PHIL2617/3617 Practical Ethics
administration
• Please read the Unit Outline on Canvas carefully
• All course material is on canvas
• Lectures will be recorded & slides posted on Canvas
• Essential readings are available in e-Readings; see Unit
Schedule for required and recommended weekly tutorial
readings
• The reading for the first tutorial (wk 2) is D. Marquis; ‘Why
abortion is immoral’; if you are not familiar with reading
philosophy, see
http://www.jimpryor.net/teaching/guidelines/reading.html
• Please see Unit Outline for important further
information about late penalties, attendance
requirements, special consideration etc.
PHIL2617/3617 assessment
(i) 2,000 word essay worth 40%
• Covers content of weeks 1 – 7
• Topics announced in week 4
• Due by midnight April 8
* There will be an essay workshop in the tutorial in week 6; please bring a detailed (.e. 500 word) essay plan
• After 3 weeks of due date,, NO answers on the original questions will be accepted. Instead, entirely new questions will
be issued for any outstanding late essays.
(ii) 2,500 word take-home exam worth 50%
• Consists of 2 x 1250wd short essays
• Covers content of weeks 8 -13
• Topics released on Canvas in week 13
• Due by midnight on June 3
(iii) Tutorial Participation worth 10%
• Mere attendance is insufficient for assessment
• Assessment will be based on discussions in class and evidence of preparation for discussion
• Adequate tutorial preparation requires completing the week’s readings
• Unexcused absence will receive a mark of 0 for the relevant tutorial
• • Failure to prepare adequately will receive mark of 0 for the relevant tutorial
Practical ethics
• is concerned to provide
reasoned guidance
about how we should
act in practical
situations
Are any acts of euthanasia morally permissible?
Should (certain forms of) euthanasia be legalized?
Animal Ethics
• Is it morally defensible
to kill animals for their
meat or fur, or to
benefit from scientific
experiments that cause
them to experience
pain?
Environmental Ethics & Climate Change
• What are our obligations to
future generations, and
toward the environment?
What is the basis of these
obligations? Do we have
individual or collective
moral obligations to reduce
greenhouse emissions?
Ethics and World Poverty
• What are our moral
obligations towards
humans in dire need?
Are we acting wrongly if
we don’t donate money
to charity to help the
world’s poorest people?
Is abortion morally permissible? Which things
have moral status?
Designer babies
• If we can modify the genes of future human beings to prevent
disease, or to enhance human capabilities, should we?
Commercial Surrogacy
• Are commercial
surrogacy arrangements
morally permissible?
Should they be legally
enforceable?
Ethical Sex
How should we lead our sex lives?
What are the conditions for morally valid consent? Is
consent sufficient for ethical sex?
Pornography, Free Speech and Censorship
• On what grounds, if any,
is the state justified in
restricting free speech?
Is the state justified in
restricting (some)
pornography?
Practical ethics
• The aim of this course
is to develop our ability
to think carefully and
rationally about these
important practical
ethical issues, using
techniques of analytical
reason and logic
Methodology
• Respectful engagement, critical reflection,
rational discussion
Less like this… More like this.
What’s wrong with killing?
Ethics & Contemporary Attitudes to Killing
• Most of us accept that
killing another human
being is seriously
wrong—except in
exceptional
circumstances
—i.e., “Killing another
human being is prima
facie seriously wrong”
Contemporary Attitudes to Killing
• Killing a human being is
worse than killing other
living things
Contemporary Attitudes to Killing
Ethics & Contemporary Attitudes to Killing
It is seriously wrong to kill a human being,
regardless of their race, religion, class or nationality
Why is killing a human especially wrong?
• because it involves killing a member of the
species Homo sapiens; or
• because it’s killing a rational, self-aware
being?
Extra-terrestrial person?
• ET is psychologically
indistinguishable from an average
human child: he feels pleasure
and pain, has hopes, projects, a
childlike capacity to reason,
human emotions, etc.
• Can someone defensibly argue
that killing ET is less inherently
wrong than killing a human child
because he is a member of a
different species?
• Would this be any different from
arguments based on racism or
sexism?
The Ethical Significance of Personhood
• Many ethicists argue that
1. It is seriously wrong to kill a human being
(sanctity of human life)
should be replaced by 2
2. It is seriously wrong to kill a rational and
self-aware being (sanctity of persons)
• These principles are not co-extensive
Personhood
• A ‘person’ is a “thinking,
intelligent being, that has
reason and reflection, and
can consider itself as itself,
the same thinking thing in
different times and places”.
(II, XXVVII, 9).

• Person is distinguished from
‘man’, or human being
(Locke’s angels and ‘rational
parrot’).
Is being a living human sufficient to
make killing wrong?
• If someone destroyed your upper brain, and with
it your entire mental life, while leaving your lower
brain in tact, would this be as bad as killing you?
• Would complete psychological reprogramming be
as bad as being killed?
• If I now destroy your lower brain, knowing that
someone else has already destroyed the upper,
would this be as bad as what the first person did
to you?
Why is killing a person (especially) wrong?
Four answers
1. Hedonistic utilitarianism
2. Preference hedonism
3. Rights-based
4. Autonomy-based
consequentialism
• killing a person is wrong because it has bad
consequences
• act consequentialism
• you ought always perform the action that
results in an outcome that is at least as good
as any other action you might have performed
which consequences?
hedonistic utilitarianism
• you ought always perform
the action that results in
the greatest amount of
happiness in the world
hedonistic utilitarianism
• killing is wrong because it results in less net
happiness in the world
• Killing a person is worse (under certain
circumstances) because it produces more
unhappiness than killing a non-person
• direct reason against killing: suffering to victim
• indirect reasons: creates widespread social anxiety
objection
• Wouldn’t some acts of
killing still be wrong,
even if they didn’t have
bad consequences?
• e.g. secret, painless
killing
• critical and intuitive
levels of thinking
• It will have better
consequences in the
long run if we adhere to
a principle of respecting
the lives of people who
want to go on living
than if we do not
preference utilitarianism
• you ought always perform the action that
results in the greatest amount of desire-
satisfaction in the world
preference utilitarianism
• Killing is wrong because it frustrates desires
• Killing a person frustrates more desires than
killing a non-person, so killing a person is worse
objection
• what if a person’s preference for continued life
is outweighed by stronger or more numerous
preferences to the contrary?
rights-based
• killing a person is wrong because it violates
the person’s rights
• only beings who are, or once were, capable of
desiring to go on living (i.e. persons) can have
a right to life (Tooley)
Tooley
• “The basic intuition is that a right
is something that can be violated
and that, in general, to violate an
individual’s right to something is
to frustrate the corresponding
desire. Suppose, for example,
that you own a car. Then I am
under a prima facie obligation not
to take it from you. However, the
obligation is not unconditional: it
depends in part upon the
existence of a corresponding
desires in you. If you do not care
whether I take your car, then I
generally do not violate your right
by doing so.”
autonomy-based
• Killing a person (against their will) is wrong
because killing disrespects the person’s
autonomy
• ‘Autonomy’ refers to the capacity to choose and
to act on one’s own decisions