Explain why relativism and egoism pose a challenge to the possibility of rational discussion in ethics. Using the readings in our text and my Weekly Comments, show how these doctrines might be challenged. Feminist Care Ethics might be seen as a challenge to Kantian Ethics.  Explain with reference to the readings in our text and my Weekly Comments. Feminist Care Ethics might be seen as a form of Virtue Ethics with the major difference being a disagreement about the nature of human excellence and the virtues necessary for acting ethically.  Explain with reference to the readings in our text and my Weekly Comments. Explain the Trolley problem and the differences in the ways that utilitarianism, Kantian deontology, and Virtue Ethics would address the problem. Base your answer on the readings in our text and my Weekly Comments. Both Utilitarianism and Kant's deontological ethics sometimes lead to morally horrendous actions related to the sanctity of human life.  Kantian ethics is able to avoid the morally horrendous actions that can be justified using Utilitarianism, while Utilitarianism can avoid the morally horrendous actions that accord with Kantian ethics. Virtue ethics, though, would not have the same sorts of problems addressing issues discussed in the text, such as torturing terrorists if it were necessary to save lives, the Trolley Problem, killing an innocent person to save the lives of others, lying or making a false promise to save the lives of others.  Explain with reference to the readings in our text and my Weekly Comments, using specific examples of the types of cases that would provide problems for each of the theories. Week 2: Ethical Relativism Ethical Relativism is the claim that moral views are relative to the culture in which one lives or to the individual (also called Subjectivism). Many people declare themselves to be ethical relativists, but very few actually believe it to be true in practice. Often people are simply trying to avoid getting into an argument when they say that their ethical positions are just opinions. If it was true that you should avoid arguments about ethical issues, you would have to believe that there are good moral or possibly prudential reasons for not getting into arguments with others, that it was good for everyone to avoid conflict about controversial issues, which means that it is simply correct to be tolerant, making you opposed to relativism. Since you would be claiming that tolerance is a virtue that everyone should accept. In other cases, you may be concerned with ethnocentrism, the practice of imposing your views on others. But then, you would have to believe that being ethnocentric is morally wrong and that there are good moral reasons for not being ethnocentric. All of the people in the class took tolerance to be a moral virtue, some claiming that it is a result of cultural relativism. But you can’t derive a universal value from cultural relativism. And Daesh (ISIL, ISIS) and the Taliban .

1. Explain why relativism and egoism pose a challenge to the
possibility of rational discussion in ethics. Using the readings in
our text and my Weekly Comments, show how these doctrines
might be challenged.
Feminist Care Ethics might be seen as a challenge to Kantian
Ethics. Explain with reference to the readings in our text and
my Weekly Comments.
Feminist Care Ethics might be seen as a form of Virtue Ethics
with the major difference being a disagreement about the nature
of human excellence and the virtues necessary for acting
ethically. Explain with reference to the readings in our text and
my Weekly Comments.
Explain the Trolley problem and the differences in the ways that
utilitarianism, Kantian deontology, and Virtue Ethics would
address the problem. Base your answer on the readings in our
text and my Weekly Comments.
Both Utilitarianism and Kant's deontological ethics sometimes
lead to morally horrendous actions related to the sanctity of
human life. Kantian ethics is able to avoid the morally
horrendous actions that can be justified using Utilitarianism,
while Utilitarianism can avoid the morally horrendous actions
that accord with Kantian ethics. Virtue ethics, though, would
not have the same sorts of problems addressing issues discussed
in the text, such as torturing terrorists if it were necessary to
save lives, the Trolley Problem, killing an innocent person
to save the lives of others, lying or making a false promise to
save the lives of others. Explain with reference to the readings
in our text and my Weekly Comments, using specific examples
of the types of cases that would provide problems for each of
the theories.
Week 2: Ethical Relativism
Ethical Relativism is the claim that moral views are
relative to the culture in which one lives or to the individual

2. (also called Subjectivism). Many people declare themselves to
be ethical relativists, but very few actually believe it to be true
in practice. Often people are simply trying to avoid getting into
an argument when they say that their ethical positions are just
opinions. If it was true that you should avoid arguments about
ethical issues, you would have to believe that there are good
moral or possibly prudential reasons for not getting into
arguments with others, that it was good for everyone to avoid
conflict about controversial issues, which means that it is
simply correct to be tolerant, making you opposed to relativism.
Since you would be claiming that tolerance is a virtue that
everyone should accept. In other cases, you may be concerned
with ethnocentrism, the practice of imposing your views on
others. But then, you would have to believe that being
ethnocentric is morally wrong and that there are good moral
reasons for not being ethnocentric. All of the people in the class
took tolerance to be a moral virtue, some claiming that it is a
result of cultural relativism. But you can’t derive a universal
value from cultural relativism. And Daesh (ISIL, ISIS) and the
Taliban would disagree, claiming that tolerance would lead
people astray in their (correct) religious beliefs. We normally
expect that people will give reasons for their moral positions if
asked. It would be very strange if someone said that they
believed in human sacrifice; but it would be even stranger, if
they could give no justification for the practice, saying “It’s
just how I feel.” What you eat and what you like in art could
easily be a matter of taste or cultural upbringing (although there
may be moral issues here too, as we will see later in the
semester); but we would normally think that it would be strange
if someone justified their moral beliefs on these grounds. If it
were impossible to criticize the views of others, it would be
impossible to criticize my own views, and thus, impossible for
me to become more morally mature. Or it would be impossible
for someone to convince me that I was morally wrong about an
issue.
How, then, can we explain the fact that people within our

3. society have fundamental differences on issues like the death
penalty and abortion, and that societies in the past believed that
slavery and human sacrifice were morally acceptable. One
solution is to claim that the differences between people and
civilizations are not as great as some people claim. Every
culture, for example, differentiates murder from other forms of
justifiable killing. Every culture differentiates between humane
and inhumane punishments. The guillotine was considered a
more humane form of execution than beheading by axe. In the
United States, lethal injection is considered more humane than
other forms of execution. So, some of the differences can be
explained as conceptual, rather than moral. Each of these
societies valued humane execution but differed on what would
count as being humane. Some of the debate over abortion can
also be seen as conceptual, what is to count, morally speaking,
as a person? Solitary confinement at Eastern State Penitentiary
was considered at the time more humane than other forms of
punishment. However, it actually drove prisoners crazy. So,
some of the differences can be traced to differences in questions
of fact. Does the death penalty actually deter criminal behavior?
Will a wall built along the Mexican border actually make
American society safer? A good deal of the debate about the
environment hinges on the question of global warming, and on
the effects on the economy of addressing the issues of global
warming, factual questions. Everyone believes in fairness.
However, they may disagree as to what actually counts as being
fair. (This will be discussed later in the semester.) Here, there
may be both conceptual and factual questions at issues. Does
allowing affirmative action level the playing field or does it
give African-Americans an unfair advantage? We all also have a
vested interest in believing that what is in our interest is also
what is moral. So that we are emotionally pulled in directions
that are not necessarily moral but tend to think that what is in
our self-interest is also moral. Then, there are also other
emotional reasons that might cloud thinking rationally about
ethical issues. We may have been raised to believe in certain

4. values, and tradition can play an important role in our emotional
life and actions. Traditional interpretations of religious texts
that enshrine the values of previous cultures could play a more
important part than thinking rationally about ethical issues. So,
the traditional interpretation of biblical and Quranic injunctions
about homosexuality might prevent us from looking at the issue
impartially. What I have presented is Pojman’s argument
against relativism. This course is designed to help people
acquire the tools that will allow them to make judgments more
rationally. Even if we do not achieve agreement on specific
moral issues, we should be able to agree on the basis for our
disagreements, which are often conceptual or factual, or which
may be based on emotional or self-interested reactions, rather
than morally justified reasoning. Of course, some of the
disagreements could be the result of people applying different
ethical theories to justify their decisions. We will be discussing
alternative ways of justifying moral decisions in weeks 3-7.
Most students got Pojman wrong because they did not
understand his strategy, a strategy that is commonplace in
philosophy and the legal system. Pojman strategy is to think of
every possible argument in favor of relativism and then show
why each of them is wrong. In law courts, defense lawyers don’t
have to prove their client innocent, they only have to show that
the prosecutor hasn’t proved his case. So, rather than offering
an argument in favor of their client’s innocence, they will pick
apart the prosecutor’s case. Students are used to the dopey five
paragraph essays taught in English classes that have a thesis and
an argument in favor of that thesis, or textbooks that just
present the material that they expect you to memorize. In
philosophy, we take opposing arguments seriously and try to
prove them wrong. So, when you are reading philosophy, you
have to keep in mind that authors may be presenting arguments
that they are then going to criticize. Read carefully.
While Pojman is concerned with the way that relativism
can undermine ethical discourse, Lachs is concerned with the
way that dogmatism can undermine ethical discourse.

5. Dogmatism is the view that there is only one correct ethical
position, typically the one that the dogmatist holds. Pojman is
not arguing for dogmatism. He recognizes that there may be
good reasons why people might differ from one another in their
ethical choices. Likewise, Lachs is arguing for a limited
relativism, not that there is no rational basis for making ethical
decisions since he clearly recognizes at least one universal
ethical principle, toleration. Where Pojman and Lachs differ is
that Lachs would say that the sorts of commonalities that
Pojman finds are just too vague to supply meaningful answers to
ethical questions. However, as we will see, Lachs too has
problems with finding answers to many of the ethical problems
we will discuss this semester. Lachs begins, though, with
dogmatism. Dogmatism, he claims is very ego satisfying, which
makes it a very easy doctrine to accept. If the principles of
ethics are obvious to anyone who would seriously consider
them, and if my ethical positions are the one true ethics, then
ethical decisions are really easy. I don’t have to worry about the
complexities of moral debate. I don’t have to worry about
taking the wrong side of an ethical dispute. It makes intellectual
life easy. However, Lachs argues, if there are dogmatists who
differ from one another, then they have no way of deciding
which is correct. Each could say that their ethical choices are
self-evident. Nor are there any principles that would allow us to
decide between rival ethical positions. If we try to base our
moral principles on what society tells us, we face the problem
that there are different societies (and subcultures) that have
differing ethical positions. Also, societies are constantly
changing, so the dogmatist would have to be constantly
changing his or her position to accord with the current rules of
society. Human nature doesn’t provide a criterion, because we
differ from one another in significant ways. Nature itself can’t
provide a criterion, because nature does not have purposes. It is
morally neutral. Finally, following God’s purposes and laws has
several problems. First, of course, there are important
differences of opinion even within individual religions as to

6. what God commands of us. Then, we have the problem that if
something is good simply because God commands it, then God’s
commands are perfectly arbitrary. God could have commanded
anything, and God could have a change of mind in the future. If
God commands certain things because they are good, though,
then there must be some criterion that God is using to determine
what is good, and human beings would not need to follow God’s
command, but could simply consult the same criterion used by
God. However, Lachs has already shown that there does not
appear to be any basis for this objective criterion. Instead,
Lachs recommends combatting egoism and being tolerant of
other views. He claims that there is no one lifestyle that is
correct for all people and, following John Stuart Mill’s
argument in On Liberty, argues that each person should be free
to determine their own lifestyle without interference by others
unless their actions cause harm to someone else. However,
while this might solve the problem of busybody dogmatists who
want to impose their own lifestyle on other people, it doesn’t
solve many of the most important ethical issues we face today,
social policy issues. The Supreme Court ruled that since there is
serious disagreement as to when the fetus becomes a person
(both within religions and on secular grounds), the decision
about abortion should be left to individuals and their
consciences. This would seem to accord with Lachs’ principle.
However, those who believe that the fetus is a person would
argue that harm is being done to another person (the fetus), so
these decisions should not be left up to the individual. Lachs’
principle would not help us here. Likewise, it doesn’t help us to
determine a fair distribution of the benefits of society, or
punishment for crimes, or what we should do about the
environment, or how we should treat animals, all topics that we
will be discussing this semester. Lachs’ principle works best
with individual lifestyle issues, rather than social issues,
although we might say that someone who chooses to devote
their lives simply to partying, drugs, and alcohol is leading an
undesirable life for a human being and is, in fact, living a life

7. fit only for a pig. This criticism is based on Virtue Ethics,
which we will study later in the semester. One thing he
recommends, which is consistent with the theology of the
Abrahamic religions, is combatting egoism, as a fundamental
principle of ethics. Next week, we take up the issue of egoism,
which is a challenge to ethical discourse, trying to understand
both the appeal of egoism and its defects as a psychological and
as an ethical theory.
Week 3: Egoism
A significant number of students gave their own opinions
or reactions in response to the Writing Assignment. They do not
belong there. In the Writing Assignments, I am asking you to
explain the text, nothing more, nothing less. I will not ask for
your own opinions, reactions, or approval. These all belong in
the Discussions. I know that English teachers have often asked
you to include your opinions and reactions. However, that is not
typical of Academic Discourse in any discipline. In the Writing
Assignments, I am asking you to do something that is standard
in philosophical discourse, explain a text. By the end of the
semester, you should be able to play one author off against
another. However, even then, philosophical discourse
discourages you from interjecting your own opinions. In this
case, I asked you to explain Pinker’s theory and give the
implications of that theory for the discussion of altruism and
selfishness, whether you thought his theory supported or
undermined altruism, not your own opinions or analyses on the
topic.
Several students referred to the author solely by their first
name. Don’t do this. It is a convention in Academic Discourse
in all disciplines that you used either the last name alone or
combined with the first name. Why is this so? I have no idea.
However, if you refer to the authors solely by their first names,
professors will think that you don’t understand the basic rules
of Academic Discourse.
Darwin is a person. His theory is Darwinian evolutionary
theory. Darwinian is not a person, as some people seemed to

8. think.
Last week we addressed the challenge to ethical theory that
comes from relativism. This week, we address the challenge that
comes from Psychological and Ethical Egoism. Psychological
Egoism is a psychological theory that purports to explain how
people actually make decisions about how to behave. It claims
that people always behave in ways that benefit themselves, that
their only motivation is self-interest. If this is true, then ethics
is impossible, because ethics, at least sometimes, requires
people to behave in ways that are contrary to self-interest. In
fact, if you accept Kantian ethics, which we will study in a
couple of weeks, the primary conflict in ethics is not about
knowing what the right thing to do is; it arises because what we
know is right often comes into to conflict with what is best for
us. On the other hand, economists in the tradition of Adam
Smith typically assume that each person is acting in his/her
rational self-interest in their economic theories, based on Adam
Smith’s famous work in economics The Wealth of Nations.
Smith also wrote a book on ethics, though, The Theory of Moral
Sentiments, in which he argues that sympathy is the basis for
ethics. So, Smith sees at least the possibility of ethical
behavior, although economic behavior is best analyzed in terms
of self-interest. The problem with psychological egoism is that
we can all think of counter-examples, where people behave
selflessly or contrary to their own self-interest without any
possibility of reward. And all it takes is one instance to show
that the theory of psychological egoism is wrong. That is
because the theory is designed to show that we always behave in
this fashion. If it is shown that we are capable of acting
differently, even if only occasionally, then ethics is possible,
and the tendency to behave unselfishly can be reinforced by
ethical or other cultural training (e.g., religion, family
upbringing, patriotism). One way to challenge examples of
altruistic behavior, though, is to claim that even what seem to
be altruistic acts are done simply to make oneself happy. This
might seem to be counter-intuitive for acts in which a person

9. sacrifices his/her life for another person but let us consider the
example of Abraham Lincoln in the textbook. Lincoln stops his
carriage to save the lives of some piglets and says that this was
not a result of altruism, but because their death would have
made him feel bad. So, he did it to make himself feel better.
But, why would he feel bad about the piglets dying, unless he
felt sympathy for them? If the piglets belonged to him, then it
would make sense to save them out of self-interest. Otherwise,
he has no reason to care for them, other than sympathy. There is
a big difference between going out of your way to save the
piglet’s lives out of sympathy and watching them drown and
then eating them for dinner out of selfishness. Kantian ethics
would claim that whatever Lincoln said, he was really acting
out of duty, that he considered it his duty to save the
unfortunate pigs. Let’s look at the way sociobiology (which has
evolved into evolutionary psychology) handles this problem.
Steven Pinker is a Darwinian thinker, applying evolutionary
theory to human behavior. In the 19th Century, Herbert Spencer
used Darwinian theory as a basis for ethics, claiming that
evolutionary theory supported a survival of the fittest ethics (a
term not used by Darwin, Darwin used Natural Selection),
everyone should simply look out for their own interests. More
contemporary thinkers, though, have called that interpretation
of Darwin into question, arguing that in a social species like
humans, extreme selfishness would not lead to the survival of
an individual’s genes. Since cooperation is necessary to survive,
Reciprocal Altruism, doing things for people who do things for
you, is essential to survival. Likewise, if you sacrificed for your
siblings or children, your genes are more likely to be passed on
through your close relatives (Kin Selection). Finally, groups
that have more altruistic members have a greater chance of
surviving than groups that have fewer altruistic members
(Group Selection). This last form of altruism is not mentioned
by Pinker, because it is controversial and only recently
proposed, but it is supported by E.O. Wilson, the founder of
sociobiology. The reason some people oppose it is because they

10. argue that evolution occurs on an individual level, not a group
level. But those supporting the idea argue that evolution can
also have an impact on small group survival. In any case,
between reciprocal altruism, kin selection, and group selection,
we are genetically programmed to be somewhat altruistic. This
does not mean that we are consciously thinking about the
survival of our genes. What it explains is conscience, why we
often feel guilty when we are acting selfishly. It explains why
we act more altruistically towards relatives and group mates.
However, if we have a tendency towards altruism as well as
selfishness, then those desires can be trained toward ethical
behavior. In other words, we have an internal conflict between
acting selfishly and acting altruistically, both of which are
necessary for survival and reproduction and both of which have
been programmed into our genes because it allowed our
ancestors to survive and reproduce. We are not simply
psychological egoists. We have the type of complex internal life
that makes acting ethically (or unethically) possible.
Having disposed of psychological egoism, let us turn to ethical
egoism. Psychological egoism is descriptive, purporting to tell
us how people do behave. Ethical egoism is prescriptive, telling
us about how people should behave. Now, some people try to
derive ethical egoism from psychological egoism, claiming that
the fact that we do behave selfishly supports an ethics of
selfishness. However, if we always act selfishly, then an ethics
of selfishness is totally unnecessary. We will always act
selfishly regardless of what ethics tells us. Infants defecate in
their diapers, but that doesn’t show that they should defecate in
their diapers. Some other justification for ethical egoism is
necessary. Typically, people trying to justify an ethics of
selfishness argue that adopting an ethics of selfishness will lead
to the betterment of society. However, this is not ethical
egoism, it is utilitarianism (which we will study next week), and
we could then ask the factual question of whether this sort of
behavior would lead society to be better. On the surface, at
least, it does appear that unselfish behavior would benefit

11. society. So, this claim appears to be wrong. However, we have
the challenge from Glaucon in Plato’s Republic. Now, this is
not Plato’s position on justice. Philosophers, as I have already
mentioned like to set up problems and then solve them, present
the opposing side in order to refute them. Later in the Republic,
Plato provides an answer to Glaucon that we will only outline
here. Glaucon claims that no one would willingly act in a just
manner, and people only do so, because they are subject to
punishment, if they don’t. This is the basis for Social Contract
theory that is later developed by Hobbes (whom you are not
required to read). Social contract theory claims that society is
based on a contract between self-interested individuals who are
willing to give up liberty in order to guarantee security and
justice. It is a rational bargain based on the rational self-interest
of the people involved. Glaucon tries to show that people would
prefer to be unjust, if they could get away with it, asking the
question: what would you do if you could avoid any retribution
for your actions? Any rational person, says Glaucon, would
want to appear to be just, because that would gain them honor in
society, but would secretly act unjustly to get as much as they
could for themselves. They would steal as much as they wanted,
and then give some of it away for the sake of appearances. After
all, they could always steal more. This life would be preferable
to the life of someone who appeared to be unjust but was really
just. Plato is thinking of Socrates who was condemned to death
by his society, although you might think of Jesus or some other
martyr to a cause who was unjustly condemned by his/her
society. It would seem that any reasonable person would choose
the life of seeming just, but actually being unjust over the life
of the just person who appeared to be unjust. Plato’s answer is
that a life ruled by your passions leads one into excess, and
excess is never good for you. He sees people as having
addictive personalities, such that getting everything you want
isn’t necessarily good for you. You should really want to eat as
much as is good for you, not as much as you want. People with
uncontrolled gambling, sexual, alcohol, or drug desires are not

12. happy people. Life is like tuning a guitar. You need the right
amount to produce harmony. Likewise, you need the right
amount in life to produce a harmonious soul, so that peace of
mind is much more important to living a happy life than having
all your desires met. Aristotle, whom we will study in a few
weeks, agrees. This week’s reading has brought up
utilitarianism, Kantian deontological ethics, and Aristotelian
virtue ethics, the ethical theories we will be discussing over the
next 3 weeks.
Week 4: Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism is, on the surface, a very simple ethical
standard---always do what will produce the greatest happiness
for the greatest number. It is the principle that underlies triage.
In a situation where there are not enough medical personnel or
supplies to treat all of the patients, as sometimes happens
during war or in disasters, patients are classified into three
categories, those who need an immense amount of immediate
attention, those who need a moderate amount of medical
attention, and those who only need a small amount of medical
treatment and can wait without risking death or further injury.
Doctors then treat those in the middle category, leaving the
most severely injured to die, because by following this policy,
they can save the highest number of victims. While doing a
lengthy and risky operation on a member of the first group, a
greater number of victims in the second group might die, who
could have been treated in the same amount of time. This is
something that most people recognize as fair and proper. It’s
why you have such long waits in the emergency room, when you
come in with minor injuries. It is a little more questionable in
the case of an overcrowded lifeboat that will sink unless some
people are thrown overboard. This case involves actively killing
some people; but is still a case of saving the maximum amount
of lives, and is generally approved of. It is what underlies the
trolley problem discussed in our textbook. However, applying
this standard in other cases raises a number of problems. The
Ford Pinto had problems with its fuel tank such that when it was

13. rear-ended in an accident, it had a tendency to burst into flame.
The Ford Motor Company officials knew about this, but did
nothing to correct it. That was because they did a utilitarian
(cost-benefit) calculation. They figured out how much it would
cost them to recall the cars and fix the problem and how much it
was likely to cost them in lawsuits by relatives of people who
died in fiery crashes. When the figure for lawsuits came out to
be much less than that for fixing the problem, a utilitarian cost-
benefit analysis, they decided to do nothing about the problem.
Unfortunately, they did not include into the calculations how
likely their actions were to be discovered and how much it
would cost them in good will, if it did. However, a more
important question is whether or not you can compare lives and
money. Certainly, we could say that a drug that cost one billion
dollars per dose and was likely to extend five people’s lives for
two weeks was not worth the cost, because that money could be
better spent on other medical research that would save more
lives. In some cases, though, like the Ford Pinto case, we seem
to be comparing apples and oranges. Jeremy Bentham, the father
of utilitarianism assures us that all pleasures are equal and that
all we have to do in calculate the amount of pleasure vs. the
amount of pain produced, the intensity of the pleasure and pain,
the duration of the pleasure and pain, the fruitfulness of the
pleasure, and the likelihood of achieving the pleasure. This is
what he calls the hedonic calculus. Now, one philosopher,
Bernard Williams, has called into question whether we can even
make these calculations. He used the example of Paul Gauguin,
the famous French painter, who left his wife and children and a
job as a bank clerk to go off to Tahiti to paint. At the time, he
had no reason to believe that he would become a world-famous
painter (although he was a competent painter in the Pont Aven
style at the time) and his wife and children were reduced to
poverty, as a result. However, after he returned from Tahiti, and
even more so, after he died, he was considered one of the
greatest artists of all time and inspired countless other artists.
So, we could say that the pain that Gauguin caused his family

14. was outweighed by his contributions to the art world. But
Gauguin could not have known that at the time he left for
Tahiti. Things that could be justified by utilitarianism in
retrospect couldn’t be used to decide on a course of action
ahead of time. This brings up questions of future generations.
Are they to be counted, since all are to count as one? Do we
count people who don’t exist yet in our calculations of, for
example, environmental ethics? (We will be discussing
environmental issues later in the semester.) It would seem that
we would need to be omniscient in order to make these sorts of
calculations. Since we can’t know the ultimate effects of our
actions, utilitarian calculations would seem to be impossible.
Let us return, though, to the apples and oranges. Can you really
compare the pleasure you will get from a running a marathon
with the pleasure you get from eating a good meal or the
pleasure you get from watching a good movie? Is living a longer
life better than eating foods you love that might shorten your
life? How much longer would the life have to be to justify
giving up certain foods? You could eliminate the dangers of
driving by never riding in a car. Just how much safety is
enough? These sorts of calculations might be difficult or
impossible to calculate, certainly more difficult than when you
are only comparing numbers of deaths. Even then, you might
question whether someone’s life was worth more than others. A
young surgeon, for example, might be someone who was likely
to go on and save a large number of lives. Whereas an old
philosophy professor with no living relatives, who might not
have long to live, might only be looking forward to simple
pleasures and declining health. Should the surgeon’s life count
more than the philosophy professor’s? Then there is the problem
associated with the higher and lower pleasures. Mill (and it is
“Mill,” not “Mills”) in the excerpt in our text, is concerned with
the fact that the pleasure of going out and getting drunk with
my buddies simply can’t be compared with the pleasure of a
good conversation with friends. Mill was worried that people
would think that utilitarianism would lead to favoring sensual

15. pleasures over intellectual pleasures, and, in fact, utilitarianism
has been criticized for this. He argued that certain types of
pleasures were qualitatively better than other, especially the
intellectual pleasures. However, this raises further problems. As
long as we can quantify pleasures, we can perform Jeremy
Bentham’s calculations. However, once we say that some
pleasures are qualitatively better than others, it is difficult to
plug that into a calculation. Just how much better is an
intellectual discussion than a good meal? Does watching the
Super Bowl or the Final Four provide more or less happiness
than reading a good book or doing rounds as a doctor? In a
similar vein, Mill also responded to people who claimed that
utilitarianism undermined the virtuous life. Many of you may
associate the virtuous life with one that avoided the pleasures of
the flesh. However, the ancient Greek word for virtue, arête,
simply meant “excellence.” The virtues are those qualities that
we find to lead to a good life for the person who has them, such
as self-discipline, intelligence, compassion, commitment to a
good cause, the ability to lead a balanced life, to make good
choices in life. Now, Mill can’t say that virtue in itself is good,
since he is a utilitarian. People may come to find it valuable in
and of itself. However, its value is really based on the fact that
it can produce happiness. So, Mill has to argue that the life of
the virtue produces more happiness for an individual and
society, than a life of sensual pleasure. He does this by arguing
that people who are capable of leading a virtuous life choose
that life over the life of sensual excess, just as those who are
capable of intellectual pleasure choose those over sensual
pleasures. Finally, there is the major flaw in utilitarianism
associated with majority rule and minority rights. What if there
is something that produces a great deal of happiness for a large
number of people, but leads to severe unhappiness for an
individual. Take the example from the Discussion of a healthy
man who walks into a doctor’s office only to have the doctor
kill him and use his organs to save five sick people who would
die without them. We would (I hope) find this to be morally

16. reprehensible. However, it could be justified on act utilitarian
grounds. Some people attempted to change the problem by
arguing that there might be bad effects on relatives and others.
Don’t do that. The example is set up to test whether it would be
morally acceptable to kill an innocent man to save the lives of
many others. WHEN YOU ALTER THE PROBLEM, YOU ARE
ALTERING WHAT THE PROBLEM IS INTENDED TO SHOW.
Some people did, however, find this acceptable. So, let me use
another particularly horrible example. Utilitarianism would
condemn rape because the pain of the victim is greater than any
pleasure the rapist might have. However, if the victim was
unconscious and was gang-raped, the collective pleasure of the
rapists might eventually outweigh the pain of the victim. And
the more men who raped her, the more moral it would be. How
is this any different than the trolley problem where you pull the
switch killing one innocent person who would not have died,
but saving five others who would have died? Suppose there was
a sadist who liked to kidnap and torture unwilling people. That
is something that would be condemned by utilitarianism. For
certainly, the victim would get more pain than the pleasure
given to the sadist. But, suppose that the sadist showed this on
closed-circuit TV (so the rest of us wouldn’t know about it) to a
large group of fellow sadists. The pleasure of the group, if it
eventually became large enough, would outweigh the pain of the
victim, whose pain would be the same whether or not it was
televised, and would be independent of the number of people
watching. Likewise, pedophile pornography would be moral,
using utilitarian considerations, if it were widely shared among
pedophiles. There is something wrong here. Torturing a person
for pleasure is wrong; but it is OK as long as you televise it to a
group of sadists? In the killing of healthy people to benefit
others, the gang rape, and the televised sadism and pedophilia
examples, we want to say that these are our bodies, and no one
should kill, torture or have sex with us without our consent.
However, in the triage and lifeboat examples, we might
reasonably conclude that we should use utilitarian

17. considerations. Even if it is simply a question of taking one of
my kidneys to save the life of a relative, in a way that would
not harm me, it is my decision as to whether or not to donate my
kidney. On the other side, Peter Singer’s article in the section
on Global Justice and Globalization in our textbook, argues that
we are morally required to give away most of our assets to
alleviate world hunger, based on utilitarian considerations. One
solution to this problem is to distinguish between rule and act
utilitarianism. Instead of looking at what will produce the
greatest happiness in each case, rule utilitarianism looks at
which rule would provide for the greatest happiness in the long
run. Singer is an act utilitarian, arguing that we need to
maximize the effect of each expenditure to alleviate hunger.
However, one might argue that a rule allowing for property
rights, combined with encouraging acts of charity or
government action might provide for greatest happiness in this
case. This would be rule utilitarianism. There is some reason to
believe that while Jeremy Bentham didn’t distinguish between
act and rule utilitarianism, he might well support the latter,
because he was primarily concerned with devising laws that
would provide for maximum happiness. He was, for example, a
leading force in prison reform on utilitarian grounds. (Prison
reform will be discussed later in the semester.) Finally, I
thought I would attach a photo of myself with Jeremy Bentham
when I met with him many years ago at the University of
London. How is that possible you say, when he was born in
1748? Bentham was somewhat eccentric and left a large tract of
land to the University of London on the condition that he be
physically present at all the Board of Trustees meetings. So, he
now sits in a hallway at the University of London in a glass
case, fully clothed, with his hands covered in gloves. His head
was removed and replaced with a wax replica, so no part of his
body is showing. The head is in a safe in the trustees’ office.
You can see the mummified head by googling it. It was too
ghoulish for me to attach. And if you get to London, Bentham
will be waiting there to meet you. He is located near the Jeremy

18. Bentham pub, which itself has some Bentham memorabilia.
Week 5: Kant
A thief grabs an old woman’s purse while she is crossing
the street intending to rob her. She holds onto the purse, and in
doing so, the thief accidentally pulls the woman out of the way
of an oncoming truck, saving her life, but dying himself by
falling under the wheels of the truck. In a second case, a man
notices that a truck is about to run over an old woman and grabs
her purse intending to pull her out of the way. He saves her life
but dies himself by falling under the wheels of the truck. Notice
that the actions and the consequences are the same. From a
utilitarian perspective, there is no difference between the two
acts. However, we, and Kant would undoubtedly say that the
action of the second person was moral, while the action of the
thief turned out well for the woman, but would not make him a
morally praiseworthy human being. The difference between the
two actions is the intention of the actor. In other words, it is our
motivations or intentions that make an act moral or immoral,
not the consequences. Even if things turn out poorly, if, for
example, both the helper and the old woman were killed, we
would still say that the person was acting rightly because s/he
had good intentions and his/her actions were guided by
morality. This is what distinguishes Kantian ethics from
utilitarianism, the focus on intentions, rather than results. For
Kant, the problem in ethics is not that we don’t know what the
right thing to do is, but that we don’t want to do it. This is
because the right, proper, just ethical action often conflicts with
our desires, our self-interest. Take the case of finding a wallet
with a large sum of cash and ID in it. We know that the ethical
thing to do is to return it; but it is in our self-interest to keep
the money, especially if we could be assured that the person
who lost the wallet would misuse the money, or use it for evil
purposes. Kant was concerned with how ethics was possible in a
world governed by physics that controls human psychology. If
we are motivated solely by our desires, then we would never be
able to act morally (the problem of psychological egoism).

19. Consider a lion, stalking and killing a human child. It would be
very strange to say that the lion had a moral duty not to kill the
child, or to put the lion on trial for killing the child. However,
we would consider a person who did the same thing to be
morally reprehensible and would certainly put that person on
trial. The difference is that we believe people are capable of
behaving morally, which means transcending their immediate
desires. Lions are motivated solely by their desires. They are
subject to the laws of physics. Unlike lions, human beings have
free will and can thus make choices. What this means for Kant
is that people are capable of acting autonomously (literally
according to laws of their own making). To be autonomous is,
according to Kant, to be free from the influence of genes and
environment, to be capable of acting for reasons other than
desires. Kant distinguishes between our will, which is free, and
our passions (desires), which are determined by the laws of
psychology. If someone is a drug addict (or alcoholic, or glutton
or sex addict, etc.), they are driven by their desires and are not
free. Breaking these bad habits requires an act of the will, a
recognition that what you are doing is wrong and freely
choosing to break the habit. Since my will is often contrary to
my desires, in this case, my desire for alcohol, etc., according
to Kant, it is not subject to being determined by genes and
environment. We have to presuppose that people have free will
or ethics is impossible. Or, as Kant claims, since we know
ethics is possible since we sometimes act in ways that are
contrary to our desires, we must have free will. Kant thus uses
the possibility of ethical behavior to prove that we have free
will because it is only if we have free will that ethics is
possible. Of course, sometimes my desires coincide with what is
right to do. However, we are required not simply to act in
accordance with moral laws; but out of moral duty. If I am
acting in accordance with my duties, but am not motivated by
the moral law, I am still not acting freely because my actions
are determined by the laws of psychology. We don’t simply
have to do what’s right but do it for the right reasons. If we

20. give to charity because it makes us feel good, it has no moral
worth. If we help someone out of sympathy, it has no moral
worth. These are each motives that are determined by our
desires, according to Kant. Of course, when our duties coincide
with our desires, it is often difficult to determine whether we
are acting out of duty or not. (If I promise someone to do
something that I really want to do, it may be impossible to
determine whether I am doing it because of my promise or
because I want to do it. This is not a problem with Kant’s
theory. It is just that in some situations, it is impossible to
determine if my actions actually count as being moral.) Now,
Kant doesn’t mean that we each make our own rules. He
believes that we are required to make our rules according to
reason, so that all rational beings will make the same rules,
otherwise our rules would be governed by our desires. In other
words, while we may all have different desires, moral rules are
determined by whether we can universalize them, that is,
whether we could will them to be universal moral principles
without contradiction. Take the rule that you should keep your
promises, except when the results of doing so leads to bad
consequences. Kant says that this is contradictory because it
undermines the practice of making promises. Who would accept
promises from someone who you know is likely to break them if
they are not advantageous? Likewise, to say that you shouldn’t
steal, unless it works out better for everyone to steal in this
case, undermines property rights. So, Kant believes that it is
never right to steal or lie or cheat or break promises. Acting
differently leads us straight into utilitarianism. However, as a
result, Kant’s thinking can lead to morally horrendous
consequences, which he, of course, would advise us to ignore.
In the 1960s movie Dr. Strangelove, a naval officer discovers
the code that will prevent the destruction of the world. He needs
to call his superiors with the information and all that is
available is a payphone, requiring 10 cents to operate, which he
doesn’t have. (It’s the 1960s, cell phones didn’t exist and there
were payphones everywhere.) He orders a sergeant to shoot the

21. lock off of a coin box on a Coke machine to get the money he
needs. However, the Sergeant is a Kantian, who replies: “I can’t
do that. It’s the property of the Coca Cola company.” Kant
would argue that it is never right to steal, even if the whole
world is about to be destroyed. If you promise to take a package
on board a plane and discover that it has a bomb in it, then you
are still morally required to keep your promise and carry the
package onto the plane. If telling the truth to someone would
hurt their feelings, you are still required to tell the truth, even if
that would destroy your friendship. These seem to be morally
counter-intuitive actions. However, what Kant would say is that
if you make exceptions to property laws, to promises, to lying,
you undermine the entire practice. You are basically saying that
you should obey property laws, keep promises, and tell the truth
only when there are no bad consequences. However, that means
that instead of looking at the motive for an action, you are
looking at the consequences. From being a deontologist (acting
according to duty) you are transformed into a consequentialist,
a utilitarian. On the other hand, Kant is able to explain why we
should not kill an innocent healthy man to harvest his organs. It
is because everyone has to be considered an end in themselves.
We should always act as if by our actions the motive of our
actions would become a universal law. This is another way of
saying that we should always act on principle and that principle
is what duty requires of us. We may never be sure of achieving
our results but acting out of duty assures us that whatever the
consequences we will be acting morally. If we are using people
for our own ends without considering their humanity, we are
reducing them to objects to be used for our own purposes, which
can never be moral. Moral law requires that we always treat
human beings as human. Kantian ethics provides a basis for the
claim that it is immoral for men to simply use them to meet
their own desires, that it is immoral for men to objectify women
by commenting on their bodies. Kant’s theory, in other words,
explains the sanctity of the individual in ways that
utilitarianism can’t. One further problem arises when our duties

22. conflict. Suppose I promise my friend that I will hide him in my
house and not tell anyone. Someone comes to the door and asks
if he is there. Either I must break my promise or lie, both of
which are immoral. The editors mention W. D. Ross, a
deontologist, who has a solution to this problem, although Kant
doesn’t discuss it. Ross, though, is an intuitionist, claiming that
we can intuit which takes priority. This, though, is something
Kant would reject. He would say that what is needed is some
rule that would allow us to determine priorities.
Week 6: Virtue Ethics
Virtue ethics is derived from Aristotle, who was a student
of Plato. While Plato provided some of the basis for Catholic
and later Protestant theology through the thought of St.
Augustine, Aristotle became the philosopher of the Catholic
Church through the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. By the time
of the Enlightenment, Aristotle had been thoroughly rejected by
secular thinkers and eventually replaced in ethical thinking by
Kant and Mill. Virtue ethics was revived in the 1970s by
Alasdair MacIntyre in a book called After Virtue, in which he
criticized contemporary moral theory, arguing that it was
incoherent, and that we needed to return to Aristotle in order to
make sense of moral reasoning. While utilitarianism and
Kantian deontology provide simple rules for deciding on moral
actions (always maximize happiness, always act out of duty),
virtue ethics claims that we need to begin with a concept of the
good for human beings. That is, we need to define what makes a
good life for a human being before we can decide on right
actions. Virtue ethics is based on the claim that moral decisions
are too complex to be captured by a simple formula. Both
utilitarianism and Kantian deontology would approve of charity.
However, the issue is: how much charity is a reasonable amount
for an individual to give and how should charitable donations be
apportioned among the recipients? No formula can give you the
answer to these questions. They are a question of judgment,
something that only a wise, virtuous person could answer. And
reasonable people might disagree on how much charity is the

23. right amount for a particular individual. Virtue ethics has
immediate application in professional ethics, e.g., medical
ethics, nursing ethics, business ethics, since it asks the question
of what are the moral virtues necessary to be a good nurse, a
good doctor, a good businessperson, etc.? Virtue ethics claims
that rather than asking about the greatest happiness of the
greatest number or whether I could universalize my maxim, the
question I should be asking when treating patients or clients is:
What would a good nurse do in this situation? What would a
good social worker do in this situation? A good nurse or social
worker is someone who has the appropriate virtues, which lead
to sound judgments in each situation. You may be wondering
why nursing schools want students to take a course in ethics. It
is because they believe that the type of training that you receive
in a course in ethics will help you develop the intellectual and
moral virtues that will encourage you to act in accordance with
professional ethics as a nurse. Both utilitarianism and
deontology, as we saw, can, on occasion, lead to actions with
horrendous consequences that most of us would find ethically
unacceptable. Virtue ethics, because it looks at things case by
case, can avoid this. A good nurse or social worker would never
choose a path that would lead to horrendous consequences.
Virtue ethics recognizes the complexity of moral issues and how
sound judgment is needed in each case. Just as there are
qualities that define a good nurse, Aristotle argues that there are
qualities that make someone a good human being. These
qualities are what he calls virtues (or in Greek, arête----
excellences). The good life for a human being is one in which
we develop our character, so that we make wise decisions. That
is what Aristotle calls a happy life. While this may seem to be
very much like utilitarianism, Aristotle has a very different
concept of happiness (Eudaimonia, which is sometimes
translated as wellbeing). We can see this from the fact that
Aristotle claims that pleasures, in the right amount, are a part of
happiness, not happiness itself, as in utilitarianism. We tend to
associate happiness with a feeling. However, the ancient

24. Athenian lawmaker, Solon, said “Call no man happy until he is
dead.” Now, he did not mean that life is so bad that we are
better off dead. He was claiming that we could not evaluate a
person’s life until after they were dead, that we had to see a
person’s entire life before we could say whether they had a
happy life or not. Aristotle would agree. It is the very nature of
life that pleasure is episodic, that we have pleasurable and
unpleasant periods in our lives. Are we to evaluate our life
based on the quantity of pleasure we had over the course of our
lifetime (minus the unpleasant times)? Consider the ending of
the movie Saving Private Ryan. The dying Captain Miller (Tom
Hanks) tells Ryan (Matt Damon) to “earn it.” Returning to
Normandy and looking at the graves of his fallen comrades as
an old man, a tearful Ryan asks his wife: “Did I lead a good
life?” He is not asking whether he lead a life devoted to duty or
whether he had more pleasure than pain in his life, but whether
he lead the type of life that would justify the sacrifice of the
lives of all of these men. This is virtue ethics. It’s a Wonderful
Life, is an extended argument that the good life is one of
service to your community, not fame, fortune, or individual
pleasure. Aristotle would argue that the happy life is not
necessarily a life of pleasure, although pleasure is a part of the
good life. In fact, a life devoted solely to pleasure would be
considered by Aristotle, as it was by Mill, a life more suitable
to a pig. Given the fact that human beings have a faculty of
reason and emotional needs, the good life for a human being has
to be defined in terms that will include more than physical
pleasures. That would include for Aristotle civic virtues, since
we are according to his analysis in the book The Politics
political animals. However, there is some debate about what is
to count as a virtue, dependent on the analysis of human nature.
Within Catholicism, the life of a monk is considered to be ideal,
to be the best life for a human being. Yet, that life is devoted to
avoiding physical pleasures altogether. Aristotle would argue
for the balanced life, a life that fulfilled every aspect of the
human personality in the right proportions. Aristotle argues that

25. being moral is like forming a habit, that we need to develop our
character so that we habitually perform the right act. Now how
do we know which is the right act to perform? Aristotle would
say that we could look to role models. (What would Jesus do?)
However, it is also by learning from experience. The right
action for Aristotle is always a mean between two extremes.
Take courage, which is the example that Aristotle uses, and
which might be considered a virtue in almost all societies.
Aristotle argues that courage is a mean between foolhardiness
and cowardice. The virtuous person is one who knows the
proper amount for him/herself. What would be courage for one
person might be foolhardiness for another. In other words, what
is right and proper for one person may not be right or proper for
another. So, being ethical, acting in a virtuous manner, requires
the development of good judgement, or in other words, practical
reason. Being moral is more than just developing habitual
behaviors. We need to develop the intellectual abilities to
determine what counts as the proper amount. This creates a
problem for virtue ethics, because virtue ethics doesn’t actually
tell us what to do in any particular case. As I mentioned above,
being charitable is usually considered a virtue; but exactly how
much should I give to be a charitable person, and which
charities should I favor? The answer to this question is a matter
of judgment. But that means that reasonable people might
disagree. So, there is no firm answer to the question, which
means that the flexibility of virtue ethics that allows us to avoid
the horrendous consequences that follow from some judgments
using deontology and utilitarianism can actually turn out to be a
problem for the theory. How much sacrifice should I make of
things that I love to be charitable? In the movie Schindler’s
List, Schindler is concerned that he did not do enough to save
Jewish lives; but how do we determine how much is enough?
Should Schindler be considered a traitor to his country, and thus
lacking in virtue? Do we have to live up to the lives of saints in
order to be said to have led a good life? This bring up another
problem, defining the virtues, which may, after all, differ from

26. society to society. A Nazi society may value following orders
and obeying the will of the Leader, who embodies the will of
the German nation. After the war, these were considered to be
character faults which did not excuse concentration camp guards
who murdered innocent people. Chastity is a virtue for Catholic
priests and is also considered a virtue for unmarried people
within Christianity. However, many people today would
disagree. Confucian virtues were criticized by many in
contemporary China as being more suitable to a hierarchical
feudal society, than to a modern socialist society. Also, there is
the problem alluded to by Kant. Courage in an evil person
should not be considered a virtue. Bill Maher, a TV personality,
incurred the wrath of the public when he criticized people for
calling the terrorists who flew into the World Trade Towers
cowards. He said that they were courageous, misguided, but
courageous. He did not mean to imply that they had acted in a
virtuous way, but that is the way people took it. Also, there is
the problem of the conflict between virtues. If loyalty is a
virtue, it may come into conflict with the virtue of justice. And
there is always the problem of conflicting loyalties. If a doctor
makes a mistake, should the nurse be loyal to the doctor, to the
patient, to the hospital? Then, there is the question of whether
developing my character is good only for my personal happiness
or whether it is something that is good for society? It seems
intuitively obvious that a society of people with good characters
would bring about a good society. However, it is possible that
focusing on character development might lead people to think
more about themselves than others, although as I noted Aristotle
considers playing a role in the life of your community to be a
virtue. Also, if we look at the Trolley Problem, Utilitarianism
and Kantianism give different, but definitive answers to the
problem---pull the switch and don’t pull the switch respectively.
Virtue Ethics does not give a definitive answer. It may be
argued that it is virtuous to pull the switch and virtuous to
refrain from pulling the switch. While you are busy debating
what a good person would do under these circumstances, the

27. trolley would already have run over the five people on the track.
So, the argument against Virtue Ethics is that it is actually
useless in guiding our ethical actions. On the other hand, it
could be argued that virtue ethics gives us the flexibility to
hand these sorts of situations that is lacking in utilitarianism
and deontology. Some people in the class noted that there is
more to leading a good life than leading a virtuous life.
Aristotle would agree. He would say that you need friends, a
moderate amount of wealth, a relatively long life, the ability to
take part in the life of your community, among others. If you
are born into a society that discriminates against you, that
falsely imprisons you, that condemns you to abject poverty, that
condemns you to an early death it may be impossible for you to
lead a good life. However, that does not mean that there is that
there is no such thing as a good life for a human being, only
that such a life is not possible for some people. Finally, as the
textbook notes, virtue comes from the Latin word for man.
Aristotle believed that men were superior to women in such
ways that women benefited from being ruled by men. Clearly, in
a situation like this, the virtues associated with womanhood
would be different than those associated with manhood.
Feminist ethics claims that male virtues have been incorporated
into what seem like neutral ethical theories, making women
appear to be less virtuous. We turn to that argument next week.
Week 7: Care Ethics
The editors define feminism as a movement that seeks
justice for women and combats sexism. However, that would
make everyone a feminist. After all, who would be in favor of
sexism and injustice for women? In fact, there are many
different feminisms, because there are many different
conceptions of what justice demands and about what constitutes
sexism. There are equality feminists, who are seeking to get
greater representation of women in the professions and equal
pay for equal work. However, they are often criticized by
socialist feminists, who claim that while this is good for upper
middle class women, it ignores the needs of working class and

28. poor women, and argue that women can only achieve equality
under a socialist society that eliminates, or at least minimizes,
class differences. There are Third World Feminists who argue
that other feminists have overlooked the problems facing
women of color. Equality feminists are also criticized by
difference feminists, who argue that men and women are
fundamentally different in the way that they think and in their
emotional lives. These are the feminists who have developed the
theory of Care Ethics, which we are discussing this week.
Finally, there are the radical feminists, who believe that the
fundamental problem in society is that it is patriarchal, and it is
necessary to overthrow all patriarchy and hierarchies to liberate
women (and men). Within the radical feminists, there are also
the lesbian feminists (not all lesbians are lesbian feminists),
who argue that women need to separate from men and form their
own culture, because men will never change.
Carol Gilligan was a student of Harvard psychology professor
Lawrence Kohlberg, who was trying to do for moral reasoning
what Jean Piaget did for the development of logical reasoning in
children. Piaget argued that children go through a number of
stages before they arrived in late childhood at logical reasoning.
Likewise, Kohlberg argued that children go through a number of
stages of moral reasoning before they arrive at mature moral
reasoning. The question, of course, is what is to count as mature
moral reasoning. For Kohlberg, it was the justice centered
reasoning found in Kantian deontology. The test he used to
determine developmental level was to ask children whether a
man should steal a drug his wife needed to stay alive, if he
didn’t have the money to pay for it. The “correct” Kantian
answer was, of course, “it is never right to steal.” However,
girls more often than boys tried to find a way out of the
dilemma by negotiating with the druggist. This was considered
to be a lower level of moral development by Kohlberg. Some
students in this class tried to deny the results, and there are
some criticisms of the experimental design made by
psychologists, claiming that thinking does not vary between

29. men and women, but on an individual basis. If that were true,
sociology, which is based on patterns of behavior, would be out
of business. The differences were pronounced enough in her
studies, though, for Gilligan to begin to question the standards
being used to judge moral development. Even though they
seemed to be impartial, and Kantian ethics prides itself on
impartiality, Gilligan believed that the standards encoded male
forms of thinking. In her book, In a Different Voice, Gilligan
argued that women’s voices have been left out of the ethical
debate, and that they offer an important addition and corrective
to standard ethical thinking. Nel Noddings claims that contrary
to what Mill and Kant believe, ethics is derived from caring
relationships. We are not individuals separated from one
another by rights and duties. We are constantly in relationships
with other people. We are parents and children, teachers and
students, members of communities in our neighborhoods, cities,
states, and countries. Ethics must begin from this
interconnectedness from the perspective of caring relationships,
which is similar to what Aristotle claims. This is often forgotten
by ethicists like Mill and Kant, whom Noddings sees as
representing a male perspective. This argument is further
developed by Annette Baier in our textbook. Even if you do not
think that men and women think differently about ethics, there
is a difference between a Care ethics and Kantian ethics.
Nobody except Kant (I hope) would say that it is ethical to
allow your wife to die because you are too poor to afford the
medicine that would cure her, which provides a challenge to
Kantian ethics. There are a variety of explanations for why
women may view ethical problems differently than men. From a
Freudian perspective, there is a different relationship between a
man and his mother, than between a woman and her mother.
Men, when they grow up, have to learn to separate themselves
emotionally from their mothers, their first love objects,
according to Freud, so that they can successfully have romantic
relationships with other women, while women do not. Women
have to identify with their mother. Those favoring a social

30. conditioning model claim that women are often placed in
positions where they are lacking in power and have to learn to
negotiate in order to successfully meet their needs. In addition,
women are often dealing with children, which also calls upon
emotional sensitivity to others. Whatever the cause, women are
often required to develop negotiation skills and exhibit an
emotional sensitivity that encourages them to address moral
problems in ways that go beyond simple issues of justice.
Justice Ethics, Annette Baier argues, is designed for
relationships between equals. In the example used by Kohlberg,
it is assumed that the buyer and seller have equal standing, that
the impoverished husband has equal standing to the druggist.
The writer Anatole France once said that “The law in all its
majesty prohibits both the rich man and the poor man from
sleeping under the bridge,” which ignores the fact that the rich
man has a nice house to sleep in, while the poor man may have
no other place to sleep. If the druggist has a monopoly on
access to needed drugs, then the situation is not one of equality
between buyer and seller, and feminist ethics calls upon us to
rethink the morality of the situation in light of this inequality,
possibly suggesting a redesign of institutions that give one
person control over the life and death of others. The Kantian
language of rights, Baier argues, is inadequate to comprehend
what is required of us. Likewise, Baier points to Gilligan’s
claim that the language of rights is inadequate to explain the
abortion controversy. Margaret Olivia Little, for example,
whom we have not read, argues that to really understand the
abortion decision, we have to understand the choices facing
women who are pregnant and the questions they might ask, such
as should I give birth to a child without a reliable partner?
Without the income to support the child adequately? Without a
support system in place? Should I care more about my plans for
the future? On the other side, there is the question of whether I
can abandon my unborn child? Would the decision to abort
haunt me for the rest of my life? If I did have the child, would I
be able to give it up for adoption, if that was the best alternative

31. for the child? (We will read a feminist analysis of abortion
similar to Little’s later in the semester.) These questions about
the morality of abortion go way beyond questions of rights.
They are derived from a world in which people are in
relationships with others and have to think and care about
others. This is very different than questions of autonomy, which
Kant thinks of as essential to ethical thinking. He envisions a
world in which there are independent autonomous individuals
each interacting with other independent autonomous
individuals, rather than individuals who find themselves in
relationships that they did not choose, relationships of mother
or father and child, spouse, brother and sister, neighbors, fellow
citizens etc.---interdependent, rather than independent. The fact
that we find ourselves already in relationships, feminist ethics
claims, means that the autonomous individual is a fiction, and
that ethics must be rethought to reflect real life situations.
Finally, the Kantian vision of individuals parallels that of
Aristotle, and most previous (male, of course) philosophers in
finding that the function of intellect and reasoning is to
discipline the unruly emotions. For Kant, remember, it is our
desires that lead us away from acting morally, while it is
intellect that determines our duty. This is what leads Aristotle
to claim that men should rule women because men are more
rational, while women are more emotional. Baier challenges that
valuation of reason over emotions, arguing that what is needed
is not the suppression of emotions, but the training of emotions
to be sensitive and caring towards the needs of others. It is
probably no accident that in her discussion of contemporary
philosophers who have criticized Kantian ethics, Baier includes
a number of people who have been responsible for the revival of
virtue ethics in the latter half of the 20th century. There are
definite similarities between feminist ethics and virtue ethics,
despite Aristotle’s critique of the emotions. In fact, feminist
ethics could be taken to be asking, how would a virtuous woman
(or man) act in these circumstances? And then using that to
decide how a virtuous person should act. Thus, feminism might

32. be seen as rethinking the nature of the virtues. This leads to one
of the criticisms of feminist ethics and difference feminism.
Doesn’t difference feminism just accept Aristotle’s claim that
women are less rational and more emotional than men, except
for changing the valuations so that emotions are more important
than reason? Equality feminists and Socialist feminists would
argue that women might be more sensitive to their feelings; but
that when it comes to reason, women are just as rational as men.
The other criticism is that like virtue ethics, Care Ethics doesn’t
really tell us what to do. It appears to be able to justify any
number of courses of action. And in the case of the druggist,
while it might lead to important changes in healthcare coverage
in the long run, it doesn’t tell us what the poor man is supposed
to do in this situation, if the druggist refuses to negotiate with
him. Also, from a Kantian perspective, you can’t just add a Care
Ethics to supplement it. Kant would say that this undermines his
entire project of making moral judgments on the basis of reason,
rather than the emotions. Once one adds emotions to the mix,
acts no longer have moral worth for Kant. The whole point of
Kantian ethics is to eliminate emotions from ethical reasoning.
So, from a Kantian perspective, the attempt to blend the two
theories doesn’t lead to a richer theory, but to an incoherent
ethical theory. Finally, a number of students confused the issue
of feminist ethics with the so-called double standard. Feminists,
of course, oppose the double standard that says that there are
different behaviors that are right for men and women. However,
that is not at issue here. Here they are arguing for an ethical
system that would apply equally to men and women. They are
claiming that previous ethical theories have not been as morally
neutral as they claim, that they have, in fact, privileged male
forms of reasoning over female forms. Here, they are trying to
alter ethical reasoning patterns, not overcome differences in
what is considered to be ethical for men and women.
Running head: HR Strategies

33. 1
HR Strategies
4
Goal choice
One of the goals chosen from the first assignment was the
global expansion of Target Corp. In essence, Target is an
international organization working with over three hundred
thousand team members worldwide. As such, the company
should expand its branches globally and not only in the United
States and India where its headquarters are located. The
corporation tends to operate in Bangalore entire organizations
as a support function. However, it has not yet expanded its
stores outside the United States. In regards to the expansion,
Target Corp is planning to launch more than 125 stores across
the provinces in Canada and Brazil among other parts of the
developing countries.
Attract
Most managers in the current global business environment
tend to face a significant challenge in deciding on the best
employees to recruit in regards to different positions within an
organization. One of the most notable traits that employees
should portrait is cultural competence. Based on diversity
resources, cultural competence employees are regarded as
important aspects for the twenty-first-century business world
with globalization goals (Noe et al., 2017). Typically,
employees with this trait tend to have an easy time working
with their managers as well as growing the organization
business to the next level. Also, based on diversity, employees
will be able to communicate with different customers regardless
of their different cultures effectively. Another trait is agile
which reflects flexibility, nimble and speed an employee has
when performing various activities within the organization. The
corporation should concentrate on finding employees with
capabilities of changing with the environment and acting fast in
regards to such changes. Finally, employees who will help the

34. corporation in achieving its goal should be friendly and open.
The organization management should focus on individuals with
compassionate, approachable and kind qualities when dealing
with customers and clients.
The two strategies that the corporation will initiate to
attract high potential employees who best suit various positions
within the organization include the building of cultural diversity
and tackling of long-distance communication challenges. Since
Target Corp is aiming at expanding its stores to other parts of
the world, there are high chances that the corporation will
encounter different cultural practices within communities. As
such, it will have to consider its culture by imitating the
cultural practices it finds in the country they operate their
business (Yamao, 2015). Further, the corporation may decide to
send some of its competent employees to foreign countries
where they will be performing some of their business.
Therefore, it is essential for the Target management
organization to figure out how such employees will be
communicating with their loved ones back at home. Diversity
within the workforce of the organization will help to have
effective communication among the staff members and the
management team which in turn will contribute to efficient and
productive operations.
Develop and retain
In dealing with global customers and client, it is
significant that employees are equipped with skills relating to
online services since most customers will be located outside
borders which make it impossible to meet them on face to face
term. One of the areas that the employees will be taught
includes social simulation training to help them in responding to
culturally sensitive ways. Another significant area is filed
simulation training where employees will show techniques of
collecting information from the people living around the region
of its operations. Based on the existing employees, the
corporation should educate its workforce on general terms used

35. in the country they operate from. When employees are capable
of communicating the language spoken in the region, it will
enhance more customers to visit the stores hence high revenue
generation. Another area that is essential is time. In other
words, existing employees may get confused with the business
timing in the host country and that one of the home corporation.
As such, they should be taught on when is the best time to
operate in gaining more customers.
For practical training, the organization should consider setting
up classroom within the corporation where work staff will be
assembling and taught together with similar perspectives to
encourage teamwork within employees since they will tend to
have related knowledge on how to do things. Permanently,
educating employees together within the same room and
awarding those who exploit their effort than others will bond
them together and also enabling them to work in achieving
similar objectives. The main advantage of this is that when
working together as a team, the corporation will experience a
mass production from its operations which will earn it a good
income. However, the disadvantage is that when some of the
employees are promoted as a result of their effort, the others
may tend to fill jealousy and this may inflict conflict among
employees. The teaching of employees in the same room will
bond them together and also enabling them to work in achieving
similar objectives.
References
Noe, R. A., Hollenbeck, J. R., Gerhart, B., & Wright, P. M.
(2017). Human resource management: Gaining a competitive
advantage. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.

36. Yamao, S., & Sekiguchi, T. (2015). Employee commitment to
corporate globalization: The role of English language
proficiency and human resource practices. Journal of World
Business, 50(1), 168-179.