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Summary notes for Applied ethics

Applied ethics model essay plan

Note that this model essay plan is merely one possible way to write an essay on this topic.

Points highlighted in light blue are integration points
Points highlighted in green are weighting points

I haven’t completely finished this – but it should give you a clear idea about how to approach applied ethics 25 mark questions.

General applied ethics question

General applied ethics questions will focus on one of the applied ethics issues and ask about the morality of it. E.g.:

Is simulated killing wrong? [25]
Is it ever morally acceptable to eat animals? [25]
Could stealing be morally justified? [25]
“Lying is good” – assess this view [25]

Your goal needs to be to pick one or two ethical theories (or meta-ethical if you want a headache). They will have an answer to the question – e.g. Kant will have a view on whether lying is good. You then have to assess the ethical theory in order to assess their answer to the question about the applied ethics issue. E.g. Kant says lying is wrong, but his theory faces issues. If those issues succeed, then Kant’s answer to the question fails. If they do not succeed, then Kant’s answer is the right one that we should conclude is correct.

Virtue ethics

Virtue ethics is the view that an action is good if it is what a virtuous person would do.
The goal of human action is eudaimonia which means flourishing or living a good life.
We achieve this when we act as rational beings, guided by reason.
Virtues are character traits or dispositions of habit which enable us to achieve our function.

Application of virtue ethics

Stealing

Lying

Eating animals
Simulated killing

Criticism of virtue ethics

The issue of clear guidance
Aristotle’s flexibility in taking the situation into account comes at the cost of sacrificing the clarity of guidance provided.
Virtue ethics tells us how to become a good person, but not what to actually do.
Aristotle claims that this approach is the best possible, because of how messy and complex moral situations can be.
However, that argument only works against deontological theories. Utilitarianism takes the situation into account like Virtue ethics does, and yet also provides clearer guidance. Bentham provides a method/algorithm for calculating exactly what action we should do.
Aristotle merely says we should do whatever a virtuous person would do. That guidance is less clear.
Aristotle explains that through our actions we could cultivate virtues like friendliness & courage, but he doesn’t explain how to calculate which action would actually cultivate the virtues. The lack of clear guidance is in the connection between virtue and actions.

Illustration of the issue’s relevance to the applied ethics issues

Stealing

Lying
Eating animals
Simulated killing
Aristotle tells us the best ethics can do is reduce to being a good person, but other ethical theories show that clearer guidance is actually possible while taking the situation into account.

Utilitarianism

Outline Utilitarianism (Bentham’s Act Util & hedonic calculus) and
explain Bentham’s view on the ethical issue
Criticize Utilitarianism with the issue of calculation.
Utilitarianism faces its own issues regarding practicality.
To weigh up how much pleasure/pain an action will produce – surely we need to know the future – which we can’t – nor can we easily measure subjective mental states or do any of this calculation in time-sensitive conditions.
We can’t calculate the long-term consequences of every act of stealing, lying, simulating killing or eating animals. You could steal/lie to save someone’s life, and they could grow up to be Hitler, etc. You could allow eating animals if they have happy lives and are killed humanely – and then you could discover that animal farming is a massive contributor to climate change (which we have discovered..). You could allow simulated killing because it is fun/pleasurable, and then that person could turn out to have anger issues that were made worse. So, Utilitarianism is of no help at deciding what we should do.
Defend Util: Mill’s version of Util – Rule utilitarianism –
weighting point that it is stronger than act because it doesn’t rely on calculating every single moral action that we do.
Follow the social rule regarding stealing, lying, simulating killing or eating animals which maximises happiness.
There should be a rule against stealing and lying. There should be a rule that if you want to simulate killing, you have to be psychologically screened first. The rule about eating animals is that so long as they have a happy life, are killed humanely and don’t contribute to climate change, then it is morally acceptable.

Further evaluation of utilitarianism

Explain Nozick’s experience machine (more crucial argument than the calculation issue – because it attacks the foundational premise of Util). Bentham (and Mill) claim that happiness/pleasure is our ultimate and sole desire – this is the basis of their argument for concluding that goodness is pleasure/happiness, from which they derive the principle of utility – that an action is good if it maximises happiness – hedonic – Utilitarianism.
However – Nozick points out that if this were true – that pleasure is our ultimate desire – then we would all plug into a machine that created fake but purely pleasurable experiences.
Nozick claims that many people would not plug into this machine – thus proving Utilitarianism false.
This means that the judgement Utilitarianism provided on the applied ethics issue [animals, lying, stealing, simulated killing] is also false.
[note – although Nozick’s argument has no relevance to the applied ethics issues – it does show utilitarianism is false, and thereby indirectly undermines Utilitarianism’s judgement on the applied ethics issue, which answers the question].

Evaluation:

Nozick’s criticism only works against hedonistic forms of Utilitarianism. Preference Utilitarianism doesn’t try to claim that happiness or pleasure is the ultimate good. It claims that an action is good if it maximises the satisfaction of preferences of all morally relevant individuals.
In that case, some people might prefer to enter the machine and others might not prefer to. This is no issue for preference Utilitarianism, since in either case people are satisfying their preferences, either for a fake life of pleasure, or a real life of pleasure and suffering.

Specific applied ethics question

You might be asked to apply a particular theory to a particular issue.

Evaluate the application of theory X (Kant/Util/Virtue/Meta-ethics) to issue Y (Lying/Stealing/S-killing/animals)

Follow this plan:

Paragraph 1:

Explain theory X and its application to issue Y (you need to know this for 5 & 12 mark questions anyway)

Criticise theory X with one of its criticisms from the spec (which you need to know anyway)

Optional: defend theory X from that criticism

Paragraph 2:

Criticise theory X with one of its criticisms from the spec

Defend theory X from that criticism

Optional: counter that defence of theory X

Paragraph 3:

Criticise theory X with one of its criticisms from the spec – OR critically compare with a different theory

Evaluate the criticism or the different theory

Good criticisms to choose due to being easy to make relevant to applied ethics issues:

Aristotle – clear guidance – we don’t have precise guidance on when or whether to do [issue Y]

Util – issue of calculation – we can’t calculate the consequences of [issue Y]

Kant – the issue of ignoring consequences – sometimes consequences of [issue Y] could be really good or bad, and Kant seems wrong for ignoring that.

However, remember that it’s not actually required to really link all criticisms to the applied ethics issue. The theories have a view on the applied ethics issue. Bringing in any criticism is then going to be relevant, regardless of whether you could illustrate the relevance of the criticism to the applied ethics issue directly.

If asked about meta ethics (which would be insanely mean!) just consider a bunch of the different theories and evaluate them as you would a normal meta-ethics essay. You need to know the application of meta-ethical theories to applied ethics issues anyway for lower mark questions so honestly a specific meta-ethics application question wouldn’t be nearly as hard as it looks.