1 EXERCISES, QUESTIONS, AND ACTIVITIES Exercises From the Text 1) In the text, we diagrammed Example 7 as follows: Whatever you do, don t vote for Joan! An action is ethical only if it stems from the right emotion so only emotional people can be ethical. Obviously, though, we need a club president who can be ethical, and Joan isn t emotional. 1. You shouldn t vote for Joan. 2. An action is ethical only if it stems from right emotion. 3. Only emotional people can be ethical. 4. We need club president who can be ethical. a. We need an emotional club president. 5. Joan isn t emotional. 2 A 3 + 4 B a + 5 C 1 What s another way of adding a missing subconclusion to this argument? (Hint: First draw the diagram of this argument without missing subconclusion a, then ask Which ideas go together well? ) General Arguments Emotion 1) Emotions are mental states which customarily involve both an evaluative and a somatic component. Fear, for instance, involves assessing a situation as dangerous and experiencing certain physical sensations associated with adrenaline. Happiness involves assessing a situation in positive terms and experiencing a different set of feelings.
2 2) Can you believe that some people think that emotional people are irrational? How bizarre! Far from interfering with reason, emotions are necessary for it. If you don t have any emotions then you can t properly care about the consequences of your actions. If you can t properly care about the consequences of your actions then you can t act prudently. And if you can t act prudently then you aren t rational. 3) Some people used to assume that women are irrational because they thought that women were emotional and because they thought that emotional people couldn t be rational. 4) Do you think that you can control what you feel? That you can make yourself like someone, if you try hard enough? Well, either our emotions stem from our beliefs or they result from involuntary physical processes, but if our emotions stem from our beliefs then we can t control them since we can t control our beliefs, and if our emotions stem from completely involuntary physical processes they are obviously beyond our control. It follows, then, that we can t control our emotions. 5) Some people think that an action is ethical only if it stems from the right emotion, but they re wrong. Whether or not we act from a certain emotion can t make an action good or bad. If acting from a certain emotion made an action good or bad then actions stemming from affection would be better than actions that don t stem from affection. Because we can t control whether or not we feel affection, however, we can t control whether or not we act from affection, and only factors we can control can affect the moral worth of our actions. 6) Some philosophers are setting up shop on their own, hanging out a shingle and counseling clients. What is proper domain of operation for these philosophical practitioners? In particular, could philosophers with no psychological training help people with mood disorders, like depression? I maintain that either mood disorders can be alleviated by talking with a philosopher, or else talking with a psychotherapist won t help either. This is because either our emotions stem from our beliefs or they result from involuntary physical processes. If, on the one hand, our emotions stem from our beliefs then it s reasonable to assume that talking with a philosopher can help mood disorders. If, on the other hand, our emotions result from involuntary physical processes then mood disorders can only be cured by treatments that target the body, like drug therapy, from which it follows that if our emotions result form involuntary physical processes then talking with a psychotherapist won t help them.
3 Public vs. Private School 1) All parents face the question of how to educate their children, and it seems like the options are increasing all the time: private schools, home schooling, and on-line education are all competing for customers. Even in this high-tech world, however, public schools remain the best choice for students. Why, you ask? Well public schools are free, and if a school is free then it will have a diverse student body because tuition won t keep any students out. But if a school has a diverse student body then it will prepare students to function well within an increasingly heterogeneous society. That s why public schools will prepare our children to cope with the heterogeneous society they ll inevitably encounter when grown. 2) Some people still send their children to public schools. Can you believe it? Private schools are able to kick out disruptive students and if a school is able to kick out disruptive students then it s able to allow students to concentrate. This means that students learn their course material in private schools, since if students don t learn their course material then it s the result of not being able to concentrate. Thus, private schools are the best choice for students because when deciding on a school, the only concern should be where students will learn the course material. Philosophical Arguments I) Epistemology Belief in Other Minds 1) How can I know that other people have minds? After all, I don t see anybody else s mind. Isn t it possible that everyone around me is an elaborate robot? Should I suspend judgment about other minds altogether? No. Other people do, in fact, have minds. Other people act much like I do, and if people act much like I do then the cause of their behavior is the same as the cause of my behavior. But I know that beliefs and desires are the cause of my behavior. And if other people didn t have minds then beliefs and desires couldn t cause their behavior because they d need to have a mind in order to have beliefs and desires at all. (Loosely adopted from Bertrand Russell, The Analogy Argument for Other Minds. )
4 Belief and Control 1) There are philosophers who argue that we can t control our beliefs. These same thinkers often maintain that we have ethical obligations with respect to our actions. Let s just think about this for a moment, shall we? Because our actions are the result of our beliefs, if we don t have control over our beliefs then we don t have control over our actions either. And if we don t have control over our actions then we don t have ethical obligations with respect to them. But any doofus knows that we have ethical obligations with respect to our actions! That s why we must have control over our beliefs. 2) Now consider the premise in the above argument that reads If we don t have control over our actions then we don t have ethical obligations with respect to them. Is Terry or Austin leveling a relevant criticism against this premise? Terry: This whole idea of ethical obligation is predicated upon the obsolete notion of objective morality. Ethics are relative and so nobody ever has any ethical obligations for anything they do, even if they have control over their actions! Austin: I agree! I mean, people can be sued and held legally liable for things that they didn t do on purpose, and so even if we don t have control over our actions, we can still have ethical obligations about them. II) Metaphysics Metaphysics 1) Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that discusses the ultimate nature of reality. The nature of the human mind is one metaphysical issue. Some people, called dualists, think that minds are nonphysical. Other people, called central state identity theorists, think that the mind is identical with the brain. Yet other people, called functionalists, think that the mind is identical with the way the brain operates in such a way that anything that operated in that same way like some future computer - would have a mind too. Another metaphysical issue is the existence of free-will. Some philosophers think that we don t really have free-will; it just seems to us that we do. The real nature of numbers is a metaphysical issue, too. What and where are numbers? Are they in the world or are they just in human minds in such a way that if no people existed then no numbers would exist either?
5 2) The word metaphysical is sometimes used pejoratively; that is to say, it s sometimes taken to imply that the thing described as metaphysical is bad. You might hear someone saying Why waste your time thinking about that? It s a purely metaphysical issue, and they ll mean that the issue is abstract, impractical and hence unimportant. Actually, however, metaphysical issues are anything but unimportant. Metaphysics affects our beliefs about the ultimate nature of reality, and our beliefs about the ultimate nature of reality determine how we act. Certainly, anything that influences how we act is important. Belief in God 1) Should you believe in God or not? Well, the there are no good arguments either way. If there are no good arguments either way then there s no way to know if God exists or not. If there s no way to know if God exists or not then we should be agnostic. That s why we should be agnostic. 2) It s clear that God exists. Events happen that science can t explain because some people spontaneously recover from terminal diseases. But miracles are nothing more than events that science can t explain, and if miracles happen then God exists. 3) Some people still believe in God. Can you imagine that? Belief in God is nothing more than superstition since there is no good evidence for God s existence. But superstitions prevent us from understanding how the world really works, which means that superstitions interfere with science. Obviously, though, we should avoid anything that interferes with science. III) Value Theory The Euthyphro Dilemma 1) Why is murder wrong? And could it have been otherwise? Are ethics fundamentally arbitrary, in the way that fashion probably is and in the way that mathematics probably isn t? Many people try to make ethics non-arbitrary by linking it to the will of God. But will this work? If murder is wrong because God says it s wrong then God creates morality by unconstrained decree, and if God creates morality by unconstrained decree then anything that is currently good could have been bad, and anything that is currently bad could have been good, since God could have decreed the moral facts differently. If anything that is currently good could have been bad, however, and if anything that is currently bad could have been good, then ethics are arbitrary, from which it follows that if murder is wrong because God says it s wrong then ethics are arbitrary.
6 2) Okay, so maybe murder isn t wrong because God says it s wrong. Maybe God says that murder is wrong because it is, in fact, wrong. See the difference? It s an important distinction to make. It s one thing to maintain that you passed the course because I said you did, and it s quite another thing to maintain that I said you passed the course because you did, in actuality and in a way not dependent upon my personal opinion, pass it. Unfortunately for some theists, however, if God says that murder is wrong because it s wrong then God is not the source of moral value. After all, if God says that murder is wrong because it s wrong then God must be appealing to some external source of moral value, and if God is appealing to some external source of moral value then God, himself, isn t the source of moral value. 3) Are some theologians correct in maintaining that God is the source of moral value? Well, either murder is wrong because God says that it s wrong or God says that murder is wrong because it is wrong. If murder is wrong because God says it s wrong then ethics are arbitrary. (We saw that in passage 1.) And if God says that murder is wrong because it is wrong then God is not the source of moral value. (We saw this in passage 2.) It follows, then, that either ethics are arbitrary or God is not the source of moral value, and ethics, whatever else they are, can t be arbitrary. Ethics and Animals 1) Since an action is ethical only if it stems from reason, anything that can t reason can t do anything that s ethically good or bad. Reason involves language use, though, and animals don t use language. Clearly, we should punish an animal for hurting a human only if animals can do things that are ethically bad. That s why we shouldn t punish animals for hurting humans. Getting Rich 1) Means are ways to achieve a goal, where the goal is called the end. You could achieve the end of being wealthy, for instance, by a number of means, including winning the lottery, investing wisely, robbing a bank, or marrying money. 2) Although some people might want to get rich by marrying money, not many people would want to be married just for their wealth because most people want to think that they are loved for who they are, not how much they own.
7 3) Stealing involves taking someone s property for your own, regardless of his or her feelings, and when you do this you re using people. This goes to show that stealing involves treating someone entirely as a means to your own ends, and, as Kant maintained, we should always treat other people as ends in themselves and never as means only. Utilitarianism 1) We evaluate things other than happiness according to their quality, not merely according to their quantity, and it would be strange to evaluate happiness differently than we evaluate other things. Furthermore, if we should evaluate happiness according to its quality then an action that produces high-quality happiness is better than action that produces low-quality happiness. Since opera is a cultivated pleasure, though, it produces a higher quality happiness than does a monster-truck rally. 2) Don t listen to that self-satisfied know-it-all! It s wrong to say that cultivated pleasures are better than uncultivated pleasures. Why? Well, first, cultivated pleasures can be enjoyed primarily by people in a relatively high socio-economic class whereas uncultivated pleasures can be enjoyed by people in lower socio-economic classes. We shouldn t be elitist. Second, cultivated pleasures are supposed to be better than uncultivated pleasures because competent judges say so, but these so-called competent judges are simply those who prefer cultivated to uncultivated pleasures! Obviously, if the process of determining what pleasures are cultivated is circular, then it s wrong to say that cultivated pleasures are better than uncultivated pleasures. Murder 1) People tend to disagree about the source of ethics, but either the ethical worth of an action stems from its consequences or the ethical worth of an actions stems from its conformity to duty. However, if the ethical worth of an action stems from its consequences then murder is wrong because murder causes more pain than pleasure. And if the ethical worth of an action stems from its conformity to duty then murder is wrong because we have a duty not to kill. 2) I m not exactly sure where moral value comes from, but I do know this: Utilitarianism has got be wrong. Look at it this way. Some murders involve killing bad people. Killing bad people doesn t cause more pain than pleasure. If utilitarianism is right than anything that doesn t cause more pain than pleasure is morally permissible. But clearly, no murders are morally permissible!
8 Deprogramming 1) What would you do if your spouse, or adult child, joined a cult? Would you have your loved one removed from the cult and deprogrammed? Do you believe that this kind of radical intervention would be justified? I think about it like this: People in cults have been brainwashed and people who have been brainwashed can t make rational decisions. But if people can t make rational decisions, isn t it permissible for parents or spouses to make decisions in their best interests? We allow parents and spouses to decide when life-support should be removed from people in permanent vegetative states, after all. And who could possibly deny that it s in the best interest of someone in a cult to be taken from the cult and deprogrammed? 2) Interesting, isn t it, how many atrocities have been committed under the guise of acting in someone else s best interests? People in cults are exercising their religious freedom, so removing people from cults and deprogramming them is a violation of that freedom. But religious freedom is a basic human right, and basic human rights shouldn t be violated. Besides, if it were okay to remove people from cults and deprogram them, then it would be okay to remove people from church on Sunday morning and deprogram them. There is, after all, no real difference between a cult and any other religion. Do you think it s okay to remove people from church on Sunday for deprogramming? Real-Life Arguments 1) Find an argument that s written in one page or less. Don t worry about how complicated the argument is, how good it is, or whether or not you can diagram it. Just find an argument. Does this argument contain a missing ultimate conclusion? A missing subconclusion? If so, what is it? Argument Construction 1) Consider the argument diagram you constructed in Chapter 4. Identify any conclusions (subconclusions or the ultimate conclusion) that you could leave out of your expression of the argument. Answers will vary. 2) Write up the argument diagrammed in the previous exercise, leaving the selected conclusions unstated. Answers will vary.