Reddit reviews Normative Ethics (Dimensions of Philosophy)
We found 5 Reddit comments about Normative Ethics (Dimensions of Philosophy). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Used Book in Good Condition
Ooooh maaaan, this is my wheelhouse! I'm finishing my masters in Design Studies, and my area of practice is interaction design.
I don't have time right now to write the kind of in-depth, tailored response that your questions deserve, but I can at least recommend some books and academic journals!
Books
Journals
(To access the actual journal articles, go to an academic library or use Sci-Hub to look up the DOIs of articles you want to read.)
Some of the comments here are deceptive. Deontology is not synonymous with natural rights. While consequentialism does mean "the ends justify the means," this is misleading.
Normative ethics in a nutshell:
Consequentialism is the idea that the right action is that which produces better outcomes than any other available action. This obviously prompts the question, what constitutes a good outcome? People give many different answers here, so consequentialsim is really a family of moral theories.
Utilitarianism is a popular consequentialist view which says that good outcomes are those which maximize individuals' utility. This is interpreted in different ways. "Classical utilitarians" think we should increase pleasure and reduce suffering. "Negative utilitarians" think we should reduce suffering, but not necessarily increase pleasure. "Preference utilitarians" think we should maximize preference satisfaction.
There are other forms of consequentialism. There are consequentialists who think that good outcomes consist not of utility, but of freedom, equality, justice, virtue, or security. Many believe multiple or all of these contribute to good outcomes.
Ethical egoism is a consequentialist view--here the consequences believed to matter are one's own utility (not all individuals' utility, like utilitarianism.)
Deontology, on the other hand, is simply the denial of consequentialism. That is, the right action is not always that which produces better outcomes (whatever good outcomes happen to be). This is often phrased as distinguishing between the right and the good. The deontologist thinks that sometimes, even if taking an action would lead to the world being a better place, it would be wrong for them to take that action.
Here's an AnCap-friendly example. Suppose we think that good outcomes consist of individuals having liberty, i.e. violations of the non-aggression principle make the world worse. A consequentialist would say that it is still okay to violate the NAP if doing so reduces the total number of NAP violations that occur. A deontologist might say that it is wrong to violate the NAP even if this leads to more total violations of the NAP. In this sense, the consequentialist believes the ends justify the means. However, this doesn't mean that consequentialists always think we should throw freedom, justice, etc. out the window to make people happy. Freedom and justice are themselves outcomes which a consequentialist might value.
One of the most influential forms of deontology is that of Immanuel Kant, who said we should always treat other people as ends in themselves, not as mere means. On this view, it's not okay to use someone to promote the greater good--not even to minimize the instances of people being treated as mere means!
Another popular form of deontology involves natural rights, which are obviously popular in libertarian/AnCap circles.
By the way, there is a third popular category of views in moral philosophy--Virtue Ethics. Virtue ethicists say that the important moral question is not how we should act, but rather what type of people we should be, i.e. what virtues we should exhibit. Both consequentialism and deontology assume that what matters morally are our actions.
Among professional philosophers, 25.9% indentify as deontologists, 23.6% identify as consequentialists, 18.2% identify as virtue ethicists, and 32.3% identify as "other." Take what you will from that.
You also asked how to determine what normative ethical position to hold. Usually philosophers want moral principles to satisfy two criteria: the principle itself must be plausible/appealing, and when the principle is applied to specific cases the result must be plausible/appealing. The most famous thought experiment that attempts to elucidate the issue is the trolley problem. A few philosophers have also attempted to prove a moral principle a priori. Kant did this in his work Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. His work is very dense and complicated. Most contemporaries think his demonstration failed, even if many of his ideas were valuable
If you're interested in exploring these issues further, an extremely accessible and well-written book is Shelly Kagan's Normative Ethics. This goes through the whole landscape of consequentialist and deontological views, and the merits and difficulties of each.
> one simply would opt for peaceful resolution
You can't just gloss over this part; moral philosophers spend their careers trying to define what peaceful resolution looks like. Your philosophy is a good starting point because it establishes some important values (though, as jcurtiswood mentions, you seem to do this axiomatically, without argument), but it leaves a lot of the finer points unspoken and indeterminate. Since to you seem to be hankering for a specific case, consider a surgeon who has 10 patients dying from a virus. Coincidentally, another man just entered the hospital with the right antibodies in his blood for curing the virus and saving the 10 patients. Unfortunately, the surgeon can't harvest the antibodies and thus save the 10 patients without killing the 11th man. The surgeon must decide now, or else the patients will die. What should the surgeon do? Does the surgeon have special moral obligations, above and beyond normal morality, which stem from his role as a doctor? You probably have a strong gut-feeling one way or the other, but it's not clear that your philosophy has a robust solution to this conundrum (after all, whatever the surgeon does he will be both saving and violating life).
To give you a feel for some important questions in ethics, chosen at random: What constitutes consent (can someone "hypothetically" consent)? Is equality a desirable component of outcomes? What exactly is it about a promise that binds people? Can their be laws (or moral rules) without law-givers? These are just a sampling. Because these questions covers so much ground, it requires that a moral philosophy be comprehensive and encompass all these questions and more.
Your philosophy, as it stands, is kinda incomplete. It's not enough to articulate a set of starting values, and say, "Well, I'll do my best to uphold those values through intuition and gut-feeling." It's good that you're interested; if you want a fantastic primer on moral philosophy you should check out Normative Ethics by Shelly Kagan.
Most academic works on Libertarianism pre-suppose a basic foundation in the terms and methods of philosophy that may be tough to understand if you haven't taken a few undergraduate courses in philosophy, or are at least willing to take a few hours with some Wikipedia articles that are written in a very dense style that unfortunately ALSO pre-suppose some knowledge.
http://www.amazon.com/Normative-Ethics-Dimensions-Philosophy-Shelly/dp/0813308461/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1300495156&sr=8-1
This book is excellent, but may be hard to get through if you're not interested in ethics as a whole. Kagan is a great philosophy writer, for better or for worse. The book is essentially an introduction to all of the major ethical systems, their counter-arguments, and other considerations. It's marketed to academics, which I think is a mistake because it's so accessible. It's as much a reference work as it is an introduction, and it occupies a valuable place on my bookshelf. I think every Redditor should have a copy of this book, or a similar one.
Libertarianism is, at its heart, a form of deontology that operates within a rights-based framework, that is, to make the claim that something is a "right," means it is absolute, and only to be violated in the presence of another competing rights claim (e.g., you have the right to life, unless you are threatening the life of another). This stands in contrast to consequentialism, which basically says that good outcomes are what we should be looking toward. Of particular concern is the "sliding scale" of consequentialism- if one person can make one demand on you (an obligation), why can't they make any demand on you? For example, if you are compelled to give one dollar to a person, why not two, three... 1000, 1001... ad infinitum. It is important to note that Libertarians also recognize a difference between "morally wrong" and "being a dick." If you refuse to help someone injured on the side of the road, what you have done may or may not be immoral, but there is a very real chance you will be found out and suffer consequences such as damage to your reputation (I surely won't want to hang out with you. What the fuck is wrong with you?). It is a rare Libertarian who says that an individual should not help another in need; in fact, private charity is a cornerstone of most Libertarian thought. The reasons for doing it are hotly debated, but most Libertarians agree that you should. Sidenote: This is a common misconception about Ayn Rand. She never said that charity makes others weak, so you shouldn't do it. In any case, her view of rights-based framework was much improved by Robert Nozick. Rights-based deontologists are in conflict with other deontologists who may want to offer the counter-argument that an objective standard can be found in the idea of a minimum standard of living, sometimes used as a (or the) justification for social welfare.
Of course, this is merely the moral end. Libertarianism also has a political dimension that says that the existence of a state that violates individual rights is an immoral entity, because it violates the a universal principle that rejects all forms of aggression. Strongly tied to this is a belief that, more often than not, a state will achieve a less efficient outcome than a market due to an inherent inability to predict all of the factors, both rational and irrational, that go into economic decisions. Since the state is also composed of politicians who seek to satisfy the needs of many different interest groups, Libertarians thus may hold that this political reality negates the counter-argument discussed above- any state that must please the master of public opinion will inevitably violate its charge of limited governance.
The TL;DR version of Libertarianism is that morality is inseparable from politics and the state, and that the Classical Liberal tradition of rights-based morality should prevail. Find out more at your friendly local library (Is a library an extension of the idea of education as a "public good," and thus a right? A library can't provide every book, does this mean they are denying the right to education? How does the political reality of library funding play into our conception of education as a right?), or Wikipedia to get some ideas of the basic definitions of ethical terms. The politics will probably follow naturally if you make a conscious decision to see government actions as part of a moral framework.
For all disputes, see /r/libertarian. I, personally, am interested in the idea of whether there can exist predator multinational companies with resources so large they can squash any competition. In our age of cheap transportation and interconnectedness, is this possible? If so, would it be possible to enact a limited anti-trust exemption on the moral basis of allowing the competition we so firmly hold is a reason for denying a coercive state?
I'm also currently preparing an article about whether cognitive bias plays a role in determining whether altruism is a genetic survival strategy, or has a morally determined basis.
Despite our reputation as selfish assholes, I think we're a pretty welcoming community, and if you have any questions, don't be afraid to ask. In fact, if you make a self-post about possible introductory Libertarian resources, you'll probably get much better information than I've given you.
DISCLAIMER: There's probably a Libertarian (or more) that will disagree with any or all of what I've said. It's a diverse movement, with numerous intellectual strands.
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Link: Normative Ethics
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