Your Ethical System and Its Justification

Your Ethical System and Its Justification Word count: 1000 Max/Min (your paper can be longer if the length is justified by the content) Worth: 200pts The goal of this paper is to enable your reader (me) to understand how you view things from a moral perspective so that I’ll be able to assess a scenario from your perspective. If I’m not able to do this, then you haven’t explained your system thoroughly enough Essentially, in this paper you are asked to do three things but not necessarily in this order: 1) Describe your ethical system (this should take you about 500-600 words), which will involve in order: a. Defining what the “good” is. b. Explaining why that is the right definition of “good” c. Explaining how we have to act to achieve that good. 2) Justify your position. Why is your system the right one? Of all the different ways philosophers conceive of the good and how to behave ethical, why is yours the right one? When arguing for your position, you must consider and attempt to counter possible objections to your system. 3) Use at least one ethical system that we\'ve covered to frame your own. First explain one of the ethical systems that we’ve discussed in detail. Then you can either discuss why you agree with it while highlighting how your system is distinct, OR you can explain their system and discuss how and why the system is wrong and how and why yours is correct. Describing your ethical system: When describing your ethical system you have to do a couple things: First, you have to define what ‘good’ is. There are several strategies for this: (a) taking parts of other systems and adapting them into your own consistent system; (b) developing a list of actions you think are moral and finding the pattern that ties them all together, (c) deciding what is most important to you and asking yourself why, (d) inspecting your goals in life and asking yourself why those goals are the ones you ought to have. The most helpful of that list may be (b). One strategy for defining “the good” is to think of various things that you think are good (morally permissible) and try to determine what common feature they share that makes them good. For example, if you think that helping those in need, being honest, and not stealing are good, then what feature do they share that makes them all good? Your ethical system will not be a collection of particular ethical answers to certain hypothetical situations, but rather the collection of principles that motivate you to take the stance you take. After you decide on this, then justify why you think this is the right definition of “good.” When you’ve done these things then the goal becomes to explain how we have to act to achieve this good. If the good is pleasure, for example, then what are the rules that we should use to guide our actions to bring this about? Think of the philosophers that we’ve covered – they define the good and then explain exactly what we have to do to achieve it. With this in mind your ethical system will likely dovetail with one of the systems that we’ve covered. Justifying your ethical system: After you’ve explained your ethical system you’ll have to justify it. This means you’ll have to explain why it should be followed. To do this you’ll have to anticipate possible objections to your system and attempt to defend yourself preemptively. When thinking about your system try to find the holes in it. Rather than ignoring them (because I won’t) try to repair your system to fill in the hole. If you are honestly unable to resolve any inconsistencies then acknowledge them anyway. Explain that there are still some problems that you are trying to work out. Here’s a possible structure for your paper: 1) Thoroughly explain John Stuart Mill’s utilitarianism, while taking care to answer the following questions. • How does utilitarianism define “the good”? • How can we tell if something is ethical from the utilitarian perspective? 2) Explain where and why you might disagree with facets of this ethical system 3) Provide a revised version that is closer to what you actually think 4) Think about the potential deficiencies of your system and try to defend yourself from criticism proactively • “Some might say that X is problematic because Y, however . . .” 5) Closing remarks/conclusion What about my feelings? If your system is based on how you feel about things (this or that action is right/wrong because you feel a certain way about them emotionally), then explain to me why feelings are adequate grounds on which to build an ethical system -- always keeping in mind that I might not share your feelings about certain things. Moreover, given that people generally seem to have different emotional reactions to the same event, it will be necessary to explain how uniformity is possible; the system you lay out should be a system that\'s capable of being followed, so if you want to grant the primacy of feelings, then address how to do this without the system unraveling in the face of the variability of different emotions. What about my upbringing? Most of us were taught by our parents how to behave. They instilled certain values in us, and many of us still carry around those values in adulthood. But this can’t be the justification or explanation of your ethical system! Many people are taught many different things as children. Some are taught to be kind, but some are taught to take advantage of others, etc. The question becomes: how do we know what the right upbringing is? If you think your parents brought you up the “right” way, think about what makes it right. Why is it better than how another person might have been brought up? That will point you toward the roots of your ethical system. What about my religious beliefs? Remember the importance of, when providing reasons or justifications for something, ensuring that you provide reasons for everybody; this is especially important in this paper. Just as it’s not enough to say that your view of ethics is correct because your parents taught you certain things, the same is true of religious foundations. Of course, this isn’t to say that your religious beliefs are irrelevant! However, try to think of why the rules you follow are good ones, apart from merely being told they’re good. If your ethical system is based on religious grounds, don\'t take the chance that I might not share your beliefs -- instead, isolate the specifics of the ethical system or values from its religious roots and present it in a way that another might be convinced to adopt your system. For example, don\'t suggest that we should \"do unto others because the Bible says so,\" instead suggest that we should \"do unto others . . . because it has this or that principle that anyone could and should endorse no matter what their religious inclinations were. Is the “Golden Rule” a good system? The Golden Rule says “do unto other as you would have others do unto you,” and at first blush, this seems to be a pretty useful moral guide. However, it does present a problem. This rule essentially asks a person to consider their own personal preferences for the way in which he/she would like to be treated and then use those preferences as a rubric for how he/she engages others. But don’t people have many different kinds of preferences? Some prefer to be lied to if the truth will hurt their feelings; others value directness and transparency. Taken farther, we might imagine a masochist (someone who likes being harmed); presumably, we wouldn’t want a masochist to “do unto others...” This means that there must be certain conditions and standards that are met before someone qualifies as a suitable candidate to follow the Golden Rule. The Golden Rule, then, is a useful tool or shortcut but only if those other conditions are met. The focus then is on what those conditions are and why those are the right conditions. Remember, I’m not interested in what you think, but why you think it.