example, well, I don't think
it's really in my interest to avoid buying
factory farmed products because I enjoy their taste
and they're cheaper than the non-factory farm products.
So I'll just do what's in my interests rather than act ethically.
If you could show that it's in your
interests to act ethically, then you would overcome that
dualism, that, that conflict between possible reasons and
you would show that there was harmony between them,
and although you could think of other possible
reasons why people might act neither in their self
interest or ethically, you would probably capture most people
in terms of saying you've given them reasons as
to why they want to act ethically.
So let's move to the first of these, and this typically associated
with Kant whom we talked about in the first couple of weeks.
Kant, you remember thinks that we ought always to act so that the
maxim of our action can be a universal law, and he bases that on reason.
He thinks that's a principle of reason.
So essentially, this is not exactly in Kant's words what I've put on the
slide here, but it's something very Kantian in its approach to say that
reason is something that's universal and then
we can also say, following that categorical
imperative that to act ethically is to act on the basis of universal law.
So the element of reason that it's universal, is the same as
the element of ethics that it's following universal law,
and therefore, reason requires us to act ethically.
So that, that's an argument that seems to be, seems to be what Kant
was thinking along, broadly along the lines that Kant was thinking and
something that might give us rational grounds for acting ethically.
Is it, is it a sound argument?
I think that there's clearly an objection.
And the objection is that the notion of a
universal truth doesn't require acting on a universal law in
the sense that Kantian wants it and Kantian needs it,
in order to say that it's the basis of ethic.
So for example, some people might maintain that it's
rational for each one of us to act in her or his own interests.
That is the, the view known as egoism
which again is mentioned in the first couple
of weeks, defended by a number of people,
perhaps most famously the, the novelist Ayn Rand.
So if this is true, if this is true, then it's universal.
It's universally true.
It holds for everyone.
It holds for everyone that she or he ought to act in her or his self interest and
in that sense, it's compatible with the rationality of
with the universality of reason that Kan talks about.
But it doesn't certainly not the Kant and certainly not for
utilitarians or other ethical views that I have been putting forward.
It's certainly not the leading you to an ethical approach.
So, I think if we're defending the rationality of acting ethically,
we need more than simply the bare idea that reason is universal.
So here's a somewhat different approach which I think has something going for it
well I'm going to leave it to you to decide how convincing this is.
So, when I said a moment ago that it's rational for everyone to act in his or
her interest, I think a lot of you
would have thought, well, yes that makes sense, perhaps
not the best, the only rational thing to do; but at least that people who do act
in their own interests are acting in a way,
that we understand as acting for a good reason.
The fact that something is in your interest, we normally
think of it as a good reason for doing it.
Perhaps when that conflicts with something else like ethics we
might say, we might question whether it's an overriding reason.
But certainly in the absence of conflicting reasons, you would
think that that's, you've got a good reason for doing it.
But perhaps that's something that seems so self-evident
and obvious to us because of what we are, because we are
evolved beings, we are the current latest stage of a very
long process of evolution which has always selected beings
who were able to survive and not only able to survive,
but able to produce offspring who survive and reproduce.
So an element of selfishness was required.
If you were completely altruistic and gave as much concern
to the survival of strangers as you did to yourself
or as much concern to the survival of the children
of strangers as you did to your own children at least,
if you know, for once you got to the mammalian
stage where children need some care and protection to survive,
then you are not likely to leave the descendants in
future generations or less likely than others, who are more selfish
to leave more descendants in future generations.
So, an element of selfishness if you like, following our
self-interest, has been bred into us by the selective process.
But that doesn't mean that that's the right thing to do.
Some people would draw from that conclusion
the idea that it's natural and therefore right.
I've argued about this when talking about nature just within the last week or
2, that you can't draw that interest
that something is natural, that therefore is right.
And in fact, the process of evolution is something
that has happened, but doesn't have moral value in itself.
Darwin, Darwin was, was clear about that from the beginning.
So, the effect of saying that this attitude that we have to self-interest
is something that has evolved, is not to that that therefore, it's right.
But I think it's to say that, therefore it's
a respect in which we are less than fully rational.
We are different from beings, if we can imagine such beings that are
purely rational beings that always think impartially
about what's the best thing to do.
We're not like that and we're not like that for evolutionary reasons.
But if that's true, then maybe it can give us a
chance of what we would be like if we were more rational.
Maybe we then would take this broader point of view
that ethics takes, the universal point of view, if you'd like.
So we'd give as much consideration to the interests of others, as we give to our
own, or as much consideration to the interest
of strangers, as we give to our own children.
Now, I'm not saying that that's even possible
really in that pure way for human beings, and
I'm not saying that it would be good for us to strive to be quite so impartial.
Although I'll come to that at the end of the lecture when
we come to the, talk about Moral science, and whether ethics requires
us to be moral science but nevertheless, it could give us an
idea of what we would do if we were more fully rational.
And it could perhaps give us some grounds for saying, in so far as we are
more rational we free our selves from that
partial evolutionary background, and we act more ethical.
So we might think of acting more ethically in that way, as something that is required
by reason but still perhaps that's, even if
you think that's right, it's, it's rather theoretical, it's
how get to grips with our motivations and
could say, well, what's the relevance of what
I would do if I were more fully rational to what's rational for me to do now?
There are a lot of further questions that you can ask.
So I am, I am just throwing that, that as a suggestion at this stage, a
possible way of answering this question from this
perspective of trying to say why is ethics rational.
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