libertarian principle of distributive justice will generate unjust treatment of the
disadvantaged. Under the libertarian principle, a person’s share of goods will depend wholly
on what the person can produce through his or her own efforts or what others choose to
give the person out of charity. In other words, freedom from hunger should be more valued
than freedom from being coerced to share out of a surplus of food.
John Rawls’ theory of justice as fairness is an attempt to bring many of these disparate
ideas together in a comprehensive way. According to his theory, the distribution of benefits
and burdens in a society is just if:
1. Each person has an equal right to the most extensive basic liberties compatible
with equal liberties for all (the principle of equal liberty); and
2. Social and economic inequalities are arranged so that they are both:
a. To the greatest benefit of the least advantaged (the difference principle),
and
b. Attached to offices and positions open fairly and equally to all (the
principle of equal opportunity).
Rawls tells us that Principle 1 is supposed to take priority over Principle 2 should the two of
them ever come into conflict, and within Principle 2, Part b is supposed to take priority over
Part a.
Principle 1 is called the principle of equal liberty. Essentially, it says that each citizen’s
liberties must be protected from invasion by others and must be equal to those of others.
These basic liberties include the right to vote, freedom of speech and conscience and the
other civil liberties, freedom to hold personal property, and freedom from arbitrary arrest.
Part of Principle 2 is called the difference principle. It assumes that a productive society
will incorporate inequalities, but it then asserts that steps must be taken to improve the
position of the most needy members of society, such as the sick and the disabled, unless
such improvements would so burden society that they make everyone, including the needy,
worse off than before. Part b of Principle 2 is called the principle of fair equality of
opportunity. It says that everyone should be given an equal opportunity to qualify for the
more privileged positions in society’s institutions.
Therefore, according to Rawls, a principle is moral if it would be acceptable to a group of
rational, self-interested persons who know they will live under it themselves but do not
know what sex, race, abilities, religion, interests, social position, income, or other particular
characteristics each of them will possess in that future society.
Rawls calls this hypothetical circumstance of rational persons the original position. He refers
to the ignorance of any particulars about themselves as the veil of ignorance. According
to Rawls, the parties of the original position will be morally justified because the parties to the
original position had accepted the principles before knowing what characteristics they would
have. This would ensure that none of them can protect his or her special interests.
This incorporates the Kantian principles of reversibility and universalizability, and treats
people as ends and not as means. Some critics of Rawls point out, however, that just
because a group of people would be willing to live under a principle does not mean that it is
morally justified.
Two final types of justice are retributive and compensatory justice, both of which deal with
how best to deal with wrongdoers. Retributive justice concerns blaming or punishing
those who do wrong; however, there are some major conditions under which people could
not be held morally responsible:
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1. If people do
not know or do not freely choose what they are doing.
2. If a person
being punished actually did no wrong.
3. The
punishment must be consistent and proportioned to the wrong.
Compensatory justice concerns restoring to a harmed person what he lost when someone
else wronged him. Traditionally, theorists have held that a person has a moral obligation to
compensate an injured party only if three conditions pertain:
1. The action that inflicted the injury was wrong or negligent.
2. The action was the real cause of the injury.
3. The person did the action voluntarily.
The most controversial forms of compensation undoubtedly are the preferential treatment
programs that attempt to remedy past injustices against groups.
2.4 The Ethics of Care
As the Malden Mills fire and rebuilding shows, there are perspectives on ethics that are not
explainable from the point of view of utilitarianism, rights, or Kantian philosophy. The owner
had no duty to rebuild (or to pay his workers when they were not working) from any of
these perspectives; still, he maintained that he had a responsibility to his workers and to his
community. Rather than being impartial (which all of these theories maintain is crucial), this
owner treated his community and workers partially.
This is central to the point of view known as the ethics of care, an approach to ethics that
many feminist ethicists have recently advanced. According to this method, we have an
obligation to exercise special care toward the people with whom we have valuable, close
relationships. Compassion, concern, love, friendship, and kindness are all sentiments or
virtues that normally manifest this dimension of morality. Thus, an ethic of care emphasizes
two moral demands:
1. We each exist in a web of relationships and should preserve and nurture those
concrete and valuable relationships we have with specific persons.
2. We each should exercise special care for those with whom we are concretely related
by attending to their particular needs, values, desires, and concrete well-being as
seen from their own personal perspective, and by responding positively to these
needs, values, desires, and concrete well-being, particularly of those who are
vulnerable and dependent on our care.
An ethic of care, therefore, can be seen as encompassing the kinds of obligations that a so-
called communitarian ethic advocates. A communitarian ethic is an ethic that sees
concrete communities and communal relationships as having a fundamental value that
should be preserved and maintained.
Two additional issues are important to note. First, not all relationships have value, and so
not all would generate demands of care, e.g., if one party is abusive to the potential care
giver. Secondly, the demands of caring are sometimes in conflict with the demands of
justice, though, and no fixed rule exists to resolve these conflicts. Critics point out that the
ethics of care can easily degenerate into unjust favoritism (partiality). The demands of
partiality and caring can also conflict with the demands of utility, justice and rights. What
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morality requires is that we learn to weigh moral considerations and balance their different
demands in specific considerations. Though the ethics of care can also lead to burnout, the
advantage of the theory is that it is a corrective to the other approaches that are impartial
and universal.
2.5 Integrating Utility, Rights, Justice, and Caring
So far, the chapter has outlined four main kinds of basic moral considerations:
1. Utilitarian standards – must be used when we do not have the resources to attain
everyone’s objectives, so we are forced to consider the net social benefits and social
costs consequent on the actions (or policies or institutions) by which we can attain
these objectives.
2. Standards that specify how individuals must be treated – must be employed
when our actions and policies will substantially affect the welfare and freedom of
specifiable individuals. Moral reasoning of this type forces consideration of whether
the behavior respects the basic rights of the individuals involved and whether the
behavior is consistent with one’s agreements and special duties. These sorts of
standards must be employed when the actions we choose are likely to affect people’s
positive or negative rights. When choosing whether to carry out such actions, our
moral reasoning must identify the rights of the people our actions will affect, the
agreements or expectations
that are in place and that impose special obligations on us, and whether our actions
treat everyone affected as free and rational persons.
1. Standards of justice – indicate how benefits and burdens should be distributed
among the members of a group. These sorts of standards must be employed when
evaluating actions whose distributive effects differ in important ways.
2. Standards of caring – indicate the kind of care that is owed to those with whom we
have special concrete relationships. Standards of caring are essential when moral
questions arise that involve persons embedded in a web of relationships, particularly
persons with whom one has close relationships, especially those of dependency.
One simple strategy for ensuring that all four kinds of considerations are incorporated into
one’s moral reasoning is to inquire systematically into the utility, rights, justice, and caring
involved in a given moral judgment, as in section 2.1 of the text. One might, for example,
ask a series of questions about an action that one is considering: (a) Does the action, as far
as possible, maximize social benefits and minimize social injuries? (b) Is the action
consistent with the moral rights of those whom it will affect? (c) Will the action lead to a
just distribution of benefits and burdens? (d) Does the action exhibit appropriate care for
the well-being of those who are closely related to or dependent on oneself? Unfortunately,
there is not yet any comprehensive moral theory to show when one of these considerations
should take precedence.
2.6 An Alternative to Moral Principles: Virtue Ethics
Many ethicists criticize the entire notion that actions are the subject of ethics. The central
issue (as Ivan Boesky’s case demonstrates) is the kind of person an agent ought to be and
what the character of humans ought to be. This does not mean that the conclusion of this
type of ethics (called virtue ethics) will be much different radically from the conclusion of an
action-based ethic. Rather, the virtues provide a perspective that covers the same ground
as the four approaches, just from a different perspective.
A moral virtue is an acquired disposition that is a valuable part of a morally good person,
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exhibited in the person‘s habitual behavior. It is praiseworthy, in part, because it is an
achievement whose development requires effort. The most basic issue, from the perspective
of virtue ethics, is the question: What are the traits of character that make a person a
morally good human being? Which traits of character are moral virtues? According to
Aristotle, moral virtues enable humans to act in accordance with their specific purpose
(which he held to be reasoning). Other philosophers, such as Aquinas, have come up with
different lists of virtues. The American philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre has claimed that a
virtue is any human disposition that is praised because it enables a person to achieve the
good at which human “practices” aim. Pincoffs suggests that virtues include all those
dispositions to act, feel, and think in certain ways that we use as the basis for choosing
between persons or between potential future selves. In general, the virtues seem to be
dispositions that enable people to deal with human life. However, it also seems that what
counts as a moral virtue will depend on one’s beliefs and the situations one faces.
A moral virtue is an acquired disposition to behave in certain ways that is valued as part of
the character of a morally good human being and that is exhibited in the person’s habitual
behavior. Virtue theory says that the aim of the moral life is to develop the dispositions
that we call virtues, and to exercise them as well. The key action guiding implication of
virtue theory, then, can be summed up in the claim that:
“An action is morally right if, in carrying out the action, the agent exercises,
exhibits, or develops a morally virtuous character, and it is morally wrong to the
extent that by carrying out the action the agent exercises, exhibits, or develops a
morally vicious character.”
The wrongfulness of an action can be determined by examining the character the action
tends to produce (or the character that tends to produce the action). It also provides a
useful criterion for evaluating our social institutions and practices.
A moral virtue an acquired disposition to behave in certain ways that is valued as part of
the character of a morally good human being and is exhibited (practiced) in the person’s
habitual behavior. An ethic of virtue, then, is not a fifth kind of moral principle that should
take its place alongside the principles of utilitarianism, rights, justice, and caring. Instead,
an ethics of virtue fills out and adds to utilitarianism, rights, justice, and caring by looking
not at the actions people are required to perform, but at the character they are required to
have.
2.7 Unconscious Moral Decisions
Moral reasoning is the process of applying our moral principles to the knowledge we have
about a situation, and making a decision about what ought to be done in that situation.
Reflecting back on the Pinto auto decision, the company made a utilitarian decision and
decided not to redesign the tank.
People go through daily activities making moral decisions without using a formal method of
analyzing a situation, but make moral decisions nonetheless.
A large number of studies of the brain and its processes have suggested that we have two
ways (systems) of making moral decisions. Scott Reynolds, a psychologist) refers to one as
the “X-system” and the other the “C-system.” The X-system takes in information and
then makes decisions automatically. The C-system, on the other hand, consists of reasoning
processes that we engage in consciously and deliberately. What we use for making our
daily ethical decisions are part of the X-system. Let’s compare these two systems.
© 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Several psychologists have agreed that much of the information our senses gather from the
world around us is stored in our brains as “schemas” or “prototypes”. These are general
memories of the kinds of situations that we have experienced, along with sounds, words,
objects or people those situations involved, emotions we felt, the way we behaved in those
situations. Our brain tries to match each of the new situations we experience with its stored
prototypes. The brain then uses the information stored in the prototype to identify what
kind of behavior is usual for that kind of situation, what kind of rules apply in the situation,
and what emotions are usual in such a situation.
Although these processes are unconsciously experienced, the brain is made aware of the
match and we consciously recognize the situation, what kind of a situation it is and what
behavior is appropriate for the situation. This way we don’t use up our limited conscious
reasoning abilities to determine what is happening each time we experience something.
Without having to expend conscious reasoning efforts, we know what kind of situation we
are in and how we should act because all of the work of coming up with that conscious
knowledge was done by the unconscious matching process of the brain.
Prototypes are added as we gain more experience and are thus stored to address future
decisions. The next time a conversation comes up the prototype is available for forming
new decisions without having to consciously thinking about it. However, as a situation
arises, use of the prototypes may require the use of the C-system because we consciously
recognize that the prototype system does not adequately address the situation or the
situation presents an entirely new set of questions. Through the C-system, we draw upon
principles to see what principles might apply to that situation.
So, as we gather more information in using the C-system, we store more information in our
prototype system for future use. A form of conscious thinking that was used in the 17th
century and then emerged again toward the end of the 20th century, especially in medicine.
This form of reasoning is called “casuistry”. This method of relies on previous “paradigm”
cases, i.e., a past situation where it was clear what the ethical response should be and the
reasons why that was the ethical response.
Casuistry uses those previous clear cases to decide what is ethical in a new situation. It
requires us to decide whether the previous paradigm case was similar enough to our current
situation, then we make the decision now to make the decision. If we find, that the new
situation differs from the previous paradigm in a morally relevant way, we then are not
justified to rely on it to resolve our current situation.
Another reasoning that is somewhat similar is the use by courts for deciding current cases
based upon past “precedent” cases to decide what to do with the current cases. The
precedent is a legal case that was decided by a higher court or the court that is deciding the
current case.
Not all prototypes originate in conscious moral reasoning. Two other ways that we acquire
our convictions about morality are from cultural beliefs (from family, peer groups, stories,
songs, television, church, etc.) and from intuition (something that seems to be hard wired
into the brain).
There are other moral beliefs that that we hold but don’t know why we believe them.
Social psychologist Marc Hauser has found most people follow three principles when making
judgments about the morality of harming people:
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The action principle: Harm caused by action is morally worse than equivalent harm
caused by an omission.
The intention principle: Harm intended as the means to a goal is morally worse than
equivalent harm foreseen as the side effect of a goal.
The contact principle: Using physical contact to cause harm to a victim is morally
worse than causing equivalent harm to a victim without using physical contact.
In his experiments, Hauser has shown that people use these when deciding whether it is
morally permissible to cause harm to one or more persons. Most of his subjects cannot
provide any reasons why they accept these principles. We seem to now know these
principles and use them by intuition (seemingly hard wired into our brain), not by moral
reasoning.
So, our moral judgments are based on two different processes; the unconscious use of
prototypes that we gradually accumulate in life, and the conscious use of moral
reasoning that appeals to utility, rights, justice and caring.
Extra Resources
1. Videos on the ethical theories in chapter two have been produced by INTELECOM
(www.intelecom.org) as part of a series of 26 half-hour shows called “The Examined
Life.” The entire series is available to students for $35 on 4 DVDs at the online
INTELECOM “Student Store.” The relevant shows are:
No. 18 “Is Morality relative?” (discusses relativism in relation to child labor).
No. 19 “Does the End Justify the Means?” (on utilitarianism).
No. 20 “Can Rules Define Morality?” (on Kant’s ethics).
No. 21 “Is Ethics Based on Virtue?” (Aristotle and virtue theory).
No. 24 “What is Justice?”.
2. Videos explaining some of the normative theories covered in chapter two. There are
numerous YouTube videos of lectures on philosophy by Professor Michael Sandel of
Harvard University. Search “Professor Michael Sandel, – What’s the Right Thing To
Do?” Available from website: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hB–71OjVEA .
3. A video about Malden Mills fire and Aaron Feuerstein’s action regarding his
employees. “Aaron Feuerstein’s Malden Mills” An ARTzenu Studios Production, A
Division of West Coast NCSY. This is 6:03 minute YouTube video clip available from
the website: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry7_FcSiQL8 .
Questions for Class Discussion
1. What principles backed up the positions of both sides in the Traidos Bank and
Roche’s Drug Trials in China case? Which principle seems to be most correct in this
situation? Why?
2. Explain how the Ford cost-benefit analysis showed that it would not be right to fix
the exploding Pintos. Did the utilitarian analysis work, in this instance? Why or why
not?
3. What are the distinctions between traditional utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism?
Why did theorists come up with rule utilitarianism in the first place?
4. Do Chinese workers have basic human rights that are different from those of
American workers? Do American companies have a duty to help protect those rights?
5. What is the difference between a negative and a positive right? Which type of right is
more recent? Which type do liberals rather than conservatives most often propose?
Why might this be the case?
6. What are the ethical rules that govern contracts? Why is each of these rules
© 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
36
necessary?
7. What are the two formulations of Kant’s Categorical Imperative? Kant argued that
they really said the same thing. Do you think that this is really the case? Explain.
8. What are the three categories of justice? How are they distinguished?
9. What are the differences between Capitalist, Socialist, Fairness, and Libertarian
notions of justice? What are the strongest and weakest parts of each theory?
10. What are the principles behind the ethics of care? Was the owner of the Malden Mills
company really doing the right thing by rebuilding his factory and, at great cost,
paying his idle workers? Explain how his actions exemplify the principles of the ethics
of care?
11. Explain the “X-system” and “C-system” methods of discernment.
Activities and Assignments
1. Have students research Publius on the Web and decide whether they think it is moral
or immoral. Then use some hypothetical examples (such as Chinese workers trying
to organize for better human rights, organized crime figures trying to widen the
scope of their activities, and/or teenagers swapping homework and mp3 files) to test
out their positions.
2. Organize the class (or groups of students) into a corporation, and ask them to decide
between some designs for a child car-safety seat, using information such as that
listed below. How much, in their estimation, would they pay for a seat themselves?
How much, therefore, is the life of their child worth to them? How are utilitarian
principles at work in this case?
Cost Percentage of deaths at 70
mph
$20 80%
$50 60%
$70 30%
$150 10%
$500 5%
3. After discussing what Microsoft should do with respect to its Chinese operations, and
just what human rights the Chinese workers have, ask students to take an inventory
of items in their own rooms (or homes) that are made in China. Do we as consumers
have a duty not to support the Chinese economy, if it is based in part on forced and
child labor?
4. Break the class up into groups: a libertarian, a utilitarian, a Kantian, a Rawlsian, and
an ethics of care group. Then, have them examine the Phillip Morris (or PepsiCo)
case study and decide what their position should be. Compare the positions with the
class as a whole.
5. Have students, in groups, come up with lists of moral virtues and some rationale for
each virtue. Then, compare the results in class and see if the group can come up
with reasons to explain the differences they find.
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