In their second papers for this seminar, many people mentioned the connection between computer networks and enhanced opportunities for personal choice in both consumer and political realms. When you consider this in light of some of the issues we discussed last time, and specifically the proliferation of "spaces" and behaviors that the Internet has made possible (and the way they expand/challenge/break systems of law and government), you might arrive at the view that finding a normative ethics that is sensible and compelling is actually more practical than relying on political institutionals to protect and promote well-being. In his famous book, The Modern State (1926), R.M. MacIver wrote:
Law cannot prescribe morality, it can prescribe only external actions and therefore it should prescribe only those actions whose mere fulfillment, from whatever motive, the state adjudges to be conducive to welfare. What actions are these? Obviously such actions as promote the physical and social conditions requisite for the expression and development of free?or moral?personality.... Law does not and cannot cover all the ground of morality. To turn all moral obligations into legal obligations would be to destroy morality. Happily it is impossible. No code of law can envisage the myriad changing situations that determine moral obligations. Moreover, there must be one legal code for all, but moral codes vary as much as the individual characters of which they are the expression. To legislate against the moral codes of one's fellows is a very grave act, requiring for its justification the most indubitable and universally admitted of social gains, for it is to steal their moral codes, to suppress their characters.
So, today we talk about normative ethics, and specifically a system of normative ethics called Utilitarianism, the influence of which on contemporary life in the West can hardly be overstated.
"An Outline of a System of Utilitarian Ethics," by J.J.C. Smart
Smart's essay is exemplary in some important ways of the good argumentative essay, and we'll talk about the qualities of the essay (and Williams' essay as well) after Thanksgiving. Today, however, we'll try to follow and/or reconstruct Smart's explanations and arguments, aiming to both understand and evaluate the system of (personal) ethics called "Act Utilitarianism".
First, we'll break the class into two groups, and let each argue for and against this system alternately. When we're done, we'll take up any of the following questions we haven't managed to address during the exercise:
Finally, and as luck would have it, I faced an ethical dilemma after class on Tuesday. I was throwing away a coffee cup on the first floor of the CIT, when I noticed $17 lying on the surface of the garbage already in the (eastern-most) receptacle. I speculated that someone had inadvertently thrown it away with the food wrappers below it, but when I asked the person sitting on the bench nearest me he said he couldn't remember anyone throwing anything away recently. Similarly, the woman at the concession stand in the lobby of CIT didn't notice anyone throwing anything away there recently, and when I asked aloud in the lobby whether anyone might have accidentally thrown away some money in the garbage can, no one responded in the affirmative (contra O'Mara?). So there I stood with the $17 and I thought about what I should do. To complicate matters, perhaps, or because I had Smart's essay on my mind perhaps, I recognized that were I to keep the money I would go immediately to the Brown Bookstore and buy a Brown sweatshirt for my daughter (who has lately enjoyed a Brown t-shirt that Cris and I wear occasionally).
On Smart's view, what should I have done about the $17? If your view differs from Smart's what do you think I ought to have done?
For Tuesday (December 2nd):: Read Bernard Williams' essay in Utilitarianism: For and Against, and post your final paper/project topic to the CHV list by Friday, the 5th.