Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 The turn to reason: how human beings got ethical
- 2 Demarcation: what does “ethical” mean?
- 3 Motivation: why be moral?
- 4 Deliberation: the question of reason
- 5 Introducing subjectivism and objectivism
- 6 Five arguments for ethical subjectivism
- 7 The content of ethics: expressivism, error theory, objectivism again
- 8 Virtue ethics
- 9 Utilitarianism
- 10 Kantianism and contractarianism
- 11 Theory and insight in ethics
- Further reading
- Bibliography
- Index
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9 - Utilitarianism
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 The turn to reason: how human beings got ethical
- 2 Demarcation: what does “ethical” mean?
- 3 Motivation: why be moral?
- 4 Deliberation: the question of reason
- 5 Introducing subjectivism and objectivism
- 6 Five arguments for ethical subjectivism
- 7 The content of ethics: expressivism, error theory, objectivism again
- 8 Virtue ethics
- 9 Utilitarianism
- 10 Kantianism and contractarianism
- 11 Theory and insight in ethics
- Further reading
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
“I don't want to! Why should I?”
“Because more people will be happier if you do than if you don't.”
“So what? I don't care about other people.”
“You should.”
“But why?”
“Because more people will be happier if you do than if you don't.”
(Katherine Tait, My Father Bertrand Russell, 1970: 184–5)Moral theory and deliberative practice again
What place in a good person's deliberations can a moral theory have? Towards the end of Chapter 8, we explored this question as it arises for the moral theory called virtue ethics. We noted that the virtue ethical account of rightness says this:
Virtue ethics: An action is right iff it is the action that a virtuous agent would characteristically do in the circumstances.
(Or something like that. We developed some complications about what the exact formula should be in §8.6, but we need not revisit these now.)
We also noted in Chapter 8 that any plausible moral theory is bound to be about more than simply action. It needs to have something to say, for instance, about emotion, response, choice and deliberation as well. Hence we can produce formulas like the following that parallel the account of rightness:
An emotion is right iff it is the emotion that a virtuous agent would characteristically feel in the circumstances;
A response is right iff it is the response that a virtuous agent would characteristically produce in the circumstances;
A choice is right iff it is the choice that a virtuous agent would characteristically make in the circumstances;
A deliberation is right iff it is a deliberation that a virtuous agent would characteristically perform in the circumstances;
and so on.
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- Ethics and ExperienceLife Beyond Moral Theory, pp. 125 - 152Publisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2009
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