and diverse societies. Discerning what each society commends and admonishes is a task for any person living in a society. We should all fit in and follow the social program as described via our language/society. Because these imperatives are relative to the values of the society or social group being queried, the maxims generated hold no natural truth-value and, as such, are anti-realist. Advocates of this theory point to its methodological similarity to deeply felt worldview inclinations of linguistics, sociology, and anthropology. If one is an admirer of these disciplines as seminal directions of thought, then ethical non-cognitivism looks pretty good. Detractors point to corrupt societies and that ethical non-cognitivism cannot criticize these from within (because the social milieu is accepted at face value).
Ethical contractarians. Ethical contractarians assert that freely made personal assent gives credence to ethical and social philosophical principles. These advocates point to the advantage of the participants being happy/contented with a given outcome. The assumption is that within a context of competing personal interests in a free and fair interchange of values those principles that are intersubjectively agreed upon are sufficient for creating a moral “ought.” The “ought” comes from the contract and extends from two people to a social group. Others universalize this, by thought experiments, to anyone entering such contracts. Because the theory does not assert that the basis of the contract is a proposition that has natural existence as such, the theory is anti-realist. Proponents of the theory tout its connection to notions of personal autonomy that most people support. Detractors cite the fact that the theory rests upon the supposition that the keeping of contracts is a good thing; but why is this so? Does the theory presuppose a meta-moral theory validating the primacy of contracts? If not, then the question remains: “What about making a contract with another creates normative value?”
For the purposes of this text, we will assume these six theories to be exhaustive of philosophically based theories of ethics or morality.4 In subsequent chapters, you should be prepared to apply these terms to situations and compare the sort of outcomes that different theories would promote.
The fourth step, in modifying one’s personal worldview (now including ethics) is to go through an examination of what is possible (aspirational) as opposed to what is impossible (utopian). This is another exercise in pragmatic reasoning that should be based on the agent’s own abilities and their situation in society given her or his place in the scheme of things. Once this is determined, the agent is enjoined to discipline themself to actually bring about the desired change. If the challenge is great, then they should enlist the help of others: family, friends, community, and other support groups.
How Do Ethics Make a Difference in Decision-Making?
In order to get a handle on how the purely prudential worldview differs from the ethically enhanced worldview, let us consider two cases and evaluate the input of ethics. First, we will consider a general case in social/political ethics and then one from environmental ethics. The reader should note how the decision-making process differs when we add the ethical mode. In most cases in life the decisions we make have no ethical content. It does not matter ethically whether we have the chocolate or vanilla ice cream cone. It does not matter ethically if we buy orchestra seats for the ballet or the nosebleed seats. It does not matter ethically if I wear a red or a blue tie today. The instances in which ethics are important are a small subset of all the decisions that we make. That is why many forgo thought about ethical decision-making: it is important only in a minority of our total daily decisions. In fact, if we are insensitive to what counts as an ethical decision context, then we might believe that we are never confronted with a decision that has ethical consequences.
To get at these relations let us consider a couple of cases in which the ethical features are highly enhanced. Readers are encouraged to participate in creating reactions to these from the worldviews they now possess.
Case 1: Social/Political Ethics
The Trolley Problem
You are the engineer of the Bell Street Trolley. You are approaching Lexington Avenue Station (one of the major hub switching stations). The switchman on duty there says there is a problem. A school bus filled with 39 children has broken down on the right track (the main track). Normally, this would mean that he would switch you to the siding track, but on that track is a car containing four adults that has broken down. The switchman asks you to apply your brakes immediately. You try to do so, but you find that your brakes have failed too. There is no way that you can stop your trolley train. You will ram either the school bus or the car killing either 39 children or four adults. You outrank the switchman. It is your call: what should you do?
Secondary nuance: what if the switchman were to tell you that from his vantage point on the overpass to the Lexington Avenue Station there is a rather obese homeless person who is staggering about. What if (says the switchman) he were to get out of his booth and push the homeless person over the bridge and onto the electric lines that are right below it? The result would be to stop all trains coming into and out of the Lexington Avenue Station. This would result in saving the lives of the occupants of the two vehicles. Of course, it would mean the death of the obese homeless person. The switchman wants your OK to push the homeless man over the bridge. What do you say?
Analysis
This case has two sorts of interpretation: before and after the nuance addition. In the first instance, one is faced with a simple question: should you kill four people or 39? The major moral theories give different answers to this question. First, there is the point of view of utilitarianism. It would suggest that killing four causes less pain than killing 39. Thus, one should tell the switchman to move you to the siding.
There is the fact that when the car was stuck on the siding, the driver probably viewed his risk as different from being stuck on the main line. Thus, by making that choice you are altering that expectation: versus the bus driver who has to know that he is in imminent danger of death. Rule utilitarians might think that moving away from normal procedures requires a positive alternative. Killing four people may not qualify as a positive alternative (because it involves breaking a rule about willful killing of innocents). Thus, the utilitarian option may be more complicated than first envisioned.
Rule utilitarianism would also find it problematic to throw the homeless person over the bridge for the same reason; though the act utilitarian (the variety outlined above) might view the situation as killing one versus four or 39. However, there is the reality that one is committing an act of murder to save others. This would be disallowed by the rule utilitarian. If the act utilitarian were to consider the long-term social consequences in sometimes allowing murder, he would agree with the rule utilitarian. However, without the long-term time frame, the act utilitarian would be committed to throwing the homeless person over the bridge.
The deontologist would be constrained by a negative duty not to kill. It would be equally wrong from a moral viewpoint to kill anyone. There is no moral reason to choose between the car and the bus. Both are impermissible. However, there is no avoidance alternative. You will kill a group of people unless the homeless person is thrown over the bridge. But throwing the homeless person over the bridge is murder. Murder is impermissible. Thus, the deontologist cannot allow the homeless person to be killed—even if it saved four or 39 lives. Because of this, the deontologist would use other normative factors, such as aesthetics, to choose whether to kill four or 39 (probably choosing to kill four on aesthetic grounds).
The virtue ethics person or the ethical intuitionist would equally reply that the engineer should act from the appropriate virtue, say justice, and do what a person with a just character would do. But this does not really answer the question. One could construct various scenarios about it being more just to run into the school bus rather than the car when the occupants of the car might be very important to society: generals, key political leaders, great physicists,
