The podcast and reading were very inciteful and educated me on the whole concept of ethics and morality differently from previously taught. The two types of claims, normative and relative, regarding ethics are interesting because of their vast differences. The normative framework shows a universal truth and that there is a good and bad whereas relative is the no universal truth and good or bad depends on each person. When investigating cultures with a hybrid model of normative and relative ethics like the United States, individual intentions help justify “right and wrong” regarding people’s moral compasses.

The concept mentioned in the podcast about an action’s intention is crucial in determining whether something is moral and ethical. Before even listening or reading, today at practice, I exemplified this perfectly. So, a few weeks ago, my teammate shanked a chip, and the ball got me. It was a complete accident, and we just laughed it off. However, I like to mess with people. Today, she was hitting, and I decided that it would be an excellent time to get her back. I punched an 8 iron at her low, and it caught her foot. I was happy, but she was a little, you could say, “heated.” Of course, she was fine, but because it was on purpose, it was evident that she was a little more upset, and my actions had more significant consequences than hers previously. I believe that intention bridges the gap between normative and relative frameworks because, universally, we know that hitting her intentionally was wrong. When you look at the individual level, few people think intentionally hitting my teammate is right because I purposely did the action knowing it bad. To what extent do you believe intention impacts your or the world’s moral compass?

According to Dr.Bezio’s first podcast on ethics, relative ethics is quite literally anarchy, the absence of a governmental body or authority. In this form of ethics, there is no universal good or bad. Instead, each individual person has their own idea of morality, and although this may seem like the perfect example of individualism, I agree that even individuals in the US share at least some common ground. For instance, most people in the US would agree that murder is bad, even if there are some relativists that would say each individual person comes to their own conclusion on murder.

What I find interesting is that relative ethics, as daunting as it seems, could actually be a progressive way at understanding the world around us. As the United States becomes increasingly polarized, with the “left” versus the “right” domineering the political sphere, many would agree that what we’re experiencing is gridlock. No real change occurs unless there is serious consequences for not doing so, and everyone seems stuck in their ways because that’s what they were told to do: fit the ethical mold that’s been set for you. Approaching this problem with through the lens of relative ethics could help politicians, representatives, lobbyists and more understand that what is ethical will forever and always be relative. In that case, maybe they would come to understand that maybe their way of running things is not the only way, and that other people’s ideas could work as well.

I admit this is an extremely optimistic example of how relative ethics could be progressive, but I think that it would be beneficial to recognize the power that understanding others’ points-of-views has. Of course, like Dr.Bezio said, some people may take relative ethics and apply it to the wrong situations (i.e. murder), but there is always a bright side when you think about it.

In the discussion of religion in the podcast, Dr. Bezio talks about how each individual religion believes they know the universal Truth. According to Google, there are 4,200 religions, which means there are 4,200 believed truths about moral rights and wrongs, and probably thousands more from an individual basis. I find it crazy that there are this many religions all claiming to know the Truth. Honestly, it shows me that we really don’t know anything. Every individual human being looks at the facts of life that have been presented to them in a variety of ways, and looks to something greater to ground them and help them understand it. This often comes about in religion, but it also takes the form of individual made-up beliefs. (To be fair, all of the religions, although extensive and detailed, are made-up as well. It just depends on how many people follow it and agree with its beliefs.) The normative paradigm, as discussed in the podcast, is that there is a universal truth and we are getting closer to that truth everyday, but we can never be certain if we have achieved it. I find it very hard to believe, given that logic, that there is a universal truth. And, even if there is, what is the point in trying to find it if you’ll never actually find it? (Or you might find it, but you won’t know you found it?) I guess it just seems kind of pointless to me — why try to find something you’ll never know if you found? And then, let’s say for argument’s sake that for some reason it becomes absolutely crystal clear that the universal truth has been found, then what? Would that change the way we go about our daily lives and rebrand how we feel about right and wrong?

After listening to the part of the podcast about the feelings behind female and male circumcision and the ethnocentrism of westerners and the WHO in naming female circumcision “Female genital mutilation”, I was curious and started to look up some other cultural practices that may seem “weird” coming from my culture. One I found was endocannibalism, which is the ritual of consuming the flesh of a member of one’s tribe after they have died. This ritual is done to ensure the souls of the dead find their way to paradise. Without the context and the reasoning behind the practice, it seems bad in our eyes, however when you put yourself in these tribe members’ shoes, it becomes harder to see the bad in the practice. It is important to know that beliefs are strong and the emotions that go along with them are stronger. We may never understand a certain belief we do not hold, but we should accept that our beliefs are not the only beliefs. This is an easy transition, in my mind, into the state of affairs in America today. We are at a point in time where this country is more divided than it has been in decades, and I think that is a result of individuals’ inability to recognize their belief is not the only belief to be had. We have completely erased the forum for open debate in any aspect of American society by creating a cancel culture and shaming people for holding their own beliefs. Modern American society is one of letting people have their opinions, unless those opinions differ from your opinion, and it is sad. Just like with cultural practices, including female circumcision, we would be doing ourselves and our world a favor if we tried to see things from someone else’s point of view.

The reading was very interesting as it addresses the topic of moral arguments. Moral arguments are “arguments whose conclusions assert that something is morally good or morally bad.” These types of arguments don’t actually have the words “good” or “bad” in them but instead they are revealed by other words. The nature of moral arguments includes a lot of emotion and often times these feelings can distract from choosing a belief or side to be on. Due to the complexity and importance of moral arguments, we can also map them. Mapping these arguments relates to the other readings from Warren that we have done in class. Moral arguments contain premises and are typically about actions. While there are other complications that differ from the basics of Warren, there are also similarities in the ways that the arguments are evaluated.

This evaluation of if something is morally wrong can be associated with the article we read “Doing, Good Better” by William Macaskill. This article deals with doing good and doing it in the most efficient way possible. As individuals, we are constantly looking at what is right and wrong and how we can help others. Moral arguments and the evaluation of them is vital to our society. Arguments are intended to find the truth within beliefs. By combining this with morals, we are looking within societal beliefs and evaluating what is “permitted.”

When the reading talks about consequentialism looking at the idea that we should treat everyone’s happiness equally, it made me think back to my Justice and Civil Society class where we talked about different theories of justice. One of those theories being egalitarianism in which the idea is that everyone deserves equal rights and opportunities. Our society has certainly leaned towards prioritizing the happiness and the provision of opportunities to those that need the most help. But in some cases this has become a topic of debate politically, typically splitting the political party line between democrats and republicans when it comes to giving government funds to lower income people or instead limiting government interference and letting everyone have the equal opportunity to work for their own money, success, along with their own happiness.

This debate about whether or not to follow consequentialism has become an ethical one. In reality, when looking at treating everyone’s happiness equally, you have to look at everyone’s background as this does not necessarily mean an equal playing field for everyone whether this is from the way they grew up economically. In philosophy, it sometimes is quite easy to pin point what is ethical and what is not. But as soon as it comes to real life situations, the lines get blurred and each situation requires a more holistic approach particularly when it is a question of hurting one person or another.

The CTAA reading was super interesting and I found it to be very insightful for a lot of different reasons. The main reason had to be how it highlighted maximizing consequentialists and their beliefs. They believe that one should produce as much happiness as possible, and I find this super important in life. I personally believe that whatever anyone does, they should do it because it makes them happy.

The universalistic maximizing consequentialist argument can be applied to a lot of life choices and arguments. If doing something – such as donating to a charity – will maximize happiness for everyone in the world and it is morally good to maximize happiness for everyone in the world, then I concur that “H” or a person should do said action. The maximizing consequentialist point of view does have a downfall, one we saw with the water pumps in DGB, where people thought that they were producing the most amount of happiness for the people in need – when in fact they were not. That being said, I think that the maximizing consequentialist argument should be one that is considered often for arguing and choices, but with sincere thought to actually produce the most happiness/good, not just assuming you are producing the most happiness/good.

I found the comparative of normative ethics to religion to be very interesting. I was raised with a lot of Unitarian Universalist principles in my family. Although we often did not attend sermons, it was still something my parents used to explain the world to me as a kid. I always had a hard time understanding how someone could be so confident that their religion was the right one when there were so many choices. I wonder if that somehow affected my tendency to be willing to hear out ideas in their entirety, even when I don’t agree with them. I also had a difficult time understanding why people relied on religious reasons to be ethical, and I wondered if the goal to get into heaven corrupted the moral action. The TV show The Good Place had a really interesting response to this question and exploring the relationship between intention and consequence in ethics. 

On an unrelated note, I think the relationship of normative ethics and relational ethics to imperialism to be particularly interesting. A lot of feminists rely on normative ethics in a neo-liberal frame-work to justify excluding multiculturalism and condemning cultural practices that they perceive oppress women regardless of what women in those countries think (ex. the veil in Muslim countries). Meanwhile, relational ethics can also be used to justify actual oppression of women. I think this just goes to show how any ethics code could be used to justify actions that I would consider morally abject, and that neither is universally applicable. 

In the podcast episode, I was intrigued by the discussion of how the basic determinants in evaluating moral ethics overlap. In the reading, it seemed less obvious that all three types of reasoning, consequentialism, deontic, and aretaic, commonly overlap in the ways that they can. To break down these forms of reasoning into consequence, action, and intent, it is more apparent to me how often all three of these forms of reasoning appear in everyday or just common societal situations. 

Beyond the discussion of the general acceptance of killing as an immoral action based on all three forms of reasoning, I want to explore the generally accepted moral good of donating to charities. This question is obviously closely related to our upcoming GivingGames project and we would all have different thoughts and ideas on this generally accepted topic. On the basis of consequentialism, we would have to consider the consequences of someone donating their time or money. Some consequences could be curing cancer, eradicating disease, or providing clothing to a child in need. All of these things would arguably be good, and thus donating to charity would be good. But, some consequences could also be supporting a political campaign that could be against your beliefs or a child dies because the promised materials never actually get to them. These consequences are obviously not good, and thus donating to charity would be bad. On the basis of deontic reasoning, we would have to evaluate the actual action of giving and furthermore the universality of the action. I think that the action of giving itself would be good because intrinsically the action of giving is not considered to be immoral. If we consider the universality of the question however, I would say that giving fails Kant’s test. I don’t think that everyone ever should be donating to charity. Some people don’t have the means to support themselves and therefore should not feel obligated to donate to charity if we evaluate it from a deontic perspective. For aretaic reasoning, which I think is super important in the context of our GivingGames project, the intentions a person has would need to be evaluated. Some people donate to charity because they want to achieve a goal (like curing disease), or support a person close to them who have suffered through an illness, or help a community that is close to their heart. I think all of these reasons would be a sign of a virtuous person and therefore a moral action. But, we all know that some people donate to a charity in an act of virtue signaling. They desire the glory rather than the actual good that comes from their donation. In this case, I don’t think donating to charity would be a moral action at all. 

All of this being said, the complexity of evaluating the morality behind things within society happens way more than I have ever considered. As rational beings, we are constantly evaluating the situations that confront us to determine whether they fit into our definition of right and wrong. And we are constantly evaluating our definition with the way our cultures and environments also define the same things. Like Dr. Bezio said, no wonder philosophers still have jobs. 🙂

The idea of noncognitivism was not one that had crossed my mind before. When one is thinking about morality or ethics there has always been the premise that there are things that are wrong or right. The belief that “there are no moral statements that are true or false” challenges the often taught mentality that there are always right and wrong actions. Children are taught early on through either punishment or reward that there are morally right and wrong ways to treat people and objects. However, the removal of true and false from the evaluation of a moral statement is a curious proposal. Surely, as the chapter points out, it would take away much of the heat and emotion found in debate and politics. Perhaps this would even allow for less extreme partisanship and more true progress towards a greater good. However, would a debate over something with no truth or falsehood lead to any progress? How can one make a decision if there is no true and false to morality? For better or worse, we as a society largely agree that there are true and false moral values and statements. Unfortunately though, which solution is true is often where the debate begins.

Taking more of a cognitivist view point and believing that there is a true and false statement to a moral question leads more to how one does decide what is true and what is false. Personally, I thinking that in holding all people equally morally important, universalism looks like the best way to make a decision regarding morality. The idea that the benefit or harm to the larger population or culture looks the best, yet the egoism of the consequentialist approach is almost always bound to creep in. Personal interest is natural for humans and in some ways goes back to survival instincts of our ancestors. However, in order to make the largest moral impact on the most amount of people, the universalist mindset must be embodied. This is highly linked the concept of effective altruism when considering where and how much money to donate. Both universalism and effective altruism rely on the premise that the largest impact should be made on the most amount of people possible. Though challenging to fully embrace, the universalist approach to morality likely has the potential to do the most good in a society.

In the podcast Dr. Bezio mentions religion as an example of Normative claims, she says religion is a good example of normative claims because each religion has universal Truths that its followers live by. Her exception to her comparison was Unitarianism. I found this compelling because I was raised Unitarian Universalist. (They are an “unusual bunch.”) While in other youth groups and Sunday Schools children are told what to believe, we discussed what religion meant to us and what it meant to others. We would learn about other religions’ holidays, traditions, and beliefs and then discuss how they connected to us and to each other. Unitarianism is more relative than normative in some of the more traditional ways, but it still has some universal truths. At the beginning of our service, we light a Chalice and say an Affirmation in unison which states, “Love is the doctrine of this church, the quest for truth is its sacrament, and service is its prayer. To dwell together in peace, to seek knowledge in freedom, to serve human need, To the end that all souls shall grow into harmony with the divine. Thus, do we covenant?” And at the end when we Extinguish the Chalice as a symbol of our time together ending we say our Mission Statement; “We welcome all as we build a loving community, to nurture each person’s spiritual journey, serve human need, and protect the Earth, our home.” While this may not be as Normative as other religions, as welcome each person in the congregation to believe in any (or the absence of) higher power they wish it still has a sense of community and common ethical standards.

I have a question about the reading that if anyone has an insight on, I would be happy to hear!  I understand that there is a belief (from Noncognitivists) that ethical arguments cannot exist because ethics are not “true” or “false” but does that mean that even if a moral argument is backed by data from a study such as The New Hope Project it can still not be considered “true”?