2. The Nature of Ethical Reasoning
Outcomes:
By the end of this module you should be able to
Identify ethical reasons
Decide if ethical reasons are relative to cultural membership
Determine how to balance conflicting ethical reasons
Video Lectures:
2.1 Two properties of ethical judgments (6:24)
Like preferences and desires, but unlike factual beliefs, ethical reasons motivate us to behave in certain ways. Like factual beliefs, but unlike preferences and desires, ethical reasons require justification and argument. Ethical reasons are both action-guiding and agreement-seeking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Y2quT20y97s
2.2 Guiding action and seeking agreement (11:33)
Because ethical reasons are action-guiding and factual beliefs are not, we cannot justify an ethical judgment based on purely factual reasons. There is a logical gap between assertions of how the world is and assertions of how the world ought to be. An ethical judgment requires at least one ethical reason. Because ethical reasons guide our actions, they must not require that we perform actions that we are unable to do. Ethical reasons may be demanding, but not overly demanding. People are attracted to the ethical relativism, the view that all judgments of right and wrong are relative to a person’s cultural membership, because they think that ethical relativism expresses toleration of cultural diversity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=gCK8Voc4iHw
2.3 Ethical relativism (13:18)
By making it too easy to agree to disagree, ethical relativism fails to do justice to the agreement-seeking aspect of ethical judgments. It encourages a sort of intellectual laziness that leads people not to allow members of other cultures to challenge their own moral views and not to respect their own moral principles. We can often explain cases of ethical disagreement between cultures as cases of different factual beliefs or as situations requiring a different balance between competing ethical considerations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=TAxqQ1MOFKI
2.4 Ethical pluralism (8:51)
In applied ethics, ethical theories are heuristic devices for summarizing and systematizing ethical reasoning. Ethical pluralism applies the points of view of all types of ethical theories to get a complete analysis of an ethical decision. Even though there is no universal recipe for making a final decision, ethical pluralism is not the same as ethical relativism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Gu1VHShb1Ns
Case Study 2:
Should Ben Take the Bonus Fund?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=VVobb61So8s