PHIL 205: PAPER
Thomas Nagel 's notion of moral luck poses an ethical dilemma concerning our human capacities to act morally. If we don’t have complete control over our actions, how can we be morally judged? This challenges a number of philosophers that have considered the ways in which we can universally detect when an act is morally right and when is an act morally wrong. Is there truly a unique and single way in which we can determinate what is moral, or are we purposefully ignoring mediating factors for the sake of justice? Hence, comes Nagel arguing about his concept of the condition of control which states that one cannot be morally assessed for what is not under one 's control. He indicates that some of our harmful actions cannot
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If the condition of control were to be true, then it would contradict many moral assessments we find natural to make, such as Kant 's notion of ethics which emphasizes that an act is morally right if and only if it is in accordance to duty and that it is founded on a good will. Needless to say, a Kantian would outright deny the importance of the condition of control because it contradicts their spectrum of how should morality be determined. Kant focuses on the importance of a good will, meaning that someone who has the volition to act morally is someone who is following reason and has the intentions to do what they consider to be right. Comparing this to Nagel 's condition of control would eventually contradict Kant 's notion of the principle of volition because according to constitutive luck, the way in which we decide our intentions or inclinations is not completely under our control. Thus, this would deny the capacities of a good will to act in accordance with duty because of numerous psychological factors that may influence the way we define what is right or wrong. Kant clearly stated that good or bad fortune should never influence our moral judgements since the good will is a good in itself which is not influenced by an unfortunate fate and is much higher than the sums of all the inclinations that might have led to it (Kant 393). By this sense, the condition of control proposes no relevance in terms of Kantian ethics because he would claim that it would be incoherent to base all morality into mere luck. Nagel criticized this view by saying that it does not reconsider the possibilities of involuntary acts of people that may lead to unjust moral assessments. Nagel continued by arguing that different states of character that are determined by constitute luck would be directly blamed in accordance to Kantian ethics because they condemn such qualities that are most
In this essay, I have defined Nagel’s thesis as the view that death is harmful on the ground that life is a good and death is the corresponding deprivation of this good. I have addressed the no positive harms, no subject, and asymmetry objections. I have also provided Nagel’s rebuttal to these objections. Finally, I have evaluated and re-explained Nagel’s persuasive response to the asymmetry objection.
Often, a person is seen as the embodiment of the value of their action, thus a person can be seen as “good” or “bad,” and the consequences of justice that affect them are based on the general value of their general actions. The value given to actions is based on a soc...
Ross, William D.. "What Makes Right Acts Right?" The Right and the Good. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930. 753-760. Obtained from PHIL 250 B1, Winter Term 2014 Readings – Ethics. University of Alberta eClass.
The basis of this paper is centered around two somewhat conflicting moral theories that aim to outline two ways of ethical thinking. The theory behind both rule consequentialism and Kantian ethics will be compared and evaluated. These theories can then be applied to a relatively complex moral case known as the “Jim and the Indians” example.
Many people have different views on the moral subject of good and evil or human nature. It is the contention of this paper that humans are born neutral, and if we are raised to be good, we will mature into good human beings. Once the element of evil is introduced into our minds, through socialization and the media, we then have the potential to do bad things. As a person grows up, they are ideally taught to be good and to do good things, but it is possible that the concept of evil can be presented to us. When this happens, we subconsciously choose whether or not to accept this evil. This where the theories of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke become interesting as both men differed in the way they believed human nature to be. Hobbes and Locke both picture a different scene when they express human nature.
Morality is not something that should be easy to comprehend, and philosophers such as Mackie and McDowell are taking the wrong approach when trying to describe morality in natural terms. People need to understand that morality is something supernatural that we don’t have the capacity to comprehend. However, this does not mean that all moral judgments are false. There is a right choice in every scenario, however the variety of scenarios in this world is so grand that one cannot judge it by one code of
In “Gender and Moral Luck,” Claudia Card argues that men and women have very different mindsets that set the two apart from one another. Her argument is that women are caring and inclusive with a weak sense of justice. Women are encouraged to assimilate and because of this, they become extensions in their relationships (206). That is what causes men to hold all the power in society. Men hold the power in the political sense because the majority of the leaders in office are male, but they also hold power in the house holds. Women are also masochistic in the sense that they can’t seem to say “no” in most cases because they are too caring. They tend to stay in bad relationships due to their need to satisfy everyone and their failure to accept
Nagel agrees to Williams’ idea and categorizes ‘moral luck’ into four different types. They are constitutive, circumstantial, resultant, and causal luck. Constitutive luck refers to “the kind of person you are, where this is not just a question of what you deliberately do, but of your inclination, capacities, and temperament”. In anoth...
One of the most persistently asked and perpetually unanswered questions in psychology is the question of morality. What is it, how does it develop, and where does it come from? A basic definition of morality is “beliefs about what is right behavior and what is wrong behavior” (Merriam-Webster). Based on the definition, the question then becomes even more complicated; How do people decide what is right and what is wrong? Research has examined this from many different angles, and two distinct schools of thought have emerged. One centers on the Lockian idea of children as blank slates who must be taught the difference between right and wrong and what it means to be moral, while the other espouses a more Chomskian perspective of a preset system of basic rules and guidelines that needs only to be activated. So what does this mean for humans and humanity? Are we born tabula rasa or are we born with an innate sense of good and evil? For those researching this topic, the question then becomes how to most effectively theorize, experiment and interpret human morality.
“All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason” (Kant 1). The usage of reason as a representation of one’s intellect is a common trait in the 21st century. Happiness, a positive emotion, tends to blur one’s judgement and coerces philosophers to look upon its relevance when formulating ethical decisions. When considering the role of emotion in ethical decisions, one must consider the contrasting views of Immanuel Kant, an 18th Prussian philosopher that focussed his philosophies around the doctrine of reason, in comparison to that of John Stewart Mill, a 19th century British philosopher that followed the doctrine of happiness through the ideology of utilitarianism. I shall argue that when making ethical decisions, it is imperative that happiness should play a very recessive, if any, role in the decision making process as it does not represent morality in any form.
All people worldwide go through the process of moral reasoning, which has been defined as "a cognitive process by which individuals make decisions about moral issues and justify these decisions, regardless of the context of the issue" (Gardiner, 1998, p.176). But not all of these people come to the s...
How often should an individual be confronted with those three words in a lifetime? What makes them pick one or the other? Is the right decision dependably fundamentally the ethical decision? Who chooses what is correct or off-base? These are every single significant question in this battling issue in life. Could the confidence in karma be sufficient for one to lead a "decent" moral presence? The finger is constantly pointed towards one 's self interest and one 's result of their choices. In Thomas Nagel 's paper, Right and Wrong, Nagel endeavors to clarify the distinctions and the contemplations behind good and bad choices. He makes references to individual advantages, religion, and disciplines of choice making. Nagel 's paper really characterizes manners of thinking and how individuals come to choose life decisions and pathways for their
The conclusion presented by Nagel is that the theory of obligation can explain special features of public morality. Also those individuals can take steps to restrict certain choices. Nagel also concluded that the institutional structure shields indi...
In conclusion, I have argued that without a sense of accountability a connection to morality cannot be made. Wirzba’s claim holds true, and we must take into account our actions and be respectful of the requirements of the places we encounter.
What determines whether an action undertaken by any agent is right or wrong? Lon L. Fuller's 1949 article, The Case of the Speluncean Explorers, provides a situation whereby the ethical definitions of right action are evaluated. The ethical study of right action consists of two major moral theories being de-ontological (backward looking/origin) and teleological (forward looking/ends). Both also have religious and non-religious strands. The de-ontological theory consists of the divine-command theory (religious) and Kantianism (non-religious), while the teleological theory is composed of natural-law theory (religious) and utilitarianism (non-religious). In this paper, all four strands of moral theory will be used to evaluate the Fuller article and decipher which moral theory best serves the argument whether the actions of the four defendants were ethically permissible given the situation. At the end of this paper, sufficient proof will be given to prove that the application of Kantian ethical theory regarding right action—the categorical imperative—with Christine Korsgaard's double-level theories is pertinent in bringing about a moral conclusion to the case involved.