Introduction to Ethics: Concepts, Theories, and Contemporary Issues 9819907063, 9789819907069

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Chhanda Chakraborti

Introduction to Ethics Concepts, Theories, and Contemporary Issues

Introduction to Ethics

Chhanda Chakraborti

Introduction to Ethics Concepts, Theories, and Contemporary Issues

Chhanda Chakraborti School of Liberal Arts IIT Jodhpur Jodhpur, India Formerly at Department of Humanities and Social Sciences Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur Kharagpur, India

ISBN 978-981-99-0706-9 ISBN 978-981-99-0707-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-0707-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Dedicated to Nirupam Chakraborti, Mala Valroy, Markus Valroy, Sayan Maximillian Valroy, and Ella Nayanika Valroy For you, for being there

Foreword

A fruit of a resolute endeavor—the book on Western Ethics entitled Introduction to Ethics: Concepts, Theories, and Contemporary Issues is a laudable contribution from Professor Chhanda Chakraborti, Former Professor of Philosophy at the Department of Humanities and Social Science, IIT Kharagpur, presently Visiting Professor at the School of Liberal Arts and Affiliated Faculty at the School of Artificial Intelligence and Data Science, IIT Jodhpur, Rajasthan. The book’s title is befitting to give potential readers an informed overview of the theme covered, and not through pursuing out-worn paths. The author skillfully narrates the three basic Western perspectives of normative ethics, meta-ethics, and particularly applied ethics, focusing on situations where answers concerning difficult moral choices are called for. The interpretative reading of Amartya Sen’s idea on Justice and Martha Nussbaum’s Capability Approach adds depth and elan to the volume. The author’s long expertise in teaching and interacting with IIT graduates of many different years at IIT Kharagpur and frequent deliberations on the subject at different conferences and seminars made her aware of the needs of the students. Professor Chakraborti’s wellstructured analytic presentation of thoughtful examples from the very contemporary medical domains of human organ transplantation or ethics for artificial intelligence for illustrations, and the study questions and exercises for learning open provisions for dialogues and debates instead of making it an abstruse and stereotype text in the Western ethics. Her straightforward writing style and confidence in dealing with

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real-life situations will find favor not only with university students, policymakers, and professionals but also with anyone who may discover an interest in the subject. Indrani Sanyal Director, Center for Comparative Religion and Culture National Council of Education Kolkata, West Bengal, India Former Professor of Philosophy Founder-Coordinator Center for Sri Aurobindo Studies Jadavpur University Kolkata, West Bengal, India

Preface

As an academic with long years of experience of teaching ethics behind me, I know that there is a demand for a well-organized textbook in Western ethics, which is rich in content and yet which the readers find accessible and relevant to the present times. My motivation for writing this textbook was to address that need. Instead of being purely theoretical or philosophical, this book emphasizes bringing lucidity and contemporaneity in the exposition to make the content appealing to the readers. Ethics of artificial intelligence was added as example of highly relevant area of applied ethics which will gain more and more prominence in the coming years. The book provides an introduction to ethics and covers the three main divisions within ethics: metaethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics. Additionally, it engages the readers with the salient concepts, criteria, principles, and important questions in each of these subdivisions. Though primarily it is envisaged as a textbook to fulfill an academic need of university students, policymakers, and professionals, it is also aimed at general readers, who might be interested in the subject for various reasons. Through this work, the author would like to extend an invitation to all to engage in ethics. For, ethics is not just for philosophy students. Various other academic disciplines, such as sociology, economics, and professional disciplines such as media studies, medicine, law, engineering, and even common citizens discuss ethical issues at the intersection of their respective interests. The material has been taught in class numerous times at IIT Kharagpur and at ethics lectures delivered by the author at various conferences, seminars, faculty development programs, and management development programs. The material has always received positive feedback. It has been developed further with great encouragement from the students. The author sincerely hopes that the book finds warm reception among a wider section of the society. The book covers the basic standard university syllabus for ethics, but it covers much more than that. In addition, it brings in many other associated but contemporary topics. Thus, this book is wider in its scope and much more contemporary in its content, in comparison with other textbooks on the subject available in India. Without diluting the quality, it has tried to situate ethics in terms of relatable contexts. In addition to original examples for illustrations, study questions, and exercises for ix

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learning, this book also provides relevant cases for instructors and students to engage in productive dialogue over the contents. The book will benefit both students and instructors. IIT Jodhpur, India

Chhanda Chakraborti

Acknowledgements

Book writing is a lonely work. In that fog of loneliness, the occasional sparks of light come in the form of encouraging words, support, and friendly advices. I must acknowledge the first comments received from Prof. Indrani Sanyal, Retd. Professor, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India, who has been a friend, philosopher in the literal sense, and a guide, for me throughout this arduous journey. Whenever I have harbored a doubt, I have taken my question to Prof. Sanyal, who despite her own personal and professional schedule has always entertained me. I am also deeply thankful to Prof. Leslie Francis and Prof. Margaret P. Battin of University of Utah, USA, for their kind words of encouragement in the review of this book proposal. I also thank Prof. Nirmalya Narayan Chakraborty for his early comments on this book project. I am also indebted to my students for motivating me to keep learning. I am deeply grateful to IIT Jodhpur for providing me the opportunity to finish the book writing project. I also acknowledge the unstinted support of my family in this long endeavor.

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About This Book

The book introduces the reader to Western ethics as a subject, along with its three standard subdivisions. Although the book is written with university students, policymakers, and professionals in mind, the book is lucid enough to be accessible to most adult readers. The book begins with introduction to the basics of ethics. These chapters are meant to provide the reader with the background knowledge necessary for understanding the more technical chapters on metaethics, normative ethics theories, and applied ethics, the three well-known subdivisions within ethics. The chapters that follow take up core ethical issues from each of these areas. The sections focus on explanation and a critical understanding of the ethical issue. The chapters also have examples, cases, and exercises to encourage critical thinking and to enable the reader to grasp the issue better. The book has tried to bring contemporary issues, such as ethics of human organ transplantation, and contemporary theories, such as Amartya Sen’s idea on Justice and Martha Nussbaum’s Capability Approach, to engage the readers with ethics in the real world. The book concludes with applied ethics, but with the example of ethics of artificial intelligence. The aim is to promote ethics also as a future-driven activity and to emphasize the need to understand the realworld ethical situations and dilemmas that will affect the stakeholders all around the world in the coming years as artificial intelligence and data-driven technologies change our everyday life.

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Contents

1 Introducing Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 What is Ethics? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 What Ethics is Not . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 Ethics as an Academic Discipline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4 Understanding Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.5 Ethics, Values, and Axiology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.6 Why Study Ethics? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.7 Ethos and Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.8 Normative and Descriptive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.9 Three Main Divisions in Ethics: Normative Ethics, Metaethics, and Applied Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.10 Free Will and Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.11 Chapter Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Study Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Research Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Case Study Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Key Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1 2 7 8 9 12 14 19 20

2 A Few More Introductory Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 What May We Reasonably Expect from Ethics? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.1 Action Guidance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.2 Imparting an Ethical Decision-Making Skill . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.3 Self-Improvement and a Life Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.4 Discourse Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Value Identification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.1 Why is It Important to Identify the Values? . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.2 ‘Hidden’ Ethical Values: Identification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 Value Clarification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 How to Identify if a Decision or a Behavior Has an Ethical Dimension? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5 Moral Intensity: Factors that Influence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

33 34 34 36 36 39 40 43 45 51

23 25 30 30 31 31 32

51 55

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2.6

Nature of the Ethical Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.6.1 More Than One ‘Right’ Answers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.6.2 Right Versus Right . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.7 Ethical Dilemmas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.7.1 How to Respond to an Ethical Dilemma? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.8 Complex Ethical Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.8.1 Ethics in Human Organ Transplantation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.8.2 Organ Trading: The Unethical and the Illegal . . . . . . . . . . 2.8.3 Ethical Issue #2: A Fair Sourcing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.8.4 Ethical Issue #3: A Fair Allocation of the Organs . . . . . . . 2.9 The Legal Position in India: Human Organ Transplantation . . . . . . 2.10 Chapter Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Study Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Research Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Case Discussion and Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Key Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

56 56 58 60 63 64 65 69 71 77 80 83 83 84 84 86

3 Metaethics I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 What is Metaethics? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Metaethical Queries and Debates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.1 Ethical Statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.2 Moral Realism Versus Anti-realism: A Metaethical Debate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.3 Conclusion on the Moral Realism–Anti-realism Debate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Ethical Universalism/Absolutism Versus Ethical Relativism: Another Metaethical Debate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.1 Ethical Absolutism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.2 Objections Against Ethical Absolutism/Universalism/Objectivism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.3 Ethical Relativism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.4 Arguments in Favor of Ethical Relativism . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.5 Objections Against Ethical Relativism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.6 Is There a Resolution in This Debate? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 Chapter Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Study Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Research Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Case Study Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Key Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

89 90 93 93

4 Metaethics II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 What is the Origin of Ethics? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Religious Origin of Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2.1 On Religion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2.2 Classification of Religion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2.3 Dharma and Religion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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4.3

The Theory of Religious Origin of Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.1 Divine Origin of Ethics: Exemplars from Ancient Civilizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.2 Divine Command Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.3 In Favor of Religious Origin of Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.4 Objections to Religious Origin of Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 Study questions on Religious Origin of Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5 Biological Origin of Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5.1 Darwin’s Evolutionary Hypothesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5.2 Evolution and Biological Origin of Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5.3 Evolutionary Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5.4 Edward O. Wilson and His Sociobiology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5.5 Reciprocal Altruism of Robert Trivers and the ‘Selfish Gene’ of Richard Dawkins . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5.6 Frans de Waal and the ‘Good-Natured’ Us . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5.7 Objections Ägainst Biological Origin of Ethics . . . . . . . . . 4.5.8 Conclusion on Biological Origin of Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.6 Social Origin of Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.6.1 Contractarianism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.6.2 Thomas Hobbes on the Social Origin of Ethics and Social Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.6.3 John Locke on Social Contract and Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.6.4 Jean-Jac Rousseau on Social Origin of Ethics . . . . . . . . . . 4.6.5 Summary and Concluding Remarks on Social Origin of Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.6.6 Objections Against Social Origin of Ethics Position . . . . . 4.7 Conclusion on Origin of Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.8 Law and Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.9 Experimental Research in Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.9.1 The Trolley Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.10 Summary and Conclusion of the Chapter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Research Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Key Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Conceptual Toolkit for Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1 Concepts in the Toolkit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 Moral Responsibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2.1 Moral Responsibility as a Pre-condition for Moral Praise or Blame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2.2 Elements in Moral Responsibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2.3 Acts of Commission and Acts of Omission . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2.4 Moral Responsibility from the Philosophical Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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149 150 152 158 159 165 167 167 168 169 180 185 197 203 206 207 209 212 217 218 222 223 228 229 233 233 238 239 239 243 244 245 247 247 248 252

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5.2.5 5.2.6 5.2.7 5.2.8

Moral Responsibility for the Non-philosophers . . . . . . . . . Conditions for Attributing Moral Responsibility . . . . . . . . The Excusing Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Degrees of Moral Responsibility and Factors for Mitigated Responsibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3 Rights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3.1 Different Kinds of Rights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3.2 How to Apply the Concept of Rights? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3.3 Conflict of Rights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3.4 How to Resolve the Situation of Competing Rights . . . . . 5.3.5 Non-human Rights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4 Duty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4.1 Kinds of Duties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4.2 When Applying the Concept of Duty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5 Justice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5.1 Ancient and Modern Philosophers on Justice . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5.2 Conceptual Contrasts in Justice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5.3 Distributive Justice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5.4 Need and Relevance of Distributive Justice . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5.5 A Relevant and Fair Criterion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5.6 Theories of Distributive Justice: Principles to Ensure Fairness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5.7 Principle of Equality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5.8 Principle of Equity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5.9 Desert-Based Principles of Distributive Justice . . . . . . . . . 5.5.10 Socialist Notion of Distributive Justice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5.11 Communist Distributive Justice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5.12 Justice as Fairness: Rawls’s Theory of Distributive Justice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.6 Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.6.1 Capability Approach and the Concept of Agency . . . . . . . 5.6.2 The Right Measure of Well-Being: Conversion Factors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.6.3 Differences Acknowledged by Capabilities Approach . . . 5.7 Martha Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.7.1 The Central Human Capabilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.8 Conclusion on Justice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.9 Summary and Conclusion of the Chapter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Study Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Research Exercise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Case Study Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Key Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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6 Normative Ethical Theories: I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 Role of the Theories of Normative Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 Consequentialist and Non-consequentialist Ethical Theories . . . . . 6.2.1 Kinds of Consequentialism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2.2 The Non-consequentialist Theories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3 Utilitarianism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3.1 History of Hedonistic and Utilitarian Thoughts . . . . . . . . . 6.4 Classical Utilitarianism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4.1 Before Bentham and Mill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4.2 The Social Milieu of Bentham and Mill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4.3 Bentham: Utilitarianism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4.4 Mill: Utilitarianism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5 Act Utilitarianism and Rule Utilitarianism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5.1 Act Utilitarianism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5.2 Rule Utilitarianism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5.3 Act Utilitarianism or Rule Utilitarianism? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.6 Summary of Classical Utilitarianism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.7 Applying Utilitarianism in the Personal Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.8 Utilitarianism After Bentham and Mill, and Negative Utilitarianism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.9 Weighing and Calculating the Consequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.9.1 Calculating the Consequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.9.2 Consequences: Benefit and Cost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.9.3 Utilitarian Benefit and Cost Calculation and the Principle of Double Effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.10 The Utilitarian Scheme of Duties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.11 Maximize the Utility for Whom? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.11.1 How Not to Count: Not Self-Interest Maximization . . . . . 6.11.2 How to Count: The Stakeholder Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.11.3 Utilitarianism is not Majoritarianism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.12 Applying Utilitarianism in the Context of the Society . . . . . . . . . . . 6.13 Strengths of Utilitarianism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.14 Objections Against Utilitarianism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.15 Summary of the Chapter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Study Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Study Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Research Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Case Study Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Key Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

421 422 425 427 432 433 435 439 439 441 443 448 456 456 458 461 462 462

7 Normative Ethical Theories: II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1 Non-consequentialism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2 Kant’s Deontological Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.1 Kant’s Duty is Not the Duty of the Military Model . . . . . . 7.2.2 Kant on Human Nature and on Moral Autonomy . . . . . . .

507 508 511 512 515

463 466 466 466 468 471 474 474 476 479 480 484 486 497 498 498 500 501 504

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7.2.3 7.2.4 7.2.5 7.2.6 7.2.7 7.2.8 7.2.9

Kant on Human Dignity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kant on Good Will and the Duty Motive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Categorical Imperative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Formulations of Categorical Imperative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion on Kant’s Categorical Imperative . . . . . . . . . . Objections Against Kant’s Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Rights-Based Deontological Ethics: Ethics of Rights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.10 Summary and Conclusion on Kant’s Deontological Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3 Virtue Ethics: Aristotle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4 Virtue Ethics: Aristotle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4.1 What is a Virtue? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4.2 Aristotle on Practical Wisdom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4.3 Aristotle on Character . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4.4 On Eudaimonia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4.5 Summary of Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4.6 Other Virtue Theories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4.7 Objections to Virtue Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4.8 Conclusion on Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.5 Ethics of Care . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.5.1 What is Feminist Ethics? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.5.2 Characteristics of Ethics of Care . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.5.3 What is Care? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.5.4 What is Ethical in Care? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.5.5 Limitations of Ethics of Care . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.5.6 Conclusion on Ethics of Care . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Study Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Research Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Case Study Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Key Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

519 522 528 530 541 541

8 Applied Ethics: AI and Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.1 What is Applied Ethics? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.1.1 Example: Ethics of Gene Therapy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.1.2 Is Applied Ethics Merely Ethics Applied? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.1.3 The Rise of Applied Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2 Methods of Applied Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2.1 Top-Down Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2.2 Bottom-Up Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2.3 Reflective Equilibrium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2.4 Conclusion on the Discussion on the Methods . . . . . . . . . . 8.2.5 Anti-theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.3 What is Artificial Intelligence or AI? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.3.1 ‘Intelligence’ as in the Artificial Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

619 619 621 625 627 629 629 631 632 635 636 638 642

547 549 551 551 552 564 566 567 569 571 573 576 577 577 588 598 603 605 608 609 610 611 617

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8.3.2 Types of AI Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.3.3 The Turing Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.3.4 John Searle’s Chinese Room Argument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.3.5 Is AI the same as Data Science? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.4 Advances in AI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.4.1 Machine Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.4.2 Deep Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.4.3 Big Data and the AI Revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.4.4 Some Notable Applications of AI and Data Science . . . . . 8.5 Applied Ethics: AI, Data Science, and Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.5.1 Why Choose Ethics of AI and Data Science as an Example of Applied Ethics? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.5.2 Moral Status of an AI System: Agency and Attribution of Moral Responsibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.5.3 Key Ethical Issues in AI and Data Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.5.4 Data Privacy and Privacy Protection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.5.5 Data Sharing, and Data Re-use for Non-intended Purposes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.5.6 Newer Forms of Manipulation and Exploitation by AI and DS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.5.7 Digital Divide and Inequalities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.5.8 Gender Digital Divide and Inequalities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.5.9 Fake Data, Fake News, “Deep Fake” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.5.10 Trust in AI Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.5.11 Trustworthy AI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.6 Summary of the Chapter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Study Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Research Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Case Study Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Key Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 755

About the Author

Chhanda Chakraborti is an active thinker, author, and a professor of Philosophy. Her Ph.D. is from University of Utah, USA. Her M.A. degree in Philosophy is from University of Washington, Seattle, USA, and a second M.A in Philosophy is from Jadavpur University, India. She served as a Professor of Philosophy at Department of HSS, IIT Kharagpur, India, and has visited several universities abroad for academic and professional purpose. After retirement from IIT Kharagpur, she has joined School of Liberal Arts, IIT Jodhpur. Her current active research areas are Public Health Ethics and Ethics of Artificial Intelligence. For years, she has served as a nominated key member in the Institute Ethics Committee for Research involving Human Subjects at IIT Kharagpur. She has also served as a nominated member of the Editorial Advisory Body of Indian Journal of Medical Ethics. She organized several international and national conferences, workshops, and seminars, including an International Symposium on Infectious and Communicable Diseases and the Global Spread: Bioethical Issues and Concerns at the 10th World Bioethics Congress in Singapore on July 28– 31, 2010. She has also organized many training programs, including programs on ‘Professional Ethics’. Recipient of many awards and fellowships, she has over 30 years of experience in research guidance, multidisciplinary research collaboration, and curriculum development. In two of her most recent sponsored projects, she will investigate the ethical issues with the technologically manipulated information, such as Deep Fake, and with Digital Twins such as Digital Twins of heritage objects. With a long history of research experience and a varied range of research interests, she is still willing to learn and do more.

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Chapter 1

Introducing Ethics

Chapter Overview In this chapter, the reader is introduced to ethics as a subject. In this chapter, you will get to learn: ✓Introduction to ethics and its subject matter ✓Definitions of ethics ✓An idea of ethics as an academic subject ✓An outline about how ethics is a study of values, and why it is a branch of Axiology ✓Distinctions between ethos and ethics, and normative and descriptive ✓Discussion on the importance of studying ethics ✓Information about different divisions within the subject of ethics ✓A discussion on the relation between free will and ethics. Main Topics in this Chapter What is ethics? Understanding values Why study ethics? Difference between ethos and ethics Difference between Descriptive and Normative Normative ethics, metaethics, and applied ethics Free will and ethics Need for a training in ethics.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 C. Chakraborti, Introduction to Ethics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-0707-6_1

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1 Introducing Ethics

Key terms: • • • • • •

Ethics Normative Normative ethics Values Normative and descriptive Free will

1.1 What is Ethics? Think of the situations when you have chosen to do something, or have decided to do something. May be you decided to bunk a class to watch a game on TV. Or, may be you helped a friend, who had not attended many classes, by giving her your class notes. Or, may be you have decided not to tell anyone, particularly anyone in the family, that one of your cousins has become alcoholic. You may have realized that the situation has put you in a dilemma: To tell anyone, or not to tell? What should be the right action? May be, after some deliberation you decided that the right thing to do for you was not to tell anyone, in particular not to tell the family. Or, perhaps you have made up your mind to join a community service program to teach the underprivileged children in the evenings. Or, perhaps in a nasty mood you have decided to write nasty microblogs anonymously about people who have not been nice to you in your office. These behaviors, I mean the decisions made by you as well as the actions that followed from your decisions, can be evaluated and labeled as right or wrong, or as good or bad. For example, your choice to help your friend by sharing your notes might be judged as right and good, whereas your decision to write nasty, anonymous microblogs might be labeled as wrong and as bad. The corresponding ethical statements would be. Your choice to help your friend by sharing your own notes is good.

Your decision to write nasty, anonymous microblogs against your colleagues was wrong.

1.1 What is Ethics?

3

The good, bad, right, and wrong in these cases are expressions of judgments. Later on, we shall call them ethical values, and the judgments will be explained as ethical judgments. We use these terms to evaluate or assess and to pass judgments. They apply, as may be seen from the examples above, to actions, as well as to the decisions taken by us, and even to our intentions. If you gave your notes to a friend, that is an action on your part. If you decided to bunk the class, that is your decision, which in this case resulted in you not going to the class. If you intend to join a community service program, that is your intention. Quick Question 1.1 An intention is an internal state inside a person’s mind. Who can evaluate these as ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, ‘good’, and ‘bad’? But, what do we mean by right or wrong, or good or bad? How are we supposed to understand them? What makes actions, decisions, etc., right or wrong? These are the kind of questions that ethics as a subject tries to provide answers to. The subject matter of ethics includes deliberations on the concepts of good, bad, right, and wrong. At the outset, we may define ethics as: Ethics is a subject which strives to provide us with a definition and an understanding of the concepts of right, wrong, good, and bad. As their application is to our behavior, where behavior broadly means our actions, decisions, and even intentions, ethics studies our behavior or conduct. We need to remember, however, that this is a preliminary definition. As the discussion progresses, this definition will be supplemented by other definitions. Box 1.1 Definition 1 Definition 1. Ethics as a study is a subject which strives to provide us with a definition and analysis of right, wrong, good, bad. Note that in the examples given above, the decisions and actions mentioned reflect your personal, private choices. But, ethics applies to them; that is, your personal behavior and private choices fall within the scope of ethics, and can be assessed by ethics as good or bad, right or wrong. How should I behave? You might wonder: How is that possible? What authorizes ethics to have a say in our personal choices and decisions? Well, one of the ways to answer that would be that while living in a society, your private and personal choices do not always remain confined to your personal life. They get translated into your behavior, and

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the behavior usually takes place in the public sphere and thus becomes subject to constraints in public interest. For example, consider that you are playing with a hard, cricket ball, on an open balcony on the 12th floor, while enjoying the view from above. You are throwing the ball up and catching it again with one hand, as you do in the playground. You might ask: Is there any scope to judge this action, which is entirely based on an individual’s (that is, yours) choice? Arguably, the easy answer to that is that your action will come within the ambit of ethical (as well as legal) judgment, should the ball slip and fall from your hand and hit some passerby down below. Then, your action would be called irresponsible and wrong. Some might call your action, namely lobbing a hard ball on an open balcony on 12th floor, irresponsible and wrong, even if it does not slip and hit someone actually. For, they might argue, its fall and harming someone down below is a foreseeable possibility, which you should have envisaged. Similarly, in the example above your decision to help a friend by sharing your class notes would certainly affect your friend’s own behavior. Indirectly, it may also affect the behavior of the others, who may witness your action. Same is true, if you decided not to help the friend with your class notes. Thus, personal choices and individual behavior do not always remain personal and private. They are likely to affect, not just your own life, but also other people’s lives around you in a positive or a negative manner. And that gives ethics the scope to judge them as right or wrong. Ethics often quietly assumes a social context while considering our conduct. It is particularly interested in our behavior towards the others around us, as is commonly the case when living in a community or a society. It also is concerned about our decision and behavior that are likely to affect the others around us, either positively or negatively. So, questions such as the ones mentioned below are of interest to ethics. Deliberations on each of these provide us the scope to both understand and to apply the terms right, wrong, good, or bad: How should a citizen behave towards the other citizens in the society? How should teachers behave towards the students? How should students behave towards the teachers? How should a person behave towards his or her own family? How should families behave towards its members? How should a person behave towards his or her own country? How should those, who are engaged in public service, behave towards the public? This is not to imply, however, that ethics is concerned with decisions and actions as good or bad, right or wrong, only if these are about the others in the society. As discussed above, ethics can very well apply in the personal sphere. For, decisions and behavior that are about just the agent may also be judged as good or bad, right or wrong. In other words, they too come within the purview of ethics. For example, suppose that you have chosen to become a vegetarian from now on. Or, suppose that

1.1 What is Ethics?

5 Ethical assessment

Acon

Agent

Fig. 1.1 Ethical assessment from behavior to the agent

you did not cast your vote. Even these very personal decisions, and actions, can be evaluated as right or wrong by the use of the ethical norms. Therefore, they too come within the purview of ethics. Having said that ethics assesses our behavior, it is time to add further that you may look at the assessment of behavior as ultimately a judgment about the doer, or the agent; that is, the one who does the action, or decides (Fig. 1.1). Note that the examples given in the beginning paragraph of this section are of decisions and actions that are all yours. That is, in those examples, the agent is you as an individual. The ethical assessment of your behavior is ultimately a judgment about you, the agent, on whether you have been good or bad, right or wrong. Similarly, we may also consider a group of individuals, e.g. a team, or a community, as the agent, whose behavior may be under evaluation. For example, we may evaluate the dignified way in which a certain team treated their opponents as a ‘good’ thing. The team here is a group of individuals. Thus, the agent could very well be a collective body, e.g. the society, a business, or a government. For example, we may criticize the policies of a government as ‘bad’. Or, if a business decides voluntarily to recall a hazardous product that it sells, we may assess that decision of the business as ‘good’. So, when we speak about action, behavior, decision, or policies that can be judged by ethics as good or bad, right or wrong, the agent could be an individual, or a group of individuals or a collective entity. Kinds of goodness, badness, and ethical good and bad: While talking about good or bad, right or wrong in ethics, it is necessary to make certain distinctions. First, note that there can be many kinds of good or bad, right or wrong. For example, there is technical goodness, e.g. when we speak of someone as a good programmer. What we mean by it is someone is good at programming. We also speak of instrumental goodness, e.g. when we say, ‘That is a good camera for pictures at night’. We mean that the camera serves a specific function well. The ethical good or bad is different from these, and the distinction should be kept alive. Similarly, there is political correctness or rightness, just as there is legal correctness or rightness, and then there is ethical rightness. If we are not careful to keep them distinct, we shall commit conceptual errors. For, they are not the same. For instance, there may be actions which may be commercially good, i.e. highly profitable, or financially good, i.e. able to generate considerable wealth, such as the action of attracting customers to buy a product by advertisements. Now, if the advertising purposely misleads the prospective customers to think the product has certain desirable qualities, which it actually does not, the company may still make a lot of money from sales to the duped customers. When seen strictly from the commercial point of view of profit-making,

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the action may be considered as financially the right thing to do. However, it is neither an ethically right action; nor is it legally a right action. Intentionally misleading or deceiving a customer is both illegal and unethical. So, what may be financially the right thing to do may not always be the right action from the point of view of ethics. We need to keep the distinctions in mind. In our discussion when we speak of good or bad, right or wrong, we only mean the ethical good or bad, right or wrong. Second, let us try to clarify a little what the distinctive character of ethical goodness or badness, rightness or wrongness is; as opposed to, say, being politically, or legally, right or wrong. For example, suppose that someone had a son and a daughter. Though both the children have been equally sincere and caring in executing their responsibility for the upkeep and care of their parent, suppose the parent created a will to bequeath all his property after his demise only to the son, leaving nothing for the daughter. Note that the parent’s action is not legally wrong. The parent has the legal right to leave his property to whomever he or she wants to. From a legal point view, the parent has not done anything wrong. However, we might still find the decision as wrong. We might be upset over the fact that the daughter has been unfairly deprived; that she has been discriminated against for no justifiable reason. The ethical judgment that we might endorse in this case is. It is wrong for the parent to discriminate between the children simply on the basis of the gender. We might insist that the right thing to do in this case would have been to leave each child, male or female, an equal share of the parental property. If this is how you feel about this example, I would ask you to pay attention to this judgment of wrongness. The parent’s action is being judged as wrong, but not on any legal ground, not on any political ground. We are holding the parent as doing something wrong on ethical grounds. We want to consider the parent’s action as unethical for being unjustifiably discriminatory. The daughter appears to have been unfairly treated, despite putting in equal effort and time to take care of the concerned parent. In sum, the distinct character of ethically good or bad, right or wrong comes from the value considerations which serve as the ethical grounds. Quick Question 1.2 Give your own example of an action which is (a) politically correct, but ethically wrong, (b) ethically good, but financially bad. Provide an appropriate scenario so that your answer can be understood better.

1.2 What Ethics is Not

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1.2 What Ethics is Not Often discussions and debates related to ethics are dismissed based on some misconceptions about ethics. Perhaps it is important at the outset to understand what ethics is not. Usually, in our ordinary understanding ethics appears to be a bunch of unduly restrictive, inappropriately judgmental, opinions. When asked to define what ethics is, ordinary people often make observations of the following sort: (a) Ethics is nothing but a collection of opinions, held by a certain society or by the powerful people in that society. Other than the consensus of the majority in that society, or the clout of the powerful in that society, it has no further validity. It has no theoretical foundation whatsoever to support itself. Being nothing more than opinions, which change from time to time, ethics differ from time to time. Similarly, because societies differ, ethics differs from society to society, and even from person to person, if they are from two different backgrounds. Ethics is relative and is not worthy of serious consideration as they do not hold true for everybody or for every society. Or, (b) Ethics is just someone’s (a person’s) personal beliefs and preferences without any strong foundation. Its authority can be always challenged, just as personal opinions can always be questioned. These depictions of ethics typically cast doubt on the credibility and the universality of ethical rules and values. However, each of these lay definitions of ethics is mistaken. First and foremost, it is a complete mistake to believe that ethics is just a bunch of insubstantial personal opinions. Ethics actually as a subject is a formal discipline, as will be explained in Sect. 3 of this chapter. And, like any other formal disciplines such as mathematics, or formal logic, ethics has its own set of basic principles, technical concepts, and criteria, which must be learnt properly first. Second, ethics, as we shall understand it in this book, is not a mere collection of random opinions of either one person, or of a certain society. It is a systematic discourse; and its claims are justified by elaborate argumentation with the support of established theoretical frameworks. The question, whether ethics changes from time to time, and person to person, and whether the possibility of such a change affects its validity, will be taken up separately in the Metaethics section of this book. But, let us state here clearly that, in contrast to being a random compilation of unsubstantiated opinions, ethics actually is a subject that is based on coherent set of principles with established theoretical frameworks to support its deliberations. As a subject, it tries to help us to understand the important concepts of right and wrong and also provide the theoretical justifications as to why, in what sense, some decision or action can be evaluated as right or wrong.

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1.3 Ethics as an Academic Discipline Ethics has also been defined as “…the discipline dealing with what is good and bad or right and wrong or with moral duty and obligation”.1 Box 1.2 Dictionary Definition of Ethics Definition 2. Ethics is the discipline dealing with what is good and bad or right and wrong or with moral duty and obligation. If we follow this definition of ethics, then first and foremost, ethics should be understood as a discipline. Here, discipline means a special field of study, or an academic discipline. By an academic discipline, I mean a systematically organized field of academic discourse. Ethics as an academic discipline is an established branch of knowledge, which is taught as part of higher education curriculum in the academic institutions, e.g. colleges, universities, and is researched in the academic community by the scholars at the academic organizations. If you are wondering about other examples of academic disciplines, let me remind you that philosophy and literature are examples of two academic disciplines under the Humanities stream and are taught in academia as part of the academic curriculum. Academic research in them is regularly and systematically conducted. Similarly, Physics and Chemistry are examples of two academic disciplines under the Natural Sciences stream, which are taught in academia and academic research in them is regularly and systematically undertaken. Aeronautical engineering and mechanical engineering are two academic disciplines under engineering. Similarly, ethics as an academic discipline in its own right is an academic discipline under Humanities and is taught as an academic subject in academic institutions, and regular academic research is systematically conducted in this subject. As mentioned in Definition 2 (Box 1.2), the subject matter of ethics as an academic discipline is the good or bad, right or wrong and also concepts such as duty, moral obligation, and justice. Definitions of these, and deliberations on these, constitute a considerable part of the content of ethics as an academic discipline. As an academic discipline, ethics is part of Philosophy. It is a branch of Philosophy, which is also known as moral philosophy. Though some thinkers have tried to argue that morals and ethics are somewhat different, generally speaking, currently the ethicists believe that the terms ethics and morality refer to the same; hence the terms can be used interchangeably.2 More specifically, ethics is a branch of the philosophical field of Axiology, which stands for a philosophical investigation into the values. In Greek, Axios (plural: Axia) 1

Merriam Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of English Language, 1968. Sydney Grannan. What’s the difference between morality and ethics? Encyclopedia of Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/story/whats-the-difference-between-morality-and-ethics [Accessed on April 25, 2019].

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1.4 Understanding Values

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means ‘value’; and ‘logos’ is a systematic study or discourse. Axiology thus stands for a study of values. As a branch of Axiology, ethics is also a philosophical study of value. In the section below, I shall explain what values are, what some of the other branches of Axiology are about, and which particular values constitute the subject matter of ethics. As of now, I shall end this section with the following definition of ethics: Box 1.3 Definition 3 Definition 3. Ethics is a branch of Axiology; that is, it is a kind of philosophical study of values.

1.4 Understanding Values Let us first try to understand what the term ‘value’ means in the context of Axiology and ethics. The term value may be understood in more than one ways. We may easily refer to at least two meanings, which stand sharply in contrast to each other: (a) Value as price: In this sense, the term ‘value’ refers to the cost, or the acquisition price of material things, such as a car, a house, and a laptop. In this sense, ‘value’ is the measurable worth, which is quantifiable, of an object; it is primarily numerical in nature. For example, we may say.

(i) The present value of the house is INR 40 Lakhs. In (i), by value, we mean the market price of the house. As an extension of this meaning, sometimes the value or the worth of a person is judged on the basis of the price or cost of the material things possessed by the person, e.g. (ii) As a billionaire, Dharamji is a high value customer. This is one understanding of the term value. (b) Value as desirable goals: In this second sense, the term ‘value’ stands for not a numerical quantity or the cost price of objects, but for an enduring, ultimately desirable goal or ideal. Ultimately desirable means here what is desired finally and as a lasting value, in the long term, and not a short-term fascination. For example: (iii) Honesty is a core value in every relationship.

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In (iii), by value, we do not mean the price of the relationship. Rather, we mean that honesty is a final desirable goal in every relationship. In this second sense, the term value refers to abstract and intangible, but enduring, desired end-states. Axiology and its branches such as ethics understand the term value only in the sense (b): As the desiderata, or as the desired end-states of humans. Desiderata is a Latin word in plural (desideratum is the singular). It means things that are desired; i.e. goals or ideals, that people in general ultimately want, prize, or appreciate. In this context, the desired end-states mean the desirable final outcome states of a process. For example, if you consider life as a process, then happiness is a desirable, final end-state, or a value. As said before, values in this sense are the ultimately desirable goals or goals which people strive for. They are goals that are regarded as of great worth, or of great importance. The term may also refer to character traits that people desire for and aspire for. In this sense, excellence, or brilliance, or beauty are values. We may consider excellence as an end-state, or the final outcome of a lifelong pursuit. An athlete may further specify excellence as athletic excellence as a lifetime goal. Values in this second sense are immeasurable and non-quantifiable. Examples of such values would be: Happiness, peace, goodness, excellence, well-being, brilliance, justice, beauty, and honesty. Often, the values studied by Axiology are referred to as human values. The reference to human is to assert the universality of these desired end-states. That is, human values are values that are supposed to be prized as worthpursuing goals in life by humans in general. They are deemed as goals that people in general want and to have more of them (Fig. 1.2). Different values may be preferred at different levels of our existence. For instance, there can be personal and interpersonal values. At the personal level, one may desire for values such as independence, smartness, fearlessness, prosperity, and attractiveness. The values that one may desire to find in oneself are also cherished in others, e.g. honesty, dignity, integrity, brilliance, and capability. We also talk about family values. Family is an important social institution, and we do believe that there are certain desirable values at the family level. For example, sharing and caring for each other, kinship, support, and cooperation in the family in the good times and particularly in the bad times are some of the values desired in the family. Example of values: Happiness

Excellence

Beauty

Honesty

Brilliance

Good

Integrity

Justice

Benevolence

Peace

Truth

Calmness

Fig. 1.2 Some examples of values

1.4 Understanding Values

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Fig. 1.3 Broad range of human values

Values may be also understood as social values that a specific human society as a collective may aspire for. For example, equality, equity, and justice may be some of the social values. Similarly, one may understand national values as desired end goals that a nation may strive for, e.g. peace, solidarity. In the same way, we may speak of universal values that are prized by anyone and everyone. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi advocated non-violence and truthfulness as universal values.3 In its Universal Declaration for Human Rights (1948), the United Nations proclaimed dignity, equality, and freedom from tyranny, fear, and torture as exemplars of universally cherished goals.4 Thus, values can refer to a range of desired end-states, from very personal to universal. Rescher5 puts it as follows: Sometimes “human value” is restricted to the area of personal values (of character and personality). But we take it to include not only what the individual may prize in himself and his associates, but also what he prizes in his society, his nation, his culture, his fellowmen in general, and his environment. We thus view this idea extended over a very broad domain - ranging from individual to social and universal values (Fig. 1.3).

Quick Question 1.3 (a) What would you do if in a crowded place you see a very young child, whom you do not know, standing alone and crying for mommy? What should be the socially desirable action here? Why?

3

As cited in Kinnier, R, J. L. Kernes, T. M. Dautheribes. A short list of universal moral values. In Counseling and values (45). 2000: 7. 4 Ibid. 5 Rescher, Nicholas. 1969. Introduction to Value Theory. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

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(b) How would you want a person to react if he or she sees a friend stealing a smartphone from someone else’s backpack? (c) Are the questions asked above in (a) and (b) connected to the values as desirable goals, as explained in Sect. 1.4? If yes, explain why. If not, explain why not.

1.5 Ethics, Values, and Axiology As we found out from the discussion above, there are many values and many kinds of values. Next, I shall introduce you to some branches of Axiology, each of which is a dedicated study of a particular value. Consider for example: (a) Aesthetics is a branch of Axiology which is the philosophical study of the value of beauty. (b) Jurisprudence or law, which is another branch of Axiology, is concerned with the value justice. (c) Logic, traditionally, is supposed to be the study of the value truth. Similarly, ethics is also a branch of Axiology, which is a philosophical study of the human values of ‘The Good’, ‘The Right’. Its aim is to determine and to reflect on, among other things, which actions are right to do, and what the good way to live is. Above all, ethics tries to teach us the value of the values, in particular the ‘The Good’ and ‘The Right’ in our lives. ‘The Good’ and ‘The Right’ are the two basic terms to use for evaluating our conduct as well as our lives. If some action is right, then it is ethically obligatory. On the other hand, if something is good, then it is worth to have it in one’s life. Box 1.4 Definition 4 Definition 4. Ethics as that branch of Axiology which philosophically investigates the nature of the values ‘The Good’, ‘The Right’. The philosophers, however, have shown that historically these two values have not always been treated as at par. With time, the emphasis on one has waned and has increased on the other. Based on the preference between the two values ‘The Good’ and ‘The Right’, Henry Sidgwick,6 an English philosopher, has distinguished between two distinguishable conceptions of ethics. (a) Ethics as a Study of the Good: The ancient Greeks favored the value of ‘The good’ as the fundamental value. According to them, ethics primarily 6

Sidgwick, H. 2011. First published 1874. The Methods of Ethics (Cambridge Library Collection - Philosophy). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Book I, Chapter I, Introduction.

1.5 Ethics, Values, and Axiology

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discusses and deliberates on the value ‘The good’. To them, ethics is a way to self-excellence or self-perfection in pursuit of this value. (b) Ethics as a Study of the Right: Modern thinkers have preferred the value of ‘The Right’ as more fundamental and have urged people to do the right thing as an obligation, regardless of whether we want to or not. According to them, ethics is more concerned with the value of ‘The Right’. As we are beginners in the subject, in this book I shall embrace both of these values as the core values that ethics investigates. Hence, Definition 4 (Box 1.4) captures our position in this regard. Some simple examples of behavior that are evaluated with reference to the ethical values of good and right could be. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Helping others in need is good. Not to steal is the right action. Choosing not to hurt an innocent is right. Returning a borrowed item is good. It is right to cast one’s vote. Given the water scarcity, conserving water is the right thing to do. It is good to treat other people and their choices with respect.

As a branch of Axiology, ethics is also a formal and systematic body of knowledge. Sciences, for example, are formal and systematic. They do not simply gather knowledge from observations and experiments; they further arrange the acquired knowledge to formulate a system of knowledge, which is governed by principles. Similarly, ethics considers our commonsense observations, moral intuitions, and judgments about value considerations and forms judgments, which are further arranged and organized under ethical principles. In addition, with sustained argumentation it justifies its conclusions. Point to Ponder Euthanasia is the act of termination of the life of a person, who is either terminally ill, or incurably ill, and is in a state of great pain and suffering, in order to help them a relief from the endless suffering. Usually, a doctor’s assistance is requested. In Greek, euthanasia means the ‘good’ death; that is, the death which is gentle, painless, and a happy and noble end to a ‘good’ life. In our current debates on euthanasia, however, often it is argued that euthanasia is not the ‘right’ thing to engage in by a doctor. Does this example show that the ethical values of ‘The Good’, and ‘The Right’ may not always coincide? Or, does it mean that the ‘The Good’, and ‘The Right’ allow different interpretations? Or, does it show that we did not

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fully understand what is meant ‘The Good’, and ‘The Right’ in this context? Explain your answer.

1.6 Why Study Ethics? Ethics concerns itself with the rightness or wrongness of actions, with goodness or badness in our behavior and in character, and in general wants to us to discern between good and bad. There are several important reasons why we should study ethics. First, studying ethics gives us the opportunity to reflect on the values which shape our own lives, and the lives of other people around us, and which guide our societies. If one does not study ethics, one may not get the opportunity to systematically reflect over these and to deliberate upon which of these values are better, or worse, and why. Consider for example the water issue. The Water Issue Our world at present is fraught with very large problems; and one of them is the global water crisis. The crisis is at various levels: (a) Of not having enough water for all: Though about 70% of our planet is covered with water, there is very little freshwater (only 2.5%), and only 1% of it is easily accessible. Freshwater on earth was always limited in quantity; the growth of population has created a crisis because of increasing demand on a limited resource. Clearly, there is not enough freshwater for the world’s total population of about 7 billion.7 (b) Of not having the desirable water quality: There is also concern about the quality of water that people get. Over a billion people live in the world without access to clean drinking water, and over 2.5 billion people live without proper sanitation. As a consequence, a vast population suffers from poor health and death from preventable diseases (c) Of not having proper management of water: There is also crisis in water management. Water is wasted. Almost everywhere, water consumption, instead of being controlled, has increased with urbanization and lifestyle. In agriculture, instead of being regulated, water-intensive crops and cultivation are being practiced abundantly. Rainwater harvesting is low in practice, when it should have been mandatory.

7

National Geographic. Freshwater crisis. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/fre shwater/freshwater-crisis/.

1.6 Why Study Ethics?

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You and I, we know all this. We know that water is essential for us, and that water is a finite, and is a very precious resource for us and our societies. We also know what is the right thing to do under the circumstances and what good we need to ensure. Yet, most of us miss the ethical dimension in this problem. We fail to notice, for example: (a) That there are important social and environmental values embedded in proper water management, and these are values that must not be overlooked, (b) That there are important ethical duties and responsibilities involved here: Actions that should be done, and actions that should not be done, with regard to our water consumption, (c) That there are important rights involved here, which we have no authority to violate. An important reason for such oversight is that in most cases, there is a serious lack of ethical reflection over this issue. There is an absence of reflective and normative way of looking at the problem, which one learns through exposure to ethics. Studying ethics, or introduction to the ethical discussions, improves that practice of value-based reflection, and the realization of the need to engage oneself, over issues that touch our lives. The water crisis was given above just as an example of large global problems, which have ethical dimensions. Examples of issues with ethical dimensions are plenty and all around us, and usually the untrained in ethics misses that dimension. For instance, in India, violence along the lines of caste and religion still continue. We readily see it as a social problem, but we do not see its ethical sides as clearly. Similarly, atrocities and violence against women have escalated in the country. Dishonesty and corruption have permeated practically every sphere of public life. Pollution of different kinds and lack of public hygiene have created grave perils for public health. Each of these is an example of a serious issue that we are familiar with. We may not realize, however, that each of these problems poses very important and urgent questions to us about assessing our own conduct and the statement about social values that these problems pronounce. A study in ethics helps us to appreciate the ethical aspects of an issue, without addressing which there may not be a complete resolution of a problem. A study in ethics is needed not only for doing the right thing, but also for a stable and cohesive society. Second, studying ethics enables us to discover and articulate our own values. It also provides us a training to expand our awareness about the values of the others. Both are equally important. In a democracy, it is very important to listen carefully to what others think, even when they may hold a different opinion, and to consider the views with due patience. A democracy thrives on ethically conscious dialogues among the different sections of the society. It is also important to learn about our own values. One needs that introspective power to think over and to articulate one’s

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own values. The process of asking and answering questions about value systems, of one’s own and that of the others, is what a study in ethics can teach us. At this juncture, some may still say that there is no need to study ethics, as we already learn what is right and what is wrong, either from our elders, families, or from the communities, or scriptures. They may argue that those lessons are sufficient to come up with some practical rules for life on what is right and what is wrong; e.g. one should tell the truth, one should not lie, one should not steal, and one should not kill. Hence, there is no further need for a formal study of ethics on this. There may be others, who would say that they do not have any practical rules of their own, but they decide their actions simply by emulating the others around them (e.g. the peer group, the community) on how to act and react in certain situations. They would say that they just look around and try to follow what the others are doing in similar situations. So, for them, what is right and what is wrong is simply what the others do or would do, and would avoid doing, in similar situations. The basic idea, they may say, is to conform to what the others around them are doing, or not doing. And hence, they would say, there is no need to study ethics to know what is right and what is wrong. To this, my submission is that such purely pragmatic, but untrained and untutored, approaches to what is good and what is right may not always provide a solution. Such oversimplified approach can very easily put people in a moral quandary, particularly when the situation is not very simple or usual, as is often the case in real life. For example, one may know that simple rule that one should tell the truth, learnt from the family elders, or the community. One may also have seen others to follow this in certain situations. However, suppose that for you the situation is like this: You have been just told by the doctor that your critically ill grandmother has been suddenly diagnosed with a very painful cancer and that she is at a very advanced, terminal stage. Your grandmother now asks you in private to tell her what the doctor told, what exactly has happened to her, and how long she has. She says that she trusts that you would be honest with her and not misinform her. How should you answer her query? What is the right thing to do? Should you tell the truth, following the pragmatic ethical rule of one should tell the truth? But then, what would be the effect of that harsh truth on her health? Would the truth frighten her and take away her mental strength? Or, should you rather tell her some lies to give her courage? But then, does she not deserve to know the truth about her conditions, so that she has to make the most use of her remaining days to meet the people she wants to? Or, should you tell her some half-truths, to soften the blow on her already frail condition? But then, would that not be betraying her trust in you, because she is relying on your honesty? Which one is the right thing to do in this case, and why? It is a difficult situation indeed. The so-called pragmatic rule does not seem to give you much guidance in this situation. On the other hand, if you are one of those people who always look around to follow what the others would do in such situations, chances are that you might find that instead of a solution, your problem has multiplied by looking around. For, people’s responses vary in such situations. That is, there is no

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one single answer; but there are many. For you, therefore, the question still remains as to which one among these responses is right for you, and why?  Consider another situation: Suppose someone has taken shelter in your house to save herself from a very angry and violent mob. Some of the mob are knocking on your door asking if you have seen her. What should be your answer? What is the right thing to do in that situation? Clearly, the ethical rules are not such simple things; nor are they simple to apply. Quite often, the real-life situations allow enormous diversity and complexity. The ethical dilemmas that they present are also complicated in nature. We shall see some examples of complex ethical issues in the second chapter of the book. The application of ethics or the ethical rules in such cases require not only informed awareness, but also a proper training in ethics. One needs to be trained in situation analysis to know where and when they apply and to what extent. Ethics, as a formal discipline, has its own set of technical concepts and criteria which must be learnt first before application. A training in ethics is needed before applying ethics or ethical considerations to a case in hand. Studying ethics makes us acquainted with the concepts and criteria that act as the tool box for application of ethics. Aristotle had said that being ‘virtuous’ or ethically good requires practical wisdom; i.e. a finely tuned sense of discernment of what and how much is appropriate for which situation. A study of ethics prepares us for making sensible decisions in real-life, complex moral quandaries. This is an important reason for studying ethics. There is another, a third, reason to study ethics also. Being untrained in ethics may lead one to pass unwarranted, swift judgments about the others in the name of being ‘righteous’ and ‘good’. Being untrained in ethics may lead to the misconception that ethics is the same as passing judgments superciliously.  For example, some of us may consider alcoholics and drug addicts as inherently ‘bad’ people. Similarly, some of us may even consider women who come home late as necessarily ‘bad’. On the other hand, some of us may subscribe to the view that people who worship and pray to God every day and practice all religious rituals meticulously are necessarily ‘good’ people. The problem with such quick, and unthinking, judgments is that, more often than not, they are based on unfounded biases or prejudices that may be there in us. These judgments often actually are hastily passed personal opinions and not backed up by any sustained justification. In contrast, the ethical judgments are the result of trained careful analysis and critical thinking and are supposed to be grounded in well-established theoretical positions. Let us consider the following scenario:  Suppose I tell you of an illegitimate child (parents were not married when they had him), who was given up for adoption. The child cannot handle school; school is very difficult for him. The teachers all complain that the child is an unruly one and is very difficult to teach. What would be your prediction be for such a child? Do you think he will grow up to be a very successful man and a productive contributor to the society in later life? Or, do you suppose that it is more likely that he is going to end

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up as a good-for-nothing, who often are the liabilities to the society? What about his social standing? Introspect over your answers, and ask yourself what your answer is based on. In the meantime, let me add few more facts about this child. Suppose I tell you further that the child grew up with no set purpose in life. He was smart, but had no direction. He kept on dropping out of college and pursued various kinds of activities. He started taking drugs and kept experimenting with psychedelic drugs for years. As a young man, he managed a job somehow but had constant friction with the coworkers and managers. He was generally disliked at his workplace. The troubles went to the point where he had to resign and leave his first job. What is your judgment about this young man? Does it match with what you predicted for the child? How would you describe this young man? As a ‘good’ human being? Or, as ‘no good, social misfit’, a directionless drifter, and drug addict, who is likely to end up on the wrong track of life? If you had absolute power, would you allow such a person in your house? Would you allow him as a coworker? If you find that you have negative attitude about such characters and have answered the questions above in forceful language in the negative, you have just passed a harsh judgment on Steve Jobs, the legendary inventor, designer, and entrepreneur, who was also the founder and the CEO of Apple Computers. What lesson is to be learnt from the above? Well, one of the lessons is that we tend to make quick judgments based on conditioned and very subjective views of what is right and proper, and we think that by doing so we are actually meting out ethical judgments. The problem here is the tendency to make unthinking decisions on face-value. However, ethical judgments are not be passed on face-value; i.e. on the basis of what appears to be the case without thinking much about it. The hastiness in our judgment may come from some preconceived notions that we may have, or from some untested biases or prejudices. For example, we may have some long-held resentment towards the ‘drifters’; that is, towards people who are directionless in their lives and are not successful, and are social liabilities, as they keep on chasing different goals one after the other. And that resentment may trigger a quick judgment in cases such as this that the person in question is ‘up to no good’ at all. Or, one might have prejudice against drug-takers in general, considering them all as selfdisciplineless addicts, who are unfit to deserve any social sympathy. A similar bias could be towards the illegitimate children, as if they are to be blamed for their parents’ doing. Such latent or overt biases and prejudices in us often play a major role in our hurried judgments about the others. But that is not what ethics is. Ethical judgments are supposed to be an outcome of reflection and discernment and not an outburst of frenzied impulse or blind prejudice. A study in ethics is needed for acquiring that skill of reflection and discernment in our judgments. The discussion above shows why studying ethics is required. In particular, the modern ethical issues of our time, such as major corruption scams, the environmental abuses out of greed, the human rights violations, and the political manipulation of the countries, are enormously complex ethical issues. They deserve well-thought-out judgments based on conscientious investigation of the relevant facts and weighing the diverse standpoints on the same issue. They require a reflective and critical approach

1.7 Ethos and Ethics

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before an evaluative comment can be made about them. A study in ethics provides us an opportunity to learn that approach. Quick Question 1.4 You are a public administrator, and you have received a complaint from an important local leader, who belongs to a religious community which is a minority in this area but a majority in the country, that a large religious procession, causing roadblocks, will be taken out by another religious community, which is a majority in the area but a minority in the country, on the same day which is religiously very auspicious to the leader’s community. You have done your own investigation and found out that the claim is correct. How should you handle this sensitive matter? Can study of ethics be of any help here?

1.7 Ethos and Ethics Etymologically, that is, if we go by the root of the word ‘ethics’, the word is linked to the Greek word ethos. Ethos forms the root of the Greek word Etikos, from which the English word Ethics has emerged via Latin word Ethicus. The two words, ethos and ethics, are thus linked through their linguistic root. They also share conceptual linkages. Ethos means the basic, distinctive character, or the collection of the dispositions, attitudes, beliefs, and the values of a person. For example, you may talk about the ethos of Chhatrapati Shivaji. Ethos also may be applied when describing the distinctive character or the values of a society, or of a community of people (ethn¯e), or even of an era. When we speak of Indian ethos, we refer to the distinctive spirit and character of India which identify it as a nation. In this sense, ethos defines a certain way the people are, their way of life. Or, when we refer to the renaissance ethos, we mean the basic beliefs, values, and practices that identify the renaissance period in history. Ethics, on the other hand, evaluates human behavior. It presupposes a personal ethos, as well as the ethos of the society to which the person belongs. For, our behavior and outlook depend on the attitudes, beliefs, and values that constitute who we are as a person and that we imbibe from the society around us. Ethos, as explained above, refers to the basic character, attitudes, and values of a specific person, or culture, or society. By understanding the ethos of a person, we can try to understand the actions of a person, the rules that the person follows, and the value judgments that the person makes. However, ethics is not just an ethos. It goes beyond an ethos to reflect over our attitudes, beliefs, and values. As a reflective investigation, it may critically question or justify the beliefs and practices in our ethos. Ethics can demand us to rise above the ethos of our own culture or community. Ethics is thus not defined by any one

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particular ethos. Thus, though ‘ethics’ is derived from ethos, they are not synonyms. Personal ethos may be an expression of personal ethics; but they are not the same.

1.8 Normative and Descriptive I have said that ethics studies actions, or decisions, or behavior, or policies, of an individual or of a group. However, you might ask, there are so many other disciplines which also study behavior of an individual or groups, e.g. psychology and sociology. How is ethics any different from those studies? In answer, we may say that ethics is different, because its approach is different from the studies mentioned. Unlike the studies mentioned, ethics is a normative study of human behavior. The ‘norm’ in the normative refers to rules or standards. Normative thus means that which is related to a norm or a standard. A normative study of behavior, therefore, is a study which assesses, or evaluates, behavior with reference to certain norms and passes judgment on the behavior in terms of conformity with the norms, or deviation from the norms. Ethics is a normative study of behavior; for, it evaluates human behavior as right or wrong with reference to the ethical norms of rightness or wrongness. It passes value judgments about behavior by checking its conformity with the said norms. Though some philosophers may disagree, most of them would consider ethical judgments as normative. Box 1.5 Definition 5 Definition 5. Ethics is a normative/prescriptive study of behavior of individual or individuals. In contrast, descriptive studies of behavior primarily describe the observed behavior. For example, anthropology may try to understand the marriage customs of a certain tribe. For that, anthropologists would observe and record the customs as they are. When reporting, they would try to describe the customs as they have observed. They may add their own comments, but primarily they would try to describe. Psychology describes what being in a certain mental state, e.g. being in stress, is about. It also describes how people behave. Descriptive studies primarily describe the observed facts; they try to capture what actually is observed. They do not try to assess and pass a judgment on the behavior described. However, this is precisely what a normative study of behavior does. Their primary function is to evaluate and judge a behavior. In simpler terms, the difference between descriptive and normative studies is that of the approach. If you are asked to describe:

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“What are the food items on your plate?” Your complete answer would be a descriptive one, comprising a full description of the items on your plate. However, if you are asked: “What should be the food items on your plate?” Your answer would be quite different. Because, you will then try to pick up the desirable food items of your choice, which may or may not be present in your plate now. And you will judge your current plate in terms of the idea of a ‘plate full of desirable food’, and if none of the current food items matches with your benchmarking ‘plate full of desirable food’, you may express your dislike and disapproval of the current plate. That is the normative stance. In addition to the observation, it adds evaluative considerations. The language of description, ideally speaking, is factual and non-judgmental. For example: Box 1.6 Examples of statements in descriptive language (a) Monday is the first working day in the week. (b) New Delhi is the capital of India. (c) Ants are social insects. Note that each of the statement (a)–(c) is factual and a statement of an observed fact. Note that the verb ‘is/are’ is more suitable to describe what and how things are. The normative language, on the other hand, is judgmental. It prescribes; that is, it passes value judgments about the facts observed in a situation. It prescribes or stipulates what should be the case or what should not be the case. Box 1.7 Definition of normative and examples Normative or prescriptive: Related to some norm or standard. Judgmental. Evaluative. (d) One should not steal. (e) Rina should take care of her ailing parents. (f) Promises made ought to be kept Example of prescriptive statements:

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Normative ethics typically uses the evaluative verbs such as ‘should’, ‘should not’, ‘ought to’, ‘ought not to’, as may be seen in (d), (e), (f). The normative language also uses expressions such as ‘unethical’ and ‘ethically acceptable’. It is important to learn the language of normative ethics and use it in the ethical deliberations. Note that sometimes people may also use descriptive language to express valueladen normative considerations. Consider for example: (g) Torturing an innocent is bad. The verb ‘is’ in (g) appears to be a statement of a fact in a descriptive manner. However, the presence of the word ‘bad’ shows that it is not just a statement of fact, but is a value-laden judgment. It actually evaluates torturing an innocent as a wrong behavior. The tone of the statement is ethical. When closely examined, it actually may translate as. (h) One should not torture an innocent. Or, (h’) It is unethical to torture an innocent. So, though in general the language of normative ethics is prescriptive, we need to be aware of the fact that the people may express their normative ethical considerations sometimes in the guise of seemingly descriptive expressions. To sum up, normative ethics is a normative or prescriptive study of behavior which prescribes or stipulates what should be done or what should not be done and evaluates the studied behavior in light of that prescription. It uses a special normative language. Is and Ought I shall end this section by highlighting that the ‘descriptive-prescriptive’, or the ‘isought’ distinction is not simply a linguistic distinction. There is a big conceptual distinction also between them. Philosopher David Hume had famously opined that ought is not derivable from is. Many try to claim what ‘ought’ to be, from claims about what ‘is’ is. For example, many systems try to claim what people should do, based on what they actually do. Hume cautioned that no ‘ought’ or ‘should’ statement can be correctly derived from a set of premises which are ‘is’ statements, i.e. purely factual, descriptive statements. The normative ‘ought’ is not correctly derivable from the ‘is’. This is popularly known as Hume’s Law. Just because people cheat in the exams, or steal from the others, it does not logically follow that they should. However, people

1.9 Three Main Divisions in Ethics: Normative Ethics, Metaethics …

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do make this mistake of making such derivation. It is a logical fallacy that should be avoided. This is known as the ‘is-ought’ problem in philosophy. Quick Question 1.5 You are part of a team of student researchers in a research laboratory. Your team is preparing a research paper for publication in a prestigious journal. However, you have come to know that some of your team members have fabricated the research data; that is, instead of reporting the actual findings from the study, they have falsely reported “dressed up” data which may seem far more interesting than the actual data. You realize that if the laboratory head and the reviewers of the journal start questioning about the data, the entire team would be blamed for false reporting. (a) If you are asked to describe the situation, how would you describe it? (b) If you are asked to comment and judge the situation normatively, what would be the changes in language and in your comment?

1.9 Three Main Divisions in Ethics: Normative Ethics, Metaethics, and Applied Ethics There are three main divisions within the subject of ethics. They are as follows: 1. Normative ethics 2. Metaethics 3. Applied ethics As explained in the preceding section, the term ‘normative’ refers to the use of ‘norms’ or ‘rules’, or ‘standards’. So, normative ethics is that ethics which sets norms or standards for human conduct. It has many theories to explain what constitutes the ethical rightness or wrongness of an action and why certain actions are ethically ‘right ‘or ‘wrong’. It examines the actions or decisions in light of the normative theories and passes judgment. Based on how far the behavior in question conforms to or deviates from the set standards, normative ethics evaluates actions, or decisions, or behavior of an individual or individuals as ‘right’, ‘wrong’, ‘good’, or ‘bad. It has been one of the traditional components of ethics. Metaethics, on the other hand, is that part of ethics which critically examines the foundational concepts and criteria of ethics and the presuppositions of ethics. Metaethics explores the very presuppositions of ethics. For example, while normative ethics passes ethical judgments, such as ‘x is not ethically acceptable’, metaethics investigates the nature of ethical judgments themselves and deliberates on questions such as:

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• Do ethical judgments express some truths or facts? • What is the nature of ethical judgments? Do they express normative considerations, or do they merely express our feelings, emotions, and preferences about certain kind of behavior? Note also that these questions about normative ethics cannot be answered within normative ethics while doing normative ethics. The questions about normative ethics, its origin and validity, and scope belong to a higher level about the entire study called ethics. These higher level questions are what we call ‘meta’ level questions. Meta means after or beyond. Metaethics means deliberations that are ‘after’ or ‘ beyond’ ethics. The above-mentioned questions about the ethical norms of normative ethics, about their nature, origin, validity, and scope, are investigated and answered in metaethics, as an area of ethics. To sum up, metaethics is that branch of ethics, which interrogates and investigates the presuppositions, the criteria, and the concepts that normative ethics utilizes. It also is concerned with the connection between the values, and human motivation, asking how ethical standards can motivate us into doing, or discourage us from doing, what they bid us to do. Applied ethics, on the other hand, is that branch of ethics which borrows the analysis and justification of ethical rules and considerations from normative ethics and applies them to practical life. Its application domain is specific; i.e. it applies the ethical norms and considerations to a particular issue or a practice. The issue may be personal, e.g. should I tell my parents that the company may fire many people, and that I may lose my job? It is a problem, in which the person seeks counsel for the right or the ethical choice. Or, it could be a public issue, such as, the duty of us as citizens when fellow members of the society are going hungry. Or, the duty of a society when a member of the society, distraught and desperate with unbearable and incurable pain, asks for euthanasia, or mercy killing. Applied ethics also appraises and recommends ethically proper action vis-à-vis the specific issue. Applied ethics can also be about specialized issues in specific fields. In fact, since the 1960s, applied ethics has gained a lot of support and public interest as specialized fields have opened up the scope of ethical debates on issues specific to those fields. Figure 1.4 gives us some idea about these specialized branches, but it is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all the branches. Environmental ethics extends ethical considerations to cover the relationship between humans and natural environment. It raises the question how humans should behave with the rest of the natural environment and tries to answer by invoking the ethical duties of humans towards the environment; such as, biodiversity conservation, protection, and preservation of the natural environment; and the environmental rights that the other species and elements in the ecosystem have over the natural environment. Business ethics is a normative study of the behavior of business owners, managers, employees, and other relevant groups. It specifically examines the ethical issues that rise in relation to various functional areas of business, e.g. in marketing management, and prescribes practical solutions to corporations towards being more ethically responsible. Legal

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Fig. 1.4 Some examples of various branches of applied ethics

Ethics is concerned with ensuring that the laws formulated are fair, and that they are able to mete out justice. Medical Ethics, on the other hand, is concerned with ethical issues that arise from the medical practice; e.g. how should a physician behave with a patient, respecting the choices of a patient. In this book, an overview of all three divisions of ethics will be attempted. Some representative samples of concepts and theories from each division will be discussed to acquaint the reader with the subject.

1.10 Free Will and Ethics Before closing the first introductory chapter, I need to introduce you to the issue of role of free will in ethics. You may have noted that throughout in the discussions above about ethics, the reference has been exclusively to human behavior. For example, in Sect. 1.7, it is said that ethics evaluates human behavior. In earlier sections, there are references to human values, or a presumed context of communities of people, i.e. humans. That is so, because traditionally, ethics is meant to apply only to human behavior. It is supposed to be a normative study on human conduct: about what humans should do and should not do. But why is ethics only confined to the behavior of the humans? Philosophically, the answer that emerges strongly is that only such actions come under the ambit of ethics, which can be meaningfully considered as deserving ethical credit or the blame. And these are the freely willed actions. Freely willed actions mean those actions which the agent has chosen to do out of free will. In his Nicomachean ethics (Book III), Aristotle stated that we, the humans as rational agents, have the power to do or not to do something and that we can exercise our voluntary choice in that. The choice can be traced back to us, and we are conscious about making that choice and to own up the deed. Following that tradition, we may understand free-willed actions as those actions over which (a) the agent has control and (b) has chosen to do without any external

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coercion, or pressure, when the agent had other possible choices. Free will is thus an indicator of control, freedom, and self-determination. In addition to Aristotle, many other most important figures in western philosophy, such as Plato, Augustine, and Descartes, also have significantly contributed to the discussion of free will in the context of ethics. Among them, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) stands out with his distinctive doctrine that our will must be free, or autonomous, in order to choose what is right over what is wrong.8 Human autonomy, or free will, is a central idea in Kant’s philosophy, in particular in his ethics. Thomas Reid (1710–1796) also has lent strong support for free will. Free will has thus been understood traditionally as a kind of power to control one’s choices and actions. The concept of free will traditionally has deep links with ethics. It is a crucial criterion for pinning moral accountability or ethical responsibility for an action. If a person does something, but not out of his own free will, or in other words, if the person is forced to behave in a certain way, or had no choice but to act in a certain way, we cannot hold the person morally accountable for the action. It is a necessary condition for ethical evaluation of one’s behavior. In Kant’s view, the ethical appraisal of one’s action presupposes that the person had a choice to do otherwise. His example is that of a thief. In Kant’s view, in order to assess the action of the thief as wrong, we must presuppose that the thief had a choice, that it was within the thief’s power not to commit the theft at that time. Otherwise, the thief’s action, even if it is stealing, cannot be ethically appraised. Other scenarios also will help to understand. Suppose that a terrorist holds a person X at gun point and instructs him to batter his friend Y with a club. The action of beating, if carried out, might hurt and seriously injure Y; but X, who would execute this action while being held at gun point, cannot really be held fully ethically responsible for the beating and the subsequent hurt and injury done to Y. For, though the action would be done by X’s hands, the action would be done under severe external coercion, and it would not be an action borne out of free choice by X. Thus, X’s action cannot be ethically appraised as blameworthy or wrong. Similarly, if X simply carries out a good deed, e.g. distributes textbooks for the school students in an underprivileged area, on the order from X’s boss. Though the deed is done by X, X does not deserve to be praised for X’s action. For, X simply executed the orders which came from a different source; it was not X’s free choice. As said above, in this sense, free will may be considered as the necessary precondition for moral responsibility. We can hold a person morally responsible for an action only if the person freely chose to do it. Consider also a situation where an action is done purely accidentally, that is, without any conscious intention. For these also, the person cannot be held as fully responsible for it. For example, the key difference between pre-meditated murder and accidentally caused homicide is that in the former, there is the presence of a criminal intention (mens rea). The murderer had intended to carry out the killing and has planned the killing before committing it, and chose to commit the murder. This establishes the agent’s intention, the conscious choice behind the killing; hence, he 8

Immanuel Kant. Groundwork of Metaphysics of Morals, Sect. 2.

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deserves to be held responsible for the murder. An accidentally caused homicide, on the other hand, is an unfortunate loss of life. It is true that a person is dead and that another person has contributed to the death; however, the second person is not considered as the ‘killer’. For, the person never intended or willed to take the life of the other person. It was not what one might call a ‘freely chosen’ course of action. Death happened by an inadvertent series of events. In that case, the ethical judgment ‘she should not have committed the murder’, or ‘he should be blamed for the murder’ would not make much sense. Same is true about an accidentally caused good act. Suppose that you are sitting on a bench in a park and reading a newspaper. You are not even aware who is sitting next to you on the bench.

As you spread your arms to open a new page on the paper, your right elbow accidentally touches something, and from your right side you hear someone saying ‘Thank you’. You did not know, but on your right a blind person was sitting next to you on the same bench. As you were opening the new page of the newspaper, she was about to get up and was searching for her stick with her left hand. Your right elbow, when it moved, helped to move the walking stick, which was lying between her and you, towards her hand. She thought you have handed her the stick seeing her condition and so she thanked you. Do you deserve this ‘thank you’? Can we say that you did the right thing? The answer is: No. For, there was no conscious intention on your part to help her; you did not choose to be kind to a visually challenged person. Traditionally, it was believed that humans alone have this unique power to control their choices and actions. In other words, it was held that humans alone had the capacity to have a free will. There was encouragement for this view from religious sources. Many religions upheld the belief that God has given the humans alone the gift of free will as a privilege, which the mankind can use for good or for bad. It is the responsibility of a person whether or not she uses her free will ethically to choose to embrace the virtuous actions, or to choose to commit the sins. Hence, ethics traditionally has been meant to apply only to human conduct, as humans alone had the free will to make choices and to act according to their choices. From the discussion above, it should be evident that the concept of free will is quite significant for ethics. However, the reality of free will has not been free of controversy in philosophy. In fact, free will vs determinism is one of the famous and major debates in philosophy. A brief overview of that debate is presented below. Determinism, in general, stands for the position that all events that happen in the world are the result of some previous event or events. The events happen only because of some pre-existing conditions and are thus completely determined by these

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conditions. Everything that happens in the world is thus predetermined, or effects of prior events. This includes the human actions too. This view of the world has far-reaching implications. In particular, it has serious implications for ethics. For, determinism and its deterministic chain of events have no room for freedom of will. If the strongest version of determinism is true, then whatever happens is bound to happen because of pre-existing events. In that case, choice, free will, or claims of ‘someone could have done otherwise’, all become mere illusion. There are various versions of deterministic theories. For example, those holding the position of physical or causal determinism have argued that every event that occurs, including human behavior, is physically or causally determined by a causal nexus of other physical events. Similarly, those who believe in biological determinism have argued that pre-existing biological factors control our actions, decisions, and even our desires. They claim that there is growing evidence that genes determine our behavior and our tendencies. Many theologians have argued for a theological determinism; namely, that only God’s will prevails in this world and that every event that happens is completely determined by it. Nothing can happen if it is not God’s will, and no one else has any power to control their choices and actions in ways other than what God has willed. So, there is no chance for an event to be otherwise. Hence, there is no free will. How can contingency and free fit in a world governed by God who must choose the best possible world to create? The Principle of Sufficient Reason, i.e. the idea that every event must have a reason or cause, was a fundamental feature of the metaphysics of Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz, in which God featured very prominently. However, the believers in free will have not given up their position. Some have argued that quantum mechanics has shown the causal, deterministic structure of reality is doubtful at the very basic level of physics.9 Thus, causal determinism or physical determinism cannot be true. Others, as believers in free will, have tried to show that determinism of any kind is not a feasible or a defensible position. Many philosophers have tried to argue that certain versions of determinism are compatible to free will. Their position is known as the compatibilist position. A detailed discussion of all the philosophical arguments in favor and against free will would take us too far away from the objective of this textbook. So, the discussion has to be stopped somewhat abruptly. The upshot is that the philosophical concept of free will or free choice has been at the center of a long-standing and hot debate for centuries. Since our goal is to know more about ethics, we may presume that we have free choice and continue ahead. This presumption becomes interestingly important in understanding and appraising the behavior of people in a social or communitarian context. A person who lives in a cave all by himself or herself can act as he or she wishes. We can at most assess the person’s behavior from the outside in terms of 9

See for example, Balaguer, M. 2010. Free Will as an Open Scientific Problem, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Roskies, Adina, 2014. “Can Neuroscience Resolve Issues about Free Will?” in Moral Psychology(Volume 4: Free Will and Moral Responsibility), ed. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 103–26.

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what we may presume as the motives. However, we do not get to see the interplay of the person’s choices and actions with the choices and actions of the others, as we would in a social setting. In the social setting, interestingly we get to see what other choices the person could have opted for. For example, if asked: “How far should you spread your arms?”, the cave dweller, who lives alone, is likely to answer: “As far as I want to”, or “As far as my arms can go”. There is nothing, or no one else, there to think about, whereas compare the situation in a society or community, where there are many people with diverse, and often conflicting, choices of actions. There a person’s individual choices can affect others and their choices and can be affected by others and their choices of actions. Consideration for the others, value concerns for living in a community, may obligate a person to accept certain restraints on personal choices and actions. For example, think of traveling in an overcrowded bus or train, and let us pose the earlier question in this background to the passengers: “How far should you stretch your arms?” The answer here is likely to be quite different from the answer of the cave dweller recluse. Some might retort back: “Where is the space to stretch the arms? There is hardly enough space to stand”. However, the actual answer is: “I should not try to stretch my arms, as it would cause trouble for the other passengers.”, or “ I should stretch my arms only as far as it does not cause any discomfort to the other passengers”. Note that it is not that the passengers in a crowded bus or train have suddenly lost their free choices, or that suddenly their arms have lost the ability to spread fully. Rather, the freedom of their choice to spread it is now curbed by their own free will in consideration for the free choices of the other passengers. There is the realization that to exercise one’s own free choice to spread the arms fully would clash with other passengers’ rights to occupied space in that overcrowded bus. Thus, in a civilized society, the ethically aware answer to the question posed above would be: “I should spread my arms as far as the others would allow”. This voluntarily imposed self-restraint shows a deliberate choice, which is what ethics is interested in. So, in the context of a community, where there are others have rights, and equal capability to make free choices, our free choices of actions gain an ethical significance. A normative judgment on human behavior in a community or social set-up is far more interesting and complex. Quick Question 1.6 What do the following claims show: Some form of determinism, or free will? Explain. (a) We are not responsible for our bad conduct; our upbringing is. (b) In a fair society, people are free to make their own decisions. (c) I am able to override the genetic and social factors which may occasionally regulate my behavior. (d) Criminals should not be punished, as their behavior is the product of their social conditioning.

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1.11 Chapter Summary In this chapter, ethics has been introduced with some preliminary definitions to highlight different facets of ethics. Its focus on the values The Good and The Right, and its concern with human behavior, has been explained. It has been pointed out that though there are many kinds of good and right, the ethical good and right are distinguishably different. Similarly, it has been argued that contrary to popular belief, ethics is not merely a collection on unsupported opinions of a person. In particular, the study of ethics has been introduced as an academic discipline and as a normative discourse on human behavior. The position of ethics as a branch of Axiology has been elaborated through a detailed discussion on values and on how ethics understands values. A classification of values has been explained to illustrate the plurality of values. Then, separately, the values which ethics focuses on have been discussed. This chapter also addresses a frequently asked question, why study ethics. It also explains the difference between the descriptive and the normative, to highlight the normative nature of ethics. The philosophical is-ought problem is discussed to exhibit the implications of obfuscation between the descriptive and the normative. The closely associated concept of ethos is discussed, to show its link with ethics, and yet to argue how they are not the same. The chapter acquaints the reader with the three major divisions within ethics: It ends with a much-discussed relation between ethics and the philosophical concept of free will and the famous debate between determinism and free will. The remainder of the introductory points will be discussed in the next chapter.

Study Questions 1. What are the characteristics, which sets ethics apart from other studies of behavior? 2. What is Axiology? How is ethics different from the other axiological studies? 3. For each of the following, answer (a) if it is ethically ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, and (b) in each case briefly but persuasively justify your answer. 3.1. To post a rumor on a campus gossip site about a classmate 3.2 To not share with your other friends what one of your friends has told you confidentially 3.3. To help your friend to secure a government contract, when there are three equally eligible claimants, including your friend, for awarding the contract, and you are part of the team which awards the contract. 3.4. To sustain drug habits by selling drugs to others. 3.5. To lie to your employer to protect a fellow colleague who you know is engaged in embezzlement of company funds. 4. For each of the 3.1.-3.5, identify the value(s) which is upheld, or compromised, or in conflict, as may be applicable, in these cases.

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5. Some say that ethics becomes “inescapable” as we, the humans, are social beings, and that we live in relationship with the other human beings, and with the nature. In your opinion, is this a good reason to study ethics? Justify your answer. 6. What are the three major divisions within ethics? What is the difference between normative ethics and metaethics? Where would professional ethics belong among these divisions? 7. How does ethos differ from ethics? Why is it said that ethics presupposes an ethos? 8. Is free will required as a necessary condition for holding someone morally responsible for an action? Explain.

Research Exercises 1. Read the leading newspapers (at least 3) of your choice for the past 2 days. List the news items (at least 3) that you think come within the purview of ethics by invoking some considerations about right, or wrong, good or bad. 2. Are these cases on your list also legally right, or wrong? If yes, explain how and where do you make the distinction between the legal and the ethical? If no, go to the next question. 3. Find out who you hold as the agent or the doer in these cases. Do you believe that the agent (s) had a choice to do otherwise? 4. Can values be deduced from the facts? Can ‘should’ statements be derived from ‘is’ statements?

Case Study Discussion Ethics Case to Discuss 1.1 Voting Machine Company BigApple has developed the software for a computerized voting machine. Company Manumen, which manufactured the machine, has persuaded the administration of several cities and states to purchase it. On the strength of these orders, Manumen is planning a major purchase from BigApple. BigApple software engineer Sweta was visiting Manumen one day and she came to know that due to problems in the manufacturing of the machine one out of every fifteen machines is likely to miscount soon after installation.

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Sweta reports it to her superior, who informs her that that is Manumen’s problem and that she should not bother. 1. Is there any action, or a decision, in this story that can be judged as right or wrong? Explain. 2. If answered yes to 1, what kind of right or wrong is in question in this case? Is it ethically right or wrong? Explain. 3. If you were in this situation, how would you handle it? Do nothing? Or, ask your Supervisor to consider the long-term implications of association with Manumen for BigApple? Or, would you react in some other way? 4. Does the fact that, only one of, and not all, fifteen machines is likely to develop a counting error problem, affect the assessment of rightness or wrongness in this case? If yes, explain why. If not, explain why.

Key Terms • Academic discipline: A systematically organized field of academic discourse. • Axiology: A philosophical study of the values. • Determinism: The position that all events that happen in the world happen only because of some pre-existing conditions and are thus completely determined by these conditions. • Desiderata: Things that are desired, goals or objectives. • Ethos: The basic, distinctive character, or the collection of the dispositions, attitudes, and beliefs. • Free will: Traditionally, free will is understood as a kind of power to control one’s choices and actions, as a capacity to choose and to do otherwise • Free-willed actions: Those actions over which (a) the agent has control and (b) has chosen to do without any external coercion, or pressure, when the agent had other possible choices. ‘Is-ought’ problem: No ‘ought’ or ‘should’ statement can be correctly derived from a set of premises which are ‘is’ statements, i.e. purely factual and descriptive statements. When people do this, the ‘is-ought’ problem occurs as a logical fallacy. • Metaethics: That part of ethics which critically examines the foundational concepts and criteria of ethics and the concepts and presuppositions that normative ethics utilizes. • Normative: That which is related to a norm or a standard. • Normative ethics: That part of ethics which deliberates upon the norms or standards for human conduct. • Value: In the context of ethics, it is understood as abstract and intangible, but enduring, ultimate desired end-states. It is immeasurable and non-quantifiable.

Chapter 2

A Few More Introductory Points

Chapter Overview This chapter takes up the remaining introductory questions, which were not discussed in Chap. 1, but are important to get acquainted with ethics as a subject. There are also introductory tips for the beginners on how to engage with the subject. In this chapter, you will get to learn about: ✓ What we may reasonably expect from a study of ethics ✓ What value identification is ✓ What value clarification is ✓ How to identify an ethical issue ✓ Why we perceive some ethical issues as more intense than the others ✓ Why ethical issues are different ✓ What dilemmas are, and how to resolve ethical dilemmas ✓ Example of a socially relevant complex ethical issue: Ethics of human organ transplantation Main Topics in this Chapter Expectations from a study of ethics Value identification Learning to identify ‘hidden’ ethical values Value clarification How to identify an ethical issue? Why we perceive some issues as ethically more intense Special characteristics of ethical issues Ethical dilemmas and how to resolve them A complex ethical issue, and how it has been addressed © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 C. Chakraborti, Introduction to Ethics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-0707-6_2

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Key Terms • • • • • • •

Values Value clarification Value identification Ethical issue identification Special characteristics of ethical issues Moral intensity Human organ transplantation

2.1 What May We Reasonably Expect from Ethics? What can we reasonably expect from studying ethics? How exactly can ethics help us? These are legitimate questions. In this section, we discuss some of the answers available in the academic literature to these questions.

2.1.1 Action Guidance One of the conventionally available answers is that ethics is supposed to give us action guidance. It is supposed to show us the way and to assist us in choosing which action to perform and which one not to perform. For, most of us would like to do the ‘right thing’. On this view, the role of ethics is that of a wise counselor. Aristotle had said that the goal of ethics is practical. That is, ethics is supposed to help us in practical situations in our choice of practices or actions. When facing the forked pathways in life, we expect that ethics would help us to find the answer to the following question: What should I do? This question may be asked from a very personal point of view about a very personal issue. For example: Example 1 Should I accept a high-paid job offer in another country and be away from my ailing parents, or should I accept a modestly paid job offer close to home?

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Or, it could be asked about a wider, social issue. Consider that there is a widely relevant social cause, and there is a wide call, for everyone in the society to engage in social activism to support the cause. Imagine that the situation is similar to Gandhiji’s ‘Do or die’ call for Quit India Movement. Since joining social movements and activism usually means a big adjustment in career and personal goals, someone may ask: Example 2 What should I do? Should I give up my studies, or my career, to join the movement? or, should I ignore the call, and concentrate only on my own studies and career? In example 2, the answer may be a personal one, the should is an ethical should, and the issue is not a personal issue. The society as a collective also can seek action guidance from ethics. For instance, when violence against women in a country keeps on escalating nationwide, despite the stronger law, the stricter punishment, and all other efforts, a society may helplessly ask: Example 3 What should we do as a society? To conclude, in this section, we learnt that in some opinion, we may reasonably expect ethics to provide action guidance. Quick Question 2.1 A compass helps us find the right direction when we want to know. The expectation of practical assistance of action guidance from ethics shows that we expect ethics to act like a moral compass. (a) What do you suppose makes us fundamentally unsure about our choices? Is it the uncertainty of not knowing what consequence our choice may bring? Or, is it something else? (b) A compass can only point at the right direction, but cannot compel one to go in that direction. Can ethics, as a moral compass, do anything more than just pointing at the right course of action? Should it do something more? Justify your answer.

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2.1.2 Imparting an Ethical Decision-Making Skill We may also expect that studying ethics would instill in us a decision-making skill with due ethical concerns. After all, ethics is not supposed to be an oracle1 with a ready-made answer for us in every situation. Treating ethics as a sort of omniscient oracle with readymade answers for all possible situations is likely to only the pave the way to subsequent disappointment. Perhaps the story of King of Lydia would help us to understand this point better. When faced with a war with the Persians, Croesus, the famously rich King of Lydia, went to the oracle of Delphi (see footnote 1) seeking advice. The oracle stated that if Croesus went to war, a great empire would fall. Croesus, in his over-confidence, interpreted the prophecy to mean that if he goes to war, the empire of the Persian king would fall. Actually, however, the Lydian army was badly defeated by the mighty Persian king Cyrus, and it was the Lydian empire which fell. There is a big lesson here. Blind reliance on generic advice, e.g. from the oracle, can cloud our judgment, and the guidance could be easily misinterpreted by the unwise, or by the over-confident agents. The outcome is an unpleasant state of dismay. A similar fate awaits us if we expect the counsel of ethics to be a prophecy of some sort. So, a more sensible expectation from ethics would be that it would impart a certain kind of thinking skill, an ethical decision-making skill, to empower us to make able, ethical decisions by ourselves. For that, we may also reasonably expect ethics to equip us with knowledge, concepts, and principles as tools for making ethical decisions on our own. By ethical decisions, we mean decisions that are ethically sensitive, informed, and are in accordance to the ethical principles. Having said that, let us also add that a formal education of ethics is not the only way to acquire this ethical decision-making skill. It is also possible to acquire by other experiential learning processes, e.g. participation in various complex, social situations. Still, a formal education in ethics helps to sensitize us further and to enrich our reflective life further by empowering us with ethical discernment and sensitivity, knowledge of values, and moral reasoning.

2.1.3 Self-Improvement and a Life Plan There is also the view that a study of ethics is expected to help us in our overall life plan: How should we live? This is a very different question from the earlier question: What should I do? Here, the expectation from ethics is not simply an advice about 1

In Greek mythology, the oracles are seers. They can make prophecies about the future, from which the people inferred the right course of action. The famous oracle was the oracle of Delphi in Greece. Around 1400 BCE, the oracle of Delphi was a most important sacred place. In the temple of Apollo in Delphi, the Priestess Pythia would act as the oracle, a seer, answering questions that visitors would put to her. The questions were mostly about future actions. The oracle would make pronouncements. The visitors included Kings, curious to know their future.

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what to do in this or that particular situation. Rather, the expectation is for an action plan for the entire life: a life plan. The main question here is: How should one live one’s life? This is the view which many ancient Greek philosophers have endorsed. For them, a good life was an ultimate goal, a highest good. Achieving the good life was a life-long pursuit, and they viewed ethics as a way, the only way, to attain that goal. Plato, in his later dialogues,2 maintains that the highest goal of ethics and ethical conduct is happiness or well-being (Eudaimonia), and virtues or moral excellences in oneself are the requisite skills and dispositions to attain such a life. That is, one should live a virtuous life to attain a good life. Ethics is expected to guide us throughout life to attain this good life. In his Republic, Plato has also claimed that the ethically good person enjoys a better life, because he enjoys an inner harmony. The ethically crooked person, no matter how wealthy and powerful he may be, does not have a good life, as he lives a life of disharmony. The good life, therefore, is that of inner harmony, and being ethically good leads us to attain the harmony. On a similar note, in his Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle advocated the idea that contrary to popular opinion, the highest goal of all human actions and life is not acquisition of material wealth, or possession of power and honor, or satisfaction of bodily pleasures. He argues that all these goals are deficient in some way or other. For example, material wealth is desired, not for its own sake, but for acquiring something else. According to Aristotle, a good life for a human being is one which is full of virtues or excellence. One needs intellectual virtues, because humans, after all, have the power of reason. In addition, a person who lives a good life must also be someone who acts rightly and has character virtues. Character virtues are excellences of character, which serve the bedrock from which the disposition to act rightly comes. Ethics inculcates in us the practical wisdom needed for character building, by inculcating character virtues in us, and following the path of virtues to a good life. The good life, or a life of excellence, in Aristotle’s view is thus a combination of the intellectual virtues with the character virtues. Aristotle envisaged the good life as a life of Eudaimonia or bliss. It is supposed to be a blissful life, full of flourishing in which there is fullest self-actualization and fulfillment in all endeavors. Being ethical is a necessary condition for attaining such a life. However, being ethical is not a sufficient condition by itself. For, Aristotle reminds us, certain conducive, external conditions are also required to have a fully flourished good life. These external conditions may not always be within the control of the individual. For example, an important external condition for a fully flourished life 2

The Symposium, the Phaedrus.

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would be the kind of state or ruling system that we are born in. He believed that the state exists not just to let people live, but it exists to ensure that the people live well. The conditions under which a citizen can live well unfortunately are not in the hands of a citizen alone. However, remaining on the path of the virtues is within the control of a person. Having said that, we return to the point that we saw how in the views of Plato, Aristotle, ethics is supposed to show us the path to a good life. Point to Ponder Aristotle seems to leave the chance of having a good life partly on a person’s luck. For, he clearly thinks that having a good life also depends on external conditions over which the agent does not have any control. (a) If attaining a good life is ultimately partly dependent on luck, then do you suppose there is no point in trying to be ethical? (b) The problem of moral luck rises when luck seems to make a moral difference. Though we generally hold that a person is responsible only for what is under the person’s control, but in practice we seem to hold people responsible and attribute to them moral praise or blame all the time even when conditions were not in their control. Thomas Nagel gives us the definition of moral luck as this: “Where a significant aspect of what someone does depends on factors beyond his control, yet we continue to treat him in that respect as an object of moral judgment, it can be called moral luck.”3 Suppose that a driver A hits a child playing at wrong place on the road, and the child dies; whereas a driver B drives on the same road but for reasons unbeknownst to B, B does not hit the child, though the child was playing at the same dangerous spot on the road. We commonly would hold A responsible, and our reaction to B would be quite different. Actually, however, B was lucky. Nagel’s worry is that luck seems to make a moral difference, when it should not. Do you suppose in Aristotle’s theory staying in the right path of virtues is a matter of luck? For example, if I do not get the right kind of mentors, my intellectual virtues may not be cultivated properly; similarly, if I am born in a community of thieves, I may not be encouraged to develop the character virtue of honesty.

3

Nagel, T. (1993) “Moral Luck.” Moral Luck. Daniel Statman (Ed.). State University of New York Press, Albany, New York, pp. 57–71.

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2.1.4 Discourse Ethics Habermas, an important contemporary moral philosopher, has proposed a drastically different idea of ethics in his Discourse Ethics.4 His ethics is called Discourse Ethics, because in it the idea of a conversation or dialogue on ethical issues is central. Habermas proposes communicative action as the process of providing and criticizing reasons for holding or rejecting a particular claim. Discourse ethics is proposed as an appropriate normative ethics for pluralistic societies which do not have a single, overarching moral authority any more. In a modern society, there is, and there will be, differences of opinions on an issue, in particular on ethical issues. Different people will have different opinions about issues that come up, and also about what is good and what is right. For example, the statement one should not be a fundamentalist, or there should not be a huge gap between the rich and the poor in the same country, be accepted by some, and rejected by some other people. In a contemporary society the norms of ethics cannot be imposed from above as given. However, while Habermas allows for difference in opinions, he insists that the opinion-holders must all be socially accountable. That is, those who hold up a claim, or disagree with a claim, must publicly justify their opinions. Justification would involve conversations, argumentations, discussions, and exchange of opinions. This is what a discourse is. Habermas is of the opinion that ethics should be essentially discursive, that is, ‘dialogic’ or conversational in nature. Ethical discourses are public discourses in a civilized society. That is, ethics is developed interpersonally; it is not a single man’s view that everyone has to accept, but the agreement to norms has to be achieved through communicative action. The basic assumption in a conversation or discourse on ethical matters is that the ethical should or should not is not just true for an individual who happens to accept them. Through conversation, dialogue, or discourse we seek to bring the others to accept the ethical should or should not on the fundamental issues. Our discourse is designed to persuade the others to come to an agreement with us on the norms.

According to Habermas, through these discourses, a person clarifies one’s own viewpoint, realizes one’s own identity, and also expresses value judgments about practices in a community. He urges all to participate in such public discourses while being aware of the others’ perspectives and interpretations. Such public discourses of ideas are marked by differences of opinions and diversity of perspectives and the acceptance of the fact that others could be right! Through this openness about being 4

Jurgen Habermas. 1991. Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action. Cambridge: MIT Press.

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fallible, ethics is developed. His view is that being in the society, an individual has the responsibility to engage in these discourses, to continue to ask questions, and to strive for finding the answers, and thus, ethics is created. He further adds that the questions about ethics are intertwined with the questions about our own identity. As Habermas has put it: What ought I, or what ought we to do?... Such ethical questions…are wedded to questions of identity: How should we understand ourselves, who we are and want to be.5 That is, the questions about which we seek guidance from ethics in a way are linked to ourselves; they are linked with what kind of a person we are and who we wish to become while living in a society. Thus, from ethics, we may expect a clarification about our own values and beliefs, just as a clarification about the views of the others. Quick Question 2.2 In this section, you have heard different answers to the question what we may reasonably expect from studying ethics. Out of these, which one did you find as most important, and why? Do you have an answer that is different from all of these? To sum up, in this section we have looked into different answers available on what we may reasonably expect from ethics. Each confirms the need for a study in ethics, and each reaffirms its relevance in our lives.

2.2 Value Identification As a branch of Axiology, ethics deliberates on values. This is why ethics is often considered as the same as value education. However, the aim of ethics certainly is not to indoctrinate. Ethics is not to supposed to brainwash an individual and to impose a particular set of values onto the individual. Instead, we may reasonably expect ethics to help a person in: (a) Value identification (b) Value clarification. Value identification: At the personal level, value identification means identifying the basic values and priorities in one’s life that one considers as important. That is,

5

Jurgen Habermas. 2003. The Future of Human Nature, Cambridge, UK: Polity, 3.

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value identification at the personal level means finding out answers to the following questions: What do I value most? What are the priorities in my life? Surprising as it may be, many of us may not have a clear idea about the answer. Sometimes, we also harbor a wrong notion about ourselves and thus may give a wrong answer to this question. A training in ethics can help someone to discover the personal answer through a little bit of introspection and simulation exercises. For instance, questions of the following kind may be posed: Suppose that you are told that you have only 24 hours to live, and that in these last hours you are allowed to do only three things. What are those three things that you would do? The idea is to create a situation of urgency to push a person to think over what he or she views as the three most important tasks in his or her own life and thereby to enable the person to identify three core values in that person’s life. Note that ethics needs not teach a person these values, but only helps the person to discover and identify them for his or her own sake. It is to enable a person to understand himself or herself, and the personal priorities, a little better. While doing this exercise in a group, we may realize that our own answers and everyone else’s answers are not the same. The values and priorities are not the same for everyone. For example, my values or priorities may be similar to some other people, but may be different from yours. The important lesson here would be that they need not be the same. The important point here is not whose values are right, and whose are wrong, ours or theirs. The lessons that we learn from this exercise are: (a) about ourselves, who we are, and what we ourselves hold as priorities, and (b) about the others, what they hold as dear; and (c) the fact that the values and priorities of the others may differ from those of ours. Thus, to some extent, value identification at the personal level is a discovery of ourselves and of the plurality of values that may exist in a fair society. At the external and situational level, on the other hand, value identification means finding values and considerations that may be considered as ethical in a given situation. This is different from the introspective value identification at the personal level. At this situational level, value identification may mean answering the following question:

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What ethical values are exhibited in the given situation? The situation is external and public. But, the ethical values and concerns posed by it may not be obvious or evident. Value identification at this level is a kind of explication of the values. Consider for example the following case: A Case in Point 2.1 The top investigation bureau of India, in active collaboration with the top investigation bureau of the USA, has arrested 27-year-old software engineer, Ponty, for allegedly trying to sell the “source code” of a sophisticated software package worth millions of dollars. Ponty, a graduate from a prestigious educational organization of India, was apparently caught red-handed on the charge of cybercrime while trying to sell the “source code” for the software package named Enigma Plus to two undercover US bureau Agents. Thinking that the US Agents represented a US Company, Ponty had struck a $2,00,000 deal with them for the “misappropriated source code”. The “source code” is worth over $70 Million. Ponty was earlier working for a software company, Ezy Software Company Ltd in Mumbai, which had been given a contract by a US Company named Enigma to “debug” the “source code” of their software package Enigma Plus. Question: What is your evaluation of what Ponty has done? Can you identify any ethical values in this case? In this case are those values honoured, or compromised? In case 2.1, you surely have noticed that Ponty has tried to sell for personal profit a “source code”, which he had misappropriated from his earlier employer company. Thereby, he has done two things, that are both illegal and unethical. First, he has misappropriated a source code, what actually belonged to US-based company Enigma. He had access to the source code only as a former employee of the Ezy Software Company, which had a working contract with the US-based company Enigma. Enigma in this case is actually the rightful owner of the “source code” in question. Ponty, when he was the employee of Ezy, must have had access to the code and subsequently must have misappropriated the “source code”. That is, in an unauthorized manner, he has left the previous company, but has kept a copy of the code. Second, he was trying to sell a ‘misappropriated’ property. We may infer that he knows what he is trying to do is wrong and that is reflected in his asking price of $2,00,000 for a code that is worth $70 million. I hope all of you would concur that what he did was wrong on both counts. Are there any ethical values in this case? Can we identify some of these? To start with, let us ask ourselves what would be the most prominent values that Ponty’s

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behavior, as a person and as an employee, has seriously compromised? I hope you find the answer of your choice. My answer would be: Honesty and integrity. These are the two values that are cherished in a person and certainly in an employee; Ponty’s actions do not demonstrate respect for the values of honesty and integrity. Ponty has stolen his former employer’s property. He took advantage of the privileged access to the code which was given to him as part of his job by a client. When he left the company, he in an unauthorized manner ‘kept’ the code, which was the property of his company. This he should not have done. He also showed lack of integrity by walking away with the unauthorized code and giving in readily to the temptation of making some quick money by trying to sell the misappropriated software. Loyalty to an employer and trustworthiness are two other values which you may cite as being compromised here. Ponty has not shown loyalty to his former employer company. A privileged access to the code came with an implicit trust that the company put on him. He breached that trust by walking away from the company with the “source code” without their knowledge. Through his treacherous action, he has also caused significant damage to the professional trust relationship between his former employer company and its US-based client. Through his action, he has brought shame and ill-reputation to his employer company, to his prestigious educational organization, and to the other Indian software professionals and the Indian IT industry as such. In this case, these may be some of the values that you can identify in the given external situation: • • • •

Honesty Integrity Loyalty Trustworthiness.

The discussion and analysis of the situation have helped us to uncover and explicate the values relevant for the situation. We shall come back to discuss valueidentification again. At present, however, let us pause to understand the need for value identification.

2.2.1 Why is It Important to Identify the Values? Since value identification means two different things at two different levels, personal and external situational level, we shall address the question about the need and importance of value identification separately for each of these levels. First, at the personal level, let us pose the question as this: What do we get to lose as a person if we do not engage in value identification? What happens when we do not pause to take a good look at what we value as a person, and what our priorities are in life? To this, some philosophers and ethicists would respond that a life without awareness about one’s personal values is a mindless as well as a rudderless life. It is a life

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without awareness of personal ‘desirable end-states’. It is a life of someone, who lives without reflecting on one’s life and without knowing what one’s own choices and priorities are. Plato has expressed his opinion about a life without reflection in the following famous, illuminating line from Socrates6 : The unexamined life is not worth living. In that line, Socrates opines that a life worth-living is the one which reflects on what the life is all about. Alternatively, a life lived unthinkingly, without any attempt to find out the values which shape it, is not a life with worth. Our lives get to have worth only when there is an effort to examine it through a critical inquiry. Plato, through Socrates, is insisting on living one’s life with keen, reflective selfawareness. On a similar note, we may say that a person, who is unaware of what he or she values in life, lives a life of a sleep-walker, i.e. people who walk while asleep. It is a mindless, unconscious life, with no clear idea of where life is taking them and where they want to go. Such a life runs the risk of falling apart when a crisis suddenly arises. For, personal values set personal goals, which also serve as directional pointers to help us to stay on track and navigate our lives accordingly. To elucidate the point, Anthony Robbins, a contemporary author, has used the expression The Niagara Syndrome. Robbins compares life with a river. Most people get in the river of life without any idea about where they want to reach. They drift and go with the flow, wherever the river takes them. When they come to a crossing point in the river, they do not know which way they should go and why. They just follow the others. When suddenly a crisis in life looms large, they are in a for a rude shock, which Robbins compares with finding oneself suddenly at the edge of the Niagara Falls, and the subsequent undesirable fall in life is inevitable. He puts it as follows: I believe that life is like a river, and most people jump on the river of life without ever really deciding where they want to end up. So, in a short period of time, they get caught up in the current: current events, current fears, and current challenges. When they come to forks in the river, they don’t consciously decide where they want to go, or which direction is right for them. They merely “go with the flow.” They become a part of the mass of people who are directed by the environment instead of by their own values. As a result, they feel out of control. They remain in this unconscious state until one day the sound of the raging water awakens them and they discover that they are 5 feet from Niagara Falls in a boat with no oars. At this point, all they can say is, “oh, shoot!” But by then it’s too late. They are going to take a fall. Sometimes it’s an emotional fall. Sometimes it’s a physical fall. Sometimes it’s a financial fall. It is likely that whatever challenges you have in your life currently could have been avoided by some better decisions upstream.7

The fall stands for a traumatic downfall, physical or financial or psychological, in a completely unprepared stage. This fall could be avoided if earlier on we can take 6

Plato. Apology. 38a. Anthony Robbins. 1991. Awaken the Giant Within: How to take Immediate Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical and Financial Destiny! Simon and Schuster.

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the time out to ponder over and to set some life goals. The life goals are the personal values. This is why value identification at the personal level is important in life. At the external and social level, a similar undesirable fate would wait for a community, or a society, if the values that a community or a society would like to preserve are not identified and if there is no deliberation on how to protect the values from erosion. If a society S, for example, has not been able to identify that inclusiveness is a value that it would like to uphold, S would not try to curb the growth of the discriminatory policies and practices that go against that value. For example, it would not try to deter the practices of debarring someone from getting admission in an educational organization based on gender or religion. Similarly, it would find nothing wrong in the practice of denying employment on the basis of caste and ethnicity. And one day, it would find itself at the brink of this ‘fall’ of total social disintegration due to the proliferation of exclusionary policies and practices. Therefore, value identification is an important skill to have at social levels too.

2.2.2 ‘Hidden’ Ethical Values: Identification In Sect. 2.2, we left the discussion on value identification in the midway to discuss the need for value identification first. In this section, we resume the topic of value identification at the external situational level with few more of cases. As said earlier, in real life situations the presence of ethical values sometimes is not so obvious. They remain ‘hidden’ in a given situation. As a result, to a layperson, the situations may not always present themselves as obviously ethical in nature. In such cases, identification of values may require at least two things: (a) Some in-depth analysis of the case or the situation (b) Some background research about the situation. Consider for example, the following news report.8

A Case in Point 2.2 McDonalds has said that its fries are free of all common allergen such as gluten, milk, or wheat allergens, but under pressure admitted that the flavoring agent is derivative of wheat and dairy products. The line is from a news report, and it speaks of a situation, but is there any ethical value, or values, here? Can we identify them?

8

The Times of India, Kolkata Edition, Feb 15, 2006.

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A first glance at this line will tell you that we are discussing the French fries of McDonalds, the famous international fast food company. As per the report, McDonalds under pressure had admitted that its fries contain derivative of wheat and dairy products, when earlier it had said that its fries are free of all common allergy-causing elements. We are discussing here a very popular food item of the very popular fast food chain and about ingredients and additives that contain allergens. Food allergies are allergies caused by food. Allergies are bodily reaction to substances, and the allergies differ from person to person. Gluten is a protein composite found in wheat and other related grain types, such as barley and rye. There are considerable number of people who are gluten-intolerant, i.e. allergic to gluten and to food containing gluten. Similarly, there are people who are allergic to milk and dairy products and wheat. Food allergies could be mild to severe and may lead to serious health complications for the allergic persons. In this case, allergies from gluten, milk, wheat products are referred to. The news piece reports that the company has not been entirely transparent and honest in its earlier statement about allergens in its food products and has “under pressure” disclosed that the flavoring agent, an additive, for its fries is derived from wheat and dairy products. McDonalds had listed that its French fries are free of all common allergy-causing agents. However, under pressure, the company shared that the flavoring additive is a derivative of wheat and dairy products. To sum up, the company had publicly claimed that its French fries were free of all common allergens, when it was not. So, to start with, you might identify that the values that appear to be compromised in this case are: 1. Transparency 2. Honesty And you would add that since food allergies are involved, a major ethical concern in this case is: 3. Health of the customers, i.e. the effect of consumption of the food on the health of the customers. And you would be right! Food safety, that is, safety from being harmed by the consumption of commercially available food, is a very important issue with any food industry. However, it is a particularly rife issue with the fast food industry, because fast food is generally considered to be unhealthy, being high on calorie and low on nutrition. Here, however, the specific issue is food allergy. In order to have a better grip on the current case, a bit of background research may help us. For example, in this case, a bit of research will show you the larger context of the news piece mentioned in case 2.2. It will show that McDonalds, though it is a very large, multinational, popular, fast food company,9 has been at the center of controversy many times in the past about food safety and other issues related to 9

In the end of 2018, McDonalds is present in 120 countries, with close to 38,000 restaurants serving 68 Million customers everyday.

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the way it does its business. Take for example the famous McLibel case (UK),10 which gained the distinction of being the longest case in English history. In the late 1980s, a group of very ordinary people in London made a bunch of serious accusations against McDonalds. Some of these were: Cruelty to animals, exploiting the children through advertisement, falsely advertising its food as nutritious, paying its workers low wages, and risking the health of its long-standing, regular customers. The company retaliated by taking the accusers to the court. The case dragged on for more than three years. In the process, the case sparked further investigation into the activities of McDonalds. A special website, McSpotlight, was created, which gleaned information critical of McDonald’s, and made that information available globally and also to the trial. When the trial ended in 1997, however, many of the allegations were proved to be true. There were other instances too. For example, in the 2000s, when McDonalds tried to enter France and the European market, a particularly fierce allegation from those who resisted the entry was that the company neglects consumer health and nutrition in its operations. Critics pointed out several things: That McDonalds did not offer a balanced healthy menu, that its main product, the fast food, is not nutritious and causes obesity, that the company does not provide sufficient nutritional information, and that it entices its customers, especially the children, to make unhealthy food choices, by luring them with ‘supersized’ options or with toys. The filmmaker of the movie ‘Supersize me’11 successfully illustrated the last point by experimenting with a 30-day diet plan: eating only McDonalds food for a month and nothing else. The movie then recorded the effect of that on his health. His body mass is said to have increased by an unnatural 13%, with an alarmingly high level of cholesterol, and considerable fat deposit in the liver. Among the various allegations against the company, a recurrent complain has been that the company puts the consumer health at risk with its food products. In the face of such severe, sustained criticism in Europe, the company came up with a bunch of turn-around, face-saving strategies.12 For example, in its European market, it dropped its supersize menu choices, introduced low-calorie options, and started to promote European Football. Even such strategic moves were not controversy-free. For example, it was pointed out that its ‘healthy’ new menu choice of Chicken Caeser salad had more calories that its burgers because of the high-calorie salad dressing used. Its French fries, in particular, have attracted a lot of controversy because of the company’s claims. McDonalds used to claim that its fries are totally vegetarian food, cooked in 100% vegetable oil. However, in 2001 the shocking revelation was that its fries were fried in beef fat, and later, a beef-flavoring was added to its fries at the 10

Staff Reporter. McLibel case: The Longest Case in English History. BBC News. Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4266741.stm. [Accessed on: Jan 14, 2019]. McSpotlight. The McLibel Trial. http://www.mcspotlight.org/case/. 11 Supersize Me. A 2004 Movie directed and starred by independent moviemaker Morgan Spurlock. Available at: http://watchdocumentaries.com/super-size-me/. 12 Elliot Choueka. Big Mac Fights back. BBC News, July 5, 2005. Available at: http://news.bbc.co. uk/2/hi/business/4665205.stm.

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production stage to enhance the flavor.13 This did not seat well with the vegetarian customers, particularly those customers for whom eating beef is a religious taboo and who were under the impression that they were eating ‘vegetarian’ food.14 Several lawsuits were brought against the company on the ground of making false claims and misleading the consumers. The lawsuits ended in 2002 when the company stated that it would issue a public apology and pay the vegetarians and some religious groups a hefty sum as compensation. It is not clearly known whether the compensation eventually was paid in full or not. When taken together with these previous incidents, the issue exhibited by case 2.2 gains a depth. The problem that it reports no longer remains an isolated incident; instead it becomes yet another example of a recurrent behavior pattern on the part of the company. It appears that even in the past the company has not been particularly careful about the effect of its food on consumer health. It also appears that the company has a habit of changing its tracks only after there is a “pressure” or public uproar against its existing ways. Thus, the values identified earlier and the ethical issue get further confirmation from this behind-the case history. You may use the values identified to highlight at least two ethically problematic issues here: (i) Lack of proper disclosure by the company about the ingredients in its product to its customers. (ii) Food safety. Consumer right entitles the consumer to the information about a product. This globally renowned fast food company with a global consumer base cannot be ignorant of the consumer right to information. Yet, the company has not been forthright and has not properly disclosed information that might be detrimental for the consumers. If the company chooses not to give proper and complete information or to suppress information about the ingredients and additives used in its food product (French fries in this case) that may be relevant for health and safety of some customers, then the company is knowingly imposing a health risk on its customers. That is unethical. Also, note that a company always knows more about its product than its customers. Unless the company discloses the information about a foreseeable potential harm or danger from the consumption of its products, the customer or the society may not even come to know of the risk until it is too late. This is why it is a basic premise in instilling customer trust that a business would disclose any information that might put the customer at risk while using a product. If we take the ethical issue of improper disclosure by this company, then a core value implicit in this case may be social trust. Social relations thrive on a certain level of trust. Relation between a business and its consumers is also built upon this core value. While society gives license to business to sell its product, it does not 13

Simon Davis. McDonalds admits using beef fat for ‘vegetarian’ French fries. The Telegraph, 25 May 2001. Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/1331625/McD onalds-admits-using-beef-fat-for-vegetarian-french-fries.html. 14 Ameet Sachdev, McDonalds apologizes for Fries ‘confusion’. Chicago Tribune, May 25, 2001. Available at: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2001-05-25-0105250183-story.html.

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give the permission to business harm the consumers by selling unsafe or hazardous products to the consumers. Product safety is a major issue in business–consumer relation. Similarly, food safety is one of the core concerns in the relation between the consumers and the food industry. In many countries, the government and the consumers insist that every food item must carry the complete information about the ingredients used, the additives used, about the nutrition value per serving, and the fat content. There are safety standards set for handling, preparation, and storage of foodstuff by food businesses to prevent foodborne illnesses. In this case, McDonalds was not forthright to disclose sensitive information about the additives to its fries and misled its customers by declaring the fries as common allergen-free. Thus, the company has compromised the value of social trust. So, in addition to earlier list of identified values, we may add one more in this case: • Social trust Finally, there is one more value that I would like to add to this list, and that is health. Health is a value; it is a cherished, desirable life goal of paramount importance to any person. Foodborne allergy shocks, as a matter of fact, are also foodborne illnesses, which could be dangerous, or even fatal, for persons. Hence, if the allegations against McDonalds in case 2.2 are true, then the case brings to the forefront how through not doing the duty of proper disclosure, the company has put consumer health at risk. So, now this value also is added to our previous list: • Health The excerpt from a news report in case 2.2 about McDonalds was just an example of how sometimes the ethical considerations and values may remain hidden within the case and become explicit when the case is analyzed properly with due consideration to the context. With training in ethics, one should be able to pick up the analytical skill needed in such cases to uncover the hidden values and the ethical considerations. Here is another example. This is an one-line report on the LPG cylinders: A Case in Point 2.3 LPG cylinders are often not filled to capacity and weigh much below the prescribed figures.

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Can we identify any ethical values in this statement? Some of you would immediately say: ‘Yes, possible’. You would say, first and foremost, the value compromised in this case is honesty. If the suppliers are not filling the cylinders to the capacity, they are actually cheating the consumers. The cylinders have a weight printed on them and are expected to actually weigh that. With partly filled cylinders, the consumers are being deprived of the expected value return for their money, and that is being intentionally manipulated by the seller. Thus, the behavior on the part of the suppliers is deceitful and unethical. The second value that you might say which is compromised here is social trust. Customers trust the supplier, and the suppliers are taking undue advantage of that. By not filling the cylinder to their right weight, the suppliers have breached the trust of the consumers, and that is unethical. The third value that you might identify is fairness. A consumer has a right to be fairly treated. In this case, the information provided about the amount of gas in the cylinder is not correct, as the cylinder is knowingly not filled to the capacity. Thus, the consumer in this case is a victim of unfair trade practice. So, your list of values might be: • Honesty • Trust • Fairness. You would be absolutely right! It is usually easier to identify the values which have not been honored. To the list above, I would like to add a fourth value: dignity of the consumers. I believe you would agree with me that the customer, who is cheated, is not treated with the due respect and care that the customer deserves. Customers have dignity, and just because they need the service of the business, it does not mean that they give up that right. By cheating through unfair means, the LPG suppliers are treating their customers in an undue undignified manner. Thus, we may identify the ethical values that the case 2.3 touches upon are: • • • •

Honesty Trust Fairness Dignity of the consumers.

These examples are meant to tell you what value identification in external situations mean. Through the analysis of the case and knowledge about the issue and its background, we tried to explicate the hidden values.

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2.3 Value Clarification Next, we discuss what value clarification is, and how ethics can help in it. Value clarification is a process to gain a clearer idea about the values. Learning ethics is supposed to enable people in this important activity. Value clarification is not the imposition of a particular set of values and ideas on to people. It is helping people to achieve a clearer understanding of the values that they themselves choose to live by. Ethics is supposed to be an extension of reflective and critical thinking in moral matters. What value clarification does is to enable the person through critical inquiry to become more aware about their own personally held values and their import. The hope is that through this clarification, the personal awareness about one’s own priorities increases, and the poorly founded values and beliefs are identified and reviewed and perhaps are replaced by the more firmly founded values. There are number of ways in which value clarification may be attempted. A person may be asked to indicate his or her position clearly on a certain issue. The responses are accepted without any judgment or evaluation. However, the person is asked to provide reasons for holding that position on the issue. In case the person needs help in articulation or in fortifying the argument, help is provided. Through this process, the person gradually becomes aware of his or her own beliefs and values held or about the conceptual and logical flaws in his or her understanding of a value. This is the clarification part. Note that the value clarification is actually more about conceptual clarity. Incidentally, Plato’s dialogue Euthyphro could be taken as an example of elaborate value clarification. In that dialogue, a conversation takes place outside the court of Athens between Socrates and Euthyphro, a Greek Citizen, who has come to prosecute his own father, because the father has unintentionally killed a hired assistant. Euthyphro appears to be full of confidence about his understanding of two values, which he thinks his taking his own father to court exemplifies: piety and justice. However, Socrates does not think so. Through patient, logical reasoning, Socrates in his unique way leads Euthyphro on to make him realize that Euthyphro’s understanding of both values is actually deficient.

2.4 How to Identify if a Decision or a Behavior Has an Ethical Dimension? How to tell if a decision or behavior has an ethical dimension or not? Given below are some of the pointers which could help you to determine: (a) Whether the decision or the behavior is likely to have significant impact on the others: It is a very important aspect of ethics to consider the probable impact of an action or a decision on the others, e.g. people around us or the larger society. Ethics encourages us to look beyond ourselves and to take into consideration

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what would happen to the others because of our actions. Effect on the others, or on the society, is thus an aspect in a decision or behavior which links it to ethics. The more significant the impact is on the others, the easier it is to see the decision or behavior as ethical in nature. For example, consider that a car company C is pushing the sale of a new car that the company knows has technical fault. Does the decision of the car company to sell a faulty car has an ethical dimension?

One of the ways to answer this question is to check if the company decision is likely to have significant impact on the others. Who would be the others in this case? The immediate answer would be: The customers of C, who would purchase the car and drive it or ride it, and their families. Releasing a faulty car on the road without apprising the customers of the risk can have significant effect on the others, where significant effect would mean impact on life and well-being of many, particularly those who would purchase and drive or ride these cars and their families. A faulty car means a risky vehicle, which may cause injury and even death. Thus, we may conclude that the car company’s decision has an ethical dimension. When considering the impact on the others, who should we include? In the car company example, we easily picked out the customers and their families. But, in general, we are to consider all those who would be affected by the decision or behavior. And, there, one might ask, are we to include only the humans to be affected? Environmentalists may urge that we share this planet with many other life forms, and we should extend the consideration to even to those other species, to the earth itself and its natural elements too. For example, if the Government of a country decides on an agricultural policy to abundantly use strong chemical fertilizers and pesticides on the soil, for example, we would have to say that such a decision has a prominent ethical dimension. For, the strong chemicals in fertilizers and pesticides can not only have adverse impact on the humans through the intake of crops grown on that soil, but also on the other species who for their survival depend on the crop, the cropland and have the ground soil and the groundwater as their home and habitat, such as the small animals, insects, and birds. When considering the impact or the effect on the others, remember to consider the positive impact (benefit) too. It is true that the negative impact, probable or actual, catches our eyes first. However, either way, the consideration about the impact on the welfare of others lends an issue an ethical aspect. For example, the decision of a country to implement a healthcare scheme with the goal of affordable quality healthcare for all would also have an ethical dimension. For, if achieved, it would

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have significant impact on the others, but in a positive sense. Here, the others would mean the larger society and in particular those who earlier could not afford quality healthcare and would immensely benefit from the scheme. Similarly, the decision of a country to engage in a war would have ethical significance, as the decision would significantly affect the country and its citizens, as well as on the enemy country, in various ways, such as drain on national resources for the war, lives to be lost, impact on the people and on the economy. The impact in this case could be largely negative. (b) Whether the decision or behavior is characterized by choices, with alternative courses of action being open: As already mentioned earlier, freedom of choice is a pre-condition for ethics. One of the markers of decision or behavior with an ethical dimension is that people involved in it had a choice to do otherwise. Consider for example, the practice of femicide or female infanticide. The decision to abort or terminate the life of a healthy, female fetus in the womb just because it is female is a decision that has an ethical dimension. Apart from the fact that it is one of the most brutal kinds of gender discrimination, there is no doubt that people engage in it by exercising their choices. The parents could have done otherwise, but they make a conscious choice to abort, simply because it is female. The doctors and medical staff who help by providing the medical support to abort the female fetus also make a conscious choice. All concerned people could have chosen otherwise, but they knowingly and without coercion choose to engage in the termination. And that gives us the reason to pass ethical judgment on that choice. (c) Whether the decision or behavior is perceived as having ethical content by the others, e.g. one or more groups. A behavior or practice may gain ethical significance if it is perceived by the others as ethically relevant and significant, regardless of the fact whether the agent, or the policymaker sees it in the same way or not. Of course, the others would have to have a legitimate ground for perceiving it that way. Consider for example the case of public controversy over the corporate sponsorship of Dow Chemicals Company of London Olympics 2012. With about $100 million sponsorship, the Olympics organizing committee accepted Dow Chemicals as a partner. As a result of this partnership, the understanding was that Dow’s branding would be evident throughout the events in London Olympics 2012, with a prominent display of Dow’s logo on a wrap that would be pasted around the main Olympics stadium. To the Olympic Committee, that corporate offer and the decision to accept that sponsorship may have seemed value-neutral. However, the decision was clearly seen as ethically contentious by many others. Some social and environmental activist groups objected by pointing out the various human rights abuses and environmental malpractices by Dow Chemicals in its business operations and registered their outrage against the association of a world game with a company tainted with such practices. However, a particularly strong protest from India was lodged by the social activists and NGOs working with the victims of the infamous Bhopal Gas Tragedy (1984), one of the worst industrial gas leak disasters that caused irreparable damage to thousands of Indians in terms of fatality and

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injury. For, Dow Chemicals had a clear link to Bhopal disaster as it had acquired the Union Carbide, the company which was responsible for the highly toxic gas release that happened at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal. The protest was on ethical ground, as even after so many years of the chemical disaster, Dow Chemicals, which now owns the Union Carbide, allegedly did not clean up the site of the disaster in Bhopal and did not pay the due compensation to the victims and their families. The ethical point in these protests was duly acknowledged and further elaborated by The London Council. The Council criticized the London Olympics Committee for tarnishing its reputation by entering into a partnership with corporate sponsors of dubious track records, such as Dow Chemicals,15 without considering the ethical, social, and environmental impact of the corporations. Other environmental and human rights group also joined the fray against Dow Chemical’s $100 million sponsorship. As a consequence of this public outcry, the London Olympics organizing committee decided to remove the logo of Dow Chemicals from a wrap to decorate the main stadium. That is, they modified their decision in deference to the protests lodged. The Indian Olympics Committee (IOC) urged the London Olympics organizing committee to terminate Dow Chemical’s sponsorship altogether. India got considerable support from Vietnam in their protest, because during the war with the USA, Vietnam was ravaged by Agent Orange, a toxic chemical which was manufactured by Dow Chemical. This was an example to show that an apparently amoral decision can gain ethical significance if it is perceived as a potent ethical issue by the significant others. (d) Whether the decision or behavior exhibits some value considerations: If some values are either upheld or are compromised by a decision or a behavior, it is an indication that it is likely to have ethical dimensions. Consider for instance, the issue of passive smoking, i.e. secondhand smoking. X decides to smoke in the presence of the others, Y and Z, who are not smokers. As X smokes, Y and Z involuntarily inhale smoke through inhalation of the smokefilled air, though they are not active smokers. This is known as passive smoking. The ethical nature of X’s behavior can become clearer once we understand how X’s behavior compromises the values of health and well-being of Y and Z, as well as X’s own. Tobacco smoking is known to be harmful for practically every organ in a human body, causing several kinds of diseases. An active smoker, such as X, no doubt harms himself or herself through smoking; however, one might say that it is the voluntary choice of the smoker. However, the issue of passive smoking is very different. Through passive smoking the harm from tobacco smoking is passed onto people, such as Y and Z, who themselves did not actively invite the harm onto their body. Yet, the risk is imposed onto them without their consent, and as a result their 15

The Telegraph Sport. London 2012 Olympics: Dow Chemical partnership has ‘damaged reputation of London Games’. The Telegraph, UK, July 11, 2012. Available at: https://www.tel egraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/news/9392569/London-2012-Olympics-Dow-Chemical-partnershiphas-damaged-reputation-of-London-Games.html.

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health and well-being are seriously compromised. The value-based analysis helps us to see the ethical dimension of passive smoking. If we now revisit the case 2.2, the McDonalds case, it may be easier for you to see that the case brought an ethical issue to our attention. For, many important values were compromised by the behavior of the company. The above discussion is supposed to help you to identify ethical significance in a decision or a behavior. The function of the pointers mentioned here is to empower you. Next, we discuss the topic of moral intensity. Quick Question 2.3 Do you suppose conscious overuse of water as exhibited by activities, such as organizing a ‘raindance’ (a large dance floor where artificial rain is created by large, overhead showers), excessive washing of clothes, leaving the water tap open even when not in use, is an ethical issue? Does it have ethical significance? Justify your answer.

2.5 Moral Intensity: Factors that Influence Before we start to discuss the nature of ethical issues, let us step aside to think over the following: It is a fact that not all issues affect us in the same way. Similarly, not all ethical issues appear as equally important to us. In some, we see the ethical dimension quickly and find it as intense, whereas, in others we do not. Why is it like that? What causes that difference in our perception? Why do we see some issues as morally intense, whereas we do not feel the same way about some others? Research in social psychology brought up the concept of moral intensity to answer this question, which I shall summarize here for your quick reference. Moral intensity is the perceived, relative ethical importance of an issue. The relative importance of the issue is a perceived quality of the issue. That is, the quality depends on people’s perception of the issue. The perceived quality is known to vary. According to Jones (1991),16 people’s perception of moral intensity varies according to six factors: 1. Magnitude of the consequences: Consequences here mean the expected outcome of the issue. The magnitude or the extent of the outcome seems to determine our perception of the moral intensity. The larger the consequence, good or bad, is in magnitude, the more morally intense the issue or the behavior will be perceived as.

16

Jones, T.M. 1991. Ethical decision making by individuals in organizations: An issue-contingent model. Academy of Management Review, 16: 366–95.

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2.

3.

4. 5.

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For example, suppose that a medical implant, when inserted in a human body, causes cell damage as side effect. Our perception of the moral intensity of the issue would vary with the extent of the cell damage. It would also vary if a large number of patients who have received the implant, were affected. In comparison, the continued usage of a new medicine with a negligible side effect may not catch our attention that much. Degree of social consensus towards the issue: Social consensus is the agreement of opinion among the people in the society. The greater the social consensus is about an issue, the greater the moral intensity of the issue will be felt. When people are certain about having support for their ethical opinion from the larger society, the issue is perceived as morally more intense. Probability of the effect happening actually: Perception of moral intensity varies with the higher probability of the outcome. When the expected consequences from the issue become highly likely to be actual, the issue is felt as more intense. Temporal immediacy: This is about how soon the consequences are likely to occur. The sooner they are likely to occur, the greater the perceived intensity is. Proximity: The feeling of (social, cultural, physical, psychological) nearness or connectedness with the affected makes us feel the importance more intensely. For example, human trafficking in one’s own country may be felt as a more intense ethical issue than the human trafficking in a relatively unknown country. Concentration of effect on the affected: This is about the depth of effect on the affected. The more concentrated the effect is on a few, the greater the felt intensity is. For example, the completely unprovoked, brutal killing, and severe mutilation of a civilian in the hands of the enemy soldiers may be perceived as ethically more intense than the death of hundreds of soldiers in the line of duty during a war.

2.6 Nature of the Ethical Issues In this section I try to acquaint you with the nature of ethical issues through some of their unique characteristics.

2.6.1 More Than One ‘Right’ Answers When we are asked to solve a problem, usually the assumption is that there is only one ‘right’ answer to it. At least, we are more used to deal with problems of this sort. For example, there is only one ‘right’ answer to the question ‘What is 2 + 2?’, and any answer besides 4 would be clearly a ‘wrong’ answer. However, as you know, not all problems are of this kind. There are problems which by their nature may allow more than one ‘right’ answers. For example, when the

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question is ‘What number, when divided by an even number, has 4 as the quotient?’, the answer could be many. 16, 24, 56, 64... all of these could be a right answer. Ethical problems, or issues, are usually of this type. Unlike the question ‘what is 2 + 2?’, in a given situation the question ‘What is the ethically right thing to do here?’ may allow more than one right answers. For example, Suppose Kitai has received a very good job offer from a country that is far away from home. But, Kitai is the only son of his old and ailing parents, who need attention and regular care. Kitai does not have any relative or friend, who is willing to take care of Kitai’s parents in his absence.

What should Kitai do? What is the ‘right’ thing to do here? It is not necessary that there will be only one ‘right’ answer to this question, ‘what should Kitai do?’ There may be more than one answer, and each may be justified as a ‘right’ answer. Consider, for instance, the answer (a): That Kitai should give up the job offer and stay with his old and ailing parents. For, one may argue that, as with every other children, Kitai has a duty to look after his ailing parents in their old age, particularly when he is an only son and when there is no immediate family or friend around who can be entrusted with the responsibility. This could be a right answer to the question. However, there could be other right answers too. For example, consider the answer (b): That Kitai should accept the wonderful job opportunity that has come his way. But, he should first discuss the situation with his parents and take their opinions too. Perhaps, his parents would urge him to take up the offer. Perhaps, he could persuade his parents to accompany him to the new country where his job is. Or, with the consent of his parents, before leaving he can make some arrangement for their stay in a reliable and reputed old age home, where his parents will have assisted living and all the living comforts in the company of other elderly people. He may have to travel home frequently to visit his parents as often as possible to ensure their well-being. For, one may argue that Kitai has a duty, not just to his parents, but to himself as well. He has a duty to himself to prove all that he is capable of by making the best use of the opportunities. The point is that, when dealing with the ethical issues, we first need to get used to the idea that there are problems in life, for which there can be more than one ‘right’ answer. That is, instead of the usual right versus wrong answers, you may have situations where there are more than one right answers. Though we may need to choose the better answer among the right answers, that does not mean that the rest of the answers are all wrong.

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2.6.2 Right Versus Right It is implied by the point above that in case of ethical issues, sometimes the conflict could be between right versus right answers. That is, since there can be multiple right answers, there could be situations where we need to make a choice between the right answers. Thus, they may present a unique kind of conflict: The conflict between right versus right. In such cases, one answer may be selected over the other, but not because the ones not selected are ‘wrong’, but because the chosen answer is ‘better’ among the available answers. The situation could be more appropriately comparable to a design answer, where there can be more than one right answers. But, some answers may be better. Case 2.4 presents us a situation to illustrate the point, where there may not be a single right answer. The case involves two important concerns: friendship and money. Each of these concerns, as the case depicts, is a legitimate concern. Each recommends an action that is right. A Case in Point 2.4 Consider a situation where your best friend is involved. You have been close friends since you met during your college years. You share numerous similar interests and greatly enjoy each other’s company. Whenever you needed to talk about major issues in your life, e.g. career plans, job opportunities, or romantic matters, this friend has always been there. This friend has also provided assistance in large and small matters—such as helping you move your belongings from one room to another and helping when your relatives from out of town have shown up and you did not have space in your room for them or were busy elsewhere. This is not to say, however, that the friendship has been one-sided in any way. You also have been a good friend providing similar kinds of support, encouragement, and assistance to your friend over the years. Though you have been through thick and thin, monetary matters have never played a significant role in your relationship as friends, either directly or indirectly. Neither of you has discussed personal finances with the other. Neither of you has asked the other for a loan. That is, not until now. Recently, your friend has asked you for a loan of Rs. 50,000. You work as a project manager for a large engineering firm and can afford to loan the money to your friend. But what is not clear, however, is exactly how your friend plans to repay the loan on the earnings as a freelance journalist. You find it acutely uncomfortable to raise this issue with your friend on how the loan is to repaid, what might be a reasonable repayment schedule, and so forth. What should you do? And why?

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For example, one might choose money and argue that since the repayment is uncertain; despite the years of friendship, the right choice would be not to loan the amount to your friend, at least not without discussing the mode of repayment with the friend. Or, one might choose friendship and argue that even if the repayment is not certain, the long relationship behooves us to stand by the friend in need, and the ‘right’ choice is to loan the money to the friend in need. Two actions are prescribed as right. The choice is between right versus right. Which one should we choose? Conflicts of this sort may be resolved by finding overriding or overweighing reasons or factors for the options available. ➜Overriding reasons means the supporting of justificatory reasons for a claim or statement that overrule the reasons for those of the others. For example, consider two claims, A and B, which are available as two right answers. Suppose that the supporting reasons for A are found to stronger than those for B, A has the overriding reasons to choose A over B. On the basis of these, we may consider A as the answer which is better than B in the given situation. The Overriding reasons are supposed to be overriding or stronger. Their relatively greater strength may be assessed on various parameters, such as their persuasive power, or by their superior logical quality, and evidentiary support. This is how we may choose the better answer among the right answers. In case 2.4, for example, if money concerns are chosen over friendship, the justification given could be that the relationship was reciprocal, and the friendship has helped both. However, the value of hard-earned money is important, and the friend does not seem to be in a financial position to repay the loan. The loan, if given, is likely to turn into a bad loan, and asking again and again for repayment may sour the friendship. So, practicality, prudence and caution recommend that in this case the relationship of friendship may be overridden by concern for one’s own money. So, the issue in this case could be met in the following way: 2.4.1 Action Rule A: I should not loan the money. Reason: hard-earned money is more important (overriding) than friendship. On the other hand, if friendship is taken as the guiding and overriding concern over money, the issue in this case could be met as follows:

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2.4.2 Action Rule B: I should loan the money to my friend, no questions asked. Reason: value of friendship is more important (overriding) than concern for money. In case we find one of the concerns overriding, then we have an action rule, which is right from its own perspective on the reasons provided. In case the reasons for any one of the available answers are not found as overweighing, we may have to try the best balance between the concerns raised by the alternative answers: Some trade-off may be necessary. Beyond the immediate conflict between the two right choices, the implication of the decision taken for the future or policy implications also may be given consideration. In that case, another choice could be to find a compromise between these two concerns. For example, in case 2.4, the suggestion may be that there first must be an open conversation, no matter how uncomfortable it might be, between the friends. The issue about the loan requested and its mode of repayment must be thoroughly discussed. The worries and concern from both sides should be all laid out in the open, so that there is no scope for misunderstanding between the friends. If a mode of repayment is satisfactorily worked out, the money should be loaned. If a satisfactory mode of repayment is not worked out, the friend needs to be told why the amount asked for cannot be loaned out. Perhaps, there can be a negotiation about a smaller amount. 2.4.3 Action Rule C: I should give the loan to my friend after having an open discussion with my friend about repayment. Reason: value of friendship and value of hard-earned money are both important, and I should try to optimize and safeguard both.

2.7 Ethical Dilemmas While speaking about the right versus right choices in ethics, we cannot avoid the topic of ethical dilemma. So, in this section, we discuss both what ethical dilemmas are and how to address them. A dilemma is a difficult situation which asks us to make a difficult choice from the available options. It is a forced choice from alternatives, when none of the available choices is pleasant or preferable. The choice is forced in the sense that not choosing would result into an outcome worse than choosing either of the alternatives. The word dilemma comes from Greek, where di stands for two and lemma for propositions or premises. It is a double proposition or double premise situation in which neither is a favorable choice. From early 16th CE, its presence is recorded as a kind of argumentation, involving a choice between two difficult alternatives.

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You may now look at the case 2.4 about you and your friend as a dilemma. The situation is such that you are caught in a dilemma as to what to do. There are choices, for you, but none of them is pleasant for you. You may choose to give the loan to your friend, but secretly be anxious and nervous about it being never repaid. Or, you may choose not to give the loan and then face the dreadful possibility of souring of the relationship with your long-time friend. So, a dilemma is not the absence of choices. In fact, a dilemma leaves two or more choices open; it is just that none of the choices is very desirable. And, one cannot choose easily. Ethical dilemmas are a kind of a dilemma. It too is a forced choice between two or more alternatives. There are ethical dilemmas, let us call them the type A, in which you would like to opt for both the choices, but unfortunately one can do only one of them. The choices are ethical obligations or duties. A moral obligation or a duty is a right action, what we are ethically required to do. In an ethical dilemma, thus, the conflict here is between right versus right. The choices are two competing moral obligations or duties. These are competing obligations in the sense that between two duties A and B, both cannot be chosen; either this would be done or that but not both. The problem is that doing one implies not doing the other. So, if duty A is done, duty B will not be done and vice versa. However, not doing an ethical duty is a lapse or a failure. So, regardless of whether one chooses to do A or B, there would be a moral failure or a lapse in doing what is ethically required. For example, if you have only INR 50,000, and your mother’s major surgery is scheduled in two days, for which you want to help financially, and your son’s college six months’ fees also must be paid in two days. You want to do both; help out your mother financially as a duty towards your parent, and pay your son’s college fees on time as a parental duty towards your son. But, you cannot do both. You will fail in carrying out the ethical obligations, if you cannot decide which one to choose. Type A Ethical Dilemma The choice is between two or more alternatives, where both are right actions and obligations. you want to do them both, but can only do one. not choosing any of them leads to an ethical lapse. There are other kinds of ethical dilemmas, lets call them type B, where the choices are difficult, and you want to avoid doing both or all of them. But you can avoid only one of them. What makes a type B dilemma particularly vexing is that the choices are equally problematic or difficult. Each of them may lead to some undesirable outcome; thus, neither of the choices is desirable or preferable. This is a situation that is caught in the expression caught between the horns of a dilemma. The horns

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of a dilemma are the two unpleasant choices that the dilemma offers; if one of the horns is by chance avoided, the other one will gore you.  A classical example of type B ethical dilemma could be found in the story of dilemma faced by Arjuna, the renowned warrior prince in the Pandava family, just before the great battle of Mahabharata between the Kauravas and the Pandavas. In the first chapter of Srimadbhagavatagita, we find Arjuna as deeply depressed and disturbed. The description says that he came out to survey the battlefield on his chariot, steered by his friend and guide, SriKrishna. As Arjuna looked at the armies of both sides, all poised for the battle, and he realizes that war means death of many of these men. He also saw his own relatives, respected elders, revered teachers, and beloved friends, standing in the army of the opponents. As the realization of the devastating effect of war on all of them dawned on him, Arjuna started to feel terribly sad and depressed. Feeling physically weak and emotionally drained, he slumped into his chariot. His lips and throat became dry, his hands trembled, and his famous bow Gandiva slipped from his hand. Tortured by the tussle between duties in his mind, he turned to his friend and guide to ask: What should he do: Which alternative to choose? Should he fight this war or should he not? Both alternatives are difficult and undesirable, yet both are duties, that is, actions that are required.

On the one hand, Arjuna is a Kshatriya prince, who is reputed for his unparallel battle skills and valor. As a Kshatriya, it is his duty to fight and not to shrink from doing his duty in the battlefield. Moreover, the war is being fought for his family honor, in the name of justice for all the injustices done to the Pandavas by the Kauravas. So, he knows that he should fight the battle. On the other hand, fighting the battle means killing many of these men, particularly he must kill his own relatives, youngsters who are like sons, his own revered teachers, and beloved grandfathers. A distraught Arjuna asks, killing one’s own kinsmen is a sin, and how can the Pandavas be happy if they have to win by killing their own kinsmen? Clearly, the choice to fight is not a desirable choice for him. However, if he does not fight, the lives of his own kinsmen and others may be saved, but he will miserably fail his own family, and in his duty as a Kshatriya.

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Type B Ethical Dilemma The choice is between two, or more, alternatives, which are difficult and undesirable. you want to avoid doing both, but you cannot. you can avoid only one of them, but not both. There are other kinds of dilemma too. Consider, for example, the situation where the two options, A and B, each has equally strong or equally weak support. So, there is no rational ground for the agent to choose any one over the other. Each of the alternatives is either equally preferable or not preferable. We are left with choices where selection cannot be justified. This is where we may cite the famous dilemma of Buridan’s Ass.17 This calls for a scenario, where a hungry donkey is situated at an equal distance from two equally good bales of hay. Each bale had the same amount of hay, of same quality and smell. The donkey had no reason to choose one over the other. So, it could not decide which one to eat. So, it stood in the middle and starved to death. It is an amusing story about the paradox of choice. We, however, shall confine our discussion of ethical dilemmas to type A and type B only. Next we shall discuss ways to respond to an ethical dilemma.

2.7.1 How to Respond to an Ethical Dilemma? Not all dilemmas are resolvable. But many of them can be resolved or at least can be responded to. Some of the established ways to respond to an ethical dilemma are discussed below: 1. The Type A dilemmas are easier to respond to. For, one needs to choose among the desirable alternatives. To resolve, this is where we may utilize the concept of overriding reason, as discussed above, if there is any. One may choose one option over the other by appealing to the overriding moral reasons or value considerations for one over the other. It has also been discussed above what option we have when there is no obvious overriding reason present for any of the alternatives. 2. The type B dilemmas, however, are harder to respond to. If it is a genuine type B dilemma, one may not escape avoiding all its undesirable alternatives. Nonetheless, some of the established strategies are: (a) Breaking the horns of a dilemma: To break the horns of a dilemma is to show that one of the alternatives is really not that undesirable. Between the two or more alternatives, the strategy is to choose the lesser evil among them. For example, suppose that the economy is in terrible shape and your company is in the downsizing mode, and you have been asked to fire either J or K from your own 17

The dilemma is named after Philosopher John Buridan (1300–1358).

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department. That is, you must fire one of them. However, the point is that you do not want to fire either of them, particularly at a time when the job market is shrinking. However, it is a choice that is forced upon you by the situation. Suppose that you now discover from the files that K was already planning to quit the company and was looking for a new job. With this new information, you may realize that firing K as an alternative is not that difficult any more. Thus, you break the horns of a dilemma by selecting one of the choices it offers to you. We may alternatively call it the bite the bullet strategy: Choose one of the options presented and show how its negative consequences can be mitigated or avoided. We may return to the Mahabharata example of Arjuna in the discussion above and see that something similar was done to pull Arjuna out of his depressed state of mind. Srikrishna, through his detailed discussion and philosophical sermon as narrated in the chapters of Srimadbhagavatgita, explained to Arjuna how death is not an end, and how all that Arjuna is so anxious and sad about, is already done, and how Arjuna is nothing but an instrument of what is destined to happen. Arjuna was advised to dedicate the outcome of his actions to Srikrishna, the Lord of the Universe. Thus, the burden of agency was lifted off the shoulders of Arjuna, and the alternative of fighting a battle no longer remained that undesirable to Arjuna. (b) To go between the horns of a dilemma: This strategy is to find a third alternative that is not as bad or undesirable as the original two alternatives. A middle path may be found avoiding the two originally given difficult choices. For example, in case 2.4 above, where your long-time friend has asked for a loan, but the uncertainty about repayment has made it difficult for you to immediately agree, and you may choose to go between the horns of a dilemma by opening up a discussion with your friend and work out the repayment plan and then either loan him the money or negotiate for a smaller amount of loan. Similarly, in the example of Kitai and the dilemma between his ailing parents and a dream job offer abroad (Sect. 2.6.1), we may resolve Kitai’s dilemma by finding a middle path for him. Kitai may discuss with his parents, and with the consent of his parents, he may arrange to take his parents along with him abroad. Or, with the consent of his parents, he may work out a decent elderly care arrangement for his parents at home with his income abroad. Thus, he may seek a third alternative which is not as bad as the two original choices.

2.8 Complex Ethical Issues The multiplicity of right choices available in case of ethical issues, or the right versus right in certain situations, indicates that it is not always easy to make a choice between the ethically right options. The selection is further complicated by the fact that in real life ethical issues are often complex and multi-dimensional. The multiple facets of the issue, combined with the multiple right choices available, make it a daunting task to find an ethical solution to a complex ethical problem.

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This does not mean that a solution to complex ethical issues cannot be found. My point is that finding such solutions is difficult, but not impossible. It just shows that we need to work harder to look for and to pick the ‘right’ solution among the available choices. In fact, there are a number of such intricate ethical issues in our society on which we have shown remarkable persistence and ingenuity to find the ethically appropriate solutions. In what follows, I shall use the contemporary issue of human organ transplantation as an example to elucidate this point.

2.8.1 Ethics in Human Organ Transplantation Human organ transplantation is a surgical operation by which a damaged or a dysfunctional organ, such as a kidney, heart, liver, or a body tissue, is removed from a human body and is replaced with a new healthy organ from another human body. For end-stage organ failure in a patient, organ transplantation has become an established medical procedure and sometimes is the only hope for those patients. This is particularly true about kidney failure. The first successful human organ transplant happened in the early 1960s, when it became possible to use special tissue-matching techniques and immunosuppressive drugs that reduced the chance of rejection of a transplanted organ by the host body. Subsequently, there have been further great advances in medical sciences and technology to yield greater success in organ transplants. Medically speaking, the issue of human organ transplantation is treated as a quite advanced and complex procedure. However, that complexity fades away in comparison to the complex challenges that the issue makes us confront when trying to implement it in the society. As you may be already aware of, human organ transplantation raises many ethical, legal, and societal issues. Here, I shall highlight only a few of those ethical challenges to discuss how different societies have tried to address them, and which ethically acceptable solutions they have picked up among the available choices, and why.

2.8.1.1

Ethical Issue #1. A Fair Procurement Process

In order to conduct an organ transplantation procedure, first healthy organs need to be procured. However, the procedure for the procurement raises several questions, such as: • How should the healthy organs for transplantation be procured? In what manner should the organs be procured?

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• In other words, what are the conditions under which it is ethically acceptable to procure a bodily organ from a human being? These are difficult, but extremely important, questions to settle in a fair, civilized society. For, globally, healthy organs for transplantation are very short in supply. First of all, the supply of organs is low; the demand for organs far exceeds the supply of organs. Second, even after a healthy organ is available, there has to be a compatibility or match between the blood groups, between the recipient and the donor. Thus, finding an organ that matches is a challenge. The acuteness of shortage of supply and the need for healthy organs for transplantation may be understood better from the fact that every year many people die while waiting for a healthy and matching organ. The combination of high demand and the low supply of healthy organs makes it a dangerously attractive area for profit mongering. And that is precisely why there has to be certain rules, conditions, and regulations for organ procurement, so that people should not seek recourse to any means of procurement. The concern about the manner of procurement becomes paramount here. Just because there is a great need for a kidney, should we simply grab someone and remove the kidney? Given the shortage of supply, are we entitled to harvest organs by force from whosoever is around? The answer, of course, is: NO. We should not. The end, no matter how great, does not always justify the means. Even if the need for organs is enormous and important and even if the consequence is life enhancing and good for the recipients, organ harvesting in an unethical manner, such as by force, or by connivance, or by manipulation, is an ethically wrong act. It is illegal as well. Just as when we desperately need money, the need does not justify taking other’s money by some dubious method; similarly harvesting the bodily organs of another in some questionable manner is considered as wrong. You might ask: Then, what is the right way of organ procurement? Globally, the accepted answer to this question is that the only and the best way to procure an organ for transplantation is through organ donation. Ethically, it is acceptable that we should receive only those organs and tissues that are voluntarily donated by a person. So, there are two conditions under which it is ethically acceptable to procure bodily organ or tissues from a human being, and they are: (i) Volunteerism: Organ procurement must be voluntary. Organs are to be donated out of his or her ‘free choice’ by the donor. The procurement method must ensure that the donor is voluntarily giving an organ. The only acceptable motive of the donor should be: Altruism, that is, to do good to the others. The act of organ donation should be driven by beneficence, a concern for the well-being for the others. This rules out all sorts of financial benefits as the motive. (ii) Informed consent: Harvesting organs from a body must ensure informed consent of the donor or of the relevant people. The consent has to be obtained

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after informing the donor about the details of the procedure, its effect on the donor, and particularly about the risks involved in the act. For example, the health implications, particularly the probable adverse effects, if any, of the organ donation should be clearly communicated to the donor. Clear and sufficient information must be provided in a comprehensible manner before the consent is obtained. In different countries, obtaining informed consent requires fulfilling certain legal procedures, before removing an organ. One also needs to know from whom the consent is to be obtained. For live donors, obviously the informed consent is to be obtained directly from the donor, but it should be in a way that is publicly demonstrable, such as a legal document or will that expresses the desire to donate. In case of dispute, there can be evidentiary support available for that desire to donate. In case of organ removal from the deceased, naturally the rule would change. In India, in case of organ harvesting from bodies that are unclaimed by any relative for 48 hours, the person-in-charge of the hospital can authorize the organ removal. The authorization would be regarded as ‘consent’ by the relevant authority. On the other hand, in case of a deceased person, whose family is present, the family must be approached for consent. Of course, the issue of informed consent becomes a bit complicated if the live donor is not capable to give consent. For example, if the donor is a minor or a child or is a mentally incompetent person, their capacity to give consent is considered as diminished or underdeveloped and doubtful. In such cases, the consent of the guardian is sought. Usually, the guardian is the parent or a relative. Lately, however, in case of a child, the parent’s authority to give consent has raised ethically intriguing questions where the child has been conceived, just so the organ and tissues can be harvested from the child to save an older sibling.18 In sum, the conditions of volunteerism and informed consent are the two conditions that are commonly followed. With both the conditions, the clause of human dignity is attached. There is the demand that due deference must be shown to the donor, dead or alive. The organ procurement method must not in any way show disrespect to the donor as a person. Harvesting by force, or without consent, is a show of utter disrespect to a person. Even when the donor is dead, we must show respect. Even when we are dealing with a prisoner, one needs to show some respect. For, even a prisoner has certain rights, which should be honored. We may try to understand the importance of the last point by citing the case of China, where the practice of forced organ harvesting from the prisoners has been reported. It is claimed that China has been harvesting organs for quite some time from

18

Gina Kolata. More babies being born to be donors of tissue. The New York Times, June 4, 1991. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/1991/06/04/health/more-babies-being-born-to-be-don ors-of-tissue.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm. [Last accessed on: Jan 4 2014]. Julian Borger and James Meek. Parents create baby to save sister. The Guardian, October 4 2000. Available at: http:/ /www.theguardian.com/science/2000/oct/04/genetics.internationalnews. [Last accessed on: Jan 4 2014].

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the deceased bodies of the executed prisoners. International investigation,19 by David Kilgour, a Member of Canadian Parliament, and David Matas, a Canadian Human Rights lawyer, brought out many disturbing facts regarding this. They claimed that many of the executed prisoners from whom organs were harvested were targeted prisoners, as they were the vocal critics of the Chinese Government. These included the Falun Gong practitioners20 and the Uighur Muslims, both of whom are known to be detractors of the government policies. The Uighur Muslims are a minority ethnic group in China who allegedly are systematically subjected to abject exploitation and mistreatment. It was further claimed that selling these organs, harvested in this manner without consent from the executed prisoners, is a regular, widespread, and a very lucrative business in China. Of course, the Chinese Government has been consistently in denial about this. However, there has been enough international discussion on this, as a result of which the China Tribunal,21 an independent peoples’ tribunal, was formed to investigate the matter. In June 2019, the tribunal came out with the verdict that forced organ harvesting has been going on in China for years and on a significant scale. Under international pressure, China has recently admitted that it did procure organs from executed prisoners and has pledged to stop the practice.22 However, there are many who are skeptical about that promise, given the wide practice of using organs obtained from deceased executed prisoners in the hospitals and in the medical system of China.23 China had tried to defend the practice in the name of benefit to the larger society. Traditional Chinese customs require that a body should be cremated or buried, intact. That is, they believe that all the body parts of the deceased should remain intact, so that the person reincarnates also as a whole. Thus, there is a cultural injunction in China against the donation of organs after death. In order to bridge the gap between need and supply, China reportedly found the way to procure from the dead bodies of the executed prisoners. It is said that about two-thirds of total number of organs in China allegedly were sourced in this way. The question is: Is it ethically right to harvest organs without consent from even those who are prisoners, or are convicted and are to be executed? The consensus is 19

Matas, D, and D. Kilgour. 2007. Bloody Harvest: Revised report into allegations of organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners in China. Available at: http://organharvestinvestigation. net/. 20 Falun Gong is the name of a spiritual discipline. In Chinese, Falun Gong means the ‘law wheel practice’, and it is a set of meditation practices and texts. It has a large number of followers, including Tibetans, democracy activists, pro-independence Taiwanese, Uighur Muslims. Chinese Government banned this group in 1999, viewing them as an “evil cult” and as a probable political threat. See for example, J.Y. 2018. What is Falun Gong? The Economist, Sept 5, 2018. Available at: https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2018/09/05/what-is-falun-gong. 21 The China Tribuna. https://chinatribunal.com/. 22 Staff Reporter. BBC News. China announces end date for taking prisoners’ organs. BBC News, August 16 2013. Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-23722796. [Last accessed on: Jan 4 2014]. 23 Jiayang Fan. Can China Stop Organ Trafficking? The New Yorker Jan 10 2014. Available at: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2014/01/can-china-stop-organ-trafficking. html. [Last accessed on: Jan 14, 2013].

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that it would be unethical to do so even to a convicted prisoner to be executed. For, even a convicted prisoner holds a right to be treated in a certain way and to be given a free choice. The ethical judgment on this is well-expressed by the World Medical Association (WMA). It has officially denounced24 the practice of harvesting organs from the executed prisoners on the ground that in that situation there is no scope for the prisoner, before or after the execution, to have a free choice in the matter. Under the circumstances, the prisoner on death sentence cannot exercise the ability for free and informed consent. In addition, there was the allegation that sometimes the executions were expedited in case of urgent need for organs. That manipulation, if it happened, is a travesty of justice and sheer abuse of power, even if the people executed were convicted prisoners. We come to the conclusion that despite the great demand for healthy organs, the manner of their procurement must remain within the boundaries set by the joint conditions of volunteerism and informed consent. The manner of organ procurement should be a fair one, such that it does not exploit, disrespect, or violate anyone’s basic rights in the process of procurement.

2.8.2 Organ Trading: The Unethical and the Illegal Though in Sect. 2.7 we are discussing the important ethical issues related to human organ transplantation, perhaps we need to digress a little to discuss a huge unethical practice related to the topic at hand, namely, the issue of organ trading. Commercial sale of organs, that is, selling and purchase of organs with money for financial gain, is known as organ trading. The practice is deemed as both unethical and illegal. Organ trading is the clandestine ‘black market’ where sale and purchase of bodily organs and tissues happen against a price. The shortage of the supply and the desperate and high demand of healthy organs make it a highly lucrative market for the profiteers engaged in the trading. The market for organ trading is international, involving a global network, international partners and travels. Studies25 report that in some cases, the potential recipients travel as tourists to other countries, where the laws are lax, or the surveillance is not that strict, to obtain the organs and tissues through commercial transactions. This is known as transplant tourism. In other cases, the person with the healthy organ may be brought to the recipient’s country, e.g. from Sri Lanka to UK. In some cases, the recipient and the person with the healthy organ both may travel to a third country, where the transplantation takes place. And, the entire matter is coordinated by an international organ trafficking syndicate. 24

World Medical Association (WMA). WMA Council resolution on organ donation in China. Feb 15, 2017. Available at: https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-council-resolution-on-organ-don ation-in-china/. 25 Shimazono, Y. The state of the international organ trade: A provisional picture based on integration of available information. Bulletin of the World Health Organization. Available at: https://www.who. int/bulletin/volumes/85/12/06-039370/en/.

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As already mentioned, organ trading is strictly prohibited as illegal in most countries, including India. For our purpose, it is more important to note that it is unethical too. It is unethical, because (a) First and foremost, organ trading is exploitative and predatory by nature. Often, by offering large sums of money, the organ traders entice the poor and the vulnerable and take unfair advantage of their desperation. They exploit the poverty, ignorance, and the gullibility of the population to make personal profit through predatory organ procurement. (b) Organ trading is the worst kind of violation of the cardinal principle of volunteerism. Commodification of organs rules out beneficence and altruism as the motives. A commercial transaction cannot be an act of unmixed altruism and volunteerism, particularly if an organ is sold under the pressure of poverty. (c) Many religious traditions object to the commercial trading of organs on the ground that persons are not owners of their bodies, and they are simply the trustees or stewards of their bodies.26 That is, as per this view, commercial sale of bodily organs is unethical, because we do not have the ownership right to sell these. (d) If one does not want to subscribe to any particular religious view, there are arguments against organ trading from a more practical point of view. According to many, treating an organ or a body part as a trading commodity exposes both the sources and the recipients to great danger. Financial incentive can tempt individuals to make extremely risky choices for themselves. Sometimes, being falsely assured about the health implications of removal of an organ, the victims agree. Sometimes, they agree without fully comprehending the long-term effect of organ removal on their bodies. And sometimes, despite understanding the health risk, people take the risk due to desperation of dire poverty. For example, someone may sell one kidney despite being in poor health conditions.27 Either way, it is a dangerous practice for the victims. Such desperation in a person and the undue exploitation of that desperation by another person are both ethically reprehensible. On the other hand, introduction of money into organ and tissue harvesting also raises the question about the risk that is linked to the quality of organs thus obtained against a price. The quality of an organ from a malnourished body, sold under duress, raises questions about its efficacy for the recipient also. Moreover, organ trading allows using people for personal greed. Greed for money can induce people to kill or to forcibly take organs from the others. So, you can see that there are number of grounds on which organ trading can be called as unethical and wrong. Unfortunately, India at one point of time used to be known as a major supplier to the international organ trading market. Particularly, for this reason, India introduced the ‘The Human Organ Transplantation Act (THOA),

26

Kaplan, A. Bioethics of organ transplantation. Cold Spring Harb Perspect Med 2014, 4(3). Staff reporter. The Bangladesh poor selling organs to pay debts. BBC News, October 28, 2013. Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24128096. [Last accessed on: Jan 4 2014].

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1994. After the implementation of the law and its various amendments in the subsequent years, the organ trading, particularly the kidney racket, has decreased to a large extent. The Act and its amendments will be discussed separately below. However, despite the Act, the black market and the racketeering of organs perhaps have not been entirely eradicated from the country. It has not been eradicated from the world either. In fact, studies report that the drop in organ selling in India was accompanied by a rise in organ selling in other developing countries, such as Pakistan, Philippines. We shall end this discussion on the organ trading with a final point. Among the countries, the Islamic Republic of Iran, however, stands out as an exception. For, there the sale of a kidney is legally allowed. Selling of a kidney and purchase of it are legally permissible. Their argument is that mere legal prohibition will not stop the kidney racket; thus, the more sensible approach is to lift the prohibition and to legalize the practice. However, the same Iranian law prohibits the allocation of a kidney to anyone who is not a local citizen. Thus, Iran allows domestic commercial transaction of kidney, but prohibits international trade of the sold organs. Other countries, where the practice of international organ trading is rampant, are also supportive of the Iranian approach. For example, being unable to prevent rampant international organ trade, Philippines is now considering moving towards legalization of commercial procurement of a kidney for both domestic and foreign recipients. The unethical issue of organ trading is discussed here only to show the perils that already exist around the complex ethical issue of human organ transplantation. While trying to address the ethical issues in human organ transplantation, the countries and the policymakers must know to avoid and deter these perils.

2.8.3 Ethical Issue #2: A Fair Sourcing We next discuss the issue is of sourcing. • Where should the freely and donated with informed consent organs be procured from? The manner of procurement was discussed above, but the next important question is: From where these organs will come? How to ensure fairness in protecting these sources? Note that the current consensus about legally and ethically acceptable sources of organs for transplantation is that there can be two sources. They are: 1. Organ harvesting from cadavers or the dead: This is called cadaveric donation or deceased donation 2. Organ donation by live donors: live donation

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Cadaveric or deceased donation: In many countries, harvesting organs from recently deceased bodies is a long-held practice. This is known as deceased organ donation or cadaveric donation. It comprises of harvesting healthy organs, e.g. lung, kidneys, pancreas, and tissues, e.g. cornea, skin, etc., after death from a body. As already mentioned, in the case of organ removal from a body, even if it is a dead body, the two earlier mentioned conditions of (a) volunteerism and altruism and (b) informed consent should hold good. In the case of the deceased donation, the fulfillment of these two conditions may be satisfied in more than one ways as explained below: (i) Through a will or a legal document: People, when they are alive, may intimate their wishes to donate their body or their organs after their death by a legal document, such as the living will. This would bear the proof of their voluntary and informed choice to donate, which would be executed when they are dead. (ii) Through signing up with a civil society organization working in organ donation: People may register or sign up with an organ donation organization, such as an NGO, or a Trust, for organ donation. These organizations usually issue a Pledge to donate an organ or a donor card, which carries the information about the person’s pledge to organ donation and the specifics of the organ to be donated. In certain countries, such as the USA, a person may express his or her voluntary, informed choice to donate organ by wearing a signed donor card on their bodies or a wrist or a neck medallion, so that in case of sudden death, no time is lost to harvest the organs. (iii) In case the deceased person has left no instruction for organ donation or does not carry a signed donor card or a pledge to donate organs card, usually the rule is that the immediate family or the relatives of the deceased are to be approached for consent. This is a practice that is also followed in India.28 In such cases, it depends on the consent of the family or of the present relatives whether the organs can be retrieved. Spain has developed a national network of Transplant coordinators, who work in the hospitals and closely monitor the situations where the possibility of cadaveric donation can arise. They then tactfully approach the family and relatives for permission to allow the deceased person’s organs to be harvested. This system has worked wonders for Spain with the cadaveric organ donation. Over the years, Spain has developed a strong deceased organ donation system and has been consistently a world leader in deceased organ collection. Its number of deceased donors per million in the population remains the highest (46.9 in 2017) among the countries in the world. (iv) For bodies unclaimed, accident victims, that is, in the absence of explicit instruction from the deceased and in the absence of any family or relatives,

28

See for example: Staff Reporter. Organs harvested from a Brain-Dead Accident Victim. The Hindu, October 18 2013. Available at: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-tamiln adu/organs-harvested-from-braindead-accident-victim/article5246439.ece. [Last accessed on: Jan 2 2014].

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in India the practice is to obtain consent from the authorities, e.g. the Hospital Super, or to presume consent. At this juncture, we need to specifically talk in detail about the condition of consent in the context of deceased organ donation. Typically, for deceased organ donation, the practice is to adopt either of the two ways of consent: (a) Presumed consent (b) Explicit consent.

(a) Presumed consent or ‘opt-out’ system: This means that the consent of the deceased will be assumed, unless the deceased has expressed a wish not to be an organ donor while alive. That is, consent is taken to be default; a person in this system is presumed to consent to organ donation, even if the person has never registered as a donor. This is why the presumed consent is also known as the opt-out system in the context of organ donation. One has to opt-out by exercising a choice for opting out of the organ donation system. This choice will have to be registered in the organ registry system. This presumed consent system is used in case of deceased donation by many countries, such as Spain, Belgium, Austria, France, Italy, Norway, Singapore. Singapore, for example, follows a compulsory organ donation after death for all Singaporeans above 21 years of age, who die in a hospital. In due deference to the choice of a citizen, Singapore makes it possible to opt-out for its citizens, when they reach the age 18. For opting out, one needs to fill up a form, expressing the desire to optout, and send it to their National Organ Transplantation Unit. The opt-out, however, translates into getting less priority when the person himself or herself needs organ transplantation. The success of Spain in cadaveric organ donation is also said to have benefited from this opt-out system. Belgium implemented its presumed consent law in 1987 for not only Belgian citizens, but for anyone who has lived in Belgium for six months or more. Strict opt-out system: In case of opt-out system, the opt-out may be a strict optout, where when opt-out is not done by the deceased, and the organs are retrieved from the dead body without consulting the family of the deceased. For instance, in Belgium, the opt-out policy is strict. After the death of a patient, the Belgian doctors are under no compulsion to inform the family of the deceased for permission to recover the organs or to inform them of their intention to do so. However, if a family member explicitly objects to organ retrieval, then the physician cannot proceed. As with other opt-out systems, in Belgium, people who do not want to donate will have to register their objection with the central health authority, and prospective donors can change their mind at any point of time. Soft opt-out system: There is also a soft opt-out system, where even when opt-out is not done by the deceased, the family of the deceased is still consulted for organ retrieval and their wishes are taken into consideration. Spain, for example, follows

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this soft opt-out, so that the final authority of deciding whether or not to donate the organs of the deceased lies with the family. (b) Explicit consent or opt-in system: This is a system in which organs, tissues, etc., can be removed from someone’s body, dead or alive, only if the person has given consent explicitly (in written form, in a legal document) for such removal. This means that a person cannot be presumed as an organ donor, unless the person has explicitly stated so. This is also known as the opt-in system. A person has to explicitly exercise choice, opt-in, to be a part of the organ donation system. Explicit consent system for organ donation is followed in certain countries, such as the USA, Denmark, UK, Canada, India. The desire to donate organs or tissues needs explicit documentation.

2.8.3.1

The Ethical Debate: Opt-out or Opt-in?

What should be a fair system for deceased organ donation, opt-in or opt-out? The answer remains controversial, as arguments are strong on both sides. A major ethical objection against presumed consent or opt-out often is that it denies a person the autonomy or the freedom of choice, that the person deserves. Bioethicists argue that presumed consent makes it possible to it is to unethically invade a person’s body without the person’s consent.29 It is also argued that by giving the blanket authorization, the presumed consent policy hands over an undesirable amount of power and possession over our bodies to the Government, in addition to the already existing control and power that it has over us.30 Others have cautioned against the possibility of presuming consent in a case, where the person concerned has not understood the implications of opt-out, or did not know the necessary information about organ donation. Medical practitioners have opined that a strict opt-out or presumed consent can strain the relationship of trust between a doctor and a terminal patient and the patient’s family.31 In this context, perhaps, we can cite the case of Brazil, which in 1997 introduced the presumed consent policy, and then quickly withdrew the policy and returned to explicit consent policy.32 For, the Brazilian Medical Association, along with the Brazilian Medical Council, objected to the presumed consent policy and opined that most doctors would not be willing to remove the organs from a deceased body without the family’s permission, even when the law instructs them to do so. On the other hand, the defenders of the presumed consent argue that the opt-out system actually allows more autonomy to personal choice to the agent about organ 29

Gill MB. Presumed consent, autonomy, and organ donation. J Med Philos. 2004; 29(1):37–59. Kennedy I, Sells RA, Daar AS, et al. The case for “presumed consent” in organ donation. Lancet. 1998; 351(9116):1650–1652. 31 Bramhall S. (2011). Presumed consent for organ donation: a case against. Annals of The Royal College of Surgeons of England, 93(4), 270–272. https://doi.org/10.1308/147870811X571136b. 32 Zink, S, et al. Presumed versus expressed consent in the US and internationally. Virtual Mentor. 2005; 7(9):610–614. Reprinted in The AMA Journal of Ethics, Sept 2005. 30

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donation instead of giving choice to the family of the deceased. For, it allows the person the free choice to opt out well in advance or stay in as a willing organ donor. In the explicit consent system, on the other hand, for the permission for organ retrieval, the family of the deceased has to be approached. And, it is not the person’s choice, but the family’s choice that will prevail. Furthermore, it is a cruel and unnecessary task to approach the family at a time of grief to discuss the matter of the organs of the deceased. Explicit consent thrusts this cruel task onto the healthcare workers. By the opt-out or presumed consent policy, however, the family can be spared of the stress over this choice at a vulnerable moment.33 Others have argued that given the social desirability of the goal of organ transplantation, the duty of communicating and registering one’s objection to organ donation should fall on those who oppose organ donation and not on those who support organ donation.34 Moreover, the shortage of organs is a dreadful fact for all those who need them. Keeping that necessity in mind, it can be argued that the practice of presumed consent has helped the rate of ‘donation’ to significantly increase in many countries, which otherwise would not have increased.35 In fact, some countries, where explicit consent policy holds, are considering the switch to presumed consent in case of deceased organ donation. For example, since 2018 there is a discussion in England to change the law about consent in organ donation from explicit consent to presumed consent to increase organ donation. In India, as mentioned above, the currently followed policy is opt-in or explicit consent, where volunteerism and altruism by individuals and their families are expected and encouraged. However, the topic of presumed consent also is being mulled over. The most important need, however, is the spread of education and awareness about organ donation among the people and the doctors. Why is organ donation rate so low? I have already mentioned that in comparison to the demand for organs for transplantation, the supply of organs by donation is low. That is not just true about India, but about all the countries in the world. In different parts of the world, there seems to be a strange reticence about organ donation, particularly if it involves harvesting the organs from a dead body. For example, in Algeria, the law permits deceased organ donation, but makes it contingent upon the family’s wish. That is, organs from a deceased body can be legally retrieved if the family agrees. However, most families refuse to donate the organs of their deceased member; therefore, in effect, the supply of organs remains low. The reasons of such refusal vary; sometimes it is lack of public education and awareness about organ transplantation, sometimes it is the lack of approval and support of the religious leaders, sometimes it is the fear of violating some religious laws, and sometimes because of their mistrust of the doctors. In some communities, mutilating a dead 33

Futterman LG. Presumed consent: the solution to the critical donor shortage? The Ethics of Organ Transplant. In: Caplan AL, Coelho DH, eds. The Ethics of Organ Transplant: The Current Debate. Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books; 1998:161–172. 34 Watson MB. Presumed consent for organ transplantation: a better system. Curr Surg. 2003; 60(2):156–157. 35 Op.Cit. Footnote 31.

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body, as is necessary in case of organ harvesting from a dead body, is culturally viewed as an act of utter disrespect towards the dead. Thus, harvesting organs from a deceased body is viewed as an act of sacrilege. The outcome is that the supply of organs from cadaveric donation remains very low; hence, the country has no other way but to rely upon live donation. Same is the situation in Morocco and in most of North Africa. Religion sometimes plays a role behind this reticence. For example, the official statement from most Islamic religious leaders is openly supportive of organ transplantation. It is said that Islam allows organ transplantation as a virtuous act of saving lives, and organ donation is an act of charity of life. It is said that Islam allows deceased organ donation, but only after all signs of life have ceased to be and death is ensured. However, in practice, the picture is quite different. Studies show that, among the five Islamic North African countries, deceased donor organ transplantation is done only in Tunisia. In the rest, deceased organ donation is practically non-existent. In the twenty-two Islamic countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, the practice of deceased organ donation is illegal and non-existent36 . In the Middle-East Arab countries also, live donation is the most practiced procedure for organ transplantation.37 Organ harvesting from the dead is not a popular source in this region, as the definition of death is viewed as a controversial topic, and also because cadaveric organ donation remains a somewhat contentious topic among the religious leaders. Some South Asian Islamic scholars (Ulemas) and jurists (Muftis) have objected against organ donation, both from human living and deceased donors, because they view the human body as a “amanat” (entrusted) from God, which they believe should not be desecrated by organ harvesting.38 Apart from Islam, certain Native American tribes, Roma Gypsies, Confucians, Shintoists, and some orthodox Jewish rabbis also have discouraged harvesting organs from a deceased body on religious grounds. There also used to be similar religious injunction among certain Christian sects against donation of organs by a person alive. Earlier, the catholic theologians used to believe that mutilation of one living body created by God for the benefit of another is a violation of the Principle of Totality. Hence, they had reservations against organ transplantation. Later, however, organ transplantation has been approved with certain restrictions, e.g. organ donation must be accompanied by the consent of the donor and must not impose excessive risk to the donor. In case of cadaveric donation, the Catholics require that the death of the donor must be ascertained. In 1992, Pope John Paul II had opined that any procedure that commercializes or treats them as objects of trade is unethical; for, it violates the dignity of the human person, as the human body is never to be considered as a merely

36

Ghods AJ. Current status of organ transplant in Islamic countries. Exp Clin Transplant. 2015 Apr; 13 Suppl 1:13–7. 37 Shaheen FA, Souqiyyeh MZ. Current obstacles to organ transplant in Middle east Countries. Exp Clin Transplant. 2015 Apr; 13 Suppl 1:1–3. 38 Bruzzone P. Religious aspects of organ transplantation. Transplant Proc. 2008 May; 40(4):1064– 7.

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physical or biological entity.39 This implies that the papacy views organ trading as unacceptable, but on the whole allows organ transplantation within the ethical limits. Fortunately, in India, the land of many religions and subcultures, no religion, or culture has imposed a ban towards organ donation, either from a live donor or from the deceased. In fact, from time to time, spiritual leaders of various communities have urged for more organ donation. Celebrities have encouraged people to donate organs and tissues. In India, it is legally permitted to donate full bodies by the donor for medical use or research, and bodies can be claimed for medical and research use if the body is unclaimed after 48 hours of death. However, there is still a shortage of donated organs in the country. For example, India has 4.8 million cases of blindness (2019). Among these, corneal blindness is preventable and treatable through transplants. However, there is scarcity of donor corneal tissues in India.40 The rate of organ donation is still not at a satisfactory level in India.

2.8.4 Ethical Issue #3: A Fair Allocation of the Organs The third, and the last, ethical issue to be discussed here in connection to ethics of human organ transplantation is about the allocation of the organs procured. The basic questions are: • What would be a fair distribution policy for organs, given the high demand and the short supply? • Or, how to ensure a fair distribution of the organs and tissues harvested, when there is acute shortage of supply and the demand is high? • Who should get an organ to be transplanted first, and who should be asked to wait? Whose life is more important to be saved, and how are these questions to be settled? These are all hard questions, but a fair society must address these and devise a fair allocation system. Let us see how different countries have tried to address these. Many countries follow a queue system. The applicants have to wait in the queue of applications for their chance to receive an organ. The priority in a queue, however, may be subjected to certain conditions. I have already mentioned that in Singapore, in the opt-out system if a person opts out, that is, declines to donate organ, the consequence is that the person will get a low priority in the queue, should the person require an organ transplantation. Similarly, in 2010 Israel has passed a law for organ distribution that gave priority to the organ donors waiting in the queue. The policy is actually ‘don’t give, don’t get’. As per the law, those who have enlisted their names on the national organ donor registry or have a donor card will get higher priority if they need organ for transplantation. The non-donors would get a low priority in the 39

Ibid. Gupta N et al. Eye donation and eye banking in India. The National Medical Journal of India, 2018, 31(5), 283–286.

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waiting queue for organs. Moreover, the law allows a transplant candidate to move up in the queue, if they have a first-degree relative, who has a donor card or has donated organ after death. Advocates of this law argue that the law has successfully created an increase in organ donation by providing a strong incentive. However, critics argue that this law is unfairly biased towards those with a large family and therefore with a larger probability of someone with a donor card.41 Sweden also has a queue system for organ transplant; however, a recipient can get ahead in the queue if the organ sourced is not from a public pool, but from a willing relative. In a queue system, discrepancy in waiting time for the recipients in the queue is a matter of ethical concern. For, if, in the same queue, it is longer waiting time for A than for B, A naturally would raise a question about equality and equity. Unfortunately, however, there are multiple reasons why such discrepancies may arise, and some of those reasons may not be in our control. For example, studies show that since organ transplantation requires a blood type compatibility, in the study population recipients with blood type O had to wait considerably longer (about 10 months) than those with blood type A (6 months) and than blood type AB (about 3 months).42 Blood type O is more common, and hence, the number of recipients in waiting is also more. Thus, tt has been argued that this discrepancy in waiting time for a life-saving intervention raises questions about the equity of a queue system. If we compare different countries, we shall see that the different levels of shortage of organ supply in different countries also affect the waiting time in the queue differently for the recipients. The queue in the countries with low to very low organ supply understandably grows longer, whereas queues in the countries with relatively higher organ donation rate move faster. For instance, New Zealand has one of the very low organ donation rates, after Greece and Mexico, and consequently has a relatively very long queue for organ transplantation in comparison to Spain. Triage ➜ For the sake of fairness, a queue system must incorporate consideration for the degree of need of the recipients in the queue. This is where the idea of triage could be beneficial. Triage is a term that refers to categorizing or sorting groups. Originally, the term was used for sorting crops into groups according to their quality. Subsequently, it gained a meaning of urgent classification in critical circumstances, referring to sorting the casualties in the battlefield into three groups such as these: (a) Those who are not seriously injured (b) Those who are seriously injured but do not require immediate attention (c) Those who are seriously injured and require immediate attention. In a scenario which calls for attending the injured in a medical camp near the battlefield, who do we treat first? Clearly, not all the groups can be simultaneously 41

Editorial. Ensuring fair allocation of organs. The Lancet, 2013, 382(9881): 181. Stanford, D. et al. 2014. A queuing model to address waiting time inconsistency in solid organ transplantation. Operations Research for Healthcare, 3(1): 40–45.

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attended or treated, so who should we start with? The grouping by Triage helps us to use the need of the patient as the criterion for getting the medical attention first. The last group will get a priority over the others. Similarly, in a queue for organ reception, a triage-based grouping of the people in waiting would enable us bring in considerations of justice and equity in the queue for organ transplantation. Different countries have worked in the recognition of the need of the recipients as one of the major considerations to bring equity in their organ allocation policy. It is reported that China recently has installed a computerized national system for organ donation and transplantation: China Organ Transplant Response System (CORS), which ranks the queue of the organ recipients and controls the distribution by several parameters, including the medical need of the recipient. The USA also recognizes the urgency of the need of the patient as a major consideration in organ allocation. Before 2000, in the USA, the donated organs are used to be distributed only locally or at least within a certain region. This led to the result that recipients in states with a larger organ donation bank benefited more than those in the states with a smaller donation bank. This also allowed the possibility that an organ may have gone to someone in lesser need than someone in greater need, just because the recipient was within the state or the region. After 2000, there were efforts to distribute the organs more equitably by replacing the priority of local distribution by national distribution. The American Medical Association (AMA) ethics code recommends that harvested organs should be treated as national, not local resource. The urgency of the need of the recipient is viewed as a foremost consideration and the consensus is that the organs should be distributed over as large a geographical area as feasible. The AMA ethics code also insists upon five ethically acceptable criteria for a fair allocation of any limited medical resource. The list of those criteria is given below. You may see that the urgency of need features in that list prominently: (a) (b) (c) (d) (e)

Likelihood of benefit Urgency of need Change in quality of life Duration of benefit Amount of resources required for successful treatment.43

This is where I would conclude the discussion on ethics of human organ transplantation as an example of handling a complex, contemporary ethical issue. The discussion above on various ethical issues linked to organ transplantation, and the ethical solutions on these which have been tried out by different countries, should show you both the complexity and practicality of ethics and its issues. We shall end this chapter by acquainting you with how India has legally addressed the issue through its laws. It helps to know what concerns the law already covers, so that the rest can be discussed within ethics.

43

Duda L. National Organ Allocation Policy. AMA Jnl of Ethics, Virtual Mentor. 2005; 7(9):604– 607.

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2.9 The Legal Position in India: Human Organ Transplantation THOA 1994: In 1994 Indian parliament passed the Transplantation of Human Organ Act (THOA 1994) for the regulation, removal, and transplantation of human organs for therapeutic purposes. However, one of its major objectives was to legally prohibit organ trading in the country. There was a great emphasis on strict prohibition of exchange of money between an organ donor and an organ recipient. The act accepted ‘brain death’ as the definition of death for deceased donation. For live donation, the act initially allowed only the first relatives (father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, and husband, wife) to donate organs to an ailing relative without government’s permission. The law made organ donation by anyone other than the first relative subjected to mandatory permission from the government. By linking organ donation to the first relatives strictly, the law attempted to keep trading of organs and the non-related outsiders out. Amendments: Since then, many rules and amendments have been made to make the Act legally and ethically stronger. For, despite the 1994 Act, cases of human organ trading in India and by the Indians were on the rise and were reported in the international and national media. Fingers were pointed at the colluding Indian doctors too, without whose active cooperation a complicated task such as organ removal, or organ transplantation, simply would not be possible. Apparently, organ trading continued because of the loopholes in the law. An amendment of the Act was proposed by the states of West Bengal, Goa, and Himachal Pradesh to address the loopholes in the Act. THOA Rules: In 2008, a notification was issued mentioning certain rules, which are called Transplantation of Human Organ (Amendment) Rules 2008, as annexed rules with the Act. Some of the significant changes that the rules brought in were: (a) Composition of an authorization committee, i.e. a committee who would authorize organ transplantation (b) Addition of a hospital-based authorization committee, a part of the committee mentioned in (a) (c) Permission for organ donation by people who are not ‘near relatives’, such as uncle, aunts in an extended family circle, as willing, living donors, provided there is no commercial dealing involved, and no touts or middlemen are involved, (d) Interview of the proposed donor and video-recording of the interview as part of the documentation process (e) Qualifications of the doctors involved in organ transplantation.

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One of the objectives of the rules was a more stringent prohibition of the commercial selling of organs and tissues in the country, and to weed out the touts involved. As said earlier, India does not subscribe to presumed consent or opt-out system for deceased organ donation. It follows an explicit consent, or opt-in, policy. The organ donor needs to make the desire to donate organ explicit and demonstrable. Legalized documentation of the desire to donate is one of the ways. THOTA 2011: Following this, the Act was amended in 2011. As importance of tissue donation and transplantation was increasing, the name of the Act was amended to Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Act (THOTA 2011). Some of the fresh changes that the Act brought in were: (a) Expansion of the ‘near relatives’ to include grandparents, grandchildren (b) Introduction of swap donations between two families, if found compatible (c) Defining the scope of work and role of a Transplant Coordinator (d) Pre-requisites for hospitals who are eligible to declare brain death (e) Expansion of the team, who are eligible to declare and certify ‘brain death’, to include more varied medical specialists. The 2011 amended Act clearly redefined a donor as someone who voluntarily authorizes removal of organ or tissues for therapeutic purposes. THOTA Rules 2014: However, in 2014 the new notification of the rules came as the Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Rules (THOTA Rules 2014).44 The rules clarified that for all organ transplantations by organ donations by non-related persons, or for foreign donors, and foreign recipients and transplantations, cases are to be evaluated by authorization committees. That is, such types of organ donations are not entirely ruled out, but must go through a rigorous scrutiny by the authorization committees. Living-donor transplantations are to be reviewed specifically by the authorization committees to deter exploitation and commercial transactions. In case of any malpractice, the committee also has the power to inspect the health facilities where organ transplantations are done and if, found at fault, the committee may revoke the registration license of the hospital.45 With the increase of deceased or cadaveric organ donations in the country and with the increase in number of facilities performing organ transplantation, the need of a registry or an organized database for organ transplantation was felt as paramount. The new rules defined the scope and work of an organ registry at three levels: National, regional, and local levels. The registry has been suggested to keep an audit on the 44

Yadla M. Legal Policies of Organ Transplantation in India: Basics and Beyond. Saudi Jnl of Kidney Diseases and Transplantation, 2019 30(4): 943–952. 45 Sahay, M. Transplantation of Human Organ and Tissues Act- “Simplified”. Indian Jnl of Transplantation, 2018, 12(2): 84–89.

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organ transplant cases, the demographics of those cases, and to also prepare a profile of the donors. India now has an Indian Transplantation Registry, an initiative by Indian Society for Organ Transplantation. Moreover, a government-appointed body has been created: National Organ and Tissue Transplant organization (NOTTO) and has been established with regional and state level presence specifically for the establishment and maintenance of organ registries. THOTA 2011 gave legal approval to the concept of transplantation coordinators. They have now become mandatory in the medical facilities where transplantation take place. The transplantation coordinators are the trained facilitators, whose job is to coordinate the brain death declaration, organize the organ harvesting and the organ donation procedures. They are also the ones, who approach the relatives of the terminally ill or the deceased patient, and are known to help even in the last rites of the deceased. Even with the living donors, they facilitate the organ donation process. We have mentioned earlier how Spain has been successfully using a dedicated network of transplantation coordinators to make their deceased organ donation system vibrant. The new THOTA 2014 Rules, however, brought in a change in the definition of death. Earlier, the definition of death was merely brain death. In keeping with the more advanced medical knowledge, the new rules stated that deceased or cadaveric donation can be done only after ascertaining brain stem death or cardiac death. Brain death has been redefined to be understood as clinical diagnosis of cessation of all activities in the brain stem. The rules also instructed that the certification of brain stem death is to be done by a panel consisting of no less than four doctors.46 The details in the law are there to inform the people about the permissible and to forbid them from going astray. Punishments for deviation from the norms, malpractices such as organ removal without authority, organ trading, have been made more stringent, which includes imprisonment and revocation of license for the medical professionals and the facilities. Unfortunately, as is the case in many countries, the rate of organ donation is not very high in India. In case of deceased organ donation, part of the reason could be that the explicit consent, or opt-in, system requires an active support from the donors or their families. The process of convincing and obtaining consent from an individual or from the relatives about organ donation is not easy exactly. For a deceased organ donation program, the hospital staff also requires a special training to properly counsel the relatives. There is also the crucial challenge of timely intervention. In case of harvesting the organs from the brain-dead patients, the determination of which is done at the Intensive Care Units (ICU)s, the ICU staff have to be extra vigilant to approach the relatives at the right moment. Hopefully, the newly installed Transplant Coordinator system would help to improve the condition. In some parts of India, a deceased organ donation program has supposedly grown.47 As for live donation, through the efforts of some NGOs, hospitals, and activists, the awareness about organ donation has increased. Now there are also mechanisms 46

Ibid. Shroff, Sunil. Legal and Ethical aspects of organ donation and transplantation. Indian J Urol. 2009 Jul–Sep; 25(3): 348–355. 47

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through which people can pledge their organs for donation during their lifetime. There are organizations and NGO who facilitate the wish of live or deceased organ donation. Improvement in organ donation for transplantation in India would be a product of persistent, dedicated, and concerted effort.

2.10 Chapter Summary The present chapter has covered the remainder of the introductory topics that you needed to know before entering the field of ethics and its main areas. In this chapter, we started out by finding out what we may reasonably expect from ethics or a study of ethics. We saw that there are a number of answers available from different philosophers. Next, we learnt about some practical skills, such value identification and value clarification. We learnt that value identification at personal level and at external, situational level is not exactly the same thing; so the requirements for both, the need for each was discussed separately. With examples from real life, the process of value identification at the external, situation level was explained. We also learnt about some of the markers or indicators, with examples, by which we can recognize whether a real-life decision or a practice has an ethical dimension. Next, we were introduced to the ethical issues, their nature, and how the perception of their moral intensity varies with certain factors. Ethical issues, by nature, allow more than one right answers; and when there is a conflict between the right answers, we learnt how to choose among them. We learnt about ethical dilemmas, their different kinds, and also about what some of the established strategies are to resolve them. Finally, the ethical issues in human organ transplantation were taken as exemplars to understand the intricacies that may be involved in real-life ethical issues. The issues were broadly classified as: a fair manner of sourcing, a fair sourcing, and a fair allocation of the organs. The issues were analyzed to show the multiple concerns that need to be addressed in each. In addition, the insights and the practices of different countries were discussed to keep the discussion grounded in reality. Finally, India’s legal position on human organ transplantation and the legal requirements were discussed. The next chapter will introduce us to a subarea within ethics, namely, Metaethics. We shall come to learn what sort of questions Metaethics deals with and what some of its answers are.

Study Questions 1. Each of the following terms and expressions has been discussed in the present chapter. Briefly explain what they are and their link to ethics: (a) Triage (b) Moral intensity (c) The Niagara Syndrome

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(d) Overriding reasons (e) Deceased organ donation. 2. Raghu is a vegetarian. How can we determine whether his food habit has an ethical dimension in it or not? Explain your answer. 3. Does the end (the purpose, the goal of an action) always justify the means (the manner, the path adopted to accomplish the goal)? Should it? Support your answer with argumentation and at least two examples of your own. 4. Why is organ trading considered as unethical? Mention the salient arguments. Do you agree, or disagree, with the arguments? Justify your answer. 5. In the context of human organ transplantation, explain the contrast between the (a) explicit and presumed consent policy and (b) strict opt-out and soft opt-out. 6. Mention at least two arguments in favor of presumed consent and against presumed consent policy.

Research Exercises 1. Do a little bit of research to find out an example of a complex ethical issue that is particularly pertinent to your country. Carefully analyze and lay out the layers of complexity in terms of ethical issues in it. Present a summary of how your country has tried to address it. 2. What would be your example of an important ethical dilemma? Carefully layout the dilemma, and explain whether it is a type A or type B ethical dilemma. What do you recommend as the strategy to resolve this dilemma? Argue why and how you have resolved the dilemma.

Case Discussion and Questions Ethics Case to Discuss 2.1 Joyeeta and Swati Joyeeta and Swati are two friends who have grown up together. They have shared the days of joy in childhood and the moments of excitement and secrets of adolescence years with each other. Luckily, they were not only together in school, but they are also now batch-mates in college. In college, new friends have been added to the friend circles of each of them. As college years progressed, they have become busier with their own studies and own activities.

Case Discussion and Questions

In their third year, Joyeeta started to notice that Swati is falling behind in her studies. During the semester examination, Joyeeta came to know that Swati has been severely warned by the college authorities for cheating in the exams. Questions 1. Joyeeta wants to do the right thing. What should she do, and why? 2. Is there only one right answer here? If not, enumerate the available options. 3. Revisit your answer to question#1. Do you think your answer has some overriding reasons to be the right answer among the other options? If so, justify the overriding reasons it has over the other available right choices.

Ethics Case to Discuss 2.2 In Keonjhar District, a part of the district’s economy is largely based on mining activities, as minerals are one of the major natural resources there. With a high demand of laborers in the area for mining activities, several thousands of laborers, men and women, are working in Barbil-Joda mining area alone. Though both the terms Reja and Coolie are used for unskilled labor, the term Coolie is an established term for male laborer throughout the country, whereas the term Reja is widely used for female unskilled labor not only in the district of Keonjhar, but also in the mining and industrial areas of the eastern region. Rejas in Barbil Municipality area are basically involved in three types of work, i.e., building construction work, open mines work, and loading/unloading of minerals for trucks and railways wagons. In construction and loading/unloading of trucks or wagons, Rejas carry the head load, while the Coolies fill the basket and hold the loaded basket to dump in the wagon rack or trucks. There are traditions or taboos that the male labors do not take the head loads. The Rejas go with the trucks in early morning at 3–3.30 AM and return late evening by 6–7.00 PM. The main work is to take the head load of minerals from one point in the mines and unload the same in the trucks standing at a distance of 10–30 Kms. They travel a lot on foot in the process of loading and unloading the trucks. The loaded iron-made basket (gamla) that they carry on the head weighs approximate 35 Kgs. The construction Rejas are usually employed through the local small construction contractors. The contractors deduct a part from their daily wages. When they are hired by the government agencies, there is no wage difference between the Coolies and Rejas, but significantly, wage rates between Coolies and Rejas vary if the contractors hire them. Coolies are always paid few rupees more than the Rejas as the daily wage, if they are hired by the contractors. The long-term Rejas works are generally available through the local contractors.

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Locally, Rejas are recognized as hard-working women. However, there is no recognition of their work in terms of skill of work. Also, people generally cast a suspicious eye on the character of a Reja. Because of the nature of their work, Rejas have to work together with their male counterparts in trucks, mines, and constructions. The character of a young Reja is generally taken for granted as doubtful. Questions 1. Can you identify any practice or decision with ethical dimension here? Justify your answer how and why you recognized the ethical dimension. 2. What ethical values are honored/compromised in this case? Explain.

Key Terms • Action guidance: Guidance for action or the way forward. When the situation proves to be too difficult or problematic for us to choose the next course of action, we seek guidance in assisting us in choosing which action to perform and which one not to perform • Breaking the horns of a dilemma: To break the horns of a dilemma is to show that one of the alternatives of the dilemma is really not that undesirable • Cadaveric donation or deceased donation: Organ harvesting from cadaver or the dead body. • Character virtues: Virtues or excellences of character • Dilemma: It is a difficult situation which asks forces us to choose from alternatives, when the available choices are difficult. The choice is forced in the sense that not choosing would result into an outcome worse than choosing either of the alternatives. • Eudaimonia: Being in a state of bliss, well-being. • Explicit consent or opt-in system: This is a system in which organs, tissues, etc., can be removed from someone’s body, dead or alive, only if the person has given consent explicitly (in written form, in a legal document) for such removal. This means that a person cannot be presumed as an organ donor, unless the person has explicitly stated so. This is also known as the opt-in system. • Forced organ harvesting: This is the practice of removal of body organs by force from a person. • Human organ transplantation: It is a surgical operation by which a damaged or a dysfunctional organ, such as a kidney, heart, liver, or a body tissue, is removed from a human body and is replaced with a new healthy organ from another human body.

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• Intellectual virtues: Virtues or excellence in intellect and reasoning. • Live donation: Organ donation by donors who are alive. • Niagara Syndrome: The syndrome of living life unconsciously, drifting with the ‘flow’ instead of by one’s own values, until a sudden, devastating crisis emerges in life. • Organ trading: Commercial sale of organs in a human body, that is, selling and purchase of organs with money for financial gain is known as organ trading. The practice is deemed as both unethical and illegal. • Overriding reasons: They are supporting reasons or justificatory reasons of a claim or statement that overrule the supporting or justificatory reasons for the other claims or statements. They are supposed to be overriding or stronger. Their relatively greater strength may be assessed on various grounds, such as their persuasive power, or by their superior logical quality and evidentiary support. • Presumed consent or ‘opt-out’ system: In this system, the consent of the deceased to donate the organs will be assumed, unless the deceased has expressed a wish not to be an organ donor while alive. • Soft opt-out system: This the system, where though consent for deceased organ donation is taken for granted, the family of the deceased is still consulted for organ retrieval and their wishes are taken into consideration. This is true even for those who have not opted-out of organ donation, • Strict opt-out system: This is a kind of opt-out system, where the consent of the deceased to donate the organs will be assumed, unless the deceased has specifically opted out of organ donation, and the organs would be retrieved from the dead body without consulting the family of the deceased • To go between the horns of a dilemma: This is to find a third alternative that is not as bad or undesirable as the original two alternatives offered by the dilemma. A middle path may be found avoiding the two originally given difficult choices. • Transplant tourism: The potential recipients travel to other countries as tourists, where the laws are lax, or the surveillance is not that strict, to obtain the organs and tissues through commercial transactions • Triage: This is a term that refers to categorizing or sorting groups. Originally, the term was used for sorting crops into groups according to their quality. Subsequently, it gained a meaning of urgent classification in critical circumstances, such as the sorting of the battle-wounded casualties in the battlefield into groups based on their condition. • Value clarification: The process of gaining a clearer idea about the values. • Value identification at the personal level: Identification of the basic values and priorities which one considers as important in one’s personal life. • Value identification at the external and situational level: Value identification in a given situation, where the values may not be evident, requires explication of the values.

Chapter 3

Metaethics I

Chapter Overview In this and the next chapter, you will be introduced to metaethics, a subdivision within ethics. You shall come to know about the kind of deliberations that metaethics as a subject engages in. A few of the metaethical queries and well-known debates and discussions related to them will be taken up in this chapter and in Chap. 4 to give you some idea about the nature of metaethics. You may find that some of these inquiries feature among the most frequently asked questions about ethics. Since the metaethical discussions on these questions are long and varied, that is why, primarily for your convenience, the discussion on the metaethical issues and debates has been separated into two consecutive chapters. The present chapter, Chap. 3, Metaethics I will focus only on two controversial metaethical issues, and you will get to know about the discussion on: (a)  Are ethical statements factual statements? Do they report facts about the world? If so, what facts are those? Are there moral facts? (b)  Are ethical statements universally true and objective in nature? Or, are they relatively true? Main Topics in this Chapter What is metaethics? Questions which metaethics investigates Moral realism Anti-realism Ethical absolutism Ethical relativism

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 C. Chakraborti, Introduction to Ethics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-0707-6_3

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3.1 What is Metaethics? Metaethics is a sub-area within the field of ethics. In Chapter 1, Sect. 1.9, I have already mentioned that there are three main areas within ethics, and that metaethics is one of them. The term meta in Greek means after or beyond. Just as metaphysics means the discourse after or beyond physics, similarly, metaethics means those deliberations that are after or beyond ethics. The after or beyond in this case is to be understood as higher. The higher here means a non-elementary level or at a conceptually higher level. There can be higher level questions and discussions about and on normative ethics, which cannot be answered while doing normative ethics. Those are the discussions that comprise the content of metaethics. For example, normative ethics passes ethical judgments, such as: S1: One should not lie unnecessarily However, metaethics investigates: • What sort of a statement is S1? What is the nature of ethical judgments in general? • Are ethical judgments factual by nature? That is, do they express some truths or facts? • Are they true or false? If so, what makes them true or false? You probably can see that these questions are not the kind of questions that normative ethics can entertain. Its job is to evaluate actions, behavior, and then pass ethical judgments. If normative ethics has to first answer these questions about the ethical judgments, then it would have to first stop doing its own task: namely pass ethical judgments. These questions are not at the level of normative ethics. Just as the rules of a game cannot be questioned while playing the same game, similarly, questions about the nature of ethical judgments are not the kind of questions that are fair to ask while doing normative ethics. Consider for example the game of Cricket. We play the game accepting the rules of the game. You can always ask: Who made these rules of Cricket? Why can’t we change the rules? Why a boundary has to be worth 4 runs, and why can it not be worth 5 runs?

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However, I hope you will agree that these questions about the origin or validity of the rules of Cricket are not the fair questions to ask while playing a particular game of Cricket. Those questions can be discussed only outside the game and can be entertained at a higher level, e.g. at the level of rule-making, may be at a Board which considers these rules and queries about these rules. The questions are not about a particular game of Cricket, but they are about the rules that game of Cricket presupposes in general. Similarly, there can be the questions about the origin and validity of ethics or about the nature and validity of the judgments that normative ethics routinely makes. However, these kind of questions are not fair questions to ask at the level of normative ethics, which presupposes certain set answers to these questions. The questions actually belong to a higher level. These higher level questions are what we call metalevel questions, which are the subject matter of metaethics. Let us use some examples to understand what higher level means here. In metaethics, the inquiries are not at the level of a specific question, such as: What is the right thing to do in this case? In metaethics, the discussion is at the more abstract and fundamental level. It raises questions about the foundational assumptions or presuppositions upon which normative ethics is based. So, the metaethical inquiry could be: ➜What does rightness mean for an action? What makes a right action ethically right? You can see that the nature of the question is very different. It is not about this or that action, or about seeking action guidance which action to do. It is an abstract question about the property of ethical rightness itself. Similarly, when, for example, normative ethics says: Lying is wrong, metaethics would ask a definitional question at a higher, conceptual level that is more fundamental than just the act of lying: ➜What does wrong mean in the ethical sense? What is the definition of ethical wrongness? Similarly, in normative ethics the appeal may be for action guidance for a specific situation, such as Is it wrong not to keep the promise in this case? In metaethics, the inquiry could be: ➜Does a situation make an ethical rule, e.g. “Keep your promises” right, or is the ethical rule of promise-keeping always right regardless of situations? Given below, you can find some more examples of metaethical questions:

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• What is good? What is right? Is there any connection between the values of the good and the right? • Where do these norms of ‘good’, ‘bad’, right’, or ‘wrong’ come from? How are these determined? • What is the origin of ethics? Are the ethical norms purely human inventions? Or, is there some other source for them? Note that these are questions that are about the fundamentals which underlie the edifice that normative ethics builds with its judgments. Metaethics also delves into human motivation, asking how ethical standards by themselves can motivate us into doing what they bid us to do or prohibit us from doing what they forbid. In sum, we may try to define metaethics as: Box 3.1 Definition of Metaethics Metaethics is that branch of ethics which covers the higher level questions and discussions on or about normative ethics. It interrogates and investigates the basic pre-suppositions, the fundamental criteria, and the key concepts that normative ethics utilizes.

Quick Question 3.1 The COVID-19 pandemic is raging all around in the city, with no sign of abatement. The government has announced a lockdown and has prescribed everyone to stay home or wear protective masks and to maintain a physical distancing when out of the home in a public place. Roshan lives in a congested neighborhood, where the risk of infection is high. He can see that there are a few people who do not wear the mask in public or wear the mask in an improper way, e.g. not covering the nose. Consider the scenario above. Formulate separate questions, some of which are (a) at the level of normative ethics and some are (b) at the level of metaethics. Justify your answer in each case.

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3.2 Metaethical Queries and Debates As you have seen in the previous section, metaethical queries are in general about normative ethics and what it employs and relies upon, but they are at a higher, conceptual level. To make your acquaintance with metaethics more complete, in the following sections of this chapter I shall introduce you to two prominent metaethical debates. They are as follows: 1. Realism versus anti-realism in ethics debate: This debate is about the nature of the ethical statements themselves. Are the ethical statements factual by nature? Are there facts that validate them? Or, are they of a different kind of statements, which cannot be made true or false by facts? 2. Ethical absolutism/universalism versus relativism debate: In short, this debate is about the extent of valid application of the ethical values and norms. Are the ethical rules applicable to all, regardless of who they, where they are, in what situation they are? Are the ethical rules and values unchangeable and final? Or, are they relative and situational, flexible, and subject to modification? Since the first debate is about the ethical statements, let us first clarify to ourselves what we mean here by ethical statements.

3.2.1 Ethical Statements By ethical statements, we mean here the statements in which we express an ethical judgment. That is, in them we express evaluative or normative judgments with reference to the ethical values, such as right and good. For example, the following statements would be considered as ethical statements: • • • • •

One should not abandon one’s parents when they are old and infirm. The practice of female infanticide is wrong. A business which does not cheat its customer is a good business. Honesty is the best policy. One should not engage in activities that are extremely harmful to the others. • Helping someone in need is the right thing to do.

In previous chapters you have seen other examples of ethical statements also and have gone through the discussion on how the ethical good, bad, right, and wrong are different from, say, the political right or the financial good. In Sect. 1.8, the normative stance and the language of ethics were also discussed with examples.

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3.2.2 Moral Realism Versus Anti-realism: A Metaethical Debate Consider the ethical statement: S2: It is wrong to torture an innocent. What kind of a statement is S2? When we make statements such as S2, do we express some facts? Are ethical statements factual statements, in the sense the statement New Delhi is the capital of India is? If they do, what facts do they express? There are many answers available to these questions. In fact, there is no single answer that is unanimously agreed upon. This is why the series of discussions and associated arguments on these questions is best described as a debate. As is the case with debates, there clearly are at least two sides on this issue. You shall see that each of these sides is defended and argued for by different philosophers. Among the answers proposed, one side is known as moral realism, and the other one may be referred to as moral anti-realism. Metaethical debate #1: moral realism versus moral anti-realism ➜What is the nature of ethical statements? Are they factual statements, i.e. do they express some truths or facts? Or, are they not factual statements? If so, what facts are these? Or, are these statements not factual?  We may also rephrase the theme of the debate in the following way: Are the ethical statements true or false? If they are true or false, what is it that makes them true or false?

3.2.2.1

Moral Realism

Moral realism: Moral realism, or ethical realism, is a philosophical position which holds that: (a) Ethical statements are factual statements, and as factual statements, ethical statements are true or false. (b) Ethical statements express moral facts. (c) Ethical statements are made true or false by their correspondence with the relevant moral facts.

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(d) Moral facts exist in reality as a separate class of facts. You can see that an important belief in moral realism is the belief in the existence of moral facts. It is a metaphysical belief that certain kind of facts, which are moral facts, exist in reality. Examples of the moral facts would include moral facts that are true about an individual and also facts that are true of people in gene. Consider, for instance, S3: Kokila is a good person Moral realists would say that S3 expresses a moral fact about an individual person, Kokila, just as the statement Kokila is tall would express a fact about Kokila as an individual person. Similarly, above-mentioned S2 also expresses a moral fact, but that fact is true of individuals in general and not for only a specific individual. Thus, in short, moral realism would answer the aforementioned questions about the nature of ethical statements as follows: The ethical statements are factual statements, and they express moral facts, which is a special category of facts.  Metaphysical realism and moral realism: In philosophy, realism stands for the metaphysical viewpoint that in reality objects can exist independent of any knower. For example, this position would agree that a star may exist in the galaxy without being discovered or seen by anyone. A flower may still have the color blue even if no one has seen it or heard about it ever. The obvious skeptical, epistemological query is: How do you know if no one has seen, or known it ever? To that, the response of realism is the staunch belief that reality is not dependent on our knowing it. In general, realism claims that the reality and the objects that make up the reality can exist independent of any observer or knower. Now, in our present discussion, you will probably make the connection why the above-mentioned position in ethics, which believes in above-mentioned (a)–(d), is called moral realism. Because, just like the metaphysical position of realism, the position also holds that the moral facts, just like any other fact, can exist in reality independent of whether anyone has observed them or has thought of them.  Moral facts: Moral realism further holds that the moral facts are a unique set of facts. They are a distinct class and are neither reducible to, nor explicable by, any other sets of facts, e.g. the physical facts about the nature. For example, the fact that S3 expresses about Kokila, namely that Kokila is a good person, cannot be captured by, or reduced to, the physical facts about Kokila, no matter how elaborate the list of the physical facts is. It also holds that moral facts are similar to the mathematical facts. For, just like the mathematical facts, the moral facts too are abstract by nature. They exist as abstract entities. So, for a moral realist, the fact that the one cannot find the moral facts among the observable, physical things, is neither a limitation, nor a serious objection at all. For, according to them, the moral facts are supposed to be abstract entities, as are the mathematical facts. Just like the mathematical facts, moral facts, being abstract,

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cannot be observed in the same way as one can observe, for example, the movement of ants. According to moral realism, moral facts hold a truth-making relationship with the corresponding ethical statements. The moral facts are the truth-makers for the ethical statements; they make the true ethical statements objectively true. Just as the statement New Delhi is the capital of India is made true in correspondence to a geopolitical fact, similarly the fact that Kokila is actually a good person makes the ethical statement Kokila is a good person true. This implies that according to moral realism, there are moral truths, which are objectively true.  Cognitivism: Cognitivism in Psychology stands for a position that deemphasizes the psychologist’s concern with the overt, observable behavior and emphasizes on the more complex, cognitive processes, such as thinking and concept formation. For example, from the cognitivist point of view, learning is not just the changes in the behavior, but is more about a shift between cognitive states. That is, learning happens when the learner is able to change from one state of knowledge to another. Now, cognitivism is Philosophy, particularly in ethics, stands for the position that when we utter or assert ethical statements, we express beliefs, which are cognitive states. We hold a belief, and we express that belief in an utterance. When ordinary, typical utterances or assertions are made, such as Kokila is tall, the communicator believes that Kokila is indeed tall. Similarly, some moral realists who are also cognitivists hold that when we assert ethical statements such as Kokila is good, we hold a belief , or are in a cognitive state, that Kokila is good. The function of that belief and the utterance is to report a fact about the world accurately. Thus, when we utter such statements, we are in a cognitive state which reports a moral fact. In other words, they claim that our moral judgments are genuine cognitive states, and they represent the corresponding moral facts. Pic. 3.1 Basic tenet of cognitivism in metaethics

A person, X, holds a belief, or is in a cognitive state, that reports the fact that Kokila is tall

A person, X, holds a belief, or is in a cognitive state, which reports the fact that Kokila is good

X asserts: Kokila is tall

X asserts: Kokila is good

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The link with moral realism is that some moral realists are cognitivists. They hold that when we make ethical statements, our statements express beliefs, which represent the moral facts that are out there in the world. Box 3.2 Cognitivism in metaethics Cognitivism in metaethics is the position that to make our moral judgments, one has to be in a cognitive state, e.g. hold a belief, and the job of those beliefs is to represent accurately a fact that exists in the world.

3.2.2.2

Moral Anti-realism

 Moral anti-realism: As debates would have it, many objections have been raised against moral realism. As said earlier, the opponent position is called moral antirealism. Moral anti-realism is actually a cluster of many kinds of objections against each of the claims (see (a)–(d) in Sect. 3.2.2.1 above) which moral realism endorses. Against the moral facts: One of the major objections from the anti-realist group is the rejection of the moral realist’s central claim that there are moral facts. The rejection often takes the form of a metaphysical skepticism. It points out that there is ample reason to doubt the existence of moral facts, as a unique and independent set of facts, which are not reducible to, and not explicable by, the ordinary facts about nature. It implies that the only facts that exist are the ordinary facts of nature or the physical facts. If moral facts are imputed to be a class of facts, which are distinct from the physical facts, and not accountable by the physical facts, then there is no evidence that they exist. In addition, there is enough ground to doubt that they exist at all. This line of argument implies that ethical statements are not factual statements; they do not express facts. Box 3.3 Metaphysical skepticism about the moral facts There is enough reason to doubt the existence of moral facts, as a unique and independent set of facts which are not reducible to physical facts. There is no evidence of the existence of moral facts. The rejection of moral facts also has taken the form of an epistemological skepticism. The skeptics argue: How do we know that the moral facts exist? Even if there were moral facts, existing as a unique set of facts, moral realism cannot explain how exactly we come to know of them. For, the usual sources of knowledge that we have do not seem to be able to access these facts. First, the moral facts are not observable, which the moral realists themselves accept. The moral realists themselves agree that we cannot know these facts by empirical knowledge. Second, the other alternative

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of knowing is through reason. However, though reason can access certain abstract truths, such as the mathematical truths, it does not seem to confirm anything about the moral facts. And third, on scrutiny, the claims about any special faculty of knowledge, such as moral intuition, or moral sense, do not stand well. Therefore, even if moral facts were there, moral realism cannot satisfactorily explain how we would come to know about them. Box 3.4 Epistemological skepticism about the moral facts Even if moral facts were there, how do we come to know of them? Moral realism cannot satisfactorily explain that.  3.2.2.2.1. Non-cognitivism: Many anti-realists are also non-cognitivists. That is, many among the dissenters of moral realism reject the claims of cognitivism. They argue that behind the assertion of the ethical statements, there are no cognitive states, such as beliefs, which we hold when making other ordinary utterances, or statements. If at all there are cognitive states behind the ethical statements, these cognitive states are not beliefs. They are mental states of a different kind. Their job is not to represent the world accurately. There is no corresponding fact to represent by these mental states. Box 3.5 Non-cognitivism in metaethics A non-cognitivist theory in ethics believes that when ethical statements are asserted, there are no cognitive states, e.g. belief, behind those assertions; or, if there are cognitive states, these cognitive states are not beliefs. These cognitive states, e.g. feelings, do not represent any fact in the world. Among the non-cognitivists, there are many different opinions. However, they agree on one point; namely, that the ethical statements are not factual assertions, but they are linked to mental states of some kind. The opinions among the noncognitivists vary on which kind of mental state exactly underlies the ethical statements. Accordingly, the non-cognitivist construal of the ethical statements varies. Let us consider the following ethical statement, and we shall see how different non-cognitivist positions interpret it: S4: One ought to take care of one’s old and ailing parents.

 3.2.2.2.2. Ethical emotivism: Ethical emotivism is one of the important noncognitivist viewpoints in ethics. As a non-cognitivist position, it maintains that ethical statements express mental states, but those mental states are subjective emotions,

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feelings. Emotions and feelings do not reflect or represent any fact about the world. They merely emote what a person feels. The name emotivism comes from this claim. Box 3.6 Emotivism in metaethics Ethical statements are not statements of facts; they merely express the speaker’s or the user’s emotions and feelings. Now, ethical emotivism would interpret the above-given S4 in the following way: The statement S4 does not describe or represent any fact in the world. It merely expresses the speaker’s disapproval of neglectful behavior towards the old and ailing parents and conveys discouragement of others from neglecting the old and ailing parents. Emotivism in ethics has been advocated by many philosophers. Among them, in this section I shall briefly mention the views of two key proponents, David Hume and A J Ayer. ➤Hume’s emotivism: Philosopher David Hume1 (1711–1776) claimed that the ethical statements arise out of our “sentiments” or emotions. What they express are our emotion-based feelings of approval and disapproval of a situation or a behavior. These feelings are caused by our contemplation about a person in a situation or a person’s behavior. For example, S4 expresses the speaker’s emotion of disapproval of neglectful treatment of old and ailing parents. Approval and disapproval both are emotion-based feelings. Hume maintained that approval is a positive emotion of pleasure, whereas disapproval is a feeling of discomfort or pain, i.e. an unpleasant feeling. Approval of a person’s behavior is linked to the feelings of respect and love towards a person. When we approve the behavior of a person X, we tend to like X, or even respect, or love, X. Disapproval, on the other hand, tends towards a feeling of dislike, or even hatred, towards the person concerned and the behavior.2 In case of statement S4, Hume would say that it expresses not only our disapproval of the negligent behavior towards the old and infirm parents, but also dislike towards any person who would engage in it. So, Hume would not consider the ethical statements as factual statements at all. They are expressions of our certain emotions and feelings. Since emotions and feelings are subjective, there is no objective status of these expressed emotions and feelings.

1

David Hume. ‘Of Morals’, Book 3, Treatise on Human Nature. Also, For further readings: 1. David Hume. A Treatise of Human Nature, L. A. Selby-Bigge (ed.), 2nd ed. revised by P.H. Nidditch, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975. 2. Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, in Enquiries concerning Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals, L. A. Selby-Bigge (ed.), 3rd ed revised by P. H. Nidditch, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975. 3. Smith, Norman Kemp, 1941, The Philosophy of David Hume, London: Macmillian. 4. Ainslie, Donald C. and Butler, Annemarie, 2015, The Cambridge Companion to Hume’s Treatise, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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➤A. J. Ayer on emotivism: Among the more recent philosophers, Sir Alfred Jules Ayer3 (1910–1989) and Charles L Stevenson4 (1908–1979) too have held the view that to make an ethical statement is to only express our sentiments of approval and disapproval. Ayer, with his fervor for logical positivism, has espoused a particularly strong attack on the moral realism and its associated claims. He argued that there are no facts that we know of as moral facts, and that there can be no verification of the existence of such facts. So, there is no question about ethical statements expressing any moral facts. Utilizing the philosophical categorization of statements into analytic and synthetic, Ayer powerfully argued that the ethical statements do not have any cognitive significance; that basically they are not meaningful statements. In his view, ethical statements simply do not have any truth value. That is, as statements they are neither true nor false. They simply express our feelings. We may briefly present Ayer’s argument as follows: Box 3.7 Summary of Ayer’s argument on emotivism 1. All meaningful statements are of two types: (a) Either true by definition (analytic type). (b) Or, empirically verifiable (synthetic type): True or false by empirical verification. 2. Ethical statements are not true by definition (not analytic). 3. Ethical statements cannot be synthetic. For, they are not empirically verifiable (not synthetic). They are not true or false with reference to any empirical fact. Ethical statements are neither analytic nor synthetic. Hence, they are not meaningful statements. They lack truth values: Neither true nor false. They merely express our emotions. So, Ayer would interpret statements such as S4 as not reporting any fact, and as neither true nor false. He would find S4 merely expressing the speaker’s feeling of moral disapproval.  3.2.2.2.3. Ethical expressivism: Ethical expressivism is another non-cognitivist standpoint. It rejects the cognitivist claim that the ethical statements report some 3

Ayer, A. J. 1952. Language, Truth, and Logic. New York: Dover Publications. Also, Ayer, A. J. “The Emotive Theory of Ethics.“ Chapter 10, in Moral Philosophy: Selected Readings. 2nd ed. Edited by George Sher. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt-Brace, 1996, pp. 120–128. 4 Stevenson, C. L. 1937. “The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms,” Mind 46:14–31. Also, Stevenson, C. L. 1944. Ethics and Language. New Haven: Yale University Press.. Stevenson, C. L. 1963. Facts and Values. New Haven: Yale University Press.

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facts about the world. It believes that the meaning of the ethical statements must be understood in terms of the non-cognitive mental states, e.g. an evaluative attitude, that are connected with such statements. It views ethical statements primarily as expressions of subjective preferences. This position would interpret statements such as S4 as statements that express only the speaker’s preference for a certain norm or kind of behavior towards the old and ailing parents. Box 3.8 Ethical expressivism Ethical expressivism stands for the philosophical position that the ethical statements are connected with non-cognitive states, e.g. an evaluative attitude. The function of the ethical statements is not to state a fact, but to express a non-cognitive mental state, e.g. a preference. However, it is important to note that expressivism views this expression of preference merely an act of attribution by the speaker and not as an actual property of the situation. That is, the preference is a purely subjective matter, and it is expressed as desirable, but without any metaphysical commitment. There is no claim that the preferred norm or behavior actually exists in reality as a property of a given situation. Simon Blackburn5 (1944–), a reputed metaethicist and philosopher who is well known for his efforts to popularize philosophy, articulated the point of expressivism through his theory of projectivism. He maintains that when we utter ethical statements, we make projections of our own attitudes on to the world. Consider the scenario: Kapil sees a child being badly and mercilessly beaten by an adult, and he thinks: That is so wrong! What Kapil observed are certain movements by the adult, the child’s cry of pain, etc. However, his response is emotional: He strongly dislikes or disapproves of the situation. This emotion he projects into the situation when he says: That is so wrong! Kapil does not see a wrong act; the wrongness does not exist in the world. Kapil judges the act as wrong and projects the wrongness, which is a product of his emotional experience, onto the act, and that is what is expressed in his statement. Blackburn is also a quasi-realist. A quasi-realist is someone who believes in antirealism, that there are no moral facts which the ethical statements express; but also allows the use of expressions as if the moral facts exist. That is, in ethical statements we express our own attitudes and project them onto the situations, but we act and think as if the properties that we describe in our statements actually exist in the world. Ethical statements are not factual statements, as they do not express any fact. However, we treat ethical statements as if they are no different from the factual statements and as if they bear truth values. But, actually, they do not bear truth values.

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Blackburn, S. 1984. Spreading the Word, Oxford, Clarendon.

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Thus, the anti-realists give an account of our usage of ethical statements, without conceding any real existence of moral facts or objectivity of the truth of ethical statements.

3.2.3 Conclusion on the Moral Realism–Anti-realism Debate We have discussed a very important debate in metaethics, which centers around the factuality and objectivity of the ethical statements. On the one hand, the objectivity and truth of the ethical statements are guarded, but then we need to posit moral facts as a category of facts to make the ethical statements significantly true. Then, we need to address the skeptical queries from metaphysical and epistemological side about the moral facts. On the other hand, if we give up the objectivity of the ethical statements, they reduce to meaningless statements or at most projections of our subjective preferences. Either way, the debate engenders many philosophical and technical complexities, not to mention counter-intuitive consequences. The debate is not resolved, as is the wont of many philosophical debates. Many new voices have joined the fray. Our point was to use the instance of the debate to illustrate what metaethics deliberates on. I hope the discussion above has shed light on that.

3.3 Ethical Universalism/Absolutism Versus Ethical Relativism: Another Metaethical Debate This metaethical debate centers around the nature of what ethics prescribes. Ethics evaluates and hands us down certain norms and values. This debate is on the questions: Is ethics absolute and universal? Are the rules that ethics prescribe universal and absolute in nature? When we say, for example: S5: One should not lie Is the ethical rule, as is expressed in S5 for example, inflexible and absolute? Is an ethical rule supposed to apply to everyone everywhere, irrespective of who they are and what situation they are in? Or, is ethics relative, flexible and situational? When we assert S5, do we only mean that S5 is true only in relation to certain situations, and certain people, and thus is relative in its application? Needless to say, this inquiry too has given rise to a vibrant and extensive debate, which we shall call the debate between ethical absolutism/universalism and ethical relativism.

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Metaethical debate #2: ethical absolutism versus ethical relativism Is ethics universal and absolute? Or, is ethics situational and relative?

3.3.1 Ethical Absolutism  Ethical absolutism: Ethical absolutism is a position in metaethics which believes that ethical rules or standards are absolute or inflexible. That is, if the ethical rule says something is right or wrong, it means that it is right or wrong always, regardless of the context or the situation. The rule neither changes nor bends according to the situation. There is no need for the rule to adapt to the situation. If S5 is an ethical rule, then according to ethical absolutism, it applies absolutely. No change of the rule is admissible.  Intrinsic properties of rightness or wrongness: Ethical absolutism believes that moral actions are intrinsically right or wrong. This means that the rightness or wrongness of moral actions does not depend on a situation, or on anything external to the action. The action is in itself right or wrong. So, If S5 is an ethical rule, then the act of lying is wrong in itself. It does not matter who lied, under what circustances, and how. Box 3.9 Rightness and wrongness as intrinsic properties: a tenet of ethical absolutism

The situaon, or the external factors. Contribute to the ethical rightness or wrongness

of an acon

Ethical rightness or wrongness is an intrinsic property of the acon itself. The situaon, or the external factors have no contribuon to the ethical rightness or wrongness of an acon.

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How does one explain the intrinsic nature of rightness and wrongness? How do they become a property of an action? What validates their intrinsic presence in certain actions? For example, with reference to S5, what makes lying as an act inherently wrong? In response to questions such as these, various proponents of ethical absolutism have tried to support its claim by trying to link the ethical norms and values with some fundamental source, which it thought would be incontrovertible. ➤Natural law moral theory: For instance, natural law moral theory is an example of an effort to establish the ethical norms and values in an arguably incontrovertible basis. It claimed that the ethical norms and values are objectively derived from the nature of the universe and from the nature of the human beings. The property of rightness and wrongness of the acts thus is evident from the very nature of the universe and human nature. St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) advocated a natural law moral theory, which held that the rational nature of the human beings actually defines the moral law. That is, the moral law is what is defined by the rational nature of the human beings themselves. Since humans are rational beings, certain ways of behavior conform to their rational nature, and those are also the ethically appropriate kind of behavior. The name natural law comes from this derivation of the moral law from the nature of human beings. Aquinas believed that the wrong actions, such as lying, murder, and adultery, are always wrong, because they are against reason and human rational nature, and such acts destroy what is good for the humans. Aquinas also accepted certain statements about God as truths ‘revealed’ by God himself; hence he accepted those statements as unquestionable. Box 3.10 Natural law moral theory of St. Aquinas Ethical norms are derived from the rational nature of the human beings. The rational nature of the human beings define the moral law. Ethical Absolutes:Many religions support some form of ethical absolutism, or other. Sometimes, they preach that their theology teaches ethical absolutes; for example, duties that are strictly binding, virtues that must be inculcated, rituals that must be followed. The corollary is that the actions that are absolutely prohibited must be absolutely avoided. This trait is seen mostly among the religions which claim that their religion is created by God, or by a divine being. So, they regard their system of ethics, based on their religion, is perfect, inflexible, and absolute, being a direct or revealed instruction from God, or brought forth by a God-like divine Being.

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Box 3.11 Ethical absolutism in metaethics Ethical absolutism is the metaethical position that ethical rules are absolute and inflexible. If the rule evaluates some action to be right or wrong, then the action is always right or wrong, no matter what the situation is.  3.3.1.1. Ethical Universalism: Ethical universalism is a metaethical position that often coalesces with ethical absolutism. Ethical universalism holds that ethical rules are universal. That is, the ethical rules apply to all, to everyone, no matter who they are or what situation and location they are at. They apply to all without any exception. If ethics prescribes something as a moral duty, then it prescribes it as a duty for all. If ethics identifies a trait as a vice or a bad trait, then it is a vice that is to be avoided by everyone. Box 3.12 Ethical universalism Ethical rules apply to everyone, without exception. If the rules recommend or prohibit an action, then the recommendation or the prohibition is for all. This implies that the same set of ethical rules would apply to everybody. Because of their universality, the behavior of all human beings is to be judged by the same ethical rules.  A common human nature: In different versions of ethical absolutism, we see a recurrent assumption about human nature. It is assumed that there is a common nature that all humans share; and that all humans, no matter who they are or where they are from, would possess the same nature. That is, it assumes that the nature of all humans is the same. This assumption has been an important premise in furthering the claim of ethical universalism. In the discussion of natural law moral theory above, we have seen that St. Aquinas considered the ethical rules as laws that are derivable from that shared human nature. And that is why, the ethical absolutist would argue that ethical rules must be universal. Despite the fact that we humans are all different individuals, ethical rules bind us all equally and universally because those rules follow from our common nature.  Another version of ethical universalism: In another form, ethical universalism upholds the belief that there is only one ethics, which holds for everyone, regardless of race, gender, time, geographic location, nationality, and creed. Thus, the duties recommended by ethics, the traits that are upheld by ethics as good and the traits that are identified by ethics as bad, remain the equally true for everyone. The belief in a single ethics for everyone, and its universality, has actually driven certain discourses, e.g. the religious discourses, the discourses on universal moral rights. In recent times, however, the discourse on human rights is heavily reliant upon the precepts of ethical universalism. It argues that human rights are rights that all humans have entitlement to, regardless of who they are, and moreover all humans

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have the same human rights. The universality of the human rights thrives on the basic claims of ethical universalism. Box 3.13 Ethical universalism Ethical universalism is the metaethical position that ethical rules hold for everyone without any exception. Alternatively, it holds that there is only one ethics; the same ethical rules apply to all.  3.3.1.2. Ethical objectivism: Ethical objectivism is the metaethical position which claims that the ethical rules or standards are objective in nature. They are objective, i.e. not subjective, standards. That is, they exist independently in reality, and they are not the whims or concepts of some human origin. They are real and grounded in some facts that are external and independent of human creation. They are the kind of standards by which disputes about whether a certain behavior is right or wrong can be settled. That is, their truth is decisive. Box 3.14 Ethical objectivism Ethical norms are objective in nature. They exist in reality and are not concepts created by the humans. They are real and not subjective Ethical absolutism supports the claim of ethical objectivism. Together, they claim that the ethical norms are not only universal, but also objective.  Plato’s ethical objectivism: We may look at Plato’s writings to find the first detailed account of ethical objectivism as a position. Plato spoke about the two realms in reality: 1. The realm of the imperfect, mundane, physical objects 2. The higher realm of the more perfect entities, the Forms: realm of the Forms. He maintained that the ethical norms and values are located in a higher and more perfect realm of the Forms. The realm of Forms is not apprehensible by the sense organs. It is an intelligible world which contains abstract, universal entities, such as the ethical norms, values, mathematical entities, and concepts. For Plato, the Forms are objective and more real than the entities in the physical realm. He considered the physical objects as nothing but weak appearances or somewhat imperfect instances of the perfect Forms. A physical tree that we ordinarily see, for instance, can never be perfect. In Plato’s words, the physical things that we see around us, participate (methexis) in different abstract Forms. A physical tree that we see, for example, only participates in the abstract, perfect Form of Treeness. In Plato’s view, the ethical values of honesty, justice are pure and abstract Forms, and they belong to the pure and perfect realm of the Forms. He considered the ethical standard of Good as the highest and the purest among the Forms. Thus, in Plato’s view, the ethical standards and values are all real, and as Forms they are more real

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than the physical entities in the physical world. What we see in the physical realm, on the other hand, are behavior or traits in people, such as honest behavior. However, the honest behavior that we see in the physical realm is only a weak instance of the Form of Honesty and is shaped after the Form Honesty. In Plato’s words, the behavior which belong to the physical realm participates in the abstract Form, which belongs to a higher realm. As Forms, the ethical values and norms are non-physical entities, but objectively real: eternal and unchanging. They are also certainly above the conventions that humans create. After Plato, the Platonists have tried to defend Plato’s ethical objectivism in different ways. For example, St. Augustine or Augustine of Hippo (354–430 CE), an early Christian theologian and philosopher, upheld a modified version of Plato’s theory of Forms. In his Christian version, Augustine accepted Plato’s doctrine of the Forms, but added that the Forms exist in the mind of God, and not, as Plato held, in a separate realm independent of God. Whether we look at Plato’s original theory, or in Augustine’s modified version, the upshot is that the ethical norms and values are objectively real. They are not figments of human imagination.  Examples among the philosophers: The support for ethical absolutism and ethical universalism can be found in the views of many thinkers. We have already mentioned that among the ancient philosophers, Plato certainly believed in ethical universalism. He also advocated ethical objectivism. In his argument against the Sophists, he clearly upheld the view that the values, such as the Good and the Truth, are objective. That is, they are values which are not dependent on some individuals or their beliefs. Aristotle too was sympathetic to ethical absolutism. It is true that he rejected the theory of Forms of his teacher, Plato. He argued that the theory of Forms is an unnecessarily complex doctrine without any explanatory advantage. He argued that the Platonic Forms are redundant entities which do not add anything to our explanation of the natural world, and that there is no separate realm of the Forms. However, this rejection does not imply that Aristotle rejected ethical absolutism totally. In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle mentions about certain actions being absolutely wrong, such as adultery, stealing, and murder. He says that they are always wrong, regardless of the particularities of the situation. Among the modern philosophers, we find a clear reflection of ethical absolutism as well as ethical universalism in the ethics of Immanuel Kant’s Deontological ethics.6 In his proposed concept of Categorical Imperative, Kant has endorsed the moral law or the Categorical Imperative to be absolutely binding, without any exception and escape clause and as a universal law. Kant’s ethics is also founded on an assumption about the human nature in general: That all humans are rational, and that all humans have a basic common trait: the capacity of self-legislation or autonomy. He argued that using that rationality the moral agents, i.e. the humans, would surely find respect for the Categorical Imperative within them. And that respect is the right motive for accepting the moral obligation that the duty that the Categorical Imperative orders.

6

Kant’s Deontological ethics will be discussed in a later chapter of this book.

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He also believed that the moral law is embedded in that capacity as a self-imposed imperative.

3.3.2 Objections Against Ethical Absolutism/Universalism/ Objectivism As is normal with debates, the claims put forth by ethical absolutism, ethical universalism, and ethical objectivism have drawn fierce criticisms from many. The theories have been contested on different grounds, particularly by the recent philosophers. In this section, I have presented some of the salient objections.  Argument from difference in opinion: A major argument against the theories is from the observed fact that different people, and even different societies, hold different opinions about ethical issues, and about what is ethically right or wrong. For example, in our present society it is more common to have disagreement on issues, such as: • • • • • • • •

Abortion Capital punishment Eating meat Homosexuality Wearing leather clothes Role of men and women in the society Treatment based on caste Terminating the life of a female fetus or female infanticide.

Some people do not find certain practices as ethically permissible, whereas others cannot find ethically anything wrong with them. Opinions on ethical matters differ between people in the same society. It also differs between two societies. For instance: Society A may find it absolutely wrong to eat the meat of a certain animal, but in society B it is not so.

Similarly, different cultures may have disagreement regarding certain practices. For example: Culture C1 accepts polygamy (a man with more than one wife), while in Culture C2 polygamy is totally unacceptable as a marital arrangement.

From this observation of disagreement in opinion on ethical matters, critics claim that the conclusion that inevitably follows is that there is no single ethics that applies to all alike universally, and that there are no absolute ethical values and standards. In other words, ethical absolutism and ethical universalism both are untenable positions.

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Box 3.15 Brief summary of argument from disagreement Premise: Difference of opinion about ethical matters between people, between societies and cultures, exist as a fact. Conclusion: Therefore, there cannot be a single ethics which is universally true. So, ethical universalism is wrong. Conclusion: Therefore, ethical rules cannot be absolute and unchangeable. So, ethical absolutism is wrong.  J L Mackie’s argument from difference of opinion: J.L. Mackie, a philosopher, is well known for his contribution in metaethics, where his position is known as moral skepticism.7 Mackie has taken the above-mentioned argument from difference to another height. He claims that: 1. It is a fact that there is vast, observed, difference of opinions about the ethical matters within a society, and among the societies. 2. It is also a fact that the difference of opinions is real and often intractable. 3. The only plausible explanation of these two facts is that there are different value systems that different people adhere to, and that there are different ways of life. He believes that this is a much better explanation of the observed fact of difference of opinions than claiming that there are some objectively real moral facts by which we can decide among the different opinion holders who is right and who is wrong, and that only some societies have come to know these moral facts, while others societies are inferior in not knowing them. He uses the example of the marital arrangement of having only one wife (monogamy) and the case of difference of opinion among two cultures about its practice. Suppose culture A practices monogamy and finds polygamy as an ethically unacceptable way of life, whereas another culture B practices polygamy (having more than one wife) and finds ethically nothing wrong in it. Both cultures claim that they are right. Mackie asks: Can we reasonably claim that between A and B only one culture has access to some incontrovertible facts that make it right about marital arrangements, whereas the other one does not, and therefore is wrong? In his opinion, we cannot. None of the cultures know any better than the other. There is no absolute right or wrong here, and each culture has its own arrangement, by which it leads its own life. In that case, Mackie asks, is it not a better explanation that in one culture monogamy has developed as a marital practice for some anthropological or whatever reason, and in another polygamy has developed, and that the ethical beliefs about monogamy in each culture have emerged as a result? Mackie’s error theory: Mackie concluded that it is far more reasonable to accept that there are no objective moral values, and that ethical norms are not universal or objective. Mackie coined the term error theory to explain his standpoint. His view J.L.Mackie. 1977. Paperback 1991. Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. Penguin Books, 49307th Ed. Penguin Books Ltd: London, England. 7

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was that it is an error to think that one has ethical knowledge, when no one knows any better. In fact, he claimed that no one has any moral knowledge, and there are no moral truths. He claimed that the ethical statements may aim for truth, but they systematically fail to reach the truth. In short, ethical statements are all false! In his view, ethics is nothing but preferences or customs that are relative to the society and the culture that one belongs to. Box 3.16 Brief summary of J L Mackie’s argument from difference in opinion Premise 1: Vast and intractable differences of opinion between people, between societies and cultures, on ethical matters exist as a fact. Premise 2: We cannot reasonably claim that between the contending parties, one side knows the incontrovertible truths of ethics, and the other side does not. Conclusion: Since there are no objective moral truths to settle difference in opinion, we should accept that there is no absolute right or wrong here. Ethics is all relative. As you can see above, the observed fact of difference of opinion becomes a key premise in the argument against the tenability of ethical absolutism and ethical universalism. The conclusion is that we should accept all the different opinions without trying to choose among them.  Against ethical objectivism: In addition to Mackie’s argument, there are also related criticisms of ethical absolutism and universalism from the metaethical positions of ethical relativism, which we shall discuss next, and from anti-realism, which is already discussed in the previous metaethical debate in this chapter. Anti-realists would reject the thesis of ethical objectivism. They would summarily dismiss the claim that there are some moral facts, which exist independently and would make the ethical statements objectively true or false. From this, a line of argument ensues which rejects all ethical absolutes, be it values or standards. Against absolute moral authority: In different forms, the opponents of ethical absolutism, particularly the ethical relativists, have argued that there is no absolute moral authority. In general, they dismiss the claim of any external, independent foundation that would act as the ground of validation of the ethical absolutes; be it God, or any other being, or the human nature, or properties that are intrinsic. Sustained arguments against the existence of God, against the presumption of a common human nature and its link to the intrinsic properties of ethical acts, have tried to establish time and again that those presumptions are problematic and unwarranted. These dismissals result in a skepticism about the ethical absolutes. If there is no absolute moral authority, then how would we know which among the ethical values and rules are the unquestionable absolutes? If we cannot be sure of that, then all we have are the opinions of different people. So, even if there are the ethical absolute values and standards, there is no way for us to universally agree on which ones are truly absolute.

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3.3.3 Ethical Relativism Ethical Relativism: Ethical relativism is the anti-thesis of ethical absolutism and ethical universalism. The metaethical position has two sides. On the negative side, the view encompasses a series of important rejections: Box 3.17 Negative side of ethical relativism (a) Rejection of ethical universalism: It rejects the claim that ethical rules are universal and applicable to everyone at all times. The theory believes that there are no universal ethical standards that are absolutely true and that apply or should apply to all people everywhere. (b) Rejection of ethical absolutism: It rejects the claim that ethical values and rules are absolute, unconditionally binding, and unchangeable. It also refuses to accept that there is some absolute moral authority to validate the ethical absolutes. (c) Rejection of ethical objectivism: It rejects the claim that ethical statements can be objectively true or false. As discussed above, the argument from disagreement, or argument from diversity in opinions, is a very strong premise for ethical relativism. Ethical relativists emphasize upon the empirically observed fact that beliefs about what is ethically right or wrong vary from person to person, society to society, and from situation to situation. They further insist that in most cases, the variance in opinion is deep, and serious enough, which cannot be always resolved rationally. Based on such observations, ethical relativism’s positive claims are such as the following: Box 3.18 Positive claims of ethical relativism (a) The authoritative force of the ethical norms is limited and relative to only certain situations, people, or to groups, such as certain cultures. That is, their normative power is not universal or absolute, but relative to the circumstances, locations, and to the people involved in. • Ethical relativism sometimes is interpreted as a subjective ethical relativism at the individual level. In this version, it claims that each person is the source of his or her own ethical rules. What is a right rule for a person may not be the right rule for another. This makes the ethical norms true relative to the individuals, and all ethics becomes personal ethics. On this reasoning, each person has the authority to decide on all matters of right and wrong, and the individual decides how she should

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live her life. This position, though may be popular in some places, is a rather contentious position. First, it is not subject to scrutiny by reason, because since the rules are relative to a person himself or herself, there is no need to justify the ethical judgments rationally. Second, the position seems to be precariously close to dogmatism or blind faith. For, since the person is the source of the ethical rules, it is easy to slide to a claim that the person’s own opinion is the absolute and unquestionable authority on an issue. • In metaethics, ethical relativism is understood in its more acceptable form as ethical relativity at the community or society level: The authoritative force of the ethical norms is relative to a society or a culture. What is right for one culture, or religion, or tribe, need not necessarily be right for another culture, or religion, or tribe. We shall find below cultural relativism endorses a position similar to this. (b) The truth or falsity of the ethical statements is also conditional and relative to the belief systems, practices, and conviction of some people or some social groups, with respect to which these statements are used. Thus, their truth or falsity is not universal or unconditional.  Different forms of ethical relativism: Ethical relativism has many versions. Hence, a cluster of varied ideas comes under the general description of ethical relativism, with each one representing a type of ethical relativism. A few of these will be discussed below.  Descriptive ethical relativism: This is a kind of ethical relativism which starts from the observed anthropological, or sociological, facts: That the same practice P is considered as right in Society S‘ and viewed as wrong in Society S“. It insists on the empirical observation that there is widely prevalent and deep difference of opinions on ethical matters, as in what is right conduct and what is not, between different societies, and these differences seem to be important, at least more important than whatever agreement there may be. From this, descriptive ethical relativism concludes that all societies or all cultures do not share the same ethics. Among the different forms of ethical relativism, descriptive ethical relativism is the mildest. Box 3.19 Descriptive ethical relativism We empirically observe that there is widely prevalent and deep difference of opinions on ethical matters. Therefore, all communities, societies, and cultures do not share the same ethics.

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 Cultural relativism: The claim of descriptive ethical relativism is based on observations from some empirical social science disciplines. However, the empirical social science disciplines engendered a stronger form of ethical relativism which is known as cultural relativism. During 19th and 20th centuries, ethical relativism received a boost from the American cultural anthropologists, such as Franz Boas (1858–1942), Ruth Benedict (1887–1948), Melville Herskovits (1895–1963), and Margaret Mead (1901–1978). Cultural anthropology is the study of living people and their cultures. Cultural anthropologists went and lived among a community to better understand their culture, customs, and practices. Franz Boas was the pioneer in the field of cultural anthropology. He started his research with the Kwakiutl Indians, an indigenous tribe, in British Columbia, Canada. Based on his observations of these people in this indigenous tribe and the practices, Boas came up with the idea of cultural anthropology, which claimed that: (a) All cultures are equally developed. (b) The differences among the cultures are linked to the different geographical, social, and historical reasons. His basic claim was that the practices within a culture, no matter how different it may look to an outsider, take place under a belief and value system that is part of that culture. Without the reference to that system and the overall cultural context, a practice is likely to be misunderstood by an outsider observer. From that misunderstanding, an unwarranted normative judgment may ensue about the rightness or wrongness of that practice. Therefore, the values and the practices of a culture must be understood with a deep study of that culture, and by situating the beliefs and practices in their own cultural contexts. So, a cultural anthropologist must first spend time to understand the culture, before studying the practices and behavior of a certain culture. Box 3.20 Basic tenet of cultural anthropology of Boas A culture, and its practices, and values, must be understood with a deep study of them in their own cultural contexts. Every culture is equally developed; no culture is superior or inferior. Boas’s ideas influenced many of his students. Some of his illustrious students included celebrated cultural anthropologists Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead. Benedict studied the religion and folklores of the native American tribes. Mead stayed with a Samoan tribe in Samoa to learn about their culture. Herskovits, another cultural anthropologist also influenced by Boas, studied the Black Americans and traced their cultural roots to Africa and initiated African Studies in academia. He rejected the common assumption that Africans should follow the western world and its values and must always remain under the direction of the European societies.

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 Cultural relativism: The conclusion that the collective works of these cultural anthropologists endorsed was that of cultural relativism. Cultural relativism is a kind of relativism that is based on the observations of cultural anthropologists. It maintains that the beliefs and values, including the normative rightness and wrongness of practices, differ from culture to culture, and that the norms and the practices of a culture should be understood with reference to the cultural context in which these take place. This implies that there is no single set of ethical rules that apply to all. It also implies that ethical norms and practices are relative to a culture. Box 3.21 Cultural relativism Cultural anthropological studies show that ethical beliefs and values differ from culture to culture. The norms, values and the practices of a culture should be understood with reference to the cultural context in which these take place. Therefore, ethical norms and practices are relative to a culture, and that there is no single set of ethical rules that apply to all. It also implies that.  Boas and critique of ethnocentrism: The proclamations of Boas and his famous students need to be understood within the context of that time. Boas promoted cultural relativism as a critical response and opposition to the western ethnocentrism, when western ethnocentrism was the usual way among the western society to look at another culture. Ethnocentrism champions the view that all cultures are to be judged from the point of view of one’s own culture, its values, customs, and practices. It also has an unwarranted claim of superiority attached with it; namely, that one’s own culture is the best and cultures which do not conform to one’s own are inferior. Boas thought such ethnocentrism is undesirable, as it may lead to a methodological bias among the researchers, causing anthropologists or sociologists to misunderstand and misinterpret what they are observing. Instead, he recommended that the social science researchers should try to understand beliefs and practices neutrally and as relative to which culture they belong to.  Benedict on Kwaikutl tribe: Benedict,8 for example, cited a practice among the Kwakiutl tribe of North America: The practice was to wipe out death by death. The practice was that a death in the Kwakiutl tribe, whether a peaceful death in sleep or a violent death at the hand of an enemy, must be wiped away by killing some people in some other tribe. Benedict argues that it would be a mistake to judge this practice of that tribe as ethically wrong from the standpoint of values of the western societies. It would be also a mistake to consider it ethically wrong by appealing to standards that are supposedly ingrained in the constitution of human nature. Instead, we should understand their practice in the cultural context within that tribe. Benedict wrote that the Kwakiutl tribe understood only two emotions: victory and shame. Any affront to a person is a matter of shame. Even accidents are a matter 8

Ruth Benedict. 1934. #42 Kwakiutl: Shame. Patterns of Culture, Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1934, pp. 215–219.

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of shame to them. A man whose axe slipped by accident must wipe out that shame by some act, such as stop talking. If a man lost all his property by gambling, he can wipe out the shame by committing suicide. Similarly, a death for them was the biggest shame. It is the ultimate affront that a family or a tribe has to face. This shame too must be wiped out by some act of purging, such as giving away property and distributing the wealth. The extreme act of wiping out of shame is headhunting. Headhunting means one has to go out and hunt a victim and bring back the head as a trophy. This act of killing a person and bringing the head is a part of their mourning, sanctioned by their culture, for the dead. So, what may seem to a westerner as a revengeful, barbaric killing spree upon the death of a member of the family is not really killing per se; instead it is the part of the culturally accepted mourning by wiping out the great shame imposed by death. Benedict maintains that we need to understand the cultural practice within its cultural context. She also claimed that the conclusion that we are entitled to derive such cultural understanding is that there is no single ethics. According to her, ethics is relative to a culture and a society, where ethics is synonymous with socially approved habits that are inculcated in us. Thus, cultural relativism strengthened the cause of ethical relativism.  Pluralistic relativism: Gilbert Harman (1938-2021) has offered a version of ethical relativism that is close to cultural relativism (discussed above), yet it is not identical to it. Harman9 claims that to believe in ethical relativism is to believe that there is more than one possible morality. In other words, to believe in ethical relativism is to believe that there is no single true morality. His basic premise is still the observed differences in opinion among people on ethical matters. He says that we observe that people disagree seriously on various things on whether they are right or wrong, just or unjust, good or bad, such as on euthanasia, necessity of caste systems. Just as Mackie has argued (see above), Harman also argues that since there is no objective way to establish which of these ethics is the true ethics, we must conclude that there is no absolute right or wrong, and we must make do with the relative right and relative wrong. This implies that not only there are many rights, and many wrongs, but the same thing can be right with respect to one kind of ethics and wrong with reference to another kind of ethics. Box 3.22 Basic position of Gilbert Harman on ethical relativism There is no objective way to establish among the varied opinions which one is the true ethics; therefore, there are more than one possible ethics. There are multiple systems of ethics, where each one is relatively right He compares the situation in ethical relativism with football relativism or legal relativism. Football relativism is the idea that there are many versions of football, and there is more than one system in which football can be played. Hence, whether or not an action deserves a penalty is relative to which version of football is being 9

Gilbert Harman. Moral relativism defended, Philosophical Review 84, 1975, 3-22.

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played. Similarly legal relativism is the concept that there is no single legal system in the world; each country has its own. Thus, whether an action is legal or not is relative to the specific legal system under which the act is being judged. It is entirely possible that the same action may be judged as legal in one legal system and illegal in another. Compared to this, in Harman’s view ethical relativism implies that there are multiple systems of ethics, which run as parallels with judgments that hold equally true about the same thing. So, an ethical judgment is true only relatively, with reference to a specific ethical system, and may be false in another ethical system.  Metaethical relativism: This position is concerned about the truth or falsity, and actually with the justification, of the ethical statements. It too starts from observation of different opinions about the ethical matters, and then the argument follows that many of these ethical disagreements cannot actually be resolved rationally. The conclusion that this position endorses is that it follows that the truth of the ethical statements must be limited and relative. The normative authority of the statements cannot be universal or absolutely binding, as the ethical absolutists and ethical universalists would claim. Rather, the truth of these statements is only limited, relative to the beliefs and practices of some people or groups. Box 3.23 Metaethical relativism Ethical statements have truth values, but not in the absolute sense. The truth or falsity of the ethical statements has to be only limited and relative to the beliefs and practices of some people or groups. So, as per this position, the ethical statements such as ‘abortion is wrong’ are true or false only relative to the beliefs and practices of some society or tradition. This means that the ethical statements such as ‘abortion is wrong’ are not absolutely true. It may not be absolutely false either. It may be both, relative to two different standpoints.  This view of metaethical relativism should be treated as different from the claim of previously discussed (see Sect. 3.3.2) positions of non-cognitivism, emotivism, expressivism, etc. The claim of these positions is that ethical statements do not have any truth value; that is, those statements are not true or false. There is no justification for these statements; hence they are not true or false. In contrast to this, instead of saying that ethical statements lack truth value and/or justification, metaethical relativism states that the ethical statements lack truth or falsity in the absolute sense; they are true or false but only in a relative sense.  Historical examples of ethical relativism: Traditionally, many ancient societies believed that ethical rules are obviously absolute and objectively true. They believed that questions such as ‘is murder wrong?’ have an absolute and objectively correct answer; e.g. Yes, it is wrong, and always wrong. Sophists: In western history of Philosophy, we find the challenge to such strong and absolutist belief in the relativist arguments of the Sophists in ancient Greece . We find brief references to the relativistic arguments of the Sophists who occasionally

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appear in Plato’s dialogues with Socrates, for example, Georgias, Protagoras. Of course, Socrates, as Plato presented him in the Dialogues, has tried to refute the Sophists. The Sophists in ancient Greece were itinerant speakers and teachers. Their way of life was to travel from one place to another and deliver public lectures. As a result of extensive travel, they had the opportunity to actually see many societies, their customs, political systems, and different religions. They could experience the different cuisines of different places and know other aspects of a social life. Naturally, they understood that local customs differ from one place to another, from one society to another. Ethical relativism in their views came as a consequence of their exposure to many societies and their varied customs. We find that many of the Sophists maintained that certain laws are flexible and relative, and those are the man-made laws (nomos); there are the other laws which are natural in kind (physis). The latter is inflexible. Among the ancient thinkers, a most radical form of ethical relativism is found in the famous assertion of Protagorus of Abdera (c. 485–410 B.C.), a Greek Sophist: Man is the measure of all things; of those that are, that they are, and of those that are not, that they are not.

Protagoras makes a drastic claim that the assessment of anything is relative to how the thing appears to the humankind. Human beings are the measure of all that is and also of what is not there. It implies that reality, or what is, is as the humans see it; there is no reality independent of what a human knows; hence there is no objective reality. It follows that no statement about reality can be absolutely true; all such statemen ts would be true relative to a human point of view. Of course, in the voice of Socrates, Plato, a firm believer in objective reality, powerfully argued against such radical relativism. This radical form of metaphysical and ethical relativism was not very common among the Greeks. However, a form of ethical skepticism, which claims that no ethical knowledge is possible, was visible even among the early Greek philosophers, e.g. in the writings of skeptic Sextus Empiricus. Herodotus: A clearer statement of ethical relativism in the ancient times can be found in the writings of Herodotus (485–425 BCE), a Greek historian and not a Sophist. Before he came to settle in Greece, Herodotus had traveled widely; from the Mediterranean to Egypt, Syria, Babylon. As he traveled, he observed many different kinds of societies and collected their history, listened to the local myths and legends, and recorded many oral narratives. He provided an account of the Persian dynasty and wrote extensively about Persian King Darius. In one of his accounts of King Darius, Herodotus narrates a story in the court of the Persian King. Darius apparently asked the Greeks present in his court if they would ever eat the flesh of their dead father, as the Callatiae (a tribe) did as their funerary custom after the death of their ancestor. Herodotus reports that repulsed by the thought, the Greeks vehemently said that they certainly would not do so at any cost. Darius then asked the Callatiae people present in his court if they would ever burn the bodies of their ancestors upon their death, as did the Greeks as their funerary custom. The Callatiae were equally repulsed by the thought and answered equally vehemently that they most certainly would not. Clearly, the practices with

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the dead bodies were very different among the Greeks and the Callatiae. Reporting this, Herodotus reminds us, almost in the same tone as the contemporary ethical relativists, that from this no conclusion follows about the superiority of one cultural practice over the other. Neither can we justifiably say that the Greek practice is better than the practice of the Callatiae, nor can we say that the practice of the Callatiae is superior to that of the Greeks. In fact, he used this story to remind all that: What each society believes and perceives as the best practice, or at least better than the others, is actually shaped by each one’s own social customs. It is the custom which we follow and consider as the right practice, but we forget that the custom is relative to the society it belongs to.

Customs of one society may seem the best to that society and repulsive to the others, when actually no custom of any society is any better. As we have seen already, this is the basic message of ethical relativism in many of its forms. Plato and Aristotle: In direct challenge to the ethical relativism and skepticism, Plato, and later Aristotle, however, strongly dismissed metaphysical and ethical relativism and defended the idea of objective ethical values and moral realism. Aristotle argued that the ethical order is grounded in the objective facts about human nature and is conducive for overall well-being of the humans. Montaigne: The shadow of the philosophical tradition of Plato and Aristotle was long, and we know that western philosophy was under its spell for many centuries. Consequently, agreement with metaphysical and ethical absolutism and objectivism was more prevalent for a long time. However, ethical relativism managed to resurface briefly in 16th CE in Montaigne’s (1533–1592) writings. Montaigne was an important French philosopher who contributed to French renaissance. He was also an early ethnographer in a sense. Around 15th CE, Europe was slowly being acquainted to the new geographic discoveries. Before that, the geography of earth outside of Europe was not very well known to the Europeans. It was also the time when the Portuguese and the Spanish expeditions discovered Africa and America. In 16th CE, various European stateheads started to send exploration teams with royal support to North and South Americas. The teams brought not only unimaginable wealth, but also the reports of various customs that exist among the tribes in South America. Some of the customs of the tribes in the Americas were strangely different from what the Europeans were used to and were quickly labeled as decadent, primitive, and barbaric. In this context, we find that in 1560, Montaigne10 wrote about customs and prepared a list of very different kinds of customs that he found in different societies of his time. His point was that the social customs vary from society to society, and that we need to accept that variance without passing any judgment about one being superior to the other. In his essay ‘Of Cannibals’ (or ‘Of the Cannibals’), he tried to understand some of the customs of the native Cannibal tribes in Brazil. The custom was to kill a war prisoner, and then roast the body, and make a community meal out of the flesh. Chunks of the roasted flesh were sent to the friends who could 10

Montaigne, Michel de. “On Custom” and “On Cannibals,” in The Complete Essays of Montaigne, trans. Donald M. Frame. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1958. (First published in 1580.).

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not attend the feast. That practice was found as shocking, barbaric, and odious by the Portuguese, and the French, just as much as the customs of Asia, and Africa were destested by the 16 th CE Europeans. The strange customs found in the new world and in the other corners of the globe were considered as inferior to the European culture. Montaigne thought differently. In his essay, he described the values and beliefs behind the custom of the cannibalistic tribe. He warned his readers not to judge quickly and cited the other practices of the tribe which were not so strange, pointed out their simple and pleasant lifestyle, and the courage shown in the battle by these tribesmen, and their love for their wives, to argue that the tribe which were looked down as ‘cannibals’ were not as bad or inferior as they were made out to be. He further added that the ‘cannibals’ may be viewed as barbaric by the Europeans, but actually the Europeans had surpassed the cannibals in barbarity! He also argued that each person considers his or her own practices as best and considers whatever is not his or her own pracice as ‘barbaric’. Thus, his observations were against the European ethnocentrism and the preumption of supremacy over these tribes and upheld the main thesis of ethical relativism. Renaissance thinkers: As we all know, the renaissance period in Europe was an age of reawakening from the dogmatic slumber of the Middle Age. From 14th to 17th CE in Europe, there were growing historical and social reasons which diminished people’s faith in objective and universal ethical norms and paved the way for ethical relativism. People in Europe were gradually losing faith in the age-old social institutions, e.g. the Church, the family-based monarchy, and the economic policies of the feudal system. There was growing, widespread discontent about the traditional social norms, values, and belief systems. Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), an English philosopher, argued for a new concept of social contract in his book Leviathan (1651). Hobbes claimed that the ethical rules and the legal rules are nothing but what people agreed upon as an unwritten social contract, to follow to make social living possible. In other words, ethics as well as law is social in origin, not divine or transcendent. They are conventions created by the humans for the ease of social living. Actions are right or wrong, depending upon whether or not they help social living in a given society. Ethical norms, thus, are not absolute, but relative to the goals of living as a community. David Hume (1711–1776), as already discussed above, in his own inimitable way penned a powerful critique of absolutist and universalist ethics. With potent skeptical arguments, he concluded that the ethical statements, and norms, are not based in facts; they are basically expressions of emotions of approval and disapproval. Though this does not make Hume a relativist, his view undermined the authority of absolutist ethics to a large extent. With the advances in the physical sciences in 18–19th CE, ethical statements were compared to the scientific claims and were treated as statements which cannot be proved as true or false. Nietzsche (1844–1900), an influential German phiosopher, summarily rejected the idea of justification of ethical claims in terms of some objective facts or divine connection. He believed that what we call ethical are merely our own interpretations of the facts. What is deemed as right or wrong is just the projection of our reactions to the phenomena.

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➤ Cultural anthopologists: Ethical relativism came back in full force to western philosophy in the 20th CE as the western world came to understand the nonEuropean cultures better. Before this, during the era of European imperialism, the predominant view was that of European ethonocentrism and a presumed notion of cultural supremacy: The belief was that the European ethnic standards, ethical values, customs, and practices were superior to the ethical values, customs, and practices of other cultures. Inequality of the other cultures and superiority of the European culture were taken for granted. The colonization of other non-European countries by the Europeans and the hegemony was defended with this belief. As already discussed above, the first solid challenge to the assumption of cultural supremacy came from the American cultural anthropologists, such as Boas, and his students and followers Benedict, Mead, Herskovits. They did extensive studies of diverse, “primitive”, non-western cultures and brought out observations that openly challenged the foundation of European ethnocentrism. They powerfully articulated different forms of ethical relativism, as has been already discussed in this section. Edward Westermarck: The connection between the empirical findings of social sciences, e.g. anthropology, and philosophy was forged by Edward Westermarck (1862-1939), a Finnish philosopher, who was also an anthropologist and sociologist. He lent a strong voice in support of metaethical relativism as well as empiricallybased descriptive ethical relativism. He viewed ethics primarily as: (a) A psychological discipline, since he considered ethical judgments being founded in emotions of approval and disapproval (b) A sociological discipline, since in his view ethical beliefs emerge from a society’s struggle to survive and from the general emotions of the people in that society. Since it is based in emotions, he concluded that ethical values cannot be objective. For, the emotions and feelings are by origin psychological states. His conclusion was in full support of ethical relativism. He said that there is no empirical basis for claiming that there are objective ethical standards. Experience shows us, he argued, that ‘ethics are relative’.11  Among the Indian theoretical traditions: Among the Indian theoretical systems, there was no clean division as ethics. There is also no separate section that can be termed as metaethics. Therefore, it is difficult to state whether ethical relativism, in its various forms, was fully endorsed by any of the traditions or not. However, Jainism fosters an interesting kind of relativism; a metaphysical and an epistemological relativism. According to Jainism, reality is many-sided or anekanta. There are many facets of reality. This metaphysical view leads to an epistemological pluralism. For, it leads to the conclusion that no single view can capture the reality in its entirety. No statement, or set of statements can capture the entire truth about the object that it or they try to describe. At most, the statement, or statements, can convey partial truth about reality. No matter which source of knowledge we choose, they cannot deliver absolute or perfectly complete knowledge. Only the perfect souls can 11

E. Westermarck. 1932. Ethical relativity. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co.

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achieve complete knowledge. Therefore, any knowledge claim, on this view, must be tentative and relative, as it represents truth only from the perspective of the speaker. Syatvada of Jainism proclaims that each knowledge claim should be accompanied by an acknowledgment of its limitedness in the form of an expression of uncertainty: “Perhaps” (syat). This relativism, however, does not seem to permeate into Jain ethics. The ethical ideals are clear and absolute. As per Jain philosophy, the goal of ethical life is to become free from the bondage of karma. It is an absolute amd universal goal that is applicable to all souls. The ethical duty for the imperfect souls is to continuously strive to cleanse the previously accumulated karma and to avoid collecting new karma, so that liberation can be attained in the process. There are also three absolute gems (Triratnas): Right faith, Right knowledge, and Right conduct; and five absolute cardinal rules (Panchashila) that act as the absolute and universal principles for living a virtuous life: Non-violence (Ahimsa), Truthfulness (Satya), Not taking what is not given (Asteya), chastity (Brahmacharya), and non-possessiveness or detachment (Aparigraha). However, Jainism makes a distinction between the duties of the austere life of a monk and the duties of a Jain layman. The duties of the layman are less severe than the austere ascetic duties of a monk. Thus, the duties are relative to one’s professed position in life and allow a small room for flexibility. Buddhism has many versions. It overall maintains a ever-changing worldview where nothing is permanent. There is no permanent soul or God who is accountable for the ethical merits or demerits of the deeds done. Yet, for the ethical life, if one has to walk the Buddhist path, one needs to follow certain cardinal ethical principles (shila). Early Buddhism offers a detailed account of the human mind: Abhidharma. In it, the basic message is that the way to develop a virtuous character is to replace the negative emotions and mental states by positive and other-regarding mental states. The five ethical precepts (panchasila), however, are the fundamental codes of conduct that apply to whoever wishes to take refuge in Buddhism. The precepts are supposed to be oaths taken voluntarily, but they are essentially certain prohibitions: • • • • •

Not to take life Not to take what is not given Not to indulge in misuse of sensory organs and in sexual misconduct Not to engage in wrong speech Not to use intoxicants.

As in the case with Jainism, the prohibitions are more austere and strict in the case of a monk than for a layperson. Thus, a little flexibility is allowed considering the way of life a person has chosen. Nonetheless, the overall nature of the silas is self-inposed, but once accepted, it is universal. The Noble Eightfold Path in Buddhist ethics is also a universal and absolute path. It is the true path or the right path to enlightenment. It contains eight practices to enable anyone for enlightenment who

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can follow. The practices are not prohibitions, but positive descriptions of eight right kind of actions that help one to stay on the right ethical path and reach the final goal: • • • • • • • •

Right view Right resolve Right speech Right conduct Right livelihood Right effort Right mindfulness Right meditation.

The final goal of the Buddhist path also remains an absolute and universal, spiritual goal for life: Nirvana; that is, to break the cycle of rebirth and to attain freedom from suffering. As for traditional Hindu ethics, the key ethical concept is that of Dharma. The meaning of Dharma is quite intricate and is supposed to be not easily comprehensible by the ordinary people. Nonetheless, Dharma remains the guiding light for ethical conduct in life. Hindu ethics classifies Dharma into many kinds, depending upon various factors. For example: Sadharan Dharma: This is a class of ethically good or virtuous practices that are generally applicable to people. Mercy, honesty, self-discipline, purity, and generosity are some of the examples. Varna Dharma: These are dharmas which are relative to the varnas or the social classes. Brahmana, kshatriya, Vaisya, and Shudra are the four varnas or social categories, and their respective dharmas are different due to the different functions of each social category. Ashrama Dharma: Ashrama is a phase in life. The life of a human was conceptualized as constituted of four ashramas or phases in life: Brahmacharya (unmarried), Garhasthya (married), Vanaprastha (detachment at mature age), and Sannyasa (renunciation at a very mature age). What is dharma for one ashrama may not be appropriate dharma at another ashrama. Similarly, there is Gunadharma, i.e. Dharma according to the social position or role of a person. What is dharma for a king is not the same for a layperson. There is Stridharma or Dharma that is suitable for a women. Then there is also Apaddharma or Dharma during moments of peril, or during a crisis. The Apad or crisis can be of three types: • Crisis created by mistake or accident • Physical crisis when one’s well-being or life is in danger • Spiritual crisis. Each type of crisis allows certain extraordinary conduct, which is not supposed to be Dharma during the normal moments. During these moments of crisis, some very special actions may become permissible. But, the justification of those specific acts is available only for the duration of the Apad. If someone continues to act on

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Apaddharma even after the crisis is over, then that would be Adharma or violation of Dharma. The discussion above is to establish that despite the various classification of the Dharma, Hindu ethics is not an advocate of ethical relativism. The classification is a mark of a flexibility that shows ethical insight and a deep understanding of the intricacies of the human circumstances. It is a mark of the usual accommodations that an overarching, universal value system must make for many external factors and situations, in order to remain practicable in everyday life. The generic values and absolute norms must allow for certain flexibility for the sake of operational ease. Fundamentally, however, the values and the norms are absolute and universal for a specific category. For example, the Dharma of a Vaisya may not apply to a Kshatriya, but it applies to all Vaisyas absolutely. There is no relativity for the application of the Vaisya Dharma when it comes to a Vaisya. Similarly, Apaddharma allows for extraordinary measures in extraordinary situations. As a result, one may be tempted to consider the ethical quality of an act is always relative to a situation. However, that is not the case. The relativity of the situational factors comes into the fore only in the case of Apaddharma, and not elesewhere. Thus, Apaddharma remains an extraordinary case of exception, which is included within a system of universal and absolute rules. In our very brief discussion of the Indian philosophical systems above, we saw that we cannot really claim that ethical relativism, as it is understood by Western ethics and as it has been discussed in this chapter, was prevalent in the Indian systems. Next, we shall look into the major arguments which support ethical relativism.

3.3.4 Arguments in Favor of Ethical Relativism The salient arguments in support of ethical relativism have been mostly discussed above in connection to various points. However, they are listed below:  Argument from the dismissal of ethical absolutism: The arguments against the acceptability of ethical absolutism and objectivism are perhaps the strongest and the most popular arguments in favor of ethical relativism. In its old version, the foundation of ethical absolutism and ethical universalism was laid in a metaphysics, which allowed a link between ethical norms and a divine source. There was also attempt to situate ethical absolutism in a metaphysics that posited an Absolute Reality, which supposedly absorbed and assimilated all differences. The rise and methodological advances of the natural science, and its empirical verification processes, further led to the decline of support for ethical absolutism and objectivism. The fall of the kind of metaphysics which posited unverifiable entities and thrived on dubious speculations, and the gradual loss of faith in a religious order, led the “enlightenment project” in ethics to search for an alternative foundation for ethics. The philosophical interest wavered from the earlier metaphysics to the search of an account which would be more credible. Thus the general skepticism about an objective foundation of ethics has helped ethical relativism to grow.

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The other important philosophical consideration that helped ethical relativism to thrive was the fact-value distinction, which Hume brought in as part of his skepticism about moral judgments.  3.3.4.1. Fact-value distinction: The distinction between is and ought (discussed in Chap 1) is sometimes called the fact-value distinction. Statements about pure observation of empirical things are about facts. On the other hand, normative statements of ethics, which inevitably contain evaluative content, are about values. Philosophers argued that these are two types of statements, which must be treated separately. Hume’s Law says that an ought cannot be derived from an is. That is, from the observation of what the facts are, one cannot derive what should be the case. From the is statements, no inference about the ought statements is permissible. There is a logical and a conceptual barrier between drawing any inference from the non-evaluative what is the case to the evaluative what ought to be the case. Box 3.24 Fact-value distinction A Fact is what is the case. A Value is what a case ought to be. These two are distinct. Statements about fact and statements about value also are distinct. They must be kept distinct and treated differently  3.3.4.2. Naturalistic fallacy: In Ethics, it is a naturalistic fallacy, where a fallacy is a defective reasoning, to treat a value term as natural, i.e. as related to the facts of the world. It is a fallacy which occurs when the line of distinction between fact and value is not respected. Moore12 coined the term naturalistic fallacy to identify the fallacy when the value term good is treated as if it were a natural property of the world; e.g. when John Stuart Mill in his ethics identified the ethical value good with the pleasurable. Moore’s point was that the definition of a value term cannot be correctly given in terms of something factual. Box 3.25 Naturalistic fallacy A naturalistic fallacy is to make an erroneous reasoning and treat a value term as natural, i.e. as related to the facts of the world; when the value is not the same as a fact. The fact-value distinction, therefore, is a very important distinction. Modern philosophy, as well as modern thinking, appears to accept that. News investigation, scientific studies, empirical surveys, etc. are supposed to aim at the bare facts, by which they mean the raw facts which are untainted by any bias, or interpretation. On the other hand, a value judgment is supposed to be more of a subjective claim. Ethical relativists utilize the fact-value distinction to argue against the objectivity of ethics. If the fact-value distinction is correct and if our ethical evaluative statements 12

G.E. Moore. 1903. Principia Ethica. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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cannot be derived from factual is statements, then the justification for the ethical statements cannot ever come from any observed facts. Then, it follows that the truth of the ethical statements is not factually verifiable. Moreover, in case of a dispute over ethical judgment, we cannot ever appeal to any objective fact to establish that one side is right and the other party is wrong. The fact-value distinction in philosophy thus reinforced a trend of skepticism, which further helped ethical relativism.  Argument from the observed diversity: This argument is already discussed extensively above. The diversity in this case is to be understood as disagreement of opinions on ethical matters. The observed difference could be between two societies or cultures; it could also be between two groups within the same society. Starting from this variance, various versions of ethical relativism make the skeptical claim that the differences in many cases are real, and serious, that there is no objective criterion to settle the dispute, and that there is no conclusive evidence that underneath the differences there is a single ethical framework in which all the differences converge.  Argument from cognitive relativism: Cognitive relativism provides important support for the cause of ethical relativism. It holds that a statement is true or false always from a certain point of view; there is no privileged, metaphysical point of view from which a statement can be regarded as absolutely true or absolutely false. This position lends support to ethical relativism by making the truth value of an ethical statement a product of its coherence with the beliefs, values, and assumptions of a certain conceptual system. Ethical statements are true or false relative to the value system from which it originates. For example, the statement slavery is unjust is true with respect to a belief system that believes in freedom of humans of all kinds, but we must also admit that it could be false from another conceptual scheme the basic assumption of which is that not all humans are equal.

3.3.5 Objections Against Ethical Relativism  Arguments against the argument from observed cultural diversity. 1. Observed diversity proves very little: The mainstay of descriptive relativism has been the cross-cultural studies and their empirical findings of observed differences in the cultural practices among the societies. Critics argue that the observation of difference among the cultures appears to be overly inflated and overrated. For, by itself, the difference or diversity proves very little. The observed fact of diversity or difference in opinion does not entail ethical relativism; for, it does not eliminate the possibility of there being a common convergence. Just because there is difference of opinions on ethical matters, it does not follow that there is no single morality. For, underlying the difference, there could be a common morality. 2. The observed differences do not rule out the possibility of there being some objective ethical values: Two different societies may have very different ideas on what the earth looks like. Society A may think earth is flat, and society B

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may think it is a globe. Just because the two different societies have different ideas about this issue, does it follow that there is no objective truth about the earth’s shape? From the observed difference of opinion between A and B, can we reasonably claim there is no objective truth in geography about the shape of earth? In other words, critics of ethical relativism have argued that from mere difference of opinions on ethical issues it does not follow that there is no objective fact to settle the dispute. 3. Observed differences within the same culture: Critics argue that when ethical relativism appeals to observed differences between two cultures, they seem to forget that there can be strong disagreements within the same culture too. It is unwarranted to assume that a culture would be completely homogenous and would hold uniformly same opinion about norms and practices. In our present society, it is more common to find the difference in opinions on some ethical issue within the same culture. It is not necessary that every community within a society would agree on every issue. For example, opinions may differ about the practice of eating meat; some may dismiss it as a wrong practice, while others may embrace it. On the ethical permissibility of capital punishment, or the rights of the homosexual population, opinions may differ within the same society. In India, the communities ruled by the Khap Panchayat hold a very different and stern opinion about the wrongness of girls marrying someone from a different caste and community, while in the other parts of India the practice is not found abhorrent. If we need to treat these differences of opinions within the same culture or community as equally real and irresolvable, then ethical relativism reduces into complete subjective opinions. On the other hand, if these are not taken into account, then the mainstay of ethical relativism, the claim of observed differences among the cultures, becomes a lopsided and convenient observation. 4. Argument from observed agreement on ethical matters: It is argued that overemphasis on the difference among the cultures overshadows the fact that the ethical codes of cultures also overlap and there are some common values across the cultures. For example, contemporary philosopher James Rachels13 (1941–2003) has argued that the differences among the societies are overrated, and that underneath the differences there are core values that do not vary at all from society to society. According to him, (a) prohibition against telling lies and (b) prohibition against murder are two examples of such core norms. Rachels claimed that the cultures or the societies may differ on what exemptions they allow to these common norms, but those differences alone must not be overstated. The differences presume an agreement in the background. So, it is not true that every ethical rule varies from society to society, as ethical relativism claims. In other words, if there are

13

James Rachels. ( originally 1986, University of Michigan Press). Elements of Moral Philosophy, 7th Ed, 2012. McGraw Hill Education.

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observed differences and disagreement among the cultures, there is also the fact of observed agreement among them on ethical matters. Lately, different research groups have tried to establish that there are some common foundational ethical values that are common. For example, Marc Hauser, an evolutionary biologist as well as a Harvard University professor in Psychology and Biological Anthropology, led an internet-based research project on the moral sense. Hauser, the director of the project, claimed that sufficient commonality was found among the responses from a large number of respondents. And that commonality, he argued with experimental reports in his work Moral Minds,14 can be explained by a moral faculty, that we have. In neuroscientific terms, that moral faculty is a certain circuit in our brain, which is specialized in recognizing problems that are ethically relevant. The overall idea was to experimentally establish that ethical considerations and abilities have an evolutionary place in the brains of the human species. It is basically a universalist claim, which considers all humans, who as a species are endowed evolutionarily with a special moral faculty. 5. Underlying agreement beneath the differences: The critics of ethical relativism have also argued that the diversity or difference found is not the ultimate truth. What strikes us as differences in opinions often mask a deeper underlying similarity. On closer scrutiny, the differences appear to be only superficial, and underneath there is commitment to common values. For example, the Parsi or the Zoroastrian community has their own custom of disposing a dead body. It is a strikingly different custom than the usual; they neither cremate nor bury their dead. Instead, there are these special places, raised tower-like structures, called Dakhma or Tower of Silence, where, when a Parsi dies, the body is brought and left to be consumed by the vultures. This treatment to the dead may strike many as a very strange and shocking practice. However, if we investigate further, we find that the Parsi’s religion is Zoroastrian faith, which considers nature and everything in nature as sacred. The faith prohibits the Parsis from defiling the air, earth, water, sky, plants, animals, and humans. And this is why they do not practice cremation or bury the dead body; as that would defile some natural element or other. They consider the dead body as impure and unclean and believe that the Sun has the power to cleanse the body of its impurities. This is why the body is left exposed in the Sun. They allow the scavenger birds to strip the body of the impure flesh, because that is seen as an ultimate act of altruism, a final act of giving for the cause of the others. Thus, on closer examination, the funerary practices of the Parsis start to make sense. For, the attitude of respect for nature and all its elements and the respect for final act of altruism find sympathy and empathy in our minds. Thus, underneath a practice, which may seem very different and may evoke different responses, there may be values that converge.

14

Marc Hauser.2006 (2007, reprint edition). Moral Minds: the Nature of Right and Wrong. Paperback. Ecco Press.

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Similarly, we may cite the Jain practice of Santhara (the Digambara Jain sect calls it Sallenkhana). In Jainism, Santhara means a vow to withdraw from all physical and mental activities, including intake of food and water, to destroy karma, which causes rebirth. Jain scriptures allow a person to take this vow as a peaceful and dignified way to embrace death. It is actually a self-imposed vow to fast until death; without food and water it is a slow and steady way towards one’s death. And when a person takes this vow, the others, the family, and the friends, even the society, are not supposed to intervene; in fact, they are supposed to let the person die. To an outsider, the practice may look strangely different and disturbing. This may look like watching a person slowly committing suicide by starving oneself, while people do nothing but watch. Some may find it even objectionable as an attempt to suicide. In fact, since suicide is an illegal and punishable act in India, in 2006 a public interest litigation (PIL) was lodged in Rajasthan High Court to treat Santhara as an illegal and punishable act by the laws of the land.15 It also pleaded that all those to support this practice should be treated as abettors to suicide. The Jain community, however, argued that conceptually Santhara is very different from suicide. For, this vow is not taken in anger, or grief, or in a momentary passion. Santhara is a well-meditated choice. It is a vow taken by a person, not to die, but to live the remainder of life in a manner to reduce the burden of karma. Karma is the source of bondage, rebirth, and suffering; so withdrawing from all activities is the only way to cease the accumulation of karma. Santhara is a choice; it is an act of withdrawal from all karma. It is a conscious process of self-purification and to free oneself from the shackles of karma. The family and the friends and the society are supposed to respect that choice. The Jain community also explained that Santhara, though permissible by the Jain scriptures, is a rare practice. It is an act of total renunciation, which can be taken up under stringent conditions only by certain kind of people; e.g. if the person is very old or is suffering from a terminal ailment. Thus, on closer examination of the practice, we find that the practice of Santhara is not an act of escapism by suicide by self-starvation; it is founded on a certain philosophical outlook towards life and its purpose, on the values of renunciation, and a person’s free choice. It is a self-imposed vow, to live the remainder of life with equanimity, which the community and family should support in due deference to the individual’s choice. 6. Inconsistency of ethical relativism: It has been also argued that ethical relativism is not a self-consistent position. In Theatatus, Plato has taken Protagoras’s claim Man is the measure of all as a kind of a relativistic theory of truth and has shown the consequences of such a position. There he argues that such relativism very quickly degenerates into an inconsistent position. If everything is relative to how it appears to one, then a relativist cannot even meaningfully assert that his position, namely relativism, is true. For, it may appear false to another. In fact, Plato claims that ethical relativism is a self-defeating position. It is self-defeating 15

Aakshaa11Sajnani. Santhara: A path to death. http://www.legalservicesindia.com/article/2349/ Santhara:-A-Path-To-Death.html.

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in the sense that its truth implies its falsity. If it is true that every ethical norm and value is dependent on some perspective, or some standpoint, then ethical relativism also is only relatively true. That is, it is true only from some perspective. Thus implies that it could be false from some other perspective. Thus, if it is true, it may be false. Ethical relativism is thus fraught with inconsistency by its own fundamental claim. 7. Violating the is-ought distinction: Other objections point out that cultural anthropology is not an ethical theory. It is a social science discipline, which offers empirical conclusion, based on anthropological observations on what people actually do. Those observations are at the level of facts. Ethics, on the other hand, is about what people should do. It is at the level of value. From purely observational findings of cultural anthropology or of travelers, how can one justifiably infer anything about the ‘should’? To infer that would be to commit a naturalistic fallacy. 8. Basic mistake of ethical relativism: James Balfour (1702–1795), a Scottish philosopher, made the point that ethical relativism, cultural relativism in particular, seems to confuse between social customs and ethical rules. These theories wrongly imply that any action will be ethically permissible if a society as a whole approves it. However, that is not the case. An action can still be wrong even if a whole nation or a whole culture approves of it. For example, a whole nation may be engaged in corruption and may tacitly or openly approve of corruption. Still, that does not change the fact that corruption is not an ethically permissible practice. Balfour basically wanted to draw a distinction between socially approved customs and ethics. A society sometimes may take recourse of strangely decadent or wicked practices, such as slavery. But such social customs, no matter how many people approve of it in a society, still remain ethically impermissible. Moreover, if we concede the fact that every cultural practice, no matter how bad or depraved they are, must be considered as ethically acceptable with reference to that specific culture, then we are depriving ourselves of important power of legitimate social criticism. Heinous practices, such as slavery, bonded labor, burning women on the charge of being witches or for being a widow, and cruel medical experiments with human prisoners, would all become acceptable practices simply with reference to the specific context and culture. However, from within the society protests against such practices have risen and held these as wrong. A society improves itself and progresses through self-criticism and abolition of practices that are culturally rooted, but are atrocious. Thus, the main thesis of ethical relativism, cultural relativism in particular, cannot be completely right.

3.3.6 Is There a Resolution in This Debate? Ethical relativism is a quite important topic in metaethics. The debate on ethical absolutism and ethical relativism is not yet closed. Nor is it confined only to ethics and philosophy. As said earlier, the debate concerning the acceptability of ethical

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relativism or ethical absolutism has permeated into the discussion of other fields as well. For example, religious leaders have taken up this debate and have resituated it around the question of God’s existence. The debate also has serious implications for our life in the contemporary society. Our present society is becoming increasingly multi-cultural. Due to social media, our virtual world and socialization process has become increasingly global. Globalization has brought in more diversity in the workplaces, in the educational organizations, in our shopping places, in our social lives, in our commercial transactions, and in our lives in general. The questions about, what is a right or wrong practice, or about what our moral obligations are, are being asked now against this multi-cultural backdrop, where practices and belief systems are diverse and at times incongruous. In such a society, are we supposed to be an ethical absolutist, or a relativist, when it comes to evaluation of a practice, or behavior, or a trait? Consider for instance, the ethical statement S:

S: One should be tolerant.

It is both timely and pertinent in present society to ask if tolerance is an absolute virtue or a relative virtue in a diverse society. Is S absolutely true, or only relatively true? Is its truth objective, or is it only true as far as our subjective emotion of approval is concerned? Questions of these kind open the flood gate for many more intriguing questions that are associated with the debate that we were discussing. Should we adopt an absolutist stance towards tolerance? If we do, we would accept it as an universal and inflexible virtue. Is that feasible in a diverse society? Is tolerance always and necessarily good? If, for example, in the name of their religion, a particular sect of people A prohibits its members against vaccination, should the society in the name of tolerance allow that, while there is an epidemic raging? Is that the right thing to do? Should an immigrant continue to practice one’s original traditions and practices from earlier homeland, while choosing to live one’s whole life in a different country which observes completely different traditions and practices? For example, should a woman from country C wear the entire body cover or the burqua, which is common to wear her own country, to her workplace in country D, where the concept of office dressing is very different? Should her office and people in her workplace in country D tolerate that? Should someone from country A, where child marriages are practiced, be tolerated to marry off their children at an early age while living in country B, where child mariages are not practiced, and are prohibited? How far should one tolerate, and when is the different not right? Should the society set some parameters, the violation of which would be taken as an indication of intolerable behavior? Then, the statement S would be both true and false: True as long as the behavior under consideration is within the bounds of the parameter; and S is false when the behavior crosses the parameteres set. Being tolerant would be both ethical and unethical. And in case there is disagreement, how should we determine who is right?

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The point is that, as we have seen above, both ethical absolutism and ethical relativism have known merits and demerits. Choosing one over the other only opens the door to more vexing questions. Yet, a choice has become more important than before in the present scenario. What is the solution? Is there a compromise that can be worked out between absolutism and relativism?  3.3.6.1. Richard Shweder’s Big Three Ethics: We find that there have been some attempts at finding a compromise. Richard Shweder, a celebrated cultural anthropologist and a distinguished professor of Human Development at University of Chicago, USA, has proposed a middle path between ethical universalism and ethical relativism. He advocates what he calls is a defensible version of relativism.16 It is a version of relativism which promotes universalism without uniformity. He accepts the anthropological observation of cultural diversity, but thinks that does not imply that ethical universalism is false. In fact, he argues that diversity or disagreement of opinions is not really a surprise for a doctrine of ethical universalism. Any act, that is assessed as good or bad, right or wrong, must be judged with specific references to its context. The act must be properly situated in its context; otherwise there would be the mistake of rushing to judgment. Once we know the context, we also find the chain of reasoning which connects the difference to a bed of common values, which are universal. Shweder spent considerable time in different places, including Bhubaneswar, India. He cited how the same statement would elicit two very different kind of ethical responses from those who know nothing about the cultural context and from those who are well-versed with the cultural context. Consider the sentence: S6: Person P had a haircut and ate chicken the day after P’s parent died Those who know nothing about the local culture of Orissa would find nothing ethically objectionable in S6, whereas for those who know about the local culture of Orissa and know that after the death of a parent, the custom is not to shave or have hair cut for days and to withdraw oneself from non-vegetarian food and would find P’s behavior objectionable. Shweder claims that the point is not the so-called differences in our responses to the customs as right or wrong. The point is that a practice or an action, through a long chain of reasoning remains connected to some ultimate, universal values. Once we can follow the chain, the differences in opinion are bridged by a common understanding. He claims that those who are engaged in research in ethics have discovered that underlying these differences in customs, there are some common, terminal goods. Shweder’s own cross-cultural research claims that though there may be cultural or contextual variances in practices by different communities, but they are drawn from three ‘big’ ethics, which are universal and fundamental in nature. 16

Richard A. Shweder. Ethical Relativism: Is there a defensible version? Ethos: Journal of the Society of Psychological Anthropology, 1990, 18 (2): 205–218.

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 Shweder’s ‘Big Three’17 : Based on their ethnographic study in Bhubaneswar, Orissa, Shweder and his research team have claimed that three common, distinctly identifiable clusters of considerations shape and guide moral development within a culture. 1. Ethics of Community: These are the concerns about the group or community and its preservation. It assesses a situation in terms of what is good for the community. It evaluates an action in terms of a person’s commitment to the community and involvement with the group. For example, actions that exhibit loyalty to a community, honor of the community, respect to the hierarchy within the community, sharing and solidarity among its members and conformity to its norms, etc. are valued and approved as right behavior. Reciprocation of favors among the group members is valued, and the benefactors to the community are rewarded and the cheaters are punished. Violation of these ethical norms of community is seen as wrong. For example, disrespectful behavior to the community or to the hierarchical order that exists within the community is seen as wrong. The community is seen as an entity with an identity, standing, and reputation of its own. This ethics relies on the regulative concepts such as duty, hierarchy, and interdependence. 2. Ethics of Autonomy: This ethics relies on the regulation concepts of rights, justice, etc. It promotes the exercise of individual choices and preferences. It covers the ethical concerns related to the well-being of an individual and makes an ethical assessment of all things concerning the individual. Actions pertaining to individual freedom and rights are valued as right, whereas actions harming an individual or infringing on another’s rights: are seen as wrong. 3. Ethics of Divinity/Purity: This cluster relies upon the regulative concepts of purity, sacred order, tradition, sin, pollution, etc. The ethics cover the concerns with duties related to a divine source or rituals to seek purity. Practices towards bodily and spiritual purity, cleanliness, and sanctity are valued as right, whereas disrespect towards the sacred order, or towards a God/Gods, engaging in practices that make the body and the mind impure, or lead towards the degradation of oneself, etc. are considered as wrong. So, if Shweder is right, the debate between ethical absolutism and ethical relativism can be resolved by choosing a middle path, where the universalism stays, but the difference in opinion also stays. The difference in opinions remains on the surface, whereas the common, universal values lie at the core, from which through a complex chain the different practices grow. Influenced by Shweder’s line of thought, there have been other efforts in moral psychology and moral anthropology to discover the common ethical values underlying the differences in customs and beliefs. Alan Fiske, for example, claimed that 17

Richard Shweder, Nancy C Much, Manamohan Mahapatra, and Lawrence Park. The “big three” of morality (autonomu, community, divinity) and the “big three” explanations of suffering. Originally published in Morality and Health, Allan Brandt and Paul Razin (eds.), New York: Routledge, 1997. Reprinted in Richard A Shweder (ed.) Why do men barbeque? Recipes for Cultural Psychology, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003.

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though cultures have different rules to implement, fundamentally our interpersonal relationships universally follow combinations of four basic psychological relational models.18 Moral foundations theory (MFT) was created out of a similar effort by cultural psychologists, which includes Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist and a professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University, to explain why the cultures differ among themselves and yet show remarkable similarities and common themes. MFT claims that there are certain universal and innate or intuitive psychological systems that function as the foundations of ethics. Upon these, each society and each culture builds its own virtues, norms, and institutions; as a consequence of which we get the unique ethics that each culture upholds. Thus, MFT is the more detailed account of the concept of universalism without uniformity. According to MFT, the five basic foundations that the research group has fund recurrent evidence of are: 1. Care (for others, to protect them from harm)/harm: This is based on our ability as mammals of empathy. Dislike for pain to others and feeling of the others, emotions are common traits. Kindness, caring, gentleness, etc. are the virtues built upon this foundation. 2. Fairness/cheating: This foundation is based on our common preference for reciprocity and common dislike for those who unjustly cheat. Justice is the virtue that is built upon this foundation. 3. Liberty/oppression: This foundation is the cause of the common dislike for the oppressors and aggressive persons who deprive one of one’s freedom. 4. Loyalty to group, family, nation (In group)/betrayal: This foundation is linked to our ties with the community, tribe, group, or society. 5. Respect for tradition and legitimate authority/subversion: This foundation is linked to our long evolutionary history as primates and the hierarchical social interactions. Deference for leadership and respect for traditions are built upon this foundation. 6. Purity (avoiding disgusting things, food, actions)/degradation: This foundation is based on our common disgust for the polluted, dirty, and the contaminated. The religious taboos and notions of immorality, impurity, and notion to cleanse oneself of the impurities are built upon this foundation.

3.4 Chapter Summary In this chapter, we have started to get acquainted with the subject metaethics and the kind of issues that it deliberates on. A definition of metaethics was given, with an emphasis on the point that the discussions in metaethics are of a higher order than what is discussed in normative ethics. In this chapter, in particular, an overview of two well-known metaethical debates was provided. The debates are: 1. The moral realism 18

Alan P. Fiske. The Four elementary forms of sociality: Framework for a unified theory of social relations. Psychological Review, 1992, 99 (4): 689–723.

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versus anti-realism debate and 2. The ethical absolutism versus ethical relativism debate. The first debate is about whether the ethical statements are statements of facts or not and whether they can be justifiably called true or false. The second debate is about the extent of applicability of the ethical norms; whether the ethical rules are universally applicable or are only limited. As part of the discussion of these debates, the arguments and the theoretical positions in favor of and against the proposed positions, both have been presented. After the discussion of each debate, the possibility of a closure has been discussed. This was our first acquaintance with the metaethical issues. In our next chapter, we shall discuss another interesting metaethical issue: The origin of ethics.

Study Questions 1. In what way are the questions in metaethics and the questions in normative ethics different? Explain with your own examples. 2. What is an ethical statement? Convert each of the following statements into an ethical statement: (a) (b) (c) (d)

A friend in need is a friend indeed. Genuine leather purses use skin of an animal. Why are you interrupting me when I am speaking? High decibel sound can impair hearing.

3. Which among these statements correctly describes Moral Realism? (a) (b) (c) (d)

It is a position which believes in physical facts. It is a position which does not believe in mathematical facts. It is a position which holds that ethical statements cannot be true or false. It is a position which holds that ethical statements represent some facts.

4. How do the Moral Realists characterize the moral facts? What is the relationship between the moral facts and the ethical statements? 5. When some Moral Realists are also cognitivists, how would they describe their position about the nature of the ethical statements? 6. Explain the difference between the metaphysical skepticism and the epistemological skepticism about the moral facts, as has been proposed by the Moral Realists. 7. A non-cognitivist in ethics believes: (a) There are no mental states. (b) There are no cognitive mental states linked to the assertion of the ethical statements. (c) There are beliefs which are linked to the assertion of the ethical statements. (d) There are no ethical statements.

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8. Consider the statement: One should learn to respect the others. How would this statement be interpreted by the following metaethical positions? (a) Ethical Emotivism (b) Ethical Expressivism 9. Carefully bring out the differences among (a) Ethical Absolutism, (b) Ethical Universalism, and (c) Ethical Objectivism. 10. Which of the following is not true about Natural Law Moral Theory: (a) (b) (c) (d)

The theory makes ethics empirically verifiable. The theory tries to make ethics and its norms unquestionable. The theory links the rational aspect of human nature with ethics. The theory supports ethical absolutism.

11. Why is it important for ethical absolutism to assume a common human nature? Briefly explain. 12. How would Plato explain the goodness in the ethical act of selfless charity? Use his Theory of Forms to explain, and also shed light on his Ethical Objectivism. 13. Form your own argument from difference in opinion on the issue of child labor in favor of Ethical Relativism. 14. Summarize the positive and negative claims of ethical relativism. In your opinion, which aspect is stronger, negative, or positive? Justify your answer. 15. Explain the difference(s) between Descriptive Ethical Relativism and Metaethical Relativism. 16. Explain what Cultural Relativism is, and what some of the major cultural anthropologists have claimed. How does Cultural Relativism support Ethical Relativism? 17. Recount the story that Herodotus told about the Greeks and the Callatiae in the court of Persian King Darius. What was the message of Herodotus through this story? How is it connected to Ethical Relativism? 18. Briefly explain how Montaigne’s views provide support to Ethical Relativism. 19. Do the Indian theoretical traditions discussed in this chapter believe in Ethical Relativism? Justify your answer with examples. 20. Which among these is not an objection against Ethical Relativism: (a) The observed differences in opinions on ethical issues do not prove much. (b) The observed differences on ethical issues between cultures show that there is no single ethics. (c) A culture need not be unanimous on an ethical issue; there can be differences in opinions on ethical issues within the same culture. (d) The observed differences in opinions on ethical issues may converge in some common ethical values.

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Research Exercises 1. Consider the argument that Plato has made against Protagoras’s claim Man is the measure of all; namely, that such a position is self-defeating. Do you agree with the argument? Do you think that the argument would be valid against all forms of Ethical Relativism? Justify your answer by examining the different forms of Ethical Relativism discussed in this chapter. 2. Consider the point made by philosophers such as Balfour that an action can still be wrong even if a whole nation or a whole culture approves of it or practices it. Do you agree with that claim? If you agree, where and how would you draw the line between social customs and ethical norms? 3. What according to you should an ethically justifiable definition of tolerance be in a multi-cultural, diverse social set-up? Argue for your case. 4. Examine the claims made by Richard Shweder in his Big Three Ethics about universality without uniformity. Do you think it shows a middle path between Ethical Absolutism and Ethical Relativism?

Case Study Discussion Ethics Case to Discuss 3.1 To guanxi or not to guanxi? Guanxi (interpersonal relationships) of China in essence is a social network built upon friendship or intimacy. It is oriented towards continued exchange of favors. In a collectivistic culture, the rules of guanxi are prescribed by lun, a set of typical Chinese feudal ethics that define the hierarchical relationships between the noble and the humble, the close and the distant, as well as the individual and the group (family or clan). Specifically, the three cardinal guides (ruler guides subject, father guides son, and husband guides wife) and the five constant virtues (benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and fidelity) work as the traditional ethical codes that still prescribe the differentiations among role relations. The rules that guide the guanxi game are that the humble cannot assail the noble, the distant cannot overrun the closer, and the individual cannot override the group. In traditional Chinese societies, “family”, “kin”, and “clan” constitute three concentric guanxi circles, with the family representing the most intimate inner relations. In such a clan or cohort, people are connected by friendship and thus are mutually attached, trusted, and committed. Among other things, mianzi

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and renqing work as two major mechanisms by which people develop, maintain, and extend such guanxi with others. By Chinese values, mianzi (face) signifies honor or status in a hierarchical society. Giving favors to the weaker demonstrates conspicuously the power or capability beyond common peers, thus gaining face. In reciprocity, people who have received a favor should be grateful and return the favor whenever called upon. Disregarding this reciprocity can seriously damage one’s social reputation, leading to a humiliating loss of face. China’s economic reform and open door policy have catalyzed a proliferation of guanxi, favor-seeking beyond the family and clan. Along with the transformation of the centrally planned economy into a market-oriented economy, people in power find that more personal benefits can be earned via power exchange, while people without power find that the benefits can be earned through some particular connections (guanxi) to those in power. Guanxi in mainland China thus now spread wider beyond the family and clan. It can be socially reorganized into two categories: quanli guanxi (power-dependence relationship) and qinyou guanxi (kith and kin relationships emphasizing favor-seeking). Entering the web of quanli guanxi is tantamount to entering collusion, in which the members are tied up by clientelism, patronage, factional favoritism, and/or bribery. In Chinese business circles, guanxi has the top priority. Doing business in China requires getting involved in the culturally rooted guanxi, or the network of interpersonal relationships, or connections. Gifts, payments, or even bribes are required to enter the web of favor-seeking guanxi. It is difficult for an outsider, or a stranger, to do business in the Chinese society. [Case based on C. Su and J. E. Littlefield. 2001. Entering Guanxi: A Business Ethical Dilemma in Mainland China? Jnl. of Business Ethics, 33 (3), 199–210]. Questions 1. Suppose that a western businessperson, aspiring to enter the Chinese market, asks you for advice: “What is the right thing to do? Is it right to try to enter the guanxi, which means to collude in bribery /corruption, which is considered unethical and illegal in my home country, to gain access to the Chinese market? Is it right not to try to enter the guanxi, which implies being cut-off from the connection network, and eventually failing to enter the lucrative Chinese market?” How would you answer? Would you prefer to be (a) an Ethical Absolutist, (b) an Ethical Relativist, or (c) prefer a middle path? Justify. 2. How would a cultural ethical relativist perceive the situation? What would be a suitable criticism of that perception?

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Ethics Case to Discuss 3.2 In September 2010, France has passed a law in the parliament prohibiting people from hiding their faces in the public places. It was the first European country to do so. This law applied to all citizens and all kinds of face coverings. France has a long history with terrorism and terrorist attacks. For the last two to three decades, it has suffered repeated waves of terrorism, of both domestic and foreign origin. As a result, it has developed a fairly effective, though controversial, mechanism to combat terrorism. It was felt that the full-face covering, or full body covering, in a public place stood in the way to open communication which is fundamental in an open society. However, the Bill was quickly named as the Burqua Bill, because many thought it targeted the Muslim women who wore Burquas, religious garments which cover full face and full body. The law prohibited all women, French or foreigner, from leaving their home with their face hidden behind a veil. This implied that there was a ban on the Muslim full-face veil also. The French parliament members argued that the law is for the separation of religion from the state. They also argued that the law freed the women from a discriminatory, patriarchal system, liberty, and is in favor of more gender equality. In 2004, France passed a similar law which prohibited the use of prominently religious symbols in public schools, which included the Christian crosses and the Muslim headscarves. The French Muslim community protested the law as an infringement on their religious freedom, and as an imposition of the European idea of gender equality on their culture. The Muslim men and women argued that the Burqua actually protects the women from the objectification which is common in European culture. The law was taken to European Court of Human Rights on the ground of alleged violation of human rights. However, the Court upheld the law as above such allegations. Questions 1. Describe the controversy in your own words, highlighting the link of the issue to ethics. 2. Do you find any one side of the controversy is ethically more right than the other? If so, identify the side and justify your choice using a metaethical position discussed in the chapter. If not, explain why not. 3. If Mackie’s argument and error theory is correct, what would be his view on this matter? 4. This is an issue where there is a clear difference of opinion within the same society. What conclusion do you believe justifiably follows from that?

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5. Should all religious practices by every subculture within a society be tolerated? Carefully develop your answer with justification. 6. “It is wrong to wear a full-face covering in the public place”: Is this statement true or false, or neither? Try to justify your answer from the standpoint of (a) moral realism and ethical objectivism and (b) ethical non-cognitivism.

Key Terms • Cognitivism: This is the position that believes that underlying the moral judgments there are cognitive states, such as a belief. When we utter an ordinary statement, we are in a cognitive state of mind, namely a belief. This position believes that the same is the case with the ethical statements. • Cultural relativism: Grounded in the research of cultural anthropologists and other empirical social science disciplies, this kind of ethical relativism maintains that the ethical norms differ from culture to culture, and that the beliefs and practices of one culture should be understood with reference to the cultural context in which these take place. One should not quickly judge a practice as wrong just because it is different. • Descriptive ethical relativism: This is a kind of ethical relativism that starts from the anthropological or sociological observation that there is widely prevalent and deep difference of opinions on ethical matters and concludes that all societies, or cultures, do not share the same ethics. • Ethical absolutism: This is a metaethical theory which believes that ethical rules or standards are absolute or inflexible • Ethical Emotivism: This position maintains that ethical statements express mental states, but those mental states do not reflect any fact about the world. They merely express subjective emotions, feelings. • Ethical expressivism: This is the position that ethical statements are expressions of only the speaker’s preference for a certain norm or behavior • Ethical objectivism: This position holds that ethical norms are objective too. That is, the rules exist independently in reality, and they are not created by the humans, or human societies. • Ethical relativism: This is the anti-thesis of ethical absolutism and ethical universalism. It holds that there is no single, universal, and absolute ethics, and that all ethical rules and values are relative. • Ethical statements: These are statements in which we express an ethical judgment. That is, in them we express evaluative or normative judgments with reference to the ethical values, such as right and good.

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• Ethical universalism: This is a metaethical theory which holds that ethical rules are universal. In another form, ethical universalism upholds the belief that there is only one ethics, and the same rules hold for everyone, • Fact-value distinction: There is a difference between a fact (which is what is the case) and value (what ought to be the case). They must not be conflated. • Intrinsic properties: An intrinsic property is a property that is inherent in a thing. It is not caused by something external, it is ingrained in the thing. • Metaethics: Metaethics is a main subdivision within the field of ethics. It is that branch of ethics, which interrogates and investigates the pre-suppositions, the criteria, and the concepts that normative ethics utilizes. • Moral facts: These are imputed as a unique set of facts. They are a distinct class and are neither reducible to, nor explicable by, any other sets of facts, e.g. the physical facts about the nature. • Moral realism: Moral realism, or ethical realism, is a philosophical position which holds that ethical statements express moral facts and are true or false by their correspondence with the relevant moral facts. • Natural law moral theory: This is a position in ethics that has proffered the claim that ethical laws or norms are objectively derived from the nature of the universe and from the nature of the human beings. • Naturalistic fallacy: A naturalistic fallacy is to make an erroneous reasoning and treat a value term as natural, i.e. as related to the facts of the world; when the value is not the same as a fact. • Nirvana: The ultimate goal in the Buddhist path. Breifly, it stands for extinction of all desires and therefore to break the cycle of rebirth and to attain freedom from suffering. • Non-cognitivism: The position which rejects the claims of cognitivism. • Projectivism: This position claims that when we utter ethical statements, we project our own attitudes on to the world. • Quasi-realism: A quasi-realist is someone who believes in the main tenet of antirealism, that there are no moral facts which the ethical statements express, but the quasi-realist also allows the use of expressions as if the moral facts exist. • Realism: This stands for the metaphysical viewpoint which believes that objects can exist in reality independent of whether anyone is perceiving them or thinking about them. • Syatvada: A theory of Jainism which proclaims that each knowledge claim should be accompanied by an expression of uncertainty: “Perhaps” (syat) as an admission of its limited truth claim.

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In this chapter we shall: ˛ Discuss three salient theories on the origin of ethics ˛ Identify why each theory gained acceptance ˛ Learn about the major proponents of the theories and their arguments ˛ Provide a critical review of arguments to assess the claims of the theories Chapter Overview In a discussion about ethics, we often encounter a frequently asked question: What is the origin of ethics? The question indeed is important. In a way, it is an indirect question about the validity of ethics. In this chapter, we shall give due consideration to this question. We shall learn about three major theories available as answers to this question. Each theory will be laid out with supporting arguments of their key defenders. The limitations in the supporting arguments of each position will be discussed to raise the level of critical awareness. I shall also highlight how each position, if true, affects the nature and the authority of ethics. Main Topics in this Chapter Religious origin of ethics and divine command Evolutionary ethics and biological origin of ethics Altruistic behavior among social insects and animals Altruism: Hamilton’s rule and the concept of kin selection Wilson’s sociobiology The ‘selfish gene’: Robert Trivers and Richard Dawkins Prisoner’s dilemma The “veneer theory” Frans de Waal: Russian doll model Social origin of ethics: contractarianism and social contract Hobbes, Rousseau, on the origin of social order © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 C. Chakraborti, Introduction to Ethics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-0707-6_4

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Relation between law and ethics Empirical Research in Ethics: The Trolley Problem

4.1 What is the Origin of Ethics? In discussions on ethical issues and ethical behavior, often the discussion may veer towards the authenticity of ethics and its norms. In that connection, people ask: Where has ethics come from? What is its origin? Who created the ethical norms? How did we come to have the values? Was it, us the humans, or did they come from some other source? Do we learn the ethical rules by observing the others and from the situations, or do we inherit them biologically?

You may have heard these questions, or perhaps you yourself may have thought in these lines. But what is the answer to these interesting questions? In this chapter, I explain that the questions not only have answer, but they have several answers. The questions have been asked many times in the past, and different thinkers have tried to provide answers. The answers may have changed with time, as the boundaries of human knowledge and achievements have expanded. In this chapter, we shall be acquainted with some of these answers. I must tell you beforehand, however, that the answers are not free of criticism. If there are supporters for one kind of answer, there are also dissenters who reject the answer. On the whole, however, despite debates and controversies around them, we find at least three distinctly different kinds of answers available to these questions from three distinct positions. They are as follows: • Religious origin of ethics • Biological origin of ethics • Social origin of ethics. In this chapter we shall look at the outline of each of these positions. The views and arguments from their main proponents will be discussed to help you to understand the positions better. Among these, the biological origin of ethics is relatively new theory, and in comparison with the other two theories, it is more empirical in nature. It has drawn support from many experimental and observational studies. As mentioned earlier, each position has attracted not only support but also a body of criticisms. So, along with the outline of each theory, you shall also get to have an idea of the salient objections raised against it. The objective is to enable you to come to a better understanding of a position through a critical approach. One more point: The purpose of inclusion of this chapter in this book is not just to address a passing curiosity about the origin of ethics. I hope that the discussion in this chapter will also acquaint you with the different ways in which ethics has been conceptualized by different thinkers. For, the position that one takes on the origin of ethics also reflects on how ethics is perceived as. For example, if one subscribes to the view that ethics has a divine origin, the ethical rules are likely to be seen as absolute

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and indisputable. So, this chapter also should bring to your attention how ethics, its nature and function, may be differently perceived from different perspectives.

4.2 Religious Origin of Ethics The first theory that we shall take up is the religious origin of ethics. We shall start with a clarification. You see, many religions, as you may know, include some codes of behavior, which approve of certain actions and forbid certain other actions, as part of the practice of that religion. For example, as has been already mentioned in earlier chapter, Buddhism as a religion includes sila or ethical conduct. The third of the eightfold path is right speech (samma vaca). Right speech is the duty to practice abstinence from telling lies, and from slanderous talk, backbiting, and talk that evoke hatred, enmity, and disharmony among people. But it also prescribed the duty to tell the truth, to speak affectionately and at the right time, and with a good will. This is part of the Buddhist sila. In this way, we find that ethics, as prescribed codes of behavior, is an integral part of many established religions. This is sometimes known as religious ethics; which is the set of standards of behavior, which follow from the key precepts of a particular religion, and holds true for the members of that religion. However, in this chapter when we use the expression religious origin of ethics, we refer to the theoretical position and conviction, which proclaims that religion is the sole source of all ethics and ethical norms and values. According to this position, all that we call good, bad, right, and wrong in the ethical sense stem from the religious teachings. Religion is also considered to be the sole source of the justification for why we should be ethical. Box 4.1 Main claim of religious origin of ethics Religion is the source of all ethics and ethical norms and values. A religion and religious teachings are the source of all that we call good, bad, right, and wrong. Religion also provides the justification why one should be ethical.

It is needless to say that this position sits well with those, who already believe in some religion or the other and are the members of some religious community. The position also entails that unless one follows some religious faith, one cannot live ethically; or, one cannot lead a fully ethical life without being religious. Understandably, this implicit claim is contested by those who either do not believe in any religion, or are skeptical about any religion, or anything supernatural.

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Quick Question 4.1 1. Can you give an example of any religious ethics and its codes of behavior, other than Buddhism, which is already mentioned?

4.2.1 On Religion Some of you might wonder: We are discussing religious origin of ethics here, but what exactly does religion mean? It is a pertinent question, because the term religion is somewhat nebulous in its meaning, with so many interpretations, covering so many diverse elements and aspects. So, we shall start with a brief discussion on what we mean by religion in this context. Etymological understanding: Etymologically, the English word religion is said to be derived from either of the two Latin words: (a) Religionem and (b) Religare. (a) Religionem stands for respect for what is sacred, or reverence for the Gods, a sense of right, moral obligation, etc.1 From this, we may understand religion as a sense of respect or awe for the sacred, or for the Gods. In it, the connection to ethical rightness and obligation and a reference to divinity and reverence to divine beings are also included. Worship is the characteristic response to the sacred, and it is an important element in all religions. (b) Religare means to bind fast or to tie through a notion of obligation; or to bind the humans and the Gods.2 In this sense, the term religion carries a reference to a binding commitment of humans to the Gods through an obligation or duty. Once more, the link to divinity is included. Though etymologically both of these meanings of religion are supported, the second etymological understanding of religion is preferred by some of the medieval philosophers, such as St Augustine, and by many modern thinkers. They understand religion as a set of beliefs and practices which accept a binding connection to the Gods, or the divine beings. From 1300 CE, there is recorded evidence that in English the term religion was used to stand for a particular system of faith. A system of faith is a shared faith among a particular community, where the religious faith serves as a bond and as an identifier among the believers. From 1530 s, the reference to divine powers became more pronounced, as the term religion in English began to be used for a sense of “recognition of and allegiance in manner of life (perceived as justly due) to a higher,

1 2

Online Etymology Dictionary. Available at: https://www.etymonline.com/word/religion. Ibid.

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unseen power or powers”.3 A strong emphasis on the element of acceptance and allegiance to those powers became manifest from that time. Cultural understanding: Religion has been also understood as an expression of a specific culture. If culture represents the values and the beliefs of humans as they understand the world, then religion is an important part of that understanding. The cultural understanding of religion, however, is more oriented about the rituals and practices associated with religion and not so much with the aspect of spiritual belief. Many archeologists, cultural anthropologists, and other researchers from associated empirical social science disciplines have suggested that the practices and rituals which are considered as religious are common features of many earlier societies. They have also claimed that those religious practices and rituals are a common cultural response correlated with a fear of death. In this sense, religion, or the practice of a religion, along with the divinity and rituals, is a cultural expression to address certain basic concerns of a human with death and with what happens after death. Covering most of the elements discussed, here is a comprehensive definition of religion that you may consider: Box 4.2 Definition of religion “Religion, human beings’ relation to that which they regard as holy, sacred, absolute, spiritual, divine, or worthy of especial reverence. It is also commonly regarded as consisting of the way people deal with ultimate concerns about their lives and their fate after death”.4

Quick Question 4.2 Do you agree with the definition of religion as given in Box 4.2? Do you think it is a complete definition of religion? Explain.

4.2.2 Classification of Religion Not all religions are alike. One of the important ways in which the religions can be classified into different categories is on the basis of whether the religion believes in a God or in Gods or not. The ones that require such a reference to a God, or to Gods, are called: Theistic religions. The ones that do not require such a reference to a God, 3

As cited in Online Etymology Dictionary. Available at: https://www.etymonline.com/word/rel igion. 4 The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica. Religion. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/topic/ religion.

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or to Gods, are called: Non-theistic religions. As you may know, though a religion contains a reference to something holy or sacred, not all religions require a reference to a God or to Gods. Examples of theistic religions: The following are some examples of major theistic religions: Box 4.3 Examples of theistic religions Hindu religion: Believes in many Gods and Goddesses, also holds certain seers and spiritual guides as holy, and has many holy books. Christian religion: Believes in one God, a holy book, and in a descendant of God. Islam religion: Believes in one God, a holy book, and in a Prophet. The descriptions in Box 4.3, of course, are brief and do not cover the varied belief systems that are included as sects under each of the religions. However, as you can see, one common thread among them is a theistic belief, i.e. a belief in God or Gods. However, there are marked differences among theistic religions in terms of how the divinity is conceptualized. Some of them believe in one and only one God, whereas others believe in many Gods. Consider for example, Sikhism and its conception of God: Box 4.4 Sikhism Sikhism: Sikhism is a religion which believes in one God, but also believes that there is one and only one God, who is the same for all people of all religions, be it Hindu or Muslim, or any other religion. The term Sikh means disciple. The followers of this religion consider themselves as disciples of that one God. It also holds the holy book Guru Granth Sahib as sacred and as the living Guru. The holy book contains the words spoken by the 10 founder Gurus of Sikhism, whom the Sikhs consider as the holy masters. Ancient Greek religion, on the other hand, is a theistic religion which believes in many Gods and Goddesses. It does not have a holy book or a line of holy Prophets. Hinduism, as already mentioned, also believes in many Gods and Goddesses and has many holy books and many God-like saints. Box 4.5 Ancient Greek religion Greek religion: Ancient Greeks believed in many Gods and Goddesses and conceived them as situated in Mount Olympus. Among the deities, not all were equally important. The hierarchy put some as very important, such as

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Zeus, Apollo, and Athena. The pantheon also included some local Gods and Goddesses who were worshiped in certain regions of Greece. The Gods and Goddesses were conceived to be very similar to the humans in their nature and in the way of life. They married, had children, and had character flaws. Greek religion did not have a holy book or a scripture; it was mostly based on oral tradition. Later, these oral stories were captured in the writings of poets Hesiod and Homer. The Greeks also conceived of many intermediate kind of beings in between humans and full Gods or Goddesses, e.g. spirits, nymphs, and dryads. Non-theistic religion: There are other important religions which believe in the holy and the sacred but not in any God, or Gods, as supernatural and heavenly beings. For instance, here are some major examples of the non-theistic religions: Box 4.6 Examples of non-theistic religions Jainism and Buddhism: Both reject the traditional notion of God, or of a Supreme Deity, but believe in Tirthankaras and Buddha, respectively. The Tirthankaras were not Gods; they were holy men and spiritual guides to salvation, who are worshiped as holy preachers. Similarly, Buddha is the worshiped as the founder and ultimate holy teacher of Buddhism and as a spiritual leader in Buddhism. But Buddha is not a God in the traditional Vedic sense. Taoism: Taoism was the organized religion in China for many centuries. It does not believe in any supreme, creator God. Its main teachings are nature worship, ancestor worship, mysticism, fatalism, etc. Also, Shintoism is an interesting example of non-theistic religion: Box 4.7 Shintoism Shintoism: Shintoism is the ancient religion of Japan. It stands out as a religion, because it not only does not believe in a God as a supreme, absolute being, but also it also does not believe in a founder Prophet or master or in a holy book or a scripture. Yet, it is a system of faith that is rooted in the Japanese tradition. It believes in many sacred spirits called Kami who live in the natural places, such as mountains, rivers, stones, plants, and also in people. In this religion, humans become Kami after they die and are respected and worshiped as ancestral Kami by the family. So, from the above we can see that there are different kinds of religions, and they represent a great variety. We need to remember, however, that the position religious origin of ethics is primarily a position from a specific understanding of theistic religion.

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4.2.3 Dharma and Religion Before we leave the topic of how to understand religion, let me mention that what we discussed here is about English term religion. It is not to be extended to the Indian concept of Dharma. Indological scholars remind us that the English term religion is not translatable to Sanskrit term Dharma.5 They are not to be used as if they mean the same. The Sanskrit term Dharma and the Pali term Dhamma have many meanings, many of which would not apply to the English term religion. For example, in Hinduism, the term dharma stands for a much broader concept than a particular system of faith. It is used to mean a broad range of things, such as duty, the right, conduct, religion, and the essential nature of things. The Sanskrit term Dharma is etymologically linked to the root Dhr, the derivative meaning of which is: That which holds or that which upholds. In this sense, Dharma is the principle which holds a person together, when life all around tries to pull one apart. Dharma is that which provides stability and harmony to one. It is also that which holds up everything and even the world. In that sense, Dharma is also the world order. It stands for the religious and ethical law that governs conduct of everyone and guides one to the four goals of life. In the Vedas, there is repeated reference to Rta, ¸ which is a cosmic law that governs the seasons and the movement of the Sun and the moon, but it also governs everyone’s conduct, including that of the Gods. Dharma is something similar as the ethical order. The term dharma is also used as the nature of things. For example, the usage of the term in the statement ‘the dharma of water is to flow down’ is meant that the nature of water is to flow down. It also has a connotation towards righteousness or a path towards righteousness. In Jainism, dharma means religion, as in Jain Dharma. It also means several other things, e.g. virtuous behavior, and uniquely it also means an eternal substance, which allows all beings to move. In Buddhism, dhamma holds a central position as the doctrine or the body of truth taught by the Buddha. A person initiated in Buddhism appeals for refuge under the big three: The Buddha, Dhamma, and the Sangha or the community of the Buddhist believers. Thus, Dhamma features very prominently in Buddhism. Dhamma in the plural is used to refer to the interrelated elements that make up the physical world. It should be evident from the discussion above that in the context of the ancient Indian religious traditions, the term dharma technically means many different things, which are not captured by the English term religion. The upshot is that, as already mentioned, religion and dharma are not intertranslatable terms, and therefore, we must remember that the discussion in this chapter is confined to religion.

5

Kane, P. V. (1962). History of Dharmasastra: Ancient and Medieval Religious and Civil Law in India. Pune: Bhandarkar Press. Vol. 1, pp 2–10.

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4.3 The Theory of Religious Origin of Ethics Historically, religion and ethics have been intertwined. Practically every major religion in the world includes discourses on how to be good, how to lead a life of virtues, the right kind of conduct, and the actions that should be avoided; even if a separate treatise on ethics may not always be found. The ethical norms and recommendations are intermeshed with the religious teachings. Accordingly, religious ethics are many; some of the examples may be found below: Jain ethics Christian ethics Hindu ethics Islamic ethics Buddhist ethics Confucian ethics Jewish ethics Daoist ethics Shinto ethics This practice of twining of religion and ethics may have prompted some to think that religion and ethics are inseparable. In contemporary world, however, the two are treated as separable. While a religion may have a component of faith and tradition and behavioral codes emanating from them, ethics, as we understand it today, is not supposed to be a mere practice of faith and tradition. It is also supposed to be based on reason and self-realization. The present-day society also believes that it is possible to be ethical without being religious and without subscribing to any particular religion. This textbook also has followed the modern distinction between religion and ethics. In the previous chapters, ethics as an academic discipline has been introduced without bringing any reference to any religion. As already mentioned (see Sect. 4.2), the religious origin of ethics is a position which believes that teaching and practices of all of ethics, right or wrong, good or bad, virtuous or vicious, comes from a religious point of view. As you have realized from the above discussion that religions vary widely in what they consider as holy or worthy of worship. As has been discussed already, not all religions subscribe to a belief in a divine being, such as a God, or Gods. Keeping in mind such differences among the religions, we may reiterate religious origin of ethics as: Box 4.8 Religious origin of ethics The religious origin of ethics is a position which believes that teaching and practices of all of ethics, right or wrong, good or bad, virtuous or vicious, comes from religion, its teachings, and its principles.

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Now, some of you may think that this view is a thing of the past, as religion is a thing of the past, and that we do not need to give it any importance. Let me give you some reasons for consideration. There is no evidence that the tendency to follow some religion or other is declining in the world of today. In fact, we find that worldwide the followers of many religions have grown, e.g. Islam. Also, the tendency to find a self-identity in a religious identity has also not seen a decline among the world population. We are still far from being a completely religion-free society. So, there is no reason for us to dismiss a view that speaks of a religious foundation of ethics. Of course, it is true that the view was more prevalent in the ancient times. In the ancient mythology, however, we find it in the form of divine origin of ethics: Ethics comes from a divine source. That is, it is the view that the instruction about the right and the wrong kind of behavior comes directly from a divine being, such as God. Box 4.9 Divine origin of ethics Divine origin of ethics is the view that ethics, or the guidelines for the right or wrong behavior, has come from a divine being, or beings, such as God, or from Gods.

History of ancient civilizations shows that many ancient societies harbored some kind of myths about the origin of ethics, or codes of behavior, from the instructions of a divine being. These myths and the available textual evidence point at a prevalent notion of divine origin of ethics. We shall now look at some of these examples from ancient history.

4.3.1 Divine Origin of Ethics: Exemplars from Ancient Civilizations Babylon In ancient Babylon, the Hammurabi codes were considered to be divine in origin. The Hammurabi code is a collection of 282 laws actually. These laws are basically codes of conduct, which cover how an individual should behave, rules for marriage and divorce, as well as conduct rules for commercial transactions, duties of the workers, duties of the professionals, etc. The Hammurabi code is one of the earliest codes in human history and is a completely written code. Named after the Babylonian King Hammurabi (1792–1750 BCE), who proclaimed it, the code applied to the kingdom of Babylon in ancient Mesopotamia. The origin of the Hammurabi codes was viewed as divine. Though the codes were names after the king and were implemented all over the kingdom, it was believed that the king did not make the codes, but received the codes from the divine hand.

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The Babylonian pillar, a stone carved pillar from the Babylonian times which is kept in the Louvre Museum, Paris, depicts that myth. The carving on the pillar shows that the Sun God Shamash of the Babylonian pantheon is presenting the codes to King Hammurabi. The codes fiercely upheld justice in its injunctions to protect the weak and the vulnerable from the strong and powerful in matters of property and theft, slavery and ownership, marriage and divorce, and commercial transactions. The codes similarly prescribed what was deemed a just punishment for the offense committed. For example, the code recommends: If a man breaks another’s bone, then as a punishment they shall break his bone. If an eye surgeon due to negligence causes one to lose his eye, then as a punishment the surgeon could lose his own eyes. In accordance to the myth of divine origin of the Hammurabi code, the code was also a prayer to the deities. Even the punishments and penalties were prayers, except they were prayers of curses to those who neglected or violated the codes. Ancient Greece The belief in divine origin of ethics was there in the ancient Greek society also. For example, in Plato’s Protagorus dialogue, we find a mention of a myth about how Zeus, the king of the Greek Gods, saw that humans were no match for the other powerful animals, and out of kindness for the humans, specially endowed the humans with a sense of ethics, and with a capacity to devise law and appreciate justice so that they can live as a society. Thus, as per the myth, in humans the sense of ethics and the ability to develop laws both came from God Zeus, the king of the Gods. Similarly, in Plato’s Euthyphro dialogue, we find Euthyphro, a character, upholding the notion that justice is what the Gods approve. Of course, Socrates sharply criticizes that view and exposes the logical loopholes in it. However, this shows that the idea, that what is just is what the Gods approve, was prevalent among the common men in the Socratic society.  Having said that, it must be added that not all ancient societies and cultures upheld the theory of divine origin of ethics. There were notable exceptions too. Consider, for instance, the case of ancient Egypt: Ancient Egypt Ancient Egypt had codes of living, which are tantamount to ethical rules, and the codes required compliance to avoid being damned after death. However, there is no clear evidence that ancient Egypt believed in a divine origin of the codes. Though the concepts of truth, order and cosmic balance, which kept the world governed, were represented by the Egyptian term Ma’at and were personified in a Goddess called Ma’at. However, it is not that Egyptian society thought that Goddess Ma’at, or some other deity, had created these concepts. Ethical norms existed in the Egyptian society in the form of rules of proper and good conduct in life, and those rules of good conduct rose from the written texts of what is now known as the wisdom literature. The wisdom literature was the texts of a purely human origin, because these were the autobiographical statements written by ordinary people to communicate to the Gods what good deeds they claimed to have done in life. The written statements were meant

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to be left in the tomb of the person as an appeal to the Gods for consideration after death as Judgment Day approaches. The truth and objectivity in the self-proclaimed statements are certainly questionable, but the statements project what was perceived as the ideal, good conduct in Egyptian society. The upshot is that the origin of those codes was human wisdom, not a divine source. Ancient India In ancient India, the Vedas are supposed to be apaurusheya, that is, not of human origin; hence, the Vedic teachings of codes of life are also not of human origin. Yet, they are not held as clearly divine in origin either. That is, they were not handed down instructions from a God or Goddess. The truths of the Vedas and Upanishads are said to be revelations to the ancient sages; they are not human in origin. But, they are not the instructions from a God, or Gods. Over time, much after the Upanishad era, a discourse on rules of proper conduct (Nitishastra) was developed, and that development was certainly human in origin. For example, the codes in Manusamhita have a clear human origin; as the name suggests, the codes were developed and formulated by Manu, a sage. So, the concept of divine origin of ethics is not universally applicable to all ancient societies. In some of them, it was particularly visible. In others, this connection between the divinity and the ethical was not very common.

4.3.2 Divine Command Theory Arguably, the idea of divine origin of ethics is found in its strongest form in the Hebrew Bible and in the early form of Judaic-Christian religion. In its strongest form, the theory is known as divine command theory. Divine command theory essentially proclaims that: Box 4.10 Divine command theory Ethics is what God has commanded us to do, or what God wills. The origin of ethics is in God’s commands. In the Hebrew Bible, and in the early form of Judaic-Christian religion, God’s command plays a pivotal role. For instance, in the book of Genesis, we find that the first creation was simply by God’s command: Let there be light! And light was created. In the book of Genesis in Hebrew Bible, the creation story speaks of Adam and Eve, the original human couple in Judeo-Christian religion. God or Yahweh commands Adam and Eve how to live in and enjoy the Garden of Eden and also commands what not to do; namely, not to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil. They were expelled by God from the Garden of Eden because they violated God’s command and ate the fruit of Tree of Knowledge of good and evil.

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The creation myth in Genesis clearly indicates that a complete allegiance to God’s command is what the right path is for the humans, and to disobey God’s command can have very serious adverse effect on the human lives. There are other examples of duties set by God’s commands in the story of Abraham in the Hebrew Bible. The concept of command of God as the source of conduct in human life comes back in a very powerful form in the story of the Ten Commandments. The Jews went to Egypt due to famine, and the community suffered for years under the oppressive rule of the Egyptian Pharaoh, until Moses liberated them by parting the Red Sea. Moses guided the Jews to a new land. Exodus and Deuteronomy are the two books of Torah, the Hebrew Bible, in which we find records of that journey and of the diverse experiences in land. In different passages in Exodus and Deuteronomy, we find that on the other side of the Red Sea, in the desert, God revealed himself to Moses on Mount Sinai and gave the Ten Commandments in the form of two engraved stone tablets to Moses: One tablet for the duties to God and the other for the duties to other fellowmen. The Ten Commandments were the codes of proper conduct towards Judaic-Christian God and to the fellowmen in the society. Thus, God’s ten commands became the law and ethics for the people of Israel. Even in the New Testament, the theme of God’s command or divine command remains strong. Jesus sums up the Ten Commandments into two: (a) The command to love God and (b) the command to love one’s neighbors as oneself. The divine commands directly prescribe the ethical duties that one should carry out in one’s life. We may restate the divine command theory concisely as this: Box 4.11 Divine command theory The divine command theory is the view that the origin of ethics is in divine command. God himself commanded that certain behavioral norms should be followed as duties.

One of the messages of divine command theory for an ordinary believer is that the commands must be followed absolutely. In many religious systems, we find a reward system for complete allegiance to the divine order. An assured place in heaven as a result of painstaking collection of choicest virtues in present life, divine protection of personal happiness, prosperity in present life, etc., are some of the examples of rewards that are sometimes promised. Similarly, penalty and punishments are clearly mentioned for disobedience and violation of the divine order. For example, a life of sin, misery, unhappiness, ignominy, and occasionally a frightening message of an assured place in eternal hell of pain and suffering are some of the consequences that are mentioned as stern warnings of disobedience.

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Quick Question 4.3 1. What makes someone good: (a) According to the ancient society of Babylon? (b) According to the ancient society of Egypt? 2. Which of the following assumptions was not discussed in this chapter? (a) (b) (c) (d)

Religious belief is required to know what our duties are. All religions teach basically the same ethical lesson. God alone is the source of all morality. Ethical rules are commands of God.

Medieval philosophers Aquinas and natural law theory: From the Bible, and Christianity, the divine origin of ethics theory took roots in the thinking of some medieval philosophers also. For example, Aquinas (1225–1274) advocated the natural law theory, which for centuries has influenced the views on the origin of ethics. His theory claimed that God has put certain ethical standards in human nature, which we then discover through reason and intuition. Ethical norms are therefore divine in origin, but are discovered as natural laws embedded in the human nature. A prime example of such a natural law is: Do good and avoid evil. In his view, all ethical norms, including the ones that we discover through reflection, or derive for application, or find in the scriptures, are based in the unchanging divine governance of the universe.  Duns Scotus’s divine command theory: The religious precept of divine command developed into the philosophical divine command theory in the hands of Duns Scotus (1265/66–1308), another celebrated medieval philosopher. He wrote: The divine will is the cause of good, and so a thing is good precisely in virtue of the fact that he wills it6

That is, an act is good by virtue of the fact that God has willed it, or desired it. God’s will is the source of goodness. The goodness of an action is not to be explained in any other way. God does not find an action good, and then wills it. Rather, an act becomes good because God has willed it. He wrote: Everything other than God is good because it is willed by God, and not vice versa.7

The essence of his position is that all that we call ethics, in terms of the good and the bad, has originated from God, and God alone. Because God has willed an action, it is good and right for us, and we are obligated to follow God’s will. God’s will is thus divine command for us. 6 7

Duns Scotus. Additiones Magnae 1.48. Duns Scotus, Ordinatio, 3.19.

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Box 4.12 Duns Scotus’s version of divine command theory An act is good only by virtue of the fact that God has willed it. The divine will is the source of all that is good.

One of the effects of identifying the ethical good with the divine will is that God’s will can change. That is, God can create new values any time, and that God can change God’s mind about the right and the wrong also. Duns Scotus is aware of that implication, and he illustrates the point by citing examples from Bible where God has revoked the previously established ethical norms. He argues that God alone has the authority to do so, and for specific reasons. For example, in Bible we find that God commanded Abraham to kill his own son, but intervened at the last moment. Bible shows that God also commanded the people of Israel to steal from their Egyptian neighbors during their stay in Egypt. Each of these commands is strange and against the usual ethical recommendation. But, God commanded these, and the justification that theory offers is that God did so for a reason that is best known to God. Point to ponder Consider the two statements: (i) An action is ethically good, if it is in accordance to the ethical norms which God has put as natural laws in our nature. (ii) An action is ethically good only if God wills it. Now, consider the two questions put to (i) and (ii), respectively: (a) How do we know what norms God has put in us as natural laws? (b) How do we know whether God has willed an action or not? From what we know of Aquinas’s natural law theory, and Duns Scotus’s divine command theory, is (b) a stronger objection to Duns Scotus’s theory, than (a) is to Aquinas’s theory? Justify your answer. To sum up, the claims that follow from the divine command theory are: An act is ethically obligatory because (if and only if) it is commanded by God, or it is the will of God. An act is unethical iff it is prohibited by God, or it is not the will of God. Clearly, the divine command theory is a powerful statement about merging ethics with God’s command or will. What are its advantages? One of the advantages of this position is that it provides a powerful support to bolster the credibility and certitude of ethics and its rules. The norms dictated by ethics become in a sense unquestionable when their foundation and sanction is linked with the divine command or divine will. All skeptical inquiries about them, and their validity, stand the chance of being dismissed as an irreverent, heretic act

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against a religion. History shows that such acts of non-conformity are not generally approved of by the believers, and often the skeptic has to suffer public disgrace, or punishment, or both. So, the usual consequence of merging the ethical norms with the divine command or will is that the truth and validity of the norms go beyond the reach of ordinary scrutiny and criticism. This position also makes ethics and its normative judgments a matter of faith. As per this position, the faith in a religion and in the existence of God is a pre-requisite for being ethical. The atheists, that is, those who do not believe in the existence of God, have pointed out that according to this position a belief in the existence of God, or Gods, is a necessary condition for believing in ethics. If God does not exist, then ethics, as is understood by religious origin of ethics, loses its normative power, and every kind of action becomes permissible. For example, Jean Paul Sartre wrote: …It is nowhere written that ’the good’ exists, that one must be honest or must not lie, since we are now upon the plane where there are only men. Dostoevsky once wrote: ’If God did not exist, everything would be permitted’; and that, for existentialism, is the starting point. Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist.8

In divine command theory, or in divine origin theory, the power of enforcement of the ethical norms, thus, heavily depends on the belief in the existence of God. From the above, if it seems that the postulation of divine origin of ethics is an entirely ancient and medieval age phenomenon, the next section will dispel all such misconception. It is written specifically to tell you that the idea of religious origin of ethics, in its various versions, found acceptance among modern philosophers also. Similarly, the idea has been rejected by many ancient as well as the modern and contemporary thinkers in western philosophy. Modern philosophers Speaking of modern philosophy, as you may know, with renaissance in Europe, western philosophy is developed in broadly two different paths: • Rationalism, which held reason as the superior way of knowing • Empiricism, which upheld empirical experience and validation as a better way of knowing. With the deep influence of enlightenment thinking, each of these philosophies led in its own way towards a delinking between ethics and a divine theology or religion. That is, many modern philosophers, both rationalists and empiricists, displayed the spirit of renaissance by distancing themselves from the divine command theory or even divine origin theory of ethics. The prominent rationalist philosophers, such as Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz, were not atheists or irreligious, yet they advocated that we should try to know what is true by human reason rather than by placing blind faith on sacred texts or on divine commands. 8

Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism (New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 28.

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Similarly, the important empiricists, such as Hobbes, Locke, and Hume, insisted upon the empirical nature of reality and argued for our access to that nature through our senses. They were not avowed atheists, yet they harbored a healthy skepticism about the traditional notion of God and a transcendental foundation of ethics on divine command or will. So, modern philosophy, in general, was not too inclined towards divine origin of ethics or divine command theory. Most philosophers of that era subscribed to the view that a belief in God is not compatible to philosophical investigations based either on rational inquiry or on empirical observations.  Immanuel Kant on reconciliation of faith and reason: Immanuel Kant (1724– 1804), also a modern philosopher, was the key figure in finding a philosophical reconciliation between a belief in God and a pursuit of knowledge through rational inquiry. One of his most important philosophical contributions was to limit knowledge to make room for faith. That is, he conceded that human knowledge is limited by the limits of our sense experience, as empiricist Hume has claimed. Kant accepted that our reason cannot know or understand entities such as soul and God and concepts such as immortality, which lie beyond the reach of our sensory experience. However, Kant did not agree with Hume that therefore we must consider all entities beyond the reach of sense experience with skepticism. In fact, in his Critique of Practical Reason, he argued that we are required to believe in God, freedom, and immortality, as “postulates of practical reason”, to make a rational sense of ethics and ethical obligation. Kant said that we must believe in God and in an afterlife to meet the demands of the moral law. Being ethically good does not guarantee happiness, so we must have faith that the effort to be ethically is a journey in progress, which extends from this life into infinity. Similarly, we must believe in a good God who would reward us with happiness for being ethically righteous. Thus, though he did not believe in the theoretical argument for the existence of God, Kant found existence of God a practical necessity for ethics. Thus Kant showed that there is no need to make a complete separation between our rational knowledge and a belief in God; our knowledge by reason can accommodate a room for faith in God. The range of things that we can know by our knowledge by reason becomes limited, but a space is created for faith in God. Incidentally, to Kant, the God in question was the God of Christianity. So, though for Kant, ethics did not originate from God’s commands, he posited God’s existence as a necessity for ethics. He did not exactly follow the divine command theory of the medieval age, but he argued for a divine connection between the Biblical texts and ethics.  Voltaire, Niezsche, Bentham, and Sartre: The atheist modern philosophers, of course, held a very different view and endorsed a clear separation between ethics and religion, particularly Christianity. Among the French philosophers, FrancoisMarie Voltaire (1694–1778), for example, was openly opposed to Christianity as a religion and its tenets. Yet, he believed in the core human values that ethics speaks of. Similarly, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), an influential German Philosopher, was opposed to orthodox Christianity and rejected the link between Christianity and ethics, particularly Kant’s ethics. In his On the genealogy of morals, Nietzsche

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famously announced the death of God, which is the God of orthodox Christianity. With the decline of faith in the Christian God, he predicted that it would also be the end of Kantian ethics. He promoted the idea of a different kind of ethics, a God-less ethics. His ethics was the ethics of a master morality, which he said was free from the shackles of Christian ethics. In Britain, the British Utilitarian thinker, Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), also completely rejected the religious origin and context of ethics and developed a social ethics the goal of which was to promote the happiness of the others (Utilitarianism). Among the continental philosophers, Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) was a declared atheist; in his Existentialism and Human Emotions, he wrote that existentialism was nothing but an attempt to derive all the consequences of a coherent atheist position. He believed that we, the humans, create our own essence by the choices that we make in our lives; and that we are ultimately alone, condemned to be free. In this freedom, we create our own ethics. So, the origin of ethics is in us and in our freedom. Recent philosophers Among the more contemporary philosophers, we find a clear argument that one can be ethical without being a believer in God and religion. For example, Michel Foucault (1926–84) also criticized the Christian conventions on the ground that they make ethics merely a set of codes to be followed and neglect the fact of our freedom and of our ability to exercise that freedom to make free choices. His point against the position of a religious origin of ethics was that such a view reduces ethics into merely rule compliance. Similarly, John Rawls (1921–2005) came up with an ethics which is influenced by Kantian ethics. His concept of distributive justice is for implementing ethics in social policies in a societal context. However, his ethics had no room for God or religion. It does not require a faith in God or in any religious principles. In fact, he believed that in a pluralistic society, different people with competing visions can reach a consensus on justice as fairness if they leave their own individual conception of good behind. The individual conceptions of good include their personal allegiance to their specific religions also. Quick Question 4.4 What is your opinion about Kant’s reconciliatory effort to make room for faith in knowledge by reason? Would that effort be accepted by recent philosophers, such as Rawls, Foucault? Is a belief in a good God necessary to remain ethical?

4.3.3 In Favor of Religious Origin of Ethics However, the support or sympathy for religious origin of ethics, and its different variant versions, is visible even among the modern and contemporary philosophers.

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For, first of all, not all contemporary philosophers are non-believers or atheists. The rejection of God, and religion, on the basis of an empiricist principle, has not been accepted by many contemporary philosophers. For example, Martin Buber (1878–1965) proposed a version of existentialism which speaks of a relationship between human beings and God. Buber considered all philosophical, naturalistic, and humanistic ethics as inadequate. His insistence was that ethics must be Godrelated; so, for him, ethics, in order to be absolutely valid, has to be grounded in religion. We may consider Buber as a believer in religious origin of ethics. Among the contemporary philosophers also, arguments in favor of religious origin or ethics, or a divine origin of ethics, can be found. For example, Phillip Quinn (1940–2004) argued in defense of the divine command theory against the wellknown objections.9 John Hare (1949-) also has defended the connection between ethics and theology, in particular with God.10

4.3.4 Objections to Religious Origin of Ethics As you have seen above, the theory of religious origin of ethics, and its many variants, historically almost always had dissenters. In particular, the divine command theory, perhaps because of its firm and uncompromisingly orthodox stance, has attracted severely critical objections from the ancient times to the present time. In this section, we shall learn about some of the salient objections against the theory of religious origin of ethics. We shall begin with the famous but ancient philosophical objection, which is well known as the Euthyphro dilemma.  Objection 1. The Euthyphro dilemma: This renowned dilemma comes from the ancient times. It can be found in Plato’s Euthyphro dialogue between Socrates and Euthyphro.11 The backdrop of this dialogue is a scene in the streets of Athens, when Socrates is being taken to court on the charge that he is corrupting the youth of Athens by turning their minds away from the proper Gods. On his way to the court, Socrates meets Euthyphro, a fellow Athenian. Socrates finds to his surprise that Euthyphro is prosecuting his own father for the murder of a servant! Even though Euthyphro’s family considers this as an impious act by him, Euthyphro is very self-satisfied and arrogant in his belief that he is being right and pious, and that his act would be approved by the Gods. Socrates innocently asks him how he knows what is right, and Euthyphro answers that the right is what the Gods want. In other words, he is a believer in divine origin, or divine command, theory of ethics. Socrates then poses a

9

Phillip L Quinn. 1978. Divine Command and Moral Requirements. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10 John Hare. 2007. God and Morality: A Philosophical History. Oxford: Blackwell. Also, John Hare. 2015. Divine Command. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 11 Plato. Euthyphro. 2011. Ed. C. Emlyn Jones. Paperback. UK: Bristol Classical Press.

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question to him that throws Euthyphro’s understanding of what ethical rightness is in a quandary: Is the pious loved by the Gods because what they do is a pious act, or is the act pious because it is loved by the Gods?

We may rephrase Socrates’s question in the light of divine origin theory as: Do the Gods love the pious because what they do is ethically right, or is an action ethically right because the Gods love and command it?

The question offers the believer in divine command theory the two options to choose from: Option 1: An action is ethically right because the Gods love and command it, OR

Option 2: Gods command a particular action because it is ethically right Socrates then proceeds to show that no matter which option is chosen, Euthyphro will be led to a position that is undesirable for him. He lays out the dilemma as follows: If the option 1 is chosen, then anything that the Gods command becomes ethically obligatory for us. As discussed earlier in this chapter in connection to Duns Scotus’s theory, this opens up the possibility that the act, even if it is the most atrocious act, would become obligatory for us, if Gods love and command it. That is not a very pleasant consequence to accept for a discerning mind. But, why do the Gods command the acts? These commands of God, Socrates asks, Option 1.1. Are these commands based on some reason? That is, do Gods have some reason to command them?

OR Option 1.2. Are they just divine whims, commands without any reason?

Now, if it is 1.2., that is, if the Gods command an action without any good reason, then we are being instructed to do things that are arbitrary divine whims. This makes the very foundation of ethics arbitrary. Ethical duties based on arbitrary divine commands would be unjustifiable, irrational, and capricious. Why should we take such divine whims seriously? On the other hand, Socrates asks that if it is 1.1., that if Gods had a good reason to command certain acts, then why can we not appeal to those reasons directly? Why do we need to bring the Gods and the Gods’ commands in the middle? Therefore, accepting 1, and then 1.1, makes the Gods redundant. The piety of the act that Euthyphro was so sure about disappears. On the other hand, if the option 1 is dropped to avoid such complications, and the option 2 is chosen, then other difficulties come up. First, if God commands certain action because the action is ethically right, then an action is right due to some other factor, and not because God wills it. Then, ethics cannot be solely dependent on

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God’s will. Then God cannot be the creator of ethics, but would merely recognize the goodness and badness that already exist in certain acts. Second, if ethics would be something external to God or Gods, then God or Gods would also be bound by the ethical norms. Then, the Gods would no longer be the Supreme Beings, as the ethical laws would be above the Gods and govern the Gods. Therefore, this option would reduce the Gods to a much lesser exalted status. Thus, through this dilemma, Socrates showed that the divine origin theory and divine command theory either weaken the foundation of ethics, and thereby undermine ethics, or lead to a self-stultifying position where the Gods can no longer be the Supreme Beings and ethics becomes independent of God. In either way, Euthyphro dilemma poses a great challenge to divine command theory. Some responses to the Euthyphro dilemma As the Euthyphro dilemma has persistently made its presence felt for centuries, the responses to it and the efforts to modify the divine command theory to deflect the horns of the dilemma also have been around for centuries. I shall briefly mention here just a few of those major efforts.  William of Ockham and Duns Scotus: Medieval theologian William of Ockham (1247–1347) maintained that to a theist believer, the option 1, as mentioned above in Euthyphro dilemma, should be perfectly acceptable. Even if God commands an otherwise atrocious act, e.g. to kill one’s own son as a sacrifice, then the act becomes right and ethically obligatory for us. So, for the theist believer, the Euthyphro dilemma does not present a dilemma. God’s command is the ultimate for them. I may remind you that about option 1.2., Duns Scotus of medieval times, as mentioned in Sect. 4.3.2, also said something similar. Even if the divine command does not have a reason, it would still be obligatory for the believers. He argued that God is the origin of ethics, and that it is perfectly possible for God to change God’s mind. God has the full authority to create new values, and new right actions, overriding God’s earlier commands. He cited examples from Bible where God has revoked the previously established ethical norms set by God’s own commands. He argued that God alone has the authority to do so and can do so for specific reasons. Bible shows that God commanded the people of Israel to steal from their Egyptian neighbors during their stay in Egypt, though stealing is otherwise a prohibited act. Therefore, Duns Scotus would have accepted option 1.2., and the possibility that God may command something, which may appear to us as a whim without any reason, or as something does not make sense.  Robert Adams and modified divine command theory: Contemporary philosopher Robert Adams12 argued that though it is a logical possibility that God would command us something ethically atrocious, such as to cruelly torture an innocent or to kill one’s own son, it is not really possible that God would actually ask us, given the nature of God as good and loving God. That is, the undesirable consequence of

12

Adams, Robert M. 1987. The Virtue of Faith and Other Essays in Philosophical Theology. New York: Oxford University Press.

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option 1 can be thwarted by the assumed nature of God. Adams proposed that the divine command theory may be modified in the following way: Box 4.13 Modified divine command theory by Adams An act is wrong if and only if it is contrary to God’s commands.

On this modification, God, being good and loving, does not command acts unreasonable and unfair acts or acts that are known to be ethically wrong. In this revised theory, an act is ethically wrong if and only if it is contrary to commands of a God who is good and loves us. Moreover, the wrongness becomes a property of the act, or the doer’s intention, by being contrary to God’s commands. Yet, despite the efforts to avoid the horns of the dilemma, or to soften the attack of the horns to modify the theory, the Euthyphro dilemma posed by Socrates remains a powerful challenge to the divine command theory specifically and to religious origin of ethics in general. Objection 2. Arguments questioning the existence and the concept of God 2.1. The positions of religious origin of ethics, divine origin of ethics, and divine command theory, all are heavily dependent on the existence of God, or Gods, or some divine or holy source. Therefore, a belief in God’s existence is a pre-requisite for accepting the truth of these positions. However, as said earlier, the divine command theory is particularly under attack on this point. The critics have raised a host of skeptical questions, of both metaphysical and epistemological nature, about existence of God. They have asked: ˛ Does God exist? If so, where is the proof? (metaphysical queries) ˛ How do we know that God exists, or the Gods exist? (epistemological queries) Historically, Christianity as a religion in particular has been concerned with the question, whether God’s existence can be proved by reason, or by some religious experience, or must be accepted as a matter of faith. Accordingly, there are a number of important, and quite influential, arguments that have tried to prove God’s existence. These ‘proofs’ have been subjected to many significant criticisms. Some of these criticisms would be relevant to discuss in connection to our issue at hand. One kind of objection utilizes the philosophical principle of sufficient reason. The term ‘principle of sufficient reason’ is coined and first formulated by Gottfried Willhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), though many philosophers before Leibniz have used the concept in their philosophical works. In its simple form, the principle of sufficient reason proclaims: Box 4.14 Simple version of principle of sufficient reason For anything that is the case, there must be a sufficient reason why it is so.

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The atheists apply this principle to argue that if God exists, there must be a sufficient reason why God exists. However, they claim that the available proofs offered for the existence of God do not appear to establish a sufficient reason. The available arguments for God’s or Gods’ existence turn out to be either flawed or inconclusive, when subjected to rigorous analysis. In the absence of proof, they contend that the default presumption is the “presumption of atheism”.13 That is, it is presumed that God does not exist. So, the point is: If the existence of God cannot be proved beyond reasonable doubt, then the claim, that ethics has originated from God or Gods, or that ethics is grounded in the commands of God, or Gods, also is a suspect. Ethics cannot be dependent on God. Response to this objection SØren Kierkegaard: Of course, for the believers in God, or Gods, the lack of reason, or the insufficiency of the reason or evidence, has never been an important issue. They state that it is a matter of faith. The expression “Leap of Faith” is associated with Danish philosopher SØren Kierkegaard (1813–1855). The connotation of this expression is that the religious faith is a blind leap, accepting the uncertainty and the insufficiency of evidence, of trust into God. Kierkegaard thought that religious faith is not a matter of intellectual or rational capacities. However, the non-believers, i.e. the atheists, and the skeptics, i.e. the agnostics, are not satisfied with such dogmatic trust and faith in the face of insufficient or inconclusive reason. Therefore, proof of the existence of God remains a hurdle for the position religious origin of ethics. 3. Other arguments from the various characteristics of God Some criticisms of divine origin and divine command theory of ethics are based on the attributes of God, promulgated by Judaic-Christian religion. That conceptualization of God needs to be understood first before appreciating these criticisms. The Judaic-Christian religion is monotheistic. It believes in one, and only one God, who is not only the Supreme Being, but also a Being with many incomparable qualities. For example, God is: • • • •

Omnipotent: There is nothing that God cannot do. Omniscient: God knows everything. Omnipresent: God is present everywhere. Omnibenevolent: God is ethically perfect, and omnibenevolent: God is right and good. • The creator the universe. Some objections are based on the compatibility between these qualities of God and the divine command theory of ethics. For example: 3.1. Argument from the omnipotence of God: A common objection against divine command theory is that divine command theory makes it possible for God to 13

Flew, A., 1976, The Presumption of Atheism and Other Philosophical Essays on God, Freedom, and Immortality, New York: Barnes and Noble.

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command abhorrent, atrocious acts, such as to commit murder of an innocent, as ethically right actions. In our discussion above of Euthyphro dilemma, we have seen that medieval theologicians, such as William of Ockham and Duns Scotus, have supported such a claim. To them, a divine command is above all questions and is obligatory for all. However, the suggestion of God commanding an ethically abhorrent command as obligatory does not sit well with many. So, a modified position of divine command theory, for example by Adams as discussed above, has been that God, being good and loving, would not actually command such abominable acts. Now, some would argue that this modified version goes against the characterization of God as omnipotent. An omnipotent being should be able to do everything, including something that is seemingly impossible. So, God, being omnipotent, would be able to command ethically heinous acts, despite being a good and loving God. The defenders of divine command theory respond that such criticism would be a misunderstanding of omnipotence. For example, Thomas Aquinas has said that an omnipotent God can do everything that is possible, but not what is impossible, e.g. creating a contradiction in terms, such as an odd–even number. However, the critics readily argue that to command an ethically repugnant act is not a contradiction in terms for God. 3.2. Argument from the omnibenevolence of God: Critics argue that from the Biblical text some of the divine commandments seem to be cruel, and unethical, the alleged omnibenevolence nature of God. They opine that if humans have commanded the same, we would have castigated them. So, if God indeed has commanded those, then God cannot be ethically perfect and omnibenevolent. On the other hand, they argue that if God is not good and ethically perfect being, then is it even right to follow the commands of such a being? Should ethics be founded on the commands of such a Being? The difference between this point, and the point made in 3.1 argument from omnipotence, is that argument from omnibenevolence does not refer to omnipotence of God to do anything God wants. Rather, it refers to God’s attribute as an all-benevolent, kind, and good God and argues that certain commands of God are inconsistent with that attribute. So, one has to admit that the God, who can command such acts, is not omnibenevolent, so it is not obligatory for us to follow the commands of such a God. 4. Objection from moral responsibility and freedom: Another objection against the divine command theory is that it wrongly portrays ethics as blind submission to God’s will, and thereby it denies us autonomy or freedom. It argues that the divine command theory mistakenly thinks that ethics is merely a kind of compliance to the divine order. The term ought in ethics is taken to mean as if it is an order, which, if not complied, some judge would pass a judgment and there would be punishment. But, that is how the legal ought works. Thus, in the name of ethics, the divine commands theory upholds a juristic or legalistic conception of ethics,14 in which being ethically

14

Anscombe, G. E. M. 1958. “Modern Moral Philosophy”, Philosophy 33: 1–19.

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right and good is wrongly thought of as being the same as complying with a divine law. Apart from being a wrong conception of what ethics is, this also implies that in our ethical behavior our choice or will plays no role. For, we are supposed to only follow God’s will and command; therefore, God’s will and command is solely responsible for what we do and what we do not do. In that case, we cannot be the creatures with free will who decide their own actions. This goes against the concepts of freedom, autonomy, accountability, and responsibility, which are the cornerstone concepts of ethics. Therefore, the divine command theory suffers from a fundamental misconception about what ethics is and what role autonomy plays in the ethical context. 5. Objection from plurality of religions: It has been objected that there are so many religions in the world, and they do not always agree on what the right thing to do is and what the wrong behavior is. Not all Gods give the same commands. If we need to follow divine command, then given the conflict among the religions and the divine commands, how does one know which set of divine commands to follow? 6. Objection from the reward and punishment system in religious origin of ethics: On religious origin of ethics, and in its many different versions, there is a divine reward and punishment system. God holds us accountable for our actions, vindicates or even rewards the pious, and punishes those who engage in evil deeds. Thus, it provides a reason for being ethically good. However, critics have objected that such an account belittles ethical motivation for being good by linking it with the motivation to avoid punishment and to gain a heavenly reward. Is fear of hell or divine punishment the best motive to be ethical? In fact, such a fear for punishment and desire for reward is a childish, immature conception of what ethics is. 7. Argument based on the peremptory nature of religious origin of ethics: The position of religious origin of ethics, and divine Command theory, has a high-handed, imperious nature, which appears to lead to blind faith and indoctrination. The skeptics ask why, despite having the ability of discernment of good and bad through critical inquiry, we should subject ourselves to such indoctrination by accepting the theory of religious origin of ethics and its different versions.

4.4 Study questions on Religious Origin of Ethics 1. What is the difference between religious ethics and the position religious origin of ethics, as has been discussed in this chapter? 2. Which is the more preferred etymological meaning of the English term religion? How exactly is it different from the derived meaning from Religionem? Do you think it provides important support to the position religious origin of ethics?

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3. Consider each of the following statements, and state whether each one is true or false. Justify your answer briefly. (a) From 1300 CE, the English word religion was used for an organized religious practice. (b) Non-theistic religions do not believe in a God or in Gods, but they all believe in a holy book. (c) In Jainism the term dharma means an eternal substance, which causes everything to move. (d) Ancient Egyptian society did not subscribe to the view of divine origin of ethics. (e) No modern or contemporary philosopher believed in religious origin of ethics or in its different versions. 4. Explain what the position of religious origin of ethics is. Is there any difference between it and the position divine origin of ethics? 5. How is the creation narrative and the Ten Commandments narrative in Hebrew Bible linked to the position divine origin of ethics? 6. Choose the right option among the given: What is the divine command theory? (a) The view that the world was created by God’s command. (b) The view that God has commanded human nature to behave in a certain way. (c) The view that God’s commands are the only things that motivate us to be ethical. (d) The view that God’s commands determine what is ethically right and wrong. 7. In Euthyphro dilemma, what problem does Socrates raise for the divine command theory? Does it raise a question about the existence of God? Or, is it about some other flaw? Answer cogently. 8. Explain how the following try to respond to the points raised by the Euthyphro dilemma? (a) Medieval theologian William of Ockham (b) Contemporary philosopher Robert Adams 9. Does having sufficient reason to believe in God’s existence matter? What would the critics of divine origin theory or divine command theory say? What would the theistic believer, such as Kierkeegaard, say? 10. “Argument from omnibenevolence indicates an inconsistency in the attributes of God, as conceived by Judaic-Christian religion”. Comment on this statement. 11. Is divine command theory incompatible with freedom of choice in case of ethical conduct? Consider the objection from moral responsibility and freedom and answer this question. 12. Write short notes on: (a) Juristic conception of ethics. (b) Argument from omnipotence of God.

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4.5 Biological Origin of Ethics In this section, we shall look into a position, which is completely opposite to the position discussed, namely the religious origin of ethics. It is known as theory of biological origin of ethics. Its main claim is that in human’s ethical behavior and what we call the ‘sense of ethics’ all are outcome of biological evolution. By biological evolution, the position refers to Darwin’s concept of biological evolution and uses it as the basic premise. So, next we shall go through a brief exposition on Darwin’s concept of biological evolution to fully appreciate the claims of this position.

4.5.1 Darwin’s Evolutionary Hypothesis Charles Darwin (1809–1882), a renowned biologist, is most famous for his contribution in the area of origin of the species. He published his seminal work On the Origin of Species in 1859. At that time, the prevalent theory of origin of everything was creationism. Creationism is the theory that everything in the world, including life in all its variety, has been created by a divine creator, namely God. The position of divine origin of ethics and divine command theory of ethics both presume creationism as the account of genesis of all beings. In his 1859 book, Darwin proposed a new and rival theory of origination of the species instead of creationism. He proposed that the origin of the different species with all their variety is through the descent or biological evolution from one or a few common biological ancestors. The process by which this evolution takes place is natural selection. This view is referred to as the evolutionary hypothesis or the theory of evolution of Darwin. Throughout his book, he repeatedly took up the creationist view and argued with evidence from biology how creationism is incompatible with the evidence. Darwin’s evolutionary hypothesis is a rival to creationism and to account of divine origin of life, in more than one ways: (a) First, Darwin describes origin of species as a completely natural process; a natural progression from one natural life form to another kind of natural life form. The account of the origin stays within the realm of the natural sciences. Creationism, on the other hand, makes the origin of species a supernatural process which depends on God and God’s divine powers. The account of origin, therefore, requires the support of belief in a divine being and in the supernatural. (b) Second, Darwin’s evolution is a continuous biological process. That is, there is a biological link between the ancestor species with the successor species. In creationism, the process of divine creation does not follow such continuity. Different species, the humans, the animals, the fish, and the plants they appear as they are suddenly at God’s command. There is no causal link with the preceding.

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In the theory of evolution, the process of origination of species is neither sudden nor discontinuous.  Natural selection: With evidence from biology, Darwin explained in his book how the evolutionary forces work on a species. In each generation, the lifeforms produce many offsprings. The variety of characteristics and behavioral traits that the lifeforms have is then passed on to the next generation. Through generations, the offsprings and their offsprings inherit the traits. But, the lifeforms also try to adapt to their living environment and thus they change and acquire new, adaptive characteristics and traits, which too are passed onto the next generations through reproduction. The evolution process thus continues. The mechanism which controls the evolution process is natural selection. Natural selection is the process or mechanism by which living organisms adapt and change and evolve. Not every species survive; some become naturally extinct; that is, the natural selection process does not select them. The species which do not survive are the ones which not successful to reproduce and leave their inheritable traits for their offsprings. Their failure is the failure in fitness to survive and to reproduce. We need to pay attention to this differential in survival, why it happens and what role natural selection plays in it. In a population, every member is not the same; each is different in some ways. Some exhibit traits that fit better with the living environment than the others, while the others, which do not adapt well to the living environment, naturally get defeated in the process. Adaptability or fitness to the living environment becomes a crucial factor in the natural selection. For, the individuals with the adaptive traits are at an advantage to survive, to reproduce, and to leave their traits for the next generation. It is the natural selection process by which the fittest survive has this advantage to pass on their own set of characteristics and traits to the next generation. Over time, these advantageous traits become more common in the population. Through this process of natural selection, the advantageous traits get transmitted to the generations. Through adaptation, newer and newer species evolve.

4.5.2 Evolution and Biological Origin of Ethics Now, if Darwin’s theory of evolution is correct, then the traits and behavior of all the species have evolved over time and are inherited from the biological ancestors of the humans. For, evolutionary origin is a continuous, natural process. Then, this must be true about the humans too as a species. In that case, the following questions can pertinently be raised: Has ethical behavior, as a trait in the humans, too originated as an adaptive strategy for the advantage in human survival in the evolutionary process? Does it follow that the origin of ethics in humans is also a completely a biological event, governed by evolution and natural selection?

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In recent times, a group of researchers in evolutionary biology has given an affirmative answer to the questions above. Pointing at the evidence collected from their biological research, they argue that behaviors or responses in the humans that we call ethical have evolved over time following the evolutionary timeline guided by the mechanism of natural selection. They claim that the evidence of this is visible in many non-human species. So, according to them, ethics and ethical behavior have a biological, more specifically, evolutionary origin. Basically, this is what the position biological origin of ethics believes in. Box 4.15 Biological origin of ethics Behaviors or responses that we call ethical in the humans have evolved over time following the evolutionary timeline guided by the process of natural selection. As a result of accumulated research on this, a field entitled evolutionary ethics has opened up. Quick Question 4.5 Given the framework of theory of evolution of Darwin, does it follow that what is true about the origin of physical characteristics and behavioral traits in the animal species, must also be true about the humans as a species? What is your opinion on this matter?

4.5.3 Evolutionary Ethics Evolutionary ethics is an approach in ethics about the origin and nature of ethics, on the basis of the evolutionary concept of natural selection, and the related findings from evolutionary biology. It holds that ethics can be understood as the phenomenon that arose in humans naturally through natural selection due to the evolution of sociable, cognitively developed beings, and not as a result of divine intervention, or as a result of collective social agreement. It also claims that the standards which conventional ethics employ to distinguish between the good and the bad, the right and the wrong, need to be reexamined and accounted for from the point of view of evolutionary biology. From this approach in ethics, it follows that: (a) If in humans ethical considerations and behavior came about by natural selection, then it should be possible that the ethical traits and behavior would also

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be found in the biological ancestors of the humans. The theory of evolution believes in the biological continuity. (b) The origin of ethics would have a link with the survival of the species.

Quick Question 4.6 Can you mention at least three major points on which evolutionary ethics differs from traditional or conventional ethics?

4.5.3.1

Charles Darwin on Ethics

Darwin’s view on ethics has been the foundation of the main claims of evolutionary ethics. In his book Decent of Man (1871), Charles Darwin argued that the moral sense and the ethical traits in a human are not sudden phenomena. Nor is it a phenomenon that is exclusive to the humans. He claimed that these abilities and traits can emerge in any animal if and when in the process of evolution the species reaches a certain level of cognitive maturity. In Descent of Man, Darwin wrote: The following proposition seems to me in a high degree probable; namely, that any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental and filial affections being included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience as soon as its intellectual powers are as developed as, or nearly as developed, as in men (Italics mine).15

Darwin meant that a certain level of development of intellectual powers in any social animal whatever with social instincts would inevitably result in having a moral sense or conscience if : (a) When the sociability or social instincts of the species, such as caring for the offspring, tending, and nurturing qualities, emerge in the species and mature as a behavior as a result of evolution (b) When the cognitive developments are mature enough in the beings to reflect on the past actions and to approve or disapprove of behavior of oneself and the others. This gives an explanation of the evolution of a sense of ethics as a completely natural, biological process. For Darwin, the journey from a social animal to an ethical animal is a continuous one. So, having a moral sense, or conscience, need not be thought of as a unique trait of humans, as many traditional thinkers have claimed. This view also rules out any presumed supremacy or superiority of the humans as a species. For, it does not regard this level of abilities as a unique ability that only the humans possess. In subsequent section, we shall see how this point of Darwin has been elaborated and substantiated further by contemporary evolutionary biologists to argue that ethical traits are possible in non-human animals as well. 15

Darwin, Charles. 1874. The Descent of Man. 2nd ed. Part I, Chapter IV.

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4.1 Think a Little In (a) and (b), as mentioned above, Charles Darwin has mentioned that sufficient maturity of social instincts and cognitive developments would be the causal antecedents of the emergence of a sense of ethics in any organism. Why? What did he mean? How may these two conditions be linked to a sense of ethics?

4.5.3.2

The Enigma of Altruistic Behavior

In the above discussion, you have seen how Darwin’s explanation of the origin of a sense of ethics presents an interesting and alternative view on the origin of ethics in conformity with the framework of his evolutionary hypothesis. However, one of the greatest challenges of that view comes from the fact of altruistic behavior among the humans and among the other animals and insects as well. Altruism means to do something selflessly for the well-being of the others. Altruistic behavior means behavior that exhibits altruism. Generally speaking, we recognize altruistic behavior by its two distinct characteristics: (a) Selflessness (b) A concern for the others. Ordinarily, in the context of the humans, an action or a behavior would be called altruistic, if in it the person does something selflessly out of concern for the others, who may or may not have any personal relation with the doer. We generally consider altruistic acts as noble and ethically good acts. For example, the act of donating an organ for strangers (whosoever may be benefited by it) is considered as an altruistic act. Consider the case of voluntary donation of eyes by a person of his or her healthy eyes after death. The eyes, particularly the corneas, would be of immensely beneficial for the beneficiary. The donation usually does not keep any clause that the recipient must be a relative or a friend of the donor. Rather, typically the recipient of the eyes may be a complete stranger to the donor. And that is what the donor also intends. This would be an example of altruism in human society.

Altruistic behavior may often incur a personal cost; e.g. one may help a stranger to reach a hospital by driving the stranger to the hospital, but it may be at the cost of one’s own time and other engagements; similarly, one may feed the hungry, but it may be at the cost of one’s own funds and effort. Notably, that personal cost does not deter the altruist from that act. Despite the personal cost, the altruist continues his or her altruism. Nonetheless, the personal cost is often there, which the altruist accepts. Self-sacrifice and selflessness are the outstanding features of an altruistic act. The features also vouch for the ethical quality of the act.

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The fact that the altruistic trait exists has remained one of the biggest and enduring evolutionary mysteries for the biologists. Charles Darwin himself called it a possible “insuperable difficulty” for his evolutionary hypothesis. The challenge comes because in Darwin’s theory, survival of the fittest, a pivotal principle, determines that an organism must always ensure its own survival. We are told that the natural selection process picks out those organisms, which adapt to their living environment the best through a continuous variation of their characteristics and thus emerge as the fittest for survival. According to Darwin, as resources are finite, there is stiff competition among the organisms to survive, and in that competition only the fittest or the most adaptable survive; and the less fit are swept out by natural selection. So, not all organisms survive in the race of natural selection, because they are not the fittest to survive. And those which survive alone get the opportunity to reproduce and to leave the copies of their genes in their offsprings for the future generations. So, unless an organism itself survives the competition to survive, it does not get a chance to reproduce and thus becomes extinct. Its own survival, therefore, is crucial for an organism. From the above, the picture that emerges is that in the race of survival an organism must primarily remain focused on devising new and newer adaptability strategies for its own survival; otherwise, its fitness becomes at stake. Altruism, on the other hand, is an act of selflessness. It is a trait which overrides a being’s natural concern for oneself and own survival and makes an effort to give the advantage to the others. It is a trait which even accepts personal cost to put the others at an advantage. Naturally, the existence of such a trait is an enigma in a world run by Darwin’s natural selection process. We may rephrase in the terms of evolutionary biology the enigma that existence of altruism presents to Darwin’s theory as follows: Altruism in terms of evolutionary biology: In terms of evolutionary biology, an organism is said to behave altruistically when its behavior benefits the other organisms in an evolutionary sense, at a cost to itself. An organism gains evolutionary benefit when it increases its “reproductive fitness”, i.e. when it has an increased chance to reproduce and leave its expected number of offsprings in the genetic pool, so that the line is continued and the inherited traits and characteristics also get a chance to continue in the generations to come. This is possible only if the organism itself survives long enough to leave its offsprings for the genetic pool. Similarly, evolutionary cost for an organism is the reduction of its “reproductive fitness”, i.e. when its chances of leaving expected number of offspring decreases. This happens when the organism itself is in peril and its life span is cut short, or when it does not get a chance to leave its progeny for the genetic pool. Thus understood, evolutionary altruism would be the behavior by which an organism reduces its own chance of reproduction, by taking exceptional risk to its own survival, but boosts the chances of reproduction and survival of the other organisms. Coming back to the topic of altruism, now we can understand why it indeed is an enigma how a behavior, that puts others at evolutionary benefit, but puts oneself at

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evolutionary disadvantage, could survive or evolve at all. Given the context of the theory of evolution and the survival of the fittest principle, the enigma of altruism therefore may be expressed as follows: Why does such behavior exist which does not bring evolutionary benefit to the organism, but gives up the benefit to the others? Moreover, how does such a behavioral trait gets selected by natural selection? If the behavior puts the survival of the organism in peril, then how does the gene responsible for the altruistic behavior survive the race of survival through the stages of evolution?

It is indeed a perplexing puzzle for the evolutionary biologists why and how as a behavioral trait evolutionary altruism should survive in a world driven by natural selection. However, the fact is that such behavior exists. Evolutionary biologists claim that altruistic behavior exists not only among the humans, but also in other species. Understandably, therefore, research on altruism occupies a prominent place on the agenda of the followers of Darwinian evolution. In this section, we shall look at some of the major efforts to come up with an account of altruistic behavior, which remains compatible with the overall claims of Darwinism. But before that, let us look at examples of altruistic behavior in different species.

4.5.3.3

Does Altruistic Behavior Exist in Non-Human Animals?

We are relatively familiar with the instances altruistic behavior in the humans, albeit more as an exception than the rule. Though times have hardened the hearts, still in human society there are people who would go out of their way to help others in need, and at times they do so at a personal cost. However, in evolutionary explanation, behavioral traits are continuous. That is, from the biological ancestors, the species in the next level of evolution inherit the genes that create the tendency to behave in a certain way. In conformity to that line of thinking, the researchers in animal biology and insect biology argue that there are notable examples of altruistic behavior in animal and insect societies as well. Consider the following examples. The penguin parenting: In frozen Antarctica, where the temperature regularly falls below -60 degree centigrade and with wind chill it can reach -76 degree centigrade, the emperor penguins spend the winter in the open ice field. They huddle together to conserve the warmth. The female lays a single egg and leaves it with the male. Because, she has to go far away from the colony to hunt for food. The hunting trip may sometimes last for two months, because the female may need to travel for over 50 miles in bitter cold to find an open sea, where she would find fish and other sea creatures as food. When the female returns to the breeding site, she brings bellyful of food, which she regurgitates as food for the newly hatched baby chicks.

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Meanwhile, the male emperor penguin stays with the egg for more than 2 months without eating, in order to incubate the egg. He does not sit on the egg, but stands and protects the egg by balancing it on his two feet and covering it with the feathered skin known as the breeding pouch. If the egg falls on the ice, the egg will freeze in the harsh cold. So, a male emperor penguin must bear the Antarctic cold standing for more than two months to protect his egg from extreme cold, while he leaves himself exposed to the harsh cold of Antarctic weather. During this period, the male does not eat and survives only on the conserved body fat. Once the mother returns to the site, the male emperor penguin hands over the parental duty and then goes to the sea to hunt and feed himself. I would like you to consider this as an example of altruistic act. Both male and female penguins go through significant personal cost. They lose substantial body mass while raising hatchlings and incubating eggs. In the hostile climate of Antarctica, they also undertake a lot of risk to their own well-being to care for and to protect their egg and the hatched newborn.16

Stock Photo of Emperor Penguin with a chick

16

For further reading, see Australian Antarctic Program. Australian Government. Emperor Penguin Breeding Cycle. Available at: https://www.antarctica.gov.au/about-antarctica/animals/penguins/ emperor-penguins/breeding-cycle/.

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At this juncture, some of you might question the appropriateness of this example. You might ask whether the parental self-sacrifices for their own children, as in the case of the emperor penguins, would count as purely altruistic. For, you might argue, the parents and their own children are related by blood. Children are not the ‘others’; it is only natural that a parent would try to selflessly care for their children. Some of you might also add that the parents care for their own children as an investment, with the hope of getting expected return from the children when the parents become old and infirm. To respond to this, let me draw your attention to the abounding and sad cases of parental neglect of their children, be it in the humans or among the other animals. Sadly, our worldly experience shows with numerous examples that not all parents are as giving or as selflessly caring as the emperor penguins. Life shows us enough cases of abandonment, cruelty, abuse, pure neglect, and even murder of one’s own children. These show that there is no necessity that just because one has given birth, one must care at a personal cost for the offspring. Furthermore, other examples of altruism, in animal and insect behavior, can be cited, where there is no blood relation or personal ties. For example:  The alarm call: In the animal world, some animals have the capability to warn others in the jungle about a lurking danger, such as a skulking predator, or an approaching disaster, such as a wildfire. They accomplish this by giving out alarm calls, either by sending some signals or by special sounds emitted by them. For example, elephants trumpet to give out the alarm calls to warn. Many birds also screech, tweet, or call to warn about an approaching snake, or hyena, or a hawk. The vervet monkeys, and ground squirrels, have an elaborate alarm call system with three different kinds of alarm calls for different kinds of risk. In Sunderban forest, West Bengal, India, (the largest mangrove forest in the world) the jackals (locally called the Pheu) and monkeys are known to give out a specific alarm call, if a Royal Bengal Tiger is in the area.

Stock photo of Vervet monkey

Stock photo of Ground squirrel

Alarm calls may be viewed as an example of altruistic behavior. It is done out of concern for the others. And there is an element of personal risk. In the presence of a predator, to give out an alarm call is to attract attention to oneself and to disclose one’s position. It increases the level of risk for the warning animal or bird, while it increases the survival chance of the others. The point is that those who get warned may or may not be related by blood to the creature that sends out the warning. Altruism among the social insects: The most extreme examples of altruistic behavior come from the social insects, such as the ants, wasps, bees, and termites,

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who live in well-organized hives or colonies. We shall only discuss the case of the ants here.

Stock photo of an ant In the highly organized ant colony, there is a clear division of labor: There is only one queen who does nothing else besides laying eggs; a few males are there for reproduction; and there is a large body of worker ants, who actually do everything for the colony. The older worker ants go out for the risky job of finding and gathering food, while the younger ones stay in the nest near the queen. The important thing to note is that all worker ants are females, and most of them are sterile. Some forego reproduction and choose the serve the queen who lay eggs. Being sterile or childless, there is no possibility for the worker ants to leave any offspring of her own. Yet, they selflessly devote their whole lives for the colony: They take care of the queen, construct and protect the nest, forage for food, and thus expose themselves routinely to various risks, and they tend the larvae given birth by the queen. They lay down their lives, if necessary, to defend the hive or colony. There are similar examples of altruistic behavior towards the unrelated among other social insects, e.g. bees, termites. But, the point here is that whether in the humans, or in the non-human animals, or among the insects, the phenomenon of altruistic behavior presents a paradox for Darwin’s theory. For, it appears to defy the concepts of natural selection and the survival of the fittest in the theory of evolution. So, it does pose a challenge to those who believe in evolution. Next, we shall see how some of the evolutionary biologists have tried to provide an explanation of altruism which fits with the evolutionary hypothesis. It is important that a satisfactory account of altruism is found for all those, who believe that all ethical and noble traits in humans or in any other species have evolved naturally following the evolution process proposed by Darwin. The explanatory efforts that we are going to learn are all part of the position of biological origin of ethics.

4.5.3.4

William Hamilton and Research on Altruism

William Hamilton (1936–2000), an evolutionary biologist and a population geneticist, came up with the concept of kin selection and a mathematical formula known as Hamilton’s rule, as an attempt to explain this long-standing paradox: Why and how altruistic behavior may exist in a world ruled by natural selection? In 1964, William Hamilton proposed that altruistic behavior can rise in a species under certain conditions. Accepting one’s own evolutionary cost may evolve in a species as a behavioral strategy, if it increases the reproductive chance of those, who

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may not be direct relatives, but who share some of the genes. He introduced the concept of kin selection to expound his theory. Hamilton’s concept of kin selection: Hamilton’s basic idea is this: A gene, which prompts a behavior which increases the evolutionary benefit of others but lowers the evolutionary benefit of the organism itself, may still increase in frequency in the gene pool, if the beneficiaries of the behavior are genetic relatives or kins who share some of the genes of the altruist. Box 4.16 Concept of kin selection The concept of kin selection says that a gene which prompts a behavior may still be naturally selected if it lowers the evolutionary benefit to the organism but increases the evolutionary benefit of the kins or genetic relatives. In other words, natural selection may still allow a gene to survive if it enables genetic success and not reproductive success. Reproductive success is success that an organism has in passing on copies of its genes to the next generation by direct parentage. In contrast, genetic success is to successfully pass on copies of the genes to the future generation either by: (a) directly through giving birth to one’s own offsprings or (2) by facilitating the reproduction of the kins or genetic relatives. Genetic success is a wider concept than reproductive success. Box 4.17 Genetic success and reproductive success Reproductive success: The success that an organism has when it succeeds in passing its genes to the next generation through direct parenting, e.g. by having its own children. Genetic success: The success that an organism has either by passing its genes through direct parenting or by helping its genetic kins to have their children and thereby facilitating passing on the shared genes to the next generation. Hamilton argued that natural selection supports both. It supports reproductive success, but it also supports genetic success under certain conditions. These conditions are expressed by a mathematical formula, which is explained below in the section on Hamilton’s rule. Hamilton’s rule: Hamilton specified the conditions under which altruism as a behavioral strategy may evolve with the mathematical formula: r x B > C, where r is the genetic relatedness of the altruist to the beneficiary of the altruism, B is the evolutionary benefit gained by the recipient or beneficiary of the altruistic behavior, in number of offsprings equivalent, and C is the reproductive or evolutionary cost, in terms of offspring equivalent, to the doer or the altruist.

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This is known as Hamilton’s rule. The rule says that when r x B is greater than C, altruistic behavior can evolve. That is, whenever the genetic relatedness or r is higher and the reproductive benefit or B the behavior can bring to the kins is more than the reproductive cost C to the doer, the gene of that altruistic behavior can exist in that population for generations. Box 4.18 Hamilton’s rule Hamilton’s rule: r x B > C, where r is the genetic relatedness of the altruist to the beneficiary of the altruism, B is the evolutionary benefit gained by the recipient or beneficiary of the altruistic behavior, in number of offsprings equivalent, and C is the reproductive or evolutionary cost in number of offspring equivalent Let us try to understand this with an example. In an ant colony, the r is truly high among the worker female ants; as in a single-queen system, the ants are all related genetically. So, the relatedness among them or r is significantly higher than any other system. Suppose that worker ant Delta and queen ant Theta belong to the same ant colony. They are genetic relatives. Suppose that instead of its own reproductive success, Delta facilitates Theta in Theta’s reproductive success, e.g. by tending to Theta’s offsprings, by foraging and collecting food for Theta, and thus exposing herself to risk but protecting Theta from being exposed to external risk. In this case, the r is high. If Delta’s altruistic behavior towards Theta can help Theta to get more children than what Delta could ever have, then rxB is higher than the C to Delta. Hamilton’s rule claims that in such case, the altruistic trait of Delta would be passed genetically through the children of its kin, Theta, to the next generation. If the potential altruist can more than make up its own C (reproductive cost) of losing the chance to reproduce offspring by adding B (evolutionary benefit) to the population bearing a certain percentage of r of its genes, then Hamilton’s rule says that the altruistic behavior would survive in that population. Inclusive fitness Hamilton suggested that the concept of evolutionary fitness, which natural selection supports, may be understood as the broader notion of inclusive fitness. The idea of inclusive fitness suggests that instead of fitness of the individual organism alone, fitness of the kins or genetic relatives also may be included in it. It counts the genetic success and fitness of the relatives as included in the fitness for survival for an individual. The increased fitness of the relatives can at times more than compensate for the fitness loss incurred individually by the individuals. For, ultimately the family genes get to be transmitted. Although it is difficult to get empirical confirmation of Hamilton’s rule, we may try to see how it may be applied in certain cases. Consider for example the case of alarm calls by a bird to the others, which puts itself at risk but warns the others. Hamilton would explain that in such case, the behavior gains inclusive fitness by

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warning the other birds in its group about a predator. Because, the other birds in its group are its genetic relatives or kins. The benefit to its kins, i.e. B, in terms of increased chances of transmission of genes to future generation, is more than compensates the loss or C to itself; as calling out exposes the bird to a risk from the predator. Hamilton maintains that in such cases, the bird may not get reproductive success itself, but the genetic success would be achieved, as the kins of the bird hear would be warned and would survive. Similarly, in case of an ant colony, being sterile, the worker ants have a lost chance to reproduce themselves. In such situation, Hamilton’s rule seems to fit in the sense that the inclusive fitness of the worker ants exceed by assisting the genetic success of the queen and the colony. So, Hamilton explained, what seems to be apparently selfless behavior or altruistic behavior in a species, which seems to challenge the survival of the fittest principle, is actually behavior which can evolve in a self-interest driven species. In certain members of a species, if the evolutionary benefit of the behavior to the kins exceeds the evolutionary cost to the organism, the behavior would survive the test of natural selection and the survival of the fittest. This is why we find the apparently paradoxical altruistic behavior existing in a world, where natural selection pushes every organism to focus only on its own survival. 4.2 Think a Little Do you think Hamilton’s concept of inclusive fitness or kin selection can give a satisfactory explanation of altruistic behavior of the humans towards the unrelated strangers? Justify your answer. In sum, Hamilton’s explanation shows how altruism can be reconciled with the behavior of self-interest and self-survival-driven behavior of species. Hamilton said that the prosocial altruistic behavior in the social insects and animals will survive when the indirect benefits from such behavior to its genetic relatives are higher than the direct reproductive cost the insect or the animal incurs for itself. We must also add here that Hamilton’s rule and the idea of kin selection is not really new. Before Hamilton, J B S Haldane (1892–1964), the eminent biologist and geneticist and a founder of Neo-Darwinism, developed a theory about the kin. When asked if he would lay down his life for the others, Haldane is said to have famously said that yes, he would, but only under certain conditions: I would lay down my life for two brothers, or eight cousins.

Haldane’s reasoning was that since he shares 50% of the genes of each brother, and 12.5% of genes with each cousin, he can lay down his life for them. For, even if he were to die, his genes would safely survive through his kins or genetic relatives. Building upon such ideas, Hamilton popularized the concept of kin selection and the mathematical formula of Hamilton’s rule to explain under what conditions an altruistic behavior can survive.

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From the above, it should be evident that Darwin’s theory of evolution depicts the life of an organism as driven by continuous struggle for its own survival, as is required to be eligible to pass the test of natural selection. In that world, Hamilton tried to explain altruism as a trait that helps the survival of the extended self , as with the kins or genetic relatives. Survival of oneself gets extended to the survival of the kins. However, such efforts cannot conceal the basic notions of self-interest and selfsurvival, which characterizes the struggle for survival of a being in Darwin’s theory. Though Hamilton tries to accommodate altruism in it, his explanation turns altruistic behavior as a case of behavioral strategy which is only seemingly selfless. In ultimate analysis, however, it gets reduced into disguised self-interest in the long run. Altruism to a kin is only apparently selfless behavior, but ultimately are acts of self-interest in disguise, where the self-interest gets served as the propagation of the genes remains secure with the reproductive success of the genetic relatives. This implies that as per evolutionary biology, any behavior which is not self-interest driven and is otheroriented, such as kindness, compassion, generosity, can only be superficially selfless; for, ultimately at the genetic level it would come out as a manifestation of disguised self-interest. This casts a shadow on the possibility of ethics and renders genuine ethical behavior as recommended by ethics highly implausible. From this, it is tempting to conclude that if the origin of ethics has to be accounted for in terms of evolutionary biology, then ethics could be accommodated only as a façade over self-seeking behavior. This line of thinking has been promoted by a group of evolutionary biologists. Among them, Wilson and his sociobiology is a major theory, which we shall look at next.

4.5.4 Edward O. Wilson and His Sociobiology Edward Osborne Wilson (1929–2021) was a celebrated American biologist, evolution theorist, and entomologist. His life-long research was on the social insects. He is considered a worldwide authority on the ants, with many important contributions to the study of ants. For instance, in 1956, he made the significant discovery that the ants communicate with each other basically through the trail of a secreted or excreted chemical substance called the pheromones. Apart from the ants, he was also an expert on hundreds of other social insects, such as the bees, wasps, and termites. This expertise and his enormous knowledge of the social insects is exhibited in his definitive book The Insect Societies (1971). However, he did not just stop at discussing the prosocial behavior of the social insects. In his second major publication, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis,17 he made a startling claim. Sociobiology, the term, was coined by Wilson. He proposed sociobiology as a new kind of study: “systematic study of the biological basis of all 17

Wilson, E.O. 1975. Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press.

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social behavior”. Sociobiology was founded on the premise that the same biological principles which serve as the basis of the social behavior among the insects can be extended to serve as the basis of human sociality and ethical behavior as well. This caused consternation among various groups. More specifically, after his life-long observations, in this second book his claim was that all social behavior, non-human or human, originates in biology, and he extended his thesis to the vertebrates, including the humans. He claimed that as all traits and behavior have evolved as a result of natural selection, social behavior in any species, even among the humans, also has a biological origin. The same biological principles which explain the social behavior in the insect societies and animal societies are also extendable to the human social and ethical behavior in the human societies. Box 4.19 Wilson’s concept of sociobiology Sociobiology: A study which is supposed to be a synthesis between the social sciences and biology. Its basic premise is that evolution of all behavior is in the biology of the species. Based on life-long research on social insects, it aims to explain all social behavior of all kinds of societies, including that of the humans, have a biological basis. When published, the book Sociobiology: The New Synthesis and its thesis were very well received by the animal and the insect scientists. However, as mentioned already, the claim, that all human social behavior, and even human nature, share the basic biological foundation with the insects, was found particularly abhorrent an idea by many social scientists and other research groups. Despite the slew of criticisms, Wilson was firm in his claim and zealously predicted that eventually all of sociology would merge with sociobiology, and all of humanities and social science would reduce into sociobiology and evolutionary psychology. That, however, has not happened. Nonetheless, Wilson’s proposal was an interesting one. Let us find out what his argument was for such a proposal. Wilson’s argument from the brain areas One of the arguments that Wilson used was that advances in neuroscience show that the human brain and its various parts control human behavior. He particularly makes the point that what we call ethical emotions, and ethical behavior, are all controlled by certain areas in our brains, which are products of long natural selection process. For example, Wilson reminds us that the gamut of emotions, such as fear, love, and compassion, that ethics counts as moral sentiments which urge the humans to perceive an action as good or bad, are all controlled by the hypothalamus, and the limbic system, in our brain. Hypothalamus is a small but important region in brain located at the base of the brain. It is an ancient area in the brain, which we have inherited from our biological

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ancestors. It has evolved long time ago and has been a part of our brain for long. It regulates the autonomic nervous system via hormone production and release and thereby regulates blood pressure, heart rate, etc. The limbic system is a deep-seated, complex of structures in our brain, which is involved in our behavioral and emotional responses, particularly in the responses which we need for our survival. For example, it regulates aggression, which we need to protect ourselves; it also regulates fear conditioning, which too helps in our survival by directing us to remove ourselves from an imminent danger. It also regulates emotional memory and social cognition. Emotional memory is the memory of experiences that evoked an emotional response in us. Studies tell us that we remember most vividly the emotional moments in life. Social cognition refers broadly to all the processes in our mind through which we store, process, and apply information about other people, social situations, and social interactions. Behavioral responses, such as caring for the others, compassion, kindness, sympathy, all are regulated by the limbic system. Wilson argued that it follows that any attempt to fully explain social and ethical behavior of any species must ultimately be in terms of the brain and the functioning of its different parts. Sociology, and other social sciences, would ultimately have to give an account of social behavior in terms of activities in the brain areas. Furthermore, Wilson argued that, as shown by research in genetics, these ancient brain areas, the hypothalamus and the rest of the limbic system as they are now, and what their functions are at present, have all evolved over a long time as a result of natural selection in evolution. Therefore, he believes that since much of the socially relevant behavioral and emotional responses are controlled by hypothalamus and the limbic system, the explanation of human sociality and ethics must finally be in terms of the biological facts and the evolution of the human. Any account of origin of ethics must be founded on statements of biology. In his own words: …The hypothalamus and limbic system … flood our consciousness with all the emotions – hate, love, guilt, fear, and others – that are consulted by ethical philosophers who wish to intuit the standards of good and evil. What, we are then compelled to ask, made the hypothalamus and the limbic system? They evolved by natural selection. That simple biological statement must be pursued to explain ethics18

He also claimed that instead of being in the domain of philosophy, ethics should now be made part of human biology. In his words: …the time has come for ethics to be removed temporarily from the hands of philosophers and biologicized.19 (Wilson, 1975, 562)

However, though Wilson’s sociobiology has made its biggest impact in the field of evolutionary psychology, only time will tell if ethics can be fully biologicized and be removed from the domain of philosophy.

18 19

Ibid. p. 1. Ibid., p. 562.

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Box 4.20 Wilson’s argument from brain areas Neuroscience research shows that the gamut of emotions that are known as moral sentiments, e.g. benevolence, love, guilt, shame, and the prosocial, ethical behavioral responses based on these emotions, are controlled by ancient brain areas. These brain areas are the outcome of evolution. Since these emotions rule our prosocial, ethical responses, any account of origin of ethics must be in terms of biology of human brain.

Think a little 4.3 In Wilson’s sociobiology, there is a strong suggestion that ethics and human prosocial responses are the same, or to a large extent similar. Do you agree with that conception of ethics? Do you believe that there is nothing more to ethics than how we behave towards the others in society? Do you believe that personal ethics does not exist?

4.5.4.1

Wilson’s Sociobiological Explanation

I hope that the outline of Wilson’s sociobiology is clear to you from the above discussion. Now, we need to understand some of the details of its main content. For that purpose, some of the key points in his sociobiological explanation are listed below: 1. Prosocial behavior is biologically inherited, and natural selection chose it because it helps in our survival: According to Wilson, all behavior has a biological basis. It follows that the behavior rules, by which the humans are constrained to act and think in a certain way, also have a biological basis. They are built into our brain by evolution. We have inherited these behavior rules in the process of evolution. These inherited behavior rules include the prosocial behavior. Prosocial behavior are those behavior which benefit, or at least intend to benefit, the others in the society or the society as a whole, for example, sharing, caring, cooperating, helping the needy, and donating. Prosocial behavior is characterized by a concern for the feelings, well-being, and the rights of the others in the society. Wilson’s point is that though the social insect societies are very different from the societies of the humans, the fact remains that we share with the insects the common factor of inherited nature of our prosocial behavior. Wilson draws our attention to the key question: What made the prosocial behavior to survive? What prompted natural selection to select it? In evolutionary terms, there can be only one answer to that. No behavior, of the humans or of some other species, would survive unless it has helped the purpose of survival. Only those behaviors,

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which have assisted or facilitated in our survival, have survived selected by natural selection. Therefore, prosocial behavior must have helped the purpose of our survival in some way or other. The genes favoring the prosocial response have been naturally selected, because prosocial responses and thinking help a community to survive. Our genetic heritage teaches us that in a community an ethically inclined choice has a better chance at survival than the less ethical ones. To a community or a group, and even for a species, the prosocial behavior helps in the survival. It makes more sense to cooperate and to face a danger as a group, instead of as an isolated individual. The society where every member helps another is strongly prepared in a concerted manner to survive any challenge that comes. These prosocial tendencies, selected to survive by evolution, are further nurtured and rewarded by society. For, society too realizes the value of prosocial responses. The member who only takes benefit from the society, but never returns the favor, is viewed as a member who cannot be counted upon, when the society would need the support. 2. Evolution has made us predisposed towards certain prosocial behavioral and emotional responses: Ant behavior is genetically programmed by evolution as instincts in the ants. The ants instinctively respond in a certain way to a situation. The human behavior, however, is not programmed in the same way. Human behavior is ruled by what Wilson calls the epigenetic rules. That is, the human behavior is governed by genetically based neural systems, which only predispose the human brain to favor certain kind of actions and responses towards certain situations. By natural selection, certain parts of our brain are predisposed to function in a certain sort of way; so that the physiological and psychological mechanisms for certain kind of behavioral and emotional responses are activated. The psychological mechanisms include the emotions, such as love, guilt, shame, and trust, which play a major role in our social interactions. This is also true about the prosocial behavior, which we call ethically proper, such as altruism, cooperation. The genes favoring the prosocial response have been naturally selected to survive in the next generation and to pre-dominate, and the emotions and behaviors linked to those genes also have survived over the time. When this is repeated in generations after generations, the emotions got reinforced. He explains the point with the example of cooperative behavior as follows: It is to be expected that in the course of evolutionary history, genes predisposing people toward cooperative behavior would have come to predominate in the human population as a whole. Such a process repeated through thousands of generations inevitably gave birth to the moral sentiments.20

Thus, together, society and biology shape the behavioral strategies that are considered as ethical. This is Wilson’s view on the evolutionary explanation of altruism and other noble behavioral traits in animals and insects.

20

E.O. Wilson. 1998. Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. New York: Knopf: 253.

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Quick Question 4.7 Wilson’s sociobiological theory tries to explain how and why our prosocial behavior has survived. Do you suppose the theory can adequately explain why and how the anti-social behavior among us has survived? If prosocial behavior supposedly helps in the survival of a species, then anti-social behavior must endanger the survival of the species. In that case, how can anti-social behavior be allowed to survive in evolution guided by natural selection?  However, Wilson challenged Hamilton’s kin selection thesis and the concept of inclusive fitness concept, which have been discussed above. Wilson and his research team claimed that the observational data do not support Hamilton’s explanation of altruistic behavior on the basis of genetic relatedness or kin selection. They claimed that the data from other insect species, such as the aphids, termites, and snapping shrimp, show that their social altruistic behavior, such as care of offspring of others, which is a cooperative division of labor, occurs even among individuals who are not genetically close related. Wilson’s group claimed that they have observed altruistic behavior even towards unrelated individuals among those species. The alternative explanation of Wilson and his team proposed is that the important unit on which natural selection works is not the individual, but the colony or the group. The colony or a group may include members who are not genetically related and therefore do not qualify as kins. They further add that acts of mutual cooperation, e.g. if an insect builds the nest, the other one looks after the egg, or the specialization of tasks, e.g. the limitation of egg laying only to the queen, can all be explained as accumulated mutations which survived the natural selection. Even without close genetic relatedness, such mutations can be explained. Conclusion So, the upshot is that Wilson in his theory claims that evolution has made us predisposed towards certain prosocial, ethically proper, choices biologically. The prosocial traits have survived because they help in the genetic survival of the group or the colony and are governed by epigenetic rules. The traits in humans and in other animals and insects, which we consider as noble and as ethically desirable behavioral traits, such as altruism, charity, and cooperation, all are biologically based attributes. The origin of ethics is thus biological.

4.5.5 Reciprocal Altruism of Robert Trivers and the ‘Selfish Gene’ of Richard Dawkins Though Wilson’s sociobiology is more famous, there are many other noteworthy efforts by evolutionary biologists and sociobiologists to provide an account of ethics in terms of evolution. You will find below a few of them. Knowing about them will

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help you to better understand the trend of thought that the biologists, such as Wilson, advocated. George Williams and the theory of gene-level natural selection We must mention George Williams (1926–2010), a celebrated evolutionary theorist, who long before Wilson had proposed his theory of gene-level natural selection. As you may already know, a gene is the basic physical unit of heredity. It is made up of DNA, and in our body it carries the information that determines the characteristics, features, and traits that we inherit from the ancestors. A person receives two copies of every gene, one from each parent. Based on these, a person inherits the physical and behavioral traits from the ancestors. Now, George Williams made the astute observation that biological evolution is actually gene-centric. That is, he maintained that it is the genes which evolve; the entire organism does not evolve. Natural selection works at the level of genes, not at the level of an individual organism or at the level of the species. It is the genes which try to adapt and survive. As a part of his views of the genes, he also had claimed that the nature of the genes is competitive, as evolution favors the fittest and the race to be the fittest is riddled with competition. The genes must compete with each other for survival; it is a win-or-perish situation. He concluded that the true nature of evolution, therefore, is competition, not cooperation. It follows that as per Williams, at the genetic level, an organism cannot help being competitive. It is in the nature of the genes to be fiercely competitive; otherwise, the genes cannot survive. So, the ethical and prosocial behavior, as in cooperation with each other, or consideration for the others, is not exactly what the genes are about. In case you are wondering how this view of gene-level natural selection is pertinent for ethics, let me point out that it implies, as you shall see, that genuine, ethical goodness could be an impossibility. This claim, if it is true, challenges the possibility of a being to be genuinely altruistic and ethical. For, we are made of the genes, and the genes are by nature self-absorbed and competitive. These are characteristics which go against the other-oriented expectation of ethics. This observation of Williams strongly influenced the thoughts of successive generations of evolutionary biologists. Robert Trivers (1943-), who we shall discuss after this, is a remarkable name among them. Robert Trivers and the theory of reciprocal altruism Robert Trivers was a legendary, award-winner American biologist, anthropologist, and one of the most significant sociobiologists. He is considered a pioneer on the ideas about evolution of social behavior in animals. He is renowned for his social theory based on natural selection21 and the concept of reciprocal altruism.22

21

Trivers, Robert L. 2002. Natural Selection and Social Theory: Selected Papers of Robert Trivers. OUP: New York. 22 Trivers, Robert L. 1971. The evolution of reciprocal altruism. The Quarterly Review of Biology 46: 35–57.

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Genuine or true altruism stands for a genuine act of altruism, where one acts with purely other-oriented motivation and without regard for oneself. Trivers claims that to an evolutionist, such behavior and motivation is an utter absurdity. It cannot be possible. Echoing William’s observation about the nature of the genes, Trivers too asserts that by nature the genes are selfish, oriented completely and exclusively about its own survival. Given that, genuine altruism is simply impossible. Trivers agrees that we do find in nature instances of behavioral responses that appear to be ‘altruistic’, but in his view those cannot be the instances of genuine altruism. Hamilton has tried with his concept of kinship selection and inclusive fitness to explain such instances of altruistic behavior by degrees of genetic relatedness. However, like Wilson, Trivers also rejects Hamilton’s explanation in terms of kinship selection. He claims that Hamilton’s explanation is incomplete and deficient. For, he argues that Hamilton’s kinship concept cannot explain altruism between two unrelated individuals. However, as Wilson and his research group have observed, altruistic acts towards the unrelated, i.e. non-kins, such as the friends, are also observed. Therefore, Hamilton’s explanation is only partial. Instead, he proposed his own theory of reciprocal altruism, which he claimed can explain even ‘altruistic’ behavior between two unrelated individuals. In sum, he claims that altruism can be driven, not by Hamilton’s kinship, but by reciprocity. Reciprocity means mutual actions or the practice of returning an action with similar response. In the context of Trivers’s theory, however, reciprocity is to be understood as the practice of exchange of mutual benefit, a situation that is best expressed by the saying ‘You scratch my back and I scratch yours’. The underlying premise is that genetically a being is geared towards that behavior which would benefit itself. Therefore, altruism is possible only as a mutually beneficial altruism. Trivers used this idea of mutual benefit to explain altruistic behavior between two entities, who are not genetically related, i.e. who do not belong to the same species or genetic family. Hamilton’s assumption that altruistic behavior requires genetic relatedness is simply wrong. Box 4.21 Reciprocal altruism of Robert Trivers Reciprocal altruism is altruism that happens between two unrelated individuals when there will be return of the benefit, or at least there will be the promise of return benefit in the future. So, it is the promise of a favor in return, or reciprocity, which drives the altruism. According to Trivers, between any two entities, A and B, who are not kins in any sense of the term, altruism cannot be a random behavior. Natural selection would not allow such an evolutionary cost to sustain. A may help B, but it would not be a random act. Trivers claims that natural selection favors only such altruistic behavior, if and when it benefits the doer in the long run. The benefit must come in the form of a return for the altruism, as is expected in the case of reciprocity. So, A helps B with an expected return of altruism from B to A, and B too accepts the benefit with that understanding. The return need not be immediate, but is expected.

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In the short or long run, in return B is expected to give privileges that are beneficial to A. Trivers maintained that if there is a chance of return altruism from B and if the cost of altruism to A is well below the benefit to B, there will be altruistic acts. In other words, according to Trivers, altruistic behavior is possible only where there is a good chance of reciprocity.

A

B

The above is as true for kins as for non-kins. Chances of reciprocal altruism increase when there is interdependence or mutual assistance between the entities, even if the two entities are unrelated. Trivers refers to the following example of the cleaning symbiosis of the fish to illustrate this point. Example 1 The cleaning symbiosis in fish in the ocean: The cleaner fish, a kind of fish, feeds itself by providing a cleaning service to the other species of fish by removing from their body unwanted materials, such as the ectoparasites, infected tissue, and dead skin. More than forty-five species of fish are known to be such cleaners, and innumerable fish serve as the hosts. The most well-known kind of cleaner fish can be seen on coral reefs of Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean. The cleaner fish are small fish, and they maintain a place on the sea floor that could be called a cleaning station, where the service-seeking other fish meet and make specific movements to attract the attention of the cleaner fish. The cleaner fish cleans by eating the dead skin and tissue, or the ectoparasites, from the body of larger fish. It even cleans ectoparasites from the mouth of the larger fish (Pic. 4.1).

Pic. 4.1 One kind of cleaner fish

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This is an example of reciprocal benefit or mutuality. Both parties benefit from this. The cleaner fish gets a meal out of its work, and the other larger fish loses dead skin, dead or infected tissue, and ectoparasites. In return, the larger fish does not eat the cleaner fish, even though it easily can. Documented evidence shows that the cleaner fish can even go inside the mouth of a larger fish with sharp teeth to clean debris from mouth, and the larger fish does not eat the cleaner fish. The two kinds of fish, the cleaner and the service-seeking client fish, belong to two separate species. So, their mutual help cannot be explained by Hamilton’s concept of kinship selection. This is where Trivers’s concept of mutuality or reciprocal altruism shows as superior, as it would still apply. Trivers further observed that for reciprocity to work well, the mutually helpful entities would have to recognize each other in the future. Many animals apparently exhibit that capacity. They do not forget a benefactor. In his view, when the entities have a long life in which they encounter each other frequently, or are in a community where repeatedly one encounters the other, the chances of reciprocal altruism increase. However, for the cheaters, for the same reason, the chances decrease. Example 2 Among the birds, the red-winged blackbird males are known to protect the nests of their neighbors. The neighbor birds are not kins; but as neighbors, they live in close vicinity of each other. It is observed that the redwinged blackbird males reduce their defense for their neighbors’ nests, when the neighbor males reduce defense for their nests.  Human reciprocal altruism: Trivers treats the case of human reciprocal altruism, i.e. social behavior between two humans, such as in sharing food, helping the needy or the sick, however, as different. As said earlier, reciprocal altruism can happen between kins, as well as between two unrelated individuals. Trivers claims that his model can apply equally well even in the human case. He alerts us that, given the complexity in human psychology, each human is to be seen as possessing both altruistic tendencies and cheating tendencies. That is, the same person at times may return a favor fairly and not return a favor fairly. It is the social environment which more or less determines which tendency will be manifested. Since all humans know this, the behavioral strategies pertaining to altruism and cheater detection keep on changing in interpersonal exchanges. Trivers states that there are differences among the cheaters. The gross cheater accepts the benefit from the altruist, but totally fails to reciprocate, and the altruist has to bear the entire cost. Such cheating leads to prompt adverse reaction against the cheater. The non-altruistic responses would be responding by curtailing the future altruistic acts to the gross cheater. Not only that, if the cheater’s ungrateful habit becomes known, no one would ever extend any support. Trivers claimed that natural selection would not favor the gross cheater, the one who does not reciprocate at all. For, in the future, if the cheater is in risk, no one would come to rescue. The adverse effect on the cheater’s life, without any help from anyone, would far outweigh the cost of reciprocating to the others. In a community setting, a selfish, or a non-cooperating individual, who does not aid in the survival of the group, and may even endanger the group, has very little chance for long-term survival in genetic terms.

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However, there is also the subtle cheater, who is harder to deal with. The subtle cheater reciprocates, but always tries to give less than the benefit received. In these cases, the altruist benefits, but he or she always gets less than what would have been equitable. These are harder to detect and create tension in the relationship. As such the human reciprocal altruism is a sensitive, unstable, and adaptive system. In it, since there is always the chance of being cheated, adaptive strategies are used to avoid detection of cheater and also to identify a cheater. Trivers claims that to handle this complexity in reciprocal responses, natural selection has favored in us a complex psychological system, which, along with inferences, regulates both the altruistic and cheating tendencies in an individual and also to regulate the responses of the individual towards these tendencies in the others. For instance, between two unrelated humans, feelings of liking and friendship form the preliminary condition for altruistic behavior. Disliking is for keeping a person away from the ambit of any altruism. Trivers reminds us that even altruists are seen to restrict their altruism to other fellow altruists, i.e. to those who are known to reciprocate the benefit. As per Trivers, the cost–benefit ratio is an important element in determining the adaptive strategy in reciprocal altruism. Trivers claims that the emotion of gratitude has been naturally selected to regulate response to altruistic acts and is sensitive to the cost–benefit ratio. Similarly, the emotion of sympathy has been selected as the psychological prompt to make the first favor to someone in need. The greater the need of the recipient is, the greater would be the chances of the recipient to feel obligated to reciprocate. On the other hand, the righteous anger is the feeling to ward off the cheaters who would accept favors without returning. If A continues to help B and B keeps on taking it, without showing any sign of intention to repay, the righteous anger in A is a response in A by which A identifies B as a cheater. Guilt is feeling which prompts a cheater to behave better and more reciprocally in the future. So, a sense of justice or fairness serves as a natural consequence of selection for reciprocal altruism. A fairness would evolve as a way of regulating the altruistic tendencies and also as a way to judging the cheaters. One feels naturally wronged when a favor extended is not repaid. Think a little 4.4 Consider the statement: ‘Among Williams, Wilson and Trivers, Wilson’s theory is relatively better positioned to allow genuine altruistic behavior’. Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Justify your answer. Trivers maintained that because of this dynamic and adaptive strategy game in reciprocal altruism, in case of human reciprocal altruism between two unrelated individuals, who are repeatedly exposed to symmetrical reciprocal situations, the

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situation would be exactly analogous to what the game theorists call the prisoner’s dilemma.23 The prisoner’s dilemma illustrates that the adaptive strategy game that gets played between two unrelated people, each of whom may cheat the other. The prisoner’s dilemma shows that the best kind of relationship would be in which each partner reciprocates and cooperates in helping the other, but the help to the other comes with a benefit to oneself. The benefit may be direct or indirect. For the sake of everyone, the prisoner’s dilemma situation is discussed below.

4.5.5.1

Prisoner’s Dilemma

The prisoner’s dilemma is a standard scenario that is used in Game Theory as an example to illustrate the kind of adaptive behavioral strategies, fed by cost–benefit considerations, that may determine the responses in a situation involving two persons. It is a complex, dynamic, and adaptive game of decision or strategy. One version of the dilemma is as follows. You can see in it how the strategy fits into the concept of reciprocal altruism. Two men are arrested in connection with a crime.

They secretly agree that neither will confess to the crime. However, the police separates them. Once in the hands of the police, the two accused cannot communicate with each other. The police tells each: If neither of them admits the crime: Both would be kept in jail for 1 year. If both confess: Each person will get 2 years of jail. If one confesses and the other keeps quiet: Then the confessing accused will go free, but the silent one will get 3 years of jail. The cost/benefit picture comes across as follows (Fig. 4.1):

23 Luce, R.D. & H. Raiffa. 1957. Games and Decisions. Wiley: New York. Rapoport, A. & Chammah, A.M. 1965. Prisoners’ Dilemma: A Study of Conflict and Cooperation. University of Michigan Press: Ann Arbor.

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Fig. 4.1 Options and consequences in prisoner’s dilemma

The prisoners are in a dilemma: The police have given them an option to confess. There is a clear benefit tagged with the confession. However, the best benefit comes to the confessor if only one of them confesses. There is always a possibility that both may confess. Since they are separated by the police and cannot communicate with each other, neither knows if the other person has confessed. Self-interest maximization suggests that one should go for maximum gain for oneself. That is, though both of them have agreed not to confess, after being in the jail it appears to be more in the self-interest of each to confess before the other does, so that as per the conditions laid down by the police the confessor gets out of jail, but the other person gets 3 years in jail. But the paradox is that when each prisoner tries to pursue that purely self-interest driven strategy, neither may get maximum gain. For, when each may try to confess, assuming that he alone would confess while the other would keep the agreement, it may so happen that the other one also would think in the same way. Each one has the cheating tendency, so each one may try to break the promise made to each other. As a result, both may confess, and as a result both may get 2 years of jail. That is not a desirable outcome. So, each prisoner knows that if both of them act on pure self-interest, each would end up being worse-off than how each would be if they had cooperated and helped each other. Therefore, a little thinking shows that both get to gain when both cooperate with and help each other; that is, if both keep their original agreement to not to confess. As a result, each would benefit by getting to serve only one year in jail. Therefore, the best adaptive strategy for two self-interest maximizers is to choose the mutually beneficial option: Both should cooperate and keep quiet. Trivers’s theory of reciprocal altruism and the prisoner’s dilemma: In case of human social altruism between two parties, who frequently meet, Trivers says that the situation would be analogous to the prisoner’s dilemma. Cooperation and reciprocal altruism among the two parties would be more advantageous and a better behavioral strategy for each party in the long run, than the strategy in self-interest to continuously try to take advantage of the other partner for maximum gain for oneself. That is the kind of altruism that can be accommodated within the broad framework of evolutionary hypothesis. To sum up, Trivers does not think that genuine, good-natured, and sincere, altruism is possible among the different species. For, as Williams had said, at the level of the

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genes, only struggle for survival of the self exists. The only kind of altruism is possible and is what Trivers call reciprocal altruism. Social behavior is ruled by cost–benefit considerations and an expectation of reciprocity. This is true for two kins as well as two non-kins. In case of human altruism also, reciprocal altruism prevails. A complex game of adaptive, dynamic behavioral strategies is played out, which is akin to the scenario known as the prisoner’s dilemma. Self-interest, strategy, and social shrewdness are the concepts which prevail in this game. Richard Dawkins and The selfish Gene This line of thinking of gene-based self-interest maximization, as espoused by Williams and Trivers, was also carried forward by the renowned British evolutionary biologist and popular science writer Richard Dawkins (1941–). In his first and very popular book, The Selfish Gene (1976), just like Williams and Trivers, Dawkins claimed that evolution is gene-centric. The information that is coded in a gene is the primary unit for natural selection. Dawkins himself acknowledged that many of his ideas came from the seminal publications of Trivers.  Biological determinism at the genetic level: Dawkins added that as for the genes, the first and foremost goal is its own survival, a gene is biologically programmed to find ways for its own survival. Survival means perpetuation of its existence through transfer of copies of itself in the genetic pool of the next generation. So, the genes are biologically determined to ensure their own perpetuation. Dawkins stated that for this purpose, the genes use the body of a living organism as an impermanent vehicle towards their own goal: To ensure and to perpetuate their own survival. The behavior of the individual organism and even of the species are merely expressions of that purpose at the level of the genes. He used a rowboat analogy to illustrate this point.  The rowboat analogy: As you see in the picture, a rowboat is a long boat which is rowed by several rowers. In competitive rowboats racing, the skill of the rowers plays a crucial role. Dawkins states that just as the body of a rowboat is merely a temporary vehicle for the expression of the talent of the rowers, similarly the body of a living organism is just a vehicle or a sheath for the genes to express their pursuit for their own survival. The rowers are the actual drivers of the rowboat, just as the genes are the drivers of the body and its behavior. The body behaves and responds in the manner which most suits the survival strategy of the genes in the body (Pic. 4.2).

Pic. 4.2 Rowboat

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Box 4.22 Rowboat analogy of Dawkins A rowboat is just a vehicle. A rowboat does not run itself. How it is run merely exhibits the talent of its rowers. Dawkins used this rowboat scenario as an analogy to convey that the body is merely a temporary vehicle, and the actual drivers of which are the genes. The first and foremost goal of the genes is their own survival, by leaving copies in the next generation. With that single goal, they direct the body and determine how it will behave.

Quick Question 4.8 Does Dawkin’s biological determinism allow room for ethical or unethical behavior? Does it allow freedom of choice? Explain.  The Selfish Genes: Although many biologists before him wrote about the nature of the genes as focused on increasing only their own chances of survival, which is the only concern of a gene, Dawkins popularized the term selfish genes. The term selfish here is to be understood as self-preserving or self-perpetuating in the long run. The best way for the gene to survive is to be in unison with the other genes in the body of an individual. As Trivers had said, Dawkins also asserts that out of selfish motive of its own survival, each gene cooperates with the others. There is nothing noble about this cooperation; it is driven purely by a selfish motive. Cooperation is mutually beneficial for the survival of each unit. Dawkins claims that we need to accept that this is how altruism in nature works. The sterile ant worker lays down its life for the queen, not because of some noble, selfless trait in itself or because of its kinship with its colony cousins; but because it is directed to do so by its genes as a way to perpetuate the genes it shares with the queen. Its selfless service to the queen matches with the genetic goal of perpetuation of the genes. Similarly, by alarm call a bird risks its own life, not as a selfless action or as a service to its own group, but it is guided to do so by its genes so that its genes continue to survive. Altruistic behavior that is observed in the nature is actually behavior which is guided by the genes their own survival. Thus, all altruistic behavior in the final analysis is motivated by self-interest.

4.5.5.2

Implications for Ethical Behavior: Social Manipulators and “A Veneer Theory”

The discussion above from various evolutionary biologists, in particular from the more recent ones, such as Trivers and his reciprocal altruism, and from Dawkins and his self-centric selfish gene theory, creates the impression that as creatures made of genes, all organisms, including the humans, are biologically determined to be

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intrinsically selfish or self-interested. This implies that for us, being altruistic, or being generous, or even being ethically good in a selfless way, are all at most can be a façade. Actually, these are behavioral strategies for long-term return in social interactions. Consider Robert Trivers, for example. He, in his theory of reciprocal altruism, gives us a model which explains all altruistic behavior among the genetically unrelated beings as a mutual game of strategy for long-term, mutual advantage. The members in a group cooperate, as they realize that each member of a community or a group benefits more from reciprocal behavior and cooperation than from acting out of pure self-interest. In case of non-human animals or insects, there are instances where the cooperation and reciprocity take the form of a well-coordinated defense system against the predators, which organizes maximal advantages to all those within the group. However, Trivers casts a pall of shrewdness over this. The members of the group are made out to be basically social manipulators. On his view, the members are viewed as socially trained self-interest maximizers, and the responses are seen as calculated strategies. A member of a community is willing to be altruistic to the other members as long as it helps the member in the long run, with the assumption that the recipient of the favor would return the favor when the situation reverses. The favor-givers or the altruists prefer the most generous reciprocators to shower their kindness, because the chances are that the favor would be returned with greater benefit. A reputation of being fair and generous, thus, attracts many members. In a social interaction, behavioral strategies that contribute to the quality of community life and is of collective advantage of the community are socially rewarded and reinforced, e.g. by conferring special privileges or status. On the other hand, individuals who do not reciprocate, that is, are the cheaters or the free riders,24 are remembered in the community, and are treated with less or no altruism in the future, which create an evolutionary disadvantage for them by being isolated from the community support. Such members are rebuked or censored by other members, e.g. by isolating or by expelling the member.  All these claims, backed up by scientific outlook and commitment to evolutionary biology, have a potent and strong impact on how ethics and its origin are to be understood. As explained above, the theories imply that ethical considerations, ethical precepts, and the behavioral recommendations that ethics makes all get reduced to social strategy driven at the core by self-interest and calculations of mutual benefit. Struggle for survival at the genetic level determines how an organism would behave and what choices would be made. As survival of oneself driven by natural selection remains the actual force, all the other-oriented behavior, such as kindness, cooperation, community interest, and altruism, that we find in nature among different species become a seeming façade. Natural selection can push one to appear selfless in transactions between two entities, but these evolutionary biologists tell us that genuine ethical goodness is a biological impossibility. Altruism at most can be 24

Free riders is a term that is used in Economics to refer to the individual or a group who benefits from something without contributing their fair share.

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reciprocal altruism. The sense of fairness, ethical emotions, and ethics, all are to be understood in the same way. As Richard Dawkins suggested, our noblest motives are fueled by the Darwinian struggle of our genes, which are biologically programmed to perpetuate themselves. Therefore, from the biology of the genes, our noblest actions are ultimately explicable in terms of the selfish genes. Thus, the overall conclusions that appear to flow from these views may be summarized as follows: (a) Ethical behavior of the humans, just like any other behavior in any other species, has a biological basis. It has originated as a result of evolution and natural selection. (b) Our genes are biologically determined to be self-serving. The genes determine our behavior and choices. The ethical behavior of a person towards the others, such as altruistic behavior, can at most be only on the surface, with the underlying motive to ensure maximum benefit to oneself. Any behavior that is noble or ethical or good by any species, human or non-human, has to just a ‘veneer’ or a façade over an otherwise selfish nature. From the above, in particular from the conclusion (b), a cynical view of the goodness in humans and non-humans emerges. This has been called the Veneer theory by Frans de Waal, another recent, renowned biologist, who we shall discuss next. The veneer theory is so named because it proposes goodness in any species as just a conniving veneer or façade, while underneath the real nature is selfish and mean. Box 4.23 Veneer theory The veneer theory represents the view that suggests that ethical goodness, altruism in any species, including the humans, is just a thin veneer or a cover, while underneath the real nature is selfish and mean. At this juncture, it needs to be mentioned that even before Trivers, Dawkins and other biologists in the west there have been thinkers who have subscribed to a similar, cynical line of thought about human nature. For example, Thomas Huxley (1825– 1895), an English biologist and anthropologist, and an ardent follower of Charles Darwin, wrote25 that nature, when left to itself without any civilized control, is “red with tooth and claw”. The message is that nature and all natural beings including the humans, when untamed by any civilization process, are wild, nasty, and violently aggressive. Yet, Huxley saw the possibility of ethics. He primarily saw ethics as a tool of society to tame that violent and aggressive side in us. He believed that with significant and continuous efforts, the humans have managed to overcome this natural condition and have come up with the ethical dictates or morality, which is part of the taming process of actual human nature. 25

Huxley, Thomas. 1894. Evolution and Ethics: And Other Essays. McMillan: The University of Michigan Press.

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Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), the Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis as a tool for treatment of psychological disorders, also depicted the human nature as fierce and violent as a wild animal and proposed that the human mind is continuously engaged in a struggle to overcome their basic animal instincts. So, the seeds of this sort of conception of human nature and ethics as an overlay effort to control that wild and violent nature were already there. The recent evolutionary biologists have brought into this their knowledge of genetics and other branches of biology, to augment the view with scientific evidence. However, not all evolutionary biologists subscribe to this sort of cynical and pessimist view about human nature and the role of ethics. Next, we shall look at the views of one such biologist, Frans de Waal.

4.5.6 Frans de Waal and the ‘Good-Natured’ Us Frans de Waal (1948–) is a Dutch-origin American biologist and primatologist, who at the time of writing this book is the C.H. Candler Professor of Psychology, in Emory University, USA. He is considered as one of the world’s leading authorities on the behavior and social intelligence of the primates, e.g. chimpanzees, Bonobos, and apes. His research on the behavior of the primates has not deterred him to draw parallels with the behavior of the humans. In his first book Chimpanzee Politics (1982), he compared the scheming behavior of the Chimpanzees with the cunning ploys of the human politicians. Since then, through his research publications on empathy, altruism, cooperation, and social cognition in primates, de Waal has continued to draw interesting parallels between primate and human behavior. For us, his most important conclusions would be those about ethics and culture. He is one of the most influential thinkers on the biological origin of ethics today. While discussing biological origin of ethics, it would be a gross oversight to not discuss de Waal’s view. As said before, the name “veneer theory” is coined by de Waal. In his own words: I call this “Veneer Theory,” since it assumes that human morality and kindness is just a thin veneer over an otherwise nasty human nature. This is a position that goes back to Thomas Henry Huxley, a contemporary of Darwin, and has been repeated over and over…26

We need to note at least two important points about Frans de Waal’s position: 1. Frans de Waal stands apart from all the other biologists discussed above. For, he rejects the veneer theory. He also rejects what this cynical view claims, namely that all beings are genetically programmed at the core to selfish and self-serving and to respond to the world only in terms of what serves self-interest. De Waal argues that the veneer theory does not stand the scrutiny of the mounting evidence that come from his own research on the primates and also from the research of the others. He insists that the evidence indicates that the humans have come from a 26

De Waal, F. 2006. Primates and Philosophers: How morality evolved. Eds. Stephen Macedo and Joshia Ober. Princeton, USA: Princeton University Press, 2006.

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long line of animals, who historically have traits, which, if found in the humans, would be considered as noble and ethical; such as ability to care, to cooperate, and the noble emotions, such as compassion, that are necessary for being ethical. In his view, animals, particularly the more evolved animals, are perfectly capable of being genuinely, ethically good natured. 2. At the same time, de Waal is a biologist, who maintains that ethics has a biological origin. In his view, biologically ethics is an outcome of evolution. The humans as a species have inherited the behavioral traits that are considered ethical from their biological ancestors. He says that Darwin also would have supported this continuity of behavior from the biological animal ancestors to the humans. For, as we have already discussed (see Sect. 4.4.1), Darwin too was of the opinion that a sense of ethics can arise in any organism provided in the course of evolution, and it has reached a certain level of cognitive maturity and sociality. Frans de Waal’s research Primates are the subject of his research. In terms of evolutionary link, they are closer to the humans. He claims that a body of long-standing research shows that traits, that we would consider as ethical in humans, such as altruism, empathy, reciprocity, care, compassion, and cooperation, are also very much present in the primates.27 De Waal has significant research contribution in research on empathy. An overview of that research is mentioned below. Empathy Empathy, for instance, is the ability to understand and experience the feelings of others as if one’s own. Empathy is considered as an important requirement for ethics and ethical behavior towards the others. For, to be able to genuinely care for the others, a certain level of empathy is required. It enables to properly understand the feelings of the others and also to offer appropriate helpful behavior to the others. Altruism, for example, requires empathy. The altruistic behavior is prompted because the need of the other is felt as if it is one’s own.  Empathy in animals: De Waal maintains that empathy as a trait can be found as an automatic response, not just among the humans, but also in animals, such as dogs and apes. It is an automatic response in the sense it is immediate and too quick to be under voluntary control. Dog lovers would be able vouch for the fact that dogs have this ability to sense the emotions and feelings. Empathy is enabled by the brain of the animals. Seeing someone else in pain or in distress activates certain areas in brain as if the observer is in pain. Research shows that from quite early in their infancy the human infant starts to respond to distress behavior of the others with a corresponding cry of their own; after the first year, they start showing the helping behavior.28 27

De Waal, Frans. 1996. GOOD NATURED: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. 28 For example, Sagi, A. & Hoffman, M. L. (1976) Empathic distress in the newb orn.Developmental Psychology 12:175–176.

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 Experimental evidence of empathy in animals: De Waal and his research team bring forth many examples from other species of animals to show that they too get distressed by the observing or sensing the distress of another, and they act to end the distress of the others, sometimes even by incurring a risk to themselves. An experiment with the rats shows that an albino rat, when it saw another rat under distress being suspended in the air by a harness, pushed a switch to lower the rat to the ground and stayed close to the rat.29 It is a case of a non-human animal realizing the distress of another animal and trying to do something to end the situation of distress for the other. Similarly, a famous experiment with the Rhesus monkeys shows that the monkeys were trained to pull two different chains, which delivered different amounts of food. Then, the experiment was modified so that the pulling of the chain with the larger reward by one monkey would deliver an electric shock to another monkey in the plain sight of the chain-puller. After this, 2/3 of the monkeys preferred to pull the non-shock chain, even though pulling it delivered lesser amount of food. Of the remaining 1/3, after observing another monkey suffering from the shock, one monkey went without food for 5 days, and another one for 12 days. Clearly, they preferred to starve themselves rather than hurting any other monkey.30 These are the behaviors, which if found in humans would qualify as noble and ethically good. What follows De Waal and his team claim that these empirical, experimental evidences suggest that other animals, just like the humans, have the ability to empathize. They claim that these also suggest that the emergence of empathy is a phylogenetically continuous phenomenon biologically, as Darwin had opined. In biology, the term phylogenetics refers to the study of evolutionary history of a group of organisms and not to a single organism. Evolution is a process by which populations change over time and branch out into separate subspecies. In this context, de Waal’s claim is to be understood as the claim that empathy has evolved in certain animals as a species; and then it has continued as a trait from the non-human animals to the humans as a species. De Waal opines that empathy has continued as a trait, because it helped the survival of the species. For example, caring for the offspring is important for the future survival of a species, and such caring significantly depends on the ability of empathy. How can the parents care for the offspring, if they cannot feel the need of a newborn? Similarly, extending a helping hand to another member in danger requires empathy.

29

As cited in S.D. Preston & F.de Waal. Empathy: Its ultimate and proximate bases. Behavioral and Brain Science, 2002 (25): 1. 30 Masserman, J. H., Wechkin, S. & Terris, W. (1964) “Altruistic” behavior in rhesus monkeys. American Journal of Psychiatry 121:584–85. As As cited in S.D. Preston & F.de Waal. Empathy: Its ultimate and proximate bases. Behavioral and Brain Science, 2002 (25): 1.

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How empathy has evolved: The Russian doll model In his view, empathy has evolved layer by layer in an animal, a structure that he has named The Russian doll model. A Russian doll figure, as you may know, contains many dolls in smaller and smaller sizes within itself. In India, we have similar dolls (Pic. 4.3).

Pic. 4.3 The Russian doll

The “Russian doll model”31 is as follows: Innermost Layer: At the core is the perception–action mechanism: Some behavior in the other is perceived, and the perception induces in the observer a mirroring effect. The observer tries to copy the same behavior. The basic expressions of this mechanism are: (a) Motor mimicry: Motor actions of one are copied. For example, yawning after watching someone else yawn. (b) Emotional contagion: Emotional state of one induces a similar state in others, as if like an infection, the emotion spreads. Such emotional contagion may cause personal distress. For example, feeling fear by observing expressions of fear in another. This is what happens when we watch a horror movie. The perception– action mechanism has evolved because the nervous system has evolved to map other individual’s states onto one’s own representations for experiencing those states Next, Second Layer: Empathic concern and consolation: Cognitive empathy. Cognitive empathy is the mechanism by which an individual imagines how another feels. This can happen when the other one is present and can be directly observed. Seeing contortion in the face of another, we can imagine the pain the other person feels. Or, it can happen even when the other one is not present, or their feelings cannot be directly observed; e.g. while reading a book we may imagine the feelings that the characters in the book are experiencing. Consolation arises out of empathic concern and expresses itself in behavior to comfort a distressed party. 31

De Waal & SD Preston. Mammalian empathy: Behavioural manifestations and Neural basis. Nat Rev Neurosci 2017(18): 498–507.

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Finally, Third and Outermost Layer: Perspective-taking and targeted helping: This is the ability to understand the specific situation and need of the other. The other is understood as different from the self , yet there is the full realization of what the other needs and must be experiencing. This requires the capability to draw a self-other distinction and yet to adopt another’s perspective (sociopaths32 cannot do this). This perspective-taking on behalf of the other is followed by helpful behavior and care towards the targeted other. This is how de Waal explained the workings of empathy in a being. Altruism On the subject of altruism, Frans de Waal holds a completely different opinion from the veneer theorists, such as Trivers, Wilson. He maintains that altruism in beings is not a ploy. It is not a superficial move, a calculated behavioral strategy. In his view, it is a genuine trait in the mammals that is typical of the mammals. It is a mammalian trait. Therefore, it also exists in the humans as an innate and a genuine trait. In mammals, it works more as an impulse, or as an urge. He writes: Mammals have what I call an ‘altruistic impulse’ in that they respond to signs of distress in others and feel an urge to improve their situation. …To recognize the need of others, and react appropriately, is really not the same as a preprogrammed tendency to sacrifice oneself for the genetic good.33

So, as a species, when mammals see others in distress, they immediately recognize the need and feel an urge to assist the other in need as an impulse. The immediacy of the urge defies any description of it as a calculated, pre-meditated move. Being naturally empathic, mammals commonly exhibit altruistic behavior towards the others. The same is true about the humans.  Evidence of altruism among mammals: De Waal cites ethological34 studies which exhibit that altruistic behavior is also present in other mammals towards their group members. For example, whales and dolphins have been observed to refuse to leave a wounded member behind. Apes have been observed to take care of the disabled members of their group and show comforting behavior for the one in distress or pain. Chimpanzees and capuchin monkeys share food to group members other than the offspring. In a famous experiment with the rats, researchers found that rats, when given the choice between two containers—one holding chocolate and one holding a trapped rat

32

A sociopath is a person who has anti-social personality disorder (ASPD). The person cannot understand other people’s feelings. He or she exhibits consistent disregard for other people’s feelings and for social norms and boundaries. He or she does not feel guilt or remorse for harming or mistreating the others. 33 De Waal, F. 2013. The Bonobo and the Atheist: In search of Humanism among the Primates. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 34 Ethology is a field of study of animal behavior in natural conditions. It also understands behavior as an adaptive trait which is formed by evolution.

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who appears to be suffering, help to free the trapped rat, even when tasty chocolate chips were in sight.35 A sense of fairness: justice and a sense of ethics in non-human animals De Waal cites the support from animal research to claim that a sense of fairness or justice is also present in non-human animals. We may mention here a famous experiment with the capuchin monkeys that de Waal and Brosnan conducted.36 In it, they claim that recorded behavior of the monkeys shows “inequity aversion” exists in animals too. The capuchins, like the humans, would reject unequal pay-offs as a sign of aversion towards inequity.  Inequity means injustice or unfairness. The expression inequity aversion stands for intolerance towards injustice or unfairness. Aversion or resentment towards injustice is considered as a feeling of righteousness, generally linked with being ethically right. The “Inequity aversion” experiment by Sarah Brosnan and Frans de Waal (2003) Two monkeys are put in two separate cages. Each can see the other. Each is given the task to hand over a rock to the experimenter and get food as reward. As long as both the monkeys get equal rewards, e.g. cucumber pieces, both are happy to do the task as many times as the experimenter wishes. But if one gets a grape, considered as a ‘better’ reward, while the other gets a cucumber for the same task, there is protest from the one who got the cucumber piece. The one who keeps getting the cucumber turn after turn, while the other monkey keeps getting the grapes is seen to angrily throw the cucumber piece back at the experimenter, while thumping on the cage and shaking the cage to register the protest. The implicit argument here is that if seen in the monkeys, a sense of justice and an aversion towards inequity naturally exists as a continuous trait in the humans. Therefore, a sense of ethics in humans, even when explained as a biologically evolved trait, can be genuine. Conclusion In sum, de Waal’s position is that ethological studies and experimental evidences show that ethical behavior or morality among the humans is an inherited trait from the biological ancestors. The evolutionary origin is evident from the prosocial behavior in other animals, in particular among the mammals. Judging from the experimental and observational evidence from the primates and other animals, the evolved mechanism of empathy is found in mammals as an automatic response. Linked to this, the altruistic, prosocial, and ethical behavior, such as kindness, compassion, and cooperation, can be found among the biological ancestors of the humans. Hence, human morality is neither a “veneer’, nor imposed as a façade. It is a genuine trait among the humans. The humans, just like their biological ancestors, are not inherently nasty 35

Ben-Ami Bartal, I., Shan, H., Molasky, N. M., Murray, T. M., Williams, J. Z., Decety, J., & Mason, P. (2016). Anxiolytic Treatment Impairs Helping Behavior in Rats. Frontiers in psychology, 7, 850. 36 Brosnan, S, F, and F.B.M de Waal. Monkeys reject unequal pay. Nature, 2003 (425): 297–299.

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creatures, and their ethical behavior, and the qualities of altruism, cooperation are not deceptive façade maintained only in self-interest.

4.5.7 Objections Ägainst Biological Origin of Ethics As you have seen, the mainstay of biological origin of ethics is scientific evidence from various experiments and prolonged and repeated observations from evolutionary biology, ethological studies, and other allied disciplines, such as animal studies and entomology. It, however, has also drawn sharp criticisms from different interest groups. We shall look into some of these criticisms for a better assessment of the position. 1. Objection based on Hume’s is-ought problem: Biological origin of ethics and evolutionary ethics as its offshoot, both appeal to observations, facts, and research evidence to come to the conclusion about the origin of ethics and the nature of its judgments. In sum, they start from how organisms behave and what a species does. Critics argue that from that if they derive a conclusion about normativity in the ethical judgment and recommendations, then it is a classic mistake of what Hume has called the is-ought problem. The is-ought problem points out the fallacy in thinking that normative ethics (the ought statements) can be derived from empirical facts (the is statements). The claim that the emergence of a moral sense or the normativity in an ethical obligation is from a bunch of purely empirical facts about how a species is trying to survive in a social set-up and is a subtle shift from the is to the ought. 2. Objection based on Moore’s naturalistic fallacy: Another objection, linked to the previous criticism, is that of naturalistic fallacy. G.E. Moore (1873–1958), a British philosopher, opined that the value of The Good is indefinable; it cannot be analyzed in terms of any other property. It certainly is not definable in terms of some naturalistic, empirically verifiable property, such as what is desirable or what is pleasant. The fallacy or the mistake in reasoning lies in thinking that the indefinable Good can be defined in naturalistic terms. To think that if something is natural, then it must be good, is to commit a naturalistic fallacy. For example, someone may claim that it is natural to seek what is pleasant, and from that it is concluded that therefore what is pleasant is what is ‘good’. This is an example of what Moore calls the naturalistic fallacy. Now, in case of the theories of biological origin, critics argue that a similar naturalistic fallacy is being committed. For, the evolutionary biologists refer to natural properties of the genes, bring in empirically observed, natural behavior of different species as evidence, and then try to define ethical goodness in us in terms of those natural properties. Thus, some critics think that the position suffers from the naturalistic fallacy. 3. Objection based on the threshold concept: The thesis of biological origin of ethics and specific theories such as sociobiology are based primarily on the evidence

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from ‘social’ but non-human animals, who are considered the biological ancestors of the humans and also from the behavior of the ‘social’ insects. From that, parallels are drawn about humans, and claims are made about human behavior. Critics have questioned the validity of any inference about the humans from premises about non-human animals and insects. That is, they question the assumption of continuity of behavior between the non-humans and the humans. For, they argue, even if we grant that in the evolutionary line, humans have biological ancestors, the fact is that the humans as a species are far more complex and more evolved organisms than the animals and insects with whom the comparison is drawn. The theories assume parallels between the behaviors of different species, which at most may be analogies. The critics claim that analogies do not amount to factual descriptions. Others have argued that the theory of biological origin of ethics assumes a continuous, developmental increment from the insects and the primates to the humans following the evolutionary steps. Accordingly, the abilities of the species are also assumed to be on a path of continuous increment. However, that assumption may be highly questionable. It is true that certain information processing abilities may be adaptive and may follow a continuous evolutionary path, as claimed by the evolutionary biologists. As for example, consider the ability to change the direction of movement. Even a paramecium has that ability; it can change the direction of its course, if it finds suddenly unsuitable acidity or salinity in the water in which it swims. Similarly, a human too can change the direction of course, when a threat or an inclement condition is sensed in the surrounding. However, not all abilities allow such simple incremental path. Ethical behavior, for example, is not merely information processing ability. As a complex ability, it depends and appears in a species because of certain necessary and sufficient conditions that exist only when certain threshold of capabilities is crossed as the species cross an evolutionary threshold. In other words, from the evidence gathered from the animal and the insect world, conclusion about origin of ethical behavior in the humans does not logically follow. 4. Argument from exaptation: Some have argued that ethical behavior has evolved, not as an adaptation, but as an exaptation37 in the humans. There is a difference between adaptation and exaptation, in view of their role in evolution. Exaptation is the process of acquiring new functions which were not originally adapted to or not selected. Adaptation refers to a feature in a species which has been produced by natural selection for its present function. For instance, the feature of echolocation is a case of adaptation. Echolocation is a technique that bats use to identify the location of an object by using reflected sound. This helps the bats to move around in pitch darkness. That ability in the bats has been produced by natural selection for its present function, namely to navigate in the darkness. The bats have adapted to their usual, dark habitat. Exaptation, on the other hand, refers 37

The word exaptation was proposed by Stephen Jay Gould and Elizabeth Vrba in 1982. The term has since then been widely accepted.

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to a feature that functions in a way that was not produced by natural selection for its present use. For example, feathers in birds now are considered as crucial for birds’ flight. However, originally the feathers, when they emerged in the body of the flightless, reptilian ancestors of present-day birds, evolved to serve for temperature regulation of the body. Now, critics argue that the humans have a moral sense or ethics, because their biological make-up allows the presence of certain conditions: (a) the ability to anticipate the consequence of their own actions, (b) the ability to make value judgments, and (c) the ability to choose between alternative courses of action.38 These three abilities, even if they arguably evolved for another reason, at present serve to support ethical behavior as a new function. The point is that ethics in humans need not be thought of as a continuous trait that has evolved because of adaptation. 5. Argument from the value-neutral nature of natural selection: It has been objected that the explanation of every human choice, particularly the ethical choices that a human makes conscientiously, as a result of natural selection process alone, is too simplistic and inadequate. For, the critics say that the natural selection process of evolutionary hypothesis is an ethically neutral process in itself. It in itself does not and cannot discern between good and bad. Natural selection is simply a natural process that increases the survival and frequency of some genes while eliminating others. It does not choose on the basis of ethical worth, or good and bad. This is further established by the fact that evolution has naturally selected horrible diseases such as the Ebola virus also, just as it has selected bees and butterflies. The point is that in order to consider some naturally selected, evolved traits as ethical and others as unethical, it is essential to introduce human values and preferences, which may be biologically rooted but not entirely accountable by a valueneutral biological evolution. The quality of a human ethical choice and the discernment shown in that choice cannot be satisfactorily captured by a neutral process such as natural selection. 6. Argument against sociobiology: Some objections have been raised specifically against the sociobiological explanation of origin of ethics. As mentioned earlier, according to many critics, the extension of standard sociobiological models to the human behavior is highly unsatisfactory. It is claimed that they are inadequate to account for human behavior, because they ignore the contributions of the mind and culture in human behavior. In their view, sociobiology as a theory has been less successful in its application to human behavior than in its application to non-human systems, e.g. ants. 7. Argument from compatibility of genetic determinism with ethical choice: Many evolutionary biologists, such as Dawkins, speak of a genetic determinism. That is, they claim that at the level of the genes, there is biological determinism. The genes are biologically programmed to only seek their own survival; accordingly they 38

Ayala, F. J. The biological roots of morality. Biology and Philosophy 1987 (2): 235–252.

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adapt and determine the behavior of the body that they occupy. Critics object that this reliance on genetic determinism of behavior, especially of human behavior, is not compatible with the freedom of choice, which is a central requirement for ethics. For, genetic determinism, if true, implies that as an individual, we have little control over our behavior. This makes self-improvement through ethically informed choices an impossible goal and renders choices by the individual as delusions.

4.5.8 Conclusion on Biological Origin of Ethics In Sect. 4.4., we were introduced to another group of theories, which speak of natural selection as the origin of ethical behavior, namely the biological origin of ethics. We saw that this position, which stems from scientific research on different species with Darwin’s evolutionary hypothesis as the guiding paradigm, proposes that the root of all behavior, including human ethical behavior, is biological evolution. On this view, the origin of ethics is in the biological make-up of the species, namely in the genes. This does not presume that ethical behavior is an exclusive human trait. However, we saw that the there is a divide among the biologists on the compatibility of genuine ethical traits and the nature of genes. We saw that one group maintains that our genes are programmed to be ‘selfish’ to pursue their own survival; therefore, altruism and other expressions of ethical behavior can at most be a superficial show, or a façade, a calculated behavior to gain strategic advantages in a group. This makes ethics a biologically originated phenomenon which is merely a façade that creatures maintain in self-interest. In contrast, we also found the argument that ethological and experimental research evidence shows that mammals in general, being cognitively more evolved and competent, naturally have a tendency to be empathic, and that there is genuine altruism among the animal societies of the biological ancestors of the humans. The humans come from species who show enough experimental evidence of being truly kind, cooperative, compassionate, and being good. Therefore, humans, who have biologically inherited these ‘good-natured’ traits, have also the capability to be genuinely good natured and ethical. As shown above, the account is not exactly free of criticism. However, that is to be expected. The accounts of origin of ethics are speculative hypotheses, which require continuous substantiation. Currently, the biological origin of ethics is a strong contender as interesting research evidences are being reported. Study questions on biological origin of ethics 1. What is Darwin’s theory of evolution? Why is it considered as a competitor to creationism? 2. Explain what biological origin of ethics is. How is it linked to Darwin’s theory of evolution?

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3. What is Darwin’s view on the origin of ethics? Compare and contrast that view with the divine origin theory of ethics. 4. In terms of evolutionary biology, how may we understand altruism? Explain why altruistic behavior is an enigma for the Darwinian theory of evolution. 5. What is Hamilton’s rule? What is the link between this rule and the biological research on altruism? Does Hamilton’s concept of kin selection support reproductive success or genetic success? 6. Explain what Wilson’s main claims are in his sociobiology. 7. What does Wilson mean when he claims that evolution has made us predisposed towards prosocial responses? How is prosocial behavior linked to ethics, and why pre-dispositions towards prosocial behavior were selected by natural selection process? 8. Bring out the differences between the answers that Hamilton’s theory and Wilson’s sociobiology provide to the question why and how altruistic behavior may evolve in a species. 9. What is the prisoner’s dilemma and what does it show? How is it linked to Trivers’s view on human reciprocal altruism? 10. What does the rowboat analogy of Richard Dawkins imply for ethical behavior? What view of ethics emerges from this? 11. Write a short note on the veneer theory and what it signifies for ethics. 12. What are Frans de Waal’s arguments against the veneer theory of ethics? 13. What is the argument from exaptation against biological origin of ethics? What is the argument from value-neutral nature of natural selection? What are the differences between the two arguments? 14. What is/are the basic point(s) in is-ought problem and Moore’s naturalistic fallacy? How do these points apply in case of biological origin of ethics? 15. According to you, which among the objections to biological origin of ethics seem the strongest? Explain your answer.

4.6 Social Origin of Ethics This would be the last group of theories that we shall learn in this chapter on the origin of ethics. As the name suggests, the main contention of this other position on origin of ethics is that ethics and social order have originated from society itself, due to necessities that are social in nature. In other words, the origin of ethics is in the human society. Its origin is social, and its sanctions and functions are also social by nature.

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Box 4.24 Position of social origin of ethics Ethics and social order have originated from the society due to necessities that are social in nature.

The key difference of this position with the previous positions should be evident at this point. By positing its origin as social, the position clearly distances itself from the divine origin of ethics theories. For, its main contention is that the origin of ethics is human, not divine and not supernatural. If a human society creates the ethical rules, ethics has to be a creation of the imperfect, finite but social humans; the approval and disapproval of ethics would have to be all projections of approvals and disapprovals of a human society. Just like the theory of biological origin of ethics, the theory of social origin of ethics is thus also a challenge to the divine origin of ethics. However, unlike the biological origin of ethics, it does not appeal to biological evolution as the source of ethics; it also does not consider ethics as a human trait which is inherited from the biological ancestors of the humans. If you are wondering how an intricate value system such as ethics can be created by a society, I shall have to draw your attention to the following fact: Many social institutions and other systems are the products of collective efforts of some human society or the other. Consider for example:  Languages that we speak  The political system of government The monetary system Language, government, and monetary system are some of the examples of systems that have been created, developed, and upheld by a human society. In a sense, these are social ‘constructs’; i.e. they are constructed by the society for some social necessity or other. The systems are regularly used by the members of the society and are reinforced as a norm by repeated and continuous uses. Each of these represents values, beliefs, and practices shared by the members of the society. More and more people participate in them to belong to the society. As more and more people accept it, the norms become internalized. This position claims that the same is the case with ethics. According to this position, the origin of ethics too is social; it is developed by the society as a set of shared norms for some social necessity. By the endorsement of the members of the society, these norms get reinforced. People subscribe to these common norms to belong to the society, and as more and more people subscribe to the norms, the norms get more reinforced and internalized. This position holds that the concept of social good is behind the origin of ethics. The concept of social good is different from and larger than the concept of individual good or private good. An individual or private good is something that benefits only a particular individual or a community, e.g. the house that the individual lives in. On the other hand, a social good is something that benefits society as a whole, or at least large sections of the people in the society, e.g. clean drinking water, the road system.

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It is also known as the common good, because it serves many in the society and is also shared by many. In philosophy, and in social science subjects, such as Economics, the idea of social good or common good is important. It refers to not only to a collectively owned good, but also to the collective effort to maintain the social good. The concept is a rejection of the notion that a society is and should be composed of isolated individuals who are only keen about their narrow interests. Instead, the concept asserts that people in the society should indulge in pursuing common interests and shared benefits and be engaged in social relationships with the others. From the age of Greek city states to modern political systems, the idea of social good has been consistently present. It can be traced back in Plato’s writing. In his discourse on politics, Aristotle also prioritized social good above the individual good. His view was that individual people, who make up the society, should try to attain what is good for the society as a whole through their actions. The position of social origin of ethics upholds that a system such as ethics originated for the social good or common good. It was developed as a social instrument to bring social order and to ensure a peaceful existence in the society. Thus, the root of ethics is in a societal concern about what would be socially good or good for the society as a whole and not just good for an individual. So, the basic message is that each individual member in the society needs to control his or her own behavior and live by the ethical norms for the sake of the common social good. We may sum up the main contentions of this position as: • Ethics is social in origin; it is developed by the humans. • Ethics was developed by the members of the society as a social instrument to bring social order and to ensure peaceful existence in the society. • Ethics was developed for the common good or social good. Now, we shall discuss the more modern views on the position social origin of ethics.

4.6.1 Contractarianism Contractarianism is a type of ethical and political theory which endorses a modern view on social origin of ethics and social order. It proposes that a person’s ethical obligations, as well as political duties to a political authority, such as a government, come from a contract, or an agreement, alternatively also called a compact, among the people in the society. That is, the people in a society come to a common agreement or a contract to follow certain codes and norms.

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Box 4.25 Contractarianism Contractarianism is a kind of ethical and political theory which employs the concept of social contract as a pivotal concept to account for the origin of law, social order, government, and ethics. The concept of a social contract is used to explain the genesis of social order, law and ethics, and government. Different thinkers have employed the concept of social contract. Since the concept of a social contract is common among them, the theories as a group are called the contractarian theories, and the view that they espouse is called contractarianism. Key elements in contractarianism Understandably, the idea of a social contract remains central among different versions of contractarianism. Though the nature of the social contract remains unclear (whether an actual, historical event or an implicit, hypothetical event), the concept of social contract is deemed as crucial. It is upheld that at a certain juncture, the people in the society came to form a social contract or agreement among them. The theories hold that the ethical and political obligations of the people in the society came from a social contract that people formed. The terms in the contract justify the rules that apply to those who are governed by them. By being a party to the contract, those who are governed by it have agreed to follow the rules as part of the contract. Thus, the rules that emerge from the contract are socially decided, but are self-imposed by being agreed upon, by the social contract. In a political contractarian theory, we find that the origin and legitimate authority of the government is explained as derived from the social contract, which represents the consent of the people who are governed. The power of the government to rule over the people comes from the fact that people came to an agreement and consented to be ruled by the Government. Similarly, an ethical theory of contractarianism claims that a social contract or a mutual agreement among many is the origin of ethical norms and their content and force. Among the other elements of contractarianism, the following needs to be mentioned: (a) A pre-contract or a no-contract state: The contractarian theories hypothesize an initial situation, which exists before the contract. This pre-contract or a no-contract stage is a phase in the society when supposedly there are no rules or norms. The contractarian theories posit that some element in this precontract situation motivated the people to form an agreement and to develop some common norms of cooperation as a social contract in the hope of some gain. Different contractarian theories have depicted this initial situation and the contract phase in different ways. (b) The characterization of the people who are party to the contract: The contractarian theories work with a certain assumption about the nature of the people who make the contract. Some of them have assumed that people are

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primarily self-interested. People who engage in making the contract are no exception. They give primacy to their own interest and have little concern for the others. However, they are rational self-interest maximizers. That is, people have a capability to rationally interact and negotiate with the others. Some other thinkers have assumed people to be simple. People are also assumed to be rational enough to realize that in a community setting their self-interest will be maximized only if they act ethically in common interest of all. Thus, they understand that to follow the norms developed through a social contract is the rational choice for self-interest maximization. History of the concept of social contract Historically, the concept of social contract is not new. In ancient Greece, following the Greek war with the Persians, where the Greeks suffered humiliating defeats in the hands of the Persians, the protection of the individual citizens and of their rights became a major standard among the Greeks for judging the efficiency of the rulers. Instead of blindly accepting the authority of the state, the Greeks questioned whether or not the authority of the state over the people is conditional upon its ability to protect the ordinary citizens and their rights. It is implied that the power vested unto the government is a kind of contractual arrangement in the society in exchange of protection of the citizens. In Aristotle’s writing, we find a reference to Sophist Lycophron, who supposedly maintained that law of the state is a contract between the ruler and the ruled to mutually respect each other’s rights.39 The prevalence of this view in ancient Greece is also borne by the narrative in Plato’s Republic Book II, where through the voice of Glaucon we hear the view. Glaucon describes a theory of origin of civil society in which to avoid injustice to themselves and to get justice, people agree to have laws and mutual covenants. Glaucon speaks of a compact among people to avoid a state of mutual aggression, and that compact is the law. In Plato’s dialogue Crito we may find a subtle reference to the idea of a social contract, when Socrates declines escape from the prison on the ground that Athenians have made an implied contract or an agreement in principle to obey the law of Athens. However, the concept of social contract particularly thrived during the age of Enlightenment, an intellectual and philosophical movement that emerged in Europe during 17th and 18th CE. The context was the authority of the state over the individual. The concept is associated with the writings of political philosophers of 17th and 18th CE, such as Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) and Jean-Jacque Rousseau (1712–1788), and renowned philosophers such as John Locke (1632–1704) and Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). I shall discuss some of these theories below to give you an idea of the classical social contract theories. But, it must also be mentioned that the concept has not disappeared from the sphere of political thinking after 17th and 18th CE. There are many contemporary political and ethical philosophers, such as John Rawls, David Gauthier, and Thomas Scanlon, who have built their views of a just society around the concept of a social contract. However, we shall not go into the discussion of the 39

Ritchie, D.G. 1891. Contributions to the history of social contract theory. Political Science Quarterly, 6 (4), 656–676.

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modern theories. Of the many theories on social origin of ethics and order, we shall mention only a handful from the classical contractarian theorists.

4.6.2 Thomas Hobbes on the Social Origin of Ethics and Social Order Thomas Hobbes was an English philosopher, whose political philosophy has influenced generations of political thinkers for centuries. His magnum opus The Leviathan is his most celebrated work. His famous social contract theory is the origin of many of the modern contractarian theories. In what follows, I shall try to introduce his theory in brief. The views of a philosopher usually take shape by the life experiences of the philosopher. Hobbes was no exception. Hobbes lived his life through a socially unstable and politically a very troubled time in England, an era which ended in the English Civil War (1642–1648). The war was between the king and his supporters who wanted the monarchy to continue and the Parliamentarians, who demanded more democratic power and the end of the monarchy. Caught between the two, the life of the ordinary people in England was unstable, under constant danger, and in continuous turmoil. Having lived through that dangerous and calamitous time, from his own experience Hobbes came to the conclusion that political stability and social order are the necessities for living in a society, and that any government which helps to bring stability and order is better than the chaotic civil war condition. Therefore, in his theory, Hobbes tried a resolution of the raging conflict behind the English Civil War. He did not support the monarchy and specifically rejected the claim that a king’s authority is granted by God. In his view, a king’s authority is neither divine in origin nor is absolute. Yet, he believed in a political authority, without which he thought chaos and instability would ruin a society. In his view, people must come under the rule of an authority. In his The Leviathan, Hobbes wrote that the people should submit to the authority, because it has the unique power to protect people from civil disorder, and the lawlessness would destroy the social stability completely. So, in his view, the collective of people, whom he calls the Sovereign, must fully accept the absolute authority of a political body and must not do anything to disrupt the rule of that authority, if society has to survive. At the same time, he is not sympathetic to the idea of a total democracy. He is opposed to the idea that the political authority must share its power with the people. Yet, he maintains that the basis of the power of a political authority has to be the choice of the people. The peoples’ choice is expressed through a social contract. So, his idea of a political authority is one that governs over the populace, but is empowered by the choice of the ruled. Why do people need a social contract? In Hobbes’s view, the need for a social contract or an agreement is to create a political authority or a government. But,

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the need for a government is to avoid what he thinks is a very undesirable scenario, namely the degeneration of the society into what Hobbes called a state of nature. The undesirability of slipping into the state of nature is the main argument for forming a social contract and a government. We need to understand how he envisaged this state of nature and also how he perceived the nature of the humans in the society. So, that is what we shall discuss next. Hobbes on human nature and motivation Hobbes’s understanding of human nature was shaped by his worldview. He was deeply influenced by the Scientific Revolution40 that was taking place in Europe in his time and the mechanistic worldview that was popular at that time. As a result, Hobbes believes that everything in the world is nothing more than material objects in motion governed by the universal laws of nature. This included the humans too. He understood the human bodies basically as machines, but he granted that humans are very complicated kind of machines. Humans too were believed to be ruled by the mechanistic laws of the universe. Given the rudimentary nature of physiology and psychology in Hobbes’s time, we may perhaps understand Hobbes’s notion of a human body as a moving clock-work machine. His materialistic, and mechanistic, outlook towards the humans led him to believe that the normative judgments of the humans in terms of good, bad, right, and wrong do not and cannot really mean anything. He thought that such judgments are merely the subjective expressions of what the people prefer and what they detest. So, as per him, to say that something is good, is to say only that people prefer it. To say something is bad or wrong, is to express what is disliked. In addition, from the mechanistic understanding, Hobbes also derived the conclusion that humans are all by nature and without exception self-interested and unalterably selfish. In his view, the instinct for self-preservation is naturally very strong among the humans and is the primary motive for all human actions. This instinct drives all human behavior. Selfishness is so embedded in human nature that humans can only do what would better their own conditions. Hobbes wrote that there may be occasional instances of benevolence and affection towards the others among the humans, but typically these are not really motivated by concerns for the others. Even when it seems that humans are acting out of kindness and benevolence, actually underneath the motive would be self-interest. The outwardly kindness may be shown on a limited basis only to a selective few who are close. So, by basic nature, according to Hobbes, humans are not really sociable. In addition, Hobbes thought that all humans are sufficiently similar, men and women alike, in terms of physical strength and mental abilities. Therefore, if there is a dispute and a fight or a war, there would be no clear winner. This means that unless 40

Scientific Revolution was the revolutionary changes that were taking place in Europe in thought and beliefs in Physics, Mathematics, Astronomy, Chemistry, and Biology between approximately 1550 and 1700 CE. It started with Nicholas Copernicus (1473–1543) and his theory of a heliocentric universe. It brought in experimental method. It is called a revolution as it completely transformed the views about nature.

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there is a greater authority to intervene, the war would continue. So, everybody must be wary of the other. Similarly, since everyone is more or less equal, everyone is almost equally at risk to the threat of domination, violence, and death by an external, oppressive authority. Therefore, when there is a threat, everyone in the society is more or less equally at risk. He also viewed the humans as naturally quarrelsome and eager for violent confrontations with the others. Since the humans are all sufficiently similar, they all desire the same things, and if one attains something desirable, they are envied and targeted by the others. So, among the humans, there is distrust, insecurity, fear, and apprehensions. So, in his view, the humans are not really sociable by nature. So, taken together, Hobbes’s human society is a collection of selfish, distrustful people, who are sufficiently similar in their abilities and vulnerabilities. Nonetheless, Hobbes assumed the humans to be sufficiently reasonable, even if the capacity of rationality is limited. Even if primarily self-interested, in his theory people can execute actions efficiently and can understand what the best way would be to achieve their best interest. Hobbes on pre-contract state or the state of nature Hobbes then argues that given the nature of the humans, the consequence of leaving them to themselves ungoverned by any authority would be a state of war where each one is against another. The consequence would be the disastrous state of nature. The state of nature stands for the natural state of humans. It is the state in which the humans would be, if they were left to their own nature. As mentioned earlier, it is also a pre-contract state; i.e. it is the time before any contract has been drawn to set up the rule by a political authority. It is also a state when there are no rules, no superior power to keep people in control. In Hobbes’s theory, the state of nature is brutal and terrifying. In his view, the life of man in such a state would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”. It is presumably a state of lawless chaos, which would inevitably degenerate into a state of perpetual war, where there would be no culture, no industry, no education, and no social comfort for anyone. For, because of fear of attack by the others, no one will grow food, build houses, or do any of the things that require effort, because it would be uncertain if the fruit of the hard labor would remain with the one who worked hard for it. Other would see and desire, attack and kill, and take away what they want. Thus, in a state of nature there can be none of the goods that we produce through social cooperation; there can be only a reign of fear where, as Hobbes famously said, every man is against every other man. There would be violence and murder not just for possessions, but also for power. Hobbes claims that people by nature will aspire for more power, no matter how powerful they are, and that people will desire power enough to kill. This would inevitably lead to aggression and physical violence and possibly death in each other’s hands. As he puts it in his Leviathan41 : During the time men live without a common Power to keep them all in awe they are in that condition called War; and such a war, as is of every man against every other man.... To this 41

Hobbes, Thomas, 1588–1679. (1968). Leviathan. Baltimore:Penguin Books.

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war of every man against every man, this also is consequent; that nothing can be Unjust. The notions of Right and Wrong, Justice and Injustice have there no place.42

This is a time when there are no rules, no laws, no police, no court, and when there is no right or wrong. Anybody can do anything, and even to one another. One has to protect and fend for what one has; otherwise there is no security. Ethics and selfdiscipline are not natural to human beings. This is how Hobbes visualized the state of nature or the pre-contract state: It is a state of every man against every man, where there is no rule, and no action is unjust. Needless to say, such a state is dangerous for all, as then we are subject to anyone’s selfish interest. No one’s property, families, or even life will be safe. Hobbes on Social Contract Hobbes concluded that given that how disturbing the state of nature would be, it is natural for people to seek a way to avoid such a condition. People prefer peace and security to chaos, violence, and death. Being naturally selfish and yet sufficiently reasonable, for purely selfish reasons most people would come to the reasonable conclusion that to secure that peace, the dangerous state of nature must be avoided at all cost, and stability must be brought in by forming a civil society. They would also rationally realize that engaging in a social contract, or a covenant would enable them to have a life which would avoid the state of nature, and secure everyone’s best protection from each other, and also from any external threat. Thus, the possibility of decline of the society into the state of nature functions as a premise for forming a social contract. In his The Leviathan (1651), Hobbes wrote that the social contract will be constituted by two different agreements: (a) The agreement to collectively give up the individual freedom and rights that people have during the state of nature. When there is no law, people are free to do whatever they please. However, if they have to live together as a collective or a society, they must agree to give up that absolute freedom and unbounded rights. (b) The agreement to obey a common authority and some common codes, the common authority also must be set by mutual agreement, and allegiance to that political authority and a set of common norms would be part of the agreement. The function of that authority will be to protect the people. Hobbes thought that the political authority that people would thus create for their protection would be like the Leviathan. The Leviathan is a mythical, gigantic, seacreature mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. In Hebrew mythology, the Leviathan is the king. Similarly, Hobbes thought that the government created by social contract would be like the powerful, huge, mythological king over the people. And that social contract was the origin of political authority and social order and a common set of norms in a society, which Hobbes thought is tantamount to ethics. Since the authority will be entrusted with the authority to punish for violation 42

Ibid. Book I, Chapter 11.

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of the codes in the social contract, people will comply with the codes in their own self-interest and adjust with a system of justice. Out of self-interest, each member of the society would adopt a regulated way of life which will allow for a community living. Thus, in Hobbes’s view, the ethical norms and the compliance to them are all rooted in a pragmatic, selfish reason: To live together in a civil community and to avoid a state of nature. Hobbes on Ethics As for ethics, in Hobbes’ view, it is not a natural trait of the humans. In the depiction of state of nature, Hobbes clearly mentions that it is a state in which the only important thing for anyone is to survive by any means; there is no right, or wrong, justice or injustice. In his materialist worldview, belief in a soul, or belief in the innateness of ethical rules in human soul, had no place. In his view, ethics in human society is created by a social contract as the norms that a society agrees to live by. So, the notions of ethical norms are a matter of contractual agreement for living in a society, and they express nothing but what the society approves. Quick Question 4.9 According to Hobbes, ethics is not natural to the human beings, as is shown in his narration about the state of nature. If so, do you suppose it is possible after the social contract for the humans to suddenly change their nature and be orderly, compliant, and ethical? Argue for your opinion. As mentioned earlier, he believed that the humans are not capable of making true normative judgments; they can only mean their own preferences and dislikes, constituted by the perceptions of people. What people find desirable, they perceive as good, and what they abhor, they perceive it as bad. Hobbes clearly does not mean moral realism or ethical objectivism by ethics. On his view, what one should do depends on the kind of situation one is in. In a state of nature, when there is no ethics and there is no law, the most important duty to oneself is to save oneself by whichever means. Even in the post-contract time, in Hobbes’s view self-interest remains the primary motive for a human. However, as is shown by the supposition of social contract, the human nature has the ability to rise above narrow self-interest and to realize what a civil society and the common good implies. He visualizes a voluntary submission by an agreement to common codes and an authority for the sake of peace and stability. Through the social contract, everyone agrees to limit their own freedom and rights, in return of protection and a rule of law by the authorized power. It is a rule of self-imposed norms. He also believed that we acquire ethical virtue when we comply with the laws of nature. For example, according to him one of the laws of nature is that we should keep the contracts we have agreed upon. When we follow this law of nature, in Hobbes’s view we gain the virtue of justice; non-compliance to this law would lead us to the

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vice of injustice. So, to be ethically virtuous, we must recognize the laws of nature and comply with them. Think a little 4.5 How did Hobbes derive his view on ethics from a mechanistic worldview? What could he mean by humans can not and do not mean anything more than their subjective preferences and dislikes by good, bad, right and wrong? Explain.

4.6.3 John Locke on Social Contract and Ethics As I have said earlier, there are different versions of contractarianism. John Locke’s theory is quite different from that of Hobbes. Locke’s contractarian theory employs the concept of social contract. However, it holds origin of ethics and the engagement in a social contract as different. In his theory, ethics did not come from social contract. It, in his view, comes from the law of nature, which is given by God. From social contract, only law and a government have been created. Locke’s theory has some of the elements from Hobbes’s theory, but it differs from Hobbes’s theory in many important ways. Locke on state of nature and ethics Locke used the concept of state of nature from Hobbes’s theory, but he did not follow Hobbes in the description of the state. Hobbes’s state of nature is a horrific and brutal state of war for people, where nothing is safe and secure. Locke, on the other hand, visualized the state of nature, or the natural state of humans, as a state when people are in a state of freedom, without any interference from anyone. It is a state which allows a choice to live one’s life in the way one finds best. There are no laws, and no authority to punish one for any transgressions. People are free; but this freedom, however, does not entitle one to do as one pleases, in particular with the others. Locke’s state of nature is without law, but it is not a state without ethics. Locke tells us that though in the state of nature there are no man-made laws, there are the Laws of Nature. According to Locke, the laws of nature, which are given by God, are the basis of all ethics. These laws command that the humans should respect each other, as all are equal and also command that one must not harm the others for the desire to own their property or the possessions. The humans realize this law and are bound by it. And that is ethics. Locke on social contract According to Locke, the state of nature in itself is not an undesirable condition, but it may degenerate into a war if and when the humans start to violate the laws of nature by harming the others to gain their possessions, or by stealing someone else’s

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possessions. Personal property, in Locke’s view, is the source of the trouble. Personal property is created when people use their own labor on the natural resources to produce something. For example, someone who cultivates a piece of land to produce food crop owns the piece of land as well as the food crop grown in it. Locke maintains that God has given the natural resources to all for subsistence. The law of nature tells us that one must not try to acquire everything in the nature only for oneself, because God has given it to all. However, when people start to violate this law of nature and start amassing personal property for one’s own sake, or when there are clashes over the ownership of property, trouble starts to brew. Therefore, property in Locke’s theory plays the crucial role in why people have to abandon the state of nature and go for a social contract. Locke thinks that for the protection of property, people decide to leave the state of nature and to enter into a social contract. Since in state of nature there is no authority to resolve disputes and to enforce order, Locke agrees with Hobbes that if a war is started, it is likely to continue. Only a political authority has the power to put a stop to the war. People draw a social contract to create a political authority, which is empowered as people hand over their own freedom, and power to it. Thus, the private power of the individuals becomes the public power of the government. So, we see that in Locke’s view, the social contract is not the origin of ethics. Ethics in his view has its origin in the laws of nature. He views the social contract as the protective agreement should people fall from the path of ethics.

4.6.4 Jean-Jac Rousseau on Social Origin of Ethics Rousseau’s contractarianism is another interesting theory. Rousseau was an important figure in the intellectual history of France in his time, as well as in 18th CE Europe. His political theories impressed Immanuel Kant and also had a deep influence on the French Revolutionaries. Rousseau on social contract The concept of social contract appears in two different ways in Rousseau’s theory: (1) As part of a descriptive history: In his Second Discourse,43 he has provided us a descriptive and historical account of how humans were and how from that state of nature they evolved into ethical and political beings as members of the modern society through social contract. The historical account is his conjecture about how humans may have been. Rousseau’s Second Discourse was actually an essay entry for an essay competition in France. In it he wrote about his view

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Rousseau, J.-J., Masters, R. D., Kelly, C., Rousseau, J.-J., & Rousseau, J.-J. (1992). Discourse on the origins of inequality (second discourse); Polemics; and, Political economy. (The collected writings of Rousseau.) Hanover, NH: Published for Dartmouth College by University Press of New England.

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on how humans may have started from a state of nature and how they may have progressed to a civil society. (2) As part of a normative account: The second social theory is a normative account of social contract, where Rousseau introduces social contract as a tool to resolve the problems that he believes ‘modern society’ has imposed on us. This theory is available in his major and most famous work: The Social Contract (1762).44 In what follows, both of these theories will be briefly presented. (1) The descriptive and historical theory of social contract: In this, Rousseau describes how he supposes the transition from state of nature to a civilized society took place for the humans. In his view, the true nature of man is overshadowed by all the ideas and facilities that the modern society has imposed on it. For instance, property and law have no meaning in nature; these are all fetters by which the modern society has bound the man. The true nature of man can be found in the state of nature, in which Rousseau claims man was far better than in the modern society and its various demands. Rousseau’s state of nature: The state of nature is the imagined, prehistoric time. Rousseau hypothesized that there was a time when the early humans lived without the corrupting influence of modern society. The most important characteristic of Rousseau’s state of nature is the supposition of total freedom that the humans then enjoyed. Rousseau opined that then the humans were completely free, as there were no restrictive injunctions from the state, and there was no restriction from the fellow men. People then neither knew what a law is nor knew what a government is. They were also psychologically completely free, as their spirit was not enslaved by the habits and artificial needs that modern society burdens one with. As society has modernized, the humans have become more and more the slaves of their needs and comforts. Thus, unlike Hobbes’s vision of the state of nature, Rousseau’s state of nature is envisaged as a peaceful time, when people lived a much simpler life, but they were completely at liberty to do as they pleased, unencumbered by any civil or political constraints. People in the state of nature were not exactly rational or moral, but they were free from the coercive restrictions. On the whole, Rousseau finds the state of nature to be much better than the modern society and says that we can never return to that state. So, Rousseau’s humans were naturally good and peaceful beings, who led a simple life meeting their needs from the nature. Since the number of people was fewer and nature was vast and abundant, people rarely met. Life was solitary, but there was no competition or conflict, as there was no reason to fight over. The simple and peaceful people were not immoral. That is, though in the state of nature, ethics was not yet discovered and there were no laws, people already had a sense about right and wrong. Even though the simple people in state of nature were guided by a keen sense of preservation of self , they were also naturally endowed with 44

Rousseau, J., & Scott, J. T. (2012). The major political writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The two Discourses and the Social contract. Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press.

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a sense of pity. They had “an innate repugnance to see a fellow suffer”. Rousseau’s humans in the state of nature were naturally kind and driven by compassion. According to Rousseau, from that natural state, as population grew, change came through the element of ‘needs’. Needs arose as people started to desire more. In the state of nature, the human needs were limited to very basic things, e.g. food and shelter. Slowly, the ways to satisfy the needs changed. Small groups and families came to be, who shared their resources only among themselves, and division of labor was introduced. Then, the needs for non-basic things started to increase, e.g. needs for luxury and entertainment. When men began to live in a permanent neighborhood, a property system is introduced, where personal property was allowed. Rousseau insists that non-essential needs and personal property and acquisitions brought in inequalities in the society. For, the size of the personal property was not the same among the people; some, because of their larger possessions, dominated over the others. Moreover, some among the society were forced to work to fulfill the needs of another section in the society. According to him, due to the discovery of convenient tools and implements to make life easier, people had leisure time in hand. And in that leisure time, people started to compare their own lot with the others. As a result, envy about other’s possessions and pride about one’s own property came about, and the seeds of competition among people were sown. Thus, the human nature was corrupted with greed, avarice, and hunger for power and property. Rousseau’s contention was that the socialization process and the demands of the society corrupted the human nature. In his view, the invention of private property actually is cause of fall from the idyllic state of nature. Gradually, as personal acquisitions grew and the feelings of pride and fiercer competition among the people grew, the initial inequalities in the society grew also. Distinct social classes, such as the rich, the poor, in terms of possession of personal wealth and acquisitions were created and further divided the people. Rousseau wrote that the growing social inequalities between the classes consequently led to a conflict ruptured the relationships among people and finally to a violent state of war, as Hobbes had conceptualized. Rousseau’s social contract In Rousseau’ theory, the social contract becomes a tool of convenience for the richer class. He wrote that threatened by this state of war, those who had amassed enough personal property soon realized that it would be in their interest to create an authority or a government, which would protect them from all those who did not have property. So, those who have the most to lose, called on the others to come under a social contract to establish a government. Though it was proclaimed that the government is there for the protection of all, Rousseau opined that actually the government was established in the interest of the rich and powerful to secure the inequalities that private property has created. Thus, the social contract is actually responsible for the competition and class conflict that is visible in the society now. This was the descriptive account in which Rousseau narrates how because of private property humans progressed from a classless society to a divided and fiercely competitive society, where the social contract protects only the interest of the rich and the powerful.

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2. The normative account of social contract: Rousseau’s normative account is supposed to provide remedial measures for the social problems created by the development of society. The opening lines of The Social Contract are famous: “Men are born free, but everywhere are in chains”. He truly believed that people are by nature free and were free in the state of nature in all aspects: Physical, psychological, and political. However, he thought that modern life in the society curtailed the freedom as it came to a point where people had to depend on the others to fulfill their own needs. For example, for food, one has to depend on the farmer, and for clothes one has to depend on the weaver. In Rousseau’s view, these dependencies are the invisible chains by which a society binds an individual and delimits the freedom of the individual. Since a return to state of nature is not feasible, the crucial issue, therefore, is how to ensure freedom and yet live together in a society? How to reconcile the fact of natural freedom of people with the unavoidable “chains” that the society imposes on the freedom of man? Rousseau’s solution is that we can achieve this only by submitting our individual will to a general will, created by a social contract. He believed that nature has made all men as equals. So, no one among the people has any extra, God-given right, or a natural right, to rule over the others. Therefore, the only legitimate authority which can rule over people is the authority that people themselves create by a contract or a covenant. According to him, the very basic agreement in that contract is the agreement by people to form a collective. A collective is not a haphazard collection of people; it is a body of people with a unified will. Though left to themselves each individual may desire different things and may hold different opinions, the collective of people, who by their own will enter into a social contract to form a society, would express a unified will or a general will. This general will expresses the collective need of protection and guarantee of personal freedom and a desire for a common good. Rousseau calls this collective of people the Sovereign. The Sovereign is formed when free and equal people voluntarily come forward to enter a social contract to create a new entity, the collective of people or the Sovereign. The Sovereign is deemed to express the will of all or the general will. Each person agrees to renounce his or her own rights and transfer these rights and power to the newly formed Sovereign. Ethics As for ethics, Rousseau’s position is that ethics is natural to humans. The goodness and purity of humans get corrupted by society and its various demands. We can overcome this corruption voluntarily by what in modern terms is called participatory democracy. According to Rousseau, the most important job of the Sovereign is the creation of the common codes or laws. A significant feature of these common codes is that they are essentially the expression of the general will. The general will of the law-givers creates the codes, to which the law-givers voluntarily submit. Thus, the codes are self-imposed. However, Rousseau thinks that a government of some form, e.g. a monarchy, is also required to enforce the law and to look after the basic functions of the state. He

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admits that the Sovereign and the government may occasionally be in conflict, as the government may at times go against the Sovereign’s will. This is why, he tells us, it is important for Sovereign to meet regularly in assemblies and cast votes in accordance to the common interest and not in personal interest. So, we see that in Rousseau’s normative account the concept of social contract is central, but it is not the source of ethics. As Locke also held, ethics is in the nature of the humans. But the laws had to be created to ensure allegiance of people to the political authority.

4.6.5 Summary and Concluding Remarks on Social Origin of Ethics In this section, we heard from eminent political philosophers their contention on how ethics as a set of norms and common codes may have originated from the society itself by the people. For this, the theorists have used the concept of social contract or a covenant, an actual or hypothetical event, as an agreement among the people to form a civil society and a ruling government. The common codes one submits to, and the accepted constraints on the behavior of the individual as a result of living in the society, are all part of a self-imposed ethic that comes as a consequence of the socialization process. Through their own reason, people realize that law, ethics, and government are necessities to save them from an anarchic, chaotic state. There are important similarities between the theories of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. One of the important similarities is that they appealed to rational selfinterest and to a consent based on reason. And, the social contract was supposed to be the source of all duties and rights for the ruler and the ruled. The theorists found the creation and legitimacy of the common codes in the consent of people. In their view, people voluntarily accepted the common codes through a common agreement or a social contract, where the concern is for the common good. The social contract was envisioned as a watershed event, but the theories differed on its purpose. For some, it was to avoid the terrifying possibility of collapsing into a state of nature; for others it was in the interest to secure personal property from aggressors and to justify the power of the authority. Similarly, the state of nature also is portrayed differently in the theories. For Hobbes, the state of nature is a brutal state of war without any ethics, whereas for Locke, the state of nature was a blissful state when people and the right to life and property were secure by the natural laws. It was pre-agreement but not pre-ethics period. For Rousseau too, the state of nature was peaceful and good, until private property and personal acquisitions were brought in by civilization and socialization process, and greed, avarice, and competition corrupted the people. In the theories of Locke and Rousseau, the social contract is not the origin of ethics, where ethics is understood as natural laws or laws of nature. However, as in the case of Hobbes, the other elements of ethics, such as the self-imposed norms,

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the self-discipline to voluntarily adhere to the agreed upon norms, the abdication of freedom for the sake of common good, and the sense of obligation, all these are viewed as an outcome of the social contract. Thus, this position views ethics as a human creation and a typical feature of the human society. As a consequence, the normativity of ethics becomes a matter of social convention, justified by rational self-interest, and the ethical judgments become expressions of what the society approves or disapproves.

4.6.6 Objections Against Social Origin of Ethics Position We may broadly classify the objections against the social contract theories into three main categories: (a) Against the concept of social contract (b) Against the concept of state of nature and the presumed nature of the humans (c) The miscellaneous objections against the position as such. (a) Objections against the concept of social contract: As explained already, the concept of social contract is pivotal for the social contract theories. However, did the social contract take place actually as an event? Or, was it merely a conjecture? The theorists, including Hobbes, must have realized that their concept of social contract is not really a historical moment; it is a presumed phenomenon to comment on the political situation. At least, for most modern contractarian theorists, the social contract is neither a historical event nor a legal document, but only a hypothetical construct to aid theorizing about how things should be. However, if the social contract is merely a presumption or a hypothetical event, even then serious problems for the position can be raised. For example: Ronald Dworkin’s objection: Ronald Dworkin (1931–2013), a renowned American philosopher and lawyer, had famously stated that a hypothetical contract is not a weak form of an actual contract, it is not a contract at all!45 Dworkin argued that a hypothetical agreement cannot bind, or obligate, an actual person. A hypothetical agreement does not provide any incontrovertible reason why an actual person in an actual society has to accept all the social arrangements that supposedly have come from that hypothetical agreement. So, in short, Dworkin totally rejects a hypothetical social contract as an agreement at all. For, a contract is meant to have binding power, but a hypothetical contract has no binding power. Moreover, if the social contract is hypothetical, the justification and legitimacy of the power of the political authority, the rights and duties, that come from the agreement also disappear. How can a hypothetical contract form the basis of ethics and governance? So, the implication is that the hypothetical status of the social contract serious undermines the credibility of the contractarian theories. 45

Dworkin, Ronald. 1975. “The Original Position” in Reading Rawls, Norman Daniels (ed.), Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 16–53.

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 David Hume’s criticism: Hobbes surmised that the social contract may have taken place in either of the following two ways: (i) As a verbal agreement, where people use a verbal agreement clause; e.g. “we hereby agree…”, and an agreement was declared in open and explicit terms. (ii) Or, as a tacit agreement by inference, where through either the silence or the actions, other people will infer that the contractees have made an agreement. Since there is no evidence of (a), most social contract theorists after Hobbes find this second method (b) as a probable explanation of the formation of the social contract. This they have named the tacit consent after Locke.  Tacit consent: Locke introduced the concept of tacit consent said that any person, who has some property or enjoys a benefit from the government, within the area under rule of a government, thereby gives a tacit consent to obey the rules of the government.46 The tacit consent is an implicit, informal, and presumed understanding of agreement, which is supposed to come from privileges accepted. Philosopher David Hume (1711–1776) raised important objection against such interpretation of the social contract. First of all, he rejects the idea of tacit consent as consent at all. According to Hume, an agreement must be founded on willful, or voluntary, consent, and a mere tacit consent does not guarantee the presence of a will. In case of the social contract, whether the agreement was given verbally, or silently, by the people, to legitimize the agreement there has to be a clear indication of a will to agree on the part of the people who agreed. There has to be some memory of giving that willful consent by the people. However, Hume argues that no nation can remember ever giving willful consent to the authority of their government, and most people only remember being born in a state where there is a government.47 Hence, Hume opines that the validation of the social contract as a tacit consent is not viable. Second, Hume argues that if the said social contract never took place, then references to a social contract must be a trick that the politicians play on the gullible people. The trick is to make the people believe that many years ago the ancestors of the current citizens tacitly consented to a specific government, and that the governments of today have inherited that authority over the current citizens. Clearly, such claim is totally baseless; for, a consent is not inherited. The consent of the present generation to a government cannot be derived from the presumed consent of the ancestors to altogether another government. Unfortunately, since the current citizens cannot go back in time and verify this claim about a tacit agreement in the past, they accept the politicians’ story and are tricked into accepting and obeying the authority of the current government. In other words, Hume is not ready to give social contact theory any value above the ploy of a politician to validate a political authority. 46

Locke, J. Two Treatises of Government (1690), Peter Laslett (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. 2.119]. 47 Hume, D. Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, 2nd ed. revised by P. H. Nidditch, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975. (1739–40), 3.2.8].

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Third, even if we accept for argument’s sake that there was a tacit social contract once, the consent of the ancestors does not bind one at present. A fictional tale of a given consent to an earlier government by a group of people in the past can in no way obligate the present generation to a present government. As said earlier, consent is not inherited. Agreements come with an expiry date, not over indefinite period of time. They are also made between two specific entities and not between generations. So, though governments are needed for our own protection, Hume argues that there never was a social contract that people tacitly consented to. To this, political philosopher William Godwin (1736–1836)48 asked few pertinent question: No matter whether the social contract was explicit or tacit, if indeed there was a contract, who were the parties in the agreement? What were the terms and conditions of the original agreement, and how long was the contract supposed to be valid? No satisfactory answer is available to any of these legitimate questions. Thus, the idea of a social contract, either as explicit or as a tacit consent, does not appear to be tenable. Philosopher Samuel Clarke (1675–1729) objected that a social contract simply does not have the obligatory force to ensure compliance to any government. In particular, he raised the objection against Hobbes’s theory that if, as Hobbes claims, in a pre-contract state of nature the humans were so unruly creatures that the rules of right or wrong, justice or injustice had no obligatory force on them, then there is no reason to believe that after the social contract the same people would suddenly become compliant. Just because they have entered an agreement, people without a sense of ethics cannot be suddenly expected to change drastically into a docile group who would be completely motivated to comply with the conditions in the agreement. Unless there is punishment, and a fear of consequences, people will not be motivated to comply merely by the contract. Clarke’s main contention was that the motivation to be ethical comes only from an inner awareness about the ethical truths, which Hobbes does not endorse. Clarke argued that ultimately Hobbes’s theory offers no safeguard to ensure that in the post-contract society people will keep their agreements.49 (b) Objections against the conceptualization of state of nature and the nature of the humans: Hobbes has depicted it as a pre-ethical state of war, where every man is against another without any sense for what is right or wrong. This description of the state of nature and also the assumption about the human nature as purely self-interested, and being devoid of a sense of ethics, have been severely contested by many. The first question to ask: Can there ever really be a group of human beings who totally lack any ethical code of behavior for its members? Hobbes believed that it is possible. In fact, he gave three supposed examples of state of nature: He claimed that (a) with respect to one another, all nations are in this 48

Godwin, W. Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793), Mark Philp (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, 3.2]. 49 Clarke, S. A Discourse Concerning the Unalterable Obligations of Natural Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelations, I. (1705, 1711). Printed by W. Botham,

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condition; that is, they are sworn enemies of each other; (b) historically this is the antecedent event. Many currently civilized populace were earlier in this state, and (c) any population which was earlier peaceful but now has fallen into civil war would recognize the state of nature. However, these claims are not found acceptable by some philosophers. They argue that, first of all, each of these alleged instances of state of nature is nothing but a presumption on the part of Hobbes, with no evidence incontrovertibly confirming the existence of such a state among the humans. Moreover, there are other contrary instances. For example: Peter Singer’s objection: Singer argues that anthropological studies indicate to the contrary. Evidence from anthropology shows that even the most primitive societies have some semblance of ethical codes for their members. Contrary to Hobbes’s claim, ethics appears to be always present in a human society; it is the part of their natural condition. Occasionally, there have been claims that a primitive tribe or a community has been found which is free of all ethics. As an example, Singer refers to Collin Turnbull’s popular book The Mountain People50 (1972), in which the Ik, a Northern Ugandan tribe, was described as a society without any values except self-interest. Turnbull’s claim, however, has been contested. The accuracy of his data and the correctness of methodology have been questioned, and his conclusions about the Ik have been considered as mistaken. Singer raises the point that Turnbull’s observations of the Ik are ill-timed and incomplete. He explains that when Turnbull visited the Ik, unfortunately the Iks were in a particularly miserable condition. The tribe was originally nomadic hunters and gatherers, but as their hunting ground was turned into a national park, and they were debarred from practicing their way of living, they were forced to reskill themselves as farmers. But they were allotted an area which was arid and mountainous and thus posed great challenge for their farming skills. This, combined with unfavorable weather and a famine in that year, put the Ik society in the harshest struggle for subsistence. Parents could not fend for their three-year-old children, strife and violence marred daily life, and the weak were at the mercy of the strong. This is when Turnbull met them and made a sweeping observation that Ik society had no values except the relentless pursuit of self-interest, which made Biologist Garrett Hardin to claim that the Ik is Hobbes’s natural man, or the people living in a state of nature, which is a situation of war where every man is against another. However, that need not be the whole truth about the Ik. Singer points out that Turnbull’s observations on the Ik were found to be biased, inaccurate, subjective, and contradictory by some anthropologists. Moreover, Singer suggests that a deeper look reveals that the Ik people were not at all devoid of all values. For example, Turnbull himself refers to incidents in which they still considered theft as wrong, killing each other as wrong, and considered it right to fulfill the obligations coming from an agreement of mutual assistance, which they called the Nyot. Moreover, from Turnbull’s account ample evidence can

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Turnbull, C.N. 1972. The mountain people. New York: Simon & Schuster.

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be found that the Ik still had some codes of behavior: They had strict prohibition on killing each other, and even on drawing blood. Singer argues that under extreme duress, in which a person’s desperate need to survive becomes paramount, it may seem like all values have disappeared. But actually they remain. He asks us to consider the inhuman conditions in the Nazi concentration camps, or in the Soviet labor camps. In his view, even in such conditions, though every prisoner was dehumanized to the extreme, values remained, and every man was not against every man. About the Nazi concentration camps, Peter Singer writes: …survivors’ reports show that prisoners helped each other. In Auschwitz prisoners risked their lives to pick up strangers who had fallen in the snow at roll call; they built a radio and disseminated news to keep up morale; though they were starving, they shared food with those still more needy. There were also ethical rules in the camps. Though theft occurred, stealing from one’s fellow prisoners was strongly condemned and those caught stealing were punished by the prisoners themselves. As Terrence Des Pres observes in The Survivor, a book based on reports by those who survived the camps: “The assumption that there was no moral or social order in the camps is wrong.... Through innumerable small acts of humanness, most of them covert but everywhere in evidence, survivors were able to maintain societal structures workable enough to keep themselves alive and morally sane.”51

Thus, Singer rejects Hobbes’s conceptualization of state of nature as well as its inherent claim that ethics is not natural for the humans. In his view, in every form and condition of human existence, the ethical values and a social order remain. (c)

Miscellaneous objections against social origin of ethics (i) It has been objected that the theory of social contract as an account of the origin of ethics is deeply unsatisfactory. For, it portrays ethics as ultimately self-interest driven. It presents ethics merely as social norms which are products of a social contract. However, the social contract is driven by calculated self-interest, where people agree to agree so that everyone’s self-interest gets served. That is why people agree to behave in a certain way. That cannot be a satisfactory account of origin of ethics. For, such agreement is at most mere conformity to a convenient arrangement; it does not guarantee any internal realization or commitment. Such an account also fails to be a satisfactory account of ethics. Just because some people got together and decided to call certain kind of convenient behavior right or wrong does not make the behavior right or wrong. Historically, certain groups of people must have found slavery and bonded labor right, and if asked, they would have all agreed that the arrangement is right because it is convenient for them. But that does not make slavery or bonded labor ethically right. (ii) The other point of objection is that the social contract theory wrongly equates ethical correctness with social correctness and ethical behavior with socially approved practices. But that is counter-intuitive. For, if what

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Singer, P. 1981. The Biological basis of ethics. In The Expanding Circle: Ethics and Sociobiology, New York, 1981, pp. 23–53.

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ethics is merely socially approved practices, then no social practice can ever be considered as ethically wrong. There would be no scope to ethically object against a practice that is socially agreed upon. Statements such as “My society practices bonded labour, but I find the practice of bonded labor morally wrong” would be treated as contradictions in terms. But, such statements, which are often the precursor of a social change, are not viewed as contradictions. It follows that the conception of ethics as mere social conventions is seriously flawed. (iii) It has also been observed that the social origin of ethics theories make ethics culture-specific. For, the norms of social correctness and socially permissible behavior may vary from culture to culture. Those who endorse absolutism or universalism (discussed in Chapter 3) in ethics naturally are not satisfied with that. On that ground, they reject the theories about social origin of ethics.

Quick Question 4.10 Which, according to you, of the miscellaneous objections against the social origin of ethics is the most powerful? Justify your answer.

4.7 Conclusion on Origin of Ethics At this point, we shall conclude the discussion on various types of theories on the origin of ethics. So far, you have been introduced to three major kinds: (a) divine origin, (b) biological origin, and (c) social origin of ethics. The salient points about each kind, along with the major proponents’ views, have been discussed. The discussion has been followed up by existing objections against the position. The choice is yours to pick from the variety, after carefully examining the arguments from each side. However, if scientific evidence is to be held as a measure, then currently the biological origin of ethics is gaining popularity among the thinkers. This also brings our discussion on metaethics to a close. From next chapter, we shall start learning about normative ethics. However, there are a few points that I think deserves your attention. In what follows, I shall discuss these two topics in brief: The comparison between law and ethics

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The surprisingly common responses to an ethical dilemma and their implication about ethics Study questions on social origin of ethics 1. How is the position social origin of ethics different from (a) divine origin of ethics and (b) biological origin of ethics? Explain. 2. What does contractarianism mean? What are some of its main features? 3. Hobbes described the state of nature as “a state when every man against every man”. What does he mean by that? How is the state of nature linked to social contract in his theory? 4. What did Rousseau mean in his statement “Men are born free, but everywhere are in chains”? Also, what does freedom mean here? 5. The concept of state of nature is used in the theories of both Hobbes and Rousseau, but their descriptions of the state of nature differ sharply. Bring out the difference in the two conceptualizations of the state of nature. 6. What is the point that Dworkin makes against ‘social contract’? How would this objection impact contractarianism as a position and the social origin of ethics theory? 7. What is Hume’s objection against the interpretation of social contract as tacit consent? 8. What does it mean to claim “consent is not inherited”? 9. What are the key points that Samuel Clarke makes against Hobbes’s contractarianism? 10. Summarize the points that Peter Singer makes against Hobbes’s conceptualization of the state of nature. What are the implications of Singer’s criticism on ethics and human nature?

4.8 Law and Ethics In this section, law and ethics and their similarities and differences will be discussed. Although the topic in this section is not directly linked to the topic of origin of ethics, it does have a bearing. If theories of social origin of ethics are to be followed, then we have to believe that ethics came in human society as a human creation as a part of the socialization and civilization endeavor. Allegedly, ethics came as an instrument of the society to bring in some social order and to regulate people who are otherwise unruly and wild natured. If that is the case, then one might ask: Then how is ethics any different from law? For, ethics and law both are normative in character, as they insist on what should be the case. Moreover, law is also a socially created instrument for regulating otherwise wild-natured people. Law is also a regulatory tool that society wields generally to warn and to keep people on an approved track. How, then, are law and ethics different?

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To this, the answer would be that there are important differences between law and ethics. (a) First difference is that ethical norms are not created in the way the legal norms are created. The creation of a law follows a certain tangible, formal, and a wellrecorded procedure. For example, in India the law-making process starts from a proposal to make a law, brought by Member of the Parliament (MP) or by a Rajyasabha member to the Parliament of India. At this stage, the proposal is called a Bill. A Bill is just the draft of a legislative proposal. This Bill is introduced as published in the official gazette. A committee may be appointed to prepare a detailed report on the Bill, and expert opinion may be sought. After this, in both the houses of Parliament the Bill is put up for vote in terms of support or reject. When it is passed in both houses of the Parliament, the Bill is sent to the President of India for his assent. After this, the Bill becomes an Act, i.e. a law or a legal Act of India. So, the laws come to be created by a legislative procedure. Apart from this procedure, some cultural rules also may be inducted as a cultural or customary law. Ethics and its norms, however, are not created by any legislative or judiciary act. No country or society has an ethics-making process. There is no tangible and recorded history of ethical rules being made in the way a law is made. As we have seen above in this chapter, even the contractarian theories do not try to provide a detailed and historical account of when and how ethics was created. Therefore, from the point of genesis, ethics and law are not the same. (b) Secondly, the implementation and enforcement for law and ethics is also very different. A law is backed up by a country’s legal system. Once created, the law is implemented and enforced by the executive branch of the government of that country. For instance, in India the Constitution upholds the law and delegates the power of its implementation to central and to the state authorities. In the center, the Ministry of Home Affairs oversees the implementation and enforcement in the country, whereas in the states, the Home Departments are responsible for its implementation and enforcement. Ethics, on the other hand, is not backed up by any country’s constitution. There is no specific authority or system which is designated to oversee the implementation and enforcement of the ethical norms and values. Actually, there lies a big difference between law and ethics. The enforcement of legal ‘should’ is by ‘force’ and has a direct consequence if not followed. There is a fear of punishment in law. There is no such element of forcible compliance, or a direct punishment for violation, attached to the norms of ethics. The motivation for conformity to the ethical rules is supposed to be ‘internal’. The ethical motivation, either to do the right thing or to desist from doing the wrong thing, is supposed to come from within the person. The person is expected to follow the ethical rules voluntarily and not because of any fearsome authority or because of some punitive consequences.

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These differences should show that law and ethics are not the same, even though both are normative in character. The discussion above is supposed to underscore their differences in their origin, maintenance, implementation, and enforcement. Apart from these, we may also try to understand the relation between ethics and law. What is the relation between law and ethics? Is law a part of ethics? Is the legal rules included in ethics as a part of ethics? Consider this picture (Pic. 4.4):

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Pic. 4.4 Law included in ethics

Unfortunately, this Pic. 4.4 is wrong. For, if this were true, then every single law would also be an ethical rule. It would be impossible for a law to be unethical. However, we do know from human history that there have been many laws have been in the past which were unduly oppressive, unfair, and therefore cannot be called ethically right. Consider for example, the laws that discriminate between the rights of different populations in a country based on ethnicity, race, caste, gender, or religion. In the USA, during seventeenth and eighteenth century, people from Africa were kidnapped on a regular basis and brought to the US shore through slave trade. The slave trade thrived on belief in racism. The black people were considered as racially inferior and therefore fit to be sold off and used like cattle. The US laws supported the slavery practice. In the USA, a sold slave was treated as a property of the owner. US law did not permit any legal right of a property to a slave. A slave’s testimony was not legally admissible in the US legal court in litigation involving a white person. Even when attacked, a slave did not have a legal right to strike a white person. These are some example of unjust laws that are not ethically permissible; these were laws nonetheless. Hence, law cannot be rightly conceived as included within ethics, as Pic. 4.4 proposes. Then, is ethics part of law? Is ethics included as a within law? That is, are the ethical norms are a subset of the legal rules? Consider the picture: This Pic. 4.5 is also a wrong depiction. For, this picture implies that what is ethical, must be legal; that is, what is morally permissible must be legally permissible also. However, that need not necessarily be the case. Sometimes, what is ethically right or permissible may not be legally permissible. For example, during March–April 1930, in pre-independence time in India, Gandhiji led the Dandi March in protest against the extremely unjust Salt Law imposed on Colonial India by the British. Salt is an essential commodity for people, and Britain knowingly kept the salt trade under their control. The Salt Law of the British prohibited the colonized Indians from manufacturing and selling salt. The Indians were forced by the Salt Law to buy salt from the British traders. Moreover, the Salt Law imposed on the buyer’s tax on salt. Gandhiji viewed the Salt Laws as completely unjust and led the Dandi

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March, which is also known as the Salt Satyagraha, as an act of civil disobedience in protest against the unjust law. The Dandi March started with a few companions of Gandhiji. However, as Gandhiji and his few companions progressed, thousands and thousands of ordinary Indians spontaneously joined the rank. The procession thus kept on growing and continued for 241 miles before it reached Dandi on April 5, 1930. The international journalists and media watched in awe the Indians committing a symbolic crime against a law. After reaching Dandi, Gandhiji and his followers engaged in salt-making, which was illegal activity as per the Salt Law, from the saltrich mud by the Arabian Sea. It was a public act in open defiance of the law. Some 80,000 people were arrested for breaking the law, and many were beaten brutally by the British police, but none of the non-violent protesters raised a finger against the police. The non-violent protest and its aftermath left an indelible mark of humiliation and defiance on the face of the British rulers. The act of mass civil disobedience at Dandi was an act of ethical uprightness, but it was not a legally permissible act by the-then legal regime.

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Pic. 4.5 Ethics included in law

If none of the pictures above correctly captures the relation between law and ethics, then what exactly is their relationship? I suggest that we might view the relation between law and ethics as Pic. 4.6:

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Pic. 4.6 Relation between ethics and law

As Pic. 4.6 shows, ethics and law are better treated as separate normative domains. But, they do have an overlap area, which is labeled in Pic. 4.6 as E & L (ethics and law). Let us first consider the overlap area, E & L. It represents all those rules which both law and ethics agree on being right or wrong. E.g. on the practice of bonded labor, law considers it as illegal, just as ethical norms would find it ethically wrong. Committing the murder of an innocent person in an unprovoked situation is both unethical and illegal. Similarly, right to basic education is both a legal right and a moral right.

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However, there are issues and concerns in ethics, which may not be formalized as a law. This is the area, which is ethics, but not law. For example, universal health coverage (UHC) is a normative goal for the health systems in a country. UHC means that access to health care should be universal; or, every resident in the country should have access to healthcare services, as and when and where it is needed, without the financial hardship. It is an ethical goal; it is how a country’s healthcare services and health system should be. However, it is not yet a law in India; that is, it is not yet a legally acknowledged right. Also, there could be actions that are ethically permissible, but legally not permissible. I have given above the historical example of Gandhiji’s civil disobedience as an example of that. Similarly, there are issues which are legally permissible but ethically not permissible. This is the area which is law, but not ethics. We may consider the case of unfair laws. In the aforementioned discriminatory, racist law, we have found an example of this. We may also cite the example of countries where there is no law which explicitly prohibits discrimination at workplace. Taking advantage of that legal gap, employers may differentiate between workers on the basis of their citizenship status in the country and set payment plans in a discriminatory manner. The nationals get paid more, whereas the foreign nationals get paid less for the same work. That practice may be legally permissible in that country, but is not ethically permissible. So, though law too has a distinct social origin and is used as a normative tool by the society to keep people in check, law is neither the same as ethics nor is it included in ethics. Think a little 4.6 “For a country, to have laws is more important than having ethics”. What is your opinion about this claim? How would you justify your opinion?

4.9 Experimental Research in Ethics The discussion in this chapter will end with a brief report on some of the notable experimental work in ethics. We shall start with the famous trolley problem.

4.9.1 The Trolley Problem The trolley problem is a popular thought experiment in ethics. A thought experiment is a theoretical tool and an exercise in imagination. It is an experiment that can be conducted by thinking over it. With it, one can perform a structured, intellectual deliberation to speculate about a problem. The German term for it is gedankenexperiment. The thought experiments are used for different purposes, e.g. education, hypothesis checking, and problem solving. The trolley problem offers us a scenario, which is easy to visualize. It allows for choices, and it asks us to make an informed ethical choice out of those. It is called

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the trolley problem because a trolley is an essential part of the scenario it offers. The credit of the original trolley problem goes to English philosopher Philippa Foot (1967), who proposed it as a scenario, referred to as Scenario 1 in the discussion below, for exercising ethical choice. Judith Jarvis Thompson, another philosopher from MIT, USA, coined the name the trolley problem and proposed an alternative scenario, which is mentioned as the trolley problem Scenario 2 in the discussion below. The trolley problem is quite renowned in both philosophy and psychology and has made its place even in the popular culture. Many variants of it have sprouted in the form of memes in the internet, as cartoons, and have featured in episodes in TV serials. The Trolley Problem Scenario 1: The basic version of the problem is as follows: You see an unmanned trolley,52 hurtling fast down a track.53 Imagine that the trolley is headed towards a junction, where the tracks fork out. You see that in its present track, five people are working, unaware of the danger. If the trolley continues in its path, these five people surely stand to be killed. You are near the forked junction, and you have access to pull a lever that will divert the trolley on to a spur (a branch line). But on the spur, you see that one person is working, who is also oblivious of the danger. If the trolley is diverted to the spur, it would then surely run over that one person who is working on the spur. You have a hard decision to make: Do you pull the lever, or not? Should you pull the lever, or not? (Pic. 4.7).

Pic. 4.7 Scenario 1, trolley problem

The trolley problem actually presents a dilemma based on two different recommendations from two different schools of thought in ethics on the evaluation of the ethical goodness of an action. It was originally presented to test our moral intuitions about a choice. The situation lays out two options, to pull the lever or not to pull the lever, and with each option the end result is the death of some people. Neither is a happy choice, and each includes a sacrifice. The question is: Which sacrifice is ethically acceptable over the other, and why? 52

A trolley may be understood as a large metal basket, or a small truck or a car on wheels, used for carrying heavy or large items. The smaller versions of a trolley may be seen in supermarkets or airports, where trolleys are used for carrying items purchased or luggage. The bigger versions may be imagined as tramcars, or streetcars, on track. 53 Alternatively, you are the driver of a trolley in which the brake is not functioning.

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There is a major ethical position called Utilitarianism, which we shall discuss in details in a subsequent chapter, which promotes the idea that those actions are ethically good which are for the greatest good of greatest number of people. It suggests that we should choose that action which produces the best overall consequence. From this position, the option, that you should pull the lever, seems to follow. For, pulling the lever would kill one person, but that sacrifice is acceptable because it would save five people. Saving five people would be the greatest good for the greatest number of people. However, there is also another school of thought, called Deontological ethics, which too shall be discussed in this book in a later chapter. It says that it is the ethical principle which counts above all considerations about the consequences of an action. If it is ethically wrong to kill a person, then killing one person is just as wrong as killing five persons. Just because five is a greater number than one, that does not make the killing of one person ethically right. Therefore, the sacrifice of one person against five lives is not an ethically acceptable option; so we should not pull the lever. Thus, the trolley problem becomes an ethical paradox. If you pull the switch, you commit an ethical offense; and if you do not pull the switch, you commit another ethical offense! The Trolley Problem Scenario 2: In 1976, Judith Jarvis Thompson presented a slightly modified trolley problem from Scenario 1. It is known as the bystander at the switch version. Everything else remains the same: You see an unmanned trolley hurtling fast down a track. It is headed towards a forked junction, and you see that in its present track, five people are working, unaware of the danger. If the trolley continues in its path, these five people are sure to get killed. You are standing near the forked junction, but the difference is that in this scenario you are standing on an overpass or an overbridge near the junction. This time, there is no one working on the branch line. In this scenario, there is no lever to pull within your access. But, there is a fat man standing next you on the overbridge, also watching as the trolley is coming. The fat bystander is the only heavy object within your reach that you can push on the trolley as a weight to divert it from its current track to the branch line. Again, the situation lays out two options, to push the fat man onto the track or not to push the fat man. And again, with each option the end result is the death of some people. Either one man has to be sacrificed, or five persons have to be sacrificed. Once more, neither is a happy choice, and each includes a sacrifice. The question is: Which sacrifice is ethically acceptable over the other, and why? Sacrificing one to save the lives of five may seem permissible to Utilitarian thinking, but pushing the innocent bystander would be objected by the Deontological ethics. For, pushing a man onto the track and putting him at peril is a seriously offensive infringement on the bystander’s right, even if the pushing may save five lives. This, in short, is the trolley problem. Both of its versions sparked significant ethical debates among philosophers and non-philosophers. The trolley problem has found its way in discussions on medical ethics and legal ethics, and as already mentioned, in popular culture. Let us now look into empirical, experimental research in ethics with the trolley problem.

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Quick Question 4.11 Experiments are supposed to be repeatable. Do you suppose the thought experiments are repeatable? Empirical research using the trolley problem: In 2001, the trolley problem was used in an empirical research by Joshua Greene54 and his colleagues at Harvard. It was seen that to the Scenario 1, where a lever is available to pull to divert the trolley, people in general approve of pulling the lever, which kills one person but saves five people. By contrast, in Scenario 2, people tend to disapprove of physically pushing a person off the overpass in front of a trolley and thus do not approve killing that one person to save the life of five persons on that track. One of the curious findings from this research was the commonness in the responses. An overwhelming majority of participants responded in a strikingly similar way to the two scenarios. To Scenario 1, most people approved of pulling the lever to kill one, but save five. But, in Scenario 2, most people did not approve killing the one by pushing the man onto the track to save five other people. What caused this commonness in the responses? The other interesting question is: Why do people differ in their responses in these two scenarios, when in both scenarios the choice is to kill one person to save the life of five persons? That is, the question is: Why sacrifice of one against five saved lives seems acceptable to people in one case, and why the same one against five saved lives seems unacceptable in the other case? Greene and his team observed that neuro-imaging and behavior studies indicate that in our brain Scenario 1 and Scenario 2 are processed differently. They explained that experimental evidence shows that the strong negative emotional response that people show towards Scenario 2 comes from a conflict between two kinds of activities in our brains. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technique, Joshua Greene and Jonathan Cohen and others argued that fMRI tests demonstrate when there is a personal force involved; namely, as in Scenario 2 where the fat man has to be pushed personally by hand, two network areas in the brain both light up. These areas are: (a) medial parts of the frontal lobe, which gets activated when situations involve emotion about the others, and (b) dorsolateral surface of frontal lobe, which gets activated when rational, mental computation goes on. In Scenario 2, both the areas get activated, as there is both personal force about others is involved and there is rational, mental computation about five vs one involved. There is a conflict between the two sets of signals, and anterior cingulated cortex registers that conflict. The emotional response overrides the rational computation. On the other hand, when considering hands-off or impersonal situation, as in Scenario 1, which involves merely a pulling of a lever, our brain reacts differently. In that case, only the dorsolateral surface of frontal lobe gets activated, and the mental, 54

Greene, J.D. 2016. Solving the Trolley problem. In A Companion to Experimental Philosophy, ed. Justin Sytsma and Wesley Buckwalter. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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rational computation between five lives versus one life stands out. There is no conflict between two sets of signals. the victim. Greene’s hypothesis was that evolution has equipped us with an instinctive, emotive repulsion against manhandling or killing by hands an innocent person. This overrides the rational cost–benefit calculation. Thus, in Scenario 2, it is not merely a case of five lives versus one; people tend to disapprove more with a negative, emotional response. Greene and his team claim that as a consequence we are more likely to disapprove of harmful actions that involve the application of personal force—that is, where which the agent has to get personally involved in the harmful action (Scenario 2). They also observed that we are more likely to disapprove if the harm is intended as a means to the agent’s goal and is not merely a foreseen (or unforeseen) sideeffect. The intention in the harm changes the situation completely. In their view, this distinction between doing harm intentionally as a means to the agent’s goal and doing harm as a side-effect plays a crucial role in eliciting two kinds of responses to these scenarios. Scenario 1 involves harming one person as a side-effect of saving five lives, whereas Scenario 2 involves intentionally harming a person as a means to attain the goal of saving five people.  More experiments with the trolley problem: In 2007, psychologists Fiery Cushman and Liane Young and biologist Marc Hauser administered an online test with the two scenarios. Nearly 200,000 people from 100 different countries participated in it from different geographical locations, e.g. Europe, Asia, North, and South America. Men and women from different ethnic origin, blacks, whites, browns, participated, and the diversity of participants also showed up in their age, literacy level, religious belief. This survey confirmed the earlier finding that people exhibit a curious commonness in their responses to the two scenarios. An overwhelming majority (89%) of the respondents approved of pulling the lever in Scenario 1 and did not approve of pushing the fat man onto the track in Scenario 2. Subsequent surveys also brought in similar results of commonness in responses towards the two scenarios. Study Questions

1. Where are law and ethics similar, and where are they dissimilar? Explain. 2. Consider the statement: “All that is legally right, need not be ethically right”. Is this statement true or false? Justify your answer. 3. What is a thought experiment? 4. Mention the important difference (s) between Scenario 1 and Scenario 2 of the trolley problem. 5. What is the relation between the trolley problem and ethics?

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6. Explain Joshua Greene and his team’s explanation of why most people answer Scenario 1 and Scenario 2 in two different ways. Do you agree with their explanation? Do you find it adequate?

4.10 Summary and Conclusion of the Chapter In this chapter, we took up a frequently asked, but relatively less addressed, question: What is the origin of ethics? In answer, we took up three major kinds of theories: Divine origin, Biological origin, and Social origin of ethics. The three kinds of theories are quite different from each other in their presuppositions and arguments. We have seen that each position picturizes ethics in a different way, imbued with the principles that each position upholds. Each theory has been presented with the salient details and salient objections against it to encourage critical understanding of the position. So, at the end of the chapter, instead of one, we have several answers to the question: What is the origin of ethics? It may seem to some of you that having more than one answer is as good as having no answer at all, so this means that the question has remained unanswered. Let me show why that is not the case. First of all, not all questions have a single answer. It is not necessary that each question must have a single correct answer, as in the case of ‘what is 2 + 2?’ For example, there can be several ways to answer the question ‘What is the way to improve the healthcare system in a country?’ Multiplicity of available answers does not and should not mean there is no answer. Second, though finally each position offers a speculative hypothesis, you must have seen that the answers proposed to ‘what is the origin of ethics?’ are quite serious in their intent and explication. A lot of deliberation and intellectual effort have gone into defending each of the positions with evidentiary support and argumentation. So, we need to accept the fact that this question allows for more than one answer. If you still insist to know which among these is the correct answer, then you need make that choice yourself after closer examination. You see, the three positions differ because their beginning points and presuppositions are different. Divine origin theory presupposes that there is a God, or a supernatural entity, but biological origin theory puts its faith in the sciences and in the theory of evolution, whereas social origin theory postulates an agreement among the members of a society. Accordingly, each theory has tried to arrange its answer around its central concepts. So, this plurality of available answers should further inspire you to think over the answers. What you choose as the right answer for you will be your informed choice. With this, I shall conclude the chapter and also the section on metaethics, here.

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Research Exercises 1. Now that you have gone over the religious origin of ethics, biological origin of ethics, and social origin of ethics and the arguments in support and against each position, which position in your opinion is more acceptable? Why? 2. The theories of origin of ethics are concerned with the origin of Western ethics. Do you supposed that they can adequately account for origin of ethics in the non-western traditions, e.g. Indian ethics, Confucian ethics?

Key Terms • Altruism: A behavioral trait which expresses itself as selfless behavior out of concern for the others and often involves a personal sacrifice. • Biological origin of ethics: Ethics and ethical behavior in humans have originated as a product of evolution and natural selection. The origin of ethics is a completely natural process. • Contractarianism: This term refers to a cluster of theories in political philosophy and ethics which employ the concept of social contract as a pivotal concept to account for the mutual obligations between the state and the individual. • Creationism: The theory that God has created all that there is, including the various life forms. • Divine origin of ethics: It is the view that ethics or the guidelines for the right or wrong behavior have come from a divine being or beings. • Divine command theory: It is the view that the origin of ethics is in the commands of God. It is the strongest form of divine origin of ethics theory. • Empiricism: This is the philosophical tradition which upheld empirical experience and validation as a superior way of knowing. • Evolutionary ethics: It is an approach that ethics can be understood as the phenomenon that arose in humans naturally through natural selection, and all the ethical concepts can be explained in terms of evolutionary biology. • Evolutionary hypothesis: It is Darwin’s proposal that different species have originated from their biological ancestors through the processes of evolution and natural selection. • Euthyphro dilemma: It is a dilemma that Plato attributed to Socrates in his Euthyphro dialogue. In this dilemma, Socrates poses the problems in divine command theory and exposes certain loopholes in it in a conversational manner. • Gene: A gene is the basic physical unit of heredity. It is made up of DNA and carries the information that determines the characteristics, features, and traits that one inherits from the ancestors.

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• Genetic success: It is the success in passing on one’s genes into the next generation. This may happen either by direct parentage or by helping one’s kins or genetic relatives to have offsprings and to leave genes for the next genetic pool. • Inclusive fitness: This is Hamilton’s concept, which counts the fitness of the genetic success and fitness of the relatives as included in the fitness for survival for an individual. • Leap of faith: The expression leap of faith is associated with Danish philosopher Kierkegaard. He believed that belief in God is a matter of blind faith and not a matter of reason or rational argumentation. It is a leap or jump into trust in God, leaving aside all uncertainties. • Modified divine command theory: Those acts are ethically right which God commands us, and God, being good and loving, does not command us acts that are ethically impermissible or instinctively atrocious. • Natural law theory: Aquinas upheld this view which claimed that God has put the ethical standards in human nature, which we then discover through reason and intuition. Ethical norms are therefore divine in origin, but are discovered as natural laws embedded in the human nature. • Natural selection: In Darwin’s evolutionary theory, natural selection is the process or mechanism by which living organisms adapt and change. It is the process which controls the evolution process. • Non-theistic religions: Non-theistic religions are those religions which do not require a belief in a God or Gods, but include a belief in something holy or sacred, e.g. a holy master or a Prophet or a sacred book. • Principle of sufficient reason: It is a philosophical principle that proclaims that for everything that is the case, there must be a sufficient reason why it is so. • Theistic religions: Theistic religions are those religions which require a reference to or a belief in a God or Gods. • The trolley problem: It is a famous thought experiment in ethics and in psychology. It was first proposed by philosopher Philippa Foot, but the name was coined by philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson. • Thought experiment: A thought experiment is an experiment that can be conducted by thinking over it. It offers us a scenario, which is easy to visualize, as a problem, and seeks solutions. • Rationalism: This is the philosophical tradition which held reason as the superior way of knowing. • Reciprocal altruism: Reciprocal altruism is the theory that Robert Trivers proposed. Reciprocal altruism is altruism that happens between two unrelated individuals when there will be return of the benefit, or at least there will be the promise of return benefit in the future. • Religious origin of ethics: It is the view that religion and its teachings are the sole source of all ethics and ethical norms and values.. • Religion: The term has many interpretations. From the etymological meanings and anthropological understanding, the English term religion may be understood as a relation between the humans to that which they consider as holy or sacred

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and vow allegiance as a way to deal with their concern over death and their fate after death. The English term religion is not translatable to Sanskrit term dharma. Reproductive success: In evolutionary terms, it is the success in passing on the gene by direct parentage. That is, if an organism is successful in having its own offspring, it attains reproductive success. Sociobiology: Sociobiology is supposed to be a synthesis between the social sciences and biology to explain all social behavior of all kinds of societies, including that of the humans, on a biological basis. Edward Wilson coined the term and the concept. He proposed it as a new kind of social science based on biology. Social contract: It is a concept that presumes that people in the society came together to form a contract or agreement among themselves about certain social and legal norms, about the kind of government they want. The concept is particularly in use in political philosophy and ethics. Social origin of ethics: This is the view that ethics has originated from the society due to certain necessities that are social by nature. State of nature: The initial state in human society which supposedly existed before any law and order was established. It is also known as the pre-contract state. It is a key feature in contractarian theories.

Chapter 5

Conceptual Toolkit for Ethics

In this chapter we shall: ˛ Learn about some of the major technical concepts of normative ethics: Moral responsibility, Rights, Duty, Justice ˛ Discuss the concepts and the prominent theories related to them ˛ Acquaint ourselves with contemporary theories and discourses on the concepts ˛ Investigate specific ethical issues and dilemmas arising from them ˛ Discover ways to apply the concepts as ethical tools ˛ Develop perspectives to analyze issues using these concepts.

Chapter Overview After metaethics, we shall now make our foray into normative ethics. Our journey will start from the present chapter, where you shall first get to learn about some important, technical concepts of ethics. It will be important for you to learn about these concepts. For, these will act for you as the conceptual tools for you to understand, analyze, and approach an issue from an ethical point of view. In this chapter, you will not only learn about these conceptual tools, but also you shall get tips and suggestions on how to use them. You shall learn about the concept of moral responsibility, which serves as a basic presupposition in normative ethics. It also acts as a prerequisite for judgments of normative ethics. You shall learn what the concept stands for, and under which conditions ethics allows the attribution of moral responsibility, and what the accepted exemption conditions are. The concept of rights also will be discussed. You shall learn about the classification of the rights into many different kinds, and also about how to resolve disputes when rights are in conflict with each other. The concept of duty will be introduced too. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 C. Chakraborti, Introduction to Ethics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-0707-6_5

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A major part of this chapter will be on the very contemporary topic of justice. We shall try to critically understand the concept of justice, its various domains, and principles. However, we shall particularly devote some time on two prominent and weighty theories on justice: Rawls’s theory of Justice as Fairness, and the capability approach of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. Main Topics in this Chapter Responsibility Rights Justice Equality Equity Distributive Justice: Rawls Capabilities Approach: Sen and Nussbaum Nussbaum’s Human Central Capabilities

5.1 Concepts in the Toolkit The concepts that you will learn in this chapter are some of the core concepts of ethics. The discussions on ethical right and wrong are driven by these concepts. Also, these are the technical concepts which will enable you to unravel the ethical dimension of an issue. You see, the same issue may be approached and analyzed from various perspectives. For example, the issue of high illiteracy rate among the population of a country may be treated as an economic problem. For, illiteracy stifles the opportunities for innovation, and obstructs the economic potential of people, and thereby it hampers the economic status of a country. However, illiteracy also has an ethical dimension. But how to approach that ethical dimension? For that, knowing more about the moral rights and ethical entitlements may be one of the ways. Using the concept of the rights, you might see how to be educated could be phrased as an ethical entitlement of a citizen from the society. Through the lens of the concept of moral responsibility, you might understand and how high illiteracy rate in a country indicates a lapse in the ethical responsibility of the society and the social institutions towards its citizens (Pic. 5.1).

Economic problem?

High Illiteracy rate

Pic. 5.1 Approaching the same issue from different angles

Ethical problem?

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Learning about these technical concepts should: • Add value to your conceptual base • Serve as a conceptual toolkit to enhance your analytical power • Enable you to approach an ethical issue in a more informed manner. This is why this chapter has been entitled as Conceptual toolkit for ethics. In this chapter, the following key concepts have been specifically chosen for discussion: Box 5.1 List of concepts to be discussed in the present chapter  Responsibility, as used in sentences such as: ‘X (someone) should be held morally responsible for y (where y is some event, decision, or action)’.  Rights, as used in sentences such as: ‘X (someone) has, or does not have, the moral right to do y (where y an action)’  Duty, as used in sentences such as: ‘It is X’s (someone’s) duty to do, or not to do, y (where y is an action)’.  Justice/Injustice and Fairness/Unfairness, as used in sentences such as: ‘The arrangement should be just’. ‘X (someone) has been treated unfairly’  Capabilities, as is expounded in the capability approach of Amartya Sen Each of these concepts listed in Box 5.1, responsibility, rights, duty, justice, and capabilities, will be discussed with appropriate examples and relevant theories. However, just a word of advice. We need to remember that these are technical concepts. Even though the concepts may appear to you as simple English words that you already know and may have used, remember that within the purview of ethics these concepts are understood in a certain specific sort of way. They are understood and used with a specific meaning and are applied only under certain conditions. So, when using these concepts, one needs to be careful to learn their precise meaning and use them with due respect.

5.2 Moral Responsibility In ethics, the term moral responsibility, or responsibility, is understood in a certain way. You see, colloquially, when we speak of responsibility, we use statements such as: Ex. (i) Janaki is responsible for fund collection (some action)

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In our colloquial use, ‘to be responsible’ may mean different things. For example: (a1) We may mean that ‘x has been assigned the task of doing y’. In that sense, (i) means that Janaki has been assigned the task of fund collection. Sometimes, we also use ‘responsible’ to mean that: (a2) ‘X has the full control and authority to do y’. For example:

Ex. (ii) The editorial team is responsible for the selection of an article for publication in the journal In (ii), we mean that the editorial team which has the authority to select an article for publication in the journal. However, there is another usage of ‘to be responsible’, which links it with attribution of credit or blame to the agent for the deed. X is responsible for y in this sense means that: (a3) ‘X caused y to happen’, or ‘X contributed in some way for y to happen’, or ‘Credit or blame for doing y goes to X’, where x is an agent and y is an event that has taken place, or is a past action. For example: Ex. (iii) A known arsonist was responsible for setting the fire which devastated the neighborhood Here, the ‘setting of the fire’ is the y, for which a known arsonist is the agent and is being held responsible. The sense that the word responsible carries in (iii) is not that the arsonist was assigned the task of setting the fire, as in (a1). It also does not mean that the arsonist had the full authority to set the fire, as in (a2). It means that the arsonist did it; he caused the fire that devastated the neighborhood and is to be blamed for his action. Consider another example: Ex. (iv) A small group of women was responsible for turning this village into a clean and green village. In example (iv), ‘turning this village into a clean and green place’ is the y, and (iv) states that the credit for doing y goes to a small group of women, the agents. It means that this small group of women did it; they turned the village into a clean and green village, for which they deserve praise.

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For our technical understanding, moral responsibility will be understood in the sense of (a3). In reference to a deed done, or to a past event (y), the concept of responsibility then attributes moral responsibility of the deed to an agent. That is not all, it also holds the agent, or the doer, accountable for doing it. The concept of moral responsibility is linked to the concept of accountability, and ethical credit or blame is attributed to the agent. So, from the above, we learnt that colloquially, the term responsibility may mean different things; e.g. any of the (a1), (a2), or (a3). However, in the context of ethics, our understanding of moral responsibility shall be confined to the sense given in (a3). We also learnt that in ethics attribution of accountability, moral credit or blame is central to the concept.

5.2.1 Moral Responsibility as a Pre-condition for Moral Praise or Blame Note that in philosophy, in particular in ethics, moral responsibility is a required precondition for conferring moral praise or for attributing moral blame to the agent. That is, a person can be praised as being ethical, or be reproved as morally blameworthy for doing y only if the person is found to be morally responsible for y. In other words, unless an person is morally responsible for an action, it does not make any sense to praise or blame the person for doing it. In example (iii), the arsonist is morally blameworthy because the arsonist has been found to be responsible for setting the fire in the neighborhood. Similarly, in example (iv), since the group was found as being responsible for the good deed, the women’s group is morally praiseworthy for the cleanliness drive in the village.

5.2.2 Elements in Moral Responsibility Let us now try to restate to ourselves what the key elements are in the concept of moral responsibility. When applying this concept, we need to look for: Box 5.2 Key elements for application of moral responsibility 1.  An event, or an action, or a deed 2.  The agent, or the doer, of the action, or behavior 3. The role that the agent plays in connection to (1). Element 1 is an action or event in the past. Element 2 is the agent, or the doer, who would be found morally responsible, or not morally responsible. The agent could be

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an individual, or even a group of people, such as a group of engineers. Sometimes, in an extended sense, the agent may be even a collective body, such as the army, the government, or even a company or a business organization. Element 3 in Box 5.2 is quite important. If the action or event under consideration is ethically permissible, we try to find out if and to what extent the agent contributed to it to happen. If the action or event is an ethically impermissible or wrong act, we try to find out not only whether the agent did it, but also if and to what extent the agent acted to prevent the action or the event from happening. You see, moral responsibility is attributed not just for causing an action, but also for certain omissions. Omission means the act of failing to fulfill an ethical obligation. It is not doing what is required, and that is also considered as a kind of action. Sometimes omissions become ethically, and legally, far more important than the commission, or the active contribution to the occurrence. This is why a distinction among actions as acts of commission and acts of omission is generally considered as important in ethics and in law. Let us try to understand this distinction before we go any further on the topic of moral responsibility. Quick Question 5.1 Consider the following: Fatik is now seriously addicted to playing computer games. 90% of his waking hours now go into playing computer games, by bunking classes, and avoiding all social contacts and other activities. Apply the learning from the sections above to identify the elements in moral responsibility in this case.

5.2.3 Acts of Commission and Acts of Omission Consider the following scenarios: Box 5.3 Two scenarios Scenario 1: Person A feeding poison in food to person B. Scenario 2: Person A knows that the food served to person B is poisoned, but does not prevent B from consuming the food. Answer the question: Do these two scenarios in Box 5.3. present the same situation? I hope all of you would agree that the two scenarios do not present the same situation. In scenario 1, person A, the agent, is actively engaged in the act of poisoning. In scenario 2, person A or the agent is an onlooker who knows that poisoned food

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has been served to person B, but does nothing to prevent the action. The outcome in both cases may be same; person B may die, or become gravely ill, as a result of ingestion of poison. However, the role of person A, as the agent vis a vis the action, is not the same. This difference in A’s role is to be noted. Let us take two more acts as example: Box 5.4 Two more scenarios Scenario 3: Person A writes a review report of a product making many nice but false claims about the product. Scenario 4: Person B writes a report of a product, but leaves certain true but damaging information out of the report. Between scenarios 3 and 4, there is a similar distinction. In scenario 3, the reviewer writes a false report, fabricating the characteristics of a product. Writing a false report is a direct action by A. In scenario 4, person B leaves out the damaging information about a product. It is an act of suppression of truth, but not an act of false reporting. The pairs (scenario 1)—(scenario 2) and (scenario 3)—(scenario 4) illustrate the distinction between: • Acts of commission, and • Acts of omission.  An act of commission is actually performing an act. The course of action is directly initiated by the agent. For example: Telling a lie would be an act of commission.  An act of omission is not doing something. That not doing is still treated as an action, or as a failure to do the needful. For example, to know the truth but not telling the truth would be an act of omission. Note that the acts of omissions could be from innocent ignorance; due to naivete or pure ignorance. For example, a newcomer may not know all the rules of an office and may fail to log out from the office computer system at the end of a workday. It is an act of omission from ignorance. On the other hand, an act of commission usually do not result from such ignorance. Though there can be notable exceptions (see the discussion in Sect. 5.2.7 on different kinds of ignorances), usually, an act of commission involves intention and motive. It also involves more effort than the corresponding act of omission. The effort often indicates a stronger intention or motive behind an act of commission. These are some of the reasons why the law treats acts of commission differently than the acts of omission. From the above, it would be a mistake to think that acts of commission and acts of omission can only be ethically wrong actions. Note that this distinction may be seen even among ethically right actions. An act of commission may be doing the ethically right thing, as well as doing a wrong action. For example, taking care of their child is an ethically right thing to do for a parent; it is also an act of commission. On the

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other hand, hurting an innocent person is an ethically wrong act, it is also an act of commission. Similarly, one may also do the ethically right thing by an act of omission. For example, we do the ethically right thing by not taking what does not belong to you; and it is an act of omission. However, we may also do the ethically wrong thing by acts of omission; e.g. parents who fail to take care of their child and neglect the child’s needs engage in a failure of their ethical obligations as act of omission. Sometimes, an act of omission may be viewed as a grave ethical lapse. To illustrate this point, I would like to cite the case of a truly exceptional and exemplary Minister that India had, Sri Lal Bahadur Shastri, who later became the Prime Minister of India. Case 5.1. narrates the historical incident. A Case in Point 5.1 In 1956, the-then Rail Minister, Sri Lal Bahadur Shastri resigned from his post as the Rail Minister accepting the moral responsibility of Ariyalur Train accident, Tamil Nadu, India. In November 1956, in Ariyalur train accident, 142 passengers died and 111 were injured. The actual count perhaps was higher, as many bodies could not be recovered from under the debris. Couple of months before this, in August 1956, a major train accident happened at Mahbubnagar, India, which took the lives of as many as 112 persons. After the Mahbubnagar accident, Shastriji, as the Railways and Transport Minister, promptly tendered his resignation to the-then Prime Minister Nehru. But Shastriji was asked to withdraw his resignation. However, closely after this, when the Ariyalur accident happened, taking the moral responsibility for the accident, Shastriji once more promptly submitted his resignation to the Prime Minister. Question: On what ground Shastriji accepted the moral responsibility for the train accident? In Case 5.1, you see, we cannot say that the Railways Minister caused or contributed directly to the major train accidents. The accidents happened due to technical failures, with which Shastriji had no involvement. So, he had no direct involvement with the incidents, and also note that no one held him directly responsible for these. Yet, Shastriji himself felt that the moral responsibility towards the very unfortunate accidents lies with him. Because, the issue here is the failure to prevent the accident; not the actual engagement with the causation of the accident. Failure to prevent the accidents is an act of omission. Ensuring greater public safety measures for the passenger safety in the railways, which would prevent the occurrence or recurrence of such disastrous accidents, lies with the Rail Ministry as a whole, and finally with the Rail Minister. Being at the helm of the Railways as the Railways Minister, he perhaps felt that the chain of responsibility of failure to prevent the accident finally rested with him. He did not try to avoid the onus of moral responsibility for the acts of omission that must have led to the repeated disastrous train accidents. He took the moral responsibility on behalf of everyone involved for the

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acts of omission that led to such accidents, and tendered his resignation. Thus he set a gold standard for the politicians. Unfortunately, however, very few Indian politicians have followed the example set by Shastriji, and when they have, it has been followed mostly for personal or political gain. From a normative perspective, the distinction between act of commission and act of omission offers interesting insights about our judgment and choices. For example, is letting someone die ethically as wrong as killing someone? Suppose that the caregiver, a relative of the patient, of an elderly patient is tired of caring for the patient. If the caregiver actually puts a pillow on the patient’s face to suffocate the patient, that would be an act of commission. However, suppose that the caregiver finds one day that the patient is choking on food, but does nothing to help the patient. That would be an act of omission. The patient may die due to wilful act of omission by not preventing a life-threatening situation for the patient. Or, consider the Trolley Problem scenarios that we have gone through earlier. You know that the trolley would run over the people on the track. If you choose to pull a lever, or push a fat man standing next to you on the track to stop the trolley, it would be an act of commission. One person would die, but you would save five persons. If you, on the other hand, choose not to do anything, but watch as the heavy trolley hurtles over the track killing the people on the track die, that would be an act of omission. You did not intervene to prevent the people on the track die. Now, some philosophers argue that there is no ethically relevant distinction between the two. For example, the act of letting people die, when intervention could have saved their lives, is no less bad than killing them. Bennett (1983), for example, argues that the difference between these two kinds is hard to define, and that whichever way we define the difference, those definitions are ethically irrelevant. Singer also has argued that the omission–commission distinction has no ethical relevance. However, I think that it is important to learn to draw this distinction in ethics. In particular, it is important to learn that moral responsibility does not end just by finding out who has done the deed. It is equally crucial to investigate who has failed to do it, or who has failed to prevent it, who could have and should have intervened. Sometimes we are not careful enough to discern the acts of omission, and spend all our efforts on finding out the acts of commission, and our judgment goes astray. But, in attributing moral responsibility, a failure to prevent an undesirable outcome (an act of omission) when one could have could be every bit as important as an act of commission. We can still pin responsibility onto the agent. You may realize that considerations about act of commission and act of omission are also useful to apply to assess the performance of large entities, such as business organizations, governments, which fail in their duties. Suppose that in a country, every year lives of some citizens are lost due to some diseases, which are treatable, and above all, preventable. A question may be raised: Who is morally responsible for these preventable deaths? The answer would surely gain in substance if considerations about act of commission and act of omission are brought in. Then, we may start to find out who in that country has the capacity to prevent the recurrence of the diseases, and who had the power, but failed to exercise the power to prevent the deaths.

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Now, we shall return to our main discussion on moral responsibility. We may remind ourselves that when considering point 3 of Box 5.2, Sect. 5.2.2, we should take into consideration both the acts of commission and the acts of omission. From the discussion above, it should be clear to you that none of these two kinds of acts is any less important than the other. We shall discuss more about them when we discuss below the conditions for attributing moral responsibility. As of now, we shall rephrase the elements of moral responsibility as follows: Box 5.5 Elements of moral responsibility rephrased 1. An event, or an action, or a deed 2. The agent, or the doer, of the action, or behavior 3. The role that the agent plays in connection to the event or action by commission or by omission.

Quick Question 5.2 Tuhina walked into the store after seeing the big and splashy advertisement poster “75% off on all items” and bought several items. At the purchase counter, she found out that it was actually “Upto 75% off on all items” with “Upto” written in tiny letters in the advertisement poster. Is this is a case of: (a) act of commission or (b) act of omission? Justify your answer.

5.2.4 Moral Responsibility from the Philosophical Perspective  In philosophy, the concept of moral responsibility presents itself as a perennial philosophical problem. A brief overview of this problem will be presented below. Philosophers argue that if Hard Determinism is true, moral responsibility would be impossible; and if moral responsibility really exists, then Hard Determinism cannot be true. They are incompatible positions. What is Hard Determinism? Hard determinism in philosophy is the theory that all actions and events that happen are determined by some pre-existing reason or cause. That is, nothing can happen without a pre-existing reason, or unless its antecedent conditions occur.

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Box 5.6 A general statement of determinism as a position For any event a, a’s occurrence must be determined by some pre-existing reason or cause. Unless its antecedent conditions occur, a cannot occur. Causal determinism is a stricter version of Hard determinism. Phrasing the claim of hard determinism in the terms of causality, it asserts that all that happens in the world are completely determined or necessitated by a causal chain of previously existing or antecedent events, and conditions. Event A happens, because its antecedent event B has happened, and B has happened because its antecedent event C has happened, and so on. The series of causally connected events form a causal chain, in which the relation between the antecedent events and the consequent events is that of a causal necessity. Causal necessity means that if the chain of prior events occurs, there is no way for the consequent event not to happen. On the other hand, no event can occur unless the chain of its antecedent causes occur. Box 5.7 Causal determinism For any event a, a causal chain of prior events, C, necessitates a’s occurrence. That is, if C occurs, it is not possible for a to not occur. On the other hand, a cannot occur unless C has occurred. One of the implications of hard determinism and causal determinism is that the future becomes completely determined by the past. For, it is the series of prior events which completely determine which events would follow. What will happen is already determined by what had happened. This means that the future is already foretold by the past events. As per this position, if we know the series of past events well, the future is predictable. Given this, it follows that in a world ruled by hard determinism or causal determinism, there can be no room for human agency and free will. For, all that will happen is already completely determined by the past events. For a person, all her future actions would be completely fixed and decided by her past actions. Then, there is no opportunity for her to change any of the events, or exercise her free will and do something else that is not already pre-ordained. If this is the case, then there can be no room for moral responsibility. As you saw in the elements of moral responsibility, moral responsibility assumes that the agent played a role in doing the deed, or in bringing about an event. However, if all our actions are determined, strictly causally by the pre-existing chain of antecedent events, then, no matter how much we try, we cannot do anything other than only what is determined to happen already by the past events. Then how can we be held as morally responsible for anything that we do? Why should we be held answerable for actions that we had no choice but to do? So, if Hard Determinism is true, moral responsibility is not possible. Yet, ethics, and all other human endeavors, believe in

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moral responsibility and human agency. This is the famous philosophical problem of moral responsibility. We may try to recast the problem using the more recent claim of biological determinism; that all our behavior is biologically determined. If our genes control our behavior, and if our genes are programmed by natural evolution for a specific purpose (as Richard Dawkins had claimed, see Chap. 4, Sect. 4.5.5.1), then all our behavior is pre-determined finally by natural evolution. People do not, and cannot, really exercise their own free choices in any of their actions! They would only do what the genes direct them do. If this the case, then there is no human agency and free choice. Consequently, we cannot really hold anyone morally responsible for any of their deeds. While discussing determinism, we may be reminded of the ancient doctrine of fatalism. Fatalism is the belief that that all events in one’s life are pre-determined by fate. As soon as a person is born, he or she is born with a pre-ordained fate, which cannot be escaped. Fatalism holds that despite all the seeming free choices in life, all that happen, happen exactly as fate would have it. Fatalism in a powerful form can be found in many early Greek texts. The story of King Oedipus,1 as has been made immortal by dramatist Sophocles, is a tragic example of inescapable fatalism. It is a classic and dreadful tale with the message that no matter how hard one tries, there is no escape from fate. In a fate-governed worldview, free will and personal moral responsibility both would have no place, the doer is nothing but a helpless puppet in the hands of fate. Without free will, as already has been discussed earlier (see Chap. 1, Sect. 1.10), it does not make sense to hold a person morally responsible. At this point, we may add that though fatalism and determinism have similarities in their claims, they are not identical positions. For, in fatalism fate is considered as a supernatural principle; it is an invisible law which supernaturally controls everything that happens. Determinism, on the other hand, is unexceptionally physical and empirical in its convictions. It tries to explain the events in the world by a physical causal series. So, we may articulate the philosophical problem of moral responsibility as follows:

1

Oedipus was a Greek mythological King in Thebes. When Oedipus was born, it was prophesied that Oedipus would kill his father and marry his mother. Oedipus’s father, who was a king, wanted to avert the horrible prophecy, so he ordered a servant to abandon his infant son to die. But, unbeknownst to the King, a shepherd took the baby and gave him to another King and Queen, who raised Oedipus as their own. Oedipus grew up without knowing his real parents. Later, when he came to know of the dreadful prophecy, he thought that if he is not near his parents, the prophecy would not come true. So, he left who he thought were his real parents, and went away. On his way, he met a stranger and in a fit of rage killed the stranger. Oedipus did not know that the stranger was his real father, the King of Thebes. He then came to Thebes, and defeating the Sphinx, he won the throne of Thebes, and also the hands of the widowed Queen, who he did not know was his real mother. Later, all of these terrible truths was revealed to him, and to his mother. His mother, the Queen committed suicide in shame, and poor Oedipus, in utter dejection, blinded himself.

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Box 5.8 The philosophical problem with moral responsibility and determinism If hard determinism, or any of its different versions, is true, then there is no free will and therefore there cannot be moral responsibility. On the other hand, if there is free will and moral responsibility, then hard determinism, or any of its versions, cannot be a true account of the world. Counter argument from Libertarianism: As is the wont of philosophical problems, many philosophers do not accept Hard Determinism, and its versions. Among them, there are the libertarians, who firmly believe in liberty or freedom. The libertarians claim that hard determinism is wrong, and free will, and human agency, exist. They also claim that some of our actions are certainly freely chosen. In defense, they cite our own subjective experiences. Our own experiences certify that in many occasions we exercise free choices, and choose to do an action freely. For example, if I decide to go to Doha via New Delhi instead of via Mumbai, my own experience certifies that this was an action that was freely chosen and done by me.  To have a free choice means to have an alternate choice. A free choice means that the person could have done otherwise. The libertarian philosophers would argue that, as Pic. 5.2. shows, or our everyday experiences show, that we do have free will, and that we exercise it as situations present themselves. I had an alternate choice and could have gone to Doha via Mumbai, but instead I chose to go via New Delhi.

Want to go to Doha

Go

via

New

Go Mumbai?

Delhi?

I decide to go via New Delhi

Pic. 5.2 Choice from alternate possibilities

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The hard determinists, however, argue that such validation by our subjective experiences do not incontrovertibly prove the existence of free will. For, even in a world ruled by determinism, it would seem as if people are making free choices, when they actually do not. It may seem that people act out of their own free choices, but even that semblance of a free choice at that moment could be pre-determined. For example, it may seem to me that I had an alternate choice, but it would be pre-determined that I would choose to go to Doha via New Delhi, even when there was an alternative route to go via Mumbai. So, it would appear as if we are making choices on our own, when actually there would be no room for free choices. Things would happen as already determined, and pre-ordained by the prior conditions. Thus, the dispute between hard determinism and libertarianism shapes the famous philosophical, more specifically a metaphysical, problem of moral responsibility: Do free will and moral responsibility exist, or is hard determinism true? Compatibilism: Some philosophers have offered a reconciliatory approach on this issue. They argue that the belief in the existence of free will is compatible with the belief in determinism. Their position is known as compatibilism. The compatibilists agree with the hard determinists that the prior events determine the future events and that the world is governed by strict deterministic laws. However, they also agree with the libertarians that some of our actions are freely chosen. Compatibilism is also known as soft determinism, or as a milder version of determinism. For, the position also holds that events are all determined. However, they allow that some of our actions can still be free when those actions spring from within us. Those actions are free, not in the sense of being not being determined, but by virtue of being self-determined or being caused by internal factors. Consider for example:

(a) Eating a vanilla icecream because you have been asked to, and (b) Eating a vanilla icecream because you wanted to. In both cases (a) and (b), you end up eating a vanilla icecream, but the direction for the action comes from two different sources. In both cases, the action is determined by some antecedent condition. However, in case (b), the compatibilists would join with the libertarians to argue that the action should be viewed as free, because its genesis is within the agent. This implies that in compatibilism or soft determinism, moral responsibility is possible. However, an action has to be self-determined, or determined by factors internal to the agent, such as a desire, to come within the purview of moral responsibility.

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Critics of compatibilism, however, have several objections. They claim that the self-determined actions and acts of free will are not necessarily the same. For instance, a person with a severe case of schizophrenia may attack another person under the delusion that the other person is trying to kill him or her. The action of the schizophrenic is certainly self-determined, caused by his or her own delusions, but very likely not out of free choice. We should not hold the schizophrenic morally responsible for the attack and blame him or her in the same way we would an ordinary person without schizophrenia. So, even when an action is self-determined, or guided by internal factors, it still may not be a clear case of moral responsibility. It is also argued that it is hard to distinguish between the internal factors from the external factors of an action, because the factors affect each other and are often intertwined. For example, a set of relatives may put pressure on you to get married, and that is external imposition. However, how you respond to that pressure and how much you get influenced by it is shaped and determined by many factors that are internal to the agent, such as your own desires, your own early life experiences, and your own values. It is not clear how to keep these factors separate from each other. Hence, it is also not clear whether there can be any clear case of internal factors, which is unmixed with external reasons. From the above we learnt that moral responsibility creates a philosophical conundrum, when pitted against the metaphysical theory of hard determinism, and its other variants. The discussion shows that free will is a pre-condition for moral responsibility, but hard determinism does not allow the possibility of free will, and therefore seems to rule out moral responsibility. The libertarians, on the other hand, argue that there are phenomenal testimony of making free choices. A reconciliatory compatibilism tries to carve a middle path, but it is not exactly controversy-free. The bottom line is that without moral responsibility, normative ethics loses much of its sheen. For, it regularly passes judgments on actions done by people, where the fundamental presumption is that people have the ability to make choices (agency) and that they can be held responsible for the action. So, a philosophical solution to the problem is much desired. It is evident from the above that such a solution is not easy to obtain, but then such is the nature of philosophical problems. However, we shall end this discussion here, as there are other important points to discuss in this connection. Quick Question 5.3 True or false? (a) According to hard determinism, human actions, like any other events in the world, are determined by specific causes, except the freely chosen ones. (b) According to soft determinism, all actions and events are determined, but human choices are free.

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(c) There is a difference between how free choice is understood by the libertarians and by the compatibilists.

5.2.5 Moral Responsibility for the Non-philosophers For the non-philosophers, the concept of moral responsibility has an appeal. For, people in general understand accountability well and are dismayed when they see signs of lack of accountability. They feel disappointed, and even resentful, when people do not own up responsibility when they should. This is applicable in personal life, as well as in worklife, and in social life. For example, case 5.2. tells us of Y, who came in as the new CEO and took the excessively risky decisions on behalf of TQR, and because of these risky ventures, TQR as a company suffered huge losses and faced many other difficulties, such as financial and legal problems. Consequently, the company’s share value went down, and the investors suffered losses, TQR went deep into debt, and the future of the employees became uncertain. A Case in Point 5.2 TQR Inc. was a very successful company until 2015 when Y became its new CEO. On behalf of TQR, Y took a series of highly risky decisions. Within a couple of years, it was evident that none of the risky ventures had succeeded; moreover, TQR got embroiled in a number of financial and legal challenges ensuing from these risky ventures. The company first started to stumble, and then went steadily downhill, with a plummeting share value. As the shareholders were very unhappy with the situation, Y left TQR in Y’s fourth year as the CEO, but Y left with Y’s hefty salary package intact. The company, however, was left tottering on its knees, deeply in debt with much of the wealth of the investors depleted, and a very uncertain future for its employees. Question: Who is responsible for the losses that the company suffered, and the misfortune that the investors and the employees had to face? And on what ground? The case shows that it is Y who actively took the highly risky decisions, which led to TQR’s downfall. By analysis of the causal chain of events, we may conclude that Y is morally responsible for the debacle that TQR experienced. Perhaps Y did not act alone. May be the entire top management went with his decisions, and perhaps the Board of Directors of TQR also got carried away by Y’s bold ideas and approved his bold ideas. But, as the Case presents it, the prime figure is Y, who made the wrong

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choices and the key decisions. So, in terms of the agency, we have to choose Y as morally responsible for what happened to TQR. But, as already mentioned previously (see Sect. 5.2.3), attribution of moral responsibility does not end just by finding out who has done the deed. It is equally important to investigate the acts of omission, which could have prevented it, and who could have and should have intervened in the act of prevention. Using the act of omission criterion, we find that Y has failed to exercise due diligence which he and his management team should have done. The failure to properly assess the risks involved is evinced by the facts that none of the ventures was successful; and that there were financial and legal risks too linked with the ventures, which later troubled the company. So, even on that count, Y is morally responsible. Perhaps, what irks us most is the fact that amidst the disastrous situation in the Company, Y suffered none of the hardships, and left the company with his heavy paypacket intact. The non-philosophers among us would find Y’s convenient departure from the company intuitively objectionable and ethically blameworthy on moral grounds. Even a layperson would find Y’s behavior as irresponsible and might express the opinion that the right thing to do for Y in this case would have been to own up the accountability for the debacle that TQR is in, and perhaps to join hands with the rest of the company to bring TQR out of the rough patch. This shows that the concept of moral responsibility has a much wider appeal and application than just among the philosophical community. Knowing the further technicalities of the concept can only add value to that. Case 5.2 was a scenario to show how the relevance and usage of the concept of moral responsibility in a corporate context. We can also imagine other spheres of life where people would recognize and intuitively react to issues of moral responsibility and accountability. Where public funds, or taxpayer’s money is used, the issue of moral responsibility and accountability may be sharply visible to ordinary people. Apart from the usual contexts in our ordinary everyday life, the issue of moral responsibility and accountability also rises in an unprecedented way as we encounter hitherto-unexperienced technological advance. I wish to specifically mention about the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the interesting issues that it can raise related to moral responsibility. I hope these would be of interest to the non-philosophers, or to the people in general. Consider these scenarios, the first of which involves a smart car, or a driverless car, a gift from AI technology: Box 5.9 A scenario of moral responsibility and a driverless smart car Scenario 5: Very late at night, a self-driving smart car has suddenly rammed into the fabulously well-decorated showroom of a jewelry shop. The damage to the showroom is quite extensive.

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Note that in scenario 5 (Box 5.9) there is no human being involved in this accident scenario, neither as an agent, nor as a victim. The car is driverless, and at a very late hour, the jewelry shop must have been empty of all people. Nonetheless, an undesirable action has taken place, causing extensive and expensive damage to a business. Who or what should be held morally responsible for the damage done? And on what ground? Note that had this been a case of drunken driving incident by a person, or a case of negligent driving by a person, the lawsuit for the property damage caused would surely attribute the moral and legal responsibility squarely onto the driver. However, in this case the smart car was not driven by any person. Should we say then that the question of moral responsibility does not arise in this case? Should we then consider this accident as an agent-less offense? Or, should we attribute the moral responsibility to the company which sold, or owned, this damage-causing AI-driven vehicle? With the ingress of AI in our ways of life, sooner or later these questions are going to become important. The answer to the more practical, and albeit more complicated, question ‘Who should be billed for the extensive damage caused?’ will depend on how well we address the question of accountability and responsibility in cases such as this. Let us now consider a second scenario involving a driverless smart car, and let us put a human being in it to see if the considerations change with that addition. Consider for example: Box 5.10 Another scenario of moral responsibility and a driverless car Scenario 6: A driverless, smart car has gone over the right foot of a pedestrian, who suddenly stepped in front of the car. The injury to the toes of the pedestrian is serious. In scenario 6 (Box 5.10), we have introduced a human victim. A pedestrian has been seriously injured by a driverless car. Once more, had this been a situation involving a human driver, there would be no doubt who should be held as morally responsible. The related responsibilities, such as helping the pedestrian to reach a medical facility for treatment, bearing the cost of the medical treatment through the accident insurance, would have been expected of the driver who caused the accident. However, in this case, no person drove the car. As there is no agent, should this incident be considered as agent-less accident, in which moral responsibility and accountability would disappear? Whose duty should it be to help the injured pedestrian to reach a medical facility, and to compensate the pedestrian for the hurt and suffering caused? Should the onus go to the Company which has sold the driverless car? You might have started to see that we need to have a better grip on the concept of moral responsibility to grapple with these sort of perplexing and complicated situations. One of the ways to have a better grasp over the concept is to know what

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conditions need to be fulfilled before we can hold someone morally responsible, or morally accountable, in the sense (a3). We need to know more about moral responsibility to decide why some agents deserve ethical merit and blame for their action, and why some agents do not deserve any of these, when to hold an agent morally responsible, and when not to. So, that is what we shall discuss in the next section. Quick Question 5.4 If for some reason a driverless smart car causes an accident, and some damage, who in your opinion should be held morally responsible, and on what ground? Or, should it be considered as a case where moral responsibility cannot be attributed? Explain.

5.2.6 Conditions for Attributing Moral Responsibility Under what conditions is it right to hold a person morally responsible in the sense (a3)? Under which conditions a person can be ethically praised or blamed for an action? In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle has offered us a well-worked out answer to this question. For centuries, his answer has provided the broad framework of understanding the conditions for attributing moral responsibility, and has also been influential in our contemporary understanding of this issue. Next, we shall try to understand Aristotle’s answer on the matter. According to Aristotle, a person may be held as morally responsible under two conditions: Condition 1: The action must be a free and voluntary action by the agent. This is sometimes called the freedom condition. Condition 2: The agent must know what the agent was doing. This is usually known as the epistemic condition. The two conditions are explained below. Freedom Condition

Box 5.11 Freedom condition of moral responsibility Condition 1. The action must be a free and voluntary action by the agent. This is usually known as the freedom condition.

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The freedom condition may be understood in two ways: (a) Negatively: To satisfy this condition, it must be ensured that the agent was not forced, or compelled, or not coerced in any way to do the action. There must be absence of external compulsion or coercion on the agent. The action must not be an external imposition on the agent. (b) Positively: To satisfy this condition, we must ensure that the cause of doing the action should be internal to the agent. The agent should do the action because of internal reasons; such as the desire, or the belief system, of the agent. In other words, the action would be considered as done freely if the agent’s own internal states led to it. The agent must be able to say that it was clearly the agent’s choice to do the action. This point was earlier discussed as self-determined action in the context of compatibilism. So, our takeaway from this is that for Aristotle, for attributing moral responsibility, it is not enough to know whether the action was done by the agent. Additionally, we need to find out whether the agent did it under external compulsion, or threat, or the agent shot because the agent wanted to. A gun may be shot by a person, causing injury to another person. Aristotle would want us to find out if the agent shot it because he or she wanted to, or was asked, instructed, or forced by someone else. Aristotle requires that the action should be freely done, as self-determined. And, we have already seen above how self-determination is taken by some philosophers as a sign of free choice. Perhaps I should mention here that Aristotle was a firm believer in free will, but he granted free will only to the humans. In Book III, Nicomachean Ethics, he says that the humans, unlike the other non-rational agents, as rational agents have the power to do otherwise, and that most of our actions are voluntary. By that he means that the humans have the capacity to do otherwise; and that in many actions our choice of a particular action can be traced back to our own internal or mental states. For him, free will is a pre-requirement of being ethical. He maintained that moral maturity lies in choosing good actions over bad ones in life consistently. So, in his view discernment, and free and wise choice, are the markers of an ethically good life. As for our scenarios with the driverless cars, it would be interesting to know how he would judge a smart car. Would a smart car, a non-human object, be considered as a rational agent, based on its ‘smartness’? Or, would Aristotle have said that the car is smart only in a derivative sense; and the choices of movement are actually the choices of its human maker? Setting aside these open-ended questions for further deliberation, we shall proceed to know about the second condition.

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Epistemic Condition

Box 5.12 Epistemic condition of moral responsibility Condition 2. The agent must ‘know’ what the agent is doing, or has brought about. This condition is usually known as the epistemic condition. The epistemic condition requires that the agent must know, or be aware of , what the agent has done. This may be understood, again, in two ways: (a) Negatively: To satisfy the epistemic condition, we must ensure that the agent was not ignorant, or unaware, of the action. This immediately eliminates all cases where the agent cannot be said to know, or was ignorant of , what the agent was doing. This point is discussed in details in Sect. 5.2.7, on the excusing conditions. However, this also eliminates all such cases where the agent’s epistemic or cognitive state is such that the agent cannot be properly held to know what the agent was doing. For example, the underaged children, or the developmentally challenged people, are exempted from being held as morally responsible, because their cognitive maturity is known to be at a level at which they cannot be said to know what they are doing, Suppose a five-year-old child has pulled the trigger of a loaded gun, causing injury to some person. The child does not satisfy the epistemic condition, so we should not hold the child as morally responsible for gun-shot wound caused, as we would an adult with normal cognitive abilities. For, an ordinary five-year-old child is not expected to have the cognitive maturity to know the implications and consequences of pulling the trigger of a loaded gun. (b) Positively: To satisfy the epistemic condition, we need to ensure that an agent was aware. However, what do we want the agent to be aware of? Of course, first and foremost, we must ensure: (i) The agent must be aware of the action done. Awareness of action is required. However, some philosophers claim that additionally awareness of the following would be desirable: (ii) The agent should also be aware of the ethical significance of the action. That is, a person should have some sort of a belief that the action being done is ethically right or wrong. (iii) The agent should be aware of the consequences of the action. The agent must have some idea about the outcome of his or her action. The requirement of (ii) acknowledges the fact that it is possible to perform an action, to be aware of the action done, without being aware of the ethical dimension of the action. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020–2021) years, in India, and elsewhere, many people were seen going around in public without wearing

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a mask. They surely knew that they are moving around without a mask. However, many possibly had no awareness of the ethical import of doing so. They may not have been aware, for example, that by doing so they are violating others’ right to safety and health, and that thereby imposing undue risk onto the others. The agents, therefore, know, and yet they are not aware. This is why some philosophers argue that the epistemic condition should include the awareness about the ethical import of the action as well. (iii), similarly, highlights the need for the agent to be aware of the possible outcome of the action. What does possible outcome mean? In this connection, let us consider the Case 5.3 to understand what possible outcome would mean. A Case in Point 5.3 Suppose that Aalap, a young man of normal cognitive ability, age 20, is standing on an open balcony on the 14th floor of a high-rise building on a busy street full of pedestrians and vehicles. As he is enjoying the view from the top, he is tossing a cricket ball in his hand and catching it. Note that the balcony is open. Suddenly, the ball slips from his hand. It falls from the balcony of the high-rise building and hits a pedestrian down below hard on the head causing a grave head injury. Question: Can we hold Aalap morally responsible for the untowardly incident? Did Aalap know the possible outcome of his tossing a cricket ball on an open 14th floor balcony? Is epistemic condition satisfied in this case? How would you answer the question posed in Case 5.3? Could we say that Aalap was aware of the possible outcome of his action? The answer in the affirmative would be right. Possible outcome means the consequence that is likely to happen, or which we may reasonably expect from an action. Did Aalap know the possible outcome of his action? Well, the case says that Aalap was a 20 year old with normal cognitive ability. When tossing a hard ball on an open balcony on the 14th floor above a busy street full of people, Aalap should have known that it is possible that the hard cricket ball may slip from his hand, and that a hard object dropped from that height could be fatal for someone walking down below. The possibility of that outcome was not far-fetched, but was within reasonable expectation. So, we can fairly say that Aalap knew what he was doing and he also knew the possible outcome of his action. Therefore, the epistemic condition with (iii) is satisfied. It is true that Aalap could not have known the exact consequences, but he knew or should have known what he was doing was dangerous. He could not have known exactly that a pedestrian is going to get hurt. However, the likelihood of that happening was high. So, we may argue that the condition (iii) of epistemic condition applies here. To this, some of you might object that the condition (iii) of epistemic condition asks too much of an agent. For, we cannot always know all the consequences of an

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action. Moreover, sometimes, the consequences of an action are not even in the hands of an agent. We may start an action expecting certain consequences, which we can be said to know; however, sometimes the action may lead to surprising, completely unexpected consequences. For example, let us suppose that Gulal was carrying 1 kg of raw rice in a plastic carry bag. Suddenly, the bottom of the carry bag burst open, and the rice scattered all over the street. It is an outcome of carrying the rice, but it is an outcome that was unexpected and surprising. Agents should not be expected to know all possible outcomes. To this, the philosopher’s response would be that in this context the requirement of awareness of consequences is actually a requirement of reasonable foreseeability. It is not required that the agent should exactly and exhaustively know all the possible outcomes of an action, but should have awareness of the reasonably foreseeable consequences. Reasonably foreseeable consequences are the consequences which are foreseeable by any reasonable person. When tossing a cricket ball on an open balcony on a high floor, where the street underneath is a busy one littered with pedestrians walking here and there, any reasonable person should be able to foresee that there is a finite probability that the ball may slip from the hand, and that the slipped ball may hit someone in the busy street below, and that the consequence of such a hit is likely to cause very serious injury. All of this was among the reasonably foreseeable consequences of Aalap’s action. So, in this case Aalap cannot be exempted as not being aware, or as not knowing the consequences of his action. Aalap should have realized this. As for the objection about unexpected, surprising outcome, the response would be that the requirement is not that the agent must know all possible and unexpected outcomes of one’s action, but that the agent should be aware of the reasonably foreseeable outcomes. Carrying a load of raw rice in a plastic carry bag does carry a risk of suddenly bursting open from the bottom. Though it is not necessary that the bag would burst, there is a reasonable amount of possibility. Carrying the rice in a heavy duty shopping bag, or even a cloth bag, would have prevented the mishap from happening. With this, we end the discussion on the epistemic condition. Its interpretations are given in (i)–(iii). You must have realized that (i) is the commonest understanding of epistemic condition, and (iii) is also required. So, usually the insistence is on ensuring that (i) and (iii) are satisfied for the satisfaction of the epistemic condition. That is, one needs to ensure at least that the agent has the cognitive capacity to know about the action, and to foresee its reasonably foreseeable consequences. Regarding (ii), though it is supported by some, it is generally not encouraged. This means that for the satisfaction of the epistemic condition, it is not absolutely essential that the agent should know the ethical import of his or her action. So, from the above, we understand that the freedom condition and the epistemic condition are the two conditions that Aristotle prescribed for attributing moral responsibility to an agent.

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Necessary and sufficient condition of moral responsibility Now, note that the freedom condition and the epistemic condition are individually necessary conditions for moral responsibility, but jointly they are sufficient conditions. Necessary conditions are conditions without which the event cannot take place. If a is the necessary condition for b, then without a, b cannot happen. Freedom condition and the epistemic condition are individually necessary conditions for moral responsibility means that each of these two conditions is a necessary condition. If any of these two conditions is absent, moral responsibility cannot be attributed to an agent as. A sufficient condition is the condition which is sufficient to make an event happen. If a is the sufficient condition of b, then from the presence of a, we can infer b’s occurrence. Freedom condition and epistemic condition jointly are sufficient conditions. It means that they must be present together, jointly, for attribution of moral responsibility. Only one of them would not be sufficient to establish moral responsibility. So, according to Aristotle’s scheme, an agent can be held as morally responsible for an action if and only if: Box 5.13 The joint conditions of moral responsibility 1. Freedom condition: The agent did so out of his own free will (in the absence of external coercion) and 2. Epistemic condition: The agent knew what the agent was doing. We may combine the distinction of act of commission and act of omission to bring further clarity in these conditions, and may rephrase the conditions as follows: Box 5.14 Two conditions of moral responsibility combined with act of commission and act of omission The agent A is morally responsible for doing B means: • (a) A has knowingly and freely done B or has brought about the act (act of commission combined with freedom and epistemic condition)

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• (b) A has knowingly and freely failed to perform B, or to bring about B (act of omission combined with freedom and epistemic condition). The Agent Moral responsibility is not to be understood merely as personal moral responsibility, or moral responsibility of an individual. Note that these two conditions of moral responsibility, and the related questions and concerns, can also be extended to collective bodies, or a group, or a larger entity comprising of many individuals, for attributing moral responsibility. A collective entity, such as an Army, a Government, or even a business organization, can be held morally responsible on the same grounds and using the same two conditions can still be applied. So, we should also be able to apply this concept, for example, in situations such as these: Box 5.15 Moral responsibility of collective entities (a) When we find that during a war, an army has unleashed unprovoked atrocities on innocent men and women in a village and has committed crimes against humanity. (b) When we find that a government has successfully managed a pandemic and has been able to provide required protection to its people. (c) When a political party has purposely instigated a mob to attack and to set fire to the houses of a targeted community.

Quick Question 5.5 On an impulse, Mohar and his college friends went to hunt pheasants (a kind of bird) in a less-traveled, remote part of their country. The area is a tribal belt, full of dense forests and pristine lakes, with practically no sign of human habitation. They shot a few pheasants and collected the dead birds as trophies. On their return trip, however, the police stopped them and charged them with hunting the prohibited birds. In the tribal society in that area, the pheasants are considered as holy creatures, who are not to be harmed. To protect the cultural sensitivity, pheasant hunting in that area is both illegal and a morally objectionable act. Analyze the case with reference to the freedom condition and epistemic condition as conditions of attributing moral responsibility. Argue whether Mohar and his friends can be held morally responsible for their behavior.

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5.2.7 The Excusing Conditions It is time now to discuss when an agent may be excused or exempted from being morally responsible. We have already learnt that the freedom condition and the epistemic condition are necessary conditions. Whenever any of these two conditions is absent, we shall find an excusing condition for moral responsibility. Therefore, we can formulate two prima facie excusing conditions of exempting someone from moral responsibility are: (a) Lack of freedom: Freedom condition absent. When the action was done under force, coercion of some kind, and not out of agent’s own free will. (b) Lack of knowledge, or ignorance: Epistemic condition absent. When the action is done without knowledge or awareness, or out of ignorance. Now, on (b), we need to go into details about what lack of knowledge or ignorance implies in this context. Philosophers claim that there are at least three kinds of ignorance. These can be distinguished as follows: (i) Mistaken ignorance: When the agent holds a mistaken belief about certain aspect of the action, so that the agent thinks that agent knows, but actually does not know. Consider for example the following scenario: Box 5.16 A scenario of mistaken ignorance Scenario 7: Kavita thought that the person she was talking to on the phone was an employee of her own bank. But that was not correct. The person on the other end of the phone was actually a swindler, but Kavita did not know that. Kavita’s parents are aged pensioners, who are not comfortable with online bank transactions. Kavita herself is bed-ridden at present due to a slipped disc. So, she tried to take care of certain banking transactions for her parents on the phone with who she thought is an employee of her own bank. She divulged certain confidential information about her parent’s bank accounts to that person. The swindler used that information to siphon off substantial amount of money from Kavita’s parents’ accounts. In this case, the epistemic condition is not satisfied. Kavita should be exempted from moral responsibility, as the epistemic condition is not satisfied. However, her ignorance was based on her mistaken belief. Kavita clearly knew that she was sharing the confidential account details with another person over the phone. So, she was aware of her own action. However, she was mistaken about the identity of the other person. Because of that mistaken belief, she put her parents’ financial future at risk.

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So, mistaken ignorance is one kind of ignorance that may serve as an excusing condition. (ii) Suspending ignorance: When the agent is unsure and wonders if the action has a certain aspect which in fact the action has. The agent, however, remains unsure, and suspends belief on the matter, and performs the action. The agent may be said to act from suspending ignorance.

Box 5.17 A scenario of suspending ignorance Scenario 8: Kishor is new to this megacity, and this is his first time to the highly sophisticated branch of his bank. His parents, who due to sickness, have become increasingly unable to make the tiresome trip to the city for every errand have sent him to do some bank transactions for the first time. Kishor feels intimidated by the whole set-up in the bank and is clueless about where and who to approach. He needs help, but he wonders if seeking help from a stranger on bank matters can cause financial harm to his parents. His eyes fall on a young man with a smiling face sitting not too far from him. Dismissing the earlier misgiving as unnecessary paranoia on his part, Kishor approaches the young man, who turned out to be eager to help. Much relieved, Kishor shared with the young man his problem and the details about his parents’ account, including the password. The young man noted down all the details, and told Kishor to wait, while the young man went from counter to counter. After a while, Kishor could not see the man anymore inside the branch. He waited for a while and then finally mustered the courage to speak to the Branch manager. By the time the bank staff came to know about this, a substantial amount has been withdrawn from Kishore’s parents’ account. Note that in scenario 8 (Box 5.17), the agent is not mistaken, but is merely uncertain whether or not sharing certain details with some stranger would put her parents’ finances at risk. But he suspends that uncomfortable feeling and goes ahead with the action. Did Kishore know that the outcome would be this? No, he did not. He did not fully know; but he was not fully ignorant either. He had a hunch of the possibility of a bad outcome, should the stranger turns out to be a rogue, but he was unsure. This is a case of suspending ignorance, which too is considered as an exempting kind of ignorance. (iii) Deep ignorance: Deep ignorance is the state of ignorance in which the agent is neither mistaken nor unsure, but is really and completely ignorant about a certain feature that the action has. The agent has no idea at all that his action actually has a certain feature. Among the kinds of ignorance, deep ignorance is the strongest exempting condition to excuse an agent. Consider the following scenario as an example:

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Box 5.18 A scenario of deep ignorance Scenario 9: Indira is very naïve and trusting as a person, and she simply has no idea how conniving people can be. She trusts people too easily. She got a call that her bank account will be closed within 24 h, unless an error in her account is corrected. Shocked and surprised, she complied with all that was asked of her, including sharing her account number, date of birth, and password. She had absolutely no idea that this was a telephone financial fraud attempt, and that sharing this information would compromise her bank account. The result was that her account was emptied by the fraudsters. As you can see, in scenario 9, Indira has absolutely no idea about her own action and its possible dangerous outcome. Though she is the agent of the action sharing confidential data and thereby compromising the security of bank account, her deep ignorance would exempt her from being morally responsible for that action. She was deeply ignorant about that she was in a telephone fraud, and that it is dangerous to divulge such sensitive information over the phone, and she just did not know that her action would lead to such a loss for her. Deep ignorance is a genuine state of not knowing, as opposed to feigned ignorance. Deep ignorance is also deep, as opposed to simple ignorance. It is deep in the sense that it is total lack of knowledge. It is not just ignorance about a certain aspect, but a complete lack of knowledge. Deep ignorance, no matter how it sounds, is not rare. It exhibits itself in many different ways in people. For example, you get to see deep ignorance about various smart devices and their usage in many people who have not kept up with the advances in artificial intelligence technology, for example. Similarly, in India, we find that, unfortunately, even today deep ignorance exists among people in one part of the country about the people, and their culture and ways of life, from another part of the country. As for example, a common man in a Madhya Pradesh village may have deep ignorance about the tribes of Northeast India and their culture, and vice versa. The three kinds of ignorance have different potential as an excusing condition from moral responsibility. Not all of them have the equal standing as an exemption condition. A case of deep ignorance, if proven, can provide a strong excusing condition from being held as morally responsible. In contrast, however, a case of suspending ignorance does not provide such a strong basis for exemption. For example, in scenario 8, Kishor had some misgivings and wondered if his action is safe, but finally dismissed his own misgivings as paranoia and trusted a stranger with confidential information. His ignorance is thin and cannot totally exempt him from being morally responsible. For, he had some inkling that his action may not be in the best interest of his parents. Therefore, in all fairness, he can only be excused partially. Kishor would be held morally responsible only up to a certain extent.

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Quick Question 5.6 How is deep ignorance different from mistaken ignorance? Which among these two kinds of ignorance is a stronger excusing condition for moral responsibility?

5.2.8 Degrees of Moral Responsibility and Factors for Mitigated Responsibility This matter of partial exemption brings us to a very important point about moral responsibility as a concept. Please note that responsibility is not an all or none concept, where an agent is either wholly morally responsible or not. As a concept, it allows a range or a spectrum. Moral responsibility can be determined and attributed in varying degree. An agent may be: (a) (b) (c) (d) (e)

Certainly morally responsible To a large extent morally responsible Mostly responsible Somewhat responsible Minimally responsible …..so on.

This can happen, because, as you will soon find out in this section, the excusing conditions allow various kinds of pleas. Accordingly, attribution of responsibility, or exemption from responsibility, may vary. There can be many different stages between complete exculpation from all responsibility for an action and the accompanying guilt, or shame or punishment, and the complete attribution of full responsibility. In between, there can be many other admissible situations as shown above. In case of legal crimes and legal responsibility of a person towards an action, the defense counsel may argue for diminished responsibility based on certain extenuating circumstances, or mitigating factors; whereas, the state prosecutor may argue for an increased degree of responsibility. In this section, we shall acquaint ourselves with the extenuating circumstances, or mitigating factors, that one may appeal to for diminished responsibility. What are the mitigating factors? These are situational factors, which are most commonly used by the lawyers, to argue for decreased culpability of the legally accused. The aim is to exonerate the person as much as possible from culpability, so that the punishment is lessened. We shall learn about them, because these can also be applied in arguments related to moral responsibility. One may appeal to them in arguing whether or not the agent is fully morally responsible for the deed, and to what extent an agent deserves the ethical credit or blame for the deed.

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Box 5.19 Mitigating factors Mitigating factors, or circumstances, are situational factors which are used in arguments to argue for diminished responsibility and culpability, or to exonerate from culpability. They are also known as extenuating circumstances.

Mitigating factors with respect to the freedom condition: 1. Circumstances that make it difficult for the person to avoid doing, or not doing an action: We know that the freedom condition requires free choice to do (act of commission), or not do (act of omission) an action. However, in between a clear case of free choice, and a clear case of coercion, there could be many problematic, in-between situations where it may be very difficult for the agent to exercise free choice. Examples of this may be found in social situations where it may be very impolite or socially incorrect for an agent stick to agent’s choice. For example, in the Indian culture when someone who is senior is age instructs the agent to do something, due to social and cultural expectations it may be difficult to say no. Or, based on relationships, the agent may be subjected to subtle coercion. However, there may be other familiar examples where the coercion and veiled threats to the agent may be unsaid, and can never be established, and yet may be very real for the agent. This makes it difficult for an agent to decline doing the action. In such situations, once the details of the circumstance are known, one can argue for mitigated responsibility. Consider for example the following scenario: Box 5.20 A scenario for a difficult situation to exercise free choice Scenario 10: Mr Zaveri, like all resident houseowners in his neighborhood, regularly pays a fixed sum to the local hoodlums. He knows that by doing so he is actually contributing to and patronizing organized extortion. But what to do? The local hoodlums are protected by a powerful, political party. They never directly ask the neighborhood houseowners for a monthly payment. However, those who objected to such payment have met with unpleasant consequences. Take Mr Sahoo’s case, for example. He declined to pay and reported to the local police; however, within days the electrical connection to his house was mysteriously severed, and his car’s windshield was smashed by unknown miscreants. Mr Zaveri says that he does not want to pay the extorted sum. However, the very presence of the hoodlums, and the unsaid, palpable threat that they exude, the protection that they enjoy from the people in power, make it very difficult for the houseowners in his neighborhood to decline monetary payments to the hoodlums, even though this amounts to supporting an act of organized extortion.

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In scenario 10, we find that Mr Zaveri is not an willing agent. It is not a case of his free choice. Though there is no direct threat, there is coercion. It is true that the houseowners can always say ‘no’, but, as can be seen in the scenario, a steep cost has to be paid that an ordinary houseowner is not willing to pay. Thus, though it may not be impossible, it is difficult f or Mr Zaveri to avoid doing what he is doing. This makes it a case for mitigated responsibility. Mr Zaveri is morally responsible for supporting the extortion network, but he is responsible to a mitigated extent. The harder it is for an agent to avoid doing the action, the weaker the compliance to the freedom condition would be. 2. Circumstances which weaken the ability of an agent to control the action: There can be circumstances which makes the agent’s control over the action doubtful. For example, the acts done under severe mental stress, such as physical and emotional outbursts towards the others, may be actions over which the agent cannot be said to have full control. Similarly, someone with a brain damage may exhibit increased aggressiveness in his or her behavior. In such cases, the existence of severe stress, or brain damage, becomes a mitigating factor to plea for diminished responsibility of the agent. The agent cannot held as fully responsible for the deeds done. In a sense, it is not a freely chosen action by the agent, and therefore is not a case in which the freedom condition is satisfied. Next, we shall consider mitigating factors related to the epistemic condition: 3. Circumstances that make the agent uncertain but not totally ignorant about the action: Certainty of knowledge about an action is not always possible to come by. Sometimes an agent may not be totally sure about the action and its outcome. In such cases, the agent knows only partially. In our discussion above, this issue was already touched upon in the discussion of suspending ignorance. Suppose that a person is trying to diffuse a bomb by cutting off a wire. There are multiple wires, and the agent does not know for sure exactly which wire to cut. Cutting a wrong wire may explode the bomb. The agent is not ignorant of the consequences of cutting a wrong wire; she is uncertain about which wire she should cut. Nonetheless, she cuts a wire on a hunch. Now, if her cutting the wire diffuses the explosive, that is good. However, if her cutting the wire explodes the bomb, should she be held fully morally responsible? Here, one would argue for mitigated responsibility for action based on uncertainty. 4. Circumstances that minimize the agent’s involvement in the act: If the agent plays only a minimal or a minor role in an action, that fact may be used for mitigation of responsibility. The lesser the involvement is, the lesser would be the responsibility and accountability of the agent. Suppose that five people are found to be involved in a bomb explosion. But, later investigation reveals that two of them had actually planted the bomb on the site and triggered it from a car parked at a safe distance. But the other three people were merely chance-acquaintances, who gave these two the shelter at night without knowing anything about their plan. The three were not ever directly or indirectly involved in the making, transporting, planning or in the triggering of the bomb. The

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three people played a relatively minor role in the bomb explosion, and this fact of minor role in the incident would serve as a mitigating factor to argue for diminished responsibility of these three people. There are many other circumstantial factors which may be used in an argument for diminished responsibility. However, only a few were mentioned here to show you what kind of factors come into play, and how arguments for lessened responsibility are constructed out of these. Altogether four kinds of mitigating circumstances or factors were mentioned: Box 5.21 Some mitigating factors Circumstances that make it difficult for the person to avoid doing the action. Circumstances that make the person uncertain but not totally ignorant about what he is doing: Circumstances that minimize the person’s involvement in the act. Circumstances which weaken the ability to control the action: Moral and legal responsibility The conditions discussed here for moral responsibility also hold good for application in determining legal responsibility. To hold someone as legally liable for an action, same conditions and similar considerations are applied: (1) Did the agent voluntarily do this? (2) Did the agent do it knowingly? To exempt a person from liability, similarly lack of freedom and lack of awareness are given due consideration. Quick Question 5.7 When Raushan was produced in the court for killing his neighbor, the Jury was asked to note several things about him: His violent background, his lack of remorse for what he has done, his absence of emotion at the time of the crime, his history of being physically abused from childhood. Which of these could be used as a mitigating factor by Raushan’s defense lawyer? Why? (a) (b) (c) (d)

His violent background His lack of remorse for what he has do His absence of emotion at the time of the crime His history of being physically abused from childhood.

In addition, in case of crime, Anglo-American law requires that the offense must be accompanied by mens rea, which stands for criminal intent or the evil mind. A legal crime, therefore, is not just an offense done; it must be accompanied by a consciously formed intent to commit the crime. That is, the misdeed must be done “knowingly”. For criminal prosecution, establishing the mens rea is a very important

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step. Thus, the epistemic condition manifests itself in the legal proceedings. Without the mens rea, the offense is viewed as a case of unintended offense, e.g. varying degrees of negligence. Concluding remarks So, now we come to the end of discussion of the technical concept of responsibility. You have learnt: • • • • • • •

✓What moral responsibility means specifically ✓ How it is problematized from the philosophical perspective ✓ The utility and application from a non-philosophical perspective ✓ Acts of commission and acts of omission ✓ The conditions under for attributing moral responsibility ✓ The excusing conditions of moral responsibility ✓ Degrees of moral responsibility and mitigating factors to use in arguments.

Box 5.22 Criminal intent and epistemic condition

Offense committed

Criminal intent? (mens rea) ?

Yes

Intentional Knowingly done Responsibility established

No

Unintended Not knowingly done Negligence Reckless Weakened responsibility

I have confined our discussion of the concept of moral responsibility within the schema bounded by Aristotle’s two conditions, freedom condition and epistemic condition. There are other, more contemporary, theories on moral responsibility, such as P.F. Strawson’s theory of moral responsibility (Strawson, 1962). However, since Aristotelian schema is more widely and commonly accepted, the discussion in this textbook has been done with reference to that schema. It is hoped that the discussion above has helped you to learn how to apply the concept of moral responsibility. Here are some step-by-step tips for your easy reference on how to apply:

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Box 5.23 A checklist for applying the technical concept ‘responsibility’ 1. Identify the action, and the agent under consideration, and see if they qualify for attributing moral responsibility. 2. Pay attention to the details of the situation, and particularly to the role of the agent. 3. See if the freedom condition and the epistemic condition are jointly satisfied by the agent. If either of them is not satisfied, you may consider the agent exempted for attribution of responsibility. 4. If both conditions are satisfied, see if the action comes under act of commission or act of omission. Accordingly, arrange your argument. 5. Further, see if there are any mitigating factors to argue for mitigated responsibility of the agent. 6. Accordingly, pass the ethical judgment about the agent, and on the degree of moral responsibility. Based on that judgment, ethical credit or blame is to be assigned.

Quick Question 5.8 A few years ago, the Department of Defense charged that Embedded, a globally renowned multi-national company, had sold the department inadequately checked computer parts and had tried to cover up by tampering the records. The computer parts were installed in ships, planes, weapons, and nuclear bombs around the world and so could no longer be tracked down. This only amplified the fear about the impact of such behavior on innocent human lives. Question: Follow the steps in Box 5.24 to analyze and to evaluate the case from the perspective of moral responsibility as discussed above.

Study Questions

1. Use your own example to illustrate how exactly the concept of responsibility is understood and used in ethics. How does this sense differ from the colloquial senses in which the term responsibility is used in ordinary contexts? 2. What is the connection between ethics and the concept of moral responsibility? 3. What are the key elements in moral responsibility? 4. What is the distinction between acts of commission and acts of omission? Illustrate with your own example to how why this distinction could be ethically relevant and important in some cases.

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5. The philosophical problem of moral responsibility is often expressed as an incompatibility between free choice and the worldview of Libertarianism: Is this claim true? Do you agree or disagree with the Libertarians? Why? Explain. 6. Explain the freedom condition and the epistemic condition as conditions of attributing moral responsibility in Aristotle’s scheme. 7. Choose the right answer. A mitigating factor related to responsibility is: (a) (b) (c) (d)

A factor which makes the offense committed more grievous A factor which is about the level of learning ability of the offender A factor which moderates the legal and ethical severity of the offense A factor which is not connected to the offense.

5.3 Rights The next ethical concept that we shall take up is the rights. In the normative context, a right is a justifiable claim or an entitlement to have or to get something, or to act in a certain way. A right is a justifiable claim or entitlement So, the statement: A citizen has a right to free speech is to be understood as: A citizen has a justified entitlement to free speech As an entitlement, a right endows the agent certain power, and privileges, to the owner of the right. For example, if you own a property, then you enjoy certain rights which come with that ownership; such the right to enjoy the property exclusively, the right to control entry of the others to the property, the right to sell or gift the property. Rights are essentially social entitlements. That is, they exist only in a social setting. These are entitlements that a society confers on an individual, and are recognized also by a society, as part of the living arrangement in the society. Outside a society, the status of the rights of an individual is doubtful.

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The rights belong to somebody. The repository of a right is usually a person, or an entity created through socially approved procedure; such as a company or a business corporation. The repository of right may be called the rights-holder. The rights-holder can make a claim to the entitlements or privileges which the rights confer upon him or her. The rights-holder can exercise the rights. For example, a citizen who has the right to free speech, is the right-holder. As a right-holder, a citizen can demand the right to free speech. A rights-holder also holds the right to voluntarily give up the right. When the rights-holder voluntarily gives up a right, it is called the waiver of a right. For example, although a taxpayer has a right to get tax refund, he or she may voluntarily give up the claim to get a tax refund. Similarly, a passenger with a legitimate reservation on a train has a right to a designated seat, but he or she may voluntarily give up that right to another, e.g. to a sick, elderly person. The rights are also supposed to be justified claims. This means that the entitlements or privileges that the rights permit must have a basis. The entitlement must be based on justification or ground. This is a very important point, because it is the justification which validates the right. Without the basis, the rights, or the claim to the rights, become vacuous and ineffectual. For example, the right to control entry into a private apartment comes with the ownership of the apartment, and that right is justified by the legal ownership of the property. You shall find out below that there are different kinds of rights, and the nature of the basis or the justification varies with each category of rights. Let us sum up the key learning points about the rights from the above discussion: Rights: Justified claims or entitlements over the others. Rights-holder: One who has the rights. Basis of the rights: The justification or ground which validates the rights. A formal definition of a right is as follows. A right is a: …justified claim that individuals and groups can make upon other individuals or upon society; to have a right is to be in a position to determine by one’s choices, what others should do or need not do. (Beauchamp & Childress, 2001)

From the definition above, it follows that a right is justified claim. A right-holder can make this claim to other people and to the society. We have called this entitlement. To have a right is also to choose what the others to do, or to not do, within the ambit of that right. A houseowner, for instance, can debar certain others from entering his or her house. The relevance of learning the concept of rights should be obvious to any wellinformed member of the society. The concept of rights has been an important topic and remains very topical even today. Many important issues of our time are actually issues about the rights. For instance, the problem with the gender-based inequality in the society is an issue about equal social rights. The protest and fight of the activists against social

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practices which involve maltreatment and unnecessary killing of animals is actually a fight for the animal rights. The debate concerning the continuation or the abolition of capital punishment is centered on the right to life, who has it and who does not. Similarly, the contemporary discussions in the society about the rights of the disabled, or of the Transgender, are also the discussions that are rooted in the concept of the rights. If the concept of moral responsibility sensitizes us about the ethical importance of ownership of an action by an agent, the concept of rights educates us about the entitlements that an agent can claim.

5.3.1 Different Kinds of Rights In this section, we shall learn about different kinds of rights. There are several ways in which rights can be classified. We shall use contrasting pairs of rights to understand through comparison and contrast the difference in kinds of rights. The pairs on our agenda will be: (i) (ii) (iii) (iv) (v)

Special and universal rights Legal and moral rights Alienable and inalienable rights Absolute and prima-facie rights Positive and negative rights.

Explanation follows.  1. Special rights and universal rights: The first classification is according to the size of the population of rights-holders. The rights which belong only to some are known as the special rights. For example, property rights are special rights. If I buy a vehicle, only I have a special right over that vehicle. I can use the vehicle as and when I want to. No other person will have the same right over my vehicle, even if the other person is a vehicle owner. Shareholder rights over a certain company are also example of special rights; they are enjoyed only by those who own the shares of a certain company. In contrast, the rights which belong to all people are called the universal rights. For example, the human rights are considered as universal rights, which belong to all people, regardless of their caste, creed, color, gender, and country of origin. The United Nations in its universal declaration of Human Rights (United Nations, 1948) declared certain rights as universal and inalienable rights, and proclaimed them as the common standard of achievement that are to be universally recognized for all people and all nations. Basically, these rights are for all people irrespective of the country, color or creed. Earlier, these rights, because of their universality, were known as rights of man or the natural rights. Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of American President Theodore Roosevelt, popularized the term human rights as a more inclusive term.

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Some of you may ask whether it is correct to consider all human rights as universal rights. For some, human rights appear to be very specific and they apply to very specific groups of humans. For example, the human rights of the children belong only to the children. For example: The right to protection from forced child labor, child trafficking, child sexual abuse, child marriages, torture and abuse of children, and The right to child health and nutrition. Similarly, certain human rights belong only to prisoners and give them certain entitlements, such as: The right to fast trial The right to humane prison condition The right to protection from inhuman, excessive cruel torture. So, considering the restricted size of the population of the rights-holders, one might argue that these human rights too should be considered as special rights. To this, the response would be that though some human rights apply only to specific groups of human beings, they still carry with themselves a claim to universality. Take the child rights, for example. These rights are applicable to any child anywhere in the world. Similarly, the prisoners’ rights apply to any prisoner anywhere in the world. The disability rights, which include protection of the disabled from discrimination, and marginalization due to disability, right to educational opportunities at primary and higher levels, right to employment and livelihood opportunities, are also applicable to all disabled. Thus, the human rights are universal rights, even if some of the human rights apply specifically to a population. 2. Legal rights and moral rights: Rights can be also classified by the nature of their basis or validation. When the rights are validated and enforced by a legal system, they are the legal rights. For example, the right to life and personal liberty is a fundamental legal right in India, which is protected by the Indian Constitution. Right to information (RTI), the Intellectual Property rights (IPR), are other examples of legal rights in India. For, these are justified, sanctioned and validated by the Acts passed by Indian parliamentary process. The legal support behind them is the justificatory basis behind the legal rights. The legal right-holders enjoy the powers and privileges on the basis of the power granted by a law. Perhaps we should remind ourselves of the six fundamental rights upheld by the Indian Constitution (see Box 5.24). The fundamental rights are those rights which are considered as fundamental or essential for the overall development of all Indian citizens, irrespective of caste, creed, gender, religion, or ethnicity. Each of these is a legal right upheld by the Indian Constitution.

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Box 5.24 Six fundamental rights mentioned in Indian Constitution, Part III, Articles 14–32 • Right to equality (equality before law, equal job opportunity, protection against discrimination based on religion, caste, gender), • Right to freedom (protection against forced labor, freedom of speech and expression, privacy, freedom of movement, right to life, freedom to practice any profession or occupation). • Right against exploitation (protection from forced labor, child labor, human trafficking). • Right to freedom of religion (free practice of religion). • Cultural and educational rights (right to conserve one’s own culture, language, and scripts, right of the minorities to establish educational organizations of their choice). • Right to constitutional remedies: In case of violation of any of the fundamental rights, the citizen has the right to move the court to safeguard the rights through writs, such as the Habeas Corpus. The legal rights, because they get the support of a legal system, are supposed to be well-protected. In case a legal right is violated, there are institutional mechanisms which can be activated to address the violation, and to enforce the enjoyment of the right. For example, if A encroaches into B’s legally owned territory, and B files a legal complaint, B can move the Court and initiate a legal proceeding against A for unauthorized and illegal encroachment. If legally required, A may be penalized for violating B’s legal right. This enforceability and the real threat of punitive measures against violation are the strengths of a legal right. However, for the same reason, the legal rights are somewhat limited in their legal authority. For, they are tied to a certain legal system, which supports them, validates and protects them. However, because of this dependence on a given legal system, the legal rights are valid only within that legal system, and do not hold any power beyond that legal system. For instance, the legal rights and privileges that we enjoy in India are valid only under the jurisdiction of the Indian Constitution; but have no legal authority on a foreign soil, where a different legal regime may be in place. The vice versa is also true. The legal rights that are protected and empowered by the US constitution, for example, the legal right to privacy, are not necessarily equally protected and empowered by the constitutions in the other countries. This makes the legal rights limited in their extent of application. In contrast, ethical or moral rights, on the other hand, are rights which are founded on and justified by the ethical grounds. A right is a moral right when there is a justification on the moral ground for the claim to entitlement. It is not necessary for the moral rights to be supported by specific legal systems. It is not possible either for a law to back up every sort of moral right, which prevails in the human interactions. There is no law, for example, to protect the right of a friend not to be cheated or harmed by another friend; it is an understood expectation

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from friendship as a social relationship. No law is sufficient to protect the rights of the vulnerable elderly, or the weak and old grandparents, from the physical harm or psychological harm from the younger generation. As said, the moral rights draw their validation from the ethical grounds. At this point, some of you might be curious to know that if the moral rights are not protected by the law, then how are they protected? If there is no threat of the punishment by law, why would anyone honour the moral rights, and if someone violates, what can we do about it? In response, perhaps I should remind you once more that much of ethics is self-motivated, and ethical behavior is supposed to be guided by value considerations. Ethical behavior should not be driven by the fear of the law; if it does, then there would be no difference between legal compliance and ethical behavior. So, those, who would honour the unsaid trust between two friends, or who would honour the safety and well-being of the grandparents, should do it for reasons that are internal: Because those are the right things to do. However, if a society finds that the sense of ethics is too low and self-discipline is rare among its people, then the society has a choice to also recognize the moral rights as legal rights through the law-making process. India, for example, had to introduce the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act (2007) to deter the acts of abuse, neglect, and abandonment of the parents and the elderly by the young population of India. Many times, you shall find that a moral right has also been adopted as a legal right through a legal process. For example, the right to basic education is a legal right now in India, because from April 1, 2010, article 21A was included in the constitution of India, and the Right to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, came into effect to protect the rights of all children of 6–14 years to elementary education. However, right to basic education is also a moral right, as the children of a country are morally entitled to receive basic education in a civilized country. Note that it is a moral right, and it was a moral right even when the legal right to education was not legally upheld in India, that is, before the RTE Act was passed. For, the fundamental entitlement which the right to basic education upholds for every citizen was still justified on the grounds of justice and equality. Each child, no matter what background she comes from, deserves to be allowed at least the opportunity of basic education. To make it a legal right is an additional matter; which adds the threat of litigation in case of gross non-compliance by the government, or by the legal guardians. But the legal validation is not the only source of validation or authentication of a moral right; the ethical norms can also suffice as the ground. So, we must learn to distinguish the moral rights from the legal rights. The moral rights, as discussed above, are not necessarily linked to a legal system. Not being linked to any given legal system makes the scope of the moral rights wider, and according to many, universal. A good exemplar of this kind of moral rights are the Human Rights.

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Box 5.25 Some salient examples of human rights • Right to life, liberty, and security • Right to remain free from being subjected to slavery or servitude • Right to not being subjected to torture, or cruel, inhuman, degrading treatment or punishment. We need to remember that the Human Rights are not dependent on any particular legal system. They are to be understood as entitlements which a human being has, whoever and wherever he or she is. So, even if the country, in which the person resides, and its government, do not recognize these entitlements, and even if they are not codified as laws in that country, the entitlements remain as rights on moral grounds. It is a different issue that many human rights have been codified into laws by different countries, including India. United Nations encourage and recommend the governments of the countries to adopt the human rights as laws in their respective countries. However, as such, the human rights do not require the support of a legal system for validation. In the subsequent chapter, we shall discuss Immanuel Kant’s views on ethics in details. As of now, I shall only mention that Kant’s ethics provides us a brilliant insight on the human rights as moral rights by the concept of human dignity. The human rights thrive on this concept of human dignity. The Kantian concept of Kantian human dignity has also deeply influenced and shaped the concept of informed consent in biomedical ethics. The human dignity is the underlying reason why, for example, even a comatose patient, as a human being, has certain rights which must be respected. Same is true about the vulnerable subjects of clinical trial and biomedical experiments. Even in a most disadvantaged, compromised position, a person’s entitlement to be treated with respect and dignity remains on ethical grounds. 3. Alienable and inalienable rights: Rights can be classified on the parameter of separability of the right from the rights-holder. Some rights are removable or alienable; they can be removed from the rights-holder. These are known as alienable rights. For example, suppose that you work for a company. As an employee, you have a right to access certain privileged data in company database, which is not a public database. However, that right is alienable. It is separable from you. If you are no longer an employee of that company, that right to access the company’s confidential data becomes null and void. Or, consider your right to use your motorbike when you want. You have that right as long as you are the owner of that motorbike. If you sell the motorbike to someone, the right to use that vehicle as and when you want ceases to be. With respect to you, the right to use the motorbike as and when you want is an alienable right.

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In contrast, the inalienable rights are rights that cannot be taken away or removed from the rights-holder. In the strongest sense, the inalienable rights have the following characteristics: I. They cannot be removed from the rights-holder II. They cannot be traded by the rights-holder, and III. They cannot be forfeited under any circumstance. In its strongest formulation, the inalienable rights cannot be removed from the rights-holder. They cannot be given up either by the rights-holder in exchange of something else. Moreover, they cannot be taken away from the rights-holder under special circumstances, e.g. in case of an offense committed by the rights-holder. Consider, for example, the right to basic education. It is viewed as an inalienable right. It cannot be forfeited; even a criminal has that right. If some criminal in prison wishes to pursue basic education, one cannot deny that right. It cannot be traded. It is generally understood that a person cannot make an ethically permissible agreement to keep himself uneducated at the basic level in return for some other benefit. However, there is a weakened sense of inalienable rights. In that weakened sense, the inalienable rights: i’. Cannot be removed ii’. Cannot be traded. However, the inalienable rights can be forfeited as a penalty under certain circumstances. For example, in some countries, a citizen’s right to contest in an election is forfeited, if the citizen is convicted in a legal case. Box 5.26 Some salient examples of inalienable human rights (1948) Right to liberty Right to equality Rights to development Right to livelihood Right to education Right to food

Right to healthy environment Right to good governance Right against discrimination Right against torture Right against undue imprisonment

4.  Absolute rights and prima-facie rights: Absolute rights are those rights which cannot be overridden by any other ethical considerations. For example, freedom from scientific or medical experimentation without consent is viewed in most countries as an absolute right. It cannot be outweighed by any other ethical

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consideration; such as greater good of the humankind. Right to practice one’s religion is also viewed as an absolute right. Note that the concept of absolute rights is closely similar to the inalienable rights, but is not the same. For, in the weakened sense, an inalienable right need not necessarily be an absolute right. For example, every citizen of the country has the inalienable right to freely move within the residence and within the borders of the country. However, there are ethical considerations which may override this inalienable right. In case of a pandemic, for example, the right to free movement of a citizen may be curtailed to prevent further spread of the infection. In its strongest sense, however, inalienable right may not be distinguishable from the absolute rights. The prima-facie rights, on the other hand, are rights which may be overridden by other ethical considerations. Most of the rights that we know of are of this category. The above-mentioned example of right to free movement is an example of primafacie right. Or, consider the case of a situation of drunk driving. The driver may be the owner of the car and a legitimate driving license holder, but the driver’s right to drive his or her own car may be derogated if found inebriated beyond a permissible limit. 5.  Positive rights and negative rights: Positive rights are those rights that make a justified claim on an entitlement; such as right to basic education, the right to food, the right to employment, the right to housing, the right to health care. Negative Rights, on the other hand, are those rights which require that others should not interfere or restrict the enjoyment of the right by the rights-holder. For example, my right to privacy as a citizen, or as an employee, is a negative right, which requires that others in the society, or my employer, should not unduly intrude or interfere with my right to privacy. To sum up, in this section we have discussed the important concept of rights. Starting with a definition of the rights as a justified entitlement of the rights-holder in a social setting, we have gone into different classifications of the rights using different criteria. For your easy reference, the classifications discussed above are summarized below. Box 5.27 Different classifications of rights Special and Universal: The distinction between the contrasting pair of rights is about the extent of applicability of the rights. Legal and Moral: The distinction is in terms of nature of justification for each kind of rights. The moral or ethical rights deserve special attention, as they are founded on ethical justification. Alienable and Inalienable: The distinction is about whether and by what means the right is removable from the rights-holder.

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Absolute and Prima-facie: The distinction is about whether it is ethically permissible to override tat right. Positive and Negative: The distinction is about whether the right is for an entitlement, or for keeping people away from interference and obstruction of enjoyment of the right.

Quick Question 5.9 The United Nations (UN) adopted The United Nations Guidelines for Consumer Protection (UNGCP) in 1985 (revised further in 1999 and 2015). The initial goal was to create awareness and to delineate the guidelines for effective consumer protection by its member states in a suitable manner. As financial services sector grew over the years, in the revisions, it added good business practices, financial protection, rules for e-commerce. Overall, its recommendations included eight consumer rights: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Right to safety Right to be informed Right to have free choice Right to be heard Right to satisfy basic needs Right to seek redressal Right to consumer education Right to a healthy environment to live in and work in.

Questions: (a) Do these guidelines speak of legal rights, or moral rights? (b) Do these guidelines represent special rights or universal rights? (c) Is the right to have free choice with respect to the purchase of a product or a service a positive right, or a negative right? Next, we shall discuss how one may apply the concept of rights in the analysis of an ethical issue and what one may gain from such application.

5.3.2 How to Apply the Concept of Rights? Let us remind ourselves once more why we are trying to learn about the rights. One of the key reasons is that because the rights-based understanding of a situation helps us to analyze and assess a situation from the point of view of entitlement. As a consequence, we get an opportunity to view the agents along with their moral rights. And then, we get to see whether or not the situation, or behavior, shows respect to

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those entitlements, or disrespect and violation of those rights. From that perspective, the rights-based framework is a powerful device to ethically analyze a situation. Look at a situation and identify the rights involved: So, first we have to learn to look at a situation or a behavior through the lens of the rights. Let us take, for example, a commonly experienced situation during the COVID-19 pandemic in India. Let us imagine a situation where in a closed space, such as an office, some people are found to move around without wearing masks, despite various instructions and notices on the wall to do so. Now, it is possible to view this scene as a case of non-compliance; where people are not complying to the orders given. However, when we look at the same scene through the lens of the rights, we start to see at least two kinds of entitlements: E1: Entitlement of people to act freely as they choose (e1) E2: Entitlement of people to health, safety, and to life (e2). In a free country, people have a right to act freely as they choose. Let us call it E1. It is not an absolute right, but more of a prima-facie right, which under certain circumstances can be overridden by other ethical considerations. In our situation, the people who are going around without masks may cite this E1 as their entitlement in a free country. However, there is also E2, which says that people also have a right to health, safety and life in a civilized society. It is a fundamental and a justified moral and legal right. However, it is a negative right, which requires the cooperation of the others to not do anything to threaten the enjoyment of that right. The other people in the closed workspace around the people without masks can refer to e2. Analyze the case in terms of rights respected or rights violated: Check whether the situation involves any violation of the rights, or due acknowledgement of the rights, involved. Identify the agent(s) who has violated or respected the rights. In the given example, the officeworkers defending E2 may argue that by not wearing the masks, some people are endangering not only themselves, but also the others, and thereby are violating the e2 of the others. And they have no right to do that. So, in this case e1 of the non-mask wearers is overridden by the e2 of the others. Using the lens of the rights, we may argue that exercising e1 in this case seriously violates e2, the more important rights of the others to health, safety, and life. This was just an example to show you how when you look through the lens of rights, specific ethical issues in terms of rights may become visible. You can easily see that the rights lens can be used in many situations around us. Tobacco smoking in public, for example, also raises serious concerns about the enjoyment of E2 by people. So, to sum up, using the rights-based framework, we get to see a situation, or a behavior, from an ethically interesting perspective. It helps us to look at a behavior or a situation in terms of whether or not the situation respects, or objectionably encroaches upon the entitlement or justified claims (rights) of some others. After analysis, the outcome is an ethical judgement: Accordingly, an ethical judgment would be passed on the situation or behavior. For example, in the above example, the behavior of the people without mask in a closed workspace would be

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judged as ethically wrong. So, the outcome of the analysis and assessment would be a normative judgment, in which the prime concern would be whether the rights have been honored or compromised. Our operational principle would be that: Actions would be deemed ethically not permissible, or at least as questionable, to the extent that they disrespect or violate the rights of individuals or of a group. Actions would be deemed as ethically permissible, or right, to the extent they respect the due rights of an individual or of a group.  Check the nature of the rights respected or violated: The ethical reprehensibility of the action, however, will depend on the nature of the rights violated. If, for example, the rights violated are of the fundamental, or inalienable, rights in character, the ethical denouncement of the action would be strong. If, on the other hand, the rights concerned are prima facie in character, the ethical judgment would be to ask for an ethically satisfactory explanation for the violation.  A specific knowledge of the rights involved is required: One very important point that we need to remember about the application of the rights-based framework is that it requires a specific knowledge of the rights involved in the situation. In order to identify entitlements in a given situation, we must educate ourselves about the relevant rights. Knowledge about the specific right in question adds value to the argument and also helps us to identify the rights-holder. The more specifically the right is mentioned, the more efficacious the argument would be. For example, instead of a general comment about the labor rights, a concern about the specific right to minimum wage would be far more potent in an argument. Similarly, a broad-based accusation of human rights violation against a corporate entity may not be effective enough. Instead, what is desirable is to draw attention to the specific human right that is being infringed upon. So, a tip for application of the rights framework is: When using the rights-based framework, do the homework to identify the specific right(s) that are relevant in the given situation.

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Finally, once we know the relevant rights, we need to figure out: (a) Which rights are rightfully owed to whom; that is, who the concerned rights-holders are. (b) If the rights are honored, or violated, who has the moral onus. (b) specifically requires determining whose responsibility it is in a situation to honour the rights, who has or who has not honored the rights and in what manner. However, both (a) and (b) requires a detailed knowledge of the context, with due reference to the cultural and local situations. The rights-based understanding also helps in pinning moral responsibility or accountability, by determining where the moral onus should lie when it comes to the duty of protecting and preserving the right. Quick Question 5.10 Fossilfuel is an oil company owned by a business group from Country A. The business is run by management team sent from Country A, and by other local employees from Country B. However, Fossilfuel’s operation is entirely in Country B, where the oil wells are. Country B believes in divine origin of ethics, and its legal, social, and politically systems are entirely shaped by what its religion R advocates. For Country B and its citizens, R is the source of all legal laws and moral laws. No other law is recognized in B; their courts go by the laws of R in the trials. According to R, the status of women is lower than men; and women must obey men’s instructions, and should not be in a higher authority position than men. Women should travel with male escort, or not travel at all. Women should not sit in the same room, converse, and work with men who are not relatives. Country A, however, does not endorse either the practices of B, or the B’s religion R. In the opinion of the management team from A, running Fossilfuel is becoming increasingly difficult with B’s legal system and with its religious beliefs of R. For, many routine matters within the company had to be stopped, such as recruitment of competent women, or promotion of the women employees. The owner group from Country A is in a terrible dilemma. Question: Are there rights issues in this case? Read the case carefully and identify the issues. Develop your arguments to critically comment on whether any right has been respected or violated.

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5.3.3 Conflict of Rights Since rights are claims of entitlements, in a situation involving many, different people may have different rights. It is possible that in some cases there might be a conflict between the claims. Consider for example the following scenarios: Box 5.28 Examples of conflicting rights Scenario 11: Kirti and Kiran individually claim that the same piece of land belongs to him. Both claim that the ownership right of the piece of land is with him. Scenario 12: Reporter Chandel has the right to free speech, which permits Chandel to publish a personal story about Deloitte Diva, a celebrity, but the publication would go against Diva’s right to privacy. Scenario 13: Doctor Ekendra, as a physician, has the right to treat to his patients to his best ability and in a way that benefits the patients most. However, Kareena, who came for a diagnosis to Dr Ekendra, has refused treatment prescribed by Dr Ekendra. Kareena says that her religion does not allow accepting medicines developed by the humans, and that she has the right to practice her own religion. The scenarios in Box 5.28 show some situations of conflict of rights. It may be also called the competing rights, i.e. the rights which compete with each other. Competing rights involve situations in which enjoyment of rights by an individual or group would interfere with the enjoyment of rights by another individual or group. Each may be a strong claim of entitlement. Thus, the competing rights situation often leads to an impasse. You may be curious to know how to resolve the conundrum presented by claimants of competing rights in an ethically satisfactory way. In what follows, I shall mention some of the possible ways of resolution.

5.3.4 How to Resolve the Situation of Competing Rights Balancing the competing rights is never an easy task. As said already, it often creates an ethical impasse, and results in bitter and long-drawn disputes among the rightsholders. Moreover, since individual beliefs and values are often involved behind such claims, the fallout of the conflict may evoke strong emotions in both the parties. Keeping all these points mind, a few of possible ways to resolution are discussed below.  Possible way 1 Find the overriding factors: Sometimes, the competing rights may allow a well-reasoned prioritization between the rights. That is, the rights in

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conflict may not be at par. In such cases, prioritization among the competing rights could be the way out. For example, suppose that we find a conflict scenario in an office as follows: Box 5.29 A scenario of competing rights that allow prioritization Scenario 14: Kalpit is a habitual smoker, who has recently joined the company, His office is in a large, air-conditioned room, which is divided into small cubicles by low partition walls. It is a shared office-space where the employees can easily see each other’s face. Kalpit takes a puff while working in his shared office. His argument is that going out of his office building each time he feels the urge to smoke is simply not feasible; it is time-consuming and very inconvenient. He also claims that it is a free country, and he has a right to smoke where he wants. His officemates, however, do not agree. Several of his officemates have serious reservations about his smoking inside a closed workspace. They have submitted a written, joint protest letter to the management voicing their objection to this practice. The letter cites the perils of passive smoking in a shared, and enclosed space, and claims that they have right to a healthy and safe workplace, which is being violated by Kalpit. The letter insists that the Company management should step in to provide a healthy and safe workplace for all. In Box 5.29, we find an example of competing rights. Kalpit’s right to freedom is allegedly interfering with his officemates’ right to a safe and healthy workplace. What should be done? The first thing to do in this sort of cases is to show respect to both the sides and to their respective rights. However, since a conflict resolution is required, the next step is to see if any of the competing rights can be justifiably overridden, so that between the competing pairs, one may get a priority over the other. In this case, one may argue that the competing rights in this case are not really competitors; because they are not at par in this case. Kalpit, as a citizen, certainly has a right to free choice; but in an organizational context, or in a social setting, Kalpit’s right to freedom cannot possibly be an absolute right. On reasonable ground, it would be a prima-facie right, which may be curtailed by consideration for other’s rights. For example, one can argue that Kalpit’s right to freedom can be justifiably overridden by weightier ethical concerns, such as right to health of his officemates as fellow citizens, right to a safe, and healthy workplace of his officemates as his coworkers, and the more pressing considerations that these concerns deserve. The company is legally and morally required to ensure a hazard-free, healthy workplace environment to all its employees. Kalpit has no right to create a hurdle for that organizational goal. The resolution process may begin with dialogue. Kalpit needs to understand that in some situations individual rights can have limits when they substantially interfere with the enjoyment of rights of the others. In such cases, compromises have to be made

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in due deference to the overriding right. In this case, Kalpit may have to be told not to smoke inside the shared office space. The company may acknowledge Kalpit’s points; and perhaps make arrangements for a conveniently located, designated smoking room, with adequate exhaust, within the office premises, so that Kalpit and other employees, who are habitual smokers, need not have to go out of the building each time to smoke. In real life, this sort of prioritization has notable precedences. When public interest or national interest is truly in conflict with an individual’s right, typically the larger interest becomes the overriding factor. For example, a person’s freedom of speech must not cross certain lines, in particular it must not go against one’s nation. Similarly, in case of a pandemic, restricting an infected patient’s freedom of movement, and putting in a quarantine facility is another example of prioritization of public interest over individual right. Between the two competing rights, the public good of society’s health and well-being overrides the individual claim to freedom.  Possible way 2 Find a middle path: The situations with competing rights always may not be so amenable to prioritization. The challenge becomes more acute when the competing rights are at par, and are equally deserving. Consider for example when two human rights, one as important as the other, are in conflict: Box 5.30 A scenario of competing human rights Scenario 15: Ben owns three houses in a small university town called Glory. In Glory, the university housing, dormitories all put together and cannot accommodate all the students. So, during their stay at the university, routinely many university students stay in rented off-campus apartments in the town. Ben has been renting apartments regularly over the years, but with a caveat. Ben interviews his tenants, and he politely declines to take in gay students as tenants. He says that taking in gay students would be endorsing homosexuality, which is against his Catholic religious beliefs. Recently, some of the rejected student tenants have registered a complaint against Ben. They claim that they are being unfairly discriminated, and their human rights, to be protected from discrimination based on sexual orientation, is being violated by Ben. Ben argues that he is entitled to the right to refuse a tenant in his property, and that he is protected by the human rights to hold and practice one’s own religious beliefs. In the case presented in Box 5.30, you may see that each side has a legitimate claim, and each claim involves an important human right. How do we reconcile such competing human rights? Prioritizing one of the human rights would mean dismissing the other one. That is undesirable. In particular, if such situation arise in an organization, what should the policy of the organization be?

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Since in real life in contemporary societies such situations do arise from time to time, fortunately procedures and policies have been deliberated upon and practiced. Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC, n.d.), Canada, for example, has done some pioneering work in terms of public policy and organizational policy with respect to resolution of competing human rights. We shall look at two of its suggestions most relevant below: Finding a middle path: First, we should try to see if there is a solution that allows the enjoyment of each of the rights. The suggestion is to innovate and see if there can be some acceptable way to satisfy both the sides, so that both the competing rights can be enjoyed by the rights– holders. Let us call this strategy finding the middle path. Some situations may allow such a resolution. For example, in the scenario given in Box 5.30, the competing human rights are equally deserving. The right to practice one’s own religion is a fundamental liberty, which cannot be forfeited. On the other hand, sexual orientation of the students is a personal matter, and they have a right not to be discriminated on that ground. However, since the university will have to keep operating in that town, the problem needs a long-term solution. Therefore, a long-term solution include: (a) Recommendation to the university to consider adding more student accommodations. The feasibility of this may be examined either inside their own campus, or outside in the town of Glory, by leasing some of the outside accommodations and rent them out to their students as university accommodation. University does not subscribe to any discriminatory policy for student accommodation. (b) At the same time, the town administration should be requested to consider approaching and convincing the other local house-owners, other than Ben and his fellow Catholics, who do not have any anti-gay tenancy policy, to consider increasing their accommodation capacity so that the accommodation problem of the gay university students at present can be somewhat addressed. The town administration can also encourage the other houseowners to advertise that they do not practice discrimination. The solution tries to address the concerns and entitlements of both sides. The university students need accommodation, and Ben needs assurance that he should not be pressurized to change his religious beliefs and practices. The difficulty that the students face should be shared by the University as well. The students may thus get university accommodation, but they cannot enjoy as much liberty as they would in a private, rented accommodation. On the other hand, Ben should be allowed his religious freedom, but he has to accept the probability of tenancy losses even in the future once he is marked as a discriminating houseowner. The two actionable strategies try to achieve short-term and long-term solution without provoking further

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rancor. They walk a middle path by to some extent conceding to the demands of both sides, but it is also a trade-off of advantages and disadvantages. If a middle path not found, find the next-best solution.  Possible way 3 Find the next-best solution: In some situations, a middle path may not be found. For these cases, OHRC suggests to try out the next-best solution. This means that the solution need not be the best solution in which all sides are happy. The next-best solution is about minimizing the negative impact of the competing sides, and making some compromise or trade-off from both sides, while respecting the importance of both the rights. A resolution process may include rounds of discussion including both the aggrieved parties before some mutually accepted trade-off can be found. Having said that, we must also add that we need to understand that in some cases a solution as a compromise may not be emerge from the rounds of dialogues with both the sides. The competing sides both may rigidly hold on to their claims without any flexibility. In such cases, it is best to adopt a principled approach, or a policy approach. In case of an organization, this would mean application of a policy that is closer to the organizational values, and which the organization can consistently follow. It could be a case-by-case approach.

5.3.5 Non-human Rights Before we close the discussion on the rights, let me draw your attention to a thoughtprovoking question that has become increasingly important: Is it necessary that the rights-holders would only be humans? So far, in our discussion of the rights, there was an unquestioned presumption that the rights-holders are humans. However, is there any necessity that a rights-holder must be a human? Or, in other words, is it possible to extend the concept of rights to non-humans too? For example, the animal rights activists ask whether only the human beings have the ‘rights’, or whether the argument can be extended also to the other species, particularly to the animals. They ask:

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If the human beings as a species have a moral standing and dignity, and therefore deserve special treatment, do other animals also not deserve a moral standing? How can we justify restricting entitlements only to the humans? The question is important and has to be placed in the context of the history of intellectual tradition of the Western world. Aristotle’s distinction between the rational animals and irrational animals: At one point in human history, it was believed that among all the species, humans alone have capability to reason. We find this belief in Aristotle’s thoughts. Aristotle claimed that only humans have rational souls, i.e. souls with the capacity to reason. Therefore, he proclaimed that the human animals alone are the rational animals, i.e. humans are the only animals who are endowed with souls with the capacity of ratiocination. The rest, in contrast to the humans, are irrational animals. In Aristotle’s view, the soul was the principle of life. All beings that are alive, such as plants, insects, animals, have souls; otherwise they would not be alive. But, Aristotle tells us, there are important differences in the capabilities and kinds of souls. In Aristotle’s scheme, both human and non-human animals have sensory souls, i.e. they have souls with the capability of sensation. However, in his view the non-human species do not have the rational souls, or the souls with the capacity to reason. Hence, they are the irrational animals and are the brutes or the beasts. The effect of this distinction: Aristotle’s reflections on the distinction between human and non-human animals left its indelible mark on the thinkers in the medieval period. It was taken for granted among the medieval philosophers that the humans as a species are superior to the non-human animals, and all other species, in terms of their unique ability of being rational. The terms irrational, beasts, etc. are meant to signify the inferiority of the non-human animals to the humans. Apart from the presumed inferiority of all non-human species, one of the major implications of this distinction between rational and irrational souls is to believe that there are ethically significant differences among these two kinds. It was believed that moral agency is the characteristic of humans alone and that the non-humans cannot have the characteristic of moral agency. Moral agency is the ability of an agent to discern between ethical right and wrong, and to make judgments based on that, and be accountable for acting out of that discernment. It was a prevalent belief in the medieval times that the discernment between right and wrong requires a rational choice, and a rational control over passions and impulses. It was believed that all and only humans, as the rational animals, are capable of having such rational choices and a rational control. It follows that the non-human animals simply were taken to be incapable of being a moral agent in this sense. It followed that the absence of moral agency in the non-human animals justifies awarding higher moral standing to the humans, as rational animals, above the non-human animals. Descartes on non-human animals as physical machines: These medieval beliefs percolated down even among the enlightenment philosophers, some of whom held that the non-human animals do not deserve any ethical treatment. This was further

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bolstered by the mechanistic worldview that was prevalent in those time. We may take Descartes’s position on this as an interesting example. Rene Descartes (1596–1650) famously maintained that in our behavior towards them, the animals do not deserve ethical considerations; because they are actually automata2 or mechanisms. He claimed that the non-human animals are complex, physical machines, without any subjective experiences. They are similar to the clockworks, or cuckooclocks, which move, and behave as if they are conscious, but actually they are not. He believed that there is no sign that the animals possess a rational soul; they cannot think or feel, or make a judgment. In Descartes’s view, as physical machines, all non-human animal behavior can be explained in mechanistic terms; that is, purely in terms of mechanical behavior without any reference to the inner events of awareness and consciousness. He argued that even the sounds that the animals and birds make, e.g. the barking of a dog, the call of a bird, are not communication, but are merely mechanically produced noises. To Descartes, this implied that humans are absolved from all moral responsibility in their behavior towards an animal. No matter how they treat an animal, the humans cannot be considered as ethically worthy or blamable. So, if a human tortures a puppy, or cuts the wings of a bird alive, in Descartes’s view the human actions cannot be assessed as ethically right or wrong. He believed that by this he is not encouraging animal cruelty, but showing due respect to humans as moral agents. In his letter to the Cambridge philosopher Henry More, Descartes wrote to justify himself: [My] view is not so much cruel to beasts but respectful to human beings… whom it absolves from any suspicion of crime whenever they kill or eat animals. (Descartes, 1998, p.67)

 Critique of traditional distinction between human and non-human animals: Over the years, however, this chauvinistic view, that the humans are the only worthy moral agents, and that humans are distinctively superior to the non-human animals in moral standing, and are the exclusive holders of moral rights, has been criticized and refuted by many philosophers. Even in Descartes’s time, Descartes was severely criticized by the thinkers of his time for his view on the non-human animals. With time, as our knowledge about the other non-human species has grown through various kinds of research, there is an increasing realization that the traits and activities, that earlier were thought to be unique and exclusive to the humans, are not really unique. For example, most scientists agree now that there is ample evidence to establish that dolphins, whales, porpoises are also very intelligent animals. These non-human animals have been found not only to demonstrate joy, grief and selfawareness, but also to demonstrate problem-solving skills and playfulness. Therefore, one can no longer reasonably claim that the humans are the only intelligent species with the capacity of rational thinking, or that the humans alone are the rational animals, whereas the non-human animals are the inferior, irrational creatures. Similarly, studies on non-human animal behavior show that emotional maturity and responsible relationship are not exclusive attributes of the social life of 2

The word automata (plural) has come from Greek. It means self-propelled devices which automatically follows a pre-determined sequence of actions. Automata are mechanisms or machines.

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the humans. For example, orangutan mothers exhibit parental instincts akin to the humans. They are known to stay with their children for the first 8–10 years, and even afterwards they stay in close contact with their children. Animals which develop long term bonds with their partners are known to grieve after the loss of the partner. Thus, the claim for human uniqueness, or the claim of human superiority as a species because of exceptional attributes has lost much of its earlier credibility and seems ready to be dismissed as a blind prejudice. Therefore, the claim of a superior moral standing for the humans over and above the non-human animals has also been contested. In contemporary times, a growing number of philosophers have argued that though humans are different from nonhuman animals in certain aspects, those differences do not justify the denial of ethical consideration to the non-human animals. ➤In fact, in the 1970s Richard Ryder called the view, that only humans have monopoly over moral agency, as speciesism (Ryder, 2000). Ryder claimed that speciesism prejudice is comparable to racism. Just like racism, speciesism is a blind, human-centric prejudice against the non-human animals. Speciesism is a biased attitude towards one’s own species, which allows serving the interests of one’s own species as paramount over the interest of other species. Peter Singer, a philosopher who has championed the cause of animal rights in ethics, further popularized the term speciesism to mean a biased attitude to favor the interests of the humans as a species over the interests of other species (Singer, 1974). In particular, the supporters of animal rights argue that the non-human animals too should have a moral status and the rights. Many have argued that subjecting animals indiscriminately and forcibly for experimental, or pharmaceutical research, or for research for profitmaking cosmetics industry, is a gross violation of the moral rights of those animals. Peter Singer has been a particularly powerful advocate on the issue of animals and ethics. One of his interesting arguments is that denial of animal rights on the basis of an unfounded inequality is a dangerous step towards racism and other ethically objectionable discriminatory practices to certain sections of humans. His point is that if we start giving inequal considerations to the ethical standings of the animals, then we shall be encouraged to give inequal considerations to different groups of human beings also, such as the racial minorities. In his seminal work, Animal Liberation (Singer, 1990), Singer employed the expression Principle of Equal Consideration of Interests (PECI). In his subsequent work, PECI was invoked as an ethical principle which demands equality in consideration of interests (Singer, 1993, p. 21). It asserts that while assessing the ethical rightness of an action, we give equal considerations to the interests of all those affected by our actions, humans and non-humans alike. On this ground, he condemns unnecessary killing of the animals, animal hunting for sports, or non-essential research for developing cosmetic products which involve painful treatment of the animals. PECI opposes all ethically objectionable discriminatory practices such as racism, sexism, and speciesism. I brought this issue up because while learning about rights or entitlements, we need to be aware of our usual human-centric thinking. It seems to me that if one is

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sensitive and protective about one’s rights, it is only fair that one should also consider whether there is any reasonable ground to think that the rights can only belong to oneself. So, I leave the issue for you mull over and to decide whether or not the concept of rights can also be extended to the non-humans. Quick Question 5.11 At present, we regularly use non-human animals as means to our ends, e.g. in pharmaceutical research, in ways which would be deemed highly unethical if they were humans. Do you suppose that we should continue to do this? Argue for your answer with specific reference to the ethical aspect of the issue. Concluding remarks To sum up, in this section you learnt about what rights are. Along with the definition of a right, the other key elements, such as the concept of a rights-holder, the justified basis of a right, also were explained. Then, a few major classifications of rights were explained, with examples and relevant discussions. Next, the crucial topic of how to apply the rights-based tool in our thinking when approaching an issue was taken up to enable and to enrich your understanding and ethical analysis. After that, the issue of conflict of rights and how to resolve such conflict in an ethically satisfactory manner were explained with practical scenarios as examples. Finally, as a befitting conclusion to the discussion, a very contemporary and timely topic of non-human rights was brought to your attention. Placing the issue in its historical context in the Western intellectual tradition, the controversy around the issue and its standing in ethics were explained. I hope that the discussion has been helpful for you understand and to apply the rights in your ethical thinking. Let me also add here that the rights-based ethics has been a major force behind various social and political reforms in the human history. For example, its contribution is significant in the movement for women’s rights movement, which is also known as women’s liberation movement. In different countries, in different times, protests have emerged about the equal rights, freedom and opportunities for the women. Similarly, the Civil Rights movement in the USA was a long protest and campaign to end racial inequalities, and for equal rights for the Black Americans. If you wish to know about more specific and contemporary cases, then the Rohingya conflict in Myanmar may be cited. It is a sectarian conflict over rights between the Rohingya Muslims and the Rakhine Buddhists. The social relevance and utility of rights-based ethics is therefore far-reaching and deep. It helps to highlight the civic, political, economic entitlements that the individual, or groups, or even institutions have. As a well-informed and vigilant citizen, you shall gain from learning the rights-based framework.

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Quick Question 5.12 Is Ryder’s claim of speciesism in favor or against the non-human rights? Evaluate Peter Singer’s Principle of Equal Consideration of Interests (PECI) and argue whether the principle alone would be effective to protect the rights of the non-human species.

Study Questions

1. What would be a difference between a right and a claim? Explain with appropriate examples. 2. Are legal rights alienable rights? Explain your answer. 3. What is the key difference between a strong and a weakened formulation of the inalienable rights? Would a right in the weakened sense of inalienability be reduced to an alienable right? Justify your answer. 4. What are the basic differences between a moral right and a legal right? Comment on the claim: There is no overlap between the moral rights and the legal rights. 5. Are absolute rights just another name for inalienable rights? Justify your answer. 6. Critically evaluate the critique of the traditional distinction between the human and the non-human animals.

5.4 Duty As we learnt about the rights, it is only natural that the discussion on the concept of duty should follow. For, as you will see, the two concepts are tightly correlated. There is a specific kind of ethics, for which the concept of duty is the pivotal concept. We shall discuss this duty-based ethics of Kant with due consideration in the next chapter. In ethics, a duty is to be understood as an action which is ethically required, or is ethically obligatory. An obligatory act is an act that is prescribed as ‘one must do’ or ‘one should do’. Since a duty is a required or an ethically obligatory action, in discussions on ethics ‘doing one’s duty’ attracts praise. Not doing a duty, on the other hand, is viewed as an ethical lapse, which attracts blame. It refers to an ethical obligation which one owes to another, and which one should perform. Consider the following examples of duties. Each of these is a prescribed action.

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Box 5.31 Examples of duty • • • • •

Duty to keep one’s promises Duty of the children to their parents Duty of the parents towards the children Duty of a citizen to the nation Duty of a doctor towards a patient.

 As already mentioned, the concept of duty is tightly correlated to the concept of Rights. Rights are tools to empower an individual, or a population, and to protect certain privileges. But the undisturbed enjoyment of the rights assume that the others in the society would do their duty to respect the rights. For example, a citizen may have a right to information about matters related to him. However, the citizen can enjoy that right, only if the relevant others in the society consider it their duty to acknowledge and respect that right. The relevant others must accept it as their duty to make provision for the enjoyment of that right. Otherwise, the citizen’s right becomes defunct. Or, take another example, a person can enjoy the right to life provided the others in the society consider it as a duty to respect that right and not to kill the person. A right, therefore, and the actual enjoyment of the entitlement that it sanctions, is dependent upon the cooperation and sense of duty of the others. Conversely, a duty is correlated with the rights. The relevant rights set the boundaries on the performance of a duty, by pointing at the right direction. For instance, execution of a duty by a person should not be done blindly; it must ensure that while doing the duty, no relevant rights are violated. For instance, it is a duty of a medical practitioner to treat a patient, but that duty must be done within the boundary set by the rights of the patient. The doctor’s duty does not permit the doctor to treat a patient against the patient’s wishes. Box 5.32 Tight correlation between duty and rights The claim ‘x has a RIGHT’ is dependent on the fact that the others consider it their DUTY to protect that right. The claim ‘doing y is a DUTY’ presumes the boundary set by the relevant RIGHTS. With this brief introduction, we shall now look into different classifications of duties.

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5.4.1 Kinds of Duties As we have seen in the case of rights, different criteria help us to classify the duties in different kinds. Once more, the classifications of different kinds of duties is presented using the contrasting pairs. 1. Legal duty and moral or ethical duty: We need to first understand the difference between the legally required and the ethically or morally required actions. The legal duty is the legally required; what the law mandates one to do; so it is supported by the law of the land. The basis of a legal duty is institutional or legal. For instance, it is a legal duty for a citizen to pay the taxes to the government. As is the case with the legal rights, non-compliance of a legal duty typically is likely to result in legal punishments or penalty. As you may know, there are varying degrees of legal punishment for non-payment of taxes or for tax evasion. A moral duty, on the other hand, is what is ethically required. The obligation is grounded in the ethical norms and is shaped by one’s own values. For example, it is an ethical duty to help the others in distress. It is an ethical duty to keep one’s promises. Should someone not help others in distress, the law does not, or may not, always wield a stick to punish. The force of an ethical duty should come from within the agent. Not doing a moral duty is an omission and a moral lapse, for which the agent is answerable to his or her own conscience. Having said that, let us further add that the same action may be required both by the law and by ethics. In that case, the action would be both a legal duty and an ethical duty. For example, to provide maintenance by monthly allowance to the elderly parents is both a legal duty and an ethical duty in India. As already mentioned, Maintenance and welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007 is a law in India, which legally requires that it is a legal obligation of the children and heirs to provide maintenance in terms of monthly allowances to the aged parents and senior citizens. However, ethically it also behooves us to take care of our elderly parents and senior citizens by providing them the needed support. For the duties which are both legal and moral in character, however, not doing the duty has both legal and ethical consequences. For example, if someone does not look after their aged parents and does nothing to ease their financial hardship, and yet expects a share of the parental property, there is a legal consequence, if the parents, or someone on behalf of the parents, drags the negligent heir to the court. And, there is also ethical consequence, which no one else may know, but the agent would know. The guilt and shame earned for oneself is a steep price to pay. Not to be able to face oneself in the mirror, and not to be able to sleep peacefully at night, and not to be able to expect support from one’s own children in old age may be some of the probable consequences of the moral lapse. 2. General duties and role-specific duties: Duties can be classified in terms of the extent of their application. Duties can be general in nature and applicable to people in general. For example, if there is an agreement, then it is the duty of the parties involved in the agreement to follow what the agreement says. It is a

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general duty, given the nature of an agreement. Similarly, citizens in general have a duty towards their nation. Also, there may be general duties that rise from being in a relationship. There are duties that the parents have towards their children, and spouses have towards the spouses; and friends have towards their friends. Similarly, there are duties that arise from emotional commitment. If one feels indebted to someone, it is a general duty of gratitude to return the favor someday. For example, if an orphan has been raised and educated by a kind-hearted family, the orphan may find it a duty of gratitude to stand by the family in a difficult time. Then, there are also specific duties which are connected to the specific roles. This is clearly visible in case of the professional roles. For example, there are certain role-specific duties that a physician or a nurse has towards the patients. People, who are not physicians or nurses, do not have that duty. An auditor has the professional duty to check for and report financial errors and malpractices in the accounts book, and to advice for better book-keeping. Obviously, people who are not auditors do not have to feel obligated to do this. 3. Positive duty and negative duty: While discussing the rights, the distinction between positive and negative rights was mentioned in the previous section. A similar distinction is also drawn among the duties: Positive duties, and negative duties Positive duties are duties which require us to do some action. For example, seeing a person in obvious distress and calling out for help, it is our positive duty to offer assistance to the person. It is a positive duty because it requires an agent to do something. It tells what action an agent should do. There are other positive duties of virtue; for example, charity is a positive duty towards the underprivileged. Many other examples can be provided of positive duty. For example, for the health and safety of the employees, it is the positive duty of an employer to keep the workplace free of foreseeable, occupational hazards. The employer is required to undertake certain actions, such as ensuring that the protective and preventive safeguards are in place in the workplace and are easily accessible by the employees, arranging to place clearly visible warning symbols, messages, and instructions near the potentially dangerous areas so that employees working in those areas are fairly warned. Negative duties, on the other hand, are duties that require us not to do certain things. These are usually the stricter rules that require us to refrain from doing the wrong things. For example, for the medical professionals, the Hippocratic Oath binds them to the negative duty of do no harm. A doctor is required to refrain from causing harm and injury to the patients. The usual instruction of ‘do not cheat’ or ‘do not lie’ is an example of a negative duty. We are required not to engage ourselves in cheating or lying. The classification of duties into positive and negative duties may remind some of us of the Indian philosophical distinction between Vidhi and Nishedha. Among the Indian theoretical traditions, the school of Mimamsa uses Vidhi and Nishedha as two of the five types to classify the entire texts of the Vedas on the rituals.

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Vidhi refers to those Vedic statements which command us to do certain action. For example: One should do the Agnihotra Yagna Nishedha are those Vedic statements which ordains us not to do certain things. They are prohibitive in character; they tell us to refrain from certain actions. As in the case with the negative duties, these are prohibitions related to the Vedic rituals. The similarities may tempt us to jump to the conclusion that the positive and negative duty distinction is the same as that between the Vidhi and Nishedha. However, that is not the case. The prima facie similarities are no ground to claim that the two sets of distinctions are identical. First of all, the contexts of these two sets of classifications are quite different. The context in which the School of Mimamsa makes and employs its distinction is essentially Vedic. Vidhi and Nishedha classification categorize the Vedic statements on the Vedic rituals into two separate groups. The commandments that are within its purview are only about the Vedic rituals. This is not the case with the Western distinction between positive and negative duty. Apart from this purely Vedic context, the distinction in Mimamsa is essentially connected with certain other fundamental assumptions. For example, it subscribes to a certain belief system which upholds that no statement in the Vedas is redundant. The positive and negative duty distinction does not subscribe to such beliefs. The distinction in Mimamsa also presupposes a certain metaphysics and principles; for example it assumes that the Karmic principle of Apurva or Adrsta holds true, and ensures that every action has a result, even if the result is not perceptible by the senses. Needless to say, these theoretical presuppositions are not shared by the positive and negative duty distinction of Western ethics. Of course, the Western distinction is reliant upon its own assumptions; for example, it assumes that free will exists, but it does not share the belief in the same metaphysics. The differences between the two sets of distinctions are philosophically significant. Therefore, there is not enough ground to claim that the two sets of distinctions are the same. In some cases the positive and the negative duties may be intertwined. For example, the doctor’s positive duty to render the best treatment to a patient is linked with the doctor’s negative duty to not forcibly treat a patient without the patient’s consent. Similarly, the duty to protect someone’s right to privacy may be viewed as a combination of both positive and negative duty. To ensure that someone’s privacy is protected requires certain measures; such as seeking consent before collecting personal data. However, it also includes a negative duty; for example, not to disclose private data without consent, not to encroach into one’s personal life.

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I have already mentioned that duties and rights are tightly correlated concepts. Now, with the help of the positive and negative distinction, we can now rephrase that relationship as follows:  Negative rights: X has a negative right if others have a negative duty NOT to interfere with x’s right For example: My right to privacy as a citizen, or as an employee, is negative right. Others have a negative duty not to create obstacle, or not to interfere, with the enjoyment of that right.  Positive Right: X has a positive right if others have (more than the mere negative duty) the positive duty to provide X the opportunity to enjoy the right For example: The right to quality, affordable health care is a positive right, for which the government has make reforms and provisions in the health system. In many situations, doing the right thing requires a combined duty approach; both positive and negative duty. The positive rights usually impose, not just a negative duty, but also a positive duty (more than the mere negative duty) on the others. A child’s right to education is a positive right, for example. First of all, it imposes on the others the negative duty of not to interfere in the enjoyment of that right. For example, the parents, or the rest of the society, should not create hurdles for the child to enjoy that right. They have the negative duty NOT to create obstacles in the enjoyment of this right. In addition, however, it imposes a positive duty on the parents, on the society and government to ensure that child gets the opportunity to enjoy the right to an education. For example, the parents must do the needful to allow the child to attend a school. The society must be supportive for the educational rights of the child. The government must ensure that there are educational organizations, and that these are accessible and affordable to allow the child to enjoy the right to education. Respecting a positive right requires more than merely not interfering; positive rights impose on us the duty to help sustain an environment which is conducive for the enjoyment of the right. Quick Question 5.13 Is the duty to cast vote a general duty or a specific duty? Is it a legal duty or an ethical duty?

5.4.2 When Applying the Concept of Duty For the ethical evaluation of a behavior, using the lens of duty is quite useful. The duty-based ethics, called the Deontological ethics, considers whether a person is ethically good or bad from whether the person has done the duty for duty’s sake.

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One of the conditions for applying the concept of duty is to know what is the required action under the circumstances. For example, for a doctor, there are set duties. The medical code of ethics is actually a set of guidelines to point out what a doctor should do, and should not do. For a soldier, there are duties, just as for a civilian citizen, there are certain duties. The duty-based analysis of a situation would show whether in the given situation the required action has been duly done, or not done. As said earlier, doing a duty properly attracts praise, and failing to do the duty attracts shame and blame. Accordingly, a normative judgement may be passed about the agent. The duty-based analysis is linked closely with accountability. For example, in case a multi-storied apartment suddenly collapses, with people inside the structure, one of the frequently asked questions is: Whose fault is it? By fault, usually people mean: Who has failed to perform his or her duty, which caused this accident? In the section on moral responsibility, you have been introduced to the distinction between acts of commission and omission. This distinction can be used also in the dutybased analysis to know whether a duty of commission has been performed, or a duty of omission has been observed. For example, in the collapsed building example, one could legitimately ask if all the usual safety measures, such as using strong and sturdy support structures, using quality building materials, have been adopted. These are the duties of commission. Similarly, one could ask if the unsafe practices in the construction have been avoided, such as not laying a firm foundation for the building, not carrying out a proper soil testing, not assigning the job of construction to an incompetent or corrupt construction business. These are the duties of omission. Concluding remarks The concept of duty has been introduced in this section with a definition and a few classifications. Its correlation with the concept of rights has been reiterated and explained further. There is a specific branch of ethics, named Deontological ethics, which is based on the concept of duty. This duty-based ethics will be discussed in the next chapter with sufficient details. For this reason, the discussion of the concept of duty has been kept to the minimum in this section. The purpose is to get you acquainted with this concept, and help you to identify and categorize actions that can come under the description of duty. In the next section, we shall introduce you to yet another extremely important ethical concept: Justice. Study Questions

1. ‘Duty and rights are tightly correlated concepts’. Explain this statement with your own example. 2. Give two examples of your own of a positive duty linked with a negative duty.

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5.5 Justice The principle of justice is a cardinal principle in ethics, as well as in law and political philosophy. We find wide application of the term just or unjust in the everyday context. As for example, • (i) I was unjustly denied a chance in the entrance test by the officer-in-charge. • (ii) A just law would treat everyone equally. • (iii) The policy of continuous lowering the interest rate of bank deposits treats the middleclass and the elderly unjustly. What is just is generally understood to mean that which is right. In (i), the statement refers to an unjust act in the sense of that which is wrong. In fact, if actions, laws, or policies, are found to be unjust, we tend to object against them on ethical grounds as wrong. On the other hand, in (ii) the statement expresses the right treatment which people expect from a law. Justice is also commonly understood as that which is appropriate and fair. Fairness is considered as a synonym for justice. So, from the above, we take it that justice refers to rightness as well as to fairness. But what does justice mean in the technical sense of the term? We shall see in the discussion below how the technical understanding of the term adds more to this common understanding of the term.  Etymological meaning of justice: Let us first look at the root of the word. Etymologically, the word justice owes its origin to the Latin term jus, which means right, or the law. From this, we learn that apart from being that which is right, justice as a term also refers to that which is the law: Etymologically, justice means that which is right, or that which is the law. Indeed, in law, justice is one of the criteria by which the quality of a law is assessed. For example, a just law is supposed to set things right. The law is supposed to mete out a just and fair treatment to all. With this expectation, people demand for a fair trial. In case the legal verdict does not properly redress an offense, we say that justice has not been served in that case. Etymologically, the word justice is also said to be derived from the Latin term justitia, which stands for equity or righteousness. Etymologically, justice also means equity or righteousness. Thus, etymologically, it has a meaning which ranges from that which is right, or morally astute, righteousness, fair, to that which is legally right. However, that is all. You will find from the discussion below that the concept of desert has become an integral component of the concept of justice.

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The concept of desert and the meaning of justice Justice is indeed a complex principle, which has multiple meanings. Among these, one definition of justice has left a definitive and deep impact on our contemporary understanding of the concept of justice. It is not an etymological meaning. However, it is found in an old Roman law (6th CE) from Institutes of Justinian, and it says that justice is: …the constant and perpetual will to render each his due According to this definition, justice is the continuous and eternal desire to give each his due. The each in this definition refers to the people, each of the people. The desire that it refers to is a desire or a goal for the social institutions, such as the legal system, the governance system. These social institutions are in a position to deliver justice. Put together, the definition means that justice is the constant and perpetual desire of the social institutions to give each person his due. It is an ideal for a society and its institutions. No wonder, the definition has shaped much of the contemporary thinking in political philosophy on the role and the duty of the social institutions. This definition has been operationalized in contemporary understanding as: Justice is that treatment to each individual in a situation which results in giving each person what each deserves, or what is due. Justice is to give each what one deserves or what is due. But, you may ask: What is a due? Note that technically, in the language of law and philosophy, desert is another name for what one deserves, or what is due. So, to serve justice is the willingness to give the desert, or the due, to each person. A desert is what is due or what one deserves. A desert has to be claimed. The claim is called a desert claim, and is lodged by a person, on his personal behalf or on behalf of another. The person who deserves the desert is the deserver. The one who makes the desert claim has the onus to provide also the justification for the claim. A typical desert claim, therefore, is a claim where a person (the deserver) deserves something (the desert) on the basis of something (the desert base or the justification). For example, consider the scenario in Pic. 5.3 in which a basketball player claims that he deserves better remuneration than his team members, because of his superior skill than the others. The player is the deserver, who makes the desert claim on his own behalf for better remuneration, which is the desert. He also provides his superior skills as the justification of the desert or the desert base.

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Better

The Deserver

remuneration

Basis: Superior skills in comparison

The desert

Pic. 5.3 Elements of a desert claim

Take another example: Seva, an employee, asks for a promotion to her boss. She says that she has significantly contributed to the growth of the company, and has spent enough years in the company to deserve a promotion. This is a desert claim. Seva places herself as the deserver. She claims that she deserves a promotion (the desert) because of her significant contribution and because her turn has come (the desert base). As Box 5.33 shows, a desert claim would typically have three elements: Box 5.33 The elements in a desert claim (a) A deserver: The agent who claims the desert (b) The desert: That which is due (c) The desert base, or the basis for the desert.

(a) Deserver: Usually the deserver is a person. However, as Joel Feinberg pointed out,3 even non-persons can qualify as deservers in certain situations. For example, an old building as the birthplace of an eminent personality may deserve to be marked as a heritage building. As said earlier, the desert claim may be made by the deserver, or by someone who represents the deserver. For example, to stop cruel treatment to the non-human animals, a human activist may make a desert claim. (b) Desert: That which is due, or the desert, may be positive or negative. Examples of positive deserts are rewards, such as awards, honour, credit, a share of the profit. In the example of the basketball player in Pic. 5.3, the desert claim is for a positive desert. However, deserts may also be negative, such as penalty, fines, punishment, blame. There could be situations where it may be argued that some people deserve negative deserts. We often say that offenders of a heinous crime deserve an equally severe punishment. We mean that it is the negative desert

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See Feinberg, Joel, 1970, “Justice and Personal Desert,” in Feinberg, Doing and Deserving, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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for the offenders. The concept of desert is a core concept in the philosophical discussions of justice. However, we must remember that merely making a desert claim is not enough. For example, the basketball player in Pic. 5.3. may make a desert claim; but that does not automatically settle the matter. There has to be further normative deliberation to assess the claim and to award the due. Justice is that normative principle which is used to evaluate the desert claims on the basis of the justification provided, and then, to determine and award what is due to whom. This is why the third element is required: The desert base. (c) The desert base: You may wonder: What could possibly serve as permissible bases of desert to decide what a person deserves in a given situation? This is a very important and controversial question, and we tend to think that the test of justice is in determining this desert base correctly. As you will see in the subsequent sections, different answers have been proposed as probable desert bases. We shall go through those answers, wherein several important principles of justice may be found. However, at present, let me mention that in law, Joel Feinberg argued that typically the desert base should be some property, or a fact, about the deserver (Feinberg, 1974). For example, in case of the basketball player and the desert claim for the higher remuneration, the desert base is the claim of athletic excellence that the basketball player has as a property. Or, in the language of the fact, we can rephrase it to say that the property base is the fact about the basketball player that he has high-quality athletic prowess. Feinberg has introduced his aboutness principle as a general principle for determining a desert base. The aboutness principle states that: A person can deserve something by virtue of a fact, or a property, only if that fact is actually about the person, or that the person actually has the property. What should that property be? Regarding that, different theorists have proposed different answers. Before we go to that discussion, let us make one more thing clear to ourselves. A theory of desert needs to be understood against the backdrop of a conflict. In philosophy and also in social context, justice is taken to mean treating people in the appropriate manner in the face of conflicting desert claims. For, usually, the desert claims are contentious, and generate counter-claims. That is, someone may claim that he or she deserves something, but others may not agree and dispute that claim. For example, in the above example the basketball player may claim that his skills are superior to that of team members, but the other team members, or the team owner, may not think so. Seva in the above example may be convinced that she deserves the promotion, but her superiors may have a different opinion. A student may claim that he deserves a higher grade than what he got because of the hard work that he has put in it, but the examiner may not agree. In legal claims, the contentious character of the

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conflict of desert claims becomes more pronounced. Several people in the family may make conflicting desert claims about the parental property. In this connection, you may remember the parable from Hebrew Bible about the judgment of King Solomon, and two women making desert claims over an infant: The Judgment of King Solomon Two women lived in the same house, and each had an infant son. One of the babies died. Each woman claimed that the baby which is alive is hers. The two quarrelling mothers came to King Solomon, who was famous for his wisdom, for a judgment; namely, they asked for justice so that baby goes to the right mother. The King heard them and asked them to come back next day with the child for a judgement. Next day, the women were back with the baby. The King said that after hearing both of them, he had decided to cut the baby into two equal pieces and to give each of them a piece. Hearing this verdict, one mother became really distraught and started to cry, while the other woman kept quiet. The King observed these reactions. The woman who was distraught and crying begged the King not to kill the baby and to let it live. She told the King to give the baby away to other woman, because then at least the baby will be alive. The other woman, on the other hand, told the King: “Yes, my Lord, give the baby to me”. The King understood who the real mother of the baby was. He punished the false mother, and gave the baby to the real mother, who wanted the baby to be alive, even if with a false mother.

In the parable above, you can see that two conflicting desert claims were placed before King Solomon for justice. Both of the women claimed to be the mother of the baby. In our technical language, each claimed to be a deserver, when both cannot be. Each woman made a desert claim, and provided her reasons as the desert base. Each tried to refute the other desert claim. But there was only one baby. King Solomon, with his unsurpassing wisdom, knew human psychology and figured out his own strategy to identify the right deserver between the claimants, and delivered justice. This case illustrates the point that desert claims are usually plagued with disputes, quarrels, lawsuits and counter-claims. In this environment, justice has to tread very carefully and carry out its work to settle who deserves what, and what is due to whom. One of the meaning of justice is to fairly arbitrate between the conflicting desert claims. Justice is to fairly arbitrate between conflicting desert claims.

Quick Question 5.14 Highlight the important differences between the etymological meanings of justice and the definition of justice given in the Roman law.

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5.5.1 Ancient and Modern Philosophers on Justice Plato on justice as a personal and a social virtue: In the classical Greek tradition, justice was regarded as one of the cardinal virtues which a fair and good society should aim for. Classical Greek tradition considered four cardinal virtues for a society: Wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. For Plato also, justice was a virtue, or an excellence, or a commendable trait. He thought that justice could be inculcated as a virtue or excellence, in a person, as in a just person, or in a society and its different institutions, as in a just legal system. However, justice for Plato was also a rational order, which requires that each part performs its appropriate role without interfering with the functioning of the other parts. In his Republic, Plato first explains this concept in his explanation of what political justice is, and then derives from by analogy what justice in a person means. He defines political justice as a structural order in the society. The Greek society of his time had three broad classes: • The rulers or the leaders • The warriors or the protectors, and • The producers or the common men. As their names suggest, each class had a definite and different function from the others and a distinct role to play in the society. So, virtue was class-specific; what was virtue for one class was not appropriate for another class. For example, wisdom was held to be the virtue among the leader class, courage among the warriors, and temperance or self-restraint among the commoners. In Plato’s opinion, a politically just society is that society in which there are right and fixed relationships among these three classes. He believed that if each of the three classes performed their own appropriate functions, and performed only their own functions, without interfering into the functions of the others, and maintained the fixed power relations among themselves, then a rule of justice would be manifested in that society. For example, the function of the rulers is to rule and they should do only that, and the commoners should not try to perform the ruler function. Plato claimed that similarly in the soul of an individual person, justice as a virtue appears when a rational order exists among the three parts of the soul. In his view, the three classes in the society have analogues in the three parts in the human soul or psyche. This is known as his tripartite theory of the soul. On his view, the three parts in the soul are: • Rational: The part that reasons (Comparable to the Rulers class) • Spirited: The part that carries out desires that reason dictates (Comparable to the Warriors class) • Appetitive: The part that desires in an unbridled, irrational way (Comparable to the Producers class). In his view, justice appears in a person as a personal virtue, when within an individual soul, the person has been able to establish the right order: The rational

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part of the soul should prevail over the adventurous courage and the impulsive passions; and each of these parts carries out only its own function and maintains the fixed power relationships, and do not cause interference in the functions of the other parts. Plato believed that the right order is that our appetites or desires, and spirited part or the impulses, should be under the rule of the rational part. Thus, in Plato’s view, justice is a quality that arises out of a rational, cohesive, appropriate and orderly functioning among different parts, be it in a society or in an individual. Aristotle on justice: Aristotle also considers justice as a virtue, but his theory is quite different from that of Plato. In Aristotle’s theory, a virtue is supposed to be a golden mean; it is a rational middle point between the two extremes, which are the vices. Aristotle did not accept the Tripartite theory of soul of Plato. Instead, he insisted on developing practical wisdom to know what is a rational mean, or a middle point, means in a given situation. Aristotle’s justice, since it is a virtue, is also a rational middle point between two bad extremes, or vices. The two bad extremes are excess and deficiency: (a) A treatment that allocates a disproportionate excess; such as in a situation where someone unfairly and unduly gets more than he deserves, and (b) A treatment that allocates a disproportionate deficiency; such as in a situation where someone unfairly and unduly gets too little than what he deserves. In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle explains that justice as a virtue must avoid these two vices, and as the rational mean should engage in the proper proportioning of the desert. The proper proportioning is to allocate exactly what one deserves, and that lies between giving too much and giving too little with respect to what one deserves.. In Aristotle’s view, we need justice as a function of fairness primarily in two types of situations: (i) Distributive justice: When the issue is the fair division or distribution of desert among the people. When there are multiple deservers, and a positive or a negative desert has to be apportioned among the deservers, the issue of distribution calls for justice. (ii) Corrective justice: When the issue is redressal of an unjust act, and the victim wants justice. If someone is wrongfully or accidentally is deprived of her due, for example, the corrective justice is required to rectify the situation. These two kinds of justice issues, and particularly distributive justice, will be discussed in greater details below, and you will find out that Aristotle’s idea on kinds of justice has left great impact on deliberations on justice for centuries in the past as well as in contemporary times. Aristotle, in agreement with Plato mentioned political justice as another kind of justice. In his Politics, Aristotle wrote that political justice has to be both lawful and fair. Being lawful alone is not enough. As laws themselves can be unfair at time, the extra requirement is for fairness. However, as said, Aristotle did not follow Plato’s

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concept of three classes in the society, or its analogue tripartite theory of soul, to explain political justice. According to him, political justice is justice for the citizens in a political community (a polis), and is about the treatment that the citizens deserve. Aristotle assumes that in a polis, every citizen is free4 and is numerically or proportionally equal to each other. The law of the polis is expected to treat each citizen as equals; and to apply to each equally. The ideal of political justice is that the powerful and the rich should not get any extra privileges and extra protection from the law which the powerless and poor common men cannot get. Aristotle offers us a very insightful principle about political justice. He states: Justice is to treat the equals as equals, and the inequals as inequals. That is, political justice involves equality, specially of citizens; but it does not involve a blind application of equality to all. The not-equals must be treated differently; otherwise injustice will be done. We need to understand Aristotle’s principle of justice in its political context. Aristotle is referring to how a citizen should be treated in a just governing system. He observes that there can be many kind of governments; such as monarchy, aristocracy; however, democracy and oligarchy are two most common forms seen. Each, according to him, has injustice inherent in them. Political justice is required to rectify that injustice. Both he and Plato maintained that democracy, as a political system of governance, is an inherently unjust system. For, democracy wrongly assumes all people are equals, when actually there are so many kinds of differences among people; rich and poor, influential and common, wise and unwise. As a result of this wrong assumption, democracy, treats the unequals as equals. The outcome is injustice. Similarly, an oligarchy is the form of government in which the a dominant handful of people or a clique rules. He claims that it is also an unjust system. For, in it the equals are unjustifiably treated as unequals. Those who are in power in an oligarchy treat the ordinary citizens, who are essentially political equals, as inequals and as inferior to the disparately wealthy, and the powerful group. That is unjust. Aristotle prefers the polity, a mix of democracy and oligarchy, as the best form of government. The polity will be ruled by conventions or laws made by the people, after consensus from different sections of the society, and in it people will be allowed by law to participate in public administration by turns. In his view, such a government will be based on law and justice, which would treat equal equally, and unequals unequally. Aristotle’s principle of political justice has left a very profound impact 4

It is worth-mentioning here that Aristotle’s Greek society had slavery system. The slaves were neither free, nor considered as equals to the Greek citizens. So, Aristotle’s theory of political justice is only for the free men, who were deemed to be political equals. In addition, Aristotle maintained that Greek women, and non-Greek people, are naturally inferior to the Greek males. So, finally, his political justice is meant only for the free Greek male citizens.

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on the subsequent thinkers and has raised significant debates on what would count as relevant equality and inequality in a social and political context. Medieval philosophers on justice: Medieval philosophers, such as Augustine of Hippo (354–430 CE), Saint Aquinas (1225–1274), have primarily followed Plato and Aristotle’s views on justice, but, as was the norm in the Medieval ages, they have added an element of Christianity and the Christian theological beliefs in the Greek philosophical theories. For example, Augustine echoes Aristotle’s view that justice is what is lawful and fair. However, in addition to the man-made laws, Augustine added that there is the eternal, divine law of God. The divine law is the Christian church’s idea of what God requires from mankind. Similarly, in the concept of justice as a notion of equity, Aquinas brought in a concept of natural right or natural justice, which he said is actually the immutable will of the Christian God, which always supercede the man-made rules. Thus, the medieval conception of justice was heavily infused with elements of Christian faith. As a result, in medieval times we find a concept of natural justice or divine justice, which is not created by humans as is the case with legal justice, and is conceived as far above human justice. It presumes a belief in the existence of a God, as is envisaged by Christianity. Early modern thinkers on justice: The early modern thinkers and their views on justice are distinctly distinguishable from their medieval predecessors by their robust empiricism.5 Their emphasis on empirical observation and verification led them to publicly challenge the authority of the theological dogma. They were particularly skeptical about the orthodox doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church. In their theorization, they exercised free thinking instead of what the Church dictated. In their understanding, we find a definite angle of promoting justice as a man-made social tool. They claimed that justice is valuable because of its social relevance and utility, not because it is the divine will. So, in their view justice is not natural or divine, but an artificial, a purely man-made social convention. For example, Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), the English philosopher, rejected the medieval idea that justice is an endowment by God as a natural virtue in the humans. In fact, as has been already explained in the earlier chapter, Hobbes was an ardent believer in the social origin of all rules, and ethics, including justice. He argued that the humans, when they are uncivilized and not yet a part of a civilized society (in their natural state), have no sense of justice. In his view, the rules of justice are created by the humans, when a community enters into a social contract or a covenant to agree to live by certain common codes of behavior. Once the contract is formed, what the social rules dictate is just, and the behavior which violates those rules is unjust. The purpose of justice is thus social; it is the common code that a society agrees to live by for a peaceful coexistence. But, all said and done, in Hobbes’s view, the rules of justice are the artificial chains, socially construed regulations, the purpose of which is to keep the basically wild-natured humans in check and in obedience to the authority of the state. So, justice is neither natural in origin, nor an absolute

5

Empiricism is a position which believes that knowledge should primarily come from sensory experience. It insists on empirical evidence and experiential validation for a knowledge claim.

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virtue. It is created for a social purpose, and has a relative value with respect to that purpose. David Hume (1711–1776), another venerable empiricist philosopher of modern era, also believed that justice is a social construct, which is developed by a human society for a social purpose. However, he did not subscribe to the idea of Hobbes’s social contract. In his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, Hume claims that the public utility is the sole origin of justice. According to him, justice is a virtue only because it is beneficial to us as members of the society. For example, justice protects our property rights as we live in the society. So, he attaches a social and pragmatic utility to justice in the mutual advantage that it produces for the members in a society by protecting the private property rights. Hume also stands apart from the ancient philosophers and their medieval followers in his emphasis on the role of emotions in ethics. Plato and Aristotle viewed emotions and passions in a human as lowly appetites and opined that these should be subjugated to the rule of our reason. Being ethical or virtuous, in Aristotle’s view, was to be guided by reason, and to not go astray by the temptations of our desires, emotions and impulses. Hume, on the other hand, believed that our emotions and feelings, and not our reason, play a great role in determining what we value. He thinks that for us, a trait, if it has to qualify as a virtue, then it has to be either pleasantly agreeable to us, or useful to us. His strikingly different theory is that what evokes a pleasant feeling in us or is something of utility at a personal level or at a societal level, gets approved by us as a virtue. Similarly, what stirs an unpleasant feeling in us, or does not serve individual interest or social good, is considered as a vice. So, in Hume’s view, all values, including justice, are derived from our emotions. Justice is a virtue because of its social utility to protect our self-interest, and to ensure social cooperation. Our strong feelings of preservation of our own ‘selfinterest’ validates justice as a virtue. We feel ‘sympathy’ for the others in the society and understand their need for protection. Thus, our feelings create the psychological foundations for accepting justice as a social virtue and as an ethical principle. Hume calls justice an “artificial” virtue; i.e. it is a virtue that the humans have created for its social public utility of maintaining social order. John Stuart Mill (1806–1873), the advocate of the principle of utility and the greatest happiness principle, also concurred that justice has a social utility, and that it serves the common good for the people. So, you can see that in different era, justice has been conceptualized differently by the philosophers. The concept has undergone a distinct evolution from the ancient and medieval times to the modern thinking. We shall separately discuss the contemporary understanding of the concept of justice in a subsequent section, which will include Rawls’s theory of justice. Therefore, the views of contemporary thinkers in justice are not included here.

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Quick Question 5.15 What are the major points of differences between the modern views of political philosophers on justice and the thoughts of the medieval philosophers on justice? Why do you think such differences occurred?

5.5.2 Conceptual Contrasts in Justice Next, we shall try to understand the difference between the issues of justice and their different concerns through some important conceptual contrasts. 1. Legal justice and social justice: We shall start by understanding the distinction between legal justice and social justice. Legal justice is justice as understood from the point of view of law. According to it, justice is achieved when the legal codes, and procedures, are properly followed. People in general are more familiar with this understanding of justice. That is understandable, as the term justice has a prominent and well worked out legal interpretation, and that interpretation constitutes what we mean by legal justice. Legal justice is justice as understood from the point of view of law. It is the achievement, arbitration, and restoration of justice and fairness as per the law. The law is a set of common rules that a society develops and accepts as the rules that apply to everyone alike in that society. Legal justice is the achievement, arbitration, and restoration of justice and fairness as per these common rules. Legal justice has many well-known functions. In case of an offense, one of its important functions is to determine the innocence or the guilt of the accused in the case. It aims to ensure that no innocent gets punished, and no one, if found guilty, goes without punishment. Legal justice also honors the right to a fair trial. One of its principles is that everyone accused of a crime deserves a fair trial. So, legal justice tries to ensure that even the offender of a most heinous crime deserves a fair legal process, e.g. a hearing of his side. A fair legal process includes timely delivery of justice. For, as the saying goes: Justice delayed is justice denied. Inordinately lengthy legal procedures are considered to be obstacles in the path of deliverance of justice. Certain factors, such as lack of sufficient courts, numerous meritless cases crowding the legal system, often create an unfair delay in the execution of judgment. As a result, the victim’s suffering does not get a timely redressal, the guilty remains free and unpunished for long after the crime, and the society suffers from the travesty of justice. Legal justice concerns itself also to try to avoid such unfair procedural delays.

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It also tries to award the right kind and right quantum of punishment for the offense committed. A punishment should be in proportion to the crime, its nature and severity. Otherwise, if the punishment is too harsh or is too light for the offense committed, either way instead of achievement of justice, injustice would be created. An important function of legal justice is therefore to determine the right kind and quantum of punishment for an offense. Among other things, legal justice also plays a vital role to settle disputes between people, grievances lodged by people, lawsuits between competing desert claims, etc. It also awards the desert to the deserving candidate. This means that legal justice requires a legal procedure, and the support of a constitution, and legal and judiciary system. However, apart from legal justice, there is also another interpretation of justice, which is beyond the legal understanding of justice in terms of civil or criminal law. This is known as social justice. Social justice is a political and philosophical theory about promoting a just and fair society. It focuses on fairness in the relations of the members of the society and tries to address injustices within the society through changes in the social institutions and public policies. Social justice is a political and philosophical theory which focuses on issues of justice and fairness within the society and addresses them. Instead of looking for justice in individual actions, social justice looks at social policies and initiatives and evaluates their impact on the intergroup relations, social cohesiveness and welfare within a society. For instance, social justice would involve itself with the issues of the following kinds: Unjustified socioeconomic inequalities in a given society: The ideal of social justice is that everyone in the society should have equal access to society’s wealth, opportunities, privileges and common resources, such as water. It was developed in the 19th CE, when in many societies there used to be wide differences in wealth and social standing among people in the society. So, a fundamental precept of social justice is that members of the society should have equal opportunity to wealthmaking, education, health care, regardless of their social, economic, political, religious, or other circumstances. It finds issues concerning justice when a society suffers from unjustified inequalities due to unfair social policies and arrangements. For example, social justice concerns itself with unjustified socio-economic disparities, or with an unfairly increasing gap between the rich and the poor in the society. Its aim is to correct the social policies, mechanisms of acquisition of wealth, and measures of wealth distribution which may have led to such unfair disparities. Improving the situation of the socially disadvantaged and the marginalized: Another important goal of social justice is to rectify the social injustices perpetrated by social customs and policies. It tries to improve the situations of the disadvantaged and the marginalized in the society to establish a fair social order. For instance,

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Government of India (GOI) has a Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, which is entrusted with the welfare, social justice and empowerment of disadvantaged and marginalized section of the society, viz. Scheduled Caste, Backward Classes, persons with disabilities, aged persons, and victims of drug abuse, etc. 2. Distributive Justice and Corrective justice: The next contrasting pair are two major kinds of issues of justice that Aristotle wrote about, as once mentioned above. They are: (a) Justice in the distribution of goods, or distributive justice, and (b) Remedial or corrective justice. Corrective justice is about correcting the injustice suffered and restoring the justice. For example, suppose that Kriti has bought a brand new hairdryer, which is supposed to be in perfect order. However, on its first use, Kriti found that the hairdryer is faulty and does not work properly (Pic. 5.4).

Pic. 5.4 A faulty hairdryer

Kriti as a consumer, or a buyer, has been wronged. She has paid the money for a product, which turned out to be defective. Kriti did not get value for her money. Corrective justice demands that the wrong that Kriti has suffered should be corrected. It prescribes that Kriti should be able to return the faulty item, and get her money back, or get a properly working product as a replacement which would truly fulfill the promises that came with the product. Take another example. Suppose that for some reason internal to the airline, a flight had to be cancelled. Corrective justice demands that the unfortunate passengers, who have suffered due to this sudden cancellation, should be fairly compensated by either full fare return or by rescheduling the travel through an alternative flight. Corrective justice presumes a 2-party relation, the wrong-doer on the one hand, and the victim on the other. It tries to restore the just order of that relationship by helping the victim to restore the position which was lost due to the wrong-doing, and it also tries to make sure that the wrong-doer does not gain from the wrong-doing. For instance, in the defective hairdryer example, Kriti as a consumer is the victim; and the wrong-doer is the company which manufactured the hairdryer. Corrective justice requires that the company should own up its role in marketing a defective product and should come forward to compensate for the unfortunate experience which Kriti had to go through because of its defective product. Distributive justice is about distribution of something among several deservers. It assumes (a) a distributor, or an agent who would distribute, (b) the thing to

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be distributed, and (c) a number of people who have a claim over the item to be distributed. For example, if a pizza has to be distributed by a person among a number of children, distributive justice aims to apportion the pizza in a just and fair manner among the children (Pic. 5.5).

Pic. 5.5 Pizza distribution

The person who distributes is the distributor, the pizza is the item to be distributed, and the children are the multiple deservers. Now, note that a pizza could be distributed in many ways among the children. Some of these ways may not be fair. For example, a distributor may unduly keep 50% of the pizza slices for himself, and distribute the rest among the children. So Out of many arrangements, distributive justice strives to set a just order in a distribution, and to eradicate unjust distributive practices. In contemporary times, distributive justice is one of the most important kinds of justice. Our next Sect. 5.5.3 is dedicated to discuss it in greater details. At present, in this section, where conceptual comparison and contrasts are being done to distinguish the different kinds of justice issues, we shall only try to understand where distributive justice differs from corrective justice. We shall note that though corrective justice typically is a 2-party situation, distributive justice typically is a many-party situation. Though there may be one distribution agent, the claimants usually are many. The issue of justice in distribution arises because of the many desert claims (Pic. 5.6).

Distributor

Many claimants

Pic. 5.6 Multilateral situation in distributive justice

A key point in distributive justice is to identify some relevant and fair criterion for distribution. We shall take on this very important issue separately and discuss it

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with the elaborate details that it deserves in Sect. 5.5.3.1. So, to avoid repetition, the topic is not discussed here. However, one point needs to be mentioned here. Aristotle observed an important comparison and contrast between corrective and distributive justice. According to him, both corrective and distributive justice are essentially efforts to maintain a balance between excess (too much) and insufficiency (too little). He claimed that in each form of justice, the goal is: To achieve equality. This is a core similarity among all forms of justice. However, he also claimed that there is a qualitative difference between the equality which distributive justice seeks and the equality which is sought by corrective justice. As has been articulated by Malin (Malin, 1992), as per Aristotle the equality aspired by distributive justice is that of proportional equality: Each deserving party with the same merit gets the same share, or the share in the same proportion, of the item to be distributed. The shares of the deserving parties are determined by the same criterion of merit. On the other hand, in corrective justice, the equality aimed for is what Aristotle termed as arithmetical equality (Nicomachean Ethics, Book IV, Ch. 4). In Aristotle’s view, in corrective justice each individual is seen as an absolute equal, irrespective of their merit, or need. Each wronged person has an equal right to ask for rectification of that wrong. When a person is wronged by another, this arithmetical equality gets disturbed. For, the wronged person, who may have been cheated, or harmed, is not treated as an equal by the wrongdoer. Corrective justice intervenes to restore that equality by punishing the wrong-doer and by compensating the victim. Corrective justice tries to provide ways for that rectification (Pic. 5.7).

Distributive justice

•Seeks propor onal equality

Corrective justice

•Seeks arithmetical equality

Pic. 5.7 Aristotle on the goals of distributive and corrective justice

3. Procedural justice and Substantive Justice: Another useful distinction is between procedural justice and substantive justice. Procedural justice is the justice of the procedures followed. It is about the justice in the manner and the procedures followed, for example, in resolving disputes, or in the allocation of desert among the deservers. It insists about fair procedures. Example of procedural justice: In case of distribution, for instance of food and essential commodities after a natural calamity, there may be different kinds of procedures, some of which may be procedurally fair, whereas some may be unfair and biased. For example, the local politician may distribute these only to his loyal political supporters. Similarly, the distribution policy may be transparent and shared

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publicly, or it may be non-transparent and secret. Procedural justice look into these aspects which make the procedures just and fair. In an organizational set up, procedural justice takes a very important role. In case of recruitment, the procedural justice followed in the advertisement of the post, in the selection process and criteria, becomes crucial. If a fair process is not followed, the validity of the selection can be publicly challenged and the reputation of the organization can become tarnished. Legally, procedural justice is about following the due process in the delivery of justice following the rules. In Case 5.4, you will find that the earlier procedure was not transparent; and people took advantage of that non-transparency to divert public funds to their own benefit, and to thwart attempts of people to know about matters pertaining to them. People were not given what was their due; namely, the easy access to information pertaining to them. The unfairness in the procedure was replaced by a due process. Accordingly, you may answer the question raised by the case. In this context, let us note the three distinctions among procedural justice introduced by John Rawls (1921–2002), one of the most important and most-cited philosophers on the issue of justice (Rawls, 1971, pp 74–75):

1. Perfect procedural justuce

2. Imperfect procedural jusce

3. Pure procedural jusce

(i) Perfect procedural justice is when: (a) There is an independent criterion to decide what would be a fair procedure to follow and what criterion is to follow, and (b) There is definitely a procedure which is guaranteed to give the desired outcome. Rawls used the example of a fair division of a cake among a number of people to illustrate this (Pic. 5.8).

Pic. 5.8 Fair division of a cake

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A Case in Point 5.4 In India, the Right to Information movement could be seen as a demand for procedural justice. Transparency and accountability in sharing official information on government files, as opposed to the bureaucratic secrecy, were the two major values which drove the campaign for Right to Information. Before 2005, until the Right to Information became a legal act, Indian citizens did not have access to information held by a public authority, such as a government office, even when the information was about the person who is asking for the information. The common people had no access to the information about an application made to a government authority, its status, the decision-making process, etc. They had no access to the information related to the public policies, public welfare funds and schemes, and even about public expenditures made from the public money. For example, the workers did not have access to see their own accounts and wages; the people who sought famine relief did not have access to information whether or not the relief has arrived. Every information with the public authority used to be treated as official secret. The archaic, colonial rule of Official Secrecy Act, 1923 helped to create this shroud of undesirable secrecy over every file with the government offices. The secrecy helped corruption to grow, and unaccounted, unscrupulous diversion of the taxpayer’s money, minimum wage, and other entitlements of the poor, used to take place routinely. The Right to Information, when it became a legal right for the people of India, helped to bring transparency, accountability, and responsiveness in governance. It became a pillar in ensuring procedural justice in the governance of the country. Among other things, it helped to set up systems and mechanisms which facilitated people’s easy access to public information, and people’s participation in governance and decision-making. Question: What was the public movement described in the case about? Was it about procedural justice? Justify your answer. What would be a fair procedure to follow when dividing a cake fairly? Note that there is a definite answer and a definite procedure. Assuming that the fair division of a cake is an equal division, equality of the pieces would be the criterion to follow. The procedure to do the fair distribution is also quite clear: Someone would have to divide the cake equally with a piece for each person, the person can then offer a piece to everyone else, and take the last piece himself or herself. Rawls says that in this case there is a criterion independent of the procedure, and the procedure is guaranteed to lead to the desired outcome. This is perfect procedural justice, which Rawls states is pretty rare to find. (ii) Imperfect procedural justice, on the other hand, is where (b) of perfect procedural justice is not there. That is, there is a procedure, but the procedure does not guarantee a fair outcome. So, imperfect procedural justice is:

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Where the procedure followed is likely, but not guaranteed, to produce the desired outcome; namely, procedural justice. Rawls gave the example of a criminal trial. Though there are rules to follow in the trial, and the hearing process is there, there is no guarantee that following the rules will always lead to the desired outcome. An unfair outcome may still result, even if the rules are properly followed and the proceedings is fairly conducted. (iii) Pure procedural justice: In contrast to each of these, pure procedural justice is where the (a) of perfect procedural justice is missing. There is a fair procedure which can give the fair outcome, but there is no independent criterion to know beforehand that the outcome following the procedure would be fair. The procedure must be actually carried out, and whatever result comes out, we accept. If we call the outcome just, it is because of our faith in the procedure. Substantive justice, on the other hand, is about the justice of the outcome. It focuses on the value of the final outcome and insists on the fair outcome. Substantive justice looks at the result of the procedures followed and asks whether justice has been served in the outcome. Example of substantive justice: Let us take our above-given example of food and essential commodities distribution after a natural calamity. Substantive justice would inquire if the procedures followed have succeeded in ensuring a fair outcome for all where the distribution took place. It may ask, for example: ✓ Finally who got what and how much? ✓ How was the desert decided upon? ✓ Were some people treated differently? If so, was there a fair reason to treat those people differently? For example, did everyone get an equal share, or did those in greater need get more than those who are better-off? In other words, substantive justice would look past the procedures to inquire about the justness of the result produced. In case of law, substantive justice would look beyond the due process. In case of a criminal legal process, for example where a person has been killed, substantive justice does not simply look at whether the due process has been followed or not. It tries to find out if the loss of life has been a murder; i.e. a killing with malice, or an act in self-defense, or an accidental manslaughter, or a case of suicide. Accordingly, it dictates the punishment that the person may receive. It may seem to you that if procedural justice is followed, automatically a fair outcome will be ensured and the requirement of substantive justice will be fulfilled. But, that need not always be the case, as we have seen in the case of Rawls’s imperfect procedural justice. In terms of law, procedural justice means the due process. Substantive justice means the justice administered by the legal rules. We may ensure that the due process is followed in case of a trial. The legal procedures are followed fairly and a fair trial is arranged for the accused. However, application of the fair

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procedures to the accused does not by itself ensure justice in how the accused was treated, when the procedures were applied. For example, a fair trial may require sharing very personal information that the accused may feel humiliating to share in public. That is a unjust and unfair outcome. Substantive justice is needed to eradicate such injustices in the delivery of justice. In contemporary terms, we may rephrase them as the following two forms of justice (Beauchamp & Bowie, 1997): Fair procedures: Procedural justice Fair outcomes: Substantive justice.

4. Retributive justice and compensatory justice: The final conceptual contrast that we shall learn is between retributive and compensatory justice. Retributive justice is the principle of justice which seeks justice and fairness in the punishment for a crime committed. Retributive justice represents the idea that justice is to give a criminal, or an offender, his due punishment, the desert. It believes in “giving back” (re-tribute) to the person what he gave originally. For example, if someone has physically harmed another, then retributive justice seeks an appropriate physical harm as the punishment to the offender for the original physical harm done. It is based on the traditional maxim: ‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’. In general, it seeks fairness so that punishments are not disproportionate to the crime committed, and so that no innocent is penalized or harmed. Retributive justice is a guiding principle in criminal proceedings. Compensatory justice, on the other hand, is the principle of justice in meting out compensation. It is concerned with the just and fair compensation to those, who either have put in some effort, or have suffered some loss, harm, or unfair treatment. For example, in case of employees, employers may set the wages at the minimum level, or at a level which does not allow a decent living. Compensatory justice seeks fair wages for the employees as the right compensation for the time and effort invested by an employee at the workplace. Or, take the case of a non-criminal lawsuit for a damage, such as a car accident in which one car with a failed brake has rammed into another car. In such a case, the compensatory justice seeks, not punishment, but a fair compensation for the damages caused. In a situation of a natural calamity, such as an earthquake, compensatory justice seeks a proportionate compensation to the victim for the loss incurred. With this, we conclude our discussion on the different contrasting forms of justice. From this, our overall takeaway is that there are several kinds of justice issues, and they need to be approached by justice with different criteria. There are specific kinds of justice which come under the jurisdiction of legal and the judiciary system, but there are other kinds of justice issues which even the ordinary citizens need to be vigilant about. In the next section, we take the topic of distributive justice, separately.

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Quick Question 5.16 True or false? Briefly justify your answer: (a) Social justice holds that justice is achieved if the constitution of the country is followed. (b) Restoration of justice for a person wronged is the task of distributive justice.

5.5.3 Distributive Justice Distributive justice deserves our special attention, because in the contemporary world it is one of the oft-used concept to determine how fair a society is. It is used as a very important ethical principle to ensure social justice, and fair distribution of the benefits and burdens in a fair society. So, that will be our next topic on justice, and we shall specifically learn about the important and influential distributive justice theory of John Rawls. From our earlier discussion, we know that since the time of Aristotle, distributive justice has been recognized as an important form of justice. Issues of justice present in the distribution of things, among a group of deservers, have always been thorny issues. In recent times, however, the credit of providing a theoretical foundation to the concept of justice as a political and ethical ideal belongs to John Rawls (1921– 2002). In his seminal work A Theory of Justice (Rawls, 1971), Rawls has proposed a theory of justice as fairness as an alternative ethical theory, other than Utilitarianism, for ensuring distributive justice in a society. In modern political philosophy, the importance of this theory is profound. The goal of distributive justice, as already mentioned, is to establish justice and fairness in a situation of distribution; such as a property among a number of heirs, or workload among members of a team. However, Rawls focused his theory of distributive justice only onto the distribution of society’s benefits and burdens. It speaks of ways of: ✓ A Fair distribution of the social benefits ✓ A Fair distribution of the social burdens. What are social benefits and burdens? The explanation is given below. Social benefits and burdens: Social benefits, or social goods, refer to the benefits that an individual gets by living in a society and by abiding by that society’s rules. Social benefits are also known as social good. For example, in case of retirement, the retiree may get pension. That is a social benefit in the sense that it is a social arrangement that the society has decided as the income security in the old age. It is a social benefit, because one gets it by living in that society. Take another example. Suppose that in society S a citizen gets direct

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cash transfer every month, if the citizen qualifies as having a below poverty level income. This cash transfer is a social benefit to the underprivileged persons, but the benefit comes to them because they are part of the society. Other examples of social benefits may be found in Box 5.34: Box 5.34 Examples of social benefits • • • • • •

Jobs Steady supply of food despite not being a food producer Housing Educational opportunities Availability of health care Use of infrastructure, such as roads, transportation system, sewage system, potable water supply system • Income and wealth-making opportunities. Social burdens: Social burdens, on the other hand, are the undesirable, but somewhat inevitable, burdens that one has to bear because of living in a society. A society does not just produce the benefits, it also creates certain burdens, difficulties, and challenges. The latter are called the social burdens. For example, the task of growing fresh vegetables and food crops is not an easy task. It involves hard labor, and an uncertain future since success is not guaranteed. Sometimes the weather is inclement, sometimes the seeds are not good, and sometimes the market does not fetch a substantial profit. It is a social burden, as someone must do the actual and difficult job of growing these to keep the food supply chain functional in the society. Consider another example. The taxes are social burden. They are imposed on people, and no one likes it when a portion of one’s income is taken away by the Government. But, people have to bear the tax burden in order to make the society a liveable place for everyone. For example, the social infrastructure, such as the roads, flyovers, bridges etc. are constructed and maintained with the tax money. Another example of social burden is unemployment. With the limited societal resources, only a limited number of employment opportunities can be created in a given society. This implies that some people will have to accept the social burden of unemployment. Further to that, not all jobs are nice, well-paid and pleasant. Some have to accept the burden of the unpleasant, or low-paid, or unsafe jobs, e.g. the job of a garbage collector or a sewage cleaner; for the sake of the society.

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Box 5.35 Examples of social burdens • • • • • • • •

Taxes Unemployment Unsafe, or unpleasant, or low-paid jobs Exposure to health hazards, such as diseases Inferior quality housing Living in dangerous neighborhoods Lack of educational opportunities Lack of quality health care.

Quick Question 5.17 Take the COVID-19 situation. Separately identify the social benefits and social burdens associated with the pandemic situation.

5.5.4 Need and Relevance of Distributive Justice From a normative point of view, the need and relevance of learning about distributive justice cannot be overlooked. When we discuss Rawls’s theory of distributive justice, you will find that Rawls has successfully drawn our attention to a very important fact about our present-day societies. He has raised the point that there can be issues of justice in the distribution of the social benefits and burdens in our societies. The social policies may be manipulated to benefit only certain sections of a society, while overburdening another section. Rawls’s theory has opened our eyes to the fact that the arrangements that a society chooses to make to distribute these can be just or unjust, and that therefore the normative considerations of distributive justice is much needed in the social distribution of social benefits and burdens. He spoke about a fair society, and a fair social arrangement for the distribution of these by different institutions of the society. You may wonder: Why should we be concerned with how the social benefits and burdens are distributed? Why should we even bother whether the distribution of benefits and burdens is fair or not? In response, scholars would draw your attention to the fact that we must show concern, because the distribution of social benefits and burdens deeply affect the lives of the people. Fair distributions can have a definite positive impact on a lot of people’s lives, just as a biased, unfair distribution can ruin a lot of people’s lives. Consider this example:

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Box 5.36 A scenario of unfair distribution of social benefit Scenario 16: Educational opportunities are social benefits. Suppose that in Country B, most of the population live in the rural areas. However, the public policies and arrangements are such that the higher educational opportunities are distributed only among the urban youth, and not among the rural youth. From scenario 16, you can see that Country B has most of its population residing in the rural areas, but the youth in the rural areas do not get their share of the social benefit; namely, opportunity for getting higher education. As a result, the lives of the large population of rural youth in Country B predictably would run in a very different course than that of the urban youth in country B. Though citizens of the same country, the rural youth of B will remain deprived of more advanced and better career opportunities and quality of life that higher education can open the door to. With the generations, a socioeconomic divide would grow larger between the urban and the rural population. I hope you realize how serious the impact would be on most of the people’s lives in Country B because of a skewed distribution policy. From an ethical point of view, the unfairness inherent in the distribution policy of Country B is unacceptable. Country B is an imaginary case. Sometimes, in actual societies the social burdens are pushed unfairly on to some sections of the society, while the benefits are usurped by the other sections. Consider for example, the burden of living in the unhygienic, or unhealthy neighborhoods. Social living generates a lot of waste, household garbage, municipal waste, as well as industrial waste. Living close to a landfill area has considerable health risks due to the air pollution, and foul smell. However, because the land cost is lower in those areas, usually it is the poorer section of the society who bear the burden of living there. Housing projects for the poor and the minorities often sit close to hazardous waste sites. On the other hand, studies based in the United States show that there is a distinct pattern of racial and socioeconomic disparities in the distribution of environmental risks (Erickson, 2016). They show that the industries target racial minorities and low-income neighborhoods when deciding where to put hazardous waste sites and other polluting facilities. Other studies claim that in the United States the Blacks and the Hispanics, who are the racial minorities, have to bear a disproportionate burden of risk from air pollution, causing lung cancer and other diseases (University of Minnesota, 2019). Some studies claim that in India, the poorest 20% is 6 times less likely to access hospitalization, despite health problems, than the richest 20%, and an under 5 yr Child born in the tribal belt is 1.5 times more likely to die than children in the rest of the country (Deogaonkar, 2004). They indicate that the distribution of the social benefits, such as access to hospital, healthcare provisions for an under-5 child, is not even across the country at all, and that location, social strata and status play a significant role in determining quality of life, life-span, and health status of a person. These are not desirable outcome.

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These are some of the reasons why distributive justice is required for allocating the social benefits and the burdens in ways that are fair. The just social arrangement does not have to be absolutely perfect, but it must make an effort to be as perfect as possible to encourage social trust. We need to remember that ultimately the distributions of social benefits and burdens are all socially chosen and can be changed. Distributive justice in the social context recommends changes to fairness at the levels of policymaking and social institutions. At present, I shall close this section with a few important questions that distributive justice can raise in the context of a society: Box 5.37 Some questions of distributive justice in a social context What should be the fair policy of distributing the access to the scarce but common social resources, such as water, public healthcare system? Since employment opportunity is a finite, social benefit, how should it be fairly distributed? Since unemployment is a social burden that must be borne by some, how should it be distributed across the society? What should be the fair allocation policy of COVID-19 vaccine during a surge of pandemic in a country of a billion?

5.5.5 A Relevant and Fair Criterion As said earlier in Sect. 5.5.3, one of the most crucial element in distributive justice is a relevant and fair criterion for distribution. Without it, the fairness of distributive justice becomes questionable. As you have been already told, distributive justice typically is a multi-party relation. In case of distribution of social benefits and burdens, there are desert claims from many, who claim to deservers, and the claims are usually in conflict with each other. The conflict among the claims is also inevitable because of the constraints with which distributive justice has to operate. Some of the constraints are as follows: (a) Limited social resources: In any given society, the social resources are limited. Be it the financial resources (money), or the public resources, such as the public transportation service, or the natural resources, such as the water resources in a country, no society, no matter how affluent, has an infinite amount of any of the resources at its disposal. Only a limited and a finite amount of resources is available. If there were infinite supply of resources, infinite amount of social

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benefits could have been created to keep everyone in the society happy. However, that is not the case. With that limited resources, only a limited amount of social benefits can be created. Typically, people’s desire for social benefits far exceeds the limited resources that a society has. Everyone in the society wants a share of the social benefits, but only a limited number of social benefits can be created and be available for distribution. Everyone may want a share of the social benefits, but with limited social benefits everyone cannot be assured of a share. Moreover, the portion or the share for everyone cannot be as large as expected. Yet, justice is to give each person his due. This implies that resolving the social conflicts will be inevitable part of the challenges for distributive justice. (b) Peoples’ aversion to bear the share of social burden: Generally, people are reluctant to bear their share of the social burdens. If there were enough people in the society who are willing to share the social burdens, or if there were sufficient people to give up their share of social benefits, then there would be no conflicts about distributive justice. Even with the limited resource and scarce social benefits, the social demand could have been met fairly. However, actually people want more of the social benefits, but do not want to bear the social burdens. People’s desires and aversions exceed the adequacy of resources. However, the social burdens also must be distributed fairly for the continued existence of the society. Given these constraints, distributive justice demands social deliberation on certain key points: Box 5.38 Some operational questions for distributive justice in a social context 1. Who should be the distributor? Who should be the agent to distribute? 2. Given the limited resources, who should get the social benefits, and how much should they get? What should the eligibility criterion be? 3. Given the aversion about the social burdens, how should the burdens be distributed fairly? And how much of the burdens is a fair share? From the above, you can see now that one of the major challenges of distributive justice is to fairly resolve the problem of allocation of social benefits and burdens while working under the abovementioned constraints. It is crucial, therefore, for distributive justice to find and employ a relevant and fair criterion for distribution. In our next section, we shall get introduced to some salient theories which propose relevant and fair criteria and principles for distributive justice.

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5.5.6 Theories of Distributive Justice: Principles to Ensure Fairness There are several theories of distributive justice, which offer competing ideas as fully developed principles, or practical working ideas, as a fair and relevant criterion for ensuring fairness in distributive justice. Some of these will be presented before you next, including Rawls’s theory of distributive justice. 1. First come first serve (FCFS): A simple example of a working principle of distributive justice and resource allocation is first come, first serve. The one who comes first in the sequence of demands, gets his or her share first. FCFS is a purely egalitarian principle. That is, it treats everyone waiting in queue as equal, regardless of their origin, gender, caste, race, ethnic origin, and social status. Only their time of arrival or joining the queue is taken into consideration. The principle is widely used and accepted as a fair principle of distribution in different situations. For example, if there is a physical queue at the ticket counter of a movie theatre, or at a bank counter, the queue generally would follow the first come, first serve principle. Those who are ahead in the line will get the chance to be served before those who are behind in the line. In these cases, the item that is being distributed is the opportunity to purchase a movie ticket offline, or the opportunity to be served at the bank counter. The behavior of queue jumping or cutting the line is publicly frowned upon by those in the queue as a kind of ethically wrong behavior, which violates fairness (Pic. 5.9).

Pic. 5.9 A queue

There are other more serious examples of the use of FCFS. As you know, for organ transplantation, human organs, such as eyes, kidney, are required. As donated healthy organs are scarce in supply, and the demand for organs is huge, the allocation or distribution policy of the organs is a fertile field for distributive justice. Some countries used to follow FCFS in the allocation of the organs. For example, in the USA, United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), the network to organize allocation of the organs collected, used to follow FCFS proudly since it was established in 1986.

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However, after various ethical issues were raised, now the policy has been revised with the addition of many other factors other than the time of arrival in the queue. FCFS is certainly a useful principle to employ. However, it is easy to see that in many situations the application of FCFS as a strictly equality-based criterion would raise ethically significant objections. Consider the following scenario: Box 5.39 A scenario of unequal need Scenario 17: After a devastating auto accident involving several persons, the victims have been brought in to the emergency ward one by one. In an emergency ward, there are only limited number of beds, equipment, doctors, and medical staff. All victims cannot be attended at the same time. In scenario 17, several victims of the accident deserve medical attention, and they have been brought into the emergency ward one by one. However, the resources are limited in the emergency room. Though each of them was brought into the emergency ward in a certain order, FCFS based on the time of the arrival cannot be a fair criterion here. For, some of them may be more grievously injured than the others and may require a medical procedure more urgently than the others. Under the circumstances, to treat them all as equals and to put them in a queue for medical attention would be entirely unfair. A fair policy in this case would be to prioritize their medical needs, and to attend to each by the medical need of the victim. The victims, who need the most urgent medical attention, should be attended to first, regardless of when they have arrived in the emergency ward. Then those who are next in the order of need for urgent medical attention should be attended to. So, FCFS, though it is a working principle, has limited utility. It is not appropriate for all occasion of distribution. 2. Need as a principle of distributive justice: As we saw in the Scenario 17, in a situation, where resources are limited, and there are multiple demands on the resource, the need principle may be used to find a solution by giving weightage to the individual needs, and also to the urgency and acuteness of that need. The need principle says: Distribution should be done based on the need. The need must be assessed to decide the size of the portion or the share in allocation. The neediest should get urgent attention in distributive decisions.

This implies that this is not an equality-based principle, as needs vary from person to person. The desert would depend on the need. Giving more to those whose need is acute is an idea that appeals to us as a way to interpret fairness. Consider Scenario 18.

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Box 5.40 A scenario for need principle Scenario 18: Suppose that there only 15 winter jackets to distribute among a group of 20 tourists, who have come only for a few hours trip to a high altitude, snowy, mountain pass, but are accidentally stranded high up in the mountain by an unexpected landslide. As the clearing of the roadblock will take time, they will be forced to spend the night at the mountain pass under a makeshift tent. Their attires are not warm enough, as the tourists did not plan to spend a night at the high altitude, windy and snowy, and terribly cold mountain pass. The local administration arranged quickly for a few tents, sleeping bags, and some heavy duty winter jackets, but unfortunately there are not enough jackets to give one each. So, what would be a fair distribution principle of the jackets? Scenario 18 draws our attention to the varying needs in the tourist group, and the scarcity of the winter jackets. The need principle would recommend that the individual needs may be assessed first, and according to the need the distribution should take place, those among the group who are more susceptible to hypothermia deserve special attention. If, for instance, there are children, elderly people, and mothers with infants in the group, then perhaps their needs should be attended to first. And the needs of the able-bodied young, and strong people, who are relatively less vulnerable to the risk of exposure to bitter cold, would be addressed next. Since there are fewer jackets than people, based on the vulnerability it may be decided who among them would be asked to share a jacket with another. The need principle is an oft-used social policy. The idea of a modern welfare state is closely connected with the idea of supporting people in need in the society. Economic packages, social welfare schemes are developed with the aim of reaching out to the population in need. As we are transiting through a pandemic (2020–2021), we may note that the mass vaccination drive in different countries has been based on considerations of need and vulnerability. Though everyone needs the protection from the deadly virus, everyone cannot be vaccinated at the same time. Hence, the distribution policy was to vaccinate in phases as per the acuteness of need for protection: The most vulnerable group was the healthcare workers, and those who have to come in direct contact with the infected and they were vaccinated as the first priority, and then the next layer of vulnerable population was reached; namely, the 60+ population and people with the comorbidities, and so on until the general public are reached. This too is an example of application of the need principle in a social policy.

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Box 5.41 Application of equity and need in COVID-19 vaccination distribution policy In COVID-19 Pandemic, WHO recommended that the vaccination should be based on equity, and need would be one of the factors. The threat of being infected was perceived to be highest for the healthcare workers, such as the doctors, nurses, hospital staff. This is why globally the healthcare workers were put on top of the priority list of the vaccination drive. Similarly, people above 60 years of age and people with certain comorbidities were declared as being specially vulnerable to the pathogen and were given top priority in the vaccination drive above the general population. Problem with the need-based approach However, the concept of need raises many questions. For example, how are we to understand the concept of need? What kind of need are we talking about? For, there can be different kinds of needs. Should all needs be treated at par, or certain kinds of need should get priority? Consider these two types, for example: (1) Basic or primary needs and (2) Non-basic or secondary needs. Basic needs or primary needs are the essential necessities for survival, such as food, water, air, clothing, shelter, sanitation. These are needs, which if not satisfied, we would not survive. Some want to include in this list of basic needs other items such as sanitation, primary health care, and livelihood. On the whole, basic needs traditionally have been understood in physiological terms as the bodily needs that are essential for the functioning of a body. In his hierarchy of needs, psychologist Maslow placed the physiological or the bodily needs as the most basic among all the other needs (Maslow, 1943; Maslow, 1954). Clearly, the basic needs, and their satisfaction, get a primacy in the understanding and assessment of needs in a distributive situation. In case of a distributive decision, we feel that it is our moral obligation to at least try to satisfy the basic needs through distribution to save the recipient’s life. For, as philosophers have explained, safeguarding someone’s survival through the satisfaction of a basic need is considered as a value or a desirable goal. Non-basic or secondary needs, on the other hand, are needs that are secondary in nature. After fulfilling the basic needs, there may be some additional personal needs. For example, the fashion needs for the trendy clothes, shoes and accessories, the need to have the latest gadgets or latest model cars. Some people always need the latest mobile, for example.

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When the resources are limited, in allocation of these resources, from the point of view of distributive justice, in comparison to the basic needs, the non-basic needs are usually considered as lower in importance and urgency. For example, when distributing food to a famine-stricken area with little or no network connectivity, the goal would be to distribute food for subsistence first to all, and their need for telecommunication would be taken up later. The usual argument for this prioritization is that the demands of non-basic needs can be kept in waiting, as not addressing them urgently do not really impair one’s survival. In case of very scarce resources, if there are demands for both basic and nonbasic needs, arguably the demands for non-basic needs may be justifiably dismissed. The logic provided is that when there is not enough, it is our ethical obligation to take care of the most basic demands first and foremost. A similar distinction was advocated in the context of natural environment and the framework of Sustainable Development (SD) as the distinction between needs and wants.. Before we leave the topic of need, it is worthwhile to note this distinction. The SD framework wants to emphasize on changing the consumption habits in an environmentally and socially responsible manner so that the need fulfillment gets priority over the satisfaction of the wants. A need is a necessity; something that one cannot do without. For example, air to breathe is a need for a human, and any other oxygen-breathing life-form. A want, on the other hand, is not a necessity in absolute sense, but it is something that one would like to have. For example, the desire to have a private swimming pool in the house is a want. Box 5.42 Needs and wants in Sustainable Development Framework A need is a bare necessity: For example, we need air to breathe. Without air, we cannot survive. A want is not a necessity in absolute sense, but it is something that one would like to have. For example, we want a luxurious accommodation. The Brundtland Commission (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987) on Sustainable development basically recommended that the developmental goals should be aligned to fulfill the needs of the people everywhere on earth, but without harming the chances of survival of the future generations. The wants can wait, and the consumption patterns, which use up the earth’s limited resources to fulfill the wants of some affluent nations and do not leave enough to fulfill the needs of many other nations in the world, must stop. However, whether we consider the basic and non-basic needs, or we consider the need Versus the want, the problem remains. It is always that easy to distinguish between basic and non-basic needs in an absolute sense; therefore it is not always easy to prioritize between them. Some argue that the distinction between basic and non-basic needs could be a matter of perception, just as the distinction between need and want also could be a matter of perception. Depending on the context, what I may perceive as a non-basic need may very well be perceived as a basic need by another

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person. For example, to a fashion model, whose livelihood and passion both revolve around fashion, fashionable clothes and accessories could be as important a need as is sustenance. Perception of a need is subjective in nature. To a musician, the need for music may be a basic need, whereas to others it may seem as a non-basic need. Similarly, water can be a need for someone stranded in a hot desert. Water is a want when it is needed for the water slides in the entertainment parks. Perception of basic and non-basic needs vary among societies too. Depending upon their stages of development, access to technology and standard of living, what may be perceived as a most basic need or a necessity in an affluent society, could very well be an unimaginable luxury or a non-basic need is an underdeveloped, impoverished society. For example, Wi-Fi connectivity everywhere in the country could be a demanded as a basic need in many developed countries, where the needs for food, shelter, health care, are already satisfied; whereas in some developing country, the needs for food, shelter, health care would be the unmet fundamental needs, and they might view the need for Wi-Fi-connectivity as non-basic need. So, the concept of need is not an easy concept always for the implementation of distributive justice. However, despite the controversial aspects, the need principle occupies a prominent position in the discourse of social policies and distributive justice. In recent times, human needs have generated important discussions in economics, political science, psychology, and even in the debates around human rights. Quick Question 5.18 A disposable needle is a needle attached to a syringe. The disposable needle must be destroyed and discarded after single use. They are used to prevent the unwanted spread of infections. Is the need for disposable needle a basic need or a non-basic need? Is it a need for only some medically vulnerable people?

3. Principle of Equality as a principle of distributive justice: Equality is a revered criterion of distributive justice, but it too has aspects that we need to understand carefully. Given its importance and the need for detailed understanding, this topic will be discussed in a separate section next (Sect. 5.5.7). Therefore, we shall discuss this topic later. 4. Principle of equity as a principle of distributive justice: The concept of equity in the context of distributive justice means a fair allocation. It is a very different concept from the concept of equality. An equitable share is a proportional share, which may or may not be equal. The principle of equity too is a celebrated

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principle of distributive justice, and it deserves its own space. It too shall be taken up in a separate section (Sect. 5.5.8). This brings us to an end of the discussion on some of the established, major principles of distributive justice. As said above, the latter two principles (Equality and Equity) will be discussed in details in what follows.

5.5.7 Principle of Equality We shall approach the concept of equality by first finding out what it is not. Note that equality is not identity. For two things to be considered as equal, it means that they are identical in some respect. The two equal things must have some attribute in common; and we say that the two things are equal with reference to that aspect. Box 5.43 Equality in at least one aspect • If two shoes are identical in size, they are equal with respect to their sizes. • If two people, A and B, earn identical amount, exactly INR 10 Lakhs per annum, then A and B are equal with respect to their annual income. • If a group of people as club members enjoy the same rights and privileges in a club, then they are equals as members of that club. • If two movies convey identical message, then they are equal in their messages. But note that they may be different in other aspects. Box 5.44 Equality allows difference Two shoes of equal size may have different colors, or different designs, material, comfort level, etc. A and B, who may be equals in annual income, may differ in their anatomy, height, weight, mother tongue, knowledge and skill level, and in hundreds of other things. So, the point is that for equality, it is not necessary that the items compared must be identical in every aspect. If two things had every attribute exactly equal, then they would be numerically identical; that is, they would not be discernible as two separate things. However, equality in general does not mean numerical identity. As concepts, identity and equality are to be differentiated. Two people may be equals, without being identical. Two shirts may be of equal size, without being identical.

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So, we learnt: Equality is not the same as numerical identity. Equality, therefore, is to be understood as being the same in at least one respect. In case of a claim about equality, the comparison between the two items must mention a feature or an aspect, in reference to which equality has to be understood. Next, let us try to follow what equality is. To do that, we shall follow eminent thinkers and their thoughts on equality from ancient times to present time.  Earlier understanding of equality: Aristotle in his writings referred to two kinds of equality with respect to distributive justice: (i) Numerical equality: A distribution is numerically equal when each person is given a numerically equal share. For example, if a food packet is being distributed, everyone, no matter who the person is, gets one banana and two apples. (ii) Proportional equality: A distribution is proportionally equal when as a result of the distribution everyone gets their proportional due. This means that the distribution will not be numerically equal, but will be according to everyone’s rightful needs. The unequals must be treated as unequals, and the share will be proportional to the rightful desert of the person. This is a very different concept of equality from numerical equality. For example, if on a trekking trip the total load to carry is 35 Kgs, and there are 5 persons in the group, but the group includes a 2-year-old child. Clearly, in such a situation, the just distribution is not to allocate 7 Kgs load to every person in the group. The child’s share of load will have to be distributed among the other four. That would be proportional equality instead of numerical equality. What this shows is that in case of distribution, people, or the items compared, may be different in ethically significant aspects. When this is the case, then numerically unequal but proportionally equal distribution is just. Aristotle’s classification draws our attention to a key concern in distributive justice: It must first be determined which cases are equal and in what respect, and which cases are unequal, and in what respect. On this, the further decision of who deserves what will depend. Around 16th CE, in Europe, the concept of equality, similar to all other concepts of that times, received a very different treatment as a concept linked to God, and Christian theological beliefs. In 16th–18th CE, a theory of natural rights was developed. The theory came with the presupposition of a natural order. The expression nature had a different connotation at that time; it referred to what God has created. So, the natural order was conceived as a divine order. It postulated that in the absence of the man-made laws, there are natural laws which govern the relations of all beings to each other. Equality was included among the natural laws. Thus, equality, as a part of the natural order and the natural laws, was presumed to be the expression of what God wills.

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According to that theory, equality is as per the natural order; every human deserved the same respect and dignity. It proclaimed equality in treatment towards every human: Every person deserved equal respectful treatment. Though equal treatment seems to imply equal share in distribution, the medieval thinkers mean moral equality and political equality rather than distributive equality. Needless to say, this notion of equality is fundamentally different from that of Aristotle. What is moral equality? This is explained below. Moral equality: Moral equality claims that the natural order is that all humans deserve to be treated equals on a moral standing. As already mentioned, historically the source of moral equality is the divine natural order, or order that prevailed in the nature as a result of God’s will. The traces of this idea can be found in ancient Greece among the Stoic philosophers, who advocated the natural equality of all rational beings. There was no explicit reference to any God in the Greek theory. The medieval thinkers, however, endorsed it with a greater religious fervor, Christian to be more specific. In New Testament Christianity and in Islam, the idea of equality of all humans in the eyes of God was advocated as a precept. This influenced the thoughts of the medieval thinkers. For example, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) maintained that natural equality among all humans was the state of nature; i.e. when the humans were uncorrupted by attachment to personal property, equality was the norm. In their natural condition, the humans regarded each other as equals, and lived peacefully as equals. Similarly, in one of the formulations of his Categorical Imperative, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) also stipulated that all humans, as persons, deserve to be treated with equal dignity and respect. Rousseau believed that equality among the humans declines when through private property social inequality increases, and differences in possessions start to overshadow the natural equality of the humans. So far, we have learnt three kinds of interpretations of equality: • Numerical equality • Proportional equality, and • Moral equality. Next, we shall find out how equality is understood in our contemporary thinking. Contemporary understanding of Equality as integral part of justice: Our contemporary understanding of equality is starkly different from the medieval times. The perceived authority of the Divine Will diminished in the modern time; hence the appeal of the belief in a natural order and all its associated tenets also has declined. Today, equality has been accepted as a social and political ideal. Yet, we find manifest signs of inequality of different kinds all around us. Some people have so much of food that they waste food; whereas some go without food for days. Some people own luxury cars, and stay in posh apartments, while some spend the night under make-shift canopies on the streets. Some people enjoy all the power and privileges in the society, and others remain helpless, captive victims of caprices of policies. That is part of the reason why in recent times, equality, understood as equality in certain aspect of human life, has been part of slogan in the protests against the governments and social institutions, which operate with their belief in some kind

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of unjustified inequalities or other. There is need, therefore, to learn about what the important claims of equality are today. Some of these are mentioned below. You shall find that in each one of them, the demand is not for numerical identity, but for equality with reference to some particular aspect of human life. 1. Legal equality: Modern jurisprudence uses Equality before the law as a foundational principle. Legal equality means equality of all people in the eyes of the law.

Legal equality: In the eyes of the law, all humans are to be treated as equals. That is, the law should not treat anyone specially, with special leniency or with special prejudice. The same law would apply to everyone, irrespective of who the person is, rich or poor, high caste or low caste, white or black, powerful or powerless, elite or commoner, a famous celebrity or an unknown ordinary person. It also means that the laws should give equal protection to all, without any bias towards a segment of the society. 2. Social equality: Social equality refers to the equality of social status in the society. It refers to a social ideal where people stand as equals in the society, and not as superior or inferior to any other.

Social equality: With respect to the society, all humans stand as equals. That is, it means that the people would have equal rights and liberty, irrespective of caste, creed, gender, ethnicity, and that they should have equal access to social resources and services. 3. Economic equality: Communism and socialism, in particular, set their central goal as economic equality in the society. Economic equality aspires to abolish income and wealth disparities among the people and to establish equality in income and wealth among people as far as possible.

Economic equality: There should be equality in income and wealth among people. It proposes a taxation system, and distribution of wealth-making opportunities among different groups of the population in such a way that level of national wealth and economic powers are somewhat equalized among the people. 4. Political equality: Political equality is the ideal that every individual in the society would enjoy equal rights and power, such as the right to life, to liberty and to

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personal property, and the same liberties, such as the freedom to cast votes, the freedom to choose a vocation.

Political equality: Everyone in the society would enjoy the same political rights and power. It means that the government would be a government for all, and that it would not act to confer special powers and privileges to some sections of the society, or not inflict special disadvantages for specific sections of the society. 5. Gender equality: Gender equality is a call for equality between the genders. Women’s right movement has championed the demands for equality of women with the men, such as equal rights for women, equal liberty for women to pursue a career choice or a life-style choice, equality in opportunities for women, equal pay for equal work, etc.

Gender equality: In a society, women should have the equal rights and liberties as men. It asks also for equal access to the social resources for women, e.g. sanitation, health care, education; and equal right to economically and socially participate in decision-making. It promotes equal valuation of women in the society as men, and equal acceptance across the sectors. As you can see from above, with the complexity in the issues in our contemporary society, various interpretations of equality have been conceived and demanded in different spheres of human life: Legal, social, political, economic, gender norms. Other than these, an equality-based, practical principle of fairness has been formulated to apply in order to make the society more fair and equal: The principle of equal opportunity. That will be our next topic. Quick Question 5.19 Is inequality necessarily ethically wrong? For example, should everyone get the same salary in the country? Should everyone wear the same kind of shoes? Justify your answer.

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Principle of Equality of Opportunity

While discussing the contemporary understanding of equality and its application in present-day society, it is worthwhile to discuss principle of equality of opportunity, separately. It is an widely used principle in many spheres of our social life, you may have seen or heard corporate offices, government organizations, university campuses to use phrases such as ‘We are an equal opportunity organization’, or ‘We are an equal opportunity employer’. What is this equal opportunity, or equality of opportunity? Equality of opportunity is a fairness principle, or a political ideal. It asserts that that in a competition for a social opportunity, such as job opportunity, all people should be able to compete on equal terms, or on a level playing field, only on the basis of merit and ability. It is the idea that in spite of existing social hierarchy in a society, access to opportunities that are created by the society should be available to every eligible member of the society. No one should be debarred from access to the opportunities on the basis of social hierarchies based on caste, race, gender, religion, etc. Equality of opportunity: Despite the existing social hierarchies, all social opportunities should be available to all by a fair competition, where people should be able to compete on equal terms. Let us try to understand the points raised by the concept of equal opportunity one by one, so that we understand the practical relevance of this principle in our present-day society. Existing social hierarchy: Social hierarchies are generally to be understood as a stratified social ranking system, which is created by a society within the society. They refer to the organization of the society in such a way, which allows an individual to enjoy social status, privileges, and access to various social and material resources, depending upon which strata or group the individual is a member of. In a social hierarchy, some people belonging to a certain strata by birth or by affiliation are allowed to enjoy a higher social status, are treated socially as superiors, and are given priority in important social matters; whereas, people who are born in a certain other community are treated as social inferiors, are restricted from participation in various social matters and decision-making processes, and are also allowed restricted access to the social and material resources. Examples: Examples would include the caste system as we find in India. The caste-based society is stratified in different castes, and by birth one belongs to a certain caste. The accepted social norm in a caste-based society is that being born in the higher castes is a privilege, which guarantees superior social status in comparison to the people born in the lower castes. The privilege also ensures easier access to the social resources. On the other hand, being born in the lower castes, people are conferred a lower social status. The ease of access to the social resources, such as

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education opportunities, and the material resources, such as access to water, are often governed by the caste membership. Other examples of social hierarchy would be the race-based stratification in the society, as in the United States of America. A racial hierarchy is a system of social ranking based on the genetic stock that one is born with, and a presumption of the racial supremacy of the White race, and the racial inferiority of all other races. In different societies and in different eras, racial hierarchies have been implemented with the full support of the law. History shows that racial hierarchy has led from time to time to oppression, social harassment, and even extermination, of the races perceived to be inferior. Access to social opportunities, such as education, a free life of achievements, were prohibited or restricted for the non-whites. The principle of equal opportunity aims to combat the social hierarchies based on prejudices and unfounded preferences. It aspires to establish a fair social order, despite any existing social hierarchy. A society may not be completely free of social hierarchies. Equal opportunity helps us to devise social arrangements to thwart the adverse impact of the existing social hierarchies. For example, in case of a caste-based hierarchical society, the movement to another social level is open only to some individuals if they are lucky to be born in a certain caste. Opportunities, such as lucrative job opportunities and career opportunities, are artificially controlled to go to the higher castes. When equality of opportunity prevails in the society, despite the caste, social positions and mobility within the social hierarchy are decided by some sort of open competition, in which every member of the society is eligible to take part in the competition on equal terms, regardless of caste, creed or gender. Equality of opportunity initiates affirmative action and makes the advantaged positions and offices available through an open competition, in which anyone, irrespective of race, can participate. By opportunities, we mean the opportunities that the society creates for advancement, and upward social mobility. For example, a very basic social opportunity is the opportunity to get educated. Similarly, another basic social opportunity is the opportunity to get healthcare services. The economic opportunity may be the opportunity to get high-quality employment opportunity, or high quality wealth-making opportunity. Since a society has only limited resources, and with that it can create only limited number of opportunities; therefore, the access to those limited social opportunities are distributed through a competition. One needs to compete with the others in the society to avail of these opportunities. Hence, the equality of opportunities is to be understood as equality of competitive opportunities. The basic idea is that everyone should have an equal opportunity to compete, without being discriminated on an irrelevant ground, such as birth in a specific family, race.

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Box 5.45 Equality of competitive opportunity • Equality of opportunities is actually equality of competitive opportunities. • A social opportunity is competitive. For, positions of advantage are limited, as social resources are limited. • Moreover, most desired positions are fewer than the people who desire them. • Principle of equality of competitive opportunities tries to ensure that everyone gets an equal opportunity to compete. Now, when a social hierarchy or ranking system exists in a society, it may try to artificially control the access to the social opportunities by allocating the access by the hierarchy. For example, the better jobs and salaries may be restricted and reserved only to the people from the white race. What the principle of equality of competitive opportunity tries to ensure is to make it possible, despite the existing hierarchy, for everyone to enter the competition to access the opportunities on an equal term. At the entry level for the competition to access the opportunities, it allows all if they have the basic and relevant eligibility, such as the requisite talent. When each contestant enters the competition for the opportunity, each one should have equal opportunity to succeed. No favoritism, or prejudice, must pre-determine the result. Then, it is their performance in the competition which decides the result. In general, the principle of equality of opportunity is against any discrimination. Discrimination is unjustified differentiation among people based on irrelevant criteria and prejudices. ➤ On equal terms, or a level playing field: A level playing field is a situation in which the conditions for a competition are fair to everyone, where every contestant gets the equal opportunity, and a fair and equal chance to win. The analogical reference is to a field game, such as football or soccer. If the field is uneven on one side and even on the other side, it will give undue advantage to the players on the even side. For each side to have a fair chance to win the game, the field must be even on both sides and for all the players. In a fair game, the players on each side must be allowed to play on equal terms, not with undue advantage or disadvantage. This concept of a level playing field is associated with the principle of equal opportunity. So, where principle of equal competitive opportunity prevails, the competition should follow the following guidelines: (a) What should not be a decisive factor for eligibility: For selecting the entrants in a fair competition, the considerations should not include circumstances for which the individual cannot be held responsible; such as where the person was born, what skin color the person has, which caste or family the person was born in, the environment that the parents could provide to the person. For, these are not chosen by the individual, so these cannot serve as relevant criteria. To include these bases as criteria would be to unfairly discriminate against some of the contestants and to deprive them even a chance to enter the race, and a violation

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of equality of opportunity. Similarly, the entry selection should not depend on any criterion which is not relevant for the competition at hand. To compete in a music competition, the religion of a competitor should not be a criterion. The idea is to allow relevantly equal contestants and to treat them all as equals at the onset of the competition. Every contestant should have equal chance to win the race and should be given a level playing field to succeed. So, note: The point of principle of equal opportunity is to reject all such inequalities as criteria for selection, for which the contestant cannot be held responsible, and which are irrelevant to the competition.

(b) What should be part of the decisive factors: The performance of the contestants in the aspects relevant to the competition should be given due consideration. Given the initial equal conditions to the contestants, once the race starts, the inequality in performance that may arise from individual choices and performance should not be removed from decisive factors for the outcome. For example, in a football match, the opportunity to win is competitive. In a fair game, after ensuring a level playing field for both sides, only the inequalities that may arise due to the inequal performance of the teams should matter to decide who is the winning team. Similarly, among the contestants, the individual differences in the level of relevant skill, strategy, and style should be given due consideration to decide who is the best player among the lot (Pic. 5.10).

Pic. 5.10 A football match

So, note: The point of principle of equal opportunity is not to eradicate all inequalities. Certain inequalities which are relevant to the competition, such as the individual performance in the contest, must be included as criteria.

Scope and application of Equal Opportunity Principle: The scope and application of the principle of equal opportunity is wide. You will find it in use in different societies in the world today.

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For example, the International Labor Organization (ILO) recommends to the employers to use of the principle of equal opportunity in the workplace. Box 5.46 Equal opportunity principle: application in the workplace ILO observes that despite attempts to eradicate unjust social discrimination, till date no country is free from social discrimination. ILO adds that the same discrimination is visible universally also in employment and occupation. Men and women alike are denied access to employment or to training and are restricted to certain occupations, and paid low wages simply on the basis of their caste, race, religion, or sex. In response to that fact, ILO recommends to the employers to use of the principle of equal opportunity in the workplace. In fact, ILO has several guidelines prepared according to the principle of equal opportunity. In Box 5.46, you may see how the principle of equal opportunity is recommended for use in the global workplace. On this interpretation, it becomes the principle of equal employment opportunity, which asserts that all people should have the right to work only on their merit and ability, regardless of their skin color, religious belief, national origin, age, or any other irrelevant factor. As mentioned earlier, we find globally many universities, educational organizations, government organizations, and business organizations have adopted this principle of equal employment opportunity as their recruitment policy. Consider another example. Among the competitive examinations in India, the Joint Entrance Examinations (JEE) of India for the entrance to the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) fit into the description of equal opportunity examinations. Any student who has cleared the 12th Class Board Examination with a certain qualifying aggregate marks (75% in 2021),6 or has secured position among the top 20 percentile in the 12th Board examination is eligible to take part in the JEE Main, and those who qualify in JEE Main are eligible to appear from JEE Advanced examination. Regardless of their gender, caste, religion, economic status, ethnic origin, a student of India, if the qualifying conditions are met satisfactorily, can appear for the JEE Examination. After the entry in the competitive examination, only the performance of the student matters for securing a seat in the IIT system. Quick Question 5.20 Choose the correct answer. Equal Opportunity Principle, when applied to a workplace, is: (a) Exclusively about the hiring and the selection process

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(b) About the requirement that the employers treat women and the physically disabled people preferentially and more favorably than the other employees. (c) About paying every worker equally (d) About ensuring that people are selected based on merit and skill required and relevant for the job. In the above, we have learnt important points about the concept of equality. We have learnt that: ✓ Equality is not the same as identity. Equality is with respect to an aspect, or some aspects, between the equal items. ✓ Equality may be numerical and proportional; and these are different. ✓ Though in the medieval times, equality was proposed as part of divine will, in modern understanding of equality, equality has been demanded by people in various domains of everyday life in a society; such as social equality, economic and political equality. ✓ Principle of equal opportunity is an important and practical application of the principle of equality, which has been institutionalized in many countries, in making social competitive opportunities accessible equally to the members of a society. From this, we can gather that the principle of equality is a major principle of justice. Yet, for distributive justice, some specific questions and conflicts rise from the application of the principle of equality which need a separate and focused discussion. We need to find an answer to the following question: How is equality to be used in a distributive context, and how to avoid the conflicts ensuing from its use?

5.5.7.2

Distributive Equality and Egalitarianism

As said before, equality is a revered principle of distribution. Many in political philosophy believe that for the distribution of all social goods, which are suitable for public distribution, equality should be presumed as a core principle of distribution. That is, in a public distribution, a standing presumption should be that of equality. Everyone waiting to be served should be presumed as equals, who deserve equal shares. The basis for such expectation is usually a faith in moral equality, or some kind of social equality.7 We shall next learn about the theory which endorses the principle of equality for distributive justice.

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Please see previous discussion in this section on moral equality and social equality.

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Egalitarianism: Egalitarianism is a position in political philosophy which endorses equality as a basis for justice, and also for distributive justice. Equality is égalité in French. In French revolution, égalité or equality was a very important part of the slogan for social change. From that French term, the name of the theory has been derived: Egalitarianism as a theory of égalité. Egalitarianism seeks a social order based on equality, or social equality: People should be treated as equals, should treat each other as equals, and enjoy equal status in the society. Box 5.47 The theory of egalitarianism Egalitarianism is a theory which upholds equality as a fundamental principle for justice. It maintains that all people in a society, should be treated as equals, should treat each other as equals, and enjoy equal status in the society. The main justification that egalitarianism provides for the equal treatment is that all humans are fundamentally worth the same; there are no relevant differences among people which can justify unequal treatment. The French revolution (1789) illustrates the idea of egalitarianism. Until about 18th CE, the societies in the Western world were stratified and divided into higher and lower classes, such as the noblemen, the clergy, the peasants. It was taken for granted that people were unequals by birth and by class. It was accepted that the Royals, the noble-born, and the clergy, would enjoy a different, very privileged, superior status in the society. The early French society was no exception. It too had higher and lower classes. The Royals, the noble, and the powerful people lived a life of abundant luxury in their palatial manors. They had wealth, power and all the comforts that the society could give. They, albeit wealthy, were exempted from land taxes, which the peasants had to pay. In contrast, the poor, the working class and the peasants in France lived in poverty, lowly status, misery, squalor, and disease. Historians tell us that in the lean years in the rural France an overwhelming majority of the poor French farmers lived below the subsistence level, earning just enough to barely survive with their families. The urban poor of French society also lived in misery. Poor living conditions and the hard workplace requirements took toll on their health and lifespan. The social and economic disparities grew disturbingly stark in that society. The festering wrath and discontent among the underprivileged reached a tipping point in 1789 and exploded as the French revolution. In the summer of 1789, the peasants in the countryside rose in hundreds of thousands to attack the Manors of the King, the noble and the rich and the mighty, and to put them under arrest, and to destroy every symbol of pomp and splendor that the high and mighty had. Seeing this rural unrest, the city of Paris also responded by the abolition of the nobility and feudalism. Thus, in 1789, the people of France overthrew the earlier, objectionably inequal system of rule by the nobles and the royals, and did away with the privileges that these privileged classes enjoyed. Their goal was to establish an egalitarian social order, where every member of the French society was socially and politically equal, regardless of their birth and class, and had the same rights and liberties in the society.

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Since French Revolution, social equality has been a leading ideal in political philosophy. With significant evidentiary support, it is claimed that equality in a society is of grave importance, because there is a steep social cost of socio-economic disparities, and the growing inequalities ensuing from them. Consider, for example, the following fact: In 2018, in the USA, the highest earning 20% US families made 52% of all US income. The combined income of the rest of the US population, the 80%, made up the remaining 48%. The income disparity between the white and the black households is also clear. The average black household is poorer than an average white household, though they are part of the same society.

The passage above draws our attention to the large wealth gap, or the inequal distribution of income, and wealth, in the USA. Within the same society, it is inequality in the income dimension. The distribution of wealth appears to be skewed, and the passage claims that race plays a role in the systematic economic disparity among the households. Though we are more familiar with inequality in the income dimension within a society, many eminent social science scholars, however, argue that the rise of inequality in non-income dimensions is no less serious for a society. Non-income dimensions are the non-economic aspects of a social life, such as education, health. Inequalities in non-income dimensions can have serious impact on a nation. Consider this for example: India is a country of more than 1 Billion population (2021). More than 70% of its population still lives in the rural areas. However, hospitals are more in the cities. A 2011 study claimed that hospital beds are more than twice in number in the urban areas than in the rural areas. Also, immunization coverage among the children remains much higher in the urban areas than in the rural areas (Balarajan et al., 2011).

The passage above points at the inequal distribution of hospital beds, and immunization coverage, between rural and urban India. Inequalities in health status, and in access to health care, can be grave problems for a society. For, in a society the wellbeing of an individual is not an isolated phenomenon. It is inseparably connected with the well-being of the others. Moreover, the right to health is a fundamental human right of every citizen, rural and urban. Other examples of inequality in non-income dimensions may be as follows: The inequalities in hunger and nutrition status: Countries can have inequalities in terms of nutritional status of their citizens and also in terms of hunger present among their populations. Some countries have comparatively more cases of stunting and wasting among the children as markers of malnutrition, and some countries have higher hunger index. India has 17.3% of under-5 children suffering from wasting, as a result of malnourished status. The percentage is among the highest in the world. 51.4% of Indian women in 15-49 years age group are affected by anaemia (Global Nutrition Report, 2020), also a global marker of malnutrition. Global Hunger Index or GHI is a tool designed to comprehensively measure and track hunger at local, national and global level. GHI published annual reports. GHI (2020) shows that Chad and Madagascar are among the countries which have an alarming level of hunger among the countries.

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Considering the importance of the far-reaching implications of the inequalities in the non-income dimensions, a different kind of index is used, which we know of as the Human development Index (HDI). It uses various measures to measure the inequalities in the non-income dimensions. We shall discuss the Human development Index (HDI) when we discuss Martha Nussbaum’s capability approach towards the end of the present chapter. The point is that inequalities of these kinds, whether in the income dimension or in the non-income dimension, are not ethically desirable. The general opinion is that the stark inequalities of these sort, if allowed to grow without social intervention, are detrimental for overall social well-being, social cohesiveness and stability. They also erode social trust on the social institutions. Therefore, from the above it should be clear that the egalitarian distribution, in which every member of society is allocated equal shares of society’s benefits and burdens, is supposed to be a worthy principle of distributive justice. Distributive equality principle from egalitarianism: Everyone should get equal share of society’s resources, benefits, and burdens. However, the discussion below will show you that in distributive justice, the application of principle of equality alone can stir up serious issues. Hence the blanket application of equality in distributive justice is problematic. Explanation follows.  Strict egalitarianism: Strict egalitarianism is the position that equality, and equality alone, should be followed strictly. In a distributive context, particularly in a societal context, everyone should get exactly equal share of goods and services, and burdens; because the argument is that there is no relevant difference among people to justify an inequal share. Distributive equality principle from strict egalitarianism: Everyone should get exactly equal share of resources, benefits, and burdens of the society. For example, when distributing voting rights, every citizen, who qualify in age, should get equal voting rights. Or, when distributing food at a breakfast counter, the distribution policy based on strict egalitarianism is that exactly equal breakfast tray should be served to each person: Everyone gets the meal of a banana, an orange, a toast, and an egg (Pic. 5.11).

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Pic. 5.11 Example of distribution justice as per strict egalitarianism

Quick Question 5.21 Prejudice is a negative attitude held towards a member of a subgroup or a community. In Society S, sexism, which is prejudice against someone based on their sex, is highly prevalent. Can we regard S as an egalitarian society? Is S a strictly egalitarian society? Critique of strict egalitarianism: Simple as the idea may seem, strict egalitarianism, when strictly followed as a distributive justice principle and criterion can raise many problematic questions. Some of these are listed below: 1. Measurement problem: To ensure strict equality in distribution, the support of measuring indices is required. If it involves the distribution of material objects, as in the case of breakfast tray, one may try for following numerical equality by keeping the number of the distributed items exact.

Numerical equality: Everyone gets 1 banana, 1 orange, 1 piece of toast, and 1 egg. Or else, to ensure strict equality, the same monetary value of the item may be distributed, in case of distribution of material goods and services. For example: Every employee in the company gets a vacation package which is worth INR 50,000.

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The problem starts to show up when the items to be distributed do not have a reliable measurement index; or, are not amenable to measurement by an index. Consider for example: Distribution of career opportunities among the members of the society. Career opportunities are not amenable to measurement by numbers. Even if one tries to measure them by the money earned by a person after availing career opportunity, the money alone cannot be a satisfactory and reliable index for equality. For, the tangible and intangible benefits and changes that career opportunities can bring to each person’s life cannot all be satisfactorily captured and measured by money earned alone. The point here is: If the item to be distributed is not a material good and does not have a reliable index, or cannot be measured reliably, distribution based on strict egalitarianism would raise more conflicts than solutions. Due to the lack of a clear and satisfactory criterion, there would not be any clear and universally acceptable answer to address the question about justice: Was the item apportioned justly? 2. Cannot handle the preference of the recipients: In a distributive scenario, about the allocated items actual recipients may have choices. Strict egalitarianism cannot seem to accommodate preferences of the recipients well. There are other distribution arrangements which are fair, yet can accommodate preferences better. Consider the breakfast distribution scenario once more for example. The breakfast tray menu is: A banana, an orange a piece of toast and an egg. Let us suppose, someone does not want an egg. The distribution rule as per strict egalitarianism is not equipped to handle preferences expressed by the recipients. It can at most give only two options to the recipient: Either take the egg, or not take it. Needless to say, neither is a happy option for the recipient who does not like an egg, or does not eat an egg. In this situation, strict egalitarianism is not necessarily the most satisfactory distribution arrangement for everyone. In a societal set-up, where there may be many who do not want an egg, the issue may provoke a public outcry and turmoil about the injustice in the arrangement. On the other hand, to accommodate preferences in distributive justice, there are many other allocations, other than strict egalitarianism, which may make everyone better off without making anyone worse off. To illustrate this point, let us revisit the breakfast counter, where everyone gets the meal of a banana, an orange, a toast, and an egg.

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Suppose that in this scenario, there is a swap, or exchange, option. Those who do not prefer an egg, but like an orange, may swap the egg for an orange with those who like an egg instead of an orange. • • • • •

X does not want the egg, but does not mind another orange instead. X finds Y, who does not like oranges, and prefers an egg instead. X swaps X’s egg with Y’s orange. X has two oranges now, and no egg. Y has two eggs now, and no orange. X and Y are both satisfied with the distribution, which respects their preferences.

As you can see, in this swap system, each will be better off. The orange-eater will be happy with an extra orange, and the egg-lover would be happy with an extra egg over an orange. Both would be better off without making anyone worse. To impose an identical meal in the name of strict equality would be unfair on such people; for, it does not do justice to the preferences of the recipients. As said, an allocation based on strict equality does not necessarily produce the best result where individual or collective preferences become a major factor in a distributive decision. The swap system is one of the other alternatives which might work out better. 3. Founded on an untenable assumption: Strict egalitarianism is based on the assumption that there are no relevant differences among people. Using that as its foundational premise, strict egalitarianism argues that all persons should be treated as equals. However, many social scientists question the tenability of that assumption. They argue that in real life, there are significant differences among people. An extremely sick person needs a different share of the health resources, than a mildly sick person. A person with a large family of 10 members would have a different consumption pattern than a person who has only himself or herself to take care of. There can be differences in terms of wealth and income among the people. These differences should not be overlooked. However, a strict egalitarianism, with its insistence on the presumed sameness, does not adequately recognize these real-life differences between the individuals, their preferences and needs, and the situations they are in. That makes strict egalitarianism somewhat unrealistic in its approach. 4. Imposition of homogeneity: It has been objected that strict egalitarianism, in the name of equality, tends to obliterate the significant differences among people and impose uniformity and homogenization in the society. For example, in society J, the mainstream population prefers wheat as the staple cereal. There are ethnic groups in J, who prefer rice and other kinds of grains as staple cereal. If J decides to distribute only wheat as the cereal through their public distribution system, it makes the mistake of imposing the food preferences of the mainstream population as the preferences for all, and of imposing an artificial homogeneity over an entire population. Critics argue that such imposed uniformity and homogenization of people are not desirable for the proper functioning of a democracy. For dissent, differences and pluralism are some of the cornerstones of a democratic system. Moreover, multiculturists argue that the present-day societies are diverse and multi-cultural. The

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ideal of strict egalitarianism, on the other hand, does not show sufficient respect for the ethnic differences, and the differences among the value systems, among a multi-cultural population. Rather, it encourages the dominance of a culture of the mainstream population over the culture of the minorities and the marginalized population. That is not a very desirable outcome for our contemporary societies. The conclusion that we may draw from the above points is that strict egalitarianism or strict equality has limited applicability as a principle for distributive justice. People are equal in certain respects, but they also have various kinds of individual differences that must be recognized in a fair society. So, as far as distributive justice is concerned, no doubt equality is a very important ideal to pursue. However, a fair criterion of distributive justice requires more than just strict equality. And that brings us to the principle of equity.

5.5.8 Principle of Equity In the context of distributive justice, the concept of equity means a fair allocation. Based on this concept, an equitable share is a proportional share. Depending upon the situation, this proportional share may be equal, or may be inequal. Above all, the equitable share would be a fair share, which may not always be an equal share. It insists upon the distributing what is deserved, or is the desert. A popular graphic demonstrates the difference between equality and equity, and the special feature of equity as follows: Three people are trying to see a game over a somewhat tall, boarded fence. One of them is pretty tall and can see the game over the fence. The second person is barely the same height as the fence, and can barely manage to watch, despite obstruction to the eyes. The last person is very short and cannot see at all. The three people represent the three types of classes in the society. The tallest person is the most privileged, and the shortest is the most underprivileged, and the middle height is the in-between middle class. Equality would provide each person a box to stand on to watch. The tallest person does not need it, but still gets one. The shortest person, despite getting the box, still cannot see the game. For, with one box, the shortest person reaches only half of the fence. Equity does not give each one a box. It gives two boxes to the shortest fellow, one box to the middle height person, and none to the tallest person. The apportioning is not equal, but is fair. And now, all three of them can watch the game (Pic. 5.12).

Equity is a core principle of social justice. The major concern of equity is to reduce the systemic disparities in terms of access to social resources; such as disparities in access to health care, access to employment. For example, in a certain society the poor, as a group of population, by virtue of being poor may be socially disadvantaged. With meager income, they may be unable to afford the expensive medical procedures, or medical diagnostics using the advanced medical technology. The predictable outcome would be a disparity between the poor in that society and the rest of the population in terms of access to health care and affordability. Many benefits of the healthcare system may remain systematically out of reach for this population.

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Now, equity, as an ethical principle of distributive justice, tries to remove the disparities for the disadvantaged groups by giving selective priority (not equal priority) to them and improve the situation. In our example, this may mean creating special, easy access channels, and cost waivers for the medical treatment of the poor. In Pic. 5.12, you may have noticed that principle of equity did not give every person the same number of boxes. It gave two boxes to the shortest person.

Pic. 5.12 Equality and equity

Box 5.48 Principle of equity Principle of equity, as an ethical principle, concerns itself with addressing unfair differences. It asserts that if necessary, selective priority should be given to the disadvantaged groups in the society. It seeks inequal but fair allocation of the social resources, and access to the social resources, and redistribution of social resources, to establish social equity. Thus, equity is a distinctly different ethical principle from the principle of equality. We need to understand that: (a) It does not assume everyone as equals, and therefore does not strive to treat everyone as equals. (b) It recognizes that there would be, and there are, differences among the people, such as difference in needs, abilities; (c) It tries to deliver justice with due recognition to the differences among the deservers. But, an important question arises. If equality is not considered, what could be some of the considerations that would constitute a desert or an equity-based share? What should be the bases for desert, when we acknowledge that the deservers, or the recipients, may have relevant differences?

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In the following, we shall learn together what some of the theories have proposed as answers to these questions. These are the distributive justice principles which come under the principle of equity.

5.5.9 Desert-Based Principles of Distributive Justice Contemporary theorists have several proposals for a desert-based application of principle of equity in distributive justice. The proposals would broadly fit into the following three categories: • Contribution: People should be rewarded according to the value of their contribution. • Effort: People should be rewarded according to the effort they put in their work. • Compensation: People should be rewarded according to the costs they incur in their work. These contemporary theories have certain commonalities. Before we discuss the theories, we need to pay attention to these common attributes: (a) None of these theories endorses strict equality. Instead, each tries to provide a justifiable basis for unequals to be treated unequally but fairly. Each of them tries to advocate a fair and relevant criterion by which the differences in allocations can be justified. (b) The distributive justice context which each theory assumes is that of society and the rewards that a society distributes. The theories are not about distributing an item in the personal lives of individual people. (c) Each of these desert-based principles refers to the total activity of all the members of the society in different occupations and professions as the social product, and assumes that the social product is aimed towards the goal of raising the standard of life. Then, each theory suggests a criterion with reference to the social product. (c) They believe that the societies desire and value efforts to raise the standard of living in the society, and that this is a good reason to consider the work concerning raising the standard of living as the primary basis for equitable distribution of rewards. We shall see when each of the above-mentioned kinds of theories is discussed below, how the common attributes play out in their recommendations. Contribution-based distributive justice The contribution-based equity approach proposes that the basis for an equitable distribution in a society should be the extent and value of contribution or productive effort towards the social product; namely, the goal of raising the standard of life of a society. The more valuable and successful the contribution is, the larger or better would be the apportioning of the social resources.

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Box 5.49 Contribution-based principle of distributive justice Distribution of the social resources should be in proportion to the value of an individual’s contribution or productive effort towards the social product. The benefits should go more to the one who contributes more. They should be awarded less to those who contribute little or none. We may consider the capitalist notion of distributive justice as an example of the contribution-based equity approach. What is capitalism? Very briefly, capitalism may be understood as a system of economy which is founded on the following tenets: (a) That people, and businesses, by nature are self-interested. They act for their own good, and not for the interest of the others. The motive of self-interest of business should be accepted and encouraged as a legitimate incentive for production and growth of businesses; (b) Left to themselves and given a free choice, businesses would pursue what is good for them, and that self-interested individualism in economic activities can drive and sustain a vibrant, wealth-making system. (c) Capitalism strongly believes in private property and private ownership of wealth. It believes that people with their own earnings should own their own property, in which the intervention of the society or of the government should not happen. (d) Capitalism believes in individual freedom. This freedom is freedom from the intervention of government and other regulatory bodies. It believes that this freedom is essential to pursue self-interest in an unbridled manner. It encourages people, businesses, and corporations to act freely for their own benefit and profit. In capitalism, there is no upper limit set to success and growth; an individual is encouraged to grow as much as he can. In a capitalist economy, the production of the goods and services that the society needs can be owned by individual persons or privately owned companies, not by the government. For example, private business owners can supply food as a profitmaking activity to the society. Or, private transport companies, airlines companies, can make transport (buses, airlines) available to the people, but for a personal profit. Capitalism also encourages people and businesses to own and produce capital goods for profit. Capital goods are physical assets which are used for the production of finished, consumer goods and services, such as food, appliances, medicines, factories, machinery, vehicles,. So, for example, a fast food private company can own its own food processing plant, the equipments that it needs, and even the vehicles which it requires to supply food to the consumers through a retail chain. A private airlines company can own its own private fleet of aircrafts, and the associated other facilities to run its business. As mentioned earlier, capitalism believes in individual freedom without the regulation of the government. The role of the government in capitalism is seen primarily as an enabler for the free market, i.e. a market without trade regulations from the

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government. The government is also supposed to protect the private wealth of people and businesses being misappropriated by the others. Under these conditions, businesses are to compete with each other for their success, and it is generally believed that the free competition among the businesses would actually benefit the society and the social product. In a capitalist system, the reward system is based on the economic success and productive contribution. Making profit from the economic activities is viewed as the reward for the entrepreneurial activities. The profit made is the indicator that the market likes the product and that the product satisfies the consumers. The profit earned therefore is considered as the reward from the society which the seller or the manufacturer of that product deserves. The more the contribution is for the production of a successful endeavor, the more the contributor to that success should be rewarded. A capitalist system believes that a reward is an incentive to excel further. The larger the share of the benefits as the reward would be, the more motivated the most talented and creative individuals would be to innovate more and to contribute more in the system. Thus, a self-interested individual would naturally be interested to contribute and to innovate more; and the economy would be benefited more. So, the distributive justice principle that a capitalist system endorses is that contribution-based distribution. Those who would put in more effort, or contribute more, towards the success of the social product, should be rewarded more. Allocation should be in proportion to their contribution. The share will not be equal, but it will be fair, equitable. Box 5.50 Examples of contribution-based distributive justice Examples While distributing the bonus among the employees from the profits made from annual sale, a contribution-based approach would favor the employees who have contributed to the success of the sales the most. The bonus would be paid by the ratio of their contribution towards the successful sales. When distributing funds, an international funding agency may adopt a contribution-based approach to favor the public health efforts of a developed country, because of its contribution to life-expectancy of its people, over the less-developed countries with weak public health systems. A government may use the contribution-based approach to favor a corporation, which contributes more to the domestic economy and GDP, and by generating employment and livelihood for so many in the society. The government may make special exemptions for this corporation by supplying a larger share of electricity and water, the social resources, at a cheaper rate.

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Critique of Contribution-based approach and Capitalist notion of distributive justice: (a) A standing criticism of the contribution-based distribution principle, and of capitalist notion of justice, is that it is not inclusive. The capitalist system harbors an uncaring attitude towards those, who due to their circumstances are unable to be as productive, or as successful, or contributive as an ordinary person. We mean those who are sick, or who are the severely physically challenged, the cognitively challenged, the underskilled, and so on, who unfortunately are unable to be as contributive as a healthy, able-bodied person. Even if they want to, they cannot contribute at the same level at which an able-bodied, healthy individual can. Yet, they are part of the society and deserve a share of the social resources and rewards. It is the limitation of this principle, however, that it cannot serve as a basis of fair distribution. (b) Socialists object that the capitalist distributive justice system spurs inequality in distribution of wealth and power. It is inherently unfair and should not be applied in the society. For, they argue, capitalism uses competitive economic success as the yardstick for who deserves more in the society. However, the truth about the free-market competition is that there are very few winners, and most of the competitors are not successful. Hence, by its reward system, the capitalist distributive system necessarily leads to unfair accumulation of social benefits, wealth, and power, in the hands of only those fortunate few, who emerge as victorious and successful in the free-market competition. According to the socialists, these handful few then wield their wealth, power, and advantage to gain dominance over the rest of the society, and to dictate their own terms of a living standard in the society. Since their perspective has no room for the poor in the society, the poor does not get a fair equality of opportunity in that system. The poor only become poorer in that society. Thus, as per socialism, the capitalist system of contribution-based distribution is basically an unfair system, which cannot serve as a principle for distributive justice. (c) Others have argued that the history shows that capital or wealth is usually acquired by oppression, inhuman treatment, and exploitation of the others, such as the practice of slavery. The unjust manner in which the wealth or capital is made in this way is ethically objectionable, and a distributive justice principle based on such a concept is likely to have pernicious effect on the society. (d) Critics also raise an ethical objection that the capital may belong to the capitalist, but the profit is made by the toil and labor of the workers. The fruits of one’s labor should go the one who labored as a reward. Therefore, the conclusion is that the profit, thus accrued, does not really belong to the capitalist. It should be distributed to those whose toil and labor has made the profit possible, and to who the profit truly belongs. However, the capitalist distributive justice conveniently overlooks this fact and undermines the value of their labor. (e) How should contribution be measured? What should be the index for measuring the value of the contribution? We may try to value contribution by how the market values it. However, such an approach is bound to run into problems.

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For, the market cannot always correctly and reliably assess the value of all kinds of contributions. For example, can the market properly assess the value of intellectual labor that an University Professor puts in day and day out for human resource development? Can it properly measure the value of the extreme hard work that a farmer puts in to keep the food supply chain of the society continuous? Reality shows that it cannot, because not every kind of contribution is a commodity available in the market. To wrap up the discussion on contribution-based equity approach, we see that it is a workable principle. The capitalist system, as an economy and a social system, has found acceptance as an economic model in certain countries, such as the USA. The contribution-based equity approach also has its following, because of its intuitive appeal to our common sense. Commonly, we tend to believe that allocation based on contribution is fair. However, we found that the approach has its share of problems. The numerous and powerful objections from various groups of thinkers show that while using it we must also remember its limitations. Let us now look at other alternative interpretations of principle of equity. Our next stop is effort-based distributive justice. Effort-based distributive justice Some theorists think that instead of successful contribution, a better way and a more fair criterion would be the effort that one makes in the attempt to contribute to the society. After all, the theorists argue, people have better control over their level of effort than over their productivity. Not all efforts result in contribution. But there is still a value in the effort made. For example, a farmer may sow crops with a lot of hard work. However, unexpectedly, that year there may be bad weather. Or, a sudden influx of pests, or some such circumstance, may destroy the crops. The crop-sowing activity did not result in success, but significant amount of effort was invested in it. Similarly, a businessman may start a new venture, but due to unforeseen events, the business venture may incur huge losses. If we just look the success of the contribution made, we may miss the important element of effort. For, it too has some value. According to the effort theorists, therefore, people should be rewarded in proportion to the effort that they exert. Once more, let us remind ourselves, the context of this theory is also the society, and the social product. So, the recommendation is to use effort as a fair criterion for the social product, or activity of raising the living standard, as the criterion of distributive justice. Box 5.51 Effort-based distributive justice Distribution of social resources would be based on the effort different people put in the social product. Those who put in more effort, deserve to receive more.

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Once more, it recommends an equitable share. The share need not be equal for all, but it will be equitable, being proportional to the effort that one puts in. Those who would put in more effort, would deserve a larger or a better share than those who would put in low effort. Critique of effort-based distributive justice: (a) Critics of effort-based approach express worry about basing social distribution of resources purely on effort. For, they argue that doing so may unjustly deprive those who exert little effort. They point out that high level effort does not always indicate high-level of efficiency, just as low level of effort does not always certify low contribution. An efficient worker may need to exert little effort to get a job done, whereas a person with an inefficient technique may need to put extra effort. Scenario 19 presents a situation to explain this point.

Box 5.52 A scenario of high effort and low efficiency Scenario 19: In Country A, the farming techniques are inefficient. The farmers of A put in a lot of effort, but the quantity of their crop yield is always lower than that of Country B. The farmers of Country B use advanced and efficient farming techniques, and that is the secret of their better outcome. Note that in situations such as scenario 19, to allocate more resources for the farmers of A would be to encourage and to unfairly reward effort that stems from inefficient practices. Rewarding the inefficient effort is a dubious basis for distributing social resources. Therefore, instead of putting unqualified emphasis on effort, the effort-based approach needs to show more sensitivity towards the quality of effort. (b) A related objection is that the effort-based approach does not make it clear which kind of effort should matter in distributive justice. As in the case of contribution, in case of effort also we must remind ourselves that not all efforts are successful. How should the unsuccessful efforts count when allocating a portion? Should an unsuccessful, but extremely hard working businessman, be considered as worthy of getting rewarded as another successful, extremely hardworking, businessman? It seems that there is no clear answer from the theory regarding this. Similarly, it is not clear how to make an interpersonal comparison between the efforts of two persons, particularly if the occupations of the two are of very different nature. Even if quantification of the effort is possible, the theory cannot answer which kind of effort should matter more in case of distribution of social resources and why. When the nature of the work is very different in nature, for example, how do we compare? Is the effort made in digging up the field for agriculture greater, or lesser,

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than the effort in writing a textbook for the students? Should a greater share of the social resources be allocated to the digger than to the textbook author? (c) It is observed that the measurement problem for the contribution theories is applicable for the effort theories also (Lamont, 1995). How should the effort that one spends be measured? At a very elementary level, in a classroom we may form a rough idea about which student is not putting an effort, and who is; or in a team project the supervisor may tell which member is not putting much effort when the task assigned to the team member runs into problem again and again. However, beyond this elementary level, it is doubtful if we can reach a satisfactory level of precision in measuring effort. How to measure the effort that an experimental scientist exerts in setting up, and conducting, the experiments? Is it equal, greater, or lesser, than the effort that a construction worker puts in his work at a construction site? It seems that the effort-based approach does not give any clear guidance to face such challenges in actual practice of the principle. So, just like the contribution-based approach, the effort-based approach also limited appeal and application. However, it indeed is a contemporary proposal for applying principle of equity in distributive justice. Next on our list is the Socialist notion of distributive justice.

5.5.10 Socialist Notion of Distributive Justice Socialism is the position in economic, political, and social philosophy, which is founded on the central tenet of social ownership of the means of production, and distribution. It means that it believes that the people in the society are the owners of all the social resources, such as wealth, and of the factories, farms and the other production units, and of the system of distribution of the products. Government, as the representative of the people in the society, would handle and manage the resources, their production, and distribution. The contrast with capitalism is that socialism does not endorse private or individual ownership of wealth, capital goods, and distribution system. Instead, it recommends public ownership of the social resources, and of the money, and other means of production. It also sharply differs from capitalism in its distribution system. Socialism encourages everyone to work for wealth, but the total wealth belongs to the society. So, the wealth is then distributed among everyone in the society. It views the society as a very large family. Unlike capitalism, it does not see people in isolation pursuing individual self-interest, but views people as living in cooperation with each other in the society. The government becomes the provider to the people. It provides wealth, and all other items and service.

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Box 5.53 Comparison between capitalism and socialism Capitalism

Socialism

1. Private ownership of wealth, capital goods, and distribution system

1. Social ownership or public ownership of wealth, means of production, capital goods, and distribution system

2. Wealth earned belongs to the individual,

2. Total wealth belongs to the society

3. Individual freedom is paramount, and there should be minimum control in the hands of the government. Government should enable individuals to pursue their goals freely. The ownership and control over the resources should be private and personal

3. Social control over resources. Government is the representative of the people in the society, and it would handle and manage the socially owned resources, their production and distribution among the people. Government is the provider of essential and all other items

4. Each individual is a free entity; free to 4. Society is a very large family, where each pursue his or her self-interest and personal needs to consider and take care of the others goals in life. Preoccupation with oneself and one’s interest is normal

Socialism believes that whatever people produce in their own way using the resources and the facilities in the society is finally a social product. The society owns it. Since it is collectively owned, everyone who works for the social product is entitled to have a share of that. On behalf of the society, the government should fairly distribute it among all the members of the society for a collective enjoyment. Capitalism leaves the production, distribution, pricing of the goods and the services to the individual business entity in a free market. In socialism, the government, as society’s representative, decides the production, distribution, and pricing of the product or service. This is known as social control of the social resources. Marx and Engels both had recommended this point. Box 5.54 Example of social control of social resources Scenario 20: In the capitalist economy of Country B, Freshtel, a telecom company, decides the price and the distribution channel of its services. In the socialist system of Country C, Sociophone, a telecom service, is owned by the government of C. The government of C decides the cost of using the service provided by Sociophone and also decides how the service would be distributed for people of C. Socialist distributive justice: The socialist distributive justice, therefore, tries to distribute rewards by labor, but it has the collective welfare in mind. So, the reward

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is distributed even to those who have not directly worked for a certain product. An actual example of this system would be the former Soviet Russia (USSR), which practiced socialism from 1918 to 1986. The socialist distributive system met with approval from Marx, but with reservations. Marx’s critique of socialist distributive justice Marx observed that the socialist distributive justice is certainly an improvement over capitalist distributive justice on the following two points: It abolishes private rights over social resources and means of production. Thereby it tries to remove the class differences between the rich and the poor, which the capitalist system nurtures. By removing private wealth and ownership, socialism also addresses the unequal, exploitative relation that exists between the rich and the poor workers in capitalism. It ends class exploitation of the workers by gaining collective control over the social resources and by using them for social benefits. However, Marx observed that while harping on the equality of the people, socialism falls short to take into consideration the relevant and significant individual differences. He points out that there can be important differences between two individuals. For example, worker A may differ from worker B in physical and mental abilities, and because of this difference their respective productive efforts may be unequal. Yet, they may be treated as equals by socialism. He observed that while relinquishing the unequal class relations, socialism tends to overlook these important differences among the people by giving equal rights to everyone and distributing rewards by labor on that assumption of equality. Marx further added that people in the society are not only different in their abilities, but they are also different in their needs. Farmers A and B may both get the reward of INR 10,000 as their share of reward for their labor. However, though both have put in equal labor, farmer A and farmer B may have different needs. Farmer A needs the money to spend on buying food and staples for his family, but Farmer B needs to also buy medicines for his ailing wife. So, B may spend the entire amount on medicines and will need more in order to buy food and other essential items. Even if equal rewards are given for equal labor, the outcome for A and B is not equal, because the needs of A and B are not equal. Marx says that inequalities of this kind will rise because of different needs that people will have. So, ultimately, the distribution is not successful to establish equality in the society. Marx also argues that socialism suffers from a fragmented perception of a person. It views a person merely as a worker, when a person is actually so much more than that, with material and spiritual needs.8 All these other needs of a person are not met very well in a socialistic distributive justice.

8

Husami, Z.I. Marx on Distributive Justice. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 8 (1), Autumn 1978, 27-64.

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5.5.11 Communist Distributive Justice Marx considers it important to understand and to recognize individual differences among people and the differences in their needs. Accordingly, with due acknowledgement of individual differences among people in abilities and needs, Marx articulated the communist distributive justice as: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”. (Marx et al., 1875). In this principle, as you can see, two operative words are used: Abilities and needs. As said earlier, we need to accept that both differ from person to person. Distributive justice must operate in acknowledgement of these differences. In the first part of this principle, Marx emphasizes on the individual ability. It means that in a developed society, each person should work as hard as is his or her ability, and develop his or her talent to the fullest. However, the rewards are not to be distributed as per ability alone. In an advanced, fully developed communist society, the distribution should also take into consideration the individual differences in needs. What a physically disabled person may need just to carry out the challenges in everyday life cannot be the same that an able-bodied member of the society may need. In our example above, farmer B will need more to run his household, as he has an ailing wife, whose medical expenses also need to be met. So, from the perspective of Marx and communism, the right combination for distributive justice should be: Each person contributes and works as per his or her ability, and each person receives the rewards as per his or her needs. The benefits produced by such an arrangement should be distributed so as to maximize the welfare of the society. The aim is to add to the welfare of all. Those who can will contribute more to help those who cannot contribute but need more. The government would direct the public distribution in this manner. There is a hierarchy of needs. The fair distribution should aim first at meeting the “basic biological needs” of the members of society, and then the other “non-basic needs”, and so on until meeting the “luxury wants”. Quick Question 5.22 In what way Marx’s Communist distributive justice principle is different from the socialist distributive justice principle? In your opinion, which principle is better, and why?

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Critique of socialist and communist justice (a) It does not reward excellence and talent: One of the sharpest criticisms against socialist justice, and of the communist conception of justice, is that it demotivates and disincentivizes people from doing a job well. For, in that society there is no reward for doing a job well, or for innovation. The system takes the rewards and distribute it as per people’s needs, and not as per their talent and skill. The aim is to add to welfare of everyone, so the reward goes to even those who had done nothing. As a result, it causes people to lose incentive and enthusiasm to do more work or better work. Why would anyone want to excel if there is no reward for being excellent? Moreover, why would anyone want to excel if the reward would come anyway? So, the objection is that the socialist distributive justice reduces material incentives for doing more work or doing better work, or doing creative work. Under this kind of distributive system, a society will suffer from lack of innovation and excellence in its endeavors. It is also an unfair system, as it unfairly does not give a reward where it is due, and gives the reward where it is not due. (b) It is against individual freedom: Another criticism is that socialism, and communism, is against individual liberty. Individual liberty is a moral entitlement. Liberal economists argue that private ownership of property, and production units, are also expressions of individual liberty. An entrepreneur needs freedom to run the enterprise, and for that a free-hand private ownership of the basic facilities is essential. However, that is denied by the socialist system. Abolition of private ownerships, imposition of cooperatives and collective ownership in socialism abrogates the moral right of individual liberty. (c) Public ownership and control over capital breeds inefficiency: Critics from the neo-classical school of economics have argued that state ownership of the enterprises, and the central control on the capital, breed inefficiency into the economy. For, there is no incentive for the workers in a publicly funded, publicly owned company, to work efficiently. For example, there is no strict budgetary constraint, as would be in a tightly monitored privately owned firm. There is also no competition for the publicly owned firms to test their ability or to excel. The future of the workers is secure, and there is no reason to excel. Therefore, the result would be reduced efficiency, flourish of mediocrity, and diminished economic welfare for the society.

Quick Question 5.23 Which among these is not a characteristic of socialist and communist theory of justice? (a) People’s collective ownership of all properties (b) Government controls production and distributes the produced goods to people

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(c) Those who can will contribute more and will therefore deserve more in share.

5.5.12 Justice as Fairness: Rawls’s Theory of Distributive Justice Now, we come to Rawls’s theory of distributive justice. As mentioned earlier, John Rawls (1921–2002) has proposed an alternative theory of distributive justice, which is different from all of the above theories of justice and welfare, and in particular is different from Utilitarianism. It is called Justice as fairness. Using both equality and equity, and acknowledging difference in the individual needs, its aim is to deliver a philosophical and ethical basis for democratic social institutions. Rawls in his theory addresses the problem of distributive justice in the distribution of social goods (explained below). The context of his theory is therefore societal, not personal or individual distributive justice. He provided principles by which a social institution can deliver a fair distribution of the social goods. In Rawls’s view, an ethically good society is a fair society, in which the social institutions follow a fair arrangement of distribution. Social institutions are the social mechanisms to meet the social needs. Examples of social institutions would include the government, the judiciary, the education system, the economy, the legal system, healthcare system, and religious institutions. Box 5.55 Some examples of social institutions • • • • • •

The government The judiciary The education system The economy The healthcare system Religious institutions.

Each of the social institutions, mentioned in Box 5.55, are socially created systems through which some need in the society is met. For example, the government is constituted to meet the society’s need of governance. The education system meets the need for society’s education. The practices of the social institutions may not always be fair. For example, suppose that in a country the legal system targets the people of a certain race, or a caste, or a religion, and acts in a prejudiced manner in its handling of lawsuits after lawsuits, which bear the signs of travesty of justice. If this continues for too long, the festering resentment within the society against the injustice can threaten the fiber of

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social unity and cohesiveness, and may erupt into widespread social discontent and even cause a revolt. Given these possibilities, Rawls’s main concern is how to devise a fair procedure to organize the social institutions in a way so that they deliver justice, and the possibilities of widespread social discontent and disruptive resentment can be nipped in the bud. Basic structure of society and justice as fairness His proposed answer is that to ensure justice in their arrangements, the social institutions should be structured in a certain way. He calls this the basic structure of society. Rawls proposes two principles which would address two aspects of the basic structure. Rawls gives us two basic principles for distributive justice: Principle of equal liberties Principle of difference He calls this set of principles Justice as Fairness. Each of these two principles of Justice as Fairness will be discussed below. But, since the two principles speak of justice in distributing the social values or social goods, first we need to understand what Rawls means by the social values or the social goods.

5.5.12.1

Rawls on Social Goods

In Rawls’s scheme, the items to be distributed are: Social goods. His principles are supposed to help us to fairly distribute the social goods among the people in the society, where people may have ethically relevant differences. The topic of social goods or social benefits was already introduced in Sect. 5.5.3. We know that the social goods are something that in some sense benefit the people in the society; such as the employment opportunity. Social goods are also known as social benefits. These are publicly owned; that is, the society owns them. In contrast, private good is something that benefits only one person, the owner; such as a cellphone, the food in one’s refrigerator. Unlike social good, the ownership of a private good is private, and by nature exclusionary. The owner of a private good can prevent the others from enjoying it. Among the social goods, Rawls focuses on the primary social goods. His conceptualization of primary social goods is connected to his conception of the citizens of a fair society. So, we first need to understand how he conceives the citizens of a fair society to be. He presupposes that the citizens of a fair society will be: (a) Free (b) Equal (c) Rational and reasonable. Let us try to understand each of these traits of a citizen of a fair society.

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 Freedom: The citizens of a fair society would be free. By freedom Rawls means that: (a) The citizens will not be dominated or oppressed, or controlled by anyone else like the slaves. They will be independent. (b) They would be free also in the sense of not having their citizenship status and rights under any coercive clause or condition. For example, their citizenship would not be conditional upon their acceptance of a particular religious or a political doctrine. Their citizen rights would not get withdrawn, if they choose to hold a different religious or political belief in that society. (c) Freedom also means that the citizens in a fair society are entitled to exercise their rights over the social institutions. For example, a citizen may demand the right to be educated. (d) The citizens are free to decide their life plans on their own, with the socially guaranteed support of the social opportunities and resources. In short, the citizens in a fair society will be free agents, free from external control and coercion in their behavior and in their thought, and free to hold their own opinion and beliefs, and to demand what is rightfully theirs. Equality: Rawls views the citizens to be equals in liberties and rights. They should be equal in their political rights, and in their capacity to take part in any social decision-making process. For example, the citizens would have equal voting rights, irrespective of their color, creed, and caste. Citizens may differ in their individual talents, skills, and capacities, but in their capacity to participate in social cooperation they are to be treated as equals. Rationality: Rawls also views the citizens to be reasonable and rational. (a) They will be reasonable in the sense that they will have the capacity to understand the need to follow fair terms of cooperation and, if necessary, they will understand the need to give up some of their own interests for the sake of cooperation. They will not be unreasonably stubborn to pursue only their own interests. Rawls calls this capacity the sense of justice. (b) They would be rational in the sense that they would be capable of pursuing and revising their own perception of what is truly valuable in life. From this conception of citizens as free, equal, reasonable, and rational, Rawls derives his account of what such citizens, as citizens, would need. In his view, such citizens would need the following primary social goods, which are required for pursuing a good life. The primary goods are: • • • •

The basic rights and liberties; Freedom of movement, and free choice among a wide range of occupations; The powers of offices and positions of responsibility; Income and wealth;

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• All the other social bases of self-respect: The recognition by social institutions that gives citizens a sense of self-worth and the confidence to carry out their plans (Rawls, 2001, 58–59). From the above list, let us try to understand what Rawls means as his preferred social primary goods: Rights and liberties: By these, Rawls intends the fundamental rights and freedoms. These would include the civil rights, political rights, freedom of thought, freedom of conscience, freedom of movement, freedom to choose from a range of occupations. He also opines that the fundamental rights and basic liberties cannot be exchanged for any other social primary goods. For example, a society cannot fairly offer economic opportunities and employment in exchange of certain basic liberties of the citizens. Powers and opportunities: By power he does not simply mean political and economic power. He refers to the power or the “facilities” to achieve one’s goals (Rawls, 1975). The opportunities are, of course, the social opportunities. Income and wealth. Self-respect, or social bases of self-respect: Rawls places great importance on self-respect as a cornerstone of a theory of justice and fairness. He tells us that it is the most important social primary good. Without it, he writes, all our activities would be empty and vain. In his view, self-respect is linked with a person’s sense of his own value, and to a sense that what he pursues as the life plan is fulfilling and meaningful. Notably, he does not include the more plausible items in this list of primary social goods; such as food, clothing, shelter. He does not explain why. However, elsewhere he shows the indications that this list is open to further additions, such as health, educated intelligence (Rawls, 1973, p 332). The primacy of the primary social goods is in the sense of importance. They are necessary social conditions to enable people to pursue their own conception of a good and a just life. According to Rawls, given the nature of the rational, equal, and free citizens, it would be rational for them to prefer more of the primary social goods than less. The duty of the delivery of these primary goods is on the political institutions, such as a government. For example, who would ensure the fundamental rights to the citizens if not the government? Rawls considers this set of social goods extremely important. In fact, he thinks that how well the citizens are doing in that society can be measured by what primary social goods they have. Equality and inequalities in the distribution of the primary social goods speak volumes about the kind of political governance a country has. As said earlier, among the items on his list, he chooses self-respect as the most important primary good. On his view, without self-respect, we would not have the desire to strive for things that we value. We value things and strive to achieve them because we think they add to our self-respect.

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The concept of the social primary goods and the importance of their fair distribution may be understood by comparing them with the natural primary goods. Both are explained below. 1. The natural primary goods: The natural primary goods are the desirable traits that people are endowed with by nature. That is, people are born with these traits, so by nature either they have, or not have, these qualities. For example: • • • • • •

Health, Strength, Good looks, Intelligence, Social charm, Being level-headed.

Rawls points out that the distribution of these desirable ‘goods’ is the outcome of a ‘natural lottery’. That is, nature distributes these randomly as we are born. Some of us are born handsome, while some of us are born plain. Some of us are gifted with various talents, whereas some of us have a hard time to impress the others. Everyone wants more of these qualities, but few get it. The distribution of natural primary goods is random, but that distribution is not within the control of a society. The distribution may be unfair, but then, as said, that distribution is not within our control. So, about the natural primary goods, the demands of a ‘fair’ arrangement do not arise. 2. The social primary goods: In contrast, the distribution of social primary goods, unlike that of the natural primary goods, is not done by nature and is not random. They are distributed by the society through what Rawls calls a ‘social lottery’. Through its policies and preferences, the society decides the distribution of the social primary goods. For example, a society decides how the basic liberties and rights are to be distributed among its people, and whether everyone in the society would have these or only some sections of the society will enjoy these. Rawls calls it a social lottery because, just like an ordinary lottery, the outcomes are uncertain. There is an element of luck in whether the outcome would be favorable, or unfavorable, for a citizen. A society, and its appointed governance system, distributes the primary social goods. The usual instruments of distribution are: • • • •

The laws The public policies The institutional delivery mechanisms Social activism, etc.

For example, a job opportunity is a primary social good. The government of a society may distribute it by making it a legally protected right. The public policies may distribute it sensitizing people about it, and formulating ways and means for people to avail it.

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The factors which may influence a government’s decisions in the distribution of the primary social goods may include: • The political beliefs present in that society • The existing economic and social stratifications in the society: Rich and poor classes, high and low castes, etc. However, all said and done, Rawls rightly points out that the distribution of the primary social goods is not random. It is decided and controlled by a society and its political institution; namely, the government, executes it. Therefore, one can raise normative questions about the distribution; for example, whether the distribution is fair. One can also speak about an ethical, fair basis for such distribution. Rawls’s theory of Justice as fairness tries to accomplish that. Rawls maintains that the societies and governments are to be evaluated on how well citizens are doing according to what primary social goods they have. So, this is what the social primary goods are, and Rawls is primarily concerned with the distribution of these. Let us now go back to Rawls’s two principles of justice as fairness.

5.5.12.2

The Two Principles of Distributive Justice: Justice as Fairness

1. Principle of Equal Liberties: In his own words, the first principle of justice is that: …all social values – liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the social bases of self-respect – are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any, or all, of these values is to everyone’s advantage. (Rawls, 1999, p 24)

In his first principle, Rawls speaks of the principle of equality (discussed in previous section) as the foremost principle in the distribution of the basic social primary goods. The goal is to benefit all in the society. He also defines injustice “is simply inequalities that are not to the benefit of all”. So, the clear message from Rawls is that for a fair society, the first principle of justice is the principle of equality. All socially desired primary social goods are to be equally distributed among all the members. For example, the freedom to cast vote, the opportunity to have income and create wealth, all are to be distributed equally, irrespective of ethnic origin, class, caste, and creed. Up to here, Rawls is an egalitarian. For, Rawls’s citizens in a fair society are all equals. Therefore, every member of a fair society has equally entitled to the primary social goods, irrespective of who they are and how they are socially positioned because of the ‘natural lottery’ and ‘social lottery’. A citizen in that society does not need to be born of a particular race, religion, or gender, for example, to deserve more of the social benefits, or more of the burdens, from the social institutions. So, the social primary goods should be equally distributed; but then Rawls adds a caveat: unless an inequal division benefits everyone. We shall explain this caveat when we discuss his second principle.

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We need to note that Rawls treats his first principle of equality as more basic than his second principle. The default distribution of the social primary goods should be based on equality, unless there is a justifiable need to deviate from that. Rawls’s basic concern is the welfare of all in the society. 2. The Difference Principle: The difference principle lays down the condition under which inequal distribution will be ethically permissible. Rawls maintains that if inequal distribution benefits everyone, then inequal distribution is to be pursued. That is, if there is comparatively better advantage in inequal distribution to benefit all, then inequal distribution may be followed. Box 5.56 Rawls’s condition for inequal distribution Suppose that there are two options for distributing the primary social goods, A and B. Suppose that Option A is that of inequal distribution. Suppose Option B is that of equal distribution. If the likelihood of benefiting everyone in the society is higher from Option A than Option B, then the option A of inequal distribution is to be followed. Rawls lays down a clear condition of when inequality is to be followed; otherwise, equal distribution of the basic social goods remains the mandate. The main goal of social distributive justice is to benefit everyone, and not just a chosen few. To achieve that goal, following equality or following inequality in distribution are the means. And, injustice is, as he puts, to distribute inequally when inequalities are not for benefit of all. The second principle further tells us that if there are social and economic inequalities in a society, and the distribution is to be inequal, they should satisfy two conditions: Condition (i): They are to be attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; Condition (ii): They are to be of greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society (Rawls, 1971, Footnote 27, pp 42–43; Rawls, 1993, pp 5–6). Condition (i) refers to the fair equality of opportunity in the distribution of the coveted positions and offices in the society. We have already learnt about the equality of opportunity principle in Sect. 5.5.4. You may recall that the equality of opportunity principle promotes equality in access and in entry to competition, but it does not remove all differences. It is against the social hierarchies and is in favor of social equality, but at the same time it insists that certain differences among the individuals must be given due consideration. Now, Rawls wants this principle to govern the eligibility to all the desirable offices and positions in a fair society. Desirable offices and positions mean the leading, well-paid, powerful positions in a society.

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Rawls wants that the competition for those offices and positions should be governed by the equality of opportunity principle. The competition should be open to all, and the irrelevant differences in their socio-economic status, religion, race, family background, etc. should not come in the way. Only their ability, talent, and performance would be given due consideration. So, relevant differences among people will be acknowledged, but irrelevant differences will be disregarded.  Condition (ii) is known as the difference principle. It is meant for distribution of wealth and income opportunities in the society. The difference principle allows inequalities in the wealth and income distribution, so long as the inequal distribution would be of advantage to all, but the greatest benefit would go to the least advantaged, or the most disadvantaged. So, it allows distributions of wealth and income which benefit every section of people, rich, poor, or average income; and the distribution share need not be exactly equal. But, we must ensure that the inequal shares benefit the least advantaged in the society the most. In other words, it should not allow the rich to get richer at the cost of the poorest of the poor. Let us take an example to illustrate this point: Box 5.57 A scenario for the difference principle Scenario 21: Consider a taxation policy in country C. A tax is a burden that all income groups will have to bear. There are three income groups in C: The least advantaged group, the middle income group, the most advantaged group. However, to impose equal amount of tax on every citizen would be gross injustice. For, every one’s income is not the same; let us also suppose that no one has the option not to pay the taxes, and no one wants to evade paying the taxes. Suppose that C has a few options, and the options of setting the percentage of tax deductions are as shown in the table below: Options

Least advantaged group (%)

Middle income/advantaged group (%)

Most advantaged group (%)

1

10

40

10

2

10

10

10

3

25

20

60

4

10

20

30

Question: Which among the given four options is a fair option to choose? Scenario 21 poses a question: Which among the four options is a fair distribution arrangement of the tax burden? We shall use this scenario to understand what Rawls’s Difference Principle wants. Let us suppose that Country C wants to follow Rawls’s Difference Principle. Difference Principle would choose the option 4, and dismiss the rest. Country C has existent inequalities, as you can see that there are three distinctly

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different income groups. Their position in terms of socio-economic advantage is also different. Country C has four options for setting the percentage of tax deductions from the income of the people. As you see, option 4 alone has the distribution in which everyone benefits, but the least advantaged benefits the most. In it, the least advantaged is at the lowest tax bracket at 10%, which means that this group gets the benefit of keeping 90% of its income for their own purpose. The middle advantaged is at a middle tax rate 20%. On the other hand, for the most-advantaged the tax deduction is at a slightly higher tax rate at 30%. So, people pay the tax at an inequal rate, but the least advantaged benefits the most in that option. So, the difference principle would select this option 4. Note that under the difference principle, the most advantaged are allowed to gain more wealth and income, provided their gain also helps the other groups of citizens. As for the rest of the options, none of them will be approved by the difference principle. Option 1 will be ruled out, as in it everyone does not benefit. The middle income group certainly does not benefit much, as it is taxed at 40% rate, which is the highest rate. On the other hand, the most advantaged gets the most benefit, because it pays the same rate of tax as the least advantaged: 10%. Option 2 would be dismissed by the difference principle, because as per it, every income group would be taxed at the same rate: 10%. When there are differences among the classes, following strict equality in terms of burden distribution would be unfair, as already discussed. Moreover, in this arrangement the least advantaged would not benefit the most. Option 3 would also be out, because it does not benefit the least advantaged the most. The least advantaged pays 25% tax, which is higher than the rate the middle income group would pay. The middle advantaged would get the most benefit in option 3, but they are not the least advantaged group. It also burdens the most advantaged (60%) unfairly. So, we can see how the difference principle can be employed to ensure fairness in a distributive decision about income and wealth. In the second principle, Rawls mentions two conditions, but says that condition (i) is prior to condition (ii). Thus, if we have to choose between arranging for distributing fair equal opportunity for all for social positions and offices, and economically benefiting the least advantaged members of society the most, the former would get priority over the latter in Rawls’s scheme. Therefore, together, the two principles, the principle of equal liberties, and the difference principle, are supposed to safeguard the fairness of distributive justice in the distribution arrangements of primary social goods by the various social institutions across the population. But, the principles alone cannot bring fairness in the distribution arrangements, unless the citizens of a fair society agrees to cooperate. The citizens have to agree to accept, cooperate, and abide by with the arrangement. Rawls envisions a fair society as a society of social cooperation, where people work together for the collective benefit, and where the people understand that for the overall benefit some trade-off of one’s own interest could be necessary.

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However, what terms would be agreeable and acceptable as fair terms by the citizens, who are equals, and free agents? Rawls addresses this question with a strategic thought experiment: The original position. That is our next topic. Rawls’s ‘original position’ and the ‘veil of ignorance’ We know that Rawls conceives the citizens in a fair society in a certain way: He conceives them as free, equal, reasonable and rational persons. However, Rawls does not view the citizens as above self-interest. His citizens are rational and reasonable, but they are also interested in what is good for themselves. So, when citizens of this kind would need to agree on fair and equal terms of social cooperation, what sort of terms would those be? Rawls offers his answer through the strategy of original position. The original position is actually a thought experiment. A thought experiment, as you know from the previous chapter, is an imaginary situation, or a hypothetical scenario, which is played out in the mind to test a hypothesis. In original position, Rawls asks the decision makers to imagine to be in a hypothetical moment of beginning, or an “initial situation”, which he calls “the original position”. Just like the moment of social contract in the Contractarian theories, the ‘original position’ is not claimed as a historical fact. It is only supposed to be the initial situation when an action or a policy is being planned among a group, and it is yet to be executed. Box 5.58 Original position The ‘original position’ is supposed to be the initial situation when an action or a policy is being planned by a group of people, and it is yet to be executed. It is not claimed to be a historical moment. In the imaginary original position, every actual citizen is imagined to have a representative present. Box 5.59 Mapping between actual citizens and imaginary representative Actual citizen ‘Paula’ → Imaginary representative of ‘Paula’ Actual citizen ‘Anindya’ → Imaginary representative of ‘Anindya’

In original position, the decision-makers are to imagine that all these imaginary representatives have come together to arrive as a group at an understanding about choosing a distribution policy which would be fair for the actual citizens. The addition of the imaginary representatives is a level of abstraction which is purposely added by Rawls. Because, Rawls argues that an imaginary meeting of imaginary representatives would be a better choice than an actual meeting of all the real citizens. In an actual citizen meeting, the meeting becomes complicated and conflictual when the

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power dynamics between the persons, and the personal equations, start to influence the bargaining process which needed to reach a consensus. On the contrary, in an imaginary meeting, all those factors become irrelevant, and the process of agreement becomes an abstract exercise free from those personal factors. In the imaginary meeting, it is to be assumed that the representatives want what the actual citizens want, and that they are free and equals, just as the actual citizens are. To further abstract the bargaining and the agreement process from the actual situation involving the actual people, Rawls proposes the veil of ignorance. Veil of ignorance: The veil of ignorance is proposed as a self-imposed, imaginary shroud of ignorance, that Rawls recommends that the imaginary representatives would put before their eyes. It is the ignorance about the others in the group and about their particular details; such as who they are, whether they are rich or poor, old, or young. The idea is to rule out any information about the other person, which could influence the fairness of the distributive decision. For example, if the actual ‘Paula’ has any bias or prejudice against the people of a class, or of a race, or a caste, or a religion or a gender, the imaginary representative ‘Paula’ would put a veil of ignorance over her eyes, and not see the face of the others, and not know who the others are in the meeting. Box 5.60 Imaginary meeting under the veil of ignorance

What the veil of ignorance is supposed to do is to disallow the representatives any specific knowledge about the real citizens whom they represent. The representatives would know nothing about what Rawls thinks are the arbitrary and irrelevant factors, such as the class, caste, race, gender, intelligence, age, etc. of the actual citizen that they represent. Even the information about the current situation in the actual society, such as the current status of the economy, the existence of class strata in the society, would be screened out for them. The representatives would attend the meeting without knowing details about who they represent.

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No one present in the meeting would know who the others are in the meeting. The veil of ignorance is thus an attempt by Rawls at further abstraction, a doubleblind process of the decision-making process, and to ensure a bias-free, fair social distribution policy. The only thing that the imaginary representatives are allowed to know is the relevant individual differences among the actual citizens. For example, they would know that the people they represent may have different plans of life, and that they are all interested in their own share of the social primary goods, which are scarce and cannot be distributed to everyone. Quick Question 5.24 Suppose you are the Food Minister of the country. How may Rawls’s “original” position and “veil of ignorance” help you to ensure fairness in the distributive policy of food distribution? Outcome: a fair arrangement for all Rawls claims that thus safeguarded, the situation would be reasonable for a fair and rational agreement or social cooperation among the free and equal actual citizens. Equal basic liberties for every citizen would be ensured. If the specific information about the actual citizens, which would give a member an advantage over the other member, is kept out, Rawls presumed that then each person would exercise his or her rational choice to make the society as fair for everyone as possible. Because, under the veil of ignorance they would not know who the policy would serve most, and what their fate would be in the society where the policy would be implemented. So, in their own self-interest they would try to ensure fair treatment for all, every strata of the society; so that even if they themselves land at the bottom of that society, they would still get a fair treatment. Thus, in an astute manner Rawls’s theory accommodates enlightened self-interest with an effort to ensure fairness in a just and fair society.

5.5.12.3

Critique of Rawls’s Theory of Justice

Rawls’s theory of Justice as fairness is perhaps the most influential theory in ethics and political philosophy in the recent times. It has been exceptionally successful to generate interest and discussion in political philosophy and specifically on social justice. Perhaps due to its enormous impact on the intellectual scene, it has also stimulated a host of objections from various corners. You shall find some of the salient objections against Rawls’s theory of justice. 1. Utilitarian critique of Rawls’s theory of justice: One of major aims of Rawls’s theory of justice was to provide an alternative theory of justice to Utilitarianism, the dominant theory of his time for social arrangements. It is only natural that objections would be raised by Utilitarians. As I have mentioned

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already, we shall discuss the theory of Utilitarianism in the next chapter. In short, the message of Utilitarianism is that only happiness or pleasure has intrinsic value, and anything else has only instrumental value in so far as it produces happiness or pleasure. Therefore, it recommends that social policies and practices should aim at maximizing happiness or pleasure, i.e. greatest happiness for the greatest number of people, in the society. Instead of happiness or pleasure, the classical Utilitarians have used the term utility; which subsequently in the hands of more modern theorists have become welfare. So, according to the Utilitarian and the welfare-theory standpoint, the centrally important moral imperative is to maximize the level of welfare in the society; for maximum number, if not for all. From the Utilitarian perspective, it has been claimed that Rawls’s theory is not that different from Utilitarianism. In fact, what Rawls says about distributive justice, can very well be captured in the big picture of the total social happiness or welfare which Utilitarianisms speaks of. Consider the example of giving Rs. 500 to a hungry poor person. Clearly, the hungry poor person, as a least advantanged person, would benefit much more from Rs. 500 than an already wealthy person. Rawls’s Difference principle would approve, because the money has benefited the least advantaged. However, the Utilitarians say that it simply shows that the small amount of money would bring more happiness, or welfare, to a least advantaged person, such as a hungry poor person, than to a more advantaged person, such as a wealthy person. Thus, according to the Utilitarians, Rawls’s theory, and all the distributive justice issues that it addresses, can be subsumed under the central question of whether and how the distribution distributes social welfare. So, they claim, Rawls’s theory of justice is essentially nothing very different from Utilitarianism. They claim that the original position and veil of ignorance are also essentially applications of the Utilitarian principle. In Rawls’s theory, under the veil of ignorance, all personal details about specific talent, status, desires, goals, etc. are stripped away to remove all biases from reasoning. The veil of ignorance renders all the people behind the veil essentially the same as impersonal reasoners, each of whom is trying to decide what is best for a himself or herself . As a rational citizen, who has no personal details about anyone, each of them, when each is trying to decide what is good for himself or herself, is actually trying to decide what is best for all. But, that is exactly what Utilitarianism says. Utilitarianism justifies those actions as right which bring what is best for all: Maximum happiness for the greatest number of people. So, according to the Utilitarians, the Rawlsian unbiased reasoning under original position and veil of ignorance is ultimately no different from principle used in Utilitarianism. So, the Utilitarian critique does not think Rawls’s theory of justice is really a different alternative for social justice. From the Utilitarian perspective, Rawls’s

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theory of justice and its theoretical constructs are ultimately extensions or modified versions of Utilitarian principle. 2. Critique from Libertarian theory: Robert Nozick’s theory of Entitlement Next, we shall learn what Robert Nozick (1938–2002), a renowned American philosopher and a libertarian, finds disagreeable in Rawls’s theory of justice. One of the points of disagreement is the kind of power that Rawls allows to the Government. Nozick is a firm believer in individual liberty and recommends that there should be minimum intervention or restriction from the government. In his book Anarchy, State and Utopia (Nozick, 1974), Nozick has argued that respect for individual rights is the gold standard to assess a government’s actions. So, for him, the only legitimate government, or the state, is the minimal state. The minimal state is the state which restricts its authority over the individual to a minimum and is merely there to protect the life, property and the liberty of an individual citizen. Nozick points out that Rawls in his theory is in favor giving more power to the state, or the Government. For example, Rawls thinks that the state should have the necessary power to distribute the primary social goods. Rawls wants the government to ensure that the least advantaged are most well-off, as his difference principle says, the upper layers in the society may need to agree to the arrangement, and if necessary, may need to relinquish some of their own shares in order to provide the maximum benefit to the bottom layers. The government may need to intervene and facilitate the process. Thus, in Rawls’s scheme, more power and authority has to be given to the government. Nozick, being an ardent supporter of individual liberty, does not find Rawls’s recommendation of more power to the state agreeable at all. Nozick also points out that Rawls’s choice of the term distributive justice is not neutral. He claims that the term presupposes a socialist idea as if there is a central distributing authority which would ensure the distribution in the society. However, Nozick says, that in a capitalist society there is no such central body of authority, which is in charge of allocating wealth, property, and income in the society. Individuals earn these either through their own labor, or through voluntary transactions with each other, e.g. a purchase, a donation. Nozick’s theory of entitlement: Nozick also has his own opinion about entitlements. He believes that any holding or possession, or acquisition of personal wealth and property, is just if it is acquired through a permissible or legitimate means, and if what is acquired leaves enough for the others. No matter how unequal the size of the acquisition is, in Nozick’s view the owner is entitled to the acquisition if it is obtained through a just acquisition. In his view, there are several legitimate means of acquisition available in the society, each of which is just. As for example, (i) Purchase, or to acquire something that was previously unowned, e.g. buying a brand new laptop is a just acquisition; or (ii) Acquisition of something through voluntary transfer of ownership, e.g. a parent giving a gift of her own laptop to her son or daughter.

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(iii) Acquisition of something as a way to rectify past injustices, e.g. retrieving and repossessing a stolen laptop. According to Nozick, anyone who has acquired his or her acquisitions in any of these (i)–(iii) legitimate means is morally entitled to the acquisition, no matter how inequal it may be in comparison to the others, and even it does not maximally benefit the bottom layer of the society. On the other hand, if a holding has come about which is not through any of these legitimate or permissible means, then it is not just, and the possessor will not be entitled to it. This is Nozick’s entitlement theory, in short. In his view, in order to know if a distribution, whether equal or unequal, is just, all we need to find out is if everyone in that society is entitled to what he or she has. Box 5.61 Nozick’s libertarian view of entitlement If the means of acquisition is legitimate, and it does not infringe on anyone else’s rights, then even it is inequal and does not maximally benefit the bottom layer of the society, it is a just acquisition and the owner is morally entitled to it. On the other hand, if a holding has come about which is not through any of these legitimate or permissible means, then it is not just, and the possessor will not be entitled to it. It follows that Nozick does not subscribe to the view that the society and its political institution should be the sole distributive authority in ensuring just and fair distribution of social resources. As a libertarian, he wants individual liberty and says that a society is just and fair if in it people are entitled to their fair share of the social resources if they acquire it through legitimate means. Nozick does not accept Rawls’s definition of fairness, and the principles of justice as fairness, and clearly sees other available means of fair distribution and entitlement which individual citizens themselves can manage. His entitlement theory allows acquisition through a legitimate means as a fair entitlement even if is against any of the two principles of justice as fairness. Nozick’s critique of patterned principles: Nozick claims that Rawls’s theory of justice, and nearly all the other principles of justice proscribed so far, are patterned principles. In his view, a principle is patterned if it prescribes that a just distribution has to follow a certain pattern with some natural dimension or characteristic of the individuals, or their combinations. Box 5.62 Patterned principles of justice A principle is patterned if it prescribes that a fair distribution has to follow a certain pattern with some natural characteristic or characteristics of the individuals.

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Examples of patterned principles of justice would be: (i) Talent-based distribution: The most talented will get the most, and the least talented will get the least (ii) Contribution-based distribution: Those who make the most distribution will deserve the most (iii) Need-based distribution: The neediest deserves the most. Rawls’ theory also follows a pattern: Equality, or else inequality under very special conditions. In Nozick’s view, all patterned principles of justice suffer from a fundamental flaw: They do not withstand individual liberty. In other words, liberty upsets the patterns. Nozick illustrates this point with his ingenious Wilt Chamberlain argument. The argument works through a scenario, which is presented in Box 5.63: Box 5.63 Nozick’s Wilt Chamberlain argument Suppose that in a society, the only distribution that is strictly equal is considered as just. Now, in that society Wilt Chamberlain is an excellent basketball player, who is extremely popular and is sought after as a coveted player by many competing teams. Suppose that Chamberlain decides to play for a certain team on the condition that anyone who attends the game in which he plays will put 0.25 cents in a deposit box at the gate, and the collection will go Chamberlain, not to the team. Suppose that in a season the team’s games in which Chamberlain played were attended by 1 million people. This means Chamberlain earned $250,000 more in the season than anyone else. Clearly, that is unequal, and the strict equality-based distribution principle will be upset by this extra earnings of Chamberlain. Question: Is the new distribution, in which Chamberlain has earned extra $250,000 unjust or unfair? The scenario in Box 5.63 presents a scenario where supposedly Chamberlain has exercised his freedom to lay down a rule of his participation in a game for a team, and the team has accepted. In that society, where strict equality rules, Chamberlain’s extra income, which is unequal to everyone else’s income, will be considered as unjust and unfair by strict egalitarianism. Nozick thinks that the judgment is faulty and is a result of a basic flaw in all patterned principles. For, it is found faulty because it is against the set pattern, and the patterned principle does not know what to do with choices made out of individual liberty. Nozick claims that his entitlement theory escapes that counter-intuitive judgment. The entitlement theory would consider Chamberlain’s extra income as entitled, because he has acquired his new, unequal wealth by legitimate means through ordinary and unobjectionable exchange. Chamberlain exercised his freedom. Nozick argues that from this, we may generalize that any distribution based on patterned principles would be uncomfortable with individual liberty, and would try to curtail the liberty of its citizens seriously in order to impose on them the distribution

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that it considers as just. This point is also against Rawls’s theory, which too is a patterned approach, and which too tries to impose on its citizens an arrangementbased distribution, which it presumes as fair, but which actually is an imposition on the free choices of the citizens. Thus, Nozick’s criticism indicts Rawls’s theory of justice as being patterned, and uncomfortable with individual liberty. 3. Criticisms by Amartya Sen against Rawls’s theory of justice In his various writings, Amartya Sen has contested the very conceptualization of justice by Rawls and has tried to show the inadequacies in Rawls’s notion. (a) Nyaya and Niti: One such effort is based on the ancient Indian understanding of justice. In his book Idea of Justice (Sen, 2009), Sen carves a distinction between two Sanskrit terms which are used in Indian ancient texts about jurisprudence: (i) Nyaya, and (ii) Niti Though both of these Sanskrit terms are used loosely for justice, Sen draws our attention to an important distinction between them. Niti refers to the abstract, just rules, which, if implemented completely, would result in a just social order, but they are abstract rules. It refers to organizational and behavioral conformity to the rules of propriety. Nyaya, however, is a broader and more inclusive concept. Instead of looking at the rules, it looks at the state of order that we create in the real world through the social institutions that we create. It refers to the kind of life that people are actually able to live in a society as a result of justice in the society. Sen finds the distinction between Nyaya and Niti in Western thinking also. Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau like Rawls, have insisted on establishing the correct principles and institutions, but Bentham, Mill, Marx, Adam Smith have taken a more comprehensive approach by focusing on what is finally realized in the society. Sen claims that Rawls’s theory is more of a Niti approach to justice. It reflects the arrangement-based approach, which presumes that the existence of fair and appropriate social institutions and abstract principles is adequate to address the demands of justice in the society. However, Sen is in favor of approaching the concept of justice in the direction of Nyaya. The Nyaya approach to justice goes beyond the mere arrangements approach to realize examine what actually has been realized through the functioning of the social institutions, and whether different sections of the people have actually been served justice. The Nyaya approach is focused on the realization of justice. It is also focused on prevention of injustice in the society. This is not to say that taking the arrangement-based approach of Rawls is wrong. Sen accepts that justice should be understood as fairness. However, Sen finds Rawls’s theory of justice troubling and only a partial, and fragmented conceptualization of justice. Sen thinks that Rawls is mistaken in thinking that all social injustices can be addressed just by arrangements made by the government.

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Consider for example, the case of famine in the country. We tend to think that deprivation of people from what they are entitled to usually can happen when the item or the good itself is short in supply. For example, a famine can happen when there is no food in the country. However, Sen reminds us that not all famines happen due to total absence of food. He uses the example of Bengal Famine of 1943 to make the point that some famines can happen despite the availability of food in the country. Those famines happen because of deeply unjust government policies. In Bengal Famine of 1943, the unjust, authoritarian, government policy of the British Government was responsible for the hunger and death in Bengal; there was no scarcity of food in the country. There are many other modern examples of such manipulated deprivations by various other governments. Correction of this sort of deprivation cannot be accomplished by an arrangement-based approach to justice. For, the arrangements are there, only the government policy creates the barrier for people to access the food. This is where Rawls’s theory of justice would fail because of its fragmented conceptualization of justice. Sen reminds us that justice is also about removal of injustice from the society, and we can find the need for removal of injustice only if we start looking at how the arrangements made by the social institutions are actually realized in the lives of people. Rawls’s theory of justice does not go that far. (b) Cannot accommodate the real-life plurality and diversity of demands: Rawls tries to come up with an ideal theory and follows what Sen calls a transcendental approach. Rawls tries to formulate a theory of justice that is universal, which is applicable everywhere. Sen doubts whether such a single theory of this kind is at all possible, or even necessary. Sen also argues that Rawls wrongly assumes that the impartial agreement, under the veil of ignorance in the original position scenario would always succeed in identifying a single just arrangement. It is presumed that all rational and reasonable decisions would always converge on a single fair arrangement. But, that presumption is wrong. It is not necessary that there will always be one identifiable social arrangement on which impartial agreement would emerge. There can be more than one genuine demands from different voices from the society, and meeting them adequately may require multiple solutions, not just one. Or, there may not be a solution, given the plurality of conflicting claims over scarce resources. In his The Idea of Justice (Sen, 2009, p 12), Sen illustrated this point with the story of one flute and three children:

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Box 5.64 The story of one flute and three children The story of a flute and three children The story is about there being only one flute, and three children, Anna, Bob, and Clara, each of whom makes a desert-claim over the flute. Anna says she deserves it. For, she is the only one who can play it (the other two agree) Bob says: He deserves it. For, he is the only one among these 3 who is so poor that he has no other toy that is his own (the other two agree) Carla says: She deserves it. Because she is the only one who has been working diligently to make the flute, it is the fruit of her labor. When heard separately, each claim appears to be a genuine and reasonable ground for desert. Each is a genuine demand, but each is a different demand. When heard together: We realize that with only one flute (limited resource) we would not be able to meet all three demands. The conclusion is: There is no one single, just arrangement as a solution here. What does the one flute and the three children story show? It shows that sometimes there is no single, right answer. According to Sen, one can find plausible reason to give the flute to any one of the children. Need-based theorists would choose Bob, the effort-based theorists may choose Carla. However, the point is that there is no reason to assume, as Rawls does, that there is a single, right answer here. There are multiple right answers here. It also shows that with limited resources, there may not always be an institutional arrangement that can help us as a solution to meet multiple, genuine, and legitimate demands from the different corners of the society. There may not always be a single identifiable solution. At the same time, the multiple but genuine demands cannot be dismissed on the ground of impartial, uniform rationality. Therefore, the entire arrangement-based, institutional approach needs an overhaul and we need to seek individual solutions. Hence, the abstract theory of justice of Rawls cannot do justice to the plurality and diversity of real life. Sen further argues that the thought experiment which Rawls’s original position refers at best to an abstract opportunity for collective reasoning. However, it is not capable of capturing the multifaceted, diverse, conflicting but very genuine and justified demands of the society at large. By removing all the specific, individual details, the original position disconnects itself from the actual, diverse kinds of demands of justice, and the conflicts of the actual world. (c) Overemphasis on the basic liberties and oversight of other important issues: Sen questions Rawls’s sole focus on the personal liberties as a very important group of social primary goods. Sen asks: Why in a ‘fair society’ the more realistic issues of entitlement to hunger, starvation, and entitlement to food, neglect of health and health care and entitlement to health should be considered as any less

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important than any kind of basic personal liberty? In other words, he questions Rawls’s skewed prioritization of the basic liberties among the social primary goods. (d) Aspect of Justice as Removal of injustice is missed by Rawls: Sen asserts that justice is also about removal of manifest, preventable injustice from the world, in the existing actual societies, and not just about seeking a perfectly just arrangement. Justice has this immensely practical, and real side, and is essentially connected with the realization of justice in the lives of the ordinary people, not just with the nature and arrangement of the social institutions. Sen gives the example of the social practice of slavery. He refers to the long history of the anti-slavery movement in the USA. After a hard and persistent protest over many years, the anti-slavery movement finally succeeded in abolishing this deplorable practice from the society. Sen opines that the abolitionists or the antislavery protesters were fighting for a total removal of an intolerable injustice manifested in the society. They were fighting for justice in this sense, and their sense of justice was about establishing a fair arrangement. So, justice is also about removal of manifested injustice in the society, and this is what Nyaya means.. However, Rawls’s theory does not seem to be aware of this broader perspective of justice, which, Sen reminds us, is what Nyaya represents. (e) A theory of justice should focus not on distribution but on the different capabilities: Sen argued that Rawls only looks at the distribution of social primary goods, and while doing so Rawls does not consider or recognize the fact that there might be differences among the ‘real people’ in their capabilities to convert that social primary good into good living for themselves. We may try to distribute income, opportunities, and other social primary goods, equally and equitably; but the when the capabilities to convert the goods received into something useful differ among individuals, the outcome cannot be fair. People have different life plans, and different capabilities, and a fair distribution arrangement alone cannot address these differences. For example, in the real world, people differ from each other in physical strength, in gender, in body size, in metabolic rate, in knowledge, etc. So, given an equal sized sack of uncooked rice, what the person would do with it depends on so many other factors. A person with no idea about need for nutrition may trade the sack of rice for money, or for a bottle of liquor. A woman may take it all home for her children to eat and may herself go without any. Even with an equal or equitable share of the rice, a physically disabled person is likely to do far less with than a normal, able-bodied person. For, she may need assistance from others in cooking that rice. The differences in their capabilities will come in the way of their converting that distributed item into what is useful for them. So, Sen claims that a theory of justice must look into what impact the distributed social goods are bringing the real lives of the actual people. This is what actual social realization of the primary social goods would mean. A theory of justice should give

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due consideration to the differences in capabilities of converting the distributed goods into individually useful achievements as fit into their individual life-goals. Box 5.65 Real-life differences in capabilities among people The Distributed item: A sack of uncooked, raw rice grain.

A is a man who is unaware of the need for nutrition, and A sells the sack of rice for money, and buys a bottle of liquor. B is a woman, who takes the sack of rice home, but cooks it all to feed her hungry children, and she herself goes without any. C is a physically disabled woman who cannot afford a full-time caretaker, and is dependent on friends, relatives, and neighbors. She cannot herself cook the rice. The sack lies in her kitchen waiting for someone to come and help. In Sen’s view, social institutional arrangements, such as poverty alleviation programs, should be evaluated as just or unjust to the extent they enable the people of different capabilities to achieve the goals that they value in life. According to him, Rawls’s theory of justice falls short of this expectation. (f) Feminist critique of Rawls’s theory of distributive justice The feminist theorists have raised various important objections against Rawlsian theory of justice. It will not be possible to present each of those objections and viewpoints. Only a summary of selective few arguments of some feminist philosophers will be presented below. A common theme that runs common among the different feminist critique is that Rawls has completely missed a gendered perspective on issues of justice. He has also embraced a reason-based ethics, whereas the feminist thinkers have upheld ethics of care or care ethics (it will be discussed in the subsequent chapter) as a distinctly different ethics to other standard ethical theories. One of the tenets of Care ethics is to look at ethical content, not in abstraction, but as situated in its context. They believe that the particularities of the situation determine a lot in ethical judgments, and that ethical content can be found in the emotional and behavioral responses of people towards a situation. Therefore, the

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feminist care ethicists have found Rawls’s strong bias towards reason and situationfree abstraction objectionable. They question the feasibility of Rawls’s highly abstract constructs; such as the original position, veil of ignorance highly questionable. Virginia Held’s criticism of Rawls’s theory of justice: Virginia Held, one of the most important feminist social, political, and moral philosophers of our time, found Rawls’s conceptualization of a rational person problematic for a theory on social justice. A rational agent is viewed in Rawls’s theory of justice as an independent agent, who is self-interested but generally disinterested in the others. In his exposition on original position, Rawls speaks of: … mutually disinterested rationality….The parties do not seek to confer benefits or to impose injuries on other. They are not moved by affection or rancor. (italics mine). (Rawls, 1971, p. 125)

As the quotation above says, in the original position, Rawls’s rational representatives are to assume the attitude of “mutually disinterested rationality”; or a rational attitude of not having any curiosity or interest about each other. To avoid the possibility of any bias or ill-will towards each other, they are not to have any concern for each other. The only thing that matters for an agent of this kind is to play out the social arrangement policy in his or her head to see how his or her self-interest would be served by it. Held finds this conceptualization most problematic. She pointed out that after all these agents are to devise a social policy for fair distribution; but they have no care or concern for anyone besides themselves. She argued that Rawls’s requirement of mutually disinterested rationality is a particularly troubling conceptualization for the social policymakers, because it implies that in order to hold truly rational discussion, one has to be only interested in the outcome for oneself, and not interested in the others. To entrust the important task of socially beneficial policymaking in the hands of purely self-interested and selforiented people is risky. For, they may never even try to transcend above their own interest to see the greater good of the society. Structuring a fair society based on the policymaking power of such self-interested people, who are apathetic to the others in the society, is highly problematic. Rawls’s conceptualization of the policymakers is in conflict with Care ethics: This conceptualization of persons is antithetical to a fundamental tenet of the feminist Care ethics. A basic premise of Care ethics is that people are not independent, purely rational agents. They are fundamentally social, emotional beings, who are connected with each other and whose emotions forge relationships with each other. As a feminist ethicist, Held is naturally not comfortable with Rawls’s idea of independent and self-interested agents. Mutual independence and mutual disinterest are not feasible in the real society: Moreover, Held claims that Rawls’s model of a moral agent is implausible and deficient for the society (Held, 1987, p.5). First of all, the perfect independence of people from one another in a real society is not possible. In a society, we actually depend on each other and on mutual social cooperation. Also, many real-life relationships do not allow mutual independence. Consider for example the relations within a family, or the relationship between two lovers, or between two very good friends, or between the

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mother and a child. Or, consider the more extreme case of a bed-ridden elderly patient and her caregiver, where there is an one-sided, asymmetrical, helpless dependence. Persons in these relationships cannot be, and are not expected to be, independent equals. Box 5.66 Real-life relationships and dependence

The point is that given the nature of our real relationships, Rawlsian concept of mutual disinterest, or mutual non-interference, simply cannot be true. Who Rawls perceives as the rational agent, who would represent the actual citizens in the original position and would decide on what a fair arrangement would be for everyone in the society, is a far cry from what real people and real relationships are like in the society. Rawls’s oversight of application of justice in the lives of women and children: Held points out that Rawls has completely missed how justice is also much needed in our private, family lives within the household, and has not spent even a word about how justice is needed even at home. Rawls is focused on the delivery of justice in the public sphere. According to Held, there is need of justice in the public domain indeed, but justice is also very much needed inside our private domains, such as within a family. When in the larger society, one class becomes more powerful than the other, or a group takes over the control of the society, and oppression, subjugation and exploitation of the others begin, we need justice to rectify the power imbalances among different sections of the society. Similarly, when within a family the work balance between the males and the females in the household becomes out of balance, we need justice to rectify the balance. Or, when one member of the household starts to wield his or her power over the rest, and the others feel too frightened to protest in fear, there is need for justice to protect the vulnerable members from domestic abuse and violence. Typically, the victims of family abuse and domestic violence are the women and the children in the household. However, Rawls’s theory of justice has completely missed this very important aspect and has assumed that justice is all about the issues outside the home. Care without justice is possible, but there would be no justice without care: Held argues that justice without care would not be justice. Our social policies and programs should not be driven just by justice, but must also be based on care. The social welfare programs, for example, run by the modern governments, should be governed not just

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by justice, but also by care. There is always room for more concern and care in the social policies; such as childcare, health care. The central value for social policies is care for the others. According to Held, care as a value is more central than justice (Held, 1995). In her own words, Though justice is surely a most important moral value, much life has gone on without it, and much of that life has been moderately good. …Without care, however, there would be no persons to respect, either in the public system of rights-even if it could be just-or in the family. (Held, 1995, p. 131)

She accepts that justice as fairness is important, but without care, justice would lose its purpose. Without care, mutual respect would be lost; either in the large society outside or in the family. The family bond would be lost. So, she opined that there may be care without justice, but without care there would be no justice. Annette Baier, another prominent feminist philosopher, commented along the same lines that there are other important things besides justice: …justice is a social value of very great importance, and injustice is an evil… other things matter besides justice. (Baier, 1999, p. 47)

Susan Moller Okin’s criticisms of Rawls’s theory of justice: Susan Moller Okin is yet another powerful feminist philosopher who has done an extensive critique of Rawls’s theory of justice. In her book, Justice, Gender and the Family (Okin, 1989), one of the central themes is how the modern theories of justice, including that of Rawls, have completely missed the consideration of the family, and consequently of women. This omission, in Okin’s view, makes each of these theories fundamentally flawed and misguided (Ibid). Rawls’s theory of justice has ignored the issues of gender and family: Just like Held, Okin too argues that Rawls’s theory has totally ignored gender and family as spheres where the discourse on justice should reach. Okin finds this omission very objectionable; for, any satisfactory theory of justice must be inclusive. Moreover, not only the women deserve fair equality of opportunity just as men, but the children, both male and female, also deserve the same. However, in Rawls’s discussion on fair equality of opportunity, neither the women nor the children feature. Rawls’s theory shows an inherent male bias. Rawls’s theory of justice suffers from two major oversights: Okin’s main argument is that Rawls’s theory suffers from an unwarranted presumption about a very important social institution; namely, the family. Rawls simply assumes that families are just. Rawls is overly concerned with the social institutions, and their fair arrangement, but family is a very important social institution. One would expect Rawls to explain how his principles of justice would deliver justice in the social institution of family; but Okin points out that Rawls does not get into that discussion at all, and instead he just assumes that families are just. Okin argues that Rawls’s assumption is baseless. Rawls considers the traditional monogamous family as part of the basic structure of the society. However, domination and injustices that happen within a family are often perpetrated along the gender lines.

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Women in a family suffer from domestic injustice. In her opinion, Rawls’s theory shows no sensitivity to the gender issues and the injustices that occur within the family. Consequently Rawls’s theory of justice suffers from two very problematic oversights, which are: (i) Rawls completely misses the fact that there may be many issues pertaining to unfair inequality of opportunity even within a family. For example, in a married heterosexual family, the men may have more power than the women, and the final say in many matters. This sometimes results in limiting the income and career opportunities for the women. The women are often not permitted to work; or to pursue her own career. Or, the men may play a dominant role in decision-making, relegating the women and the children in the family to a subservient status. Sometimes, the life and the health of the women and children within a family are under threat, as happens when domestic abuse and violence take place. None of these justice issues find any mention or acknowledgement in Rawls’s theory of justice. (ii) Rawls also overlooks the threat that the skewed gender relations may pose for justice within the family. For example, the typical division of labor in a family, including the responsibilities of housework and child rearing, are usually not distributed equally and equitably among the men and the women in the family. Usually, it is the women who have to bear the major part of these responsibilities. That reflects the prevalent gender norms within the family. However, Rawls’s theory of justice shows no awareness or sensitivity towards these. Okin argues that if we are to have a just society, we must ensure first that justice prevails at home and in the family. For, it is in the family that we learn to be just first. Rawls’s theory of justice completely misses this point. (iii) The personal is political: Okin argues that the contemporary justice theorists, Rawls included, all make the same error. The error is to subscribe to a dichotomy between the personal sphere and the political sphere. They all mistakenly think that the two spheres are independent, and that justice applies to the political sphere, but not to the personal sphere. That is the basic common mistake of them all. Being misguided by this erroneous belief, they keep their discussions on justice confined only to the public sphere, i.e. the larger society, the social institutions. Okin argues that the personal sphere is political too; the issues of justice equally apply and manifest within the family. Justice pertains to the family matters when it comes to equitable division of labor between the men and women in the family, or when patrilineal or matrilineal dominance disrupts the family peace and even threatens the life and security of the family members in the extreme cases. She believes that if justice is not applied to the personal sphere, namely, the family, then the women and the children becomes the worst victims of injustice, aggression, and in the worst cases, domestic abuse and violence. The personal is political is a feminist slogan that represents the feminist belief that the personal experiences of the women within a family are equally rooted in gender inequality, which shapes many of the political inequalities in the society out there. A substantial part of Okin’s

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argument is on the oversight of this sphere of justice by various justice theorists as well as Rawls. With this, we shall conclude our discussion of Rawls’s theory of justice as fairness. As said already, the theory has been seminal in the contemporary discussion on justice. You have also seen above what the theory tries to achieve and how it tries to achieve with two principles of justice. However, you have also seen the kind of criticisms that it has drawn from various quarters. Quick Question 5.25 Four types of objections against Rawls’s theory have been discussed above: (a) From Utilitarianism, (b) from Nozick’s libertarianism, (c) Sen’s critique, and (d) from the feminist philosophers. Which kind of objection in your opinion is the strongest against Rawls’s theory of justice? Justify your answer.

5.6 Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach Before leaving the topic of justice, it behooves us to at least get acquainted to Amartya Sen’s capability approach. For, capability approach has emerged as a leading economic theory in the contemporary world for thinking about poverty, inequality, justice and in general about human development. However, it is also essentially a very important normative approach to justice, and specifically, the very complicated notions of social justice and a fair society. So, this unique, contemporary theory of justice by its own merit deserves a place in our ethics discussion on justice. In philosophy, the capability approach has been employed to develop a slew of other theories in many important fields; such as development ethics, public health ethics, environmental ethics, political philosophy. It has created a different perspective altogether to view realization of justice in the society. So, I believe that our discussion on conceptual tools of ethics, in particular about justice and social justice, would remain incomplete if we do not also discuss at least the outlines of, the capability approach. It is a valuable and contemporary normative approach which will further enrich our understanding of justice. Keeping the target readers of this book in mind, I shall try to keep the exposition of the approach as far non-technical and simple as possible. In itself, Sen’s capability approach is not a full theory of distributive justice. It is an approach. It contains, broadly speaking, two lines of arguments: 1. Sen’s negative thesis is to show how not to measure justice, and social welfare in the society. The approach highlights what was missing from the traditional

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economic models and the other normative accounts, such as Rawls’s theory of justice, Utilitarianism. 2. Sen’s positive thesis is an ethical framework. It is a normative approach, which tells us that when evaluating the well-being, peoples’ achievements and social justice in a society, what we should inquire about. To find out what level of welfare is there in the society, we should not ask what they have, and which social primary goods have been distributed by the social institutions. Instead, we should inquire what the people are actually able to do with the distributed goods, and what kind of lives they are able to lead because of the distribution in the society. So, according to capability approach, the measure of well-being and welfare should not be in terms of the distribution arrangements of resources and the distributed social primary goods. The right measure should be what people are actually able to do and what states they are in with those distributed resources and goods. Box 5.67 Positive claim of Sen’s capability approach If we wish to measure how well the people are in a society, and whether social justice is achieved in that society, we should try to find out: What the people are actually able to do, and what kind of lives they are able to lead in that society? The measure should not be, as Rawls thought, which social primary goods they have and what the institutional distributive arrangements are in that society. What is the capability approach? In Sen’s own words, capability approach: is an intellectual discipline that gives a central role to the evaluation of a person’s achievements and freedoms in terms of his or her actual ability to do the different things a person has reason to value doing or being (Sen, 2009)

From this quote, we understand that the capability approach uses a very different yardstick to measure people’s achievements and freedoms in a given society. It measures what people have achieved and how free they are by people’s actual ability to do the different things that they want to do, or to be what they want to be. This approach through people’s actual abilities is what sets capabilities approach apart from rest of the theories. Usually, the conventional approach to assess how well a family is in a country is to check the income level in the household. If the income level is high, the conclusion is that the family is doing well; and if the income level is low, the conclusion is that the family is not doing too well. However, capability approach says that checking the household income level is an unreliable indicator to measure well-being of the family. It recommends instead that one needs to find out how the family lives actually and what their actual abilities are, whether they have choices to carry out all the activities that they value; such as travel, send their children to school, have three nutritious meals for the family every day.

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By actual ability, we mean the realization in the real life, and not just at an abstract, formal level. This implies that the capability approach concerns itself with the particular aspects of people’s actual lives and the states that they are in; such as: • Their life span: Are most of the people deprived of life in infancy, or in childhood, or in one’s prime? Or, are they able to live a long life? • Their quality of life: Are they able to live a good life while alive? Or, are they living a life full of misery and constraints? • Their health status: How healthy are they? How sick are they? • Their nutritional status: Well-nourished? Barely nourished? Malnourished? • Their educational status: Learning achievements? It is also concerned with what the people actually can do, and whether they have the freedom to do all that they want to do; such as: • Travel: Are those, who want to travel, free to travel? Can they afford to choose to travel? • Raise a family: Can those, who want to have a family, actually have a family? Do they have a job to afford maintaining a family? • Be a social activist: Can those, who want to be a social activist, speak their mind freely on their chosen social cause? Is active political involvement with a social cause allowed by the government in their country? Actual ability concerns itself with the choices and agency that the people actually have in a society, and with what level of well-being the people will achieve if they pursue their choices. In Box 5.68, you may see how different the questions are, which the capabilities approach asks from the questions of the usual method of finding out how well a family is.

5.6.1 Capability Approach and the Concept of Agency Agency is an important constitutive element in Sen’s capability approach. Agent here means the individual person. Sen understands an agent as some who acts, chooses, and makes changes in life. Agency is the exercise of the agent’s own choices. Capability approach is agent-oriented.

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Box 5.68 Difference between capability approach and other theories

How well is the Roy Family?

The capability approach Check how they actually live Check if they are free to The usual approaches

pursue all that they want to

Check the household

do

income level of the Roy

Check if they can be what

Family

they want to be if they pursue their choices

Capability approach is agent-oriented in the sense that it emphasizes on the importance of an agent’s own and free choices to do certain things and to live the kind of life that he or she values. It believes that it is important to ask what the people want to do and what they want to be; but according to this theory it is very important to ask who decided what they want to do and what they want to be. For, these doings and what they want to be could be the outcome of other people’s decisions or actions. In many countries, people do not have much of a choice to choose the kind of life they have. The economy, the policies, and the government together usually thrust upon the people the life, the career, the quality in life that they have. So, people want only those things that are pre-decided for them and live the life that is also pre-decided for them. However, for capability approach, it matters who decides or controls these decisions about what people want to do and to be. With the concept of agency, Sen indicates that the people, or groups, should decide these matters by themselves for themselves. A person should choose by himself or herself what he or she wants to do, e.g. take retirement from job, and what he or she wants to be, e.g. be a painter. The individual’s choices and abilities are of paramount importance to capability approach. One of the central notions of capability approach is to enable people to become direct agents in their own lives. The level of development is a country is dependent on the capabilities achieved by its people, and the well-being and capability of people are dependent on the agency that the person exerts about these. Sen wrote: If a traditional way of life has to be sacrificed to escape grinding poverty or minuscule longevity (as many traditional societies have had for thousands of years), then it is the people

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directly incolved who must have the opportunity to participate in deciding what should be chosen. (Sen, 1999, p.31)

If the choices and abilities are obstructed, or controlled by another, or if they are not within the means for an individual to actually achieve, the capabilities approach considers it a unfair and unjust situation. Then it requires a change in the public policies and in the commitments of the institutions, so that the conditions can be improved to a level at which individuals can be free to choose their life plans. Functionings and capabilities In capabilities approach, we need to get well-acquainted with two technical concepts: • Functioning • Capabilities. Well-being has to be understood in terms of these two concepts. In the section immediately below, we shall try to understand what these two terms mean. Functionings: Functionings are to be understood as the various states of doings and beings. Doings: These are activities (doings) that a person can choose to undertake. For example, a person may choose to undertake the task of transforming a piece of land into a garden. In this case, gardening would be a functioning. Or, a person may choose to undertake the action of cooking a meal; in that case cooking a meal would be a functioning. Beings: Functionings can also be the various states in which a human can be (beings). For example, a person can be healthy, or be self-sufficient, or be malnourished, be resting. Each of these states to be is a functioning of a person. Capabilities: Capabilities are the various combinations of functionings that a person can achieve. He also calls the capabilities the real opportunities and freedoms to achieve these doings and beings. They are a kind of freedom and opportunity. When one has a lot of money, there are plenty of choices for what the person may want to buy with the money. Just like that, a person with many capabilities can have a choice to enjoy which among many different kinds of activities the person wants to pursue, and can have choice among many which kind of life the person wants to live. For example, being well-nourished is a functioning as it is a state of being or a way to be, but the real opportunity to be well-nourished is a capability. A person may want to be well-nourished. However, if that person is working day and night to feed the family, and does not get the opportunity to look after his or her own nourishment needs, may not get the real opportunity to achieve that state of being. In that case, the person cannot be said to have the capability to be well-nourished. Or, he or she may or may not be even be free to achieve a well-nourished state. Perhaps his or her food choices are restricted severely by (a) the availability of the food, or (b) by the high, unaffordable prices. In this case also, the person does not have the capability to be well-nourished. The capabilities should be understood as different from the functionings.

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A functioning is a person’s doing or being in a state. But, the capability depends on the fact whether or not the person actually has the opportunity and freedom to achieve the functioning, given the choice. In the above example, the capability concerns itself with the fact whether the person could be well-nourished if the person wanted to. A capability is the answer to the question: “What is this person able to do and to be?” (Nussbaum, 2011, p.20). Box 5.69 Functionings and capabilities

Funconings Capability

•It is a person's doing or being in a certain state. •E.g. To be well-nourished •It is the real opportunity and freedom to achieve a funconing •E.g. The real opportunity to be wellnourished

Capabilities are real freedoms in the sense that one has to have all the necessary means in real life to achieve the doing and being of choice, if one wishes to. For example, suppose A wants to achieve the status of being treated medically. It is A’s choice. However, let us suppose that the nearest health facility is 30 Kms away, and A neither owns nor can afford a vehicle to go that far. Or, A simply cannot afford the cost of being medically treated, This shows that even if A wishes to go, A does not have the necessary means to achieve the being of A’s choice. So, we can say that A does not have the real freedom to achieve the functioning of being medically treated. In other words, A does not have the capability. Note that real freedom is distinct from freedom in principle. In our example, A may have the freedom in principle to visit a health facility to seek treatment. No one would stop A if A chooses to visit the facility. But A does not have the real freedom to seek treatment at a health facility, even if A chooses to. Therefore, A does not have the said capability. Real freedoms are real-life freedoms. The capability set describes the set of attainable functionings that a person will be able to choose from, if the person wishes to.

5.6.2 The Right Measure of Well-Being: Conversion Factors As mentioned earlier, and as Box 5.69 depicts, Sen thinks that how well the people are cannot be measured by what social primary goods they have, and how the primary social goods are distributed in the society. He claims that a more reliable measure

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would be to find out how people actually live and whether they have the capability to achieve their functionings. Quick Question 5.26 Neera wants to give up her 9–5 job and be a full-time writer. Her parents, however, want her to keep the job. Use the concepts of agency, functionings, and capability from capability approach to analyze situation and to identify what in this situation would qualify as (a) agency, (b) a functioning, and (c) a capability. This is a point to reckon. Sen’s main point here is that the possession of distributed resources and social goods alone cannot guarantee that all people are better-off or not. For, well-being depends on the individual ability to convert the resources into successful achievements of personal goals in life; namely, the functionings of their choices. That successful conversion depends on a lot of personal and circumstantial factors. Sen has called these the “conversion factors” (Sen, 1992). Conversion factors are about the diversity in the human beings. Human beings are diverse not only in their biology, but also in terms of how each human being is situated socially, economically, physically, culturally, and so on. Conversion factors reflect peoples’ different social, personal and environmental characteristics which affect people’s ability to effectively convert their endowments into capabilities. Due to these conversion factors and their effect on people, the success of conversion cannot be the same for everyone. Some people will be able to convert the distributed social goods into improvement in quality of life and achieve their preferred functionings, but some will fail to do so. These conversion factors are of great importance in capability approach. For, distribution of equal things, or equal amount of things, in the presence of different conversion factors, can create undesirable kind of inequalities in their doings and beings. Sen illustrated this point with a scenario where two persons, A and B, both get the same resources, but B is physically disabled and is wheelchair-bound, and A is able-bodied. The wheel-chair dependence would restrict B’s mobility and physical access to different places. Moreover, Sen reminds us that B may have additional expenses to manage a life with disability; such as the expenses to hire an attendant. As the expenses would come out of the same resources, even with the same share of resources B will end up having fewer resources than A to carry out other activities in life. B is also unlikely to convert the same resources as successfully as A. Sen added that Rawls’s difference principle would not justify redistribution of resources on the ground of disability.

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Differences in conversion factors So, the point is that even with the same or similar bundles of distributed resources, different people may reach different ends due to different conversion factors. The conversion factors may be classified as follows: • (i) Personal conversion factors • (ii) Social conversion factors • (iii) Environmental conversion factors. (i) Personal conversion factors: These are the factors that are attributes of the person, such as age, gender, physical condition, health status, medical history, education. In Sen’s example above, the disabled status of the person in question becomes a personal conversion factor in converting the resources into functioning. (ii) Social conversion factors: These are the factors from the society; such as the social norms, the public policies, the existing power relations in the society, social hierarchies. For example, in a village where caste-based social hierarchies are very strongly present, the government may arrange to distribute the subsidy (resources) for building a permanent house in the village. However, in that village, a person of a lower caste may not be able to successfully convert the received resources into building a permanent house, and be a house owner (a functioning), in fear of the consequent backlash from the upper caste community in the village. The social hierarchy in this case acts as a social conversion factor, limiting the person’s ability to convert into a functioning of the status of being sheltered. (iii) Environmental conversion factors: These are the factors which rise from the geography of the physical location or the built environment. For example, the pollution in the physical environment, the climactic conditions, and the natural environment are the environmental conversion factors from the physical environment. If we take the example of a scooter, then the conversion of the scooter (a good or a commodity) to the ability to freely move around (a functioning) will depend on the location. If, for example, the area in which the person lives is a sand desert (physical environment) where the scooter with its normal tires cannot run, or if there are no decent, motorable roads (built environment), then the scooter (resource) is likely not to be converted successfully into the activity of riding a scooter (a functioning). Each of these three kinds of conversion factors shows that capabilities among people will differ due to the difference in the conversion factors. Sen uses this point to argue that there is a need to move beyond the focus on resource and goods distribution in the society and to look for what people can actually do and be with these resources with differences among the people in terms of the conversion factors. Sen opines that the primary goods distributive justice approach of Rawls takes little note of this fact of real-life human diversity in conversion factors and capabilities. We should accept

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that well-being in the society cannot be measured in a single yardstick of income and resources received. Quick Question 5.27 Discuss the three kinds of conversion factors of capability approach with respect to capability of your choice in the context of India. Select conversion factors that are particularly applicable in the context of India.

5.6.3 Differences Acknowledged by Capabilities Approach One of the biggest lessons from capability approach, therefore, is that in order to connect with justice with real lives of real people in the society, a theory of justice must acknowledge the relevant individual differences among the real people. The capabilities approach begins by acknowledging the human diversity in more than one ways, as mentioned below: (a) It acknowledges that there can be different kinds of functioning and capabilities for different groups of people. For example, being well-nourished might be an important functioning for the urban elite population, whereas being able to feed the family might be an important functioning for a marginalized tribal population in the same society. Capability approach tries to duly address this plurality of functionings and capabilities. (b) It acknowledges the plurality of the conversion factors, e.g. the personal, the social, which affect the functioning and capabilities of different groups of people differently. This is already discussed above. (c) It also acknowledges that different people may have different goals in life, or life plans. A person may not want a fixed career path, the life-goal may be to travel the world instead. The person may not have a stable income, but considers travelling as valuable. The approach insists that in the society the person as an agent should have the freedom and opportunity to pursue different kinds of goals in life and different kinds of doings and beings. So, the two of the central claims of capability approach are:

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Box 5.70 Two central claims of capability approach 1. The freedom to achieve well-being is of utmost ethical importance. That is, people should have the freedom to choose to do the things that they value doing, and people should be free to choose to do what they want to be 2. Well-being should be measured by people’s functioning and capabilities. Capability approach recommends that the social institutional arrangements for social justice, such as the development programs, poverty reduction schemes undertaken by a government, should be ethically evaluated as fair or unfair to the extent they allow people to have different capabilities and functionings to achieve the life plans that the people value. The functionings and capabilities achievements are the better metrics to evaluate human development, social progress and justice in the society. So, Sen has a very different and deep understanding of justice than fairness in arrangements of distribution of social primary goods. It speaks of justice in the actual lives of different kinds of people. This is what in his Idea of Justice Sen has called the Nyaya understanding of justice, in contrast to the rule-based or the Niti approach. On his view, justice has a much larger role as a societal tool to improve the human condition. It is also about removal of manifest, preventable injustice from the world, in the existing actual societies. Injustice is allowing the preventable capability deprivation to happen. Obstruction in removal of or allowing the perpetuation of preventable unfairness amount to injustice. We shall conclude our discussion of Sen’s capability approach, and its strikingly different approach to justice, here. We shall now look some related discussion and critiques of the approach to further enrich our understanding.

5.7 Martha Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach As we draw close to the end of discussion on justice and capabilities approach, we must pause to pay attention to Prof Martha Nussbaum’s interpretation and alteration of the capabilities approach to you. For, it is an attempt augment capabilities approach and to make it more complete. Prof Nussbaum is an eminent feminist philosopher, and a leading thinker on humanism and human development. Her work is known as the most well-known and influential attempt to complete Sen’s Capability Approach. Nussbaum agrees with Sen that the earlier, conventional approach to measure wellbeing and development only in the terms of household income, and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is entirely misguided. She points out that the unreliability of that measure should be obvious from the example of South Africa, which because of its high GDP would shoot to the top of the list of well-being in that measure; however, the measure will fail to capture the apartheid that the people within South Africa was

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facing. So, this conventional approach to measure well-being must be rejected. She adds that a narrow measure in the economic aspect to capture a country’s performance in human welfare is bound to fail, because a human life has so many other aspects which the governments of every country should protect and nurture; such as health, education. Some of these require targeted Government intervention. She joins Sen to argue that the economic measure of well-being also fails to capture the agency: One’s active control over one’s life through one’s choices. One can lead a life because the country and its government do not leave one any choice. Think about an authoritarian regime, which decides what kind of life its people will lead. No matter what the people achieve under such a regime, Nussbaum and Sen would not call them achievements and freedoms, because they are not based on people’s own choices. As said earlier, agency is at the core of capability approach. The economic measure of well-being failed to ask whether people have control over their own lives, and whether they can exercise their own free choices about their lives. People are not passive objects to whom welfare is doled out. Capability approach with the concept of agency insists that the real people on their own should choose what to do and what to be, and if they are not able to do so, they must be empowered to decide for themselves. Nussbaum thinks that the capabilities approach is the theoretical framework which captures well all these hitherto-neglected elements and factors. As per Nussbaum, the goal of development is to enlarge the people’s choices, and to enable people to develop certain capabilities. She analyzes that capabilities have three parts, which have to work together: (a) Basic capabilities, which are the equipment that people come with as they are born, and which make it possible for them to enjoy other fuller capabilities given favorable circumstances. For example, the physical strength, or the health status of a person. Some people are born healthy and strong, some are not. (b) Internal capabilities: Development of some internal powers to enjoy the other capabilities. For example, education and through education the cultivation of the power to think or to speak cogently on an issue. (c) External capabilities or favorable external circumstances, which allow one to enjoy the other capabilities. For example, one may have the organ to speak, (the voice box, the tongue, the teeth, etc.), and may be educated, but one may not be able to exercise the capability to voice one’s opinion, if there is no freedom of speech in the country of residence. So, the freedom of speech in the society is the external capability that is required. As we can see from her analysis, certain capabilities are not in the agent’s control, such as (a), and some definitely require agency, a proactive choice from the agent, such as (b). On the other hand, (c) is possible only with cooperation from a government. Nussbaum sees the possibility of capabilities at the fullest when all these capabilities coalesce and work together. The human development approach has been profoundly influenced by Amartya Sen’s pioneering work in welfare economic, development economics, Nussbaum points out that an important usage of capabilities approach is in the comparison of human development among the countries of the world. The term human development

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is about the humans and what impact the development brings to their lives. The United Nations utilized the lesson from the capabilities approach to develop the Human Development Index (HDI) to compare the countries in terms of human capabilities in all the aspects of human lives. Different bundles of capabilities are taken as the parameters for comparing countries with each other, and the results are shared in terms of HDI ranking system. Box 5.71 Human Development Index (HDI) based on capabilities approach What is the Human Development Index? Human Development Index (HDI) was created on the idea that to measure the development of a country, its people and their capabilities should be the final criteria. The central idea of HDI is the overall human development and not just economic development. HDI is a composite measure of average achievement in three key dimensions of human life: 1. A long, healthy life: Life expectancy at birth is the indicator. Life expectancy index is created from this. This assesses the health dimension also. 2. Being knowledgeable: Expected years at school for school age children, and mean years at schools for adults aged 25 years and above, are the indicators. From this, the education index is created. 3. A decent standard of living: This is measured by the gross national per capita income (GNI). The scores of three indices are then aggregated to obtain the HDI of a country. There are many other aspects of a human life, which the HDI does not capture as of now, but acknowledges. Countries are compared on their human development score and are ranked based on their HDI score. For example, as per HDI 2020 report, Norway was the No 1 with the highest HDI score, followed by Ireland, Switzerland. Singapore was ranked 11, Saudi Arabia was 40th, and Malaysia at 62, and made place as Asian countries among the ‘countries with high human development’ group. India, on the other hand, was ranked at 131 out of 189 countries, among the ‘countries with medium human development’. Bhutan and Namibia were ahead of India in HDI in 2020. As you may see from Box 5.71, one of the critical dimensions that HDI uses is life expectancy, or “average life span”, of a population as an indicator of a long, healthy life. The basic premise here is that development in a country must show up even in improving the life expectancy of its people. Countries are compared in terms of this basic and crucial capability among their people. Governments are held responsible for having policies in place to enable people to enjoy this capability to have a decent average life span. On the other hand, if in the intercountry comparison stark inequalities show up in the average life span of the people of the different countries, then capability approach would point at the deep-seated socio-economic

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inequalities, and other inequalities in terms of access to nutrition, medicines, health care, among other things. If people of Country A live to be 85 years on the average, but the people of Country B systematically show average life span as only 55 years, then capability approach would say that this disparity indicates something is seriously amiss in how Country B has organized its various sectors of governance; such as health sector, food and nutrition sector. Studies show (Kumari & Mohanty, 2020) that the cost of inequal social opportunities definitely cast a shadow on the average life-span of a person. The social stratifications based on caste, race, gender, religion, etc. often take a toll on the life span of a person. Thus, capabilities approach ask governments to work for improvement on these issues.

5.7.1 The Central Human Capabilities Nussbaum states that she wishes to go even one step further than the intercountry comparison with the capabilities approach. She wants to prescribe to the countries what they can do to come closer to actual realization of the capabilities in their respective nations. For that, her first and major contribution is to create content for the constitution of the countries. The content comes in terms of what she calls the central human capabilities. The central human capabilities: Since every country’s constitution carries an idea of the very basic entitlements that a citizen should have, her contribution is to create further content on the basic entitlements on the basis of the capabilities approach. Nussbaum says that she has created this content based on Aristotle’s idea of human flourishing. A human life has a rich potential. The central human capabilities are requirements for achieving that potential to the fullest. She gives us a definite list of what she calls are the central human capabilities (Nussbaum, 2000), which she claims should be included in every country’s constitution. The central human capabilities are ten in number, and you can find the list of these ten capabilities given in Box 5.72. Box 5.72 Central human capabilities, Martha Nussbaum Real opportunities 1. Life: Living a full life. Ability to live to old age with quality of life, not to die prematurely, not to have life reduced to something not worth living. Not having life cut short or being made such that it hardly seems worth living. 2. Physical Health: Living in health, and not in a state where ill health seriously affects the quality of life. Having access to medical help as needed. To have good food and be able to exercise in ways that sustain health. To have enough nourishment to start with.

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3. Physical integrity: Being able to go where you want to go. Being free from attack and abuse of any kind. Being able to satisfy healthy bodily needs. To be able to live securely without violence/injury, to be able to have reproductive choices. 4. Senses, imagine, and thought: Being able to use all of one’s senses. Being free to imagine, think, and reason. Having the education to be able to do this in a civilized, human way. Having access to cultural experiences, literature, art and so on and being able to produce one’s own expressive work. Having freedom of expression, including political and religious. Being able to put thinking power in an informed and cultivated way. 5. Emotions: Being able to become attached to other things and people outside of ourselves, being able to love and care for them. Experiencing grief, longing, gratitude, and justified anger. Not being subject to fear and anxiety or blighted by trauma or neglect. To be able to afford emotions. 6. Practical reason: Being able to consider and develop understanding of what is good and what is bad, being able to think critically about the world and one’s own place in it. Being able to live with one’s conscience. 7. Affiliation: Being able to associate with others. (a) To be able to live with and show concern for others, empathize with (and show compassion for) others, to be able to have the capability of justice and friendship. Institutions help develop and protect forms of affiliation. (b) To be able to have self-respect and not be humiliated by others, that is, being treated with dignity and equal worth. This entails (at the very least) protections of being discriminated on the basis of race, sex, sexuality, religion, caste, ethnicity, and nationality. In work, this means entering relationships of mutual recognition. 8. Play: To be able to enjoy, laugh, play. Not having one’s enjoyment and recreation criticized or prevented. 9. Other species: To be able to live with the full range of plants and other species that inhabit the earth. To be able to establish relation with nature and other species. 10. Control over one’s environment: (a) Political: To have right to participate politically, making free choice and joining with others to promote political views. (b) Material: Being able to own property and goods, being able to seek and accept work, and to be treated reasonably at work. Being free from unwarranted search and seizure. Read the list provided in Box 5.72 carefully. The list provides ten capabilities which Nussbaum regards as centrally important to live a full and rich human life. Some of these refer to the physical aspect of a human life, such as physical health, physical integrity. However, Nussbaum also insists on mental capability. For example, people should be able to afford emotions. Life should not be so hard (as it

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may be in some countries with very harsh and hostile reality) as not to be able to afford emotions or to express the real emotions. Among other capabilities, she mentions the capability to socially affiliate with the others. We must learn and enable ourselves to feel and show concern for the others. Life must not be so threatened that only one’s own survival becomes the sole focus. The other striking central capability is the capability to play: There should be opportunity and scope for a person to be able to enjoy oneself in leisure time in the way he or she wishes. Also note that Nussbaum’s list of central capabilities not only touches some of the very important aspects of a human life, but also has a keen quality concern. For example, the first central human capability is the capability of life. By that Nussbaum does not refer to mere survival, or merely avoiding premature death. She means the capability to live a life fully, and not to have life reduced to something that is not worth living. To live a life fully requires so much more than just avoiding premature death, or merely passing the days. To live life fully is to have a vibrant life, in which one reaches one’s full potential so that it becomes a fulfilling life. It is certainly not a life which is so poor in quality that it is not worth living. Similarly, she mentions the capability of sense, imagination and thought, which is about being capable to use all these faculties to the fullest and at an advanced level. All humans have the senses; but those who cultivate the sensory delights to the fullest reach a different level of achievement with them. Those who have eyes cannot always see or create visual beauty, for example. Those who have the tongue do not always have the capability of appreciation of the taste that a culinary expert can create. This capability refers to the enjoyment of a culturally rich life, and an active political life, both of which requires the ability to use one’s senses, imagination and thinking powers at a sophisticated level. So, you can see that Nussbaum brings in a quality concern in Sen’s concept of functioning. This is how she augments Sen’s approach. By functioning, Sen means any activity or any state of being which a person values. Nussbaum, on the other hand, speaks of not just any, but the Aristotelian idea of true human functioning. She thinks that a functioning should be performed in a truly human way, which is performing it with a flourish that is unique to the humans. In her opinion, living a human life is so much more than just performing the basic biological activities in the bare minimum way. A human life is to express fully the human powers. Her ten central human capabilities represent what she thinks are the basic functionings that a dignified, free person should have, who is able to control and choose her way of life. Though each of these ten capabilities are important, Nussbaum emphasizes on the capability of practical reason and affiliation more than the others. She claims that her list provides an idea about what Aristotelian concept of a good life is. It is a life of human flourishing. One of her key points, however, is that the ten central capabilities should be part of the constitution of every country. Through the constitutional rights, the citizens should be assured the minimum by which these capabilities can be realized. She opines that it is the duty of the Governments to ensure that at least a threshold level of the central capabilities can be achieved by the ordinary citizens. Second, she also articulates what would be the minimum that the constitution of a country should have, if the country wishes to pursue this line.

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We may end our brief discussion on capabilities approach here by pointing out the impressive impact Sen’s capabilities approach (opportunities and freedoms) and Nussbaum’s capabilities approach (human powers and central capabilities) have had in ethics and other related disciplines. I have already mentioned their impact on the discourse on human development. United National Development Program (UNDP) has been built on the principles of capabilities approach. Its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are goals, which guide the nations to assess and address their performances in non-income developmental aspects, such as poverty reduction, infant mortality, women empowerment, education, alleviation of hunger and malnutrition. These are the goals to measure the quality of life in a country. These are the measures whether or not people are capable of living up to their full potential as per their choice. Nussbaum’s theory has also lent important support to Disability ethics. Interesting questions have been raised on what kind of institutional support would be required to provide the best opportunities to people with various disabilities to lead a life that fulfill the central capabilities.

5.8 Conclusion on Justice Through the discussion on justice, we have come to learn about one of the most important and complex ethical concepts. We have seen how justice has been interpreted in different ways. We also have learnt from the contemporary theories that in present-day society justice has an enormous relevance. However, after all this, as a beginning student, you might wonder: How to apply the concept of justice in various ordinary situations? To this, firstly, my submission is that try to grasp the principle of equality and principle of equity. In ordinary situations, these principles ought to help you. However, practical wisdom is required to know where to apply which one. As you have learnt from above, not all situations are appropriate for applying egalitarian principle. Similarly, where equal treatment is necessary, inequal treatment would be unfair. Secondly, you have been told about various kinds of issues in justice. Make it a point to understand from the context what sort of a situation is at hand. For example, if you have a situation at hand of distributing festive gifts to your office friends, then distributive justice concerns are applicable. If on the other hand, if you have a situation where you have accidentally caused a damage to someone’s property, then you need to realize that the situation does not call for the application of principles of distributive justice. You need to address the situations and the related concerns with corrective justice. In short, before you apply principles of justice, try to fathom the nature of the situation at hand. Third, note that the way Rawls and Sen have conceptualized justice has a prominent social aspect. They have formulated their theories with a big emphasis on what a fair society ought to be and ought to do. Their theories and concepts are developed for application at a macro level by the policymakers. So, this distinction between applying justice in the personal space and in the public sphere should be kept in mind.

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Fourth, Sen and Nussbaum in their theories made a large room for the people, their actual lives and their real freedoms and choices. When applying their theories to situations, keep in mind their definition of justice is very different. They speak about the impact of macro level distributive decisions on the lives of the ordinary people, and their agency. So, if applying these theories, you need to keep the policy environment as the backdrop of your justice concerns. These are some of the recommendations from my side to enable you to use the concepts for further deliberations.

5.9 Summary and Conclusion of the Chapter In this chapter, our goal was to learn about some of the key technical concepts of normative ethics. For this chapter, the concepts of moral responsibility, rights, duty, and justice were chosen. Each of these concepts has been defined and explained. The intricacies in these normative concepts were explained and wherever appropriate examples have been provided. Since these are conceptual tools, not only the concepts have been defined and discussed but also in this chapter how to apply the conceptual tools also has been explained. These were some of the foundational concepts of normative concepts. With these, the groundwork for entering into normative ethics is now laid. In the next chapter, we shall engage ourselves with the basic theories of normative ethics.

Study Questions 1. Explain the concept of desert in the context of justice. How is the concept of desert connected with the concept of justice? 2. Which of the following best represents Plato’s view on justice? (a) (b) (c) (d)

Justice is what benefits the weaker section of the society. Justice is a virtue, or a condition of harmony, in the soul. Justice is to have the society ruled by the spirited warrior class. Justice is doing exactly what the law says.

3. Which of the following is false about Aristotle’s view on justice? (a) Justice as a virtue is a golden mean, or a rational middle point, between two vices of excess and deficiency in behavior towards a situation. (b) Justice is not to treat person A and person B equally, if A and B have ethically relevant and significant differences. (c) Justice is not possible in the political system of democracy. (d) Justice is equal rights all: For citizens as well for the slaves.

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4. What does Aristotle’s principle of political justice mean: Justice is to treat the equals as equals, and the inequals as inequals? Why does Aristotle consider democracy as an inherently unjust governing system? 5. What is distributive justice? Illustrate your answer with an example. Compare and contrast between distributive justice and corrective justice, with special reference to Aristotle’s observation on this matter. 6. Critically evaluate the FCFS principle as a criterion of distributive justice. 7. Is this statement true or false? Justify your answer. Equality of opportunity does not try to remove all existing social hierarchies. Instead, it tries to allow all individuals equal access to employment opportunities. 8. 2011 Census of India shows that only 55% of families in the rural areas have electric connection in the house, whereas 93% of urban families have electrical connection. Which of the following would best describe the disparity between the rural and urban families? (a) (b) (c) (d)

Economic inequality Political inequality Legal inequality Gender inequality

9. “The C.E.O.s of large multi-national companies, on the average, make almost 200–300 times hundred times more than what their ordinary employees earn; billionaire industrialists shape our politics and national policies; the urban infrastructure grows while in the rural areas the infrastructure projects stagnate for years; the best health care goes to the richest who can afford it”. The situation represents which of the following options: (a) (b) (c) (d)

Socialism Inequality in welfare Egalitarianism A social contract

10. In your opinion, which of the criticisms mentioned in the text is the strongest objection against strict egalitarianism, and why? 11. Select the right option. Capitalism is: (a) An economic system in which the properties, and capital goods are owned and controlled by the government. (b) An economic system in which the property and modes of production are privately owned and controlled. 12. What are the primary social goods for Rawls? How are they different from the natural primary goods? 13. Explain the following statement: “Rawls’s first principle of liberty is about the distribution of the social primary goods, whereas his second principle of difference is for distributing wealth, income opportunities and status in the society”.

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14. What is the “veil of ignorance” in Rawls’s theory? Explain its role with respect to justice and fairness. 15. What point does Amartya Sen want to make by bringing the Nyaya and Niti distinction in the meaning of justice? 16. The story of one flute and three children is actually a pointer at what Sen considers a flaw in Rawls’s theory of justice. Explain that flaw as Sen sees it. 17. Sen’s capability approach has four constitutive concepts: (a) agency, (b) functionings, (c) capabilities, (d) conversion factors. Explain each of these with the example of capability to be educated. 18. Nussbaum speaks of three parts of a capability: basic, internal, and external. Explain these with example of your own. Argue whether these can work separately. 19. What are Nussbaum’s central human capabilities? What do they represent? What according to Nussbaum is the role of the government of a country with respect to these?

Research Exercise 1. Consider the following: The government of a country has the rights over the country’s land, and also has the right and the authority to acquire some land for the sake of national development. However, the native residents of the land, which is to be acquired by the government, also have a right over the land where they have been living for generations. For the local residents, displacement from the land would mean displacement not only from their habitat, but also from their way of life. Identify the competing rights in the example. What according to you would be a possible and ethically satisfactory way to resolve this situation of the competing rights? Justify your answer. 2. Consider this: Reshma is a 9-year-old little girl, who is daily sent to work by her parents at a nearby reassembling plant. The nimble fingers of a child are suitable for assembling certain parts. A child-rights activist claims that this violates Reshma’s child rights to education and hinders her normal development as a child. Reshma’s parents claim that they are a very poor family, and they have the human right to eliminate or alleviate their poverty. They explain that Reshma’s income enables the family to keep their heads above the water, and to stay away from abject poverty. (a) Develop a way to address both the parents’ concern for poverty alleviation and the child rights activist’s concern for protection of Reshma’s child rights.

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(b) Should you suggest that the parents may be retrained for a better job with a higher income than they earn now, so that Reshma can be spared from her role as a earning (c) member of the family? Or, do you have some other possible middle path in mind? Justify your answer and show its merit as ethically satisfactory answer 3. Marxist theory of justice says that everyone should receive according to their needs and give according to their abilities. Does Rawls’s justice as fairness go farther than that? If yes, in what way(s)? If not, how does it differ from Marxist theory of justice? 4. Should a ‘socially just and fair’ distributive policy about setting up computer education centers (a societal benefit) be based on (a) contribution to society, or (b) needs and abilities, or (c) principle of difference (Rawls), or (d) capability approach? Briefly justify your answer. 5. Suppose that about 200 million people of Country A are underfed and 50 million are on the brink of serious starvation, resulting in deaths. Suppose that the country has now procured sufficient foodgrain stock, and you have been asked to devise a ‘fair’ (i.e. ‘just’) foodgrain distribution policy as per each of the following: (a) egalitarianism, (b) capitalist notion of justice, (c) socialist notion of justice, (d) distributive justice of Rawls, (e) capability approach. (a) Articulate first each of the policies devised by you as per (a)-(e). Explain whether and how your policy would differ in each case. (b) If you were to recommend one among all the policies, which one would you choose and why?

Case Study Discussion Ethics Case to Discuss 5.1 The death of Stephen Golab9 Three former executives of a northwest suburban film-recovery plant were found guilty of murder by a judge Friday in a landmark trial stemming from the death of a worker who inhaled cyanide fumes on the job.

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Case based on newspaper report: Ray Gibson, 3 Guilty in Cyanide Death, Chicago Tribune, June 14, 1985. Available at: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1985-06-14-8502070967story.html.

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Judge Ronald J.P. Banks, who presided over the bench trial in the Maywood branch of Cook County Circuit Court, issued the verdicts in what is believed to be the nation’s first case in which corporate officials were charged with murder for the job-related death of an employee. Those found guilty are Steven J. O‘Neil, president of the now-defunct Film Recovery Systems Inc., of Elk Grove Village; Charles Kirschbaum, the plant manager; and Daniel Rodriguez, the plant foreman. They also were found guilty on 14 counts of reckless conduct. The three are to be sentenced on June 28 and face at least 20 years in prison. Thomas Royce, a defense lawyer for two of the defendants, called the decision a “landmark” and said it was “very, very significant”. He said it sent a message that corporations would be held accountable to the criminal justice system. The three men shook their heads in disbelief when the verdicts were issued, and Kirshbaum’s wife broke into sobs as Banks revoked their bonds and ordered them to jail to await sentencing. The case stemmed from the death on February 10, 1983, of Stefan Golab, a 61-year-old Polish immigrant employed at the plant. Golab worked over tanks of cyanide solution used in the plant’s recovery of silver from used photographic film. Banks said that, although there was no evidence indicating the amount of cyanide in the air in the plant, testimony from a police officer who told about air quality the day the worker died convinced him that there were cyanide fumes on the premises. The symptoms were those which, according to scientific findings, would occur if workers were exposed to cyanide, he said “I found the conditions in which the workers performed their duties were totally unsafe”, the judge said. He said that although workers did not know of the peril in which they worked, company officials were well aware of the hazards. In finding the three men guilty, Judge Banks also found that their firm, Film Recovery and Metallic Marketing Systems Inc., which owned half of the Elk Grove Village plant, were both guilty of involuntary manslaughter and 14 counts of reckless conduct. How Golab actually died in the plant and whether plant officials knew there were life-threatening conditions there were the key issues during the eight-week bench trial. Prosecutors charged that Golab inhaled a lethal dose of cyanide fumes as he prepared to disconnect a pump used to clean out the 1,000-gallon tanks at the factory. He staggered from the tank into a plant lunchroom, began shaking violently and lapsed into unconsciousness, according to witnesses. Defense attorneys, however, contended that Golab simply died of a heart attack unrelated to his work at the plant. The main prosecution witness was Dr. Robert J. Stein, Cook County medical examiner. Stein testified that Golab had a lethal level of cyanide in his blood.

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He said that when he performed Golab’s autopsy, a smell of bitter almonds— the odor associated with the poison—spread throughout the examining room after an incision was made into the body. Under the state’s murder statute, prosecutors had to prove that the plant officials ignored the conditions despite knowing that there was a risk of injury or “great bodily harm” to a worker. Nearly 20 of the plant’s former workers, all but one of whom were illegal aliens, testified that they vomited almost daily because of the plant’s fumes. Case 5.1. Questions 1. (a) Whose responsibility is it to ensure that the health and safety of the employees is protected at the workplace? (b) Is it a legal responsibility, or moral responsibility, or both? 2. Identify and explain the factors in the case that could be used to argue that the three officials were morally responsible for Golab’s death in the Aristotelian scheme of conditions for moral responsibility. Are freedom condition and epistemic condition both satisfied in this case? Justify. 3. Epistemic condition has three interpretations (i)-(iii), which were discussed in the text. Which among those are applicable to this case? Justify your answer. 4. Explain and comment on the factors that could be used as mitigating factors to save the officials from the “murder” charges and to argue for a lesser charge. 5. Should Company Film Recovery Systems Inc be held morally responsible for Golab’s death? If so, on what ground? On act of commission, or on act of omission?

Ethics Case to Discuss 5.2 Trika is submissive by nature. After a lot of search and a series of unsuccessful interviews, she has found this job four months ago. The job is important to her, and she has no intention to discontinue. As an employee, she is yet to find her footing in the company. However, one thing she has understood clearly from her brief work experience in this company is that she should not do anything to displease her boss. So, irrespective of what others may think, she strives to live up to the expectation of her boss. This includes passing the bills submitted by her boss’s close friend quickly and without much scrutiny. She knows that sometimes the bills are questionable, but she has decided that for her it is best to turn a blind eye to them. By the way, her boss has never directly instructed her

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to pass the bills, yet she feels that she is somehow expected to do it. Basically, she thinks that showing the slightest resistance could displease her boss and may cost her the job. Case 5.2. Questions 1. Suppose that audit raises objections about some of the bills submitted by Trika’s boss’s friend, and complains about irregularities, should Trika be held as morally responsible? Argue for your answer. 2. Is it possible to defend Trika for a mitigated responsibility for the irregular bills? If so, what would be a factor or factors in her defense? Justify.

Ethics Case to Discuss 5.3 Cobalt is used to power the rechargeable lithium batteries in the smartphones, laptops, and electric cars. The demand for cobalt is on the rise. It has tripled in the recent years and is believed to grow even more as more and more cheap, handheld technological products are going to be in demand. More than 60% of cobalt comes from the mines of Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Africa, one of the poorest and most unstable countries in the world. Cobalt mining is dangerous. In addition to environmental impact, it can cause adverse impact on human health. During the cobalt mining, miners are exposed to radioactive emission from the particles. The emission is carcinogenic; it can cause cancer. Cobalt mining also emits particles which may cause physical ailments, such as nausea and vomiting, heart problem, vision problem, thyroid problem. Exposure to cobalt dust may cause irritation to eyes, nose, throat, and skin. Many cobalt mines are illegal and do not follow any safety guidelines in the mining process. The tunnels underground are ‘rat-hole’ mines, which run deep into the ground. The mining depends more on human muscles, using their hands, shovels, pick-axes, rather than on modern mining equipment. Along with the men and women, due to the increasing demand, children from low-income families are sent to the cobalt mines. Driven by extreme poverty, children from some poor families illegally work in the cobalt mines, owned by a UK mining company and a Chinese mining company. The economy of DRC Congo is crippled by years of war. In its recent finding, UNICEF claimed that there are 1,10,000–150,000 artisanal miners in DRC Congo, out of which 40,000 are children between the ages 5 and 17 years. In 2019, a landmark case was filed by the human rights firm International Rights Advocates on behalf of 14 parents and children from the DRC. The

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case accuses the top technology companies such as Apple, Google, Tesla, Dell, Microsoft of aiding and abetting in the death and serious injury of the children working in cobalt mines in their supply chain. The cobalt mined in this way involving child labor find its way through a global supply chain to the products of these corporate technology giants. The families claim that some of the children were killed in tunnel collapses, while others were victims of accidents resulting in paralysis or life-changing injuries. A major allegation is that the multi-national corporations, such as Apple, Google, Tesla, Dell, Microsoft, “knew” that the cobalt in their supply chain came from forced, child labor, in risky environment, and thus are complicit in child labor.10 Case 5.3. Questions 1. Read the case carefully and identify as many issues related to rights as you can. Specify the right with the title and purpose of the right. 2. Take each of the rights identified in Question 1, and correctly classify if it is: (a) (b) (c) (d)

Universal or special, Legal or moral, Alienable or inalienable, Absolute or prima-facie right.

Justify your answer. 3. What was charge the human rights firm International Rights Advocates alleged against the Corporate giants? Rephrase the charge in the language of the rights. 4. Identify the rights-holders in the landmark case of 2019. Explain the role of the human rights firm International Rights Advocates in this regard.

Key Terms • Aboutness principle: This is a principle proposed by Joel Feinberg as a general principle for settling questions about a desert base. The principle says that a person can deserve something by virtue of a fact only if that fact is about the person; or by virtue of a property only if the person actually has that property. 10

A case prepared by the author based on the report by Annie Kelly. Apple and Google named in US lawsuit over Congolese child cobalt mining deaths. The Guardian, Dec 16, 2019. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/dec/16/apple-and-google-named-in-uslawsuit-over-congolese-child-cobalt-mining-deaths.

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• Absolute rights: These are rights which cannot be overridden by any other ethical considerations. • Act of commission: It is an act of actually and directly doing something. • Act of omission: It is not doing an action. It still is treated as an action, or as a failure to do the needful. • Alienable rights: These are rights which are not inseparable from the rightsholder. • Automata: Automata (plural, singular automaton) is a Greek word. It means self-propelled devices which automatically follows a pre-determined sequence of actions. Automata are mechanisms or machines. • Capitalism: Capitalism is a system of economy which allows private ownership by individuals, businesses, and corporations, can, and encourage the profit-making business of capital goods, such as factories, machinery, vehicles, for the production of consumer goods. The government does not own the key capital goods and is seen as an enabler for free market, and as a protector of private wealth. • Causal determinism: It is the philosophical position that all that happens in the world are necessitated by a chain of previously existing or antecedent events and conditions. If the chain of prior events occurs, there is no way for the consequent event not to occur. • Civil rights: These rights enable a citizen to have a civilized, social life, and assure the fulfilment of the basic needs. Civil rights are bestowed by the nations to their citizens within their territory and are protected by the constitution of the country. • Compatibilism: This is a philosophical position which tries to reconcile hard determinism and libertarianism. It claims that all events are all determined, yet some of our actions can still be free when those actions are self-determined. This is also known as soft determinism. • Competing rights: Competing rights are rights which compete with each other. They involve situations in which enjoyment of rights by an individual or group would interfere with the enjoyment of rights by another individual or group. • Corrective justice: It is the form of justice which is aimed at correcting the injustice suffered by a person. • Desert: It stands for what one deserves. • Deserver: The person who deserves something. • Desert base: The basis on which a desert claim can be made. • Discrimination: Discrimination is unjustified differentiation among people based on irrelevant criteria and prejudices. • Distributive justice: It is the form of justice which is about the fair distribution of something among several deservers. It assumes (a) a distributor, or an agent who would distribute, (b) the thing to be distributed, and (c) a number of people who have a claim over the item to be distributed. Following Rawls, distributive justice has come to be understood as justice in the distribution of benefits and burdens of a society. • Duty: Duty in ethics is to be understood as an action which is required, or is obligatory.

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• Economic equality: Economic equality asks for equality in income and wealth across the society. It demands distribution of economic opportunities and rights in such a way that the disparities in income and wealth are equalized among the different groups of population. • Egalitarianism: Egalitarianism is a theory which advocates equality as a fundamental principle for justice. • Equality: Equality means to be equal. It is to understood as being the same in at least one respect. Equality is one of the fundamental principles of justice and is also a pillar for distributive justice. • Equality before law: It means equality in the eyes of the law. The same law would apply equally to all, irrespective of caste, creed, race, or religion. The law would give equal protection to all. • Fatalism: It is the belief that that all events in one’s life are pre-determined by fate, and that there is no escape from fate. • Gender equality: Gender equality is a call for equality between the genders, the male and the female. It seeks equality of status, rights, opportunities, access to social resources, among many other things, between men and women. • Hard determinism: It is a philosophical position that all that happens in the world are determined by previously existing or antecedent events. • Inalienable rights: These are rights that others cannot take away or remove from the rights-holder. • Justice: Justice is understood as that which is appropriate and fair. What is just is also understood to mean that which is right. • Legal equality: Legal equality means equality of all people in the eyes of the law. • Legal justice: This is justice as understood from the point of view of law and the legal system. • Legal rights: When the rights are empowered and enforced by a legal system, they are the legal rights. • Level playing field: A level playing field is a situation in which the conditions for a competition are fair to everyone, where every contestant gets the equal opportunity, and a fair and equal chance to win. The analogy is to a field game, where the field must be at the same level for each player. • Libertarianism: It is a philosophical position that free will exists and that we are free to exercise our choices. Some of our actions are freely chosen. • Mitigating factors: These are particular situations which are appealed to in arguments in law in particular to argue for diminished responsibility, or to exonerate from culpability. These factors help to weaken the attribution of responsibility. • Moral agency: The ability of an agent to discern between ethical right and wrong, and to make judgments based on that, and be accountable for acting out of that discernment. • Moral equality: This is a tenet of early modern political philosophy. Moral equality claims that the natural order is that all humans deserve to be treated equals on a moral standing. • Moral rights: These are rights which are founded on and justified by the ethical grounds. They draw their validation from the ethical grounds.

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• Negative Rights: These are those rights which require that others should not interfere or restrict the enjoyment of the right by the rights-holder. • Prima-facie rights: These are rights which may be overridden by other ethical considerations. • Political equality: This stands for the ideal that every individual in the society would enjoy the same political rights, liberties, and opportunities. • Positive duties: These are duties which require us to do some action. • Positive rights: These are those rights that make a positive justified claim on an entitlement. • Procedural justice: This is the justice linked to the procedures followed. It focuses on the issues related to the fairness in the procedures. • Necessary conditions: These are conditions without which the event cannot take place. • Negative duties: These are duties that require us not to do certain things. They refrain us from doing the wrong, or ethically impermissible, actions. • Non-income dimensions: These are the non-economic aspects of a social life, such as education, health. • Reasonably foreseeable consequences: These are the consequences of an action which are foreseeable by any reasonable person, given. • Speciesism: It is a term introduced by Richard Ryder. It represents a biased attitude towards one’s own species, which allows serving the interests of one’s own species as paramount over the interest of other species. • Socialism: Socialism is the economic, political, and social philosophical position which advocates social ownership of the social resources, means of production, and distribution, instead of private or individual ownership. • Social benefits: These are the benefits that an individual gets by living in a society and by abiding by that society’s rules. The social benefits are decided and distributed by different agents and institution of the society. • Social ownership: Social ownership means that the people in the society are the owners of all the social resources, such as wealth, and of the means of production, such as the factories, the farms, and the other production units, and of the system of distribution of the products. There is no private owner, who can claim these as a private property. • Social equality: Social equality is a social ideal which demands equal social standing for all people in the society. Irrespective of who they are, and which socioeconomic strata they come from, or which gender and religion they are of, everyone must be socially treated as equals, not superior or inferior. • Social hierarchy: Social hierarchy is a stratified social ranking system based on group membership. Some groups are treated as socially superior, others as of socially lower status; and accordingly the access to social and material resources is given. • Social institutions: Social institutions are understood as the social mechanisms in the society to meet the social needs. Examples would include the government, the judiciary, the education system, the legal system, the healthcare system, religious institutions.

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• Soft determinism: This position actually subscribes to the view that events are all determined. However, they also allow that some of our actions can still be free when those actions spring from within us. Those actions are free, not in the sense of being not being determined, but by virtue of being self-determined. • Special rights: These are rights which exclusively belong only to some people. • Speciesism: The term is coined by Richard Ryder in the 1970s. It refers to a biased attitude towards one’s own species, which allows serving the interests of one’s own species as paramount over the interest of other species. • Substantive justice: This is about the justice of the outcome. It focuses on the value of the final outcome and on the fairness of the outcome.

Chapter 6

Normative Ethical Theories: I

In this chapter we shall: • Gain an understanding about consequentialist ethics as a preeminent branch of normative ethics • Learn about Utilitarianism both as an exemplar of consequentialist ethics and also as a major normative ethics theory • Understand what hedonism is, and how it provides the historical backdrop for Utilitarianism • Acquire knowledge about what Utilitarianism is and what it is not, and how to apply Utilitarianism • Gain an understanding about the strengths of Utilitarianism • Critically examine the limitations of Utilitarianism. Chapter Overview With this chapter, we begin our foray into the domain of normative ethics theories. We shall start with the question what the normative ethical theories contribute to the discourse on ethics and how they can help in our ethical decisions. After a discussion on the distinction between consequentialist and non-consequentialist ethics, Utilitarianism as a theory will be introduced as a very important instance of consequentialist ethics theory. We shall follow the Classical Utilitarianism through a discussion of the views of Bentham and Mill, two key proponents of Classical Utilitarianism. A historical discussion on hedonism, and ethics based on hedonism, in both India and in the west, would provide us the required context. This chapter will carefully bring out the main features of Utilitarianism and will introduce the student to the subtle intricacies that exist in this theory. A discussion on the strengths and the limitations of Utilitarianism will be presented to enable the reader for a critical understanding and application of the theory. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 C. Chakraborti, Introduction to Ethics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-0707-6_6

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Main Topics in this Chapter Role of the normative ethical theories and ethical decision-making Consequentialism and its different types Utilitarianism as a consequentialist ethical theory Classical Utilitarianism Act Utilitarianism and Rule Utilitarianism Aquinas’s Principle of Double Effect and Utilitarianism Why Utilitarianism is not self-interest maximization Why Utilitarianism is not Majoritarianism Strengths of Utilitarianism Limitations of Utilitarianism

6.1 Role of the Theories of Normative Ethics In the present as well as in the next chapter, we shall learn about the theories that normative ethics offers. Our purpose is to equip ourselves with the theoretical framework so that our application of ethics is fortified by the theoretical insights. However, before that, I believe it would help to do a quick recapitulation of what normative ethics is and what it tries to do. In Chap. 1, Sect. 1.9, we have learned that normative ethics is one among the three main divisions within ethics. Let us also remind ourselves that norm means rules or standards (see Chap. 1, Sect. 1.8). Hence, normative ethics is that ethics that sets norms or standards for human conduct. It provides us rules or norms about which actions we should do and which we should not do. In other words, normative ethics provides us the norms to prescribe which kind of behavior is ethically permissible and which is not ethically permissible. An example of a norm or a rule of normative ethics would be (a) Stealing is wrong The actions which comply with the norm or the rule would be ethically permissible, and those which do not comply would be the ethically wrong acts. With respect to the norm in Box 6.1, since the norm specifically prohibits stealing, the behavior or conduct which amounts to stealing would be considered as ethically wrong or ethically not permissible. We may restate this rule using the prescriptive language of normative ethics as (a’) One should not steal

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The other examples of rules thus restated would be • One should show compassion to the distressed. • One should be honest. • One should not harm any innocent. In Chap. 1, Sect. 1.8, we have learned the difference between the normative and the descriptive. We also learned how the language and expression of the normative differ from that of the descriptive. The language of normative ethics uses certain special terms such as should, should not, ought, and ought not. Box 6.1 Special terms in the prescriptive language of ethics The language of normative ethics typically uses certain terms such as should, should not, ought, ought not. Ethical judgments are passed in the normative mode using these terms. Unlike metaethics, which deals with questions at a higher and more advanced level about ethics and its nature, (see Chap. 3, Sect. 3.1) normative ethics concerns itself with practical, everyday questions. Box 6.2 presents some samples of such practical questions. Let us recapitulate that Aristotle said that the goal of ethics is practical (see Chap. 2, Sect. 2.1.1). It means that the goal of ethics is to enable us to translate theoretical, normative knowledge into issues and situations that concern us in our practical lives. Example 1 Climate change is a contemporary and immensely practical issue. From normative ethics, we expect to have certain norms to guide us which would be the ethically permissible actions and which would not be the ethically permissible pertaining to climate change. Normative ethics is supposed to show us the way ahead with such practical issues.

Box 6.2 Some examples of practical questions which normative ethics • • • • • •

What is the ethically right thing to do in this situation? Am I doing something ethically wrong? Why is such and such behavior ethically wrong? What kind of a person should we try to be? How do we become a good person? What should one do to have a good life?

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 Action guidance: Thus, on the whole, a core expectation from normative ethics is action guidance. Normative ethics and its rules are supposed to guide us in our actions. It is supposed to show us the way forward in terms of actionable items: Which action to perform and which action we should not engage in. It is to help us in practical situations or, when faced with difficult choices in life, to show us the way forward. Where do the theories of normative ethics fit in all this? The theories of normative ethics offer us the criteria and principles to differentiate between ethically right and ethically wrong behavior. They offer us multiple options to pick from, as they represent a specific theoretical perspective. As you shall see, the theories of normative ethics not only provide the norms, but also furnish the argument and the justification for the norms provided. The principal purpose of the normative theories is to provide articulated and wellargued principles, and standards, for ethically permissible behavior. In short, they provide us the norms of conduct for action guidance. The theories also provide us the grounds for accepting the criteria, or justification, for upholding certain norms. The theories of normative ethics are sometimes referred to as the first-order theories in contrast to the second-order theories and questions with which metaethics deals. The theories of normative ethics concern themselves with the more basic practical questions and situations to provide ethical guidance from a theoretical level. However, we need to make one point clear right from the beginning. Please note that there is no one, single theory of normative ethics. We need to accept the fact that there are multiple theories. There are more than one theory of normative ethics that would tell you why a particular behavior is ethically praiseworthy, or ethically disapproved. You may wonder whether they all speak in unison or whether they give you different advices. You may find that each of them would cite a unique, different ground and a different set of requirements for accepting an action as ethically right, or for disapproving an action as ethically wrong. Consequently, as a beginner, you may feel confused. However, this plurality should neither confuse you nor should take you by surprise. For, let us recall that you have already heard that in ethics, there can be more than one correct answer to a question posed. This does not imply that there is no correct answer for you to choose from. It also does not imply that the answers obtained from the theories are arbitrary and are of no value. The plurality of the answers may be caused by many factors, such as different assumptions harbored by the theories. Occasionally, the particularities of the context also may reflect in their answers as the differences. Let me also add that it is not necessary that the judgments of the theories of normative ethics would always be different, or that they would always be in conflict with each other. Their judgments can also converge. For example, the theories would all in unison pass the judgment that unnecessarily torturing an innocent person is ethically wrong. However, the justifications provided by the different theories may differ, as different theories may cite different grounds as per their own theoretical commitment.

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So, we need to learn to welcome the plurality that the theories offer in normative ethics. In fact, the theories offer you choices to select from as per your own ethical leanings. They offer you a chance to find out which one you relate to most and which considerations appeal to you the most. The present chapter will bring to you the well-established normative theory of Utilitarianism, It will acquaint you with its specific conceptual framework. You shall see that the theoretical framework will offer you its own ethical norms and principles to approach ethically pertinent behavior and situations. It will also offer you its justification for upholding the norms and the principles. This chapter will also point out, with examples, the applications of Utilitarianism in both personal and societal contexts. Quick Question 6.1 What exactly is the contribution of the theories of normative ethics in our ethical deliberations? Select the correct answer from the given options below and justify your choice and also explain why the other choices are wrong: (a) The sole merit of the theories of normative ethics is to provide us a starting point in our discussions. (b) The theories not only help us to distinguish between what is ethically right and what is wrong, but also to justify our arguments. (c) The theories alone can answer the higher-order questions about ethics which metaethics concerns itself with. (d) They expose the errors in our ordinary thinking about interpersonal relationships.

6.2 Consequentialist and Non-consequentialist Ethical Theories The ethical theories of normative ethics are usually broadly classified into two groups: (a) Consequentialist

(b) Non-consequentialist We shall first learn about the first group: the consequentialist theories. The consequentialist ethical theories form a cluster of normative ethical theories, which, as their name suggests, focus solely on the consequence or the outcome of an action. They maintain that whether an action is ethically right or not depends on its consequences

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or the results produced by the action. This is the common and the most basic tenet shared among the theories under the umbrella term consequentialist ethical theories. Box 6.3 Basic tenet of the consequentialist theories Whether an action is ethically right or not depends on its consequences or results produced by the action.

Example 2 Tipara, a new mother of twins, wishes to know whether getting her children immunized against childhood diseases is an ethically right choice for a parent. The consequentialist theories would recommend that she should look at the consequences of her choice to figure that out. If the outcome of getting the children vaccinated can be considered as good, the consequentialist theories would call the choice ethically right. On the other hand, if the consequence of not getting the children immunized against the childhood diseases is bad, the choice would be deemed ethically wrong by these theories (Pic. 6.1).

Would it be ethically

Consequentialist

right to immunize my

ethics

child?

Check the consequence

Is the consequence 'good'? then do it. Otherwise, don't.

Pic. 6.1 Consequentialist ethics

As per Classical Utilitarianism, what makes lying ethically wrong is the effect of lying on other people. It is the outcome of lying, rather than the fact that lying as an act is deceitful or that lying is a vice that is to be avoided. A prime example of consequentialist normative ethical theory is the Classical Utilitarianism. When we discuss it in the next section, you shall see how it exemplifies the characteristics of consequentialist ethics. Next, however, we shall first try to understand the different kinds of types that exist in consequentialism.

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6.2.1 Kinds of Consequentialism A. Actual consequences, or foreseen, foreseeable, probable consequences: When considering the outcome of an action, which consequences are we supposed to look at, the actual or the expected? There is a kind of consequentialism which holds that we consider the actual consequences of an action to evaluate whether an act is ethically right or not. We may call it actual consequentialism. Box 6.4 Actual consequentialism Whether an action A is ethically right depends only on A’s actual consequences.

Example 3 Suppose that Veena has decided to purchase a car for her family, which is within her budget, but the car does not have some of the driver and passenger safety features, such as the air pillows. Is her decision ethically right? In response, the actual consequentialists would inquire what the actual outcomes of that purchase decision are. Are they good? If Veena and her family actually found that car comfortable for going to work and school, and went happily to vacation trips in that car, and nothing adverse actually happened, then the actual consequentialists would pass Veena’s purchase decision as ethically right (Pic. 6.2).

Pic. 6.2 Purchase decision

Another kind of consequentialism differs in opinion and recommends that we should consider the foreseen, foreseeable, or probable consequences of an action instead of the actual consequences. In that case, to determine the ethical correctness of Veena’s purchase decision, we need to ask what could be the

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foreseen, foreseeable, or probable consequences of such a decision. We may loosely call such theories foreseeable or probable consequentialism. Example 4 Purchasing a car without adequate passenger safety features carries a risk for Veena’s family and herself. This risk is among the foreseen, foreseeable, or probable consequences. If foreseen consequences are to be considered, then we need to ask: Did Veena foresee the risk? If she foresees it and still goes ahead with the car purchase, then based on the foreseen consequences, her choice is not ethically right. However, if she did not foresee a risk for some reason, then by purchasing the cheaper car, Veena has not done anything ethically wrong. However, if foreseeable consequences are to be considered, then if Veena’s family members get grievously injured in an accident, Veena’s action would be deemed ethically wrong. For, the possibility of serious harm from riding a car without adequate safety features is foreseeable, and Veena should have foreseen that bad consequence as a possibility (Box 6.5). B. Objective and subjective consequentialism: Objective consequentialism is that kind of consequentialism which considers probable consequences, but only the objectively likely or objectively probable consequences (Railton, 1984). The view is called objective consequentialism, where objectively likely consequence means a consequence which any person as an agent would be able to see as a likely or probable consequence of a certain action. Box 6.5 Actual and foreseeable or probable consequentialism

Which

Was Veena’s car purchase decision an ethically right choice?

What are the

consequences?

consequences

?

The actual consequences?

The foreseen, or foreseeable, or probable consequences?

According to this position, to determine whether an action is ethically right or wrong, we look into the objectively probable consequences. If we go back to the example of Veena and her purchase decision of a car without passenger safety features, then this position would ask us to consider the objectively probable

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consequences of that decision. In case some family members as passengers sustain grievous injuries from a road accident because the car did not have sufficient safety features, then we would be asked to consider whether such injury as the consequence can be among the objectively probable outcome of Veena’s risky purchase decision. Veena’s decision may be viewed as ethically wrong if the risk of injury or loss of life of a passenger is counted among the objectively probable or likely consequences. In contrast, there is a kind of consequentialism called subjective consequentialism. This position holds that in order to be considered as the criterion to determine the ethical quality of an action or decision, the consequence should be subjectively probable. That is, the consequence must be foreseen, foreseeable, or viewed as probable, by the particular agent of that action. In our Example 4 of Veena, the evaluation of her car purchase decision as ethically right or wrong would depend on whether the probability of injury and harm to the passengers riding in her chosen car was viewed as foreseeable or probable by Veena herself . According to this kind of consequentialism, the probability has to be linked with the perception of the agent as a foreseen, or foreseeable, consequence. So, in case Veena’s family members as passengers sustain grievous injuries from a road accident because the car did not have sufficient safety features, then we need to find out if Veena herself considered such a consequence as probable. In case Veena somehow could not foresee this when she made her car purchase decision, as per this position her decision cannot be viewed as ethically wrong (Pic. 6.3).

Which

Was Veena’s car purchase decision an ethically right choice?

What are the

consequences?

consequences

?

The actual consequences?

The foreseen, or foreseeable, or probable consequences?

Pic. 6.3 Objective and subjective consequentialism

 A variation of this position is to require that the consequence should be reasonably foreseeable by anyone or all. This is a common interpretation of consequentialism.

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Quick Question 6.2 A ball, when thrown up in the air, will drop down. The ball’s dropping down is a consequence of its being thrown up in the air. Is this consequence an objectively likely consequence, or a subjectively likely consequence? Other than these above-mentioned kinds, we may also consider the following kinds of consequentialism. C. Direct and Indirect Consequentialism: Direct consequentialism is a type of consequentialism which claims that whether an act is morally right depends only on the consequences of that act itself. So, the consequence consideration is directly on the action itself and on its consequences. An example of this type of consequentialism is Act Utilitarianism, which we shall discuss in the present chapter as a kind of Direct Utilitarianism. Act Utilitarianism is that kind of Utilitarianism which recommends that we specifically consider the consequences of the individual action under consideration. For action A, Act Utilitarianism would require to know: What would be the consequence if A was done? On the other hand, indirect consequentialism applies the consideration of the consequences indirectly. It holds that just a particular action and its consequences are not enough, we also need to pay attention to other outcome, which may result as indirect consequence of doing that action. We may find an instance of indirect consequentialism in Rule Utilitarianism (to be discussed later in the present chapter). Rule Utilitarianism is an interpretation of Utilitarianism, which asks us to consider the consequences if an action A consistently is done by everyone as a rule. It would ask: What would be the consequence if as a rule everyone was permitted to do A? Note that the theory does not consider the direct consequences of the action A. It asks us to consider the consequence of the rule if actions were done as a policy by everyone. D. Evaluative consequentialism: Evaluative consequentialism is another kind of consequentialism which maintains that ethical rightness of an action depends only on whether the action can produce a value as a consequence. A value is a desirable end, and the consequence will have to be weighed in its ability to produce that value. So, the difference between this kind of consequentialism and the other kinds is that it looks at the consequences through the lens of a desired value and evaluates the consequences in terms of their ability to produce that value. The other above-mentioned kinds of consequentialism are concerned with questions about which kinds of consequences and consequences of what. D1. Single evaluative consequentialism: When using the value as the criterion, a consequentialist theory may select a single value as the core value and judge all consequences in being productive towards that value.

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For example, hedonism, which we discuss in this chapter (Sect. 6.3.1.3), believes in pleasure as the central value. All its evaluations of the ethical rightness or wrongness of any action are in terms of whether or not it can produce pleasure. Similarly, Amartya Sen’s capability approach, which was discussed in Chap. 5, holds individual welfare as a core value. If a welfarist theory of value is combined with a form of evaluative consequentialism which believes in a single value, we would have welfarist consequentialism. D2. Pluralistic evaluative consequentialism: There are the other evaluative consequentialists, who do not believe that there is only one kind of value, or that all values can be reduced to any single value. They recommend the use of multiple values, or more than one kind of values, as criteria to evaluate an action’s ethical rightness or wrongness. We may call such theories pluralistic evaluative consequentialism. Moore’s ideal Utilitarianism, for example, upholds the values of beauty and truth (or knowledge), in addition to pleasure (Moore, 1903, 83–85, 194; 1912), as equally important values when weighing the consequence of an action to determine the rightness of an action. Consequences are to be weighed in connection to all three values. Another example would be the consequentialism which has accorded the status of intrinsic values to multiple values: knowledge, autonomy, solidarity, and beauty (Railton, 1988, 93–133). E. Maximizing and satisficing consequentialism: Maximizing consequentialism holds that an action is ethically permissible if and only if no other act would produce more good than it. The ethically permissible action should maximize the good. In other words, the ethical rightness of an act depends on whether or not the act can bring the best consequence (Slote and Pettit, 1984). Critics argue that such a view is too demanding. The requirement that agents should always produce the best and maximum good may not always be feasible. As an ethical theory, such a requirement may seem overly demanding. Satisficing consequentialism makes a milder claim that an act is ethically permissible if and only if its consequences are satisfactory in terms of producing good or utility (Slote and Pettit, 1984), even if it is not the best consequences. The distinctions among the aforementioned kinds of consequentialism were brought to you to sensitize you about the nuances of consequentialism as a normative ethics theory. It is easy to believe that consequentialism is a simple theory which merely asks us to judge an action by looking at the outcome. I thought that such simplification is not desirable and that you should be aware about the points raised by many thinkers in their different interpretations of consequentialism. I do hope that the discussion above made you realize that before the application of consequentialism in our ethical judgments, there are further questions which are equally important to address. Next, we shall touch upon the non-consequentialist normative theories to put a closure to this section.

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Quick Question 6.3 True or false? (a) A difference between direct consequentialism and evaluative consequentialism is that direct consequentialism evaluates the action by judging the direct consequences of a particular action by any given criterion, but evaluative consequentialism evaluates the action by judging the consequences by a fixed criterion. (b) Maximizing consequentialism selects that action which produces the best consequence, whereas satisficing consequentialism approves an action even if it does not produce the best consequence.

6.2.2 The Non-consequentialist Theories The non-consequentialist ethical theories: In contrast, the non-consequentialist ethical theories offer a sharply contrasting perspective with a very different set of principles and starkly different ideas. These theories will be discussed in the next chapter (Chap. 7) with the exposition that each of them deserves to bring out their unique characteristics in sharp contrast to consequentialist thinking. At this point, let us note that non-consequentialism is also a normative ethical position. It is named so because as a position it rejects a consequence-based ethical evaluation of an action. It holds that the outcomes alone cannot decide the ethical quality of an action. It does not deny that the consequences can be a factor in determining the ethical rightness of an action. However, it insists that we need to consider other important aspects of an action, such as the manner (how the action was done) in which the action was done and while doing whether any ethical norms were flouted, the motive or the intention behind the action (why the action was done), to decide whether the action is ethically good or not (Pic. 6.4). Ethical Theories

Consequentialist

Decide whether a course of action is ethically ‘good’ or ‘bad’ by its consequences

Non-consequentialist

Decide whether a course of action is ethically ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ by considerations other than its consequences

Pic. 6.4 Consequentialist and non-consequentialist ethical theories

6.3 Utilitarianism

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Box 6.6 Basic tenet of non-consequentialism Non-consequentialism is a normative ethical position that claims that consequence of an action alone cannot decide the ethical rightness of an action; there are other important aspects of the action which must be taken into consideration.

6.3 Utilitarianism Utilitarianism is a prime example of a consequentialist normative ethics theory. Put briefly, according to Utilitarianism, only those actions are ethically good, the consequences of which contribute to increase overall human happiness for all, and those actions the consequences of which do not so are not good. Good consequences of an action determine the action as ethically good, and bad consequences determine the action as ethically bad. In Utilitarianism, good consequences mean consequences which produce the most or maximum happiness for all; bad consequences mean consequences which do not produce most or maximum happiness for all. The idea of pleasure or happiness is a central value for the theory. This was a brief introduction to the theory of Utilitarianism. However, in order to understand Utilitarianism properly and fully, we must follow the thoughts of its two main advocates: John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) and Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832). Box 6.7 Brief statement of the central claim of Utilitarianism Utilitarianism maintains that only those actions are ethically good, the consequences of which contribute to increase overall human happiness for all; and those actions which do not do so are not good ethically. Bentham and Mill, The chief proponents: John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham were two 18th CE eminent British philosophers and reformers, and they are the pioneers of modern Utilitarianism. In their hands, Utilitarianism received the first, articulated form as a full-fledged consequentialist ethical theory based on the idea of pleasure (Pic. 6.5).

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Jeremy Bentham

John Stuart Mill

Pic. 6.5 Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill

Let me clarify why their theory is considered as the first well-articulated fullfledged theory on the concept of pleasure. You see, the idea of holding human happiness or pleasure as a core human value was already there in philosophy. In that sense, Bentham and Mill did not propose something radically new in their theory. As you shall find out immediately below in the section entitled History of Utilitarian Thoughts (Sect. 6.3.1), long before Mill and Bentham, the idea of pleasure or happiness as a central human desideratum and philosophical reasoning based on that was there in ancient India, as well as in ancient Greek thoughts. In the ancient world, illustrious schools of philosophical thought were established with followers who practiced the philosophy. So, why do Bentham and Mill deserve any credit? The answer is: The credit goes to Bentham and Mill for articulating the idea of a happiness-based philosophy for the first time systematically, and for developing it as a well-argued, full-fledged theory of philosophical normative ethics, which the modern world and the mainstream philosophers and political and social thinkers could follow. Mill and Bentham also brought into the idea a wider, societal dimension, which was not prominent earlier. Quick Question 6.4 Is Utilitarianism a kind of evaluative consequentialism? Justify your answer. We shall first look at the earlier presence of the seeds of Utilitarian thoughts through a historical discussion, and then we shall get into what Mill and Bentham brought into their modern Utilitarianism.

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6.3.1 History of Hedonistic and Utilitarian Thoughts By Utilitarian thoughts, we mean here the line of thinking which encourages doing those actions which produce happiness. As mentioned above, such thoughts were clearly present in some ancient civilizations of the world. There were schools of thought that held happiness as a fundamental and worthy human value. In this section, we shall learn about these schools of thought.

6.3.1.1

The Charvaka School of Thought, India

In between 5th and 6th BCE, in ancient India, the Charvaka (also cited as the Carvaka) school of thought, also known as the Lokayata, emerged in Northern India. It was a rebel school of thought, very open in its denouncement of the-then mainstream religious and philosophical beliefs. For instance, the school summarily rejected the concepts of the immortal soul, afterlife, heaven and hell, the Gods, religious practices to appease the Gods, and everything else that were the staples of main Indian philosophical systems in that time. Probably, what caused the most uproar was its rejection of the authority of the teachings of the Vedas and the Upanishads, the superior role of the Brahmins, and the injunctions that follow from all of these. These rejections earned them the contemptuous moniker nastika or a non-believer (atheist) school of Indian philosophy. Unfortunately, however, the school lasted only for a short time. However, there is evidence in the secondary literature that while the school lasted, it caused enough turmoil with its drastically unconventional views, argumentations, and rejections. It dwindled and disappeared possibly under the twin pressure of harsh criticism, derision, and rejection from the mainstream, the more established Vedic theoretical systems, and the lack of acceptance from the society. As Riepe (1956) puts it: It is said that this hedonistic school stealthily crept into Indian speculation, created an unpleasant turmoil and passed away as mysteriously as it had come (Riepe, 1956, 551).

The Charvaka School did not accept the authority of the Vedas, but Buddhism and Jainism also did not accept the authority of the Vedas. However, perhaps due to more organized nature of their positions, Buddhism and Jainism could not be dismissed in the way the Charvaka School was. Moreover, Buddhism and Jainism both were religions; a theoretical system that had code of ethics and principles for self-upliftment. Unlike Buddhism and Jainism, the Charvaka School was not a dharmic philosophy; that is, it was not a philosophy based on a religion at all. It did not believe in anything supernatural or transcendental. Instead, the Charvakas were robust empiricists and proclaimed that the world revealed to us by our sensory experiences in the only world, and that we have only one life to live in that world. For them, there was no reason for being in penance or practicing austerity in preparation for an afterlife. Instead, they preached a philosophy of life based on pleasure or joy in this life.

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The Charvaka School thus stood apart from the typical ancient Indian philosophical traditions in choosing pleasure or happiness as the goal of human life. Its ethics of life is simple. It claims what an individual ultimately desires is pleasure. Unfortunately, much of the original literature by the Charvakas was lost. We come to know of the school of thought and its claims only through the secondary literature, that is, from the writings of the others who did not belong to the Charvaka School. The secondary literature has documented its sayings and has recorded the arguments from the dissenters too. As Sarva-darshana-sangraha (a secondary literature) cites it, we find that the Charvakas ridiculed the idea of the other mainstream philosophical positions that one should relinquish all pleasures in the present life and live a life of austerity for a better afterlife. Their philosophy of life was whatever pleasure is to be enjoyed, it should be enjoyed in the present and in the only life we have. The Charvakas were no fools. While preaching a life of pleasure, they knew that in this life pleasures come often accompanied by some pain. For example, the pleasure of having excellent and a lot of delicious food everyday may come with the pain of an exorbitant food bill or of a lot of extra body weight; just as the pleasure of making money may be followed by the pain of loss. However, according to them, to forsake all pleasures in this life just because the pleasures are accompanied by pain is “the reasoning of fools” (Madhavacharya, 1914, p. 4). Instead, the Charvakas encouraged that an individual should, by all means, pursue joy in the present life and seek what gives him the most pleasure. Their point of view on the afterlife is well-summarized in these lines attributed to them: While life is yours, live joyously. None can escape Death’s searching eyes: When once this frame of ours they burn, How shall it e’er again return? (Rangacharya, 1909, p. 6)

What sort of pleasure should one pursue? In answer, the Charvakas allowed any kind of pleasure. They did not differentiate between kinds of pleasures. Unlike the mainstream Indian philosophical schools, it did not find anything wrong with sensual pleasure or pleasure from the senses. Their pleasure philosophy did not allow any austerities. It allegedly preached the idea: As long as one is alive, one should live in joy, one ought to take ghee/butter even if for that one has to borrow the money.

There was wisdom in their pleasure-based ethics of life. Since pleasure in this life is mixed with pain, the Charvakas wisely advised that one should enjoy pleasure in a way which also avoids pain as much as possible. For them, happiness was a balance of pleasure over the pain. For them, virtue was to ensure maximum pleasure and minimum pain. They also believed in foresight. They knew that immediate pleasures sometimes need to be forestalled for some long-term pleasures. They advised that it is practical to engage in activities today which would bring pleasure tomorrow. For example, they believed that in business and agriculture, one should make sacrifices in immediate pleasures to ensure the gains for a greater future (Riepe, 1956).

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Box 6.8 A brief statement of the Charvaka School of thought Based on secondary literature, we come to know that the Charvakas believed that: (a) Pleasure is and should be the goal of human life, and (b) That we have only one life to live, and that since in life pleasure comes mixed with pain, a life should be lived in a balance so that maximum pleasure, and minimum pain is achieved, and (c) To relinquish all pleasure in present life for a better afterlife is to reason like a fool. In sum, we find that an ethic of life based on the central value of pleasure was present in ancient India. Since most of the primary texts are lost, we have to settle with the sketchy description of the position from the secondary citations. Quick Question 6.5 Is the Charvaka School a consequentialist school? Justify your answer.

6.3.1.2

Ancient China

In ancient China also, scholars have found traces of thoughts about the value of a happy life. Kuan Yi-Wu, a neo-Taoist, is also said to have preached a life of joy, unobstructed by prohibitions: Allow the ear to hear anything that it likes to hear. Allow the eye to see anything it likes to see. Allow the nose to smell whatever it likes to smell. Allow the body to enjoy whatever it likes to enjoy. Allow the mouth to say whatever it likes to say. Allow the mind to do whatever it likes to do. ... prohibition of the hearing of music is called obstruction to the ear ... prohibition of the seeing of beauty is called obstruction to sight ... prohibition of perfume is called obstruction to the smell ... These obstructions are the main causes of the vexations of life. To get rid of these causes and enjoy oneself until death, for a day, a month, a year - this is what I call cultivating life (As cited in Riepe, 1956, pp. 551–552).

Though the view is not that of a school of thought, it does recognize the importance of cultivating a vexation-free life of joy.

6.3.1.3

Hedonism, Ancient Greece

In ancient Greece around 3rd BCE a philosophy of life based on joy or pleasure flourished. While such a philosophy could enjoy only a peripheral line of thinking in ancient India, it carved its own niche as a part of the mainstream philosophy in

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ancient Greece. The position came to be known as hedonism. The name came from the Greek word h¯edon¯e which refers to pleasure. Box 6.9 Origin of the name hedonism The name Hedonism comes from Greek word h¯edon¯e which refers to pleasure. For western philosophy, it was the first philosophy which held pleasure as the central value. Over the years, however, various versions of hedonism have been advocated by different philosophers. Hedonism has become an umbrella term to refer to all those theories which use pleasure or happiness as the core value. The basic tenet of hedonism is that the fundamental goal of human life is to pursue happiness and avoid pain. Hedonism of Aristippus: In ancient Greece, the earliest and very radical form of hedonism is attributed to philosopher Aristippus of Cyrene (435–356 BCE). He claimed that the goal of human life is the sentient pleasure of the moment. It is a radical form of hedonism, because it not only speaks of pleasure as a core value, but also places value only on the value of the pleasure of the moment, without any regard for the future. For, it is argued that the future is uncertain; therefore, each moment of life should be enjoyed thoroughly. No matter how radical the view was, Aristippus could successfully found a hedonistic school, where this view was taught and deliberated upon. The school continued even after Aristippus’s demise. Plato, a contemporary of Aristippus, discussed hedonism in detail in some of his dialogues. This shows that hedonism could place itself well as an alternative philosophy within the scholarly circle. Aristotle too commented on hedonism in his Nicomachean Ethics. As said, evidently hedonism had a strong presence among the thinkers in ancient Greece. Hedonism of Epicurus: However, philosopher Epicurus (341–270 BCE) is the most important hedonist among the ancient Greek philosophers. In comparison with Aristippus, Epicurus’s hedonism was quite different and original. Epicurus certainly held that the goal of human life is happiness. However, for him, the pursuit of happiness was to be guided by reason. Influenced by Socrates and Aristotle’s conception of a good life, Epicurus maintained that true hedonistic life is not a life of momentary sentient pleasure. His view differed sharply from that of Aristippus in its claim that a true hedonistic life is a life of enduring pleasures. Enduring pleasures are pleasures that last. He maintained that such long lasting pleasures can be achieved only by self-control and guidance of reason. Since in life pleasure is almost always accompanied by pain, happiness for him was a life which is free from physical pain from ailments and free from all mental anxiety and agony. Such conception of happiness is modest and minimal. He compared such a happy life as equal to the life of a God. We can see that for him avoiding pain, physical and mental, was more important than attaining pleasure. In this sense, he is often called a negative hedonist; or, someone who puts more importance on avoiding pain than on attaining pleasure. According to him, the best life is a plain and simple life in which one’s well-being is not dependent on too many external, material things.

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Epicurus’s influence was vast, and the legacy of his teachings was carried forward by the various Epicurean societies founded following his views not only in Greece but also as far back as in Libya. It also left its mark on many Greek thinkers and poets. Its decline came with the rise of Christianity in Europe. Dissent with the philosophy of hedonism was always there, even in the time of Epicurus. However, as Christianity slowly became a dominant intellectual force in the Roman Empire, criticisms against hedonism became sharper and more vitriolic. Epicurus’s hedonism was wrongly interpreted by the early Christian scholars as the view which sanctions immediate gratification of all bodily desires. Under this misconception, the Epicureans were charged with all sorts of excesses that Christianity considered as vices, such as gluttony, drunkenness, and adultery. Since the Christian philosophy glorified the renouncement of all comforts in present life for a joyous life in heaven, it did not tolerate the non-Christian or pagan hedonistic preaching of a present life lived in the pursuit of pleasure. In 529 CE, the Christian Roman emperor Justinian forced the Greek philosophical schools in Athens to close. Epicurus’s school was also closed at that time after 700 years of continued existence, along with Plato’s Academy. To conclude, from this section, we learnt that: • Historically, the existence of a philosophy of life, which endorsed happiness or pleasure as a central human value, existed in ancient India, and Greece, long before Bentham and Mill. • We briefly followed the philosophical position of the Charvaka School in ancient India and the hedonism of Aristippus and Epicurus from ancient Greece. • We learned that within hedonism there could be significant differences. For example, Aristippus’s hedonism was different from what Epicurus and the Epicureans recommended. • We also learned that with the rise of Christianity and its powerful grip on scholarly activities, hedonism along with all other non-Christian schools of thought came to be denounced during the Middle Ages. • We discussed the history to better understand Utilitarianism and where it came from, In Sect. 6.4, you shall find out how with renaissance, hedonism re-emerged in a new shape and gained some additional dimensions.

6.4 Classical Utilitarianism 6.4.1 Before Bentham and Mill Towards the end of the Middle Ages (around 1400 CE), as the re-awakening of renaissance spread through Europe and the grip of Christianity started to loosen on the European thinkers, hedonism once more started to receive scholarly attention. Though

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it was frowned upon by many, particularly by the Christian theologians, hedonism found its sympathizers too. For example, Erasmus (1466–1536), a Dutch renaissance humanist and Christian priest, pointed out the misrepresentation of Epicurus’s view in the writings of Martin Luther (1483–1546), a Christian theologian and an important figure in Christian history of the reformation.1 As the renaissance period progressed, tolerance for difference in opinion increased, and hedonism came to be accepted in a modified form that was compatible with the humanism of renaissance.

6.4.1.1

Peter Gassendi and the Universalistic Trait in Hedonism

Among these renaissance-age scholars, who showed support to hedonism, we must mention the name of Peter Gassendi. In 1649, Pierre Gassendi, a Christian and a proclaimed Epicurean, put forth a systematic defense of Epicureanism and pointed out its misinterpretations by the earlier Christian theologians.  He also offered a modified interpretation of hedonism. Very importantly, in Gassendi’s exposition, a universalistic trait was added to hedonism. By universalistic, I mean that Gassendi understood the happiness of hedonism as happiness for all and not just for an individual. He argued that there is no conflict between self-interest and the greater good for all, and that we should try to promote universal happiness. However, as a devout Christian, his interpretation was infused with the idea of a Christian God. He argued that God had created us as empathetic creatures, so that we can care for the well-being of the others, and so that we can work for the happiness of the others. He viewed pleasure and pain both as God-given tools to us; pleasure is given to work for the greater good of all, and pain is given to avoid things that harm us. Thus, in Gassendi’s exposition, hedonism transformed from a philosophy of seeking pleasure in an individual life to a philosophy which aims to achieve universal happiness. His approach and thoughts heavily influenced many major French philosophers of his time.  However, the French philosophers accepted Gassendi’s message of universalistic hedonism, but rejected the in-built role of God and the required faith in God’s existence which Gassendi postulated. When we discuss classical, modern Utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill, we shall find that this French interpretation has left its mark on their theory. For, classical, modern Utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill also advocated universalistic hedonism as a social objective, but made no reference or commitment to God’s existence. The cause for social happiness was argued for without any reference to God. That is one of the reasons why the theory gained quick acceptance among the enlightened, liberal thinkers of their time. Through Gassendi, hedonism also impressed the British philosophers of the time, e.g. John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and Francis Hutcheson. The fundamental insight of universalistic hedonism, that the choice of action should be for promoting happiness among all people in general, appealed to the 17th CE British moralists also, such as 1

As cited in Moen, 2015, p. 14.

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Richard Cumberland, Anthony Ashley Shaftsbury, the 3rd Earl of Shaftsbury. In that sense, all of these views and efforts may be considered as the precursor of modern Utilitarianism. However, as said earlier, the credit of properly articulating and establishing the position as a normative ethical theory goes to Bentham and Mill. So, next we discuss the views of Bentham and Mill. Quick Question 6.6 How was the Middle Age hedonism different from the ancient Greek hedonism? Bring out the differences.

6.4.2 The Social Milieu of Bentham and Mill Theories do not emerge out of thin air; they usually have their genesis in their context. Bentham and Mill’s ethical theory too has stemmed from the social context of their time. We shall now try to understand that. We shall try to follow how the Utilitarian call to promote overall happiness of common people as a worthy, central value for a society was rooted in the condition that their society was in at that time. During the second half of 18th CE, industrial revolution brought a radical change in the lives of general public in Britain. It brought a paradigm shift in the manufacturing industry, and with that it brought a great turmoil in the society. Machines started to produce and manufacture things, for which the humans and their craftsmanship and labor used to be essential. When machines could do what the men could do and did in a much faster and more efficient way, the machines replaced the workers in the workshop. The workers lost their old, traditional jobs. Jobless and desperate, a great mass of people, mostly craftsmen and laborers, left their countryside homes in search of a new livelihood in the cities. A great migration started to the cities, as there were no jobs any longer in the countryside. The cities of Britain in those days were already filthy. However, with the new influx of people, they became filthier and overcrowded. Needless to say, the quality of the life of the poor and the underprivileged migrant families in such cities was quite miserable. Life was often barely at the survival level, ravaged by alcoholism, malnutrition, ill health, illiteracy, and grim poverty among the migrant laborers. Box 6.10 Condition in the cities in Britain in 18th CE Cities in the 18th CE Britain • Death rates remained relatively high; yet, by the end of 18th CE London’s population reached about 1 million people, with the continuous flow of

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people from the country sides of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and even from other countries. Thousands of people flocked to the rapidly growing industrial cities, Manchester, Leeds, in search of jobs. The cobblestone streets were overcrowded and noisy because of horse-drawn carts, sedan chairs, street vendors, and thousands of pedestrians. • Most 18th CE towns were filthy and insanitary. London’s sky used to be filled with smog and pollution creating a fog. The rivers stank from the pollution and debris, and open sewers ran through the cities carrying human waste, waste from the meat shop, horse manure, and other foul-smelling things. Source Mathew White (2009) On the other hand, industrial revolution created sharper inequalities in the society as it made the rich richer with the wealth created by the mechanization. The rich enjoyed a luxurious life in that society, while the ordinary laborers, who comprised the majority, lived in utter poverty, misery, and squalor. The theory of Utilitarianism which Bentham and Mill championed has to be understood in this milieu, where unacceptable chaos and inequalities existed in the British society. Both Bentham and Mill were social reformers. They wanted an ideological change in the British society that would alleviate the misery of the population and increase the overall quality of life for all. Bentham saw Utilitarianism as the ideological and ethical foundation for a purposeful social reformation. Mill too saw in this theory a tool which would guide the social policies to create greater happiness for the most in the society. Through Utilitarianism, both Bentham and Mill advocated the idea of formulating social policies that are oriented towards creating the greatest happiness for the society at large. Both strongly believed that a life should be lived with an ethical obligation to create the greatest good for the greatest number of people. In fact, in order to contribute to society in life and even when dead, Bentham dedicated his body for science after his death. The idea of human happiness for all, or universalistic hedonism, as a fundamental social goal was socially very significant to them, given that their objective was to initiate a reform in the-then English society. They challenged the belief that laws are sacrosanct and given by the nature and demanded reform of the laws that created suffering for the common people. Their normative ethical theory was a tool of critique to usher in the social reform they desired. However, as mentioned above, their arguments did not invoke God, but appealed to the good sense, and to the sense of social obligation, which people in a society should have. To start with, we may make a list of some of the basic tenets of Classical Utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill as follows: 1.  Happiness is an intrinsic value; i.e. something that is to be held as a good in itself . As per them, happiness is the most important desirable goal. Considering that, their theory is a kind of hedonism. Moreover, for them, happiness is an end-goal for its own sake. That is, in their view people desire happiness for the sake of

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being happy. They do not want to be happy to achieve other goals. This is what it means to accept happiness as an intrinsic value. 2.  Universal happiness: The Utilitarian goal is the overall happiness of all and not just of oneself. Mill and Bentham were universal hedonists in the sense mentioned above. 3.  The net outcome: Utilitarianism insists on a net outcome. Since happiness comes mixed with some unhappiness or pain, the idea is to pursue those actions which produce a greater balance of pleasure over pain. We should strive to ensure that in social actions and policies the balance of pleasure for all is greater than the pain. 4.  Criterion of ethical rightness and wrongness: An action is ethically right if it tends to produce pleasure or happiness for all concerned and ethically wrong if it tends to produce unhappiness or pain for all concerned. We shall now elaborate and explain these ideas with specific reference to the thoughts of Bentham and Mill.

6.4.3 Bentham: Utilitarianism 6.4.3.1

The Concept of Social Utility and Its Use as a Criterion

Put simply, the concept of social utility stands for social usefulness. Social utility is to be understood as the ability to produce tangible benefits for the society at large. Social utility increases with the growing extent of service. Bentham upheld this concept as a criterion for evaluating individual actions, and also the actions by a government, as in implementation of laws and social policies. He introduced this concept to examine the Common Laws of Britain of his time and advocated major legal reforms to bring in laws which have social utility. In his view, the Common Laws of his time were defective in the sense of being biased towards the powerful class. He wrote that using those laws the lawyers protected only the sinister interests of the ruling class (Kaino, 2019, 40). In his opinion, the laws did not have social utility, as they did not help in making the lives of common men any better and instead contributed to promote the interests of a handful who were in power. For Bentham, those laws and social practices, which lacked public or social utility, were bad. Box 6.11 Bentham’s concept of social utility Social utility stands for being useful for the society. It also means being fruitful to the society at large by producing the tangible benefits and well-being for the people in the society.

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In his view, a law or a social policy which does not do any good for all, or produce any good, ought to be abolished as ethically wrong and should undergo reform. He clearly maintained that an action, either by a person or by a government, is to be approved as ethically right and good, which are likely to promote social benefits for the larger population and produce overall happiness and are to be disapproved as ethically wrong and bad when they do not produce social benefit, and instead cause overall unhappiness. Bentham’s cogent and forceful arguments swayed many in his society and set an influential trend among the liberals in the British society. Among them, the group of Philosophical Radicals stands out and is of particular relevance for our discussion. Quick Question 6.7 Use Bentham’s concept of social utility as the criterion to assess the social policy of having a public transport system.

6.4.3.2

The Philosophical Radicals

Bentham’s concept and criterion of social utility for the social and legal reformation inspired many English political thinkers of his time. Among them, a group of committed, liberal thinkers came to be known as the Philosophical Radicals. The Philosophical Radicals took Bentham’s views as a philosophy of social action. They wanted execution of Bentham’s ideas to usher in radical and liberal changes in the British society and its regulatory regime. As part of their social activism, some of them even became the members of parliament (M.P) of Britain to exert political influence at the top echelon of power. The group also used print media to communicate their views and to also influence public opinion. They made forceful arguments for the reduction of power and privileges of the aristocratic class in the society. They supported the cause of universal suffrage, or the right to vote for all eligible adults. In their time, the voting rights were not universal in Britain. The Philosophical Radicals are of special importance to us for the discussion on Utilitarianism for at least two reasons. First, their consistent commitment to Utilitarian thoughts helped the position to develop further. For instance, scholars have shown that the origin of Bentham’s Greatest Happiness Principle was in the deliberations by the Philosophical Radicals. Second, James Mill (1773–1836), who was a prominent member of the Philosophical Radicals, was the father of John Stuart Mill, who we have already mentioned as a chief and celebrated proponent of Utilitarianism. The progressive ideas of his father, and of the Philosophical Radicals, were crucially important, early influence for John Stuart Mill.

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Pleasure as a Core Value and an Intrinsic Good

Like some Greek Hedonists, Bentham believed that humans and their behavior are governed by two principles: • We seek pleasure or happiness, and • We avoid pain or displeasure. In his view, what ultimately is of value to the humans, and what motivates the humans, is pleasure or happiness. Also, according to him, pleasure or happiness is good for its own sake and not good just because it produces some further good for us. Other things, such as money, friends, are not intrinsic goods, because they are good insofar as they bring us pleasure or happiness to us. They are good only as instruments of happiness. Similarly, he claimed that what demotivates us, and what is bad in itself , is pain or unhappiness. Lack of money, absence of friends, etc., are bad, but only instrumentally bad because they play an instrumental role to cause unhappiness and pain for us. Suffering and unhappiness, on the other hand, is intrinsic bad or bad in itself , and not because they bring about some other bad thing for us. • Pleasure or happiness is an intrinsic good, and • Pain or unhappiness is an intrinsic bad. 6.4.3.4

Greatest Happiness Principle

One of the greatest contributions of Bentham to Utilitarianism is his Greatest Happiness Principle. The principle has come to be associated with Bentham as a central pillar for Utilitarianism. However, the principle did not originate with Bentham. Scholars claim that the idea behind the principle can be traced to the fellow Philosophical Radicals and in particular to Francis Hutcheson (Goldworth, 1969, p. 315). The principle came to be closely associated with Bentham, because he upheld it as the most important principle and also adhered to it with utmost sincerity. The principle of greatest happiness prescribes that in a society we should try to promote the greatest happiness for the greatest number. In other words, we should promote maximum happiness for as many as possible through our actions and stay away from those actions which cause pain and overall misery for people in general. Box 6.12 Greatest happiness principle Greatest Happiness Principle: An action which produces the greatest happiness for the greatest number is the right action.

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In Bentham’s view, the Greatest Happiness Principle is the final standard of ethical conduct. It determines whether an action is ethically right or wrong. Bentham summed it up as a ‘fundamental axiom’ that … it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong. (Bentham 177, p. 393)

For us, we need to note that the greatest Happiness Principle is the ethical norm which Utilitarianism prescribes. It sets down an ethical should, or an ethical duty for us. It also provides action guidance. As per this view: Box 6.13 Ethical rightness and wrongness as per Greatest Happiness Principle

What we should do

•The ethically obligatory action is that action which produces greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people. It is the right action.

What we should not do

•The action, which fails to produce greatest happiness for the greatest number, is therefore, ethically a wrong action.

The principle applies to actions and decisions by a person, but Bentham specifically spoke of the applicability of the Greatest Happiness Principle to a government and the social policies that it sanctions. In his view, the right objective for a government should be the greatest happiness of the greatest number of its people. When there are multiple options of actions to choose from, the Greatest Happiness Principle is recommended to select the right choice among alternative courses: That action which can produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number among the alternatives is the best action.

6.4.3.5

Bentham’s Hedonistic Calculus

In his Greatest Happiness Principle, Bentham mentioned two quantity terms: • Greatest happiness and • Greatest number of people. The quantitative expressions are Bentham’s goals for measurable targets. Greatest number of people certainly is a measurable target. However, his recommendation for

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greatest happiness in quantity terms was not just a whim either. He believed that happiness and pain are measurable in units with the right kind of parameters.  He even thought that a hedonistic calculus is theoretically possible to calculate the overall pleasure or pain caused by an action and also to compare between the consequences of two actions. In his view, units of pleasure and units of pain for all concerned in the present and in future can be added, and the balance can be taken as the measure of net pleasure or pain for everyone affected. His recommended parameters for such calculus were • • • • • •

Intensity (of pleasure or pain caused) Duration (how long the pleasure or the pain caused last) Certainty (how certain the pleasure or pain is as the consequence of the action) Proximity (how closely the pleasure or pain will follow the action) Fecundity (how likely the action is to lead to further pleasure or pain) Purity (how pure or unmixed is the sensation).

Of course, such precise and multi-parameter calculation of pleasure and pain experiences, which Bentham had in mind, may not be always feasible. Bentham understood that, and did not recommend that we must always try to apply the Utilitarian calculations before every action. However, Bentham thought that in principle we can have a comparative understanding of the consequences that actions and policies bring to the people and to the society to determine which among these is able to cause greatest happiness.  To sum up, from the above we learnt that: 1.  To Bentham, the concept of social utility was very important to assess individual actions and laws and social policies. 2.  He based his ethics on the concept of social utility and on the hedonistic concept of pleasure as an intrinsic good to argue for the purpose of social reformation of socially harmful laws and practices. 3.  Bentham’s Utilitarianism is a kind of universal hedonism. He sought the social ideal of happiness for all and not just for the agent. 4.  He proposed the greatest happiness for the greatest number as the principle and the criterion for determining the ethical rightness and wrongness of actions: Only those actions are ethically right which can produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number, and actions which do not do so are not ethically right. 5.  From his consequentialist ethics, the clear message is that the ethically obligatory action is that which produces greatest happiness for the greatest number. 6.  Bentham proposed a possible hedonistic calculus to measure the consequences in terms of overall happiness or pain to make comparison between alternative courses of actions.

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6.4.4 Mill: Utilitarianism Brought up in the progressive tradition of the Philosophical Radicals, and under the tutelage of his illustrious father, James Mill (1773–1836), John Stuart Mill was steeped in the ideas of Bentham’s Utilitarianism. From his early life, he was an ardent follower and admirer of Bentham and his Utilitarianism. The three principle features of Utilitarianism, which were ingrained in Mill’s thinking from childhood, were. 1.  Happiness is important, and universal happiness or everyone’s happiness is important. 2.  Everyone’s happiness is equally important: An egalitarian or impartial look at happiness. 3.  Social institutions and social policies must be redesigned and reformed, if needed, to promote universal human happiness. Following Bentham, Mill too endorsed the idea that happiness is a value in itself, and pleasure and absence of pain are central, desirable goals in human life. He too maintained that the goodness or badness of an action depends upon the consequence that it produces.

6.4.4.1

Mill’s Contributions to Utilitarianism

However, as Mill grew in age and scholarship, he started to differ in opinion from Bentham and the Philosophical Radicals, and even from his own father, on certain points about Utilitarianism. He was an ardent defender of Utilitarianism, but he believed that theory as was espoused by Bentham needed certain revisions. His amendments and interpretations of Utilitarianism were original, insightful, and significant. They modified and fortified Utilitarianism for better acceptance among the people. We shall discuss some of these salient changes that he brought in to the theory. Bentham championed the cause of Utilitarianism as a pioneer. His ideas were new, and many of them perhaps were not always as fully thought out as was needed. As a result, critics were quick to point out flaws in the Utilitarian line of thinking, and several of the arguments and ideas of Bentham were either not well-received, or were misunderstood. Mill’s seminal work Utilitarianism (1861) is basically an essay in defense of Utilitarianism. In it, Mill took upon himself the task of addressing many of the major criticisms against Bentham’s Utilitarianism, and in his defense, he articulated the amendments and revisions that the theory requires. So, Mill’s task in his book was to both defend the theory with counter-arguments, dispel certain misconceptions about the theory, and to also establish and revise the theory to place it on a firmer, well-argued ground. In what follows, we shall learn about Mill’s own salient revisions, additions, and contributions to Utilitarianism to know how and where Mill’s Utilitarianism is distinctively different from that of Bentham and the other predecessors.

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Mill on Utility

The connection between Bentham’s principle of social utility and the goal of happiness was not very clear to some. They opined that utility appears to be the opposite of pleasure, since utility is more about expediency and usefulness, which does not seem to capture the idea of pleasure or happiness.  Mill explained that in Utilitarianism utility is to be understood as pleasure and the absence of pain. There is no difference between Utilitarian utility and pleasure or happiness. In fact, in his definition of Utilitarianism (See Section B immediately below) he used utility, on which Utilitarianism is based, as a synonym for the Greatest Happiness Principle itself. For him, within the context of Utilitarianism, the social utility of an action is to be understood as its outcome of producing greatest happiness for the greatest number. Elsewhere, he also states what according to the Greatest Happiness Principle the goal of life and a standard of action is: According to the Greatest Happiness Principle, as above explained, the ultimate end, with reference to and for the sake of which all other things are desirable (whether we are considering our own good or that of other people) is an existence exempt as far as possible from pain, and as rich as possible in enjoyments, both in point of quantity and quality, … This, being, according to the Utilitarian opinion, the end of human action, is necessarily also the standard of action (Mill, 1861, Chap. II, p. 214).

From this passage, we learn that the Greatest Happiness Principle envisions the Utilitarian conception of a desirable life. It is life of rich enjoyments, full in quantity and quality of pleasure, and also is free from pain. The insistence on quality of pleasure by Mill is worth noting. I shall elaborate this point in subsection D below. The happy life that Utilitarians speak of for all people is a rich and full life of happiness. The passage also establishes the Greatest Happiness Principle as the standard of action; that is, the Greatest Happiness Principle is not just a goal, but it also is a criterion by which actions are to be evaluated. Actions that lead to the same end will be evaluated as right.

6.4.4.3

Mill on Utilitarianism

In his book Utilitarianism, Mill defined Utilitarianism as follows. It is: … the creed which accepts as the foundation of morals “utility” or the “greatest happiness principle” holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure (Mill, 1861, Chap. II).

In this definition, Utilitarianism is defined as the position which believes that the principle of utility or the Greatest Happiness Principle is the foundational principle of governing all actions.

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From this definition, we can also identify Mill’s original contributions towards clarifying the concept of Utilitarianism. We find that in this definition Mill makes at least four clear assertions about Utilitarianism: 1.  Utilitarianism is the theory which is based on the concept of utility or the Greatest Happiness Principle. 2.  Actions are right in proportion to their capacity to produce happiness. 3.  Actions are wrong in proportion to their incapacity to produce unhappiness. 4.  By happiness, Utilitarians mean pleasure and the absence of pain, and by unhappiness they mean pain and the absence of pleasure.  From our discussion on the kinds of consequentialism above, we see that Utilitarianism is an exemplar of evaluative consequentialist, universal hedonist ethics. Its central value is happiness, and it evaluates actions by their consequences to produce happiness. However, we also need to note that based on its explicit insistence on consequences as the criterion for ethical goodness or badness of an action, a side-effect of this view is that: No action can be right or wrong just by itself . An action would be right or wrong only if its consequences conform, or do not conform, to the Greatest Happiness Principle. Example 5 Let us suppose that Auli has stolen money from Shapiro’s wallet. Ethical Evaluation by Utilitarian Greatest Happiness Principle: Auli’s stealing as an act would be considered ethically wrong only if it leads to decreased overall happiness and increase of pain for all concerned. As shown in Example 5, the act of stealing as such cannot be held as wrong. Its wrongness will depend upon what sort of consequences it produces and whether those consequences conform to the Greatest Happiness Principle. This may appear to some as strange, in particular if one believes that some actions are intrinsically good or bad. However, such belief characterizes the non-consequentialist positions and not the consequentialist theories.

6.4.4.4

Mill’s Proportionality Doctrine

In his definition, Mill also indicates that in Utilitarianism being ethically right or wrong is a matter of degree for an action, being proportional to its ability to produce happiness, or the reverse of happiness. This passage is often referred to as the Proportionality Doctrine (Brink, 2018). (i) The rightness of an action is proportional to its ability to produce happiness. (ii) The wrongness of an action is proportional to its ability to produce the reverse of happiness.

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 Scholars claim that with the proportionality clause Mill’s claim does not mandate an ethical duty to always maximize happiness. An action, if it promotes happiness, is right; however, an action would be ethically right even if it tends to promote happiness. Actions which contribute to the total sum of happiness in the world, but to some lesser extent, still can be right, though in a lesser degree. So, in terms of probability, there can be gradations of rightness among actions. According to this, actions tend to become right or wrong in proportion to their likelihood to produce happiness or its reverse. Example 6 Auli has stolen money from Shapiro’s wallet. Evaluation by the proportionality clause: Auli’s act of stealing would be considered as more or less wrong in proportion to its likelihood to decrease overall happiness and cause pain; or as more or less right in proportion to its likelihood to increase overall happiness and decrease pain for all concerned. Auli’s action by itself is not right or wrong; moreover, it is also not absolutely right or wrong. It tends to become right or wrong in proportion to the consequence it produces. This leaves open the possibility that an act of stealing can be more right if in the given situation it is more likely to cause more happiness and more wrong if it more likely to produce unhappiness in another situation. This is further confirmed by the word tends. Actions can be more or less right if it tends to promote happiness; it does not have to actually. Two points come to the fore from this. In case of judging an action, we are to evaluate it on two levels: • Amount of happiness caused by it, and • The expected probability of the occurrence of that happiness. Using this, we can get a gradient of right actions: • The best action is certainly the one which can actually produce the maximum expected happiness. The best action is that which actually maximizes the expected happiness. • However, the action, which does not maximize happiness, but has a decent expected probability to produce maximized happiness is also good in proportion to its expected probability.  We may apply this to the case of alternative courses of actions as well. When there are multiple choices of actions, we may make a comparative estimate using these two considerations. Among the available choices, some actions can be more right than the others, if they are proportionally more likely to produce happiness than the others. Similarly, some actions can be worse than the others, because the likelihood of their producing maximized happiness may be lesser.

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Example 7 An act by a Robin Hood, who robs from the rich to feed the poor, has a greater likelihood to make the poor and the hungry happy and would be proportionally more right than, say, an act of stealing from the poor, who already have nothing, and thus has greater likelihood to cause proportionally more unhappiness.

D.  Mill on quality of pleasure: Perhaps, the biggest contribution of Mill to Utilitarianism is to bring out a very important distinction that was not there earlier in Bentham’s Utilitarianism. This was the qualitative distinction that Mill introduced between different kinds of pleasures. Bentham treated all pleasure as the same. There was no qualitative distinction made among them. For example, he would not carve any distinction between the quality of pleasure of helping someone in need and the self-serving pleasure of owning a personal possession, or of eating one’s favorite food. Bentham believed that the pleasures can be differentiated only in quantity terms. In his Greatest Happiness Principle, he spoke of the greatest happiness of the greatest numbers as a quantitative goal. Example 8 In Bentham’s view, the pleasure of eating one’s favorite food would be no different in quality from the pleasure of serving the others.

Also, if we recall that he gave parameters for a hedonistic calculus of measuring and comparing the units of happiness, we shall remember that he proposed seven dimensions as part of his hedonistic calculus, but, as shown in Example 9, they were all quantitative dimensions. As a result, there is no qualitative difference of pleasure in Bentham’s Utilitarianism. Example 9 In Bentham’s Hedonistic Calculus, a pleasure P’ may be only quantitatively different than another pleasure P”.

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A pain from a toothache may be greater in intensity than a pain from a pinch (Quantitative difference). A pleasure from seeing a beautiful scenery from a moving train may be shorter in duration than the pleasure of watching a good movie (Quantitative difference). In short, in Bentham’s hedonistic calculus, there was no recognition of quality of pleasure, and the important differences that may emerge from the qualitative distinctions between pleasures and pains.  As a result, some people understood Bentham’s Utilitarianism as a theoretical approval for a simplest kind of hedonism, which justifies indiscriminate and decadent pleasure-mongering of the lowest kind. They took Bentham’s claim as tantamount to the claim of the greatest gratification of physical, crude and crass, and sensuous pleasure. Consequently, Bentham’s Utilitarianism was criticized it as the philosophy worthy of only swine, being as decadent and overindulgent as these animals are.

6.4.4.5

Mill on Quality of Pleasure

Mill acknowledged the absence of qualitative concerns in Bentham’s theory as a loophole in the conceptualization of Utilitarian pleasure. As a remedial measure, Mill introduced a normative and qualitative concerns into Utilitarian concept of pleasure. Mill opined that though pleasure is the only desirable goal, not all pleasures are at par. There can be qualitative distinctions between pleasures. Since some pleasures can be qualitatively better than the others, in his view, there can and should be gradations and hierarchy of pleasures based on their quality (Pic. 6.6).

Pleasure Grade 3

Pleasure Grade 2

Pleasure Grade 1

Pic. 6.6 Mill brought in qualitative differences in pleasure

According to Mill, some pleasures are better and superior in quality than the others. Then, Mill also claims that some pleasures, being superior in quality, are more fitting to be enjoyed by the humans. He clearly chose the intellectual pleasures as superior in quality and more befitting for the humans than the bodily pleasures. According to him, the bodily, sensuous pleasures are more crude, and mundane, and can be enjoyed even by the non-human animals. The intellectual pleasures, on the other hand, require a certain refinement and cultivation in the enjoyer for a proper

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enjoyment, as they are sophisticated in nature. Mill believed that the humans are gifted with higher powers and capacities such as rational thinking. He claimed that what the humans can derive pleasure from once their higher faculties are properly cultivated and refined are far superior to the animalistic pleasures that the physical body of any other animal can offer such as pleasure of eating pleasure of sleeping. The intellectual pleasures were higher in hierarchy and in quality, and far more suitable for the humans, than the purely sensual pleasures. He mentioned that to him, the discontent of a refined man seeking qualitatively better, intellectual pleasure is far better than the satisfaction of an animal, or a person with a low intellect, with the qualitatively lower pleasures. For, people who have refined higher faculties and know how to enjoy the higher pleasures are often discontent and are harder to satisfy. In this context, Mill’s famous saying is: It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied (Mill, 1861, Chap. II).

So, it is imperative that in Mill’s Utilitarianism, when deciding about the ethical rightness or wrongness of an action, we need to consider not just the quantity of happiness, but also the quality of happiness produced by it. As per Mill, the Greatest Happiness Principle considers the total amount of happiness produced as well as the kind of happiness produced.

6.4.4.6

Mill on an Attainable Concept of Happiness

We see that in Mill’s definition, happiness is not merely an absence of pain. The Utilitarian happiness is a much richer concept. It is both pleasure and absence of pain; just as unhappiness means pain and absence of pleasure. Note that this means that the Utilitarian happiness is not merely freedom from pain. That would be the minimal requirement. It is much more than that. We can take it as Mill’s recommendation that a follower of Utilitarianism should not stop at just making the greatest number of people free from the pain and suffering that they were undergoing. An Utilitarian should also ensure that the people are happy in a positive sense too. Since critics of Utilitarianism objected that the Utilitarian concept of happiness is not an attainable goal for mankind in general. It could be an aspirational goal that we all pursue, but it remains elusive. For, it cannot be an actually reachable goal in life. To this, Mill countered that the Utilitarian concept of happiness is certainly an attainable goal even by the ordinary people. As a social ideal, it is practical and feasible. However, Mill made it clear that the attainment of the Utilitarian happiness in the society requires the support of the political will and the institutional support from the social systems, such as the education system. Mill further explained that the Utilitarian happiness is a moderate, and pragmatic, claim. By happiness, he does not mean a life of eternal ecstasy or a constant excitement. Instead, he envisages a happy life as a tranquil life which has relatively little

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pain, but also has a few moments of rapture. That is not much. Mill’s happiness, therefore, is not meant to be an aspirational state of perpetual, everlasting joy. Such a life of infinite or eternal joy is simply not feasible. Rather, he is ready to call a life happy if there are a few moments full of joy in it with a minimal presence of pain or unhappiness. He maintained that such happiness is certainly possible for most people, no matter how ordinary the lives are; however, to ensure such life the educational and the social system must have to be supportive. Education cultivates the mind and removes the major barriers to our unhappiness. In his view, the major causes of unhappiness are selfishness and a lack of mental cultivation. Both of these causes are within the people, and Mill asserted that both of these causes of unhappiness are remediable by people themselves. With a little effort people can cure themselves of these causes, if appropriate values are instilled in them through their education and through their social support systems. Quick Question 6.8 How does Mill define utility? Show how it is different from how Bentham defined it.

6.4.4.7

Concluding Section on Mill’s Utilitarianism

To sum up, from the above, we learned that: 1.  Mill was steeped into the ideas of Utilitarianism from the beginning following the views of Bentham and the Philosophical Radicals. On the whole, he accepted the goal of happiness and freedom from pain and suffering as the ultimate goal in life for people as the cardinal principle. With them, he too saw the theory of Utilitarianism, and its argumentations, as the ethical foundation to insist on social reform in the legislation and institutional designs in his society. 2.  Mill agreed with Bentham that public welfare or universal happiness should be the prime directive for social institutions, social policies and regulations. He also wholeheartedly accepted the Greatest Happiness Principle as the foundation as well as a criterion of action in Utilitarianism. 3.  However, Mill disagreed from Bentham, and the Philosophical Radicals on certain important points. 3.1.  He redefined the Utilitarian concept of happiness and brought in a concept of proportionality in determining a right action more pragmatically. 3.2.  Mill also brought in quality concerns, in addition to the quantity, and a quality-based hierarchy, in the Utilitarian concept of happiness to save it from being akin to a decadent form of indiscriminate hedonism. 3.3.  Mill also redefined the Utilitarian ideal of happiness as an attainable, pragmatic goal, which a conscientious society can strive for to deliver to its people.

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He clearly indicated that the obligations lie on both sides: Both the social institutions and the people themselves have equally important, proactive roles to play in the attainment of that goal of universal happiness in the society. We shall end this section with due acknowledgment of Mill’s contributions in the shaping of Classical Utilitarianism as a popular and a very influential ethical theory.

6.5 Act Utilitarianism and Rule Utilitarianism It is evident that the Classical Utilitarians wished that the idea of promotion of universal happiness should be taken up as an ethical duty by individuals and the society. That is certainly a welcome notion. However, due to various strands of thought present in Mill’s writings, it is not entirely clear how exactly Mill saw the link between an action and the happiness produced. Though he mentioned the happiness as a consequence, there is ambivalence in the writings about what the consequence is going to ensue from. As a result, there are more than one way to interpret his statements, and we have at least two prominent ways to understand and apply Utilitarianism to given situations: • Act Utilitarianism • Rule Utilitarianism.

6.5.1 Act Utilitarianism Many of Mill’s statements indicate that in order to determine the moral quality of an action, we should look at the consequences of an individual action which is under consideration. The principle of social utility or Greatest Happiness Principle should be applied directly on an action each time, and a case-by-case approach would have to be followed to assess the probability of happiness as a consequence from each action. The right action in a given situation should be chosen on the basis of its expected probability to produce best overall happiness or well-being for all concerned than any other available options. This is known as Act Utilitarianism. From the discussion on the types of consequentialism, you can also identify it as an example of direct consequentialism (Pic. 6.7).

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Choose A’s Possible Action A

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Example 10 Suppose we are considering the rightness of the action of opening a school in a village, when there are location choices, such as Village A, Village B, and Village C.

Where should it be ethically right to open a school? Let us assume that the goal of opening a school in the village is linked to bring improvement in the lives of the children, and their families, and thus to produce greater overall happiness or well-being for all concerned in the area than now. Let us also assume that there are resource constraints, under those constraints we can open only one school at present in one village, and the other nearby villages would have to be benefited from that. The options before us are Option 1: To open a school at Village A Option 2: To open a school at Village B Option 3: To open a school at Village C Which one should we choose and why? (Pic. 6.8). Open in Village A?

Open in Village B? Open in Village C?

A School

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If we proceed using Act Utilitarianism, then we need to directly investigate the options 1–3 and their expected probability of producing overall happiness as a consequence. For each of these three options, we need to project the probability of producing more overall happiness for all concerned. Perhaps for that projection we might need to do some preparatory research of the pros and cons of the choices; e.g. consider the school location in each of the villages, and its accessibility from other villages in the nearby areas. Similarly, we might also investigate the schoolgoing population size in each of the villages, the availability of land in each village for setting up the school, etc. Based on due consideration to these and many other relevant factors, we may project the expected probability of the overall consequence of each option. Then, if we are to follow Act Utilitarianism, we choose that option as the best option which comparatively would produce more overall happiness for all concerned than the two other alternative courses of action available. In each case, our focus is directly on the greatest utility consideration of a particular choice of action.

6.5.2 Rule Utilitarianism It is also possible to follow Rule Utilitarianism as a guiding principle in applying Utilitarianism. Instead of applying directly on the individual action, Rule Utilitarianism applies the utility consideration on a generalized consequences of similar actions. It considers whether overall happiness would come as the effect of, not of an individual action, but of the possibility if similar actions were done by everyone as a rule or as a policy. A rule here means a universally applicable, general policy of behavior. Box 6.14 Brief statement on Rule Utilitarianism Rule Utilitarianism applies utility consideration to a rule, if similar actions were done by everyone as a rule. And then, it considers whether overall happiness would come as the effect of following such a rule. So, the requirement of Rule Utilitarianism is somewhat different. It comes in two parts: • An individual course of action A has to be in conformity with an ethical rule. Example of an ethical rule: ‘Everyone should do A in situation C’, or ‘No one should do A in situation C’. • Then it considers the consequence of following that ethical rule. • The ethical rule is considered as ethically approved if its inclusion among the other ethical rules would produce more overall happiness than other possible rules. The choice, therefore, is among the consequences of ethical rules. The one which is selected is based on the Greatest Happiness Principle, or on utility. In other words,

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the principle of utility is not applied directly on a particular action or actions and their possible consequences. It is applied on the ethical rule on which the action is based to evaluate the consequences of including that rule among our ethical rules (Pic. 6.9). It is an example of indirect consequentialism. Action

A

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Pic. 6.9 Scheme for Rule Utilitarianism

Example 11 Suppose we are trying to decide: Is it right to stop at red light at the traffic signal? Should we stop at red light at the traffic signal? Note that the individual actions under consideration are (a) To stop at a red light in traffic (b) To not to stop at a red light in traffic. Rule Utilitarianism would require us to consider the rule that the actions are based on. So, for the actions (a)–(b), the rules or the policies which the actions have to be based on may be formulated as follows: Rule A for action (a): Whenever the traffic signal turns red for a lane, all traffic of that lane should stop until the signal changes to green. Everyone in that lane should stop at the red light. Rule B for action (b): Whenever the traffic signal turns red for a lane, traffic in that lane should not come to a halt, but should continue. That is, no one should stop at a red light. Next, Rule Utilitarianism would ask: Which of these two rules, Rule A or Rule B, if added to other already existing rules, is likely to produce the greatest social utility or happiness for the greatest number in the society? The rule which is likely to produce maximum utility for all concerned as the consequence is the right rule. As before, the rule which is likely to reduce happiness or utility in the society should not be chosen. The action based on the right rule is then the right action. If we choose Rule A, because it would ensure road safety for all, and considerably reduce the probability of avoidable accidents and injuries, then our argument would be that as a rule, it is expected to produce more social utility than, say, Rule B.

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Mill also states that since already ethical rules may exist, the inclusion of a new rule, such as Rule A, should make an increase in the overall well-being of all and more than the other rules, such as Rule B. Thus, the ultimate goal is to maximize happiness or well-being. However, Rule Utilitarianism works at an abstract, policy level to project the impact of that policy on people in general. Example 12 Let us revisit the above-discussed example of opening a school. If applying Rule Utilitarianism, we need to project the overall consequences of the rule behind a chosen action. For example, if we intend to open a school, Rule Utilitarianism would ask us to consider which rule or policy our action would be based on. As you can see, there can be several possible rules to follow. For example, one might suggest that as a policy schools should be opened wherever the land is cheaper. Another might suggest that schools should be opened based on the better accessibility of the school by road. Rule 1: A school should be opened in a place where the land is cheaper. Rule 2: A school should be opened in a location which has better accessibility by road. Rule Utilitarianism then would ask us to project the overall social utility or greatest happiness as a consequence of each rule. We are to assess if in comparison to other possible rules, the inclusion of a rule would increase the overall happiness for everyone or not. If, for example, Rule 1, though economically viable, does not produce as much general happiness as would another rule, such as Rule 2, then as per Rule Utilitarianism it should not be selected. Quick Question 6.9 Which of the following is true? (a) Rule Utilitarianism is less flexible with each given situation than Act Utilitarianism (b) Act Utilitarianism, because it is a kind of Direct Consequentialism, cannot work with probable or expected consequences (c) Rule Utilitarianism recommends that when there are more than one ethical rule about a situation, it is our duty to follow all those rules. (d) Act Utilitarianism can evaluate an action only by its long-term consequences.

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This also answers how we should resolve a situation when two rules clash with each other. The overall social utility still remains the criterion. We should choose that rule which comparatively produces greatest utility.

6.5.3 Act Utilitarianism or Rule Utilitarianism? So, from the above we have come to learn about Act Utilitarianism and Rule Utilitarianism. As was mentioned earlier, both Bentham and Mill, the two foremost exponents of Classical Utilitarianism, have sometimes endorsed application of principle of utility directly on the action and its consequence (Act Utilitarianism), and sometimes on the consequence of the rule the action is based on (Rule Utilitarianism). This has led to scholarly debate on whether Classical Utilitarianism supported Act Utilitarianism or Rule Utilitarianism. Let us take a note of the fact that both sides have positive and negative points. Act Utilitarianism makes a case against a rigid, rule-based approach in ethics. It disagrees with the claim that certain actions are always and absolutely right or wrong, because they follow from a right or a wrong rule or policy. It argues that it is a mistake to pass such a sweeping judgment about an entire class of action as absolutely right or wrong. For, situation and context can and should make a big difference in our assessment of an action. Instead, it recommends that each action and its specific consequences for its specific situation should be assessed individually. On the other hand, there are several weighty objections against Act Utilitarianism. One of the objections is that it permits any action, even an unjust action, an ethically approved action as long as it produces greatest happiness as it consequence. Another objection is that it allows the violation of the rights of an individual, in the name of greatest happiness of the greatest number. Thus, Act Utilitarianism has to face objection from justice and rights. The mixture of positive and negative points is true about Rule Utilitarianism too. A strength of Rule Utilitarianism is that the rule-based approach is better suited to handle questions of fairness. Moreover, it is claimed that ordinary people are notoriously bad at making discretionary judgment about what is the right thing to do in individual situations. Having a handy rule to follow economizes the effort and also increases overall utility. In every occasion, if people have to pause to calculate the maximum utility for each specific action and their possible alternatives, the overall utility would be hampered. Instead, having a rule in place maximizes utility. However, Rule Utilitarianism, because of its insistence on generation of utilityproducing rules, is not so efficient and pliable to adapt to any given situation. It is also claimed that it does not always offer an efficient answer in case of an ethical dilemma with rules. We, however, shall not dwell on this debate and try to take side between Act Utilitarianism and Rule Utilitarianism. Instead, from both, we shall take away the lesson that our actions have consequences, which impact the well-being of the others. Our learning takeaway will be that our ethical perspective needs to include the recognition of the relationship between our actions and the well-being of all concerned and guide our ethical obligation accordingly.

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6.6 Summary of Classical Utilitarianism Let us take a stock of what we learned from the above about Classical Utilitarianism. We learned that: 1.  It is a consequentialist ethical theory, which evaluates the ethical quality of an action by its consequences. 2.  It assumes that pleasure is an intrinsic good, and absence of pain is included in the concept as a desirable goal. 3.  Universal human happiness is a utility which all legislation and social institutions should aim to deliver. Failure to produce this utility by a certain law or a social practice calls for a reform of the said law or practice. 4.  It assumes that pain, suffering, unhappiness, agony, etc., are all of negative value or disutility for well-being of individual (s). Our duty is to avoid or prevent, or at least reduce disutility. 5.  It also holds that actions are to be judged as right or wrong in proportion to their tendency to produce happiness and prevent pain. The utility of an action lies in its greater ability to create happiness for all concerned. 6.  Actions should bring happiness for the maximum number of people and not just for the agent.

6.7 Applying Utilitarianism in the Personal Context Now, after all this discussion some of you may still wonder how to apply this normative theory in our personal lives. To that my response is as follows. Remember, the most important lesson from Utilitarianism, or consequentialism in general, is that our choices and actions in life have impact on the others. Who these others will be, would depend on the action itself. No matter how you count the others, the fact remains as a crucial learning for living in a community among other people: Our actions have an impact on the others, positive or negative. Classical Utilitarianism reminds us that it is our duty to ensure that our actions contribute to increasing the overall well-being of the others, and not just to the well-being or happiness of ourselves, and to decrease the unhappiness of the others. Secondly, Utilitarianism gives us clear pointers about the desirable kind of consequences we should look for from our chosen actions. Let us suppose that you are considering whether or not to quit smoking. It wants us to engage with the comparison which among the available options is most likely to bring the greatest overall happiness (happiness minus the suffering) to all concerned? Accordingly, our choice should be made. Example 13 Should Karun quit smoking?

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His available options may be: Choice A: To quit smoking immediately Choice B: To not quit smoking at all Choice C: To quit smoking in a phased manner Choice D: To not quit smoking until some health problem occurs. Let us suppose that we are Act Utilitarians at present. Classical Utilitarianism would ask Karun to weigh the consequences of each course of action available: When considering the consequence, Karun should consider the possible outcome for himself, his family, friends, fellow workers, or whoever is around him in general; and not just what the outcome will be for him. In particular, he is to use the Greatest Happiness Principle as the criterion of choice. He should decide which among the choices increase the overall happiness for all concerned and does not decrease utility for people around him through his smoking and their passive smoking.

6.8 Utilitarianism After Bentham and Mill, and Negative Utilitarianism With Bentham and Mill, Utilitarianism secured a firm footing as an influential tradition in normative ethics. However, even after Bentham and Mill, it drew support from various philosophers and economists, among whom the name of Henry Sidgwick2 (1838–1900) must be specially mentioned. Even now, long after Bentham and Mill, it has remained a much-discussed theory as a strong contender in normative ethics. Despite facing many criticisms, it has found its advocates even among contemporary philosophers. It has received many reinterpretations after Bentham and Mill from different philosophers. I shall mention only a couple of those here: • Peter Singer’s extended application to animal ethics • Negative Utilitarianism of Popper and Smart. Peter Singer (1946–), who proclaims himself as a follower of Bentham and Mill, is one of the well-known Utilitarians of our times. He has given the egalitarian arguments of Classical Utilitarianism a new and extended application to animal ethics quite successfully. As you have noted, Classical Utilitarianism, as discussed already, treats everyone and their happiness, as equal. The happiness or suffering of oneself is not counted as any higher, or more important, than the happiness or suffering of a perfect stranger. Singer calls this principle ‘equality of interest’ and argues that it should be extended to non-human animals as well. According to Singer, a renowned 2

Sidgwick was an influential English philosopher and economist in the Victorian era, who helped to systematically develop the Utilitarian concepts.

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proponent of animal ethics, we should give equal consideration for consequence of our actions and policies on the humans as well as on the non-human animals when considering the Utilitarian overall consequences. He claims that based on what he calls the Principle of Equal Consideration of Interests (ECOI), in one’s ethical consideration one should give equal consideration to the interests of the non-human animals (Singer, 1993). There is another interesting philosophical reading of Utilitarianism by Karl Popper, which you may enjoy. What does Utilitarianism actually recommend? That we should try to increase happiness, and/or that we should try to reduce unhappiness? The usual answer is both. The statement of the Classical Utilitarians may be understood to require both the increment in greatest overall happiness for the greatest number and also a decrease in unhappiness. However, philosopher Karl Popper (1902–1994) has argued that the goal of reduction of human suffering has more value than that of creation of increased happiness. Popper, by his own declaration (Smart, 1989, p. 35), is not an utilitarian. He made his observation in a specific context of bringing reform in the social institutions and the public policies for a better society. A public policy is a policy in public interest, which is typically formulated by a government or its authorized representatives, or by a committee appointed by the government. Its goal is to address real-life problems that affect the welfare of the people. It is based on a vision and is implemented by specific programs and schemes. While discussing public policies and their aim, in that context Popper opined that in politics and in the formulation of public policies the main moral obligation should be, not to maximize the happiness of the greatest number, but to reduce the suffering of the others to the greatest possible extent. He accepted minimization of suffering as the prime ethical principle as far as public policy is concerned. Box 6.15 Popper on reduction of suffering as the most urgent duty for public policy Popper claimed that in politics and in devising public policies, the main and the most urgent ethical obligation is to reduce the suffering of the others, and not to maximize happiness. In case a public policy needs to prioritize which duty is foremost, to increase general happiness or to reduce suffering, Popper opines that the answer is clear: The most urgent duty is to minimize the suffering. He wrote: It is my thesis that human misery is the most urgent problem of a rational public policy (Popper, 2002).

He argued that there is actually no symmetry between happiness and suffering (Popper, 1952, 284). Happiness and suffering do not appeal to us in the same way, and they do not create the same sense of ethical urgency. Between two injunctions: One should increase the happiness of the others, and one should minimize suffering, there can be no comparison. For, he maintains that human suffering makes a direct

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appeal to us. It appeals with an urgent recommendation to reduce the suffering in a way which an appeal to increase happiness does not. To see some human in suffering carries a moral urgency, it provokes in us a need for urgent response to minimize the suffering. To increase the happiness of people who are already happy does not carry the same moral urgency. In his words: I believe that there is, from the ethical point of view, no symmetry between suffering and happiness, or between pain and pleasure. Both the greatest happiness principle of the Utilitarians and Kant’s principle, “Promote other people’s happiness...”, seem to me (at least in their formulations) fundamentally wrong in this point, which is, however, not one for rational argument....In my opinion...human suffering makes a direct moral appeal for help, while there is no similar call to increase the happiness of a man who is doing well anyway (Popper, 1952, pp. 284–285).

He further argued that Utilitarianism believes that maximization of pleasure would outweigh the pain, but that is wrong. If there is suffering among people, increasing the overall net happiness would not automatically lessen the suffering. In Popper’s view, from an ethical point of view, pain is not outweighed by pleasure, in particular if the pleasure belongs to another man. So, in Popper’s thinking, the principle of minimization of suffering is the most important ethical directive for the public policies. Moreover, he states that he is apprehensive that the Utilitarian ideal of happiness for all and the project of maximizing the happiness are bound to lead to the perilous state of totalitarianism. Totalitarianism is an extreme form of government which is dictatorial, and wishes to centrally control all activities, public and private, and prohibits all kinds of opposition to its way of functioning. Popper sees in Utilitarian tenet ‘maximize the happiness of the people’ the invariable possibility of a totalitarian imposition of a central idea of happiness by the powerful onto the ordinary people. An effort to maximize the aggregate happiness of people would tend to treat overall happiness as if it is a singular, standard concept of happiness, and would try to thrust it onto the people. For instance, a government may decide that constructing a home for the people would make everyone happier and would expect its people to agree with that. Any opposition to such imposition would be seen as detrimental to a collective well-being. However, when we try to make people happy without asking what they want in order to be happy, we commit the mistake of unduly imposing our ideas onto them. The outcome may not be as desired. He also saw in the Utilitarian maximize happiness principle the possibility of an imposition of drastic measures on the people in the name of maximization of happiness. For instance, a regime may impose extreme human suffering on people at present and justify that by a promise of much greater happiness in future. The tenet of maximizing happiness would allow that. Hence, he submits that for public policies the principle of minimize the suffering is preferable. Popper’s view was taken by Prof Ninian Smart as a proposal to amend Utilitarianism. Though Popper did not think so, Ninian Smart considered it as an alternative to Classical Utilitarianism and used the term Negative Utilitarianism to identify it. He took Negative Utilitarianism as the view that the injunction of maximizing happiness is to be replaced by the injunction to minimize the suffering (Acton & Watkins, 1963, p. 83).

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Negative Utilitarianism has its own appeal. As a policy, it is generally easier to help people to reduce their suffering than to ensure their increased happiness. One can feed a starving person and help to reduce his or her hunger pains, for example, but to take upon the ethical obligation of increasing the feeling of happiness of another person is not as easy. For, happiness is personal, and coming up with a consensus about what makes a person happy is probably not the best idea. In a healthcare set-up, for a painful cancer treatment, we might view the pain management by the medical team as an example of the tenet of Negative Utilitarianism: The foremost duty is to reduce the suffering. However, mostly the Classical Utilitarianism is adhered to with its dual injunctions: to increase or maximize happiness and/or to reduce the suffering.

6.9 Weighing and Calculating the Consequences In this section, we look more closely at the application of Utilitarian calculation of the consequences. We find that there are at least three key considerations about the consequences that we need to be attentive to while applying Utilitarianism: 1. Calculating the consequences: How to calculate the overall consequences? 2. Searching for available options: Were all options considered? 3. Consequences for whom: Who do we include, or not include, when calculating the consequences?

6.9.1 Calculating the Consequences From the writings of Bentham and Mill, it appears both that they expect the agents to check the actual outcome of existing policies and actions, as well as probable outcome for policies and actions that yet to be. This means we may take the consequences that have transpired, or the probable effects. We may consider the immediate effects and also the long-term effects. Similarly, one could consider both the direct and indirect consequences of an action.

6.9.2 Consequences: Benefit and Cost Benefit and Cost: Consequences of an action are often a mixed bag of consequences, with some good and some bad outcome for the people concerned. The good consequence is usually referred to as benefit and bad effects as cost.

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Example 14 Constructing high-rise buildings in a city may have mixed consequences. One of the consequences is provision of urban housing, which we may count as a benefit to many. However, it may also have a bad consequence, or a cost, by creating a significantly higher demand on the groundwater reserve. The result therefore will be mixed. The consequences also may not be shared equally or in equal manner by all concerned. For instance, the benefit of urban housing will be directly enjoyed by the people who will get a home in the project; however, the cost of lowering of the groundwater table would have to be faced by a much larger set of people, who may or may not get the benefit of a share of the urban housing (Pic. 6.10).

Problem: Need for housing in urban area, but no space Possible action: Construct space-saving high-rise structures

Benefit: Housing made available

Cost: Significant stress on groundwater

Pic. 6.10 Mixed consequences of benefit and cost of an action

As it is well-aware of the mixed consequences that our actions bring, Utilitarianism recommends that we are to calculate the net benefit or the overall consequence. Out of the mixed consequences, we are to calculate the overall consequence or the net utility as total benefits minus total cost. The benefits and cost are both to be calculated; and then the worth of the cost will have to be subtracted or offset from the benefit to get the true picture. The overall consequence or net utility of Action A: Total benefits of doing action A minus total cost of doing Action A.

 The key point to note here is that the main goal of the theory is not to calculate the gross amount of estimated benefits, or the total cost produced. Rather, the important factor is to arrive at the net result. One needs to assess the net benefit, i.e., the benefit over the cost, and not just the benefit. This important lesson from Utilitarianism is often missed.  If the net benefit of an action among all other options is higher for all concerned in comparison with the available options, i.e. the good effects outweigh the bad effects, then according to Utilitarianism the action is ethically obligatory.

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 If the net cost (cost–the benefit) of the action is higher than the benefit produced, then the action is ethically wrong. It should not be done. This is referred to as the Utilitarian cost–benefit analysis of the consequences.

6.9.3 Utilitarian Benefit and Cost Calculation and the Principle of Double Effect The Utilitarian concept of consequences as a mixed assortment of good and bad consequences may make us realize that there could be ethical dilemmas specifically about choosing a mixed outcome. An action which has both a good and a bad outcome may be viewed as an action with a double effect. Such double effect situations create special ethical quandaries for us. For, when the same action has both good outcome and bad outcome, recommending the action on the basis of the good outcome also makes us responsible for the bad outcome also. In such a situation, should we still engage in choosing the action with mixed outcome? When for an action the good outcome is significant, but it is inseparably mixed with a significantly bad outcome, is it still ethically permissible to choose the action? ➤ Combining his Christian faith with Aristotle’s teachings, medieval philosopher Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) came up with the Principle of Double Effect to deal with such situations. He too realized in situations of double effect the good and bad outcome are mixed. In fact, sometimes it may be even be the case that the consequences are so mixed that the good result cannot be brought about without the bad result. Understandably, such a situation creates an ethical dilemma for us, because typically we desire only the good outcome and want to avoid the bad. Example 15 Consider a situation where there is cancer in the leg of a young, teenager patient, who is athletic and in the prime of his sports career. Now, the doctors are of the opinion that an early amputation of the affected leg may stop the further spread of the cancer for this patient. The amputation will benefit the patient with a managed case of cancer with timely intervention: The cancer is likely to be prevented from spreading further, and thus the amputation is likely to save the patient from pain, suffering and possible death. All of these are good results or benefits for the patient. However, the amputation will also have a significant cost or a bad outcome. The cost will be that because of the amputation, the young, athletic patient will lose a leg and may have to suffer from a drastic change in life and career goals along with the challenges of physical disability for the rest of his life. The point is that the benefit cannot be attained without incurring the cost. So, is it ethically permissible to go ahead with the amputation? Or, is the cost too steep to impose to bring in the benefit? (Box 6.16)

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Example 16 Consider a dramatic situation, where when a baby is about to be delivered, the doctor announces that due to a complication both the mother and the baby cannot be saved. Only one can be saved. The act of saving one would come at the cost of the other’s life. The benefit is a life is saved, but cost is a life lost. What should we do? Is it ethically permissible to kill one to save one? The choice is clearly a hard one, and though one would like to make a right choice, we do not know which one would be the right choice. The family, for example, might be torn between the choices. The doctor too may face a dilemma of duty, since the duty of saving a life seems to come with the duty to take a life in order to save a life.

Box 6.16 Example of double effect

Benefit:

Prevent

the

spread of carcinoma Early amputation of a leg with carcinoma Cost: Live an entire life wit disability

To address the quandary posed by such double effect situations, in his Summa Theologica Aquinas had offered a solution with his proposed Principle of Double Effect. His principle says that an action, which cannot produce the benefit without incurring a steep cost, is ethically permissible, provided these four conditions are met: • • • •

The act is itself good, or at least is morally neutral. The bad effect is not the means by which the good effect is achieved. The good effect is at least equivalent in importance to the bad effect. The motive of the doer is to do good only.

This principle is appealed to explain the ethical permissibility of an action that imposes a serious harm or cost. Aquinas introduced his principle to explain the permissibility of killing one’s assailant in self-defense. He argued that though a person is killed (a bad outcome), the killing is permissible because there was no

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intention to kill the person. It happened in self-defense. The only intended act was to protect oneself. Box 6.17 Principle of Double Effect Principle of Double Effect: An act which imposes a serious harm, or a bad outcome, along with the positive consequences, is ethically permissible only if: • • • •

The act is itself good, or at least is morally neutral. The bad effect is not the means by which the good effect is achieved. The good effect is at least equivalent in importance to the bad effect. The motive of the doer is to do good only.

Subsequent versions of the Principle of Double Effect make the distinction between causing a bad outcome as an unintended side-effect and causing a bad outcome as a means to achieve the good result. Principle of Double Effect approves the former, but does not permit the latter. So, clearly the principle maintains that there is a significant difference between an intended negative outcome and an unintended negative outcome. The consideration about the intention of the agent is prime in the ethical permissibility of an action with double effect: The agent should not desire the negative outcome to happen. The intention of the agent should be good, and the action too should be by nature good or at least ethically neutral; moreover, if the agent can produce the good outcome without the bad, then the agent should do that by all means. Example 17 In our amputation example, or Example 15, a doctor may justify the decision to ampute, though he or she may know that this would cause severe life-altering changes for the teenage amputee. By the Principle of Double Effect, the doctor is ethically permitted to do it because the doctor does not intend to make the amputee suffer. The negative outcome is only an unintended, unavoidable side-effect of the positive outcome of preventing the spread of cancer to other parts of the patient’s body. Now, Utilitarianism also speaks of mixed consequences of an action, where the cost and the benefit are jumbled together. However, its position on this matter is not the same as the Principle of Double Effect. Utilitarianism is, as has been mentioned, a consequentialist theory in ethics, whereas the Principle of Double Effect is not.  Therefore, the Utilitarians, as consequentialists, reject the Principle of Double Effect. For, the principle accepts the ethical relevance of intention of the agent as a prime factor in its ethical evaluation of an action. Whether the agent intended the negative outcome or not is major consideration for the principle. On the other hand, as a consequentialist school of thought, Utilitarianism denies the ethical relevance

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of intention. In fact, other than the consequences, Utilitarianism does not regard anything else as ethically relevant. So, the two positions do not share the foundational assumptions and therefore cannot be treated as the same. Moreover, for Utilitarianism, the Greatest Happiness Principle is supreme. This principle is its only concern as well as the criterion of adjudication in a case where the positive outcome is mixed with the negative outcome. So, in such a case Utilitarianism would say that an action is ethically permissible only if the good effect or the benefit sufficiently outweighs, in quantity and quality, the bad effect or the cost. In the calculation of the consequences, the net benefit should be clearly more than the cost. Consideration about the motive or the intention of the agent, or the basic nature of the action itself, does not feature in the Utilitarian approach. Box 6.18 Utilitarianism on actions with mixed consequences For Utilitarianism, an action, which imposes a serious harm, along with positive consequences, is ethically permissible only if the good effect or the benefit sufficiently outweighs, in quantity and quality, the bad effect or the cost. We may take our Example 15 to understand the difference. Utilitarianism would permit the amputation only if it is sufficiently established that the positive outcome of the amputation far exceeds or outweighs the bad effect or the cost imposed upon the amputee. Extraneous considerations, such as whether the doctor intended the bad outcome, or the intrinsic nature of the amputation as an act, will not come into the Utilitarian evaluation. However, the intention of the doctor, and other considerations, would be the decisive factors for the Principle of Double Effect.

6.10 The Utilitarian Scheme of Duties In ethics, usually actions are understood broadly in three categories: (a) The ethically right actions: These are ethically obligatory action or duties; that is, these are ethically approved actions which one should do. It is required of one to do these. Not doing these, or failing to do these, indicate some sort of lapse in the doer. Some opine that one is ethically prohibited from not doing them. If an action is ethically good, they ask, how can it not be obligatory? For example, providing for or supporting one’s underage children. (a1) The ethically supererogatory acts: The ethically supererogatory actions are a special class of ethically rights actions, which are not ethically required but are ethically praiseworthy. These are actions that go beyond the call of duty. They are not required, but if one does it, it is praiseworthy as exemplary act. For example, if a person provides an exceptionally generous support to a worthy cause, such action is of course ethically permissible, but it also is beyond what is merely required.

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The term supererogation comes from Latin, which means to pay over and above what is due (super-erogare). (b) The ethically wrong actions: What one should not do? One has a duty to avoid doing these. These are ethically prohibited actions. For example, committing a murder. Quick Question 6.10 Is donating a small part of one’s salary for a social cause, such as education of the underprivileged children, an ethically right action or a supererogatory action? Justify your answer. (c) The optional actions: These are actions that are ethically permissible, but are not obligatory. One is neither obligated to do them, nor is prohibited from doing them. Doing them does not attract ethical praise; and not doing them does not attract ethical blame or reprimand either. We may call them the ethically neutral actions. For example, watching the sunset from your own balcony. We may use this categorization of actions to understand the ethically right, wrong, and optional actions from the perspective of Utilitarianism. (a) The ethically rights actions as per Utilitarianism: With the cost–benefit analysis, Utilitarianism tells us in no uncertain terms what our duties are. Given a choice, we are ethically required to do that action which results in greatest net benefit/utility than any other option.  The ethically right action is that action the net utility of which is significantly higher than the rest of the choices. (b) The ethically wrong actions as per Utilitarianism: Given a choice, it is ethically wrong as per Utilitarianism to choose that action or policy the net utility of which is not significantly greater than the net utility of the alternative options. To choose an action or a policy which does not serve the interest of the people in general, but only serves the interest of the agent, or a handful people, is an ethically wrong action. It is our duty to refrain from making such choices and also from doing such actions.  The ethically wrong action is that action which does not have a significantly greater net utility than the available alternatives. (c) The ethically optional actions as per Utilitarianism: An action, or a policy, whose net utility is neither significantly greater or nor significantly lower, but is at par with the rest of the choices, is to be considered as ethically optional in Utilitarianism. It is neither ethically an obligatory action, nor an ethically prohibited action, as per Utilitarianism.

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Box 6.19 Scheme of duties as per Utilitarianism

Actions

The ethically Duties

right

actions)

/

The ethically wrong actions / prohibited actions

The

ethically

optional actions

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------In Utilitarian framework: 1. The ethically right / obligatory action: Only if Its net utility is higher than the rest of the choices 2. The ethically wrong action: Only if its net utility is lower than the rest of the choices 3. The ethically optional action: If its utility is no less or no higher than the rest of the choices.

You may have noticed that in the scheme of actions as per Utilitarianism, the category of supererogatory actions has not been enlisted. This is for the following reason. If Classical Utilitarianism is to be followed, then in its action guidance, no room is perhaps left for the supererogatory actions. For, the basic Utilitarian principle is to promote the greatest net benefit for all. We are ethically required to do that which results in the greatest net benefit; there is no exemption left from that principle to do something over and above that is not required (Vessel, 2010). There is no space left to do something over and above than producing the greatest net benefit. The supererogatory act, on the other hand, is the action which is ethically not required, but is over and above what is ethically required, such as acts of extreme and heroic self-sacrifice where one risks one’s life to save another. In general, Utilitarianism is skeptical of ethically heroic acts of self-sacrifice. The theory would claim that in such cases of extreme self-sacrifice, the loss to the agent may outweigh the benefits obtained by the beneficiary, and thus this act may actually decrease the overall happiness or net utility of all concerned. This is why the supererogatory acts were not included in the scheme of duties as per Utilitarianism. We now see what the ethical theory of Utilitarianism requires us to do and what it tells us not to engage in. Next, we shall learn how to decide who to count and how to count the greatest number when calculating the greatest number and the net utility of an action.

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6.11 Maximize the Utility for Whom? Utilitarianism recommends that in our actions and policies we should strive at maximizing the utility or happiness of the greatest number of people or the people in general. However, when implementing Utilitarianism for operational purposes one might still ask the following questions:  Q1. Who should we count in this greatest number?  Q2. Should we simply count the majority in any population as the greatest number?  Q3. How do we count this greatest number? Should it be a randomly selected group or is there a principle to follow in counting the greatest number?

Example 18 Suppose that a university administration is considering increasing the hostel charges for the students. If it tries to apply the learning from Utilitarianism, who should it count among the greatest number while doing the benefit and cost analysis of this decision? Should it include only the administrative body which has the authority to make the decision, or should it also include its students, as well as the society from where its future students would come? Should it include the entire student body of the university, or only those students who avail the hostel facilities? What constitutes the greatest number in this case? Is there a guiding principle to follow? Let us try to address the question 1–3 one by one. First, let me mention that Q2 is separately discussed in Sect. 6.11.3. So, we shall postpone our discussion on Q2 till we come to that section. In the present section, only Q1 and Q3 will be discussed jointly. We shall first discuss how not to count the greatest number, and then answer how to count, who to count, and by which principle.

6.11.1 How Not to Count: Not Self-Interest Maximization Intuitively, we may answer Q1 by saying that we should count among the greatest number of all those who would be affected by the action or the policy. Since Utilitarianism is a consequentialist ethics, it evaluates the ethical worth of an action or a policy by its outcome. Building on that idea, we may employ the consideration to include the greatest number of all those who would be impacted, positively or negatively, as the outcome of a certain action.  However, Utilitarianism gives clear instruction about how not to start the counting. It tells us that counting of the greatest number should not start from oneself . When it asks for calculation of the maximum net utility of an action, Utilitarianism does not mean maximum net utility for the agent. Though someone will have to do

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the maximum net utility calculation, the calculation should not be done to see how it serves the self-interest of that person the most.  As you may have noted from the discussion on Bentham and Mill above, the important point about Utilitarianism is that though it is based on hedonism, it does not preach self-gratification. So, we need to remember that though Utilitarianism preaches happiness maximization, it does not promote self-interest maximization. Instead, it instructs us to take everyone’s interest equally into consideration and that may include one’s own interest as well. It tells us to widen our narrow selfish perspectives, and that when we are calculating the utility or happiness from an action, we should do so from an impartial perspective, and not from a perspective that is partial to ourselves, and to our near and dear ones. We have to be open to the fact:  The action that maximizes the happiness of the greatest number may or may not be in favor of us. That is, the greatest number of people, who are made happy in the greatest sense, may or may not include the agent in terms of net utility. However, when what serves the greatest happiness of the greatest number does not serve our own interest, Utilitarianism maintains that it behooves us to still choose the action on the ethical ground of the Greatest Happiness Principle. This is where Utilitarianism stands far apart from petty self-interest maximization and self-gratification. Therefore, Utilitarianism and its Greatest Happiness Principle must not be interpreted as self-interest maximization. Its happiness is a social ideal, which can be achieved only when the society as a whole is largely happy. In fact, as mentioned above, Mill thought that one of the causes of unhappiness lies in our selfishness. Selfishness or self-orientedness, according to Mill, is a hindrance to the Utilitarian ideal of happiness. Therefore, for calculation of consequences the counting of the greatest number should not start or end with oneself.  Impartiality: Scholars point out that Utilitarianism encourages us to cultivate an impartial perspective in ourselves. For, Utilitarianism urges us to treat everyone and the happiness of everyone as the same. It tells us to put everyone else’s happiness before our own happiness and not to be partial towards our own happiness. It instructs us to set aside all selfishness, and petty self-interest, and commit ourselves to the promotion of the interest of a larger body. The same is also the instruction for the cost–benefit calculation. Self-interest is to be set aside. One has to learn to treat one’s own happiness impartially to accept why the happiness of the greatest number should override one’s own happiness. This calls for a cultivated trait of impartiality, which enables us to view everyone else’s happiness at par with the happiness of oneself. Quick Question 6.11 In our Example 18 of university administration, as per Utilitarianism how should the decision-making body start to count people to decide how and whether the decision (to raise the hostel fees) maximizes happiness? As per Utilitarianism, how should they not count?

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6.11.2 How to Count: The Stakeholder Theory We now try to address Q1 and Q3 by borrowing a modern terminology and the guiding principle from a modern theory in Business Ethics, namely the Stakeholder Theory. Though Classical Utilitarianism or its successors did not make use of this concept or the theory, I believe that operationally it could help the application of Utilitarianism. So, we may answer Q1 and Q3 as follows: We count the greatest number of the stakeholders, and in counting the stakeholders, we may follow the guiding principle of the Stakeholder Theory. Let us then try to understand the concept of a stakeholder. The expression a stakeholder was recorded first in 1708 referring to a person who holds a stake or stakes in a bet (Sivakumar, 2007, p. 353). Example 19 Two friends, Nitin and George, have held a bet of INR 500 on whether or not the team Manchester United would win a certain game. In ordinary sense of the term stakeholders, both of these friends are stakeholders in this case, as their money is riding as the stake on the bet.  R. Edward Freeman on Organizational Stakeholder: However, the term acquired a special meaning in the hands of R. Edward Freeman (1984), who defined what an organizational stakeholder is in the context of an organization, and popularized the stakeholder framework in the discourse of Business Ethics. Freeman defined an organizational stakeholder as an individual or a group, who are affected by the achievement of the organizational objective, or can affect the organization. That is, an organizational stakeholder is a person, or persons, who are impacted as a consequence of an organizational objective, or because of an organizational objective, can affect the organization. Box 6.20 Freeman’s definition of an organizational stakeholder An organizational stakeholder is an individual or a group, who are affected by the achievement of the organizational objective, or can affect the organization.

Example 20 Suppose that a pharmaceutical company wants to double its earnings in eight years. That is its organizational objective. For that, they have decided to consolidate their focus in the European market, leaving the South Asian market behind. To find out who the stakeholders are, we need to figure out who or which groups of people would be affected by this organizational objective and who can affect the organization.

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Using this, we start to see the stakeholder groups who would be affected; e.g. the existing South Asian customers of the company, the existing pharmaceutical companies in the European market, the existing employees of the company, the investors or shareholders of the company, and the existing suppliers to the company. We can also see the stakeholders who can affect the organization: the European Union market regulatory body, the other pharmaceutical companies who are already in the European market and are the competitors; the employee union. As you can see, the concept of organizational stakeholder allows us to identify and name the groups clearly. It helps the business organization to see who they and their decisions have an impact on and who can influence them and their decisions. If stakeholder interests are managed well by the organization, the organization is likely to last longer and also to perform better. Freeman proposed the organizational stakeholder framework for an organizational context. His main goal was to emphasize that there are many more groups of people, beyond the stockholders or the investors, towards whom a business must remain accountable. He maintained that a business must be run to create value for all the stakeholders and not just for the stockholders (Pic. 6.11).

Customers

Suppliers

Employees The firm

Investors

/

Stockholders

Government Society Competitors

Pic. 6.11 Organizational stakeholders of a firm

 Now, in the purview on this book, our context is not restricted to organizations only. However, we can take the learning from stakeholder theory to apply in Utilitarian calculation of the greatest number. So, for our purpose here, we may allow the concept of stakeholder to guide us to select the persons or groups who should be included in the greatest number. When making a policy, or deciding on an action, we try to identify all those who can be affected or who can affect the decision-making body, positively or negatively. We try to create maximum net utility for the greatest number of the stakeholders.

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Example 21 Suppose that a company is trying to decide the kind of housing that it is going to build for its employees in a newly developed area. Who should it consider among the greatest number? The company may follow the learning from the stakeholder theory to include the greatest number of the stakeholders in its effort to make happy. An action plan may be devised to identify the stakeholder groups. The obvious, direct and primary stakeholders of that housing decision would be the company employees. For, they would be directly affected by the decision, as the housing is being considered for them. However, there may be other indirect stakeholders of that decision. For instance, the decision of the employee housing would also reflect back on the company and its good will. If the quality of the company housing is truly good, it would create a brand differentiator for the company. The employee satisfaction may result in deeper employee engagement and may attract future employees. On the other hand, if the kind of housing the company has in mind is poor in terms of design, quality, and facilities, it may leave a trail of bad consequences for the company to face. For example, the reputation of the company as an employer may suffer, and there may be increasing resentment among the employees. So, in that sense the company is a stakeholder too. For the same reason, the shareholders of the company, whose money is actually riding on the company, also would be stakeholders. Employee union and media could also be the stakeholders, as they can exert pressure on the company and affect its functions and position. Once we have identified the stakeholders, we may apply the Utilitarian principle. Utilitarianism would recommend that the company should take a decision after considering all the options and then by choosing that option which would increase the happiness of the greatest number of its stakeholders. The company should do a stakeholder analysis to come to an informed conclusion about who to include among the stakeholders. In short, my submission is that the stakeholders framework complements the thoughts embedded in Utilitarianism. It enables us to recognize that those who are likely to be affected by an action deserve to be included among the greatest number the action is going to serve. In the application of Utilitarianism, it may serve as expedient too to help us to identify the relevant people and groups who may be affected by an action, or may affect the decision-makers, for example, through lobbying and other measures. This is for understanding a way to count the greatest number required for the Utilitarian calculation. However, we need to also remember that the founder figures of Utilitarianism were primarily social reformers. Their interest was to promote public policies which would serve the larger social groups and not just a few powerful people. So, for them, the answer was that while a public policy, the decision-makers must ensure that the policy increases the happiness of the maximum number in the relevant groups of the society. At the same time, as mentioned above, we should note that Classical Utilitarianism did not recommend that in every action we must always consider the entire

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society among the greatest number. They understood the happiness of a group as the aggregate of the happiness of all its members. So, their goal was to raise the level of that aggregate happiness.

6.11.3 Utilitarianism is not Majoritarianism In this section we take on the Q2 of Sect. 6.10: • Should we simply count the majority in any population as the greatest number? To this, our answer is that Utilitarianism does not maintain that the greatest number is necessarily the majority. There is an important distinction between Utilitarianism and Majoritarianism. Quick Question 6.12 Which of the following groups should be included as a stakeholder in the decision-making involved in our Example 18 above, in which a university administration is considering increasing the hostel charges for the students? Justify your answer: (1) (2) (3) (4)

The parents or family of the students The local businesses in other cities of the country Bombay film industry The news media.

 Majoritarianism is the position that the numerical majority of a population should always have the final say and the final right to decide on behalf of a society. It is the position which endorses that by the sheer numbers, the majority in a population becomes the most important group and has the decisive authority in all matters. It is easy and tempting to think that by its insistence on the greatest number, Utilitarianism is actually a version of Majoritarianism. With its goal to maximize the happiness of greatest number, Utilitarianism is recommending Majoritarianism.  However, it would be a mistake to think so. There are important differences between the two positions. Majoritarianism preaches a certain primacy of the majority in the social choices. In it, a majority is taken for granted as a superior body, which decides on behalf of all, and imposes on the minority the duty to comply with the choice made by the majority. Utilitarianism, on the other hand, is egalitarian in its core. One of its fundamental principles is to treat everyone’s happiness as equal, no matter which group one belongs to majority or minority. It does not confer on majority a primary position by default. It does not treat the happiness of the majority as the decisive criterion. It also does not authorize the majority to take all decisions on behalf of all. Instead, it

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asks an agent to adopt an impartial point of view and choose that action or policy which can maximize the utility or happiness for the greatest number. That choice is an impartial agent’s choice and not the choice of the majority. The opinion of the majority does not determine what the agent should choose. We should also remember that as per Utilitarianism, the agent may or may not be a part of the greatest number. That is, the agent’s own happiness may or may not be maximized by the said action or policy.  The distinction between Utilitarianism and Majoritarianism should be also clear from the following. If a minority group is going to be very seriously unhappy as the consequence of a decision, whereas the majority would be only somewhat happy with the decision, Majoritarianism would pass the decision. Utilitarianism, on the other hand, would not automatically pass the decision. For, the average utility in such a case would not be maximum. With this, we come to the end of the discussion on who should be counted, how should be counted, and how the greatest number is not to be understood, when applying Utilitarianism to maximize the utility of an action or a policy. Next, we shall learn about the applicability of Utilitarianism in the society. We have already learned about the application of the theory in our personal decisions. In the following section, however, we shall look beyond the personal sphere to note where and how the applicability of Utilitarianism may be found.

6.12 Applying Utilitarianism in the Context of the Society Is Utilitarian thinking applicable in the society? Are there any instances of its application in present-day society? The answer to these questions may be found in manifold from various walks of life. As already discussed, Utilitarianism from its inception had a distinctive outlook for the larger societal context. The theory has wide applications in public policies. When we come to think of it, we may find that almost every major public policy one way or the other considers social cost and social benefit ensuing from it. Moreover, the principle of greatest good for the greatest number is also upheld in most of the social policies. However, in this section, I shall mention a few more specific examples of application of Utilitarian principle and thoughts in the society. Example 22 Application of Utilitarianism in punishment: Among Bentham’s works, his The Rationale of Punishment (1830/2009) captures Bentham’s Utilitarian thoughts on the rationale of punishment. Usually, a legal punishment is justified as retribution, i.e. as a price for the crime committed. Some pain or discomfort is inflicted on the offender, and it is justified as what the offender deserves as the retribution for what he committed. Utilitarianism, however, offers a very different perspective on punishment.

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Utilitarianism upholds happiness and absence of pain as central values. Therefore, for it, all punishments are evil, because they inflict pain or discomfort on a person, and pain and discomfort are not what a human desires. Bentham argues that the infliction of pain or the discomfort can be justified only as a means to a greater good or increased social utility either by deterring future crimes by instilling a fear of punishment, or by incapacitating the offender by reforming the person from within. Either way, the happiness and well-being of the society would be greater, as the society would be better protected. That is the only justification for punishment which Utilitarianism can approve. Bentham believed that punishment can be calibrated to deter the repetition of the crime and to reform the person. Modern thinking on legal punishments, the objective of punishment, and prisons is certainly influenced by Utilitarian thinking. Even in the change of name from a prison to a correctional institution or a reformatory, you may find the influence of Utilitarian thoughts. Example 23 Utilitarian thinking in Cadaveric Organ harvesting: As has been already discussed, human organs are short in supply, but their demand is very high, and very few people are willing to donate their organs. The usual policy in different countries of harvesting organs from the dead bodies of the unclaimed bodies of the accident victims, and other cadavers, may be viewed as an instance of Utilitarian thinking. For, there the policy is to maximize the benefit of the organs for maximum number of people whom the organ can still serve. People who are still alive can benefit from the organ transplantation can be served. Typically, the argument provided for such organ harvesting is the greater good of greater number of people, who may need the organs.

Example 24 Utilitarian thinking in Epidemic and Pandemic Policies: Freedom of movement in one’s country is a civil, constitutional right of a citizen. However, during an epidemic or a pandemic, typically the public health policy is to keep the infected people in quarantine, or in isolation, with restrictions on their free movement. The justification for the policy is actually utilitarian. The restrictions on the movement of the infected, or the suspected as infected, are restricted on the ground of greatest good of the greatest number. Because of the pathogen that they carry, the infected is considered as a threat to the larger society. Their free movement is curtailed, and they are kept isolated to protect the rest of the society and to avoid a greater amount of suffering of the people. Thus, the quarantine policy uses the Utilitarian cost–benefit calculation and works on the premise that the net social benefit of quarantining the few infected outweighs the net cost of discomfort of the infected.

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Example 25 Utilitarian argument in Political Philosophy: In political philosophy, a Utilitarian argument is used to justify the creation of a government as a political sovereign and an authority. Having a government as a political authority certainly requires certain sacrifices at the individual level. For example, a person has to give up some of the individual freedom and follow the rules set by the government in public interest. A person also has to sacrifice some of the earnings as tax paid to the government. However, the positive side is that a government brings stability and peace in the society. Because of its presence, the feuds between people are not successful to disrupt the social cohesiveness. It also protects its citizens from any attack from powerful external foes. So, in the ultimate analysis, the net benefit of having a government as a political authority outweighs the cost of sacrifice of some individual liberties.

Example 26 Utilitarianism in Medicine practice and Public Health vaccination: In medical practice, a doctor may follow the utilitarian approach to determine the line of treatment for its overall net benefit. Though there may be some cost as consequence, such as some adverse side-effects, a line of treatment may be still selected on the ground of its overall benefit for the patient. We may also take the public health policy of childhood vaccinations, or universal immunizations, as an example of application of Utilitarian thinking. The childhood immunizations involve some cost. At the individual level, the child experiences some discomfort due to the vaccine; perhaps suffers from pain and may be a fever too. The parents also undergo some effort and time to extra care of the vaccinated child, or to get the child vaccinated at the right intervals. At the national level, there is a significant cost, as universal immunizations demand committed public expenditure, deployment of human resources, planning, scheduling, and awareness campaigns, among other things. Yet, no country or government can absolve itself of the responsibility of nationwide immunization drive for the children. The justification comes from the Utilitarian principle of greatest good for the greatest number. The net benefit of the childhood immunizations far outweighs the cost: The child gets lifelong protection from most of the killer diseases, and the nation secures the health of its future citizens. Example 27 Utilitarian thinking in putting a global ban on CFC-based technology: A noteworthy example of Utilitarian thinking in a societal context is the collective decision taken by governments and the industrial sector some decades ago to stop using Chlorofluorocarbon (CFC)-based technology in refrigeration.

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Since 1920s, refrigeration and air conditioners used compounds as refrigerants which were toxic and flammable. A team of chemists came up with CFC-based compounds as solution, which were not flammable, and was volatile. This gained the CFC-based compounds a wide acceptance. In the 1970s, CFCs were widely in use. By 1973, through their scientific investigation, F. Sherwood Rowland (1927– 2012), a Nobel laureate American chemist, and Mario J. Molina (1941–2020), also a Nobel laureate Chemist from Mexico, discovered that the volatile CFCs wind up in the stratosphere causing irreparable damage in the ozone layer of earth. As you may know, ozone, with oxygen, is able to absorb much of Sun’s harmful ultraviolet radiation and thus can prevent the radiation to reach earth’s surface. For the health of the humans and other species on earth, the importance of having an undamaged ozone layer is crucial. It took an uphill battle by the scientists, amid a lot of protests and challenges thrown by the chemical industry, which used the CFC-based compounds freely, to convey to the public that the CFCs cause ozone layer depletion. The clinching evidence came from the British scientists working in Antarctica. They showed in 1984 that the stratospheric ozone has decreased significantly since 1960s, and in 1985 their paper showed that there is a hole in ozone layer above Antarctica causing 40% loss of stratospheric ozone. This provided the crucial causal link between the ozone layer damage and the CFC emission in the atmosphere in the mind of people and the lawmakers and prompted international action. Rowland and Molina shared the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Paul Crutzen for their pathbreaking research on ozone and stratosphere. In 1986, to prevent further ozone layer depletion and its terrible consequences on the species on earth, the governments of 56 countries agreed on Montreal Protocol to eventual phaseout of production of CFC and the use of CFC-based technology in any cooling system (American Chemical Society, 2017). The chemical industry and the associated businesses involved in refrigeration and cooling systems slowly but steadily came up with CFC-free chemical and technological alternatives. This collective decision to stop CFC production and to change to a non-CFC technology was taken despite the benefit in the use of CFC-based technology. The CFC technology was cheap, and the products were easy to manufacture and to use; so it was profitable for the businesses to use the CFC technology. On the other hand, change to an environmentally safer technology in manufacturing and other industrial activities is expensive. There were two clear options: (a) To stop using CFC-based technology and (b) Or to continue with the CFC-based technology. The nations and the businesses chose (a), on the ground that the overall cost of continued use of CFC-based technology was too huge: It would completely deplete the ozone layer of the earth and endanger humans and all other species on the earth from the cosmic radiation through the ozone hole. So, despite the benefit from the profit, the technology was collectively abandoned because its stupendous social cost outweighed the private benefits. It was decided that it would be wrong to continue its usage. The well-being of the people at large, and that of other species on earth, was

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at stake and was considered as sufficiently overweighing reason for abandoning the CFC-emitting technology and for adopting a CFC-free technology (Pic. 6.12).

Pic. 6.12 Product label ensuring CFC-free product

This brings us to the end of the present section in which examples from different walks of life have been garnered to show the applicability of Utilitarianism in a societal context. With this, we have come to the close to our introduction to Utilitarianism as a theory. It is time now for a critical review of the theory, with due consideration to its strengths and limitations, and with that we shall this chapter on Utilitarianism.

6.13 Strengths of Utilitarianism The strengths of Utilitarianism are many. We shall discuss only some of the major advantages here. 1. Commonsensical approach: A major appeal of Utilitarianism as an ethical theory is that its arguments are close to our commonsense. Intuitively people connect with its main contentions, resulting in its wide acceptance. Utilitarianism stands as one of the most common approaches to making ethical decisions. There may be many reasons for that. First, many among us are result-oriented people. So, people in general find the consequentialist ethical approach of Utilitarianism sensible. People seem to understand with a relative ease the logic behind testing the goodness of an action by the goodness of the results. Second, the ideas of Utilitarianism as a normative theory are relatively easier to operationalize. For example, it recommends the use of a single measure as the criterion for assessing ethical rightness of an action: The measure is the maximized utility. It asks us to check whether the action or the policy maximizes the utility for all, or for the greatest number. In comparison with other ethical theories, generally people find the Utilitarian more appealing and useful from a practical point of view.

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Third, the detailed conceptual framework of Utilitarianism fills an important void for the commonsense morality. It offers a coherent, well-argued principle, and a criterion to identify and justify an action or a choice as ethically right. This is something which the commonsense morality lacks. 2. Egalitarian approach: One of the strengths of Utilitarianism is its in-built egalitarian approach. It treats everyone’s happiness as equal and prescribes every Utilitarian to cultivate that mindset. We need to remember that the original proponents of Utilitarianism, Bentham and Mill, specifically promoted the theory as a progressive ideal leading to a more equal, or egalitarian, society. They wanted their own society, which was socioeconomically extremely unequal, to undergo a reformation to become more egalitarian. In 19th CE, it was a radical proposal, when social inequalities were the norm. At that time, large sections of the British society were disempowered, poor, and systematically discriminated. The wealth, power, and privileges that come with these, all were enjoyed and controlled only by a few families. The laws and policies were made by these small group of people for their own advantage. Mill and Bentham could not tolerate this stark inequality. They championed the rights of the systematically deprived and disempowered subgroups of their own society. For example, Mill and Bentham supported the cause of voting rights (suffrage) for women, when women in British society did not have voting rights, or any other political rights. They were disenfranchised. Bentham and Mill also promoted the rights of the poor who did not own any property and thereby did not have a legal standing. They wanted a change in the laws so that the legal rights of those, who are not property-owners, were also honored. Similarly, they used their theory to argue against the practice of slavery and also against cruelty to the animals. Both were prevalent in their society. Once more, their basic premise was that everyone’s happiness is equal and is equally important. The egalitarianism of Utilitarianism is also exhibited in the way they calculate the aggregate benefit for all. It assumes that the instances of individual happiness and unhappiness of individuals can be aggregated in a quantitative manner, as Bentham’s hedonistic calculus shows. To calculate that aggregate, it gives equal weightage to the benefit (happiness) or cost (unhappiness, harm) to each person. It counts each person equally as a unit, and each unit’s pleasure and pain is treated as equal, and as a part of the aggregate outcome, regardless of the socioeconomic status of the person, color, or creed. That is, each person’s happiness is treated as equal. The greatest happiness is thus actually is an aggregate happiness of all members put together. This egalitarian treatment of all in the society, and of each section of the society, which is a core precept in Utilitarianism, makes the theory a strong contender as a normative ethics theory. 3. Focus on human well-being: Social utility, or benefit for the greatest number, features very highly among the priorities of Utilitarianism. This focus on social benefit may be viewed as a derivative from the concept of beneficence, which is a celebrated normative principle in ethics. The concept of beneficence prescribes

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that one ought to act for the others’ benefit as an ethical obligation (Beauchamp, 2019). Traditional ethics has always urged the people to engage in beneficent actions, such as in acts of charity, altruism, and other acts of kindness and compassion. Scholars claim that the principle of utility in Mill’s theory of Utilitarianism is an impressive instance of the principle of beneficence (Beauchamp, 2019). Mill and the other subsequent Utilitarians hold an action as right only if it leads to greatest beneficial consequences or happiness, and to least possible harmful consequences or unhappiness, for the others. This linkage to beneficence lends further credibility to the arguments of Utilitarianism. Using modern language, we may understand the nature of Utilitarianism as a welfare-oriented ethical theory. This focus on social welfare or wellbeing of a society is one more reason for Utilitarianism to enjoy a prominent position among the ethical theories. 4. An operable criterion: Utilitarianism offers a relatively easily comprehensible criterion for reaching a conclusion about the rightness of actions. Its cost–benefit analysis is also a helpful tool to assess the consequence. For operational purposes, these are definitely points of advantage. Though the quantification of the benefits and costs incurred may be debatable, once we are past that debate the theory shows us a clear path ahead to know which action to select. This delineation of a criterion and with such clarity is rare among the ethical theories. So, this too goes in favor of Utilitarianism as a theory. 5. Widely used: As discussed earlier with different examples from a societal context, the Utilitarian thoughts are widely applied in different walks of life. The wide usage to some extent bears testimony of the applicability of the theory as a multi-purpose, action-guiding normative theory. Next, we shall consider some of the salient objections against the theory.

6.14 Objections Against Utilitarianism 1. The measurement problem: In its calculation of consequences, Utilitarianism assumes that a quantitative measurement of happiness and unhappiness, or social benefits and cost, is possible. It requires us to assign quantitative values to benefits and harms for the calculation of net outcome. Even for a comparative assessment of outcome of alternative options, a quantitative measurement of the outcome is necessary. Critics of Utilitarianism focus on this point precisely to raise many objections about the possibility and reliability of such quantitative measurement of happiness and unhappiness of people. These objections together constitute what is known as the measurement problem of Utilitarianism. Given below are some of these objections. 1A. A common objection is that certain benefits and costs are not amenable to quantification. Even if we try, the quantification is not accepted as universally satisfactory. Critics ask:

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How can we put a numerical value for human life, or for the health of a person? Is it possible to put a numerical value for human well-being?

The point here is that certain benefits, such as gaining of health, and costs, such as a life lost, are viewed as invaluable by most of us. Consider the untimely loss of a father. The loss could be irreparable for the family, and if the father was the sole earning member in the family, then the loss may alter the lives of the family irreversibly. Similarly, health is wealth; and damage to someone’s health is viewed as an irremediable cost. Considerations of this kind resist the Utilitarian approach of putting a numerical value on every kind of consequence. While many of us may agree in principle with the objection made above, in response the supporters of Utilitarianism may argue that the objection is not valid. For, our societies have already adopted measures to quantify the values of things that are centrally important to us, such as life and health. Do we not put a quantitative value on human life, when monetary compensations are offered for a life lost, say, in a train accident? Monetary compensations are based on a numerical estimation of what a life costs. Do the actuaries in life insurance companies not calculate a life span in quantitative terms to come up with a premium to be paid by the insurer? The entire insurance industry, whether it is life insurance, travel insurance or medical insurance, is driven by numerical valuation of what we usually regard as invaluable; namely life, health? That shows that the reach of the numerical valuation is greater than what we ordinarily presume. For practical purposes, the society has permitted quantitative valuation of many outcomes, which ordinarily may seem as beyond any quantitative valuation. These indicate that numerical valuation of all that we value as benefits, and all that we dislike as cost, may be difficult, but are not impossible to quantify. In other words, the quantitative approach of Utilitarianism may not be entirely unfeasible. However, the critics may still argue that though for practical purposes, a society permits numerical valuation of many consequences, such valuation is only approximate. Moreover, it remains contested, being not universally agreed upon. For a family which has lost one of its dearest members in a tragic accident, no amount of monetary compensation can adequately capture the actual cost to the family. For someone, who has suffered irremediable sickness from working in hazardous workplace conditions, no amount of compensation can match the depth and the magnitude of loss to that person. There is a subjective element in the valuation of benefits and cost. An externally done measurement in quantitative terms does not always add up to that. To this objection, the Utilitarian may respond by arguing that in certain cases, such as in psychological feelings of happiness, or in case of a personal bereavement, it is indeed difficult to understand and measure benefits and costs in a universally, satisfactory manner. However, such psychological, subjective elements can be combined with quantitative analysis to come up with an objectively demonstrable, numerical metric. As example, the Utilitarian may point at the worth-mentioning effort of Happiness Index to objectively measure abstract, social ideals such as human happiness and well-being by combining quantitative analyses with qualitative understanding.

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 Example 28 A Happiness Index: Happiness earlier used to be thought of as an elusive goal for any numerical or quantitative measurement. However, between 2011 and 2015, a Happiness Index (HI) to measure human happiness was developed by The Happiness Alliance, a non-profit organization. Traditionally, the national well-being and growth used to be measured by Gross National Product (GNP). This practice was criticized by many. They claimed that there are several shortcomings in GNP metric, e.g. it does not take into account the hidden social cost of economic development and cannot capture the subjective well-being measures. Contesting the idea that the development of a country is to be measured only in terms of its economic growth, in Bhutan a concept of Gross National Happiness (GNH) was developed by the Kingdom of Bhutan as an alternative to the GNP. In protest, the GNH was measured by an index, Gross National Happiness Index (GNHI). Inspired by the pioneering work of Bhutan, The Happiness Alliance developed The Happiness Index, which combines a quantitative approach with a qualitative measure. It measures satisfaction with life, feeling of happiness, and other domains of happiness, such as psychological well-being, health, community, social support, education, art and culture, environment, material well-being, governance, and work. Each domain has qualities which are measured. For example, psychological well-being has under it the qualities of optimism, a sense of purpose, a sense of accomplishment. Under health, there are the qualities of energy level and the ability to perform daily activities. The Happiness Index is a comprehensive survey instrument which assesses the happiness and well-being in a country. It is a tool developed for increased social utility: It enables one to understand and to improve societal well-being and happiness (Musikanski et al., 2017). Lately, it serves the very important function of a comparative understanding of national well-being and happiness by comparing and ranking the countries in the world. Using statistical analysis in which countries all over the world are compared and ranked in terms of human happiness, every year, a happiness score is decided by a comprehensive Gallup polling data from 149 countries of a country’s performance in the past three years on six categories: • • • • • •

Gross domestic product per capita Social support Healthy life expectancy Freedom to make your own life’s choices Generosity of the general population Perception of the internal and external corruption levels.

A look at the six categories shows that gross domestic product (GDP) is only one among the criteria. It is not the only criterion to measure well-being of a country. Based on the happiness score obtained in these six categories, countries are then ranked in terms of happiness and well-being of its citizens. In 2021, for example,

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Finland was the happiest country, and Afghanistan was the least happy country, and India stood at 136 out of 146 countries.  Example 29 Human Development Index (HDI): We may also cite here the example of HDI as a complex measure which combines quantitative and qualitative data to come with a measure of development of a country. The point here is that apart from the observable objective aspects of development, a measurable index has been developed for more abstract, intangible, and subjective aspects of development. However, we shall keep the discussion of HDI brief in this chapter, since it has been already discussed in Chap. 5 (Sect. 5.5.5.6). The United Nations has developed a Human Development Index (HDI) to measure the achievement of a country in terms of providing its people capabilities in non-economic dimensions, such as a long, healthy life. Countries are compared and ranked in terms of human development and human well-being using this index. So, this is how Utilitarianism may defend itself against the objections raised in 1A. We shall see next that 1B raises a different kind of measurement problem, which is not so easily answerable. 1B. The problem of measuring comparatively: Critics argue that Utilitarianism urges us to compare outcome from different alternative courses of actions to come up with the right action based on the net utility. They argue that this presumes that benefits from one option are comparable to the benefits from another; or that similarly costs too are comparable; however, is such comparison feasible?

Example 30 Suppose I am considering between two courses of actions. One allows me the time for my daily exercise, but requires me to give up a meeting with my close friends over a cup of tea. The other option allows me to enjoy a cup of tea with my close friends, but then I have to give up my daily jogging routine. Both have benefits, and using the Utilitarian scheme I am supposed to compare the two options. However, how does one compare the benefit of a little bit of exercise everyday with the benefit of spending time with close friends? Similarly, how does one compare the loss of human dignity with, for example, the loss of losing one’s job? The matter gets even more complicated when it comes to interpersonal comparison in happiness and unhappiness. We may recall that Utilitarianism is egalitarian in its core as it treats everyone’s happiness and unhappiness as the same. However, that supposition of egalitarianism raises a major problem, particularly in economics. The problem of interpersonal comparison of utility is a difficult problem of comparing

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the welfare or the mental states of different people (Drakopoulos, 1989). Most economists reject the possibility of such interpersonal comparison, even if it may be implicitly assumed in certain welfarist policies. If interpersonal comparisons of utility or benefit are problematic, then the question is: Whether it is plausible to expect that the aggregate or sum maximization of all kinds of happiness and unhappiness, benefits and costs, all of which may not be comparable, will always be reached. Without such aggregate calculation, however, the Utilitarian calculation of maximization of utility is not possible to employ. With this, we shall conclude our discussion on the objections based on the measurement problem of Utilitarianism. 2. Uncertainty of consequences: The second major criticism against Utilitarianism is actually a generic objection against the central postulate of consequentialism. As you know already, consequentialism believes that the consequence is the sole determinant of ethical rightness and wrongness of an action. The dissenters claim that this is where the position goes seriously wrong. For, they argue that for determining the ethical quality of an action, and from that to attribute praise or blame to the doer, the consequence of an action is perhaps the most unreliable and unpredictable part. Have we not seen how sometimes the action which we initiate with a certain expected result fortuitously results into something else? Between the commencement of an action, and its fruition into results, there may be so many variables, some of which could be either unknown or unexpected, but each of which may vary. The consequences are shaped by these factors and their variances and sometimes may follow a completely unexpected path.

Example 31 A farmer might start a plantation of exotic flowers, instead of his usual food crops, with the hope of making higher profit. However, that year an unusual weather may set in, and as a result the exotic flowers that year may develop a fungal disease. Or, suppose that in that year there is a sudden downturn in demand in the flower market due to a pandemic. Consequently, the farmer may suffer high losses that year. When the farmer planted, he did not know of such fortuitous turn of events.

Example 32 I am a believer in the Greatest Happiness Principle, and I may donate to an organization, who I believe does social work to improve the lives of the local migrant population. However, unbeknownst to me, the organization is actually a respectable facade for a terrorist outfit. By being a patron of that organization, I actually end up abetting the terrorist outfit in its attacks on innocent civilian lives here and there. Thus, whether I want or not, my action of donating money eventually results in the harm caused to the innocent civilians.

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Moreover, as a consequence of my action, my name may become associated with this organization, and as a further consequence my reputation and social standing as a citizen may be dragged into very serious charges. When I chose to donate the money, I did not know my action would lead to such end. It was not my intention to cause such harm to the people. Yet, if consequentialist scheme is to be followed, I would be judged by the consequences of my action. The point here is that consequences are often uncertain and do not bear a reliable testimony to the moral worth of an action or that of an agent. The nonconsequentialists argue that this is why consequences should not serve as sole determinants of ethical quality of an action; there are other aspects of an action which hold more importance. For example, the intent or motive of a person speaks of the true intention of an agent and the actual worth of the action. We may accidentally initiate a good deed. Similarly, we may also cause something bad without wanting to. But they would not be intended outcome. We did not intend to do the good, or to do something bad. That absence of intention fails to connect us to the consequences. It would not be fair to judge us as agents based on whatever may be the unintended consequences. A Case in Point 6.1 Suppose I am sitting in an airport terminal, and reading a newspaper, a printed copy. Suppose that I do not even know that the man sitting right next to me is blind, and that he has kept his walking stick close to my seat. Now suppose that I open a new page of the paper, and as I do so, my elbow nudges the walking stick, and the stick goes into the hand of the blind man, who at that moment was searching for his walking stick to leave the seat. The blind man turns towards me and says: Thank you! Question: Do I deserve that thank you? Have I really done an ethically good deed? What is your opinion? Justify your answer. Other non-consequentialists have argued that not only the motive, we should also pay attention to the manner in which an action is done, before we can determine the ethical rightness or wrongness of an action. The consequentialists may maintain that it is the end or result which justifies the means. Many non-consequentialists, however, insist that if the means is wrong, then the end, no matter how much social utility it produces, cannot justify the action. Even though developing a cure for cancer would produce great amount of happiness among a very large number of people in the world, we cannot praise the action as good if the drug development involves clinical trial on unsuspecting people. There are other non-consequentialists who claim that some actions by nature are such that regardless of what utility they may produce,

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doing them would still be ethically wrong. They refer to the intrinsic properties that an action may have. In short, the blind faith in an action resulting in societal happiness or social utility as the sole criterion for ethical rightness or wrongness has been contested by the non-consequentialist ethical theories. We shall learn about these theories in our next chapter. 3. Fails to take in considerations about justice: The justice theorists put up several objections against Utilitarianism. In general, their criticism is that Utilitarianism fails to properly address issues of justice. Philosophers, such as Martha Nussbaum, have maintained that Utilitarianism, by its nature, is insensitive to the matters of justice. Since maximum good for maximum number is its only goal, fair distribution of that good among the people is unimportant to it. Hence, it allows some people to be used merely as stepping stones as a mean to produce greater good. This may result in gross injustice in the individual cases. Rawls’s critique of Utilitarianism: In his insistence on equal liberties, Rawls stands against Utilitarianism. Rawls claims that Utilitarianism, as a theory, is essentially unfair, because it permits inequal distribution of something as basic as civic liberties and rights, as long as the greatest number, or the majority, is served. In his opinion, that is unfair, because no amount of increase in benefits for the majority can ever justify inequality in the distribution fundamental rights and primary social goods for all. For example, if depriving a few members of society of the fundamental rights creates significantly larger benefits for the majority, such an arrangement may be supported by Utilitarianism. However, it would be rejected as an unfair arrangement by Rawls. Rawls’s main criticism against Classical Utilitarianism is that the theory takes the principle of choice of an action of one person and imposes it on the whole society, and that in doing so, it fails to distinguish between persons. For, Utilitarianism, in its quest for greatest happiness, adds up everyone’s happiness, as if everyone is the same and as if one person’s happiness is the happiness for the other. People are separate, and Rawls wants a theory of ethics to respect that separateness.  Minority rights: As an issue of justice, critics argue that Utilitarianism may override minority rights to promote general welfare in the society. In case of building a dam, for example, or in land acquisition for industrial growth, the Utilitarian approach may be blind to the injustice done to a minority group and their rights, if that group is displaced or driven out from their own land without a fair compensation. Since the mainstream society will benefit, the rights of the displaced minority tribe, or community, may be overlooked. To refute such charges, Utilitarians may remind us that Utilitarianism does not endorse Majoritarianism. We have seen above that in Utilitarianism the welfare of the majority is not the final argument; it insists on making everyone happy, majority or minority. If an action or a policy brings a significant harm to the minority, or makes them seriously unhappy, Utilitarianism would not permit that action or policy. Majoritarianism would.

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The critics, however, still argue that the quantitative consideration of happiness of the greatest number, built into Utilitarianism as an ideal, remains a problematic idea. It can seriously mislead someone into converting Utilitarianism into Majoritarianism. The Trolley problem and Utilitarianism: Let us revisit the trolley problem, which we discussed in Chap. 4, Sect. 4.8.1. You may remember that it is a thought experiment first introduced by philosopher Phillippa Foot, and then used and popularized by philosopher Judith Jarvis Thompson. Basically, in its original version it asked us to choose between the lives of five men and the life of one man (Pic. 6.13).

Pic. 6.13 The Scenario 1, trolley problem

The position which would endorse killing one life is ethically justified if as a consequence it saves five lives is usually attributed to consequentialism, and in particular to Utilitarianism. For, in a sense the choice of saving five lives at the cost of one life maximizes happiness for the greatest number and produces the best overall consequence. The non-consequentialists would strongly disagree. They claim that some actions, even if they bring the best overall consequences, can still be wrong. In fact, they hold it against Utilitarianism that it does not have any constraint to deter such ethically wrong actions from being approved as ethically permissible by the Utilitarian criterion. Sacrificing a few: A similar standard objection related to considerations of justice is that Utilitarianism may require us to violate the standards of justice by allowing the sacrifice of a few. It may permit a few to be exploited or even sacrificed in the effort to bring the general well-being for the maximum number. This point is different from that made in 3.1. For, these few need not be minorities in the count of the whole population. They just happen to be the instruments, the expendable tools, to achieve the goal of happiness for maximum number. For example, one may create a Utilitarian argument to conduct unauthorized clinical trials of experimental medicines on a few healthy prisoners in the name of producing a greater good. Similarly, one may offer a Utilitarian line of reasoning to defend forceful harvesting of organs from the healthy children abandoned on the streets by their parents or family in the name of promoting maximization of social utility.

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The non-Utilitarians argue that such line of reasoning would be a travesty of justice, and individual rights must be protected on the ground of justice, even if it does not increase the aggregate of happiness. The advocates of Human Rights would find such possibilities most offensive. They would argue that each person, no matter who the person is, a prisoner or a social liability, is a repository of certain inalienable rights. They would proclaim that no one is expendable as a mere means to achieve greatest happiness for the greatest number. 4. Fails to address individual needs against aggregate utility: Utilitarianism treats everyone equal and treats everyone’s well-being of the same value. For example, if there is a basket of Rs 100 as welfare and there are ten individuals in the society, Utilitarian distribution of welfare would be Rs 10 to each. This assumption of equality between people, or individuals in the population, fails miserably in a real society, composed of heterogeneous population with diverse levels of need. Amartya Sen (Sen, 1973, pp. 13–20; Sen, 1979, pp. 203–205) specifically considered a situation where between two individuals, one, let’s say person 2, is a physically handicapped. Their needs cannot be the same, their abilities to derive utility from their share of the welfare cannot be the same; but Utilitarianism would treat their well-being as the same. Also, the net outcome or aggregate consequence will not reflect the individual needs and their levels of difference. Thus, the calculation of consequences in terms of aggregate cannot truly capture or address the differential in individual needs that may be there in the real society. Moreover, the Utilitarian notion of equality starts to give counterintuitive results when applied to people who cannot be treated as equals. Sen argues that if person 2, because of being a cripple, gets only half the utility from any level of income than the able-bodied person 1, the maximization of utility principle of Utilitarianism would end up giving more to the able-bodied Person 1, than the cripple person 2. For, the able-bodied person 1 will have superior efficiency to produce more utility out of his or her share of income. Person 2, as a physically handicapped, will have limitations to derive the same level of utility with the same efficiency, even if their shares are the same. 5. Utilitarian calculation of consequences is unrealistic: Critics object to the Utilitarian calculation of consequences on various other grounds. One of them is that the Utilitarian proposal is overambitious and unrealistic. They claim that it seems to require that each time one has to act, the agent must calculate all the consequences of the action and its all possible alternatives. They conclude that it is impossible to do so. For, it requires an agent to know all the possible alternative options for an action. Moreover, the agent is required to know all the probable consequences of each of those options. Without such knowledge, one cannot calculate the net benefit which is crucial for choosing the right action. However, it is simply not feasible to do that every time by everyone. Hence, as

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a decision procedure, the critics claim that the Utilitarian scheme does not offer a practical solution for coming to an ethically correct decision. In response, some (Sinott-Armstrong, 2021) claim that this objection is actually based on a misinterpretation of Utilitarianism. It assumes that the principle of utility is to be used as a decision procedure or guide, that is, as a method that agents consciously can apply to acts in advance to help them make decisions. However, most classic and contemporary Utilitarians and consequentialists did not view the Utilitarian consequence calculation as a precise, demanding decision procedure (Bales, 1971). Among the key proponents of Utilitarianism, Bentham clearly expressed that he does not consider the Utilitarian calculus as a decision-making procedure to be followed before every ethical judgment. He understood that to expect that would be unreasonable. He wrote: It is not to be expected that this process [his hedonic calculus] should be strictly pursued previously to every moral judgment (Bentham, 1789, Chap. IV, Sect. VI).

Mill too opined that it is a misinterpretation of Utilitarianism to think that to calculate the consequences an agent must always consider the outcome for the entire world. In his words: it is a misapprehension of the utilitarian mode of thought to conceive it as implying that people should fix their minds upon so wide a generality as the world, or society at large (Mill, 1861/1998, Chap. II, Par. 19).

In other words, Mill did not think that the Utilitarian approach is a calculus which must take every possible outcome for a vast generality, such as the whole society, for making a decision. Sidgwick, another proponent of Utilitarianism, also allowed for human limitations to show up in the consequence calculation. What makes the right action right need not always be what we want to achieve with the action. He wrote: It is not necessary that the end which gives the criterion of rightness should always be the end at which we consciously aim (Sidgwick, 1907, 413).

It follows that Sidgwick too did not see the Utilitarian calculation of consequences as a definite, precise decision procedure. If the principle of utility is used as a criterion of the right rather than as a decision procedure, then Classical Utilitarianism does not require that anyone know the total consequences of anything before making a decision. Therefore, there is no unrealistic absolute requirement in Utilitarianism to know all the possible consequences of an action. 6. Utilitarian calculation of consequences is overly demanding: Others have objected that the Utilitarian requirement to maximize utility in decision-making is overly demanding, because it imposes on us decisions that should be left up to the individual as ethical choices, which are neither ethically prohibited or obligatory (Scheffler, 1982). These are the ethical choices that someone as a person voluntarily should choose, if they wish to do the right thing. However, if we have to always choose by utility maximization, then those everyday choices would

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have to be very different from what they are now. For example, suppose that I have chosen to clean my own cupboard during the weekend. If I have to choose by what maximizes the utility for all, then perhaps doing social work among the underprivileged in that time would certainly benefit many more and maximize the utility. So, I ought to serve the underprivileged during my free time in the weekend instead of cleaning my cupboard. However, helping the underprivileged in my free time should be a matter of my free choice and should not be a mandatory action. Moreover, the Utilitarian approach makes my choice of cleaning my own cupboard look ethically questionable and perhaps wrong. However, cleaning my own cupboard does not seem like an ethically wrong act. The critics claim that Utilitarian principle should not intervene in such personal choices. In defense, the Utilitarians argue that this objection rests on a misinterpretation of Utilitarianism. Though it is prescribed that we morally ought to maximize utility, the theory does not subscribe to the view that it is not necessarily always ethically wrong to fail to maximize utility. According to the Utilitarians, we ought to certainly engage much more in helping the needy, and in other social work for the upliftment of the underprivileged, but to clean one’s own cupboard is not a morally wrong act. It is an ethically innocuous act, which is neither right nor wrong. It is an optional act, which the individual is left free to pursue. Apart from the above, some of the leading thinkers of modern India have also expressed their own reservations against Utilitarianism. For example:  Swami Vivekananda on Utilitarianism: Swami Vivekananda, who was a spiritual leader and a visionary, found the hardcore empirical character of Utilitarianism as an ethical theory problematic. Swamiji believed in ethics as universal, eternal, and spiritual in nature. He opined that the concept of utility in Utilitarianism is too narrow; at most the Utilitarian considerations can apply to present-day society. But beyond the realm of present-day society, Utilitarianism has no value. It is not eternal, whereas ethical codes are supposed to be eternal (Vivekananda, 2009). According to Swami Vivekananda, in its insistence to be pragmatic and practical, Utilitarianism does not want humans to reach out to the infinite and walk the super-sensuous path of spirituality; thus, it is limited as a theory of ethics (Vivekananda, 2007). He also observed that Utilitarianism wants us to be beneficent and altruist. As a monk, he understood human distress too well and agreed that human happiness is a worthy goal. However, his point was that such action has to come from an ideal within. Unless there is a lofty, spiritual ideal in life, in his view the question ‘why be good to the others?’ remains unanswered (Vivekananda, 2007). Thus, in his views, Utilitarianism is inherently limited as an ethical theory; in the name of ethics it merely hands us an expedient tool.

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Similar sentiments were expressed by Sri Aurobindo, Tilak, and Gandhiji: They found the purely materialistic nature of Utilitarianism and the hedonistic calculus of Bentham “artificial and egoistic” (Varma, 1955, p. 241). Each of them voiced a concern that though a theory of normative ethics, Utilitarianism does not sufficiently encourage spiritual upliftment in an individual. On the other hand, it leads to the neglect of the interest of the minority. Instead of making pleasure or pain as the ultimate criterion, Utilitarianism should work for the good of all sentient beings, as the ideal of sarva-bhuta-hita in Gita speaks of (Ibid.).

6.15 Summary of the Chapter In this chapter, we have discussed a very important theory of normative ethics, Utilitarianism. We have outlined what consequentialism is in normative ethics and what different forms consequentialism can take. Utilitarianism was positioned as a prime exemplar of consequentialism. That the philosophy based on pleasure or happiness as a core value of human life has been present for long was established by short overviews on the philosophy of the Charvaka School of India, hedonism of Aristippus and Epicurus in Ancient Greece, and traces of thoughts found in Ancient Chinese texts. In contrast, Classical Utilitarianism was presented as the first systematic, philosophical theory based on the idea of pleasure or happiness, with contributions from early renaissance thinkers, such as Gassendi. As the credit for formulating Classical Utilitarianism goes to Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, the salient contributions of both Bentham and Mill to Utilitarianism were discussed separately, along with a short but in-depth look at the social milieu which created the backdrop for Bentham and Mill’s theory. The central tenets of Classical Utilitarianism have all been discussed with possible applications in personal and social spheres. Act Utilitarianism and Rule Utilitarianism have also been discussed as two major subtypes of Utilitarianism. In addition, Negative Utilitarianism has been introduced as an interesting, more recent interpretation of Utilitarian principles by Karl Popper. After outlining Utilitarianism, a more detailed discussion was taken up on the implementation of the principles of the theory. In this connection, important lines of distinctions were drawn, such as the distinction between Utilitarianism and self-interest maximization, the distinction between Utilitarianism and Majoritarianism. In this connection, Stakeholder theory of Freeman was introduced. Towards the end, the strengths of Utilitarianism were highlighted, and some of the objections against the theory also were discussed. It was suggested that Utilitarianism can respond to some of these objections in a befitting and better manner than to some other objections. It was implied that the objections may show some limitations in the theory; however, they do not make a case for total rejection of the theory. What I have also shown in this chapter is how to apply the principles and considerations raised by a normative theory of ethics in decision-making. I have also shown with numerous examples how and where utilitarian arguments and thoughts have been employed in weighty social policies and key decisions. In the present society

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that we currently live in, it appears that there will be more and more occasions for the readers to apply the important learnings from the theory.

Study Resources 1. Driver, Julia. (2011). Consequentialism, London: Routledge. 2. Driver, Julia, “The History of Utilitarianism”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford. edu/archives/win2014/entries/utilitarianism-history/ 3. Duignan, B. and West, Henry R. (2021, March 2). Utilitarianism. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/utilitarianism-philosophy 4. Mill, John Stuart. (1861/1998). Utilitarianism, Roger Crisp (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press. 5. Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (2018, April 6). Hedonism. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/hedonism 6. Moen, O.M. (2015). Hedonism before Bentham. Journal of Bentham Studies, 17, 1–18. 7. Riepe, D. (1956). Early Indian Hedonism. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 16 (4), 551–555. 8. Ryan, Alan. (1990). The Philosophy of John Stuart Mill, Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. 9. Troyer, J (ed.). (2003). The Classical Utilitarians: Bentham and Mill. Hacket Publishing. Kindle edition available. ISBN-13: 978-0872206496.

Study Questions 1. Explain in your own words what consequentialism is. Illustrate the concept by two examples of your own. Mention two problems with a purely consequentialist approach to the moral worth of an action. 2. About the Charvakas, which of the statements is false? (a) The Charvakas promoted an ethics of life based on pleasure or happiness for the present life (before one’s death). (b) The Charvakas argued for a life of pleasure unmixed with pain. (c) The Charvakas did not make any qualitative distinction in pleasures to be pursued in life. (d) The Charvakas believed that what we ultimately desire is pleasure. 3. Consider this definition:

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Utilitarianism is the view that so long as an action provides me with more measurable economic benefits than costs, the action is morally right.

4. 5. 6.

7.

8.

Is this definition correct, or incorrect? If you find it incorrect, identify each of the mistakes in the definition. Did the Charvakas endorse a philosophy of gratification of immediate pleasures? Explain. What was the central idea of hedonism of Aristippus? How is that hedonism different from the hedonism of Epicurus? What were the important contributions of Peter Gassendi in support of hedonism against the critique of the early Christian theologians? In what way did these help Classical Utilitarianism? What is Bentham’s concept of social utility? What exactly Bentham meant by claiming that the principle of social utility can be used for both individual actions and actions by a Government? Select the false statement: (a) Bentham believed that humans in general desire pleasure and want to avoid pain. (b) Bentham claimed that an action is right or wrong depends on whether it passes the standard set by the Greatest Happiness Principle. (c) In Bentham’s Hedonistic Calculus, by proximity he meant how acute the pleasure or pain is as a consequence of the action. (d) Bentham maintained that the Utilitarian calculation need not be performed before every action, but should be given due consideration.

9. Explain what Bentham’s Greatest Happiness Principle is, and what role it plays in Utilitarianism. According to Bentham, how is the quantity of happiness to be measured? 10. Name at least two of Mill’s original and significant contributions to Utilitarianism and show whether and how Mill’s ideas helped Bentham’s Utilitarianism. 11. What was the measure Mill took when faced with the criticism that Utilitarianism is a doctrine which is worthy only of the swine? How did his revision altered the social vision of Utilitarianism? 12. Explain the proportionality clause in Mill’s definition of Utilitarianism? What is the impact of such as a clause in the ethical evaluation of actions as per Utilitarianism? 13. When faced with the criticism that Utilitarian happiness is not a goal which is attainable in this life, how did Mill respond? Is a happy life to him is a perpetual state of ecstasy? Explain. 14. What is the Greatest Happiness Principle, and how does it determine if an action is ethically right? What are some of its implications when ethically assessing, for example, an act of donating blankets in winter? 15. Which of these is correct? According to Rule Utilitarianism (a) An act is good if and only if its outcome is maximum good.

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(b) An act is good if and only if a legal rule approves it. (c) An act is good if and only if it is done with the right motive (d) An act is good if and only if it follows from a rule, which can be included among rules which produce greatest good. 16. Mention an objection to Utilitarianism which Rule Utilitarianism can address but Act Utilitarianism cannot answer. Explain. 17. Does Utilitarianism encourage us to kill an innocent person to save ten lives? Justify your answer. 18. Is the duty to reduce suffering of the others more important and urgent than the duty to maximize the happiness of the others? Explain how Karl Popper and Negative Utilitarianism would answer this question. 19. What is Aquinas’s Principle of Double Effect? How is it different from the Utilitarian understanding that consequences come mixed with good and bad consequences together? Explain. 20. True or false? “Aquinas’s Principle Double Effect is compatible with Classical Utilitarianism”. Justify your answer. 21. What are supererogatory acts? Is there room for supererogatory acts in the scheme of Utilitarian duties? Explain. 22. Is Utilitarianism a clever way to maximize one’s own interest? Is it another ploy for self-interest maximization? Justify your answer. 23. Why is Majoritarianism ethically problematic? When faced with the criticism that Utilitarianism is actually a version of Majoritarianism, how would a Classical Utilitarian may defend Utilitarianism? 24. “The in-built egalitarianism of Utilitarianism is a strong point in its favour”: Do you agree? Explain. 25. What is the ‘measurement problem’ against Utilitarianism? Explain with an example of it. How would Utilitarianism defend itself from such an objection? 26. Write a short note on: Happiness Index, the use of Utilitarian thinking in putting a global ban on CFC-based technology. 27. “Utilitarian calculation of consequences is unrealistic and overly demanding.” Critically examine the claim. 28. What do the critics of Utilitarianism mean by the claim that “with emphasis on aggregate utility, Utilitarianism fails to address the individual need“? Explain.

Research Exercises 1. “Utilitarianism is the view that so long as an action provides me with more measurable economic benefits than costs, the action is morally right”. Do you agree or disagree with this statement? If you think this definition is incorrect, identify the mistakes contained in this definition of Utilitarianism and argue in support of your answer.

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2. What would be the Utilitarian argument for the protection of environment from human misuse and abuse? Clearly articulate the argument showing its link to the established principles of Classical Utilitarianism. 3. As you may know, some countries have legally permitted Euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, whereas some countries have not. Comment on what kind of Utilitarian calculation of benefits and costs may have been done by the countries which have not allowed Euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. 4. Is Human Development Index in use for improving the public policies of any country? Is Happiness Index used in any public policy discourses? Find out and make a small report.

Case Study Discussion Ethics Case 6.1 The World Wide Web does not really protect anonymity. Governments, law courts, and other officials who want to censor, trace, or examine files on the Web can go to the server where they think the file is stored. Using their subpoena power, they can comb through the server’s drives to find the files and the identity of the creator of the files. In June 2000, AT&T Labs announced the creation of Publius, a software that enables the Web users to encrypt their files and to store them in several different servers scattered all over the globe. As a result, attempts to trace, censure, or examine the files would find it impossible to succeed because without the help of the person who created the file it would be impossible to locate and identify the fragments of the encrypted file. Many welcomed this idea, but others were dismayed. An anti-pornography activist stated: “Who wants to be more anonymous than criminals, terrorists, child molesters and pornographers, hackers and e-mail virus punks?” On the other hand, the creators of Publius hoped that their program would help people in countries where freedom of speech was repressed. Case 6.1. Questions 1. Consider the arguments provided in favor and against Publius. Answer if these arguments are consequentialist or non-consequentialist in nature. If these are consequentialist arguments, which category of consequentialism would they fit best? Justify your answer. 2. How would a Utilitarian calculation of consequences work in this case? What would it recommend?

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Ethics Case 6.2 In 2004, a major multi-national pharmaceutical company was charged with sponsoring at least four medical trials since 1995 using Hispanic and Black children from a Children’s care home, which specialized in caring for the HIV+. The children in the home were either HIV+ or born to HIV+ mothers. Their parents were dead, untraceable, or deemed unfit to look after them. The experiments sponsored by the company were designed to test the ‘safety and tolerance’ of AIDS medications, some of which had potentially dangerous side-effects. Some of these trials were designed to test the ‘toxicity’ of AIDS medications. One involved giving children as young as four a high-dosage cocktail of seven drugs at one time. Another looked at the reaction in sixmonth-old babies to a double dose of a childhood vaccine. The argument in defense was that the experiments were conducted so that safe medicines may be developed for the HIV/AIDS patients all over the world. It was also argued that they enabled these children to obtain state-of-the-art therapy which they would otherwise not have received for potentially fatal illnesses. However, health campaigners argued that there is a difference between providing the latest drugs and experimentation. They claimed that many of the experiments were ‘phase 1 trials’—among the most risky, and that the babies were treated like laboratory animals. HIV tests for babies were not a reliable indicator of actual infection, and therefore, toxic drugs could have been given to healthy infants. HIV drugs are similar to those used in chemotherapy and can have serious side-effects. There were also pressure put to find out who approved the trials and to reveal who gave consent on behalf of the children and on what grounds. The company confirmed that it provided funds for some of the experiments but denied any improper action. It said that these studies were implemented by a clinical research network, and the company’s involvement was only to provide the study drugs or funding with no interactions with the patients. Case 6.2. Questions 1. Was Utilitarian arguments provided in the defense of the experiments conducted? Explain. 2. What was being suggested by the argument of the health campaigners? 3. Does this case provide a strong argument against Utilitarianism and its principle of Greatest Happiness for the greatest numbers? Justify your answer.

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Ethics Case 6.3 In 1960s, Ford & Co, USA, wanted a quick design, manufacture, and marketing of a low-cost car from Ford. Lee Iaccoca, President in Ford Motor Co, USA, was behind the design of such a car. The car was named “Ford Pinto”. Japanese cars became quite popular and captured a sizeable market share of the American automobile market. With “Ford Pinto”, Ford & Co. wanted to capture the market back from the Japanese car industries. Pinto’s fuel tank was placed behind the rear axle. Before launching the product, test data on the car’s performance showed that the car’s design allowed its fuel tank to be easily damaged in the event of a rear-end collision. Data indicated that a rear-end collision even at 20 mph would cause rupture and spray of gas in passenger area, resulting in deadly fire and explosion. Later, critics also pointed out that the car did not have any real reinforcing structure between the rear panel and the tank like a rear bumper. This meant that in certain collisions, the tank would be thrust forward into the differential, which had several protruding bolts that could puncture the tank. This and the possibility that the doors may jam during an accident made the car a veritable deathtrap. Ford Motors knew about this design flaw, but refused to pay the expense for redesigning. So, the managerial decision was, as in the case of corporate cost-cutting, to go ahead with the production and sale of Ford Pinto. Their justification was as follows: Cost of modifying the tank: $11 × 12.5 million automobiles = $137 million. On the other hand, modification or redesign would stop estimated 180 burn deaths possibilities, injuries, and 2100 burned automobiles. Value of possible life lost was held at $200,000 for each person, serious burn injury at $67,000 per person, etc.; so in total the cost for compensation was estimated at $49.15 million. Ford management decided that it would be cheaper to pay off possible lawsuits for resulting deaths and burns and injuries. The real outcome, however, was quite different. Pinto sold to massive numbers. However, within a decade, about 27 persons died in automobile fire and explosion in Pinto, about 120 people were severely burnt, many underwent painful skin graft, and others remained scarred for life. Many major lawsuits were slapped on the Ford & Co, asking for compensation. Even criminal charges were pressed, since it was established that the company knew about the danger that they were putting the unsuspecting consumers in. The negative publicity against the company was huge. Finally, the company had to undertake a costly recall of all affected Pintos from the market. In the process, Ford lost several million dollars and gained a reputation for manufacturing “the

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barbecue that seats four”, i.e. for manufacturing a four-seater car that actually is a fire-pit which roasts its passengers. Ultimately, Ford had to eventually phase Pinto out. Case 6.3. Questions 1. Some would say that Ford & Co went into trouble because of the benefit– cost calculation of Utilitarianism is inherently defective. Others claim that it was a wrong application of utilitarian scheme on their part. Which one do you think is right? Or, do you think something else was wrong in this case? Briefly justify your answer.

Key Terms • Actual consequentialism: This is a kind of consequentialism which insists that the ethical rightness or wrongness of an action depends on the actual consequences of the action. • Charvaka School of thought: The Charvaka School of thought is an ancient Indian school of philosophical thoughts. It rejected the authority of the Vedas, Upanishads, and the concepts and injunctions that come from these texts. It also rejected the entities and the world that is beyond the reach of the sensory experiences. Instead, it preached and practiced a philosophy of life based on the pursuit of pleasure and happiness in the present life. It is a kind of hedonism. • Consequentialist ethical theories: These are a cluster of normative ethics theories which claim that whether or not an action is ethically right or wrong, depending solely on the consequences of the action. • Direct consequentialism: A type of consequentialism which holds that whether an act is morally right depends only on the direct consequences of that act itself. • Evaluative consequentialism: Evaluative consequentialism holds that ethical rightness or wrongness of an action depends only on whether or not the consequences produce a certain accepted value. • Foreseeable or probable consequentialism: This is a version of consequentialism which claims that to determine the ethical rightness or wrongness of an action we should consider its, not actual but, consequences which are foreseeable by a reasonable person; or at its probable consequences. • Hedonism: Hedonism is the name of a philosophical position which upholds pleasure or happiness as the central value in human lives. • Indirect consequentialism: Indirect consequentialism holds that when determining the ethical rightness or wrong of an action, the consequences of, not just that individual action, but the consequences of acts of similar kind, should be taken into account

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• Objective consequentialism: This kind of consequentialism considers only the objectively likely or probable consequences of an action. Objectively likely means that any person in that position would be able to see the consequences as likely or probable consequence. • Pluralistic evaluative consequentialism: This is a group of evaluative consequentialists who allow more than one kind of value, to evaluate ethical rightness or wrongness of an action. • Majoritarianism: It is the position that the numerical majority of a population should always have the final say and the final right to decide on behalf of a society. • Maximizing consequentialism: Maximizing consequentialism holds that an action is ethically permissible if and only if there is no other act which would produce more good than it. In other words, an act is ethically right if and only if it can bring the best consequence. • Negative Utilitarianism: Negative Utilitarianism is the view that the duty is not to maximize happiness, but to reduce unhappiness. Classical Utilitarianism—the injunction of maximizing happiness of Classical Utilitarianism is to be replaced by the injunction to minimize the suffering. Karl Popper proposed the idea, but Ninian Smart took it as an amended and alternative form of Utilitarianism. • Normative ethics: It is that ethics which sets norms or standards to determine right and wrong human conduct and aims to guide us to choose the ethically right actions and to avoid the ethically wrong actions. • Satisficing consequentialism: Satisficing consequentialism claims that an act is ethically permissible if and only if its consequences are satisfactory. The consequences need not be the best consequences • Social utility: Bentham understood social utility as the ability of an action to be useful to the society. Social usefulness or utility is to be understood as the ability to produce happiness for the society. Bentham recommended that this concept should be used to evaluate the rightness of action of ordinary people as well as a government. • Subjective consequentialism: These are the consequentialist theories which insist that that the consequence should be foreseen, foreseeable, or viewed as probable, by the specific agent of that action. • Supererogatory acts: The ethically supererogatory actions are a special class of ethically rights actions, which are not ethically required but are actions that go beyond the call of duty. They are not required, but if one does it, it is praiseworthy as exemplary act. • Universalistic hedonism: It is a variant of hedonism that claims that we should seek the happiness of all, or the greater good.

Chapter 7

Normative Ethical Theories: II

In this chapter we shall: ˛ Gain an understanding about non-consequentialist ethics as a preeminent branch of normative ethics ˛ Learn about Kant’s deontological ethics and its key contributions as a major non-consequentialist normative ethics theory ˛ Understand what Aristotle’s virtue ethics is, and its illuminating concepts of ethical virtue, practical wisdom, character, and eudaimonia ˛ Find out what feminist ethics is, and how ethics of care is a worthy example of a feminist ethics ˛ To learn from major feminist ethicists the major tenets of ethics of care ˛ Gain a critical understanding about the strengths and the limitations of ethics of care.

Main Topics in this Chapter Non-consequentialism Kant’s Deontological Ethics Three formulations of the Categorical Imperative Strengths and limitations of Kant’s ethics Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics Virtue as the golden mean Limitations of Virtue ethics Ethics of Care as Feminist ethics Precepts of ethics of care, and the duty to care Limitations of ethics of care

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 C. Chakraborti, Introduction to Ethics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-0707-6_7

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7.1 Non-consequentialism Learning about the theories of normative ethics would remain seriously incomplete if we do not come to know about the position of non-consequentialism and the normative theories which come under the umbrella term of ‘non-consequentialist theories’. It, as already mentioned in Chap. 6, is a well-established category of the theories of normative ethics. In this chapter, we shall discuss non-consequentialism first and then examine the major theories of ethics which are instances of nonconsequentialist way of ethical thinking. Non-consequentialism is the position which, as its name suggests, rejects the thesis of consequentialism. Its negative thesis is that consequences of an action should not be the only criteria to determine the ethical rightness or wrongness of the action. The position is not against considering the consequences. Consequences may be a factor to determine ethical rightness and wrongness, but this position insists that consequences alone cannot be the factor to decide the ethical rightness or wrongness of an action (Kamm, 2013). Its positive thesis is that there are other aspects of an action which too must be considered when determining the ethical worth of an action. As to what those aspects are, different kinds of answers come from the non-consequentialist theories, as we shall find out when we examine them. Box 7.1 Non-consequentialism as a position in Ethics Non-consequentialism is the position in ethics which holds that consequences of an action should not be the only criteria to determine the ethical rightness or wrongness of the action. It strongly recommends that other aspects of an action must also be considered when evaluating the ethical worth of an action.  However, it also believes that the rightness or wrongness of an action is determined by the properties which are intrinsic to the action. In other words, the rightness or wrongness may be inherent in the action itself; such that regardless of their consequences, the actions may have a certain ethical quality. Thus, this position upholds tenets which strikingly oppose the claim of consequentialism. It upholds that: • An action by nature can be ethically wrong, no matter how much benefit it brings as a consequence to how many. • An action by nature can be ethically right, irrespective of what consequences it may bring about. • It follows that unethical actions, even if they have praiseworthy consequences, remain unethical. • It also follows that ethically praiseworthy actions remain ethically right irrespective of their consequences. In its rejection of consequentialism, non-consequentialism does not make a distinction whether the consequences are of a particular action or of a rule. In other words,

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it refuses to accept both Act Utilitarianism and Rule Utilitarianism. It argues that even when their consequences are the same, one of the two actions A or B, or one of the two rules A and B, may still be right and the other one may be wrong. Example 1 Let us suppose that A and B are two ethical rules and they both can produce the consequence C, which maximizes the overall benefit. However, A advises the use of an unethical means to achieve C, whereas B advises the use of an ethically permissible means to achieve C. Consequentialism would approve both A and B as ethically permissible rules. However, non-consequentialism would approve B but would reject A. It would reject A on the ground of unethical means adopted, despite the consequence C. The lesson that we may learn from example 1 is that non-consequentialism does not believe that the end can justify the means. The means adopted to achieve an end is equally important. This example 1 and its pictorial representation in Pic. 7.1 are about two action rules, A and B. However, you can see that the point made here can be easily also extended to cases where A and B represent, not rules, but individual actions. Between two actions, which lead to a widely beneficial consequence, if one of them adopts an unfair means and the other one does not, the one with the unfair means would be rejected by non-consequentialism as an ethically wrong action. Consider for example:

Rule A

Rule B

Ethical means

Unethical means

Consequence C

Pic. 7.1 Pictorial representation of example 1

Example 2 Every country has human organ shortage and has desperate people waiting for organ transplant to survive. However in Country A, forcible extraction of human organs from ordinary people who are alive is allowed; whereas in country B, only voluntary donation of organs is allowed.

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Needless to say, non-consequentialism would not approve of Country A’s actions, even if it is argued that procurement of organs in this way can actually help a lot of people. For, the manner of procurement is not ethical, and therefore non-consequentialism would not ethically permit the action. From the above, I hope you can understand the difference between consequentialism and non-consequentialism. Non-consequentialism uses a sharply contrasting criterion for evaluating an action or a rule as ethically right or wrong than what consequentialism offers. When faced with a decision to judge an action as ethically right or wrong, non-consequentialism would ask questions which would be very different from what consequentialism would ask. Box 7.2 would give you an idea about the kinds of questions which non-consequentialism may ask before judging the ethical quality of an action. Box 7.2 Questions that may be raised by non-consequentialist theories 1. Was it an ethically permissible manner in which the action was done? Did the manner, for instance, involve exploitation of another person? 2. Was the action fair/just to all concerned? 3. Would the agent like to be at the receiving end of the action? 4. Was the action done with the right intent/motive? 5. Does the action violate anyone’s fundamental right? 6. Did the action show care where it is due? We may summarize the main contentions of non-consequentialism as a position as follows: • Consequences of an action, or policy, does matter when evaluating the ethical rightness or wrongness of the action; but it cannot matter alone or exclusively as the sole criterion. Utilitarianism, and its variants, are all wrong, as they take a partial view of what constitutes ethical rightness or wrongness. • To determine whether the action is ethically right or wrong, aspects others than the consequence of the action should also be considered. • Of two actions, even if they have the same consequence, one may still be ethically right and the other wrong. • Actions, even if their consequences maximize the happiness of the greatest number, can still be unethical • The rightness or wrongness of an action is based on properties intrinsic to the action Given this introduction to non-consequentialism, we shall now learn about the theories which come under non-consequentialism. The theories of normative ethics which we shall cite as instances of non-consequentialist position are as follows: • Kant’s Deontological ethics • Justice theories

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• Virtue ethics of Aristotle • Feminist ethics of care. Among these, in Chap. 5 of this book, Justice theories, or the theories of justice, have already been discussed in details, Sect. 5.5. onwards. Going over Chap. 5, you shall find that the various interpretations of the concept of justice, including the more recent theories on distributive justice and capability approach and human development approach, have been discussed at length. Justice or fairness, as you may recall, is not dependent only on the consequences that an action may bring. Several other considerations have been highlighted by different theories of justice as essential conditions for ensuring that justice has been served. Thus, in general Justice theories are by nature non-consequentialist theories. Here, it may be pertinent to also mention that in his A Theory of Justice (Rawls, 1971), in the preface of the first edition, Rawls proclaimed that one of the aims of his theory of distributive justice is to offer a systematic and workable alternative to Classical Utilitarianism. Classical Utilitarianism and its consequentialist thesis, therefore, were the chief opponent of his theory of justice. Since we have already discussed the Justice theories, in the present chapter, we shall learn and examine only the remaining non-consequential theories of normative ethics: • Kant’s Deontological ethics • Virtue ethics of Aristotle • Feminist ethics of care. Without further delay, we shall get to these theories from the next section. Quick Question 7.1 Statement S: According to right to education, every child has a right to basic, primary education. Use arguments from (a) non-consequentialist ethics to justify S (b) Consequentialist ethics to justify S. Make sure that the distinction between the two sets of arguments is clear and evident.

7.2 Kant’s Deontological Ethics The name deontological ethics is derived from two Greek terms: One, the Greek term déon, which stands for duty or obligation, and two, the term logos, which stands for a study or a discourse. Hence, from the Greek terms, deontological ethics stands for

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that ethics which is based on the ethical concept of duty. Since for Kant’s ethics the ethical concept of duty is the pivotal concept; it is named as deontological ethics. Kant’s philosophical thinking on ethics may be found mostly in his The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Kant, 2012/1785). However, he has added, further developed, and even modified, those views in his subsequent works, such as The Critique of Practical Reason (Kant, 1997/ 1788), The Metaphysics of Morals (Kant, 2017/1797), and Lectures on Ethics 1 (Kant, 1997). As said already, duty, or ethical obligation, is the central topic for Kant’s ethics. We shall follow Kant to find out how he understands the concept and where his interpretation of the term stands apart from the other, more usual, interpretations. However, before that, let me also put on record that for Kant, to qualify as an ethical duty a right action requires to go through three other considerations: Box 7.3 Kant’s Requirements • The Right Motive: The right action should be done with the right motive. • The Right Manner: The right action should be done in the right manner. In the second formulation of his Categorical Imperative, Kant speaks of a certain way to behave with the fellow human beings. • The Right rule: The right action should be in accordance to the right ethical rule or principle. Kant used the term maxim for rule. He also provided testable criteria to check if the maxim is the right one.

All of these will be explained in the course of our discussion. Deontological ethics of German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1802) is perhaps the most influential and grand example of a non-consequentialist normative theory. It concerns itself with guiding the kind of choices which we ought to make, and with the choices that we should desist from.

7.2.1 Kant’s Duty is Not the Duty of the Military Model A duty in the ethical sense, put simplistically, is an action that we are ethically required to do. Not doing it would be considered as an ethical lapse as in failure to do a duty. It is an action that we are asked to do and are expected to do. But, for Kant, that common understanding of duty is not enough. For, you see, commonly we tend to think that a duty means an order, which is imposed on us by someone else. This may be called a military model of duty. The representative visual image of this model of duty is one where a military officer, who is superior in rank 1

Lectures on Ethics are actually the notes taken by Kant’s students in the courses in Ethics which Kant has delivered lectures at Konigsberg in the years 1775–1780.

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barks an order at a subordinate. The subordinate’s duty is to follow that order. The subordinate is required to follow that order. Not doing it would be considered not only as a lapse but also as an offense. It would be viewed as an act of non-compliance and insubordination. The source of the order is not within the agent, i.e. the subordinate in this case. The source of the order is external; e.g. the superior or the boss in this case, but for other cases it could be the society, the religious, or political authority. The requirement to do the duty is backed by a power asymmetry between the one who gives the order, and the one who has to carry out the duty. For example, between an ordinary employee and the boss, the power is not equal. A fear factor is likely to be in the employee that in case the order is not followed, the boss has the power to create situations that would be adverse for him or her. In military, the penalty for non-compliance of an order by a superior office is steep. So, we may summarize the military model of duty as follows: Box 7.4 The Military Model of Duty • The duty is externally imposed: The order and the decision come from another source, not from the agent. • The obligation to comply is created by a fear of consequence, or by a power asymmetry. • Compliance is expected by an external authority, and non-compliance would be taken as a serious disciplinary lapse.

Example 3 Pranesh is an ordinary soldier/jawan and a recent entrant in the army. An order from the Colonel has come for him and the other fellow soldiers in his camp: “The soldiers should join the team to keep the mountain roads clean after a snowstorm so that the military vehicles can move smoothly.”

Duty: To keep the mountain roads clean after a snowstorm.

In example 3, for Pranesh, an order has come from a superior. The understanding is that Pranesh and his fellow soldiers must follow the duty specified without questions. For Kant, however, this military model of duty is not an acceptable model for ethical duty. So, the first thing to note at this point is that Kant’s concept of ethical duty is not the military model of duty. Kant’s duty is not military model of duty

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To Kant, a duty or an ethical obligation is not an externally imposed order. It should be a self-imposed obligation. That is, the agent himself or herself should choose to do something as his or her ethical duty. The ethical duty is self-imposed implies that the source of obligation is within the agent. The agent accepts an ethical obligation. The obligation is created by the agent’s own choice and not by any external coercive force or threat. The agent voluntarily binds himself to the obligation. The agent commands himself or herself that “I should do this” or “I should not do this.” In case of failure to do the duty, the agent is answerable to himself or herself. There is no one else to be afraid of, or to answer to. Example 4 The COVID-19 has recently claimed the life of Sonal’s father, leaving her mother and the family distraught. The departed father was the sole earning member in her household. Sonal is in college, but she has a sibling who is very young and is in school. Her grandfather, a retired school teacher, also lives with them. Looking around at her family members, Sonal quietly decided: I should bear the responsibility of my family by getting a job.

Duty: To take the responsibility of the family.

In example 4, unlike Pranesh of example 3, Sonal has accepted an ethical obligation on her own and not at the order of someone else. For example, she has not chosen her duty because the society has compelled her. She has decided herself what her duty would be, not because of a component of fear of non-compliance. She has chosen because she thought that would be the right thing to do. If she fails in doing her duty, she is answerable to herself and not to anyone else. So, we may summarize Kant’s concept of duty as follows. According to Kant: Box 7.5 Kant’s idea of Ethical Duty • An ethical duty is internally imposed, or self-imposed: The order and the decision to follow come from the agent: “I should”, “I should not”. • The obligation to comply is created by the agent’s sense of obligation and not by any external threat. • Compliance is based on a rational self-realization by the agent, and noncompliance is answerable to oneself. Kant’s distinctly different concept of duty relies on Kant’s conviction that human beings have this internal capability to independently find out what is ethically right or a duty for them. Without the external coercion, or fear of consequence from an authority, the human beings are capable of figuring out what they ought to do. He also

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believed that once they realize, the humans have the capability to bind themselves voluntarily to a duty. The binding to do a duty may be understood as the commitment to carry out a duty. In example 4, Sonal made a commitment on her own to shoulder the responsibility of her family, and she did it voluntarily. This shows that Kant’s conception of duty depends to a large extent on his conception of human beings as moral agents. So, next, we shall follow Kant to grasp his conception of the humans as moral agents.

7.2.2 Kant on Human Nature and on Moral Autonomy Kant upheld that the human beings as rational moral agents are unique from the rest of the world in their unique capability. Everything in this nature, Kant writes, acts according to law. However, it is only the rational human beings who have a will, i.e. an ability to act according to the thought of a law (Kant, 2012/1785, Chap. 2). It is true that just like any other object, the human beings are also part of the natural world. As being part of the natural world, they too must follow the laws of Physics that apply to all physical things; such as the Law of Gravity and the Law of Force. However, Kant argues, human beings are not merely physical objects, they are persons. Quick Question 7.2 Identify the statements which are false among the given options, and justify why you consider them as false. 1. The Military conception of duty has a coercive element in it. 2. Kant’s conception of duty allows some consideration for the consequences of an action. 3. Doing right actions because they are advised by the friends and wellwishers will be considered as ethical duties in Kant’s ethics. For, the rational human beings stand apart from the rest of physical things in their ability of free will. With the free will, the humans escape the causal chain of the physical events. For example, just because they are hungry and the food is in front, does not necessarily mean that a human would start to eat. A human being can freely choose whether or not he or she wants to eat. Even when external causes are present, the human can exert his free will to disrupt the causal chain. So, in Kant’s view, the human beings belong to the natural world, but they are distinct from the rest in their unique attribute: They have a free will. A free will is truly free; it is a will which is not bound by any external factor, and it alone can bind itself voluntarily. In Kant’s view, humans have this unique capability.

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Kant believed that the free will of the humans endows them with the unique trait of moral autonomy. The term autonomy is derived from two Greek terms: 1. Autos (Greek): It means self. 2. Nomos (Greek): It means rule. Put together, autonomy means self-legislation or self-governance: To be ruled by one’s own choices according to one’s own beliefs and values. Autonomy is a very important concept in the ethics of Kant. Autonomy can of different kinds. For example: (a) Personal autonomy: The capacity to take one’s own decision and to choose a course of action, or even a way of life, for oneself instead of obeying the commands from the others. The decision or the course of action may not have any ethical content in it, but it shows not being under the control of the others. Example 5 Subarna deliberated on her career choices and chose a career in movie scriptwriting, despite difference of opinion with her family and friends. In example 5, Subarna illustrates personal autonomy in her career choice. (b) Political autonomy: The capacity to know and to hold one’s own political opinion, without being influenced by the others. It is also to be respected for that opinion and listened to in a political context. It is also the capacity to participate in a collective self-rule and thus not to be under the rule of a higher authority. Example 6 In USA and Canada, within the ‘reservation’ territory, many indigenous American-Indian nations have their own rules, and the usual rules of tax or gambling of the U.S. Government do not apply to them (Foldvary, 2011) However, what Kant means by autonomy in his ethics is moral autonomy, which is conceptually different from personal autonomy as well from political autonomy. So, we need to pay special attention to what moral autonomy means. (c) Moral autonomy means the capacity to consciously deliberate and to generate an ethical rule for oneself. While political autonomy refers to self-governing law, moral autonomy refers to being ethically independent. To be morally autonomous means to create one’s own ethical rules, and not to be dictated by anyone else’s ethical diktats. To be morally autonomous is also be bound by those rules by one’s free choice.

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Self-determination with ethical rules is another name for moral autonomy. As per Kant, the humans as moral agents have the moral autonomy. In what follows, we shall elaborate what that implies. As per Kant, the will of a moral agent is morally autonomous when it is: (a)  Self-legislating: It means to be ruled by one’s own ethical rule or the moral law. Self-legislating also means that the moral agent’s will is not governed by ethical rule from any external source. External sources in this context mean any source other than the agent himself or herself ; such as religious authority or Church, social norms held as conventions. No external source should decide for the moral agent what is ethically right and what is ethically wrong. If it does, then the agent cannot be morally autonomous in the proper sense. Remember that Kant belonged to the enlightenment era in Europe, that is, to the 17th and 18th CE. True to the confident spirit of the enlightenment era, Kant was convinced that the humans as rational agents themselves are sufficiently capable to generate those rules for themselves from their own reason. He strongly believed that they do not require instruction about what is ethical from any other external authority, and they should not be swayed by any external authority; such as: • • • • •

Social pressure or peer pressure Customs and conventions The law Any religious authority What is deemed as God’s will.

From the list above, you can see that Kant is actually empowering a moral agent, as a rational human, to be capable of making his or her own decisions. Contrary to the prevalent notion of compliance to the social norms of religious dictates, Kant viewed ethics as a matter of rationally deliberated upon personal choices and convictions. Note that he does not even want the law of the land influence the will of a moral agent. This implies that in Kant’s view ethics is not be confused with compliance to the law. (b)  Self-motivating and self-constraining: To be morally autonomous also means that the will can motivate itself to follow the self-imposed rule. No one else needs to make the will to obey the rule, either by threat, or by social pressure. Moreover, the will can also voluntarily accept to be constrained by that rule; i.e. it can willingly surrender itself to the instruction from the rule and behave as the rule instructs. Kant thinks that this ability to be motivated and constrained by self-imposed ethical rules is something which sets the humans apart from any other object (Pic. 7.2).

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Pic. 7.2 Moral autonomy in Kant’s ethics

So, from the above, we realize that in Kant’s understanding a morally autonomous person is both a law-maker and also is someone who is governed by that law. In case of the usual laws of a country, the law-makers and the common people who are to follow the laws are not always the same. In Kant’s view, moral autonomy means that the agent makes his or her own ethical rule or moral law, so the agent is the law-maker. And the same agent is also someone who accepts to obey the moral law.  We should also note in this context that Kant did not want a moral agent’s moral autonomy to be influenced even by the agent’s own desires. For, to be under the influence of one’s desires would be to allow an arbitrariness and an irregularity in the commitment to the moral law. He argued that the human desires are fickle and they change from day to day with the circumstances. What one desires on a normal day of life may not be what one may desire at a crisis moment in life. Today I may desire to help someone in need, but in another time I may not desire to do so. That randomness cannot be allowed in complying to the ethical rule. A steadfast commitment is what Kant expects in carrying out one’s ethical obligation. So, moral autonomy is not be influenced by one’s own desires, even if the desires are not external to the agent. Moreover, Kant maintained that the desires, though they are internal to an agent, are inessential to an agent. We can realize that when we see that though someone’s desire may change, with that change the agent does not become a different person. Therefore, in moral autonomy, the agent’s desires should not have any influence.  It is natural, then, to ask what would Kant allow in governing the morally autonomous agent’s choices? The answer is: The only thing which Kant would allow to govern an autonomous person’s choices and actions would be the agent’s own rationality. In Kant’s view, rationality is essential to the self. Kant’s moral agents are independent agents, who are capable to make their own rational decisions about what is ethically right and what is ethically wrong. We shall elaborate this idea in our discussion on his classification of the imperatives. At present, let us summarize what we learnt from the above on Kant’s contentions about moral autonomy of a moral agent:  Humans as rational moral agents have a unique ability. That unique ability is that of moral autonomy.  Moral autonomy refers to self-legislation, self-motivation, and self-constraint, according to the agent’s own rational choice.

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 Moral autonomy means to be free from external influences in one’s ethical choices.  Moral autonomy also means to be free from the influence of anything that is inessential to oneself, such as one’s own desires.  Moral autonomy is to be governed by one’s own reason or rationality.

Quick Question 7.3 1. In your own words, using your own example, explain how moral autonomy is different from personal autonomy, and political autonomy. 2. Write short notes on: (i) Self-motivation and self-constraint as part of moral autonomy, (ii) Kant’s conception of human beings.

7.2.3 Kant on Human Dignity In Kant’s scheme of things, the humans stand apart from the rest of the creatures (Rachels 1986/2012, pp. 114–17,122–23). For, in Kant’s own words, humans have a value which “is above all price”. “Value above all price” means that humans are invaluable. In Kant’s terminology, it means that the humans alone have intrinsic value. They are to be valued for themselves and are not be valued for something else. According to Kant, what makes the humans so distinctively different from the rest and confers intrinsic worth on to them, is their unique capability of moral autonomy. As a moral agent capable of being morally autonomous, every human has intrinsic worth. Each human has a dignity. Kant clearly asserts that unlike the other things, the humans deserve to be treated with respect. As we have already mentioned on different occasions, there are two ways to value things. One, things may be valued for what purpose or utility they can serve. That is to assign an instrumental value (Pic. 7.3).

Pic. 7.3 Intrinsic worth in Kant’s scheme of things

For example, a pen is a tool for writing, and it is valued for its ability to write; not for its sake per se. It is valued for what utility it can produce for us as a tool. Two,

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the other way is to value something for its own sake. That is to have intrinsic worth. In Kant’s understanding, humans or persons belong to this second category, because they are rational agents. That is, they have the ability to discern and choose freely their actions and decisions. Kant also assumes that the human beings are the only beings who have free will. Kant thought that if there were no rational beings with free will such as the humans, there would be no ethics (Rachels, 1986). In contrast, other non-human animals, Kant believed, are not part of the moral community, since they do not have free will. In Kant’s view, the non-human animals and other creatures are there merely to serve human purposes. As was the prevalent view of his time, he too subscribed to the view that these beings, and everything else, have only an instrumental value to serve the human beings. In Kant’s ethics, therefore, the human beings occupy a very special place in the hierarchy of creatures. He maintains that every human being is to be regarded as a person, as opposed to an object. A person, being a rational, morally autonomous agent with free will, is worthy of respect. Kant emphasizes that a person, unlike an object, deserves respect, and does not deserve to be treated as an object with merely instrumental value. Kant’s concept of human dignity: In Kant’s view, every human being, irrespective of what class or rank he or she belong to, has equal intrinsic worth. Kant refers to human dignity. In his view, human dignity is unconditional and is incomparable worth, which is innate or given in every human being. We, as humans, neither acquire it nor can we delink ourselves from it (Hill, 2015, pp. 215–221). Every human being has human dignity and deserves to be treated with respect. Box 7.6 Kant on human dignity In Kant’s opinion, every human being, regardless of social rank or economic status, has intrinsic worth. Human dignity is innate in every human being. We can neither acquire it, nor can alienate ourselves from it.  Human Dignity and Human Rights: The concept of human dignity in Kant’s ethics is centrally important. The concept has been interpreted and applied in many different ways. One of these interpretations is manifested in the theory of Human Rights and the application of this theory in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations (UN). The UN declaration of Human Rights asserts that it is in the recognition of the “inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family” (UN, 1948). Various human rights are said to be derived from this concept of human dignity which is inherent in a human. Because a human has human dignity, a human also has certain inalienable rights. It does not matter, who the human being is in terms of caste, class, gender, or religion, or where the human is in terms of nationality, country of domicile, certain rights attach themselves to the human. These rights are known as the human rights.

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Box 7.7 Abbreviated list of Universal Declaration of Human Rights • Article 1 Right to Equality • Article 2 Freedom from Discrimination • Article 3 Right to Life, Liberty, Personal Security • Article 4 Freedom from Slavery • Article 5 Freedom from Torture, Degrading Treatment • Article 6 Right to Recognition as a Person before the Law • Article 7 Right to Equality before the Law • Article 8 Right to Remedy by Competent Tribunal • Article 9 Freedom from Arbitrary Arrest, Exile • Article 10 Right to a Fair Public Hearing • Article 11 Right to be considered innocent until proven Guilty • Article 12 Freedom from Interference with Privacy, Family, Home, and Correspondence • Article 13 Right to Free Movement in and out of the Country • Article 14 Right to Asylum in other Countries from Persecution • Article 15 Right to a Nationality and Freedom to Change It

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Article 16 Right to Marriage and Family Article 17 Right to own Property Article 18 Freedom of Belief and Religion Article 19 Freedom of Opinion and Information Article 20 Right of Peaceful Assembly and Association Article 21 Right to Participate in Government and in Free Elections Article 22 Right to Social Security Article 23 Right to Desirable Work and to join Trade Unions Article 24 Right to Rest and Leisure Article 25 Right to Adequate Living Standard Article 26 Right to Education Article 27 Right to Participate in the Cultural Life of Community Article 28 Right to Social Order assuring Human Rights Article 29 Community Duties essential to Free and Full Development Article 30 Freedom from State or Personal Interference in the above Rights

Source University of Minnesota Peace and Environment Resource Centre, as cited in the UNHCR India Website [https://www.unhcr.org/getinvolved/teachingtools/469 3806f2/student-resource-sheet-ages-12-14-human-rights-refugees-universal-declar ation.html]

 Human Dignity and Bioethics: Many think that Kant’s concept of human dignity also has significant contemporary implications. In Bioethics, the concept and the practice of informed consent are said to be derived from this concept of human dignity. Informed consent means informed, voluntary, decisionally-capacitated or competent consent (Eyal, 2019). A consent may be obtained from a person in ways that are ethically problematic. For example, A may force B to give consent to something under a life threat. Or, A may withhold key information about the risks involved, and only tell B about the benefits and thus obtain consent from B with half-truths and suppressed truths. None of these would qualify as informed consent. As said above, informed consent is a process of obtaining consent, in which:

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(a) The complete information of the risks and the benefits involved are properly disclosed in a manner that is comprehensible to the other party. (b) The consent must be given voluntarily by the other party; i.e. not under compulsion, threat, fear, or force. (c) The other party must be a competent consent-giver. That is, the other party must be cognitively mature and capable to give an informed consent. A consent from a child, who is cognitively immature to fully understand the import of the consent; or the consent of a developmentally challenged person, who is incapacitated decision-maker, is not acceptable as informed consent. In most countries, in the healthcare sector, informed consent as a process and as an outcome has now become a legal requirement. Informed consent must be obtained from a patient before a treatment is undertaken or before a procedure, such as surgery, is done. For a participant in clinical trial of some medicine or medical research, informed consent must be obtained after full disclosure about the treatment and the nature of the study has been disclosed, and after ensuring that the participant has comprehended what has been disclosed. Of course, in other sectors also, informed consent is equally ethically important. For instance, when installing a CC TV in a public area, it is both ethically and legally obligatory to inform the public that the area is under CC TV surveillance. Since the area is public, the informed consent is not obtained individually, but the information is shared publicly in the form of clearly visible notices. However, we do get to hear about incidents of unethical surveillances of unsuspecting people. Some philosophers find the concept of informed consent a derivative from Kant’s concept of inalienable human dignity which each person has. Because of human dignity, we owe it to a human being to show due respect. Respecting his or her informed choice is an extension of showing that due respect to the decision-maker. For an object, we do not need to perform this informed consent process, because an object, being functional and instrumental in nature, does not deserve that show of respect. The main rationale of the practice of obtaining informed consent is based on human unique capability of moral autonomy (Donnagan, 1977). Quick Question 7.4 How is Kant’s concept of human dignity linked to the Human Rights? According to Kant, should the mentally ill, the physically disabled, have the same Human Rights as the mentally healthy and physically able-bodied people? Justify.

7.2.4 Kant on Good Will and the Duty Motive From the above, you can now see that Kant perceived the humans as rational agents who could decide the ethical rules for themselves. He gave us a theoretical framework

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of Categorical Imperative through which these rules can be derived by the agents. Next, we shall follow this framework to understand how these rules may be derived and tested.  Before we begin discussing the Categorical Imperative of Kant, it must be emphasized that ethics for Kant is a very personal matter. To him, ethics is a firstperson endeavor. That is, ethics concerns itself with actions and decisions of the agent himself or herself about his or her own actions. For him, ethics is not compliance to the norms posed from outside, such as the social norms. It is not at all about how the others in the society look at the agent and what opinion they may hold about the agent or what actions are to be followed. Ethics is about the decisions and actions or inactions by the agent and only by the agent. As said earlier, Kant does not think that the society, religious authority, or even a God has any role to play in ethics. Box 7.8 Kant’s view on ethics • For Kant, ethics is about the decisions and actions or inactions by the agent and only by the morally autonomous agent. • For him, ethics is not compliance to the social norms. • It is not at all about how the others in the society look at the agent and what opinion they may hold about the agent. • It is not what the authority, religious or political, instructs one to do. As per Kant, the central question of ethics is: What should ‘I’ do?

That ‘I’ in Kant’s ethics is a solitary individual, a moral agent, who is trying to figure out how to act in a ethically right way. In his exposition, Kant introduces the concept of good will to shed light on how an individual moral agent may be guided in making ethically right decisions. He begins with the statement that: The only thing in the world which is good without qualification is a good will.

A good will in this context is the personal will of an individual moral agent, and in an ideal situation, a moral agent would have a good will which fits the description good without qualification. Kant views good will as the only thing in the world which is good in an unqualified sense. In his opinion, a good person is good by having a good will.

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Good without qualification in this context means that: (a) The good will is absolutely good in itself, not for some other purpose, which then would become a qualifier for it. It is not good because of what it can bring, it is good for its own sake. It is not good just from a particular perspective; it is good above all particularities. It is not good only because someone desires, or prefers it or is inclined towards it. It is good irrespective of all such subjective elements. (b) The good will is good in the sense that it cannot be used for any bad purpose. Other things that are good in themselves may still be used for some bad purposes. For example, health is a good; but it may be put to a bad purpose. A healthy but autocratic ruler may continue to oppress his subjects for long, being unaffected by physical ailments. A good will, on the other hand, is good in itself and thus cannot employ itself to bad purposes. Kant also maintains that a good will is not good because of what it produces. For example, A good will is not good because it helps to bring the agent’s own happiness. Or, it is not good because it succeeds in bringing the welfare of the others.  Outcome or consequences do not matter as far as the goodness of a good will is concerned. As per Kant, the good will would still “shine like a jewel” even if it is completely powerless to achieve anything or carry out any action. Kant’s basic idea is that what makes a good person good is his possession of a will which is guided and governed by the moral law. A good person is a person with a good will. The person with a good will is someone who makes only those decisions that are ethically worthy, and who would act on ethical grounds as the only conclusive reasons for accepting a decision or choosing an action. Therefore, the question above what should ‘I’ do is to be answered as follows: Each moral agent individually should act as guided by his or her good will. Box 7.9 Good will in Kant’s ethics What makes a good person good is his possession of a will which is guided and governed by the moral law. A good will is a will which is completely governed and guided by the moral law.

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A good will, for which the moral law is the decisive guide, is motivated by the idea of duty. Being motivated by the idea of duty is certainly a rather unusual idea. For, normally, people do their duties somewhat reluctantly. Kant understands that, and he also understands that for the ordinary people, being the imperfect rational creatures, the reality is that our desires and inclinations mostly drive what we choose as our actions. In short, we do mostly what we want to and not what we should, which is the crux of duty. Example 7 • I choose to sleep late because that is what I want to/desire. • I make bitter comments about others because I am inclined towards finding faults in everyone.

Given our nature, the fact that just because an action is ethically required or is a duty does not motivate us to do it. Typically we follow our desires and inclinations in our choice of actions. Kant understands the influence of desires and inclinations on us very well.  However, the specialty of a good will is that it can rise above the desires and inclinations to be stirred by duty. In Kant’s view, this very nature of the humans, which is often swayed by the desires and inclinations, is the crucial element in an ethical duty. The unqualified goodness of good will comes from the fact of being motivated solely by the moral law, despite the presence and the pull of desires and inclinations in a moral agent. His opinion is that had we been naturally saintly and could easily resist the temptations that our desires offer, the goodness of the good will would not be understood. The goodness in a good moral agent shines because it stays good unwavered by the continuous pull of desires and inclinations. Therefore, the goodness of a good will is tested by its ability to resist the natural pull of desires and inclinations. A good will is also known by the way it accepts the moral law. For Kant, a duty is not just a right action; it is not an action which merely complies with the moral law. It is an action chosen with the right motive: The duty motive. The right motive is the motivation by duty: The duty should be done from the motivation of doing a duty. The recognition of a duty should suffice to be the motive for doing a duty.

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Duty Motive as Opposed to the Other Motives

Kant explains this point about the by comparing the duty motive with other kinds of motives, such as: • Self-interest • Sympathy • Happiness Kant’s contention is that a duty done from any of these motives may be praiseworthy from other perspectives, but it cannot be regarded as duty done from the motive of duty. Self-interest

Example 8 Kant gives the example of a shopkeeper who does not cheat his customers only because he knows that his business may suffer if the other customers find out about his cheating. Here, the action chosen is: Not to cheat the customers But the motive behind the action is: To avoid being known as a cheat by the customers

So, the shopkeeper’s action is the right action (not to cheat his customers), but the motive behind the action is self-interest. In his self-interest, the shopkeeper has chosen not to cheat his customers; because he thinks if he cheats, he will eventually lose his business. In Kant’s view, the shopkeeper’s action is praiseworthy as being prudent, or as being a wise choice. It also appears as a right action from the outside. But in his view it has no moral worth because it is not done from the duty motive. The shopkeeper is not doing the right action because it is his duty not to cheat the customers. The shopkeeper’s action would become worthy of being an ethical duty if and only if he is driven by the realization that its his duty not to cheat his customers. So, a right action could be done from any of these other motives: Out of selfinterest, or from feeling good about it, or out of a feeling of sympathy or compassion. According to Kant, actions done out of these other motives disqualify the actions as being ethical duty. For he opines that these other motives have only an accidental

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link to ethics. If one is motivated to do a duty because doing so makes one feel good, or because it stirs sympathy, then doing that duty becomes contingent and dependent on that feeling. Feeings are transient by nature. If one day the feeling does not come from doing the duty, it is not sure whether one would still do what one’s duty is. Therefore, even if a right action is done from any of these other motives, Kant would not call it an ethical duty. As per Kant, the right action has to be done from the right motive: The duty motive. This purist approach of Kant for the only acceptable right motive has caused many philosophers to object. Many think that it is too stringent a requirement on Kant’s part; as we routinely do good deeds out of sympathy, compassion, concerns, or even to make our family or friends happy. When we shall discuss ethics of care in this chapter, you shall find that the feminist ethicists vehemently oppose Kant’s idea of excluding all feelings from the ethical duty. They argue that our feelings are very much part of who we are, and it is only natural that the feelings and emotions will play a role in our ethical choices. However, as said earlier, Kant’s point is a subtle one. Kant does not deny that the feelings are a part of us. He only objects against making them a right motive or doing one’s duty. His point is that the reliance on fickle feelings as motivational grounds is not the best firm basis for grounding an ethical duty. For, doing an ethical duty requires a steady commitment. Kant’s view is that the motivation in an ideal moral agent should be such that the agent would always treat considerations of duty as sufficient requirements for doing that duty. Now, going back to the topic of good will, we may link the discussion of the duty motive with that of the good will as follows: Having a good will is a requirement for ensuring the duty gets done out of the duty motive. For, having a good will ensures that: (a) The agent would be committed to perform an action if the agent realizes it as a duty, and (b) The agent would be committed not to perform an action if the agent realizes that it is not an ethically permissible action. Having a good will means that the agent’s will will keep a control on the agent’s feelings, desires and inclinations so as to have a firm commitment to perform a duty from the duty motive, and not to be led astray to the path of unethical actions. Quick Question 7.5 Suppose your friend Rubina regularly gives alms to the beggars. Seeing her do this day in and day out, one day you asked her: “Why do you give alms to the beggars? She replied: “Because it makes me happy”. Would Kant consider her action as doing an ethical duty? Explain. Would you consider her action as ethically good?

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In Kant’s ethics, the right motive for doing an ethical duty is the sheer respect for the moral law. To perform a duty out of respect for the moral law is to recognize and realize that the moral law is the supreme standard. To respect is to feel a sense of overwhelming awe. Kant thinks that the humans respect the moral law in the sense that they understand it as the supreme authority, even though they may not always be moved by it to act on a duty. This moral law of Kant is actually his Categorical Imperative, which is our next topic.

7.2.5 The Categorical Imperative Now, we come to a pivotal concept for Kant’s Ethics; namely the concept of Categorical Imperative. First, let us remind ourselves that a duty for Kant is not a military duty; it is a self-imposed obligation. It is a command or an imperative that an agent issues to oneself. Example 9 • I should lose some weight. • I should not delay any further to pay the electric bills.

Clearly, there can be many self-imposed duties as commands, but not all of them have ethical content. In example 9, you find two instances of the non-ethical imperatives. These are imperatives because these are commands issued to the agent by the agent. Each of the imperatives in example 9 carries a should or a should not and prescribes a course of action for the agent. However, they do not pertain to any ethical issue. Thus, they are imperatives to oneself but not ethical in character. Hypothetical imperative: Among the self-imposed imperatives, Kant mentions a kind of imperatives which are conditional: He calls them the hypothetical imperatives (Kant 2012 /1785, Chap. II). This kind of imperatives is a command, given that the agent wills a certain goal. It states that an action is good for some purpose. If the agent wants to achieve that goal, then the agent should perform the action. This kind of imperative has a conditional form: If I want ..., I should do x/I should not do x.

The should or should not in this kind of imperatives is conditional on the antecedent. If the agent wishes or wants a specific goal, then the should or should not applies to the agent as a rule of conduct.

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Example 10 • If I wish to be seen as trustworthy, I should always tell the truth. • If I wish to be seen as trustworthy, I should not lie.

Example 10 illustrates the conditionality of the command. Truth-telling is recommended if one wishes to pass oneself as trustworthy; otherwise not. In Kant’s view, such hypothetical imperatives, being conditional, cannot be the basic moral law on which our ethical duty would be based. For, the condition can be removed, and then, the duty which is linked to that condition also would disappear. In example 10, the agent would no longer have the duty to always tell the truth if the agent does not wish to be seen as trustworthy anymore. The commitment to the duty would become conditional. And, according Kant, that is not at all the nature of the moral law and of an ethical duty. The hypothetical imperatives may be praiseworthy from other perspectives. They can be rules of skill. For example, Example 11 If Annika wants to be good at piano, then she should practice more. Or, as we find in example 11, the hypothetical imperative may be prudent, and shrewd, action rules, which are wise in a worldly manner. But, in Kant’s view, they are non-moral because they are dependent on motives that are not ethically pure. Kant holds that any rule of conduct which is motivated by the desire by something other than the respect for the moral law cannot the ethical basis for duty. Categorical Imperative  Kant maintains that the fundamental rule for our ethical duties is a Categorical Imperative. It is a self-imposed imperative in the sense that it is a command of a rule of conduct to the free-willed moral agent, who are to follow it out of their own choice. Categorical: It is categorical in the sense that it is an unconditional command. It declares the action as “objectively necessary” without referring to any goal (Ibid.) It applies to the rational moral agent unconditionally, without any clauses, without any reference to any condition or goal. So, the imperative is never left to what the agent may or may not desire. It obligates the agent unconditionally. A Categorical Imperative has the form: I should do … I should not do… Not linked to the outcome: Kant holds that the Categorical Imperative is not concerned with what may be the outcome of the conduct. In fact, the command that

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it conveys holds no matter what the outcome is from the action. It carries with it a necessity: The action must be done (Ibid.). Universal: In Kant’s view, it is also universally valid. That is, it is applicable to everyone in every situation, regardless of the particularities of the situation or of the agent. In contrast to the example 11, the examples of a Categorical Imperative would be: Example 12 • I should always tell the truth. • I should never lie. As already mentioned, a rational realization of the duty should be sufficient motive to perform the duty commanded by the Categorical Imperative. No other kind of motive is necessary (Pic. 7.4). Imperatives

Categorical Imperative

Hypothetical Imperative

Pic. 7.4 Types of imperatives

Quick Question 7.6 Answer if the given statements are true or false, and justify your answer. According to Kant, a Categorical Imperative (a) (b) (c) (d)

Is a principle of action which apply to the others Is a command of action which is unconditional and guided by reason Is a command of action which holds true for a certain class of people Is a principle of action that does not depend on what we desire

7.2.6 Formulations of Categorical Imperative Kant proposes a theoretical framework on the Categorical Imperative by formulating it in different ways. These formulations also serve as testable criteria for any proposed rule of conduct.

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As per Kant, each of our conscious, deliberate actions reflects one or more maxims. A maxim is a personal rule or a policy on which a person’s act is based; or if the person does not have a policy, then maxim is the principle behind the decision on which the person acts (O’Neill, 1985). The maxims are not exclusive features of ethical actions. Even common decisions and behaviors can be based on maxims. According to Kant, we as persons, act according to rules or maxims. Box 7.10 A maxim in Kant’s Ethics A maxim is a personal rule or a policy on which a person’s action is based. If the person does not have such a policy, then it is the principle behind the person’s decision to act in a certain way.

Example 13 Neena decides that despite her busy schedule, she should find time to exercise. Then, as per Kant, her maxim is: I (or One) should find time to exercise despite busy work schedule. Neena is acting on a rule or maxim that doing exercise is a right choice. Now, coming back to ethical actions, whenever we want to find out if our actions are ethically right or wrong, Kant says that we should look at our maxims, and not at what consequences, good or bad, they would produce. But, how do we know which of our maxims is a duty in Kant’s sense? Kant addresses this question with his formulations of Categorical Imperative. The formulations are supposed to offer us the criteria by which we can test and identify which of our maxims is a duty in Kant’s sense, and which is not. A maxim which passes the criteria set by any of the formulations is a morally permissible duty or a Categorical Imperative. A maxim, which does not pass, is an unethical action which an agent should not engage in. In what follows, I shall discuss his two major formulations of the Categorical Imperative. Quick Question 7.7 Formulate the maxim for the agents in each of the following scenarios: (a) Harish does not pay income tax on his income from his toy store business. (b) Vartika considers it good to walk to her office than riding a crowded bus. (c) Prabir regularly donates 10% of his monthly salary to an orphanage.

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The First Formulation: Universalizability

The first formulation of the Categorical Imperative is that you are to. act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will it becomes a universal law (Kant 2012/1785, Chapter II). From the first formulation, we come to know that one should act only according to that rule which the agent can also want to be a universal rule for everyone. That is, the personal maxim should be universalizable. The first test for a maxim is whether the personal rule can also be desired to be a universal law, such that everyone can follow it. Many philosophers have opined that the first formulation gives us a decision procedure to test our ethical rules (O’Neill, 1975; Rawls, 1980). Accordingly the four steps in that procedure are as follows: 1. Formulate a rule or maxim of the proposed action 2. Reformulate that personal rule (maxim) as if it is a universal law of nature in a possible world which every rational agent in that world must follow 3. See whether the personal rule is even conceivable as a universal law of nature in that world 4. Will test: Ask yourself whether you could rationally will to act on your rule in that world. (Johnson and Cureton, 2022).  So, you see, the first step is to think over the action contemplated, and to figure out what general rule or policy you are trying to follow in the action to be done. Example 14 You are planning to donate your time at the community center to help the elderly in filling out some forms. Your personal maxim or policy may be: Helping others is good.  The 2nd step is an interesting one. You need to consider your personal maxim as if it is a universal law which holds for everyone. For that, if necessary, the maxim may be rephrased as: Example 15 Everyone should/ought to help the others.  Step 3 may be viewed as conceivability test. In it, the idea of having the personal rule of conduct becoming a universal law applicable to all has to be entertained at the conceptual level without any inconsistency. At the conceptual level it means that one has to rationally entertain the possibility at an abstract level that there is a world, in which the personal maxim has become a rule which universally applies to everyone.

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Example 16 You need to run it in your head if there is any inconsistency or conceptual problem in holding your personal maxim as a universal law. Is it logically conceivable that everyone in the world should help the others?  The step 4, on the other hand, may be called the will test. In step 4, the agent has to see if he or she still wants, without incurring any contradiction, to act on that rule in the world where everyone will follow the same rule. This will, or wanting, is not a whimsical desire. Kant wants an agent, as a rational being, to employ reasoning to see if having such a universal rule is compatible with a rational view of how things should be. Example 17 Can you will such a universal rule to be there? Do you wish it to be a universal rule by which everyone must help the others? If a proposed rule of conduct passes all four steps, then it is clearly an unconditional duty: It is a Categorical Imperative. Hence, it is ethically required to act on that rule. In his Groundwork (Kant 2012/1785), Kant also explains and illustrates with examples how a maxim may fail in one of these steps. But he discusses the examples for the first formulation of Categorical Imperative with reference to his classification of duties as follows. He writes that duties may be classified as: (i) Perfect duties and imperfect duties (ii) Duty to ourselves and duties to the others. He also gives four examples to demonstrate each kind of duty.  Perfect duty: A perfect duty is an unconditional duty. The form of a perfect duty is: One must always do x, or one must never do x. (Hill, 1971). Example 18 Kant gives the example of a man who needs money. The man understands that no one would lend him money unless he promises to repay. The man is ready to make a promise, but he also knows that he will not be able to repay. Let us suppose, Kant writes that the man still has a conscience and asks: Is it right to make a promise that I cannot keep? To know the answer, the man must formulate the maxim of his action, which Kant penned as follows: When I think I need money, I will borrow money and promise to repay it, although I know that the repayment will not ever happen. (ibid) Now, if the maxim is tested by the first formulation, Kant holds that it would fail in the 3rd step, the conceivability test. For, he thinks that there would be a contradiction

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in conceiving a world where it is a universal law. In that world, everyone may make a promise to repay, but everyone knows that the promise will not be kept. In such a world, promise-making and its intended purpose would cease to have any meaning. No one would believe when any promise is made and would laugh promise-maker as a pretender. If a maxim fails at the 3rd step, that is, the rule cannot be even conceived without contradiction as a universal law in a world, then the maxim does not qualify as a Categorical Imperative. The agent should never do it. In this case, Kant says that it is a perfect duty to never engage in any action according to that rule. That is, the agent knows that the rule or maxim proposed is an unethical rule to act upon (Pic. 7.5). Universal rule: Whenever one needs money, one will borrow money and promise to repay it, but one will not repay.

Failure at 3rd Step: One cannot conceive of such a universal rule without inconsistency: This will render promise-making universally meaningless. Everyone will make false promises, and both sides would know that the promise will not be kept.

Therefore, the maxim is not an ethical duty. It is not a Categorical Imperative

Pic. 7.5 Kant’s example of a failure in conceivability test, Step 3

A perfect duty is a Categorical Imperative, which may be expressed as ‘one should’ and also as ‘one should not…’. A perfect duty can be a duty towards oneself, and also a duty towards the others. In Kant’s view, To refrain from suicide to avoid future unhappiness is a perfect duty towards oneself.

That is, one should always refrain from committing suicide, no matter what. On the other hand, It is a perfect duty towards the others to refrain from making a false promise which one has no intention to keep. This is shown in example 18 above.

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 Imperfect duty: On the other hand, an imperfect duty means that the rule is applicable but it will also allow exceptions. Some duties are such that they are flexible and allow for exceptions. For imperfect duty, the form is: One should sometimes and to some extent do x, or not do x

Example 19 Kant gives the example of a man who is himself well-off. When he sees the others who are struggling through hardships, he thinks that there is no need for him to help the others. The maxim here is: When others are in trouble, if I am well-off, I am not required to assist the others. Kant holds that this maxim may pass the 3rd step. For, a world devoid of benevolence and sympathy is conceivable, although a world where benevolence and sympathy exist would be certainly better. However, Kant thinks that the maxim would fail in the 4th step. The will of the well-off man which sees it as a universal law would come in conflict with the will to see it enacting onto himself. That is, the man may conceive of a world where it is a rule that even when one is financially well-off, one should not extend help to the less privileged people. However, the man may realize that in some occasion he may not remain so well-off, and then he too may require help and sympathy from the others. When misfortune strikes, the same man may will or want others to help him. But then, there would be no hope of getting any help from the others in that world. So, the man will find it difficult to will the universal rule to hold. In example 19, Kant maintains that the agent has an imperfect duty. The example shows that in Kant’s ethics, benevolence or altruism is an occasional, imperfect duty. We have a duty to sometimes and to some extent help and assist others who are in trouble. One may choose the situations where one should be benevolent. Just like perfect duties, imperfect duties also can be towards oneself and towards the others. Kant’s example of imperfect duty towards oneself is: A duty to develop one’s natural talents instead of letting them rust due to laziness or procrastinating habit.

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That is, it is an occasional duty or imperfect duty to tend oneself and to develop one’s natural talents and not to be so lazy as to neglect them. One may do it in some cases and is exempted from doing it in some other cases. The example of an imperfect duty towards the others, as shown in example 19, would be: To help and assist others in distress, even when one is well-off.

Quick Question 7.8 (a) Explain the key difference between a perfect duty and an imperfect duty as formulated by Kant. (b) Give your own example of a maxim which would fail in the 3rd step of the 1st Formulation of Categorical Imperative in Kant’s ethics.

7.2.6.2

Second Formulation: The Humanity as an End

Now, we shall discuss Kant’s second formulation of the Categorical Imperative. To many, Kant’s second formulation of the Categorical Imperative is more appealing and endearing. The second formulation is often called as the Humanity Principle (Johnson & Cureton, 2022). O’Neill, however, has called it The Formula of the End in Itself (O’Neill, 1985). In Groundwork (Kant 2012/1785), Kant opines that the Categorical Imperative must be derived from a conception of something that is an end in itself , or that which has a value of its own. In this connection, he proposes humanity as an end in itself , or as something which has value in itself, and therefore which deserves to be treated in a special way. This means any one, who has humanity or is a human, has intrinsic value and ought to be treated in a special way. So, drawing from his concept of human dignity, Kant formulates the Categorical Imperative in terms of humanity as follows: The Humanity Principle

 Act in such a way as to treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of anyone else, always as an end and never merely as a means. By the expression to treat humanity, Kant intends treating all humans, irrespective of who they are, and whether it is oneself or another person. The second formulation of Categorical Imperative is a rule about how to treat a human. It directs us to treat

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all humans in a certain way (“always as an end”) and never to treat the humans in a certain way (“merely as a means”). It clearly indicates that an action, which involves treating a human merely as a means, cannot be a duty. So, let us first try to understand what Kant means by treating a person merely as a means.

7.2.6.3

To Treat a Person Merely as a Means

 What is it to treat a person “merely as a means”? Let us try to understand this. A means is a tool or an intermediary step towards a goal. So, we may try to understand to treat a human merely as a means as follows: To treat a human being merely as a means is to use the person solely as a stepping stool without acknowledging the worth of the person. To clarify further, we may follow Philosopher Onora O’Neill, who brings more into the explanation. She holds that to use someone merely as a means. “is to involve them in a scheme of action to which they could not in principle consent” (O’Neill, 1985). In other words, in Oneill’s opinion, to treat someone merely as a means is to make use of the person in a personal scheme without the consent of the person. The person is not even asked for opinion or agreement but is exploited for a private purpose. Example 20 To make friends with someone only to take advantage of his or her network of influential friends is an example of merely using a person as a means.

Example 21 To marry someone only to claim of a share of his or her property is an example of using a person merely as a means.

In both examples 20 and 21, the person is not valued for what he or she is, but only is exploited for an ulterior, personal motive, where the gain comes to the user. O’Neill (Ibid.) gives the examples of deceiving someone to gain personal benefit. Example 22 Shyam presents a rosy picture of his own startup, which is already deep in debt, to Suresh by fabricating the data and by manipulating the financial

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information. He lures Suresh to invest in his startup. If Suresh had known all the details that were not disclosed by Shyam, Suresh would not have given his consent to invest. In O’Neill’s view, we can say that Shyam is using Suresh merely as a means in the Kantian sense. Suresh is being lured by Shyam into investing money in Shyam’s startup. Since Shyam’s scheme requires that Suresh must not know anything and yet must invest in the startup owned by Shyam, clearly Shyam is making use of Suresh without disclosing the full information about the startup and on false pretenses. Suresh would not have consented to had he known the details.  Kant (Ibid.) gives the example of violating someone’s rights as treating that person merely as a means. Kant assumes that the violation shows that the person’s consent or agreement to forfeit the rights has not even been asked for. To violate one’s rights is not to respect that person as a right-holder. The violator simply wishes to use the person as a stepping stool to further his or her own scheme of action. Box 7.11 Kant’s example of using someone merely as a means According to Kant, to violate someone’s right is an example of using that person simply as a means.  This is an important lesson for us. When a person’s right is intentionally violated, be it property rights, human rights, or civil rights, we may place that in Kant’s ethics as an example of using a human being simply as a means, which is contrary to the second formulation of the Categorical Imperative.  Note that the formulation does not ask us to totally refrain from using people as means. For, given the kind of relations of cooperation on which a society is based, it would be unreasonable to expect that people would never ever use other people and their skills. Rather, the truth is that right from the moment of birth, we hardly have any moment when we do not need the help, abilities, and support of the others to meet our basic and other needs. For the food that reaches our table, for the cloth that adorns our bodies, for the parental support and affection which provide the nurturing environment we need from birth, for the education that makes us ready for the world, we need to use the skills and abilities of the others. It is important to note that Kant does not state that: (i) Using other people as a means is inevitably ethically wrong. He asserts that: (ii) It is wrong to use someone merely as a means. There is a very big, ethically pertinent difference between the two claims: (i) and (ii). The “merely” is the operative word. While cooperative activities and transactions among people should happen, he considers it wrong to treat someone who actually has intrinsic worth as nothing but a means.

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 The second formulation, therefore, tells us that the actions done on maxims which require the use of other humans merely as a means are wrong. So, what we learned from the discussion above on the second formulation of Categorical Imperative, we may summarize as follows: Actions, which are based on maxims which allow not recognizing a person’s worth beyond how the person is useful for a personal scheme of action and allow using a person without consent as a mere tool, are wrong. 7.2.6.4

To Treat a Person as an End

What is it to treat someone as an end? One aspect of treating someone as an end, of course, is not to treat merely as a means (O’Neill, Ibid.). However, the other, positive, aspect is to treat the person with respect. We must pay attention to this message of treating someone with respect that Kant’s ethics teaches us. A person should be treated with respect and not treated as a stepping stool. Kant states that the humanity in all humans has intrinsic worth, or an absolute value. Something of an absolute value deserves respect. Hence, Kant implies that the humanity in ourselves just as well in others deserves respect. To treat someone else with respect is to treat the person also as a rational agent, just like ourselves, and to treat them as capable to have their own maxims and choices, just as we ourselves do. Example 23 The heart surgeon discussed with Somesh, the heart patient, about the available treatment options for Somesh. Together, they also went over the details of the impending heart surgery: The process itself, the recovery rates, the benefits and the risks involved, and the probability of a positive outcome. The surgeon also provided the idea about the cost involved for the surgery procedure, plus the hospital admission and other related expenses. Somesh shared his concerns and fears with the Surgeon and found the compassionate approach of the Surgeon quite reassuring. It was only after this Somesh gave his consent to the treatment proposed. We may take example 23 as an example of treating Somesh as an end, as the Surgeon showed the due respect that Somesh as a patient deserves. His consent was obtained as an informed choice by the patient, since after all it is his body on which a treatment procedure will be tried out. His concerns were respected and his fears were allayed, and he was offered a compassionate and reassuring behavior by the surgeon. In contrast, Somesh would have been treated merely as a means if the surgeon had misled Somesh to go for an expensive procedure so that the Surgeon gets a fair percentage out of the treatment recommended. Or, if Somesh’s rights as a patient were violated, that would have been a case of treating Somesh merely as a means. For

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example, if the surgeon has chosen a risky procedure without consulting or without the consent of Somesh, then his right to safety and well-being would have been violated.  This respect towards humanity works also as a limiting condition on our behavior and actions. To treat humanity in ourselves and in others with respect puts a limit on what we are ethically permitted to do to ourselves and to the other humans. If we follow Kant, my own humanity as well as the humanity in the others does not permit me to stoop so low that human dignity is compromised. Kant writes: This principle concerning the status of each human being—and more generally of each rational creature—as an end in himself is the supreme limiting condition on the freedom of action of each man (Kant 2012/1785, Chapter II)

Example 24 Even if someone is dirt poor, the poverty of that person cannot be a ground to coerce him to sell himself into bonded slavery, or to sell both his kidneys for money. There is a need to show a minimal amount of respect to a person, no matter how poor. The humanity in that person puts a limit on what conditions others can subject him to in order to eke out a living. Example 25 Kant’s own example is that: To neglect to develop one’s own natural talents is not to treat oneself as an end. It appears that in Kant’s view, to bring one’s own natural talents to a greater perfection is to further nature’s purpose for humanity; to let them rust due to negligence is to not respect the humanity that we have in ourselves. The upshot is that no duty, perfect, or imperfect, to ourselves or to the others, can be in conflict with the second formulation of the Categorical Imperative. We should respect persons simply as persons, and not because what rank or status they may have. Kant also mentions the following: Act only so that the will could regard itself as giving universal law through its maxim. Kant does not specifically mention that it is another formulation of the Categorical Imperative, but he emphasizes on the law-giving ability of the will. The will of a rational moral agent should be the spring from which the moral law should spring. This is a universal ability of every rational being, on which human dignity is based.

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Quick Question 7.9 (a) Do you think denial of right to education is an act of disrespect shown to a person? If so, justify your answer using Kant’s ethics. (b) From childhood to adolescence, most of us need the help and support of all kinds (economic, psychological, and social) from our parents and family. Based on which behavior do you think it can be said that the parents and the family are being treated merely as a means? And when do you think it can be said that they are being treated as an end? Justify your answer with appropriate examples of your own.

7.2.7 Conclusion on Kant’s Categorical Imperative Kant claims that all these formulations of the Categorical Imperative are just different formulations of the same law. So, it seems that to him, the formulations are equivalent. However, the equivalence is difficult to understand, since the formulations, as we have seen, do not all mean the same. Rather, they appear to highlight different ethical requirements. However, some of Kant’s commentators have suggested that he meant that the formulations are interderivable and that in this sense they are equivalent. Some others have argued (Allison 2011) that what Kant meant that each formulation would permit the same duties, as Kant himself has tried in Groundwork. We should understand that Kant meant his Categorical Imperative as a universal, objective and unconditional principle which applies to all rational beings, no matter what circumstances they may be in. This implies that what is ethically right as per Kant’s ethics is right for everyone in every circumstance.

7.2.8 Objections Against Kant’s Ethics In the above discussion, we now have an idea about Kant’s ethics and its basic principles. Kant’s ethics is unique in its expectation from a human being as a moral agent and also in its exalted conceptualization of a moral agent in terms of the agent’s power of moral autonomy and of human dignity. However, Kant’s ethics has also drawn criticisms. In this section, we shall look at some of those objections against this ethics. 1. Presumption of uniform human nature and universal application of ethics: Kant’s ethics presumes a certain uniformity in human nature. Its foundational premise is that the human nature, or more specifically, the nature of all rational beings, is the same. Based on this, he argues that the supreme moral law or the

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Categorical Imperative, if it passes the different criteria set by the formulations, is applicable universally to all rational beings in all situations. Critics ask: How correct is this belief in a standardized human nature which every human being must have, when evidence seems to indicate to the contrary? Are all people truly of the same nature? Take the case of a psychopath or a sociopath, for example. They are humans and also are rationally quite capable beings. Yet, the internal nature of such persons is so different from the ordinary human beings that the presumption of sameness is highly questionable. A psychopath is a highly intelligent person with an exaggerated sense of selfworth, but is a pathological liar; and is incapable of feeling empathy, love, remorse, or shame for any action. The profile of such a person cannot match with the ordinary people for whom emotions such as love, guilt, shame, and often are the motivation or the inhibitor for actions (Pic. 7.6). Anti-social behavior

Narcissism

A psychopath

No empathy No feeling of guilt

Pic. 7.6 Traits of a Psychopath

Empathy motivates ordinary people to engage in many ethically praiseworthy actions; such as helping someone in distress, because we can relate through our empathy with being in distress. But we cannot expect that from a psychopath, as the psychopath is incapable of such a feeling. Similarly, guilt, shame, and pity would deter ordinary people from doing a grossly unethical action, such as brutally torturing an innocent child. But that cannot be expected from a psychopath. For, a psychopath does not have a conscience. Doing the unethical actions would not send any shiver of qualms to his mind. He or she can steal, kill, or torture another person without feeling the usual associated feelings which would deter another person from doing these acts. Now, Kant’s universalizability principle of Categorical Imperative depends on a test of conceivability and self-inclusion. The agent is supposed to conceive that his or her personal maxim has become a universal law in a possible world. The conceivability test presupposes that all rational beings would find the same things as worthy of being universal law, or would find the same things as unworthy of being universal law. How safe is that presumption? Given the very different nature of a psychopath, for example, this conceivability test by a psychopath may produce

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a very different result than the test by the ordinary people. For, a world which is run by the universal law of torturing an innocent person may be abhorrent to an ordinary person, but not necessarily to a psychopath. Thus, the conceivability test depends a lot who is trying out the test. In other words, given the empirical evidence of diversity of human nature, the claim of Kant’s ethics of universal applicability of its rules, or even the tests proposed by 1st formulation of Categorical Imperative, becomes questionable. What is conceivable as a universal law by a type of people may not be conceivable as universal law by another set of people. 2. Do the intellectually impaired deserve human dignity? Critics argue that Kant’s ethics confers a dignity to human beings conditionally and thus excludes many who are incapable of fulfilling the conditions. Although as per Kant’s ethics it appears that no matter who or where the human being is, the dignity is inseparable from the humans, some critics argue that in Kant’s ethics the attribution of human dignity actually is dependent on certain conditions. Kant clearly expects a human being to be naturally and necessarily endowed with an advanced level of cognitive capabilities which allow one to think at an abstract level. It also expects a human being to necessarily have certain dispositions towards ethical actions and a control over the will to turn it into a good will to generate and to follow a self-imposed moral law. Some feminist philosophers in particular have strongly objected against this expectation in Kant’s ethics on the ground that it excludes many from the ambit of human dignity. The critics argue that the way Kant envisages human dignity makes people with severe cognitive disabilities not worthy of human dignity. For, the people with serious impairments in their cognitive capacities are not capable of moral autonomy (Kittay 2005; Vorhaus 2020). In fact, they are not capable of any kind of autonomy; being helplessly dependent on the others for their necessities. Those who have the most severe kind of cognitive disabilities, or those who are in a permanent vegetative state, do not have the bare minimum capacities and tendencies to identify, or even to accept an ethical rule by themselves, not to mention generation and compliance to an ethical norm on their own. Thus, they cannot qualify as ends in themselves in Kantian ethics. Consider the examples of someone with advanced stage of Alzheimer’s, or someone with epilepsy-related cognitive dysfunction, or someone in a vegetative state of deep coma. Hence, the critics argue that in Kant’s ethics, those with cognitive impairment or disorders remain marginalized and remain excluded from any ethical considerations about how we should treat them, with or without respect. When disability is a fact of life, in old age and for some even at an early age, we need an ethics to also provide action guidance on how we in a society ought to treat the disabled. The silence in Kant’s ethics in this regard remains an area of weakness in Kant’s ethics. The critics also claim that Kant’s ethics exudes an inherent bias towards normal, able-bodied humans. Similarly, along the same line environmentalists and animal rights activists may argue that the same argument may also be extended to the case of many non-human

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animals and other species, who can be objects of ethical considerations, but do not seem to have the level of cognitive capacities required to qualify as Kant’s rational moral agent. Therefore, from Kant’s ethics, there is no recommendation possible on whether or not they too can be part of the moral agents community and whether they to deserve a treatment with respect. 3. Cannot guide us in ethical dilemmas: Ethical dilemmas do occur in our lives. A workable normative theory of ethics cannot, and should not, ignore such conflict situations. It should not only not ignore, but actually should provide some suggestions for how to resolve the conflict (McCarty, 1991). Kant’s ethics, however, seems to suffer from lack of consideration about real-life ethical dilemmas which arise from their specific context and their resolution. To put more specifically, two duties, both of which in abstraction may pass the Categorical Imperative test, in real life may conflict with each other. Should that happen, Critics claim that Kant’s ethics offers us no solution or procedure on how to resolve the conflict between two Categorical Imperatives. There is no clause which indicates how consideration of overriding factors may be brought in to resolve such possible conflicts. Example 26 Kaveri has a reputation as a purchase committee head for her organization. She has a keen eye for quality, cost, and matching specifications; hence, the responsibility of many important purchase decisions goes to her. Her good friend, Neeta, who has an order supply business, is in serious debt in the market. Neeta’s business is not running well at all; and more losses would mean that she would lose her house, which is in mortgage with the bank. Being desperate, Neeta has pleaded Kaveri to give her a chance to survive by approving one bulk order to Kaveri’s company. Kaveri also feels that she ought to help her friend in distress. Yet, she also knows that in a fair competition with the other suppliers, Neeta’s offer may not stand a chance. In example 26, we find two duties: (a) The duty to help friends in distress and (b) To practice fairness in decisions. As abstract universal principle, both rules would pass the 2rd and the 4th step, as they are conceivable as universal laws without glaring inconsistencies or contradictions. (a)’ Everyone should help friends in distress, and (b)‘Everyone should practice fairness in decisions. However, in the specific context of example 26, Kaveri, who is the moral agent, would face a dilemma, because in that circumstance Kaveri’s duty towards her friend in distress would clash with her duty to be fair in her decision. If she opts to be fair, she would fail in her duty towards her friend; and if she chooses to help her friend, she would compromise her duty to be fair in her organizational decisions.

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In such cases of conflict, critics claim that Kant’s ethics does not help us by offering us a way out of the quandary. For, the theory does not have any procedure or guidelines for how to handle such conflicts, and how to manage a trade-off, as might be necessary. Part of the problem lies in the fact that Kant expects that only one maxim would pass the Categorical Imperative tests. In this context, his bold proclamation is as follows: A conflict of duties is inconceivable (Kant 1780, p. 25).

That is, in his view, there cannot possibly be any clash between duties. While this shows his confidence, it is hard to understand how to justify his claim. The elimination of all possible conflicts of duties is hard to justify. 4. Hegel’s criticisms of Kant’s ethics: G.W.F. Hegel criticized Kant’s ethics on various grounds in his different writings. Here, however, I shall mention only a few of Hegel’s criticisms: (a) Empty formalism: Kant formulated his 1st formulation of Categorical Imperative in purely formal terms and called it the “supreme principle of morality”. Kant emphasized that it is a purely formal principle. Precisely on this point, Hegel criticized Kant’s ethics as being too abstract and not fit for providing actual action guidance to people. For, when trying to figure out what is ethically right and wrong, we are to see whether or not a maxim leads to a contradiction when universalized. Hegel and Hegelians have argued that while this makes the principle purely formal, it also makes it totally useless. In Hegel’s own words: The criterion of law which reason possesses within itself fits every case equally well and is thus in fact no criterion at all. (Hegel, 1971, p. 319)

His contention was that the principle which fits every case equally well can provide no definite answer on a specific action’s rightness or wrongness. Paradoxical answers: Hegel and Hegelians proposed several puzzles to show the emptiness of Kant’s Categorical Imperative 1st Formulation. I shall mention here just one of them. Let us suppose that in a world it is a universal law to help and assist others in poverty and distress. If that is so, then paradoxical answers follow. (a) Then there would be no distressed or poor person left to help, because everyone would be helping the others. (b) Or, alternatively, given the usual resource constraints, where no one has infinite resources, in that world by always assisting the others, everyone in that world would eventually become poor. So, in either case there would be no one left to help others in poverty or distress. Thus, as a result of a universal law of benevolence and altruism, either there would be no person left who is distressed or poor to need help; or, everyone would be themselves in distress or poor enough as not to be able to help the others in distress. Clearly, neither situation is a desirable scenario.

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So, effectively the concept of altruism or beneficence would disappear if it were to be conceptually universalized as a law. (Hegel, 1975, p. 80). (b) Against a first-person centered ethics: Hegel also objected against Kant’s reduction of ethics into a completely first-person affair. He opposed the idea of an ethics in which a single rational moral agent is an isolated, atomic entity, and where that agent alone decides what the agent should do and should not do.  For, Hegel strongly believed that there is a social reality, which provides the context and undeniably sets the assumptions and conditions under which ethical deliberations and decisions should be made. He rejected the belief that there can be an “I” without the “we”. He In short, Hegel was convinced that to segregate ethics from the social backdrop and to make it a purely individualistic matter was a big mistake on Kant’s part. (c) Encourages an uncomfortable internal conflict between desires and reason: Hegel maintained that Kant’s ethics pushes humans towards an internal, unnecessary, conflict within oneself between one’s own desires and reason. It encourages humans to suppress their natural desires, which is unnatural, and to forcibly subjugate all desires to reason. In Hegel’s view, this does not properly address the tension between self-interest of a person and a person’s ethics. Many of Hegel’s criticisms have been contested by philosophers defending Kant. However, in this section, we shall not be able to go into the counter-arguments. 5. Totally neglects the consequences: From the consequentialist ethics, a criticism of Kant’s ethics is that it wrongly completely neglects the role which consequences play in the evaluation of the ethical worth of an action. Moreover, it is overly obsessed with the intention or the motive behind an action. However, as we all know the proverb, “the path to hell is paved with good intentions”. Quite often, we find that an action, though started with good intentions, can lead to disastrous results. Similarly, actions started with bad intentions may lead to some unexpected good outcome. O’Neill gives the example of capitalism, which is driven by the motive of personal greed and profit, and has led to unparallel benefits for an economy for some countries (O’Neill, Ibid.). 6. Restricted only to intentional actions: It is also argued that Kant’s ethics is quite restricted in its scope, because it evaluates only the maxims which are consciously adopted by a moral agent. Therefore, Kant’s ethics can evaluate only consciously adopted, intentional actions by the agents. It cannot assess actions which reflect no policy or intention. This creates a lacuna. Any action, which lacks an agent-centric decision-making process, or a clear process of deliberation, remains out of reach for it. So, collective movements in which there are multiple agents and multi-level decisions, such as a freedom struggle of a country, or a spontaneous protest such as the Chipko movement, cannot assessed by Kant’s ethics as ethically right or wrong.

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7.2.9 The Rights-Based Deontological Ethics: Ethics of Rights In the above discussion, we have been exposed to how Kant formulated his deontological ethics. It indeed is the most traditional and the original mode of Deontological ethics, which is agent-centered and is centered on the duties related to a moral agent. The focus is on personal morality: How an agent should decide to keep himself or herself free of ethical blame. However, there is another kind of deontological ethics which is different from the duty-centered ethics. That group of deontological ethics theories is known as the rights-based deontological ethics. The central concept is that ethics is the concept of rights. Emphasizing on Kant’s second formulation of Categorical Imperative this group of theories upholds that it is a fundamental right of a person to not to be used merely as a means without one’s consent. This ethics uses that concept as a fundamental tenet. It strictly forbids the use of a person’s body, effort, and talent without the person’s consent for another person’s benefit. Exploitation of a human by another is considered as a grave ethical transgression. Nozick and ethics of rights: The Libertarian philosophers, such as Robert Nozick, subscribe to this idea. The individual rights are considered as paramount. However, among these Nozick specifically spoke of the right to self-ownership as a fundamental right. A Case in Point 7.1 The Sahel is the narrow area of land south of Sahara Desert, stretching from Atlantic ocean in the west and the Red Sea in the east. It is in between the great Sahara Desert in the north, and the green savannas in the south. It runs through multiple countries: Senegal, Burkina Faso, Chad, etc. It has been the home of nomads for centuries. It has never been an easy place to live in, but the nomads have survived amazingly well. The Sahel is naturally vulnerable to droughts throughout the year, but in the recent years, the Sahel has been greatly impacted by desertification in the latter half of the 20th CE. The reasons include a surge in human population in the region, which resulted in the overexploitation of the land by cattle grazing, wood, and bush consumption for firewood, and crop growth wherever possible. The cattle grazing and the agricultural activities were encouraged by the governments of the countries which share the Sahel region. Their goal was to use the region as an opportunity for maximum economic return. To encourage the cattle grazing, large part of the natural vegetation, such as grass, trees, and shrubs, of the Sahel region was removed and replaced by crops and grasses which are more suitable for cattles. Removal of the vegetation by the roots resulted in loosening of the soil and the natural water retention system

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in the region. The natural aquifers, which were able to replenish the groundwater reserve during the natural climate cycles, could no longer do so. As a result, the regions closest to the Sahara Desert rapidly were desertified. Gradually, a significant part of the Sahel increasingly became desertified. Several and long droughts followed which impacted the human habitations with famine and starvation. By 1972, famine took a grim toll on the lives of 22 million people who live in the area. Their cattles and livestock died, their livelihoods were gone, and starvation and lack of nutrition caused thousands of children to die. Since the 1980s, the human-caused factors were recognized and taken seriously by organizations such as United Nations and other NGOs. However, certain studies, which critically examined the efforts by the countries sharing the Sahel region, and also the international aid initiate, claim that the international relief mechanism needed reform, and interventions from the West African countries need ore concerted, serious effort. [Source: (a) https://www.dgb.earth/carbon-offset-blog/desertification-sahelcase-study; (b) Hal Sheets and Roger Morris, Disaster in the Desert, A Journal of Opinion 4 (1) (Spring, 1974),CUP, pp. 24-43.] Questions: (a) Bring out at least two examples of an action and its consequences from the case above. (b) Should we exclude all considerations about the consequences of these actions, if we were to evaluate the ethical worth of the actions? Explain and justify your answer.

7.2.9.1

Self-ownership as a Right

From the time of John Locke, in political philosophy the notion of self-ownership has been championed. It expresses the thought that people as individuals have the fundamental right of self-ownership. A person alone is the owner of himself or herself. That is, people own their bodies, skills and abilities, talent, and their own labor. What one does with one’s body is a matter of that person’s right; or what one creates by one’s own talent are one’s own. They are owned by the self. Another person needs active consent if that person wants to have a claim over these. One of the clear implications from the concept of self-ownership is that slavery is ethically impermissible. For, no one else can own, buy, or sell another person as a property. Nozick claims that it also implies that being ends in themselves, and self-owners with dignity, a person has inviolable right to his or her life, body, freedom, talent, and labor. According to Nozick, these rights related to self-ownership set limits on the actions and duties of the others towards a person.

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Example 27 If A has a basic right over A’s body, then B is ethically restricted in B’s action or in execution of B’s duty by ensuring that: • A’s body is not physically harmed, • Or A’s body is not forcibly damaged (e.g. some organ is forcibly removed from A’s body), • Or, A is not forced to engage in some physical labor against A’s wish.

This means that B will have to understand B’s duties towards A as constrained by A’s rights. We may recall that duties and rights are tightly correlated concepts. Their applications also are interlinked. B will have to ensure that A gets the opportunity to enjoy A’s rights. It also gives the right to A to decide how A wishes to use A’s body and its powers and capabilities. However, from this characterization of individual rights on the basis of the concept of self-ownership as fundamental and the correlative duties of the others, Nozick derived some controversial claims about the rights of a private citizen. He claimed that taxation by the government on people is ethically impermissible. He argued that taxation implies that the state views the individual partially as a slave. The deduction of a partial amount from personal wealth as tax to be paid to the government shows that the state is entitled or is a partial owner of the time, effort, and labor of an individual with which the wealth has been created. Hence, Nozick opined that the various ways in which the state intervenes in an individual’s life, either through welfare programs as benefits, or through the taxes, are all ethically wrong. For, they all treat citizens as slaves.

7.2.10 Summary and Conclusion on Kant’s Deontological Ethics After examining the strong points and the shortcomings, as alleged by the critics of the position, of Kant’s Deontological ethics, we are now at a position to recapitulate what we learned from the above. We may summarize the main takeaways about Kant’s Deontological ethics as follows:  1. Kant’s ethics is of the non-consequentialist type. For, Kant maintained that when we ask:

Is decision d or choice c ethically right or wrong?

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We should not look for the answer to come from the consequences of d or c. The answer will also not come from the given situation in which d or c was made. For Kant, what makes a decision d or choice c ethically right is whether the ethical rule or the maxim d or c is based on qualifies as a Categorical Imperative. For an ethically approved, obligatory action, or a duty, its rule or maxim will have to be self-imposed and yet universalizable, abstract, and unconditional in character. In general, the recommendation of deontological ethics is that the right and wrongmaking characteristic of an action is not dependent on the consequences of that action. The rightness of an action comes from the conformity to the self-imposed right rule, right manner, and right motive voluntarily followed by a rational moral agent. 2.  The central concept for Kant’s ethics is the concept of duty. A duty is the ethically required right action which should be done. However, his concept of duty is not the usual or conventional in nature.  For Kant, a duty is not just a right action but also is a right action done with the right motive and done in the right manner. A dutiful action should be done only by a rational realization that it is a duty. A good action, if done from any other motive, will not be considered as duty.  For Kant, a duty is not an externally imposed obligation. It is a self-imposed obligation by the agent. The self-imposed duty is generated from the will of the rational moral agent. 3.  In Kant’s view, humans are unique in their special ability of moral autonomy. Their choices are not guided or governed by external factors. Through their own will, they can generate ethical rules for themselves and can also be legislated by the same rules. 4.  Kant holds that because of this unique trait of moral autonomy, every human being has equal intrinsic worth or dignity. Hence, every human deserves to be treated with respect as an end and never simply as a means. 5.  For Kant, ethics is intensely personal. Ethics is not for impressing the society, or to comply with the norms of an external authority, such as religious authority, or of God. It is about doing one’s own duties. 6.  Kant thinks that only a good will is unqualifiedly good in the world. A good will is a personal will of an agent. A person is good by virtue of having a good will. A good will is good, not because what results it can produce, but because despite having contrary desires and inclinations, it is completely governed by the moral law. 7.  The moral law is the Categorical Imperative, or the Unconditional Imperative, which is universally valid applicable to every rational moral agent and situation. There are multiple formulations of the Categorical Imperative, such as the Universality Principle, the Humanity as an end principle. 8.  The formulations are supposed to be criteria by which the ethical rightness or wrongness of our personal rules of action may be tested.

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Quick Question 7.10 It is said that rights and duties are correlated. Can you give two examples of your own to illustrate this point?

7.3 Virtue Ethics: Aristotle After Kant’s Deontological ethics, we now begin the discussion on virtue ethics, which is yet another example of a non-consequentialist theory of normative ethics. In the Western ethics, virtue ethics is one of the oldest normative ethical theories, which can be traced to the thoughts of the ancient Greeks. We find that the ancient Greek epic poets and playwrights, such as Homer and Sophocles, depicted the successes and failures of their heroes in their lives in terms of the virtues and vices in the character of the heroes.  Virtue Ethics and Plato, Aristotle: As you can see from the above, the basic ideas of a virtue-based ethics were already there in the ancient Greek tradition. However, in Plato’s writing, virtue ethics for the first time received a more formalized and pronounced form. Plato had important contributions in virtue ethics in his discussion of human soul, virtue, character, and goal of life. Subsequently, however, Aristotle was the first to unify the discussions on virtue ethics in a systematic form of an ethical theory. Aristotle’s two treatises, Nicomachean Ethics and Eudemian Ethics, are regarded as the major sources to understand the classical form of virtue ethics. Thus, though Plato and Aristotle may be both considered as the founders of classical virtue ethics, Aristotle is attributed the major credit for systematizing the classical virtue theory. In this chapter, we shall primarily follow Aristotle to introduce virtue ethics.

7.4 Virtue Ethics: Aristotle Ethics is practical: Aristotle viewed ethics as a very different kind of field of study from the theoretical sciences. Ethics, according to him, is immensely practical in nature. It is practical in the sense that it is primarily concerned with real-life actions or behaviors. Moreover, in Aristotle’s view, ethics is not just concerned with good action but is actually concerned with the achievement of a good life for a human being. Aristotle’s virtue ethics is founded on this concept. It is not about providing answer to what is the right thing to do by a person in a particular complex situation. It is concerned about how to act rightly in every complex situation throughout the person’s life.

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Therefore, the questions which Aristotle’s virtue ethics is concerned about are relatively much larger in scope and in significance to the life of a human being, such as: Questions that it pursues

Other ethics

Aristotle’s virtue ethics

1

What is the ethically right thing to do in this situation?

What should one’s life plan be?

2

How should one address this ethical issue?

How should one live to attain a good life?

As for the right kind of life plan, Aristotle’s answer, as we shall find out from the discussion below, is that a good life is a life of eudaimonia, and that such a life can be attained only by living a life of virtues. He holds that the purpose of ethics is to improve our character through choices and actions based on the virtues. Therefore, the objective of ethics is how to contribute to a good life and well-being of a human being. Accordingly, his discourse on ethics starts with the discussion on eudaimonia, which roughly translates as bliss or human flourishing. He then goes into an exposition on virtue (Greek: Aretê), and the character that a human being requires to live a full life of eudaimonia. In the sections below each of these concepts has been explained. You will find a discussion on Aristotle’s concept of eudaimonia in Sect. 7.3.4, on the concept of virtue in Sect. 7.3.1., and on character in Sect. 7.3.3. These are the fundamental concepts in Aristotle’s virtue ethics. As said, in this chapter, we shall follow Aristotle’s virtue ethics. However, versions of virtue ethics have been championed by modern philosophers also. After the exposition of Aristotle’s virtue ethics, I shall try to give a brief idea about the modern versions of virtue ethics. At present, we shall start with a discussion on virtue, the central concept of virtue ethics.

7.4.1 What is a Virtue? In Greek, a virtue (Greek aret¯e) is an excellence or an excellent trait in a person. An excellence is a quality which makes its possessor excellent or good. Example 28 (i) An athlete who is an excellent runner possesses the virtue of being a good runner.

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(ii) An author, who writes excellent prose, possesses the virtue of being a good author. (iii) A pen which writes very well possesses the virtue of being a good pen. In general, a virtue or an excellence is a quality by which its possessor performs some function very well, so that the possessor is judged as good at that function. In Aristotle’s virtue ethics, however, the use of virtue is different from the common use. In it, the possessor of a virtue is always a person. A virtue is understood as excellence in the character of a person, such that it makes its possessor good in character. In virtue ethics, the virtue is always a person’s quality, not of things. So, in example 28, (iii) is not within the purview of Aristotle’s virtue ethics. For, a pen is not a person; it is a thing. So, even if a pen may have some excellent quality, in Aristotle’s virtue ethics that excellent quality is not discussed. In that sense, Aristotle’s ethics is only about the goodness or excellence in a human being. Virtues are discussed in connection to the character of a person, because this ethics believes that virtues, being excellent qualities in a person, make their possessor (a person) good. Aristotle’s ethics recommends that virtues are to be cultivated in oneself. It sets it as a personal goal. That is, one has to consciously try to become the possessor of certain excellences. Box 7.12 Virtue in Aristotle’s ethics In Aristotle’s virtue ethics, a virtue is an excellence or an excellent trait in the character of a person. The virtue makes its possessor, the person, good. Aristotle speaks of two kinds of virtues which one should cultivate in oneself: (a) Intellectual virtues, (b) Ethical virtues Intellectual virtues are excellences which in Aristotle’s scheme is linked to the rational part of a soul. The rational part of a human soul can engage in reasoning. Thus, the intellectual virtues are cerebral in kind and are rooted in reasoning power; such as: • Theoretical wisdom • Practical wisdom Ethical virtues, on the other hand, are said to be virtues of character. Their nature is different as they are linked to another part of a human soul which, according to Aristotle, cannot reason but can follow reason. Examples of ethical virtues are as follows: • Temperance or self-control • Generosity • Courage.

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Being rooted in that part of soul which cannot reason itself but can follow reason, the ethical virtues are not based in reason. They require the intellectual virtues to guide them. The classification of the virtues is based on Aristotle’s conception of the human soul or psyche. His theory of human psyche is discussed below in Sect. 7.3.1.1. As already said, Aristotle sets it as a goal for a person to cultivate virtues. Among the virtues, it is the ethical virtues which is more pertinent for our context. According Aristotle, any free man is capable of becoming ethically virtuous. For Aristotle, a free man is not just a man who lives in a free society. For, even a slave2 lives in a free society, but is not a free man. A slave’s life is guided by the wishes of the slave’s master. A free man in Aristotle’s conception possesses certain qualities. He is free to live as he wishes (Keyt, 2016). This excludes the slaves in the society. A free man also has the capability to rule, and to be ruled, in a democratic sense of freedom. A man is free to the extent he can live the life of politics and philosophy. (Ibid.). This, in Aristotle’ view, excludes women and the children, as they are not capable to rule. Aristotle clearly did not consider them as worthy of being ethically virtuous. So, in Aristotle’s view, any free male has the potential to be ethically virtuous and practically wise. Even for free men, he sets the following conditions. Any free man can become ethically virtuous provided that: (a) In childhood they develop the proper habits, and (b) When their reason is fully developed, they develop practical wisdom (Phronesis). It is important that in the childhood the good habits are practiced. Virtues stem from good habits; in other words, the beginning needs to be good for a person to walk the path of ethical virtues. However, in addition to (a), Aristotle also adds (b). For, the good habits developed in the childhood may not develop with full understanding of the import of those habits. A child is often taught the good habits; and the child may just follow the instructions. But a child is not mentally mature enough to understand or appreciate the wisdom behind such practices. Hence, the requirement of practical wisdom is added when the reason is fully mature and the mental maturity is attained. Practical wisdom is wisdom about the practical matters. It is wisdom about actual situations, and the appropriate responses to them. Such wisdom is a product of time. Over the years, by repeated practices the virtue gets perfected, and we gain a vast experiential learning from them. With time, and with enough practice of the virtues, our insight into complex situations in life grows, and we learn more and more about what counts as appropriate responses to such situations. This insight and sense of appropriateness are part of practical wisdom.

2

Slaves were common in Athenian society in Aristotle’s time.

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Quick Question 7.11 1. Which among these can be a virtue in Aristotle’s ethics? Also identify which is not a virtue in Aristotle’s ethics. Explain your answer (a) (b) (c) (d) (e)

The height of a mountain peak Sachin Tendulkar’s batting skills The cooling power of an air-conditioner The tenacity of a young learner Self-confidence of a successful businessman

2. From the given options, identify which are intellectual virtues and which are ethical virtues: (a) (b) (c) (d)

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Honesty Prudence Friendliness Ability to grasp abstract thoughts

The Human Psyche and the Vices

We have seen above that Aristotle’s classification of the virtues presupposes his understanding of the human soul or psyche. Similarly, his conception of a vice, which is the opposite of a virtue, also depends on his theory of the human soul. We shall learn about both his theory of soul and his conception of vice in what follows. Aristotle’s account of a vice, in contrast to his account of virtue, is not as fully developed. Some commentators of Aristotle have even expressed doubt whether Aristotle’s scattered comments on vice add up to a coherent account of vice (Brickhouse, 2003). For our purpose, however, we shall understand a vice in Aristotle’s ethics as follows. Just like a virtue, a vice is a trait in a person (also a habit and a disposition). However, unlike a virtue, a vice instead of making its possessor good leads the possessor continuously towards wrong actions. Ultimately a vice is a bad trait, or a defect, in the character of a person. The psychology of vice in Aristotle’s writing may not be sufficiently developed. However, in what Aristotle has articulated, it is evident that Aristotle understands the failings of an average man well. He understands that for an average human being, the path of virtue is not easy. It is marked by a strife between the rational and irrational aspects of the human psyche. He also opines that vice thrives when the control of the rational part over the irrational part is weak. In his theory of the human psyche or soul, which we shall discuss next, the rational part of the soul is supposed to keep the irrational parts of the soul in check and under subjugation. However, Aristotle understands that not every man is capable of achieving that kind of control.

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Therefore, in Aristotle’s view, depending upon the degree of control one’s rational part of the soul has over the irrational aspect, there could be many intermediary stages between virtue and vice. In this section, we shall learn about those intermediary stages, and the kind of persons who have them. First, however, we shall learn about Aristotle’s theory on the human soul, or as we would call it in modern terminology, his account of human psychology. In Aristotle’s view, as shown in Pic. 7.7, the human psyche has two parts:

Rational

Calculative (Logic, Maths)

Human psyche Irrational

Appetitive (Emotions, desires) Nutritive ( Growth, reproduction)

Pic. 7.7 Human psyche as per Aristotle

(i) The rational: The part by which we engage in rational and calculative deliberations; e.g. Mathematics, Logic. (ii) The irrational: The part which houses our desires, impulses, and emotions. He posited that because of their contrary nature, in our soul there is a strife between the rational and the irrational parts. The irrational desires, impulses, and emotions tempt and try to drag us towards the non-virtuous choices, whereas the rational element in our soul tries to control them and to keep them on the right path. In Aristotle’s view, the irrational part of a human psyche is not different from what exists in the non-human animals. That is, even the animals also have the appetitive and the nutritive tendencies. Thus, it is the rational element which uniquely distinguishes a human being from the rest of the creatures. According to this ancient account, the humans alone have the rational part in their psyche. As shown in Pic. 7.7, the calculative abilities are in the rational part of the human soul. It is the highest and the noblest rational element, because of which we can reason and contemplate. The irrational part of the human soul, on the other hand, has two subparts: the appetitive and the nutritive. There is an important difference between the two irrational subparts. The appetitive part, which comprises of emotions and desires (see Pic. 7.7), is irrational; but it can be guided by reason in the humans. With vigilance and practice, a person can learn to control one’s emotions and desires and make them follow the advice of reason. One of the conditions of living in a civilized human society is to gain this control of rationality over one’s desires and impulses. In the animals, however, since the rational part is absent, the appetitive element cannot be controlled. The nutritive aspect, on the other hand, comprises of the raw, basic, physiological urges, over which human reason has practically no control. The humans stand out from the other living creatures, because in the human beings the rational part is there, in addition to the irrational parts.

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Vices and the Continent, Incontinent, and the Evil Persons

Given his account of human psyche, we can see that Aristotle understands that the human psyche is not very conducive for the development of a virtue and its practice. For, the conflict between the rational and the irrational parts in their psyche is constant; and the irrational part keeps on trying to drag people away from the path of righteousness. Hence, people who are deficient in the practice of virtues are common. Not everyone can have mastery over their irrational impulses and desires. As a result, we see different levels of what Aristotle calls deficiencies in the psyche of different people. Aristotle mentions three kinds of deficiencies and people who have these deficiencies. (1) The continent: Among us, some people are there who are better at resisting irrational temptations and pressures. They are not saints as they do have the irrational urges, but their rationality has better control over their urges. So, from the outside, it may appear that they are always on the path of virtue. For, they do what the virtuous do. However, Aristotle does not call them virtuous, he calls them continent persons. A continent person is tempted towards a non-virtuous choice, but he manages to control that temptation well. He is pained to resist his desires, but he controls his desires well. So, from the outside, he appears to be virtuous.

A continent person is not a virtuous person. For, he is tempted towards a non-virtuous choice, but he manages to control that temptation well. From the outside, he appears as virtuous because of his better control. So, for Aristotle, being truly virtuous is not merely to put up compliant behavior on the outside, but to be virtuous from within. The seat of virtue is within the person’s character. In his view, the important difference between the continent and the virtuous is that the virtuous person is so well habituated in the practice of virtue that he is not tempted towards a non-virtuous choice, and he is not pained to practice a virtue. The control of his reason over his desires and passions is complete. The virtuous person enjoys doing the right thing and walking the path of virtue, whereas the continent does so grudgingly. (2) The incontinent: There are other kinds of people who are not so self-disciplined as the virtuous and the continent. They try to control and curb their appetitive elements, but they fail and give in to the temptations. Aristotle calls them incontinent persons. Most of the average people belong to this category.

An incontinent person is not virtuous, as he tries but fails to stay on the path of virtue and succumbs to his urges.

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(3) The evil: And then, there are people who refuse altogether to walk the path of the virtues. They justify their choices by claiming that there are no values of the virtues. Aristotle calls them the evil persons. These are clearly the people who walk the path of the vices. He holds that they are driven by insatiable greed, desire for power and luxury.

Box 7.13 Aristotle’s category of persons in terms of deficiencies in the psyche. The virtuous person: She is not tempted or pained to practice a virtue. The control of her reason over her appetitive part (desires and passions) is complete. The continent person: The control of her reason over her appetitive part (desires and passions) is good, but not complete. She is tempted towards a non-virtuous choice, but he controls that temptation well. The incontinent person: The control of her reason over her appetitive part (desires and passions) is not good. She tries to control and curb the appetitive elements but fails and gives in to the temptations. The evil person: She does not even try to control her desires and impulses by reason. She refuses the path of the virtues and claims that there are no values of the virtues. Each of these kinds of people, as explained in (1)-(3) and in Box 7.13, are described by Aristotle as manifesting a kind of internal disorder or a deficiency in one’s soul. In his opinion, the deficiencies are caused by psychological factors which are not fully rational. In the continent person, the hold of the reason over the appetitive part of the soul is strong. That is, the desires and inclinations tempt the continent person but finally are subjugated by the wisdom of reason. However, in an incontinent person, the control of reason is weak over the appetitive part of the soul. That is, the reason tries but cannot bring the desire and the inclinations under its control. In that way, the reasoning power in an incontinent person is defective. In the evil person, the rational part is completely subdued by the desires, passions, and inclinations, which according to Aristotle is an abominable situation for a human being. Quick Question 7.12 Identify who among the given are continent, or incontinent, according to Aristotle’s classification? (a) An overweight person who wants to reduce but loves to eat (b) A person, who when provoked to anger, leaves the spot (c) Someone who cannot control the display of emotions in public

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Ethical Virtue

Ethical virtue (Greek e¯ thik¯e aret¯e) is an important category among the virtues. An ethically virtuous person is an ethically excellent, praiseworthy person.  According to Aristotle, an ethical virtue is a hexis; that is, it is a disposition or a tendency in a person. Example 29 Pauline has a tendency to be generous in her giving. She is disposed to act in a generous way. When it comes to contributing for a gift for a colleague, her contribution is munificent.  Aristotle also says that an ethical virtue is a disposition which becomes a habit when it is reinforced by repeated practices. So, an ethical virtue is developed from repeated practices of a tendency. However, Aristotle’s ethical virtue is not merely a simple disposition which turns into a habit when sufficiently repeated. An ethical virtue is a complex combination of realization, knowledge, feelings, desire, expectations, values, and actions and reactions in a person. It is a multi-track disposition, linked with emotions, choices, perceptions, desires, attitudes, sensibilities, etc. There would be the tendency to act in a certain way, but that choice would be accompanied by a realization, a keen perception and assessment of the situation, and also by a mixture of suitable emotions and attitudes as a base for having appropriate feelings towards a given situation. For example, kindness as an ethical virtue is a disposition, which requires practice. In addition, it has to be accompanied by a discerning realization that kindness is the right kind of emotional response to a certain situation. The situation has to be perceived in a certain way, and that perception would serve as the trigger for the disposition to act kindly to start. A behavior based on the virtue of kindness is not a mechanical action. It involves feelings and reactions within the person. A kind person has to feel from within in a certain way to respond emotionally towards a situation. The person has to desire to act in a certain way after recognizing kindness as the appropriate response to the situation. Example 30 As a school teacher, Babita gets various kind of applications for the absence of a student. Typically, the letters mention situations to evoke pity, sympathy, and kindness and ask for forgiveness for being absent. She has a kind nature, but over time she has also realized that not all these letters which evoke kindness are genuine, not all the excuses given are real. Some are fake and are specifically written to evoke a kinder attitude towards the absentee. Approving them would send a wrong signal to the student community. With her years of experience, Babita has become judicious in her assessment of where to show

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kindness and leniency and to what extent. She realizes that being kind is not merely an emotional response; it requires many other kinds of considerations; such as where to show kindness and how much to show, and where not to give in.  An ethical virtue is a long-term and stable trait. The tendency to behave in a certain way is not supposed to be occasional and sporadic response. An ethical virtue is also supposed to be consistent over a varied range of situations. Example 31 Nihar, who is kind and cordial to his clients, is very unkind to his parents and to his family. Similarly, Arthita, who is sometimes kind but at times cruel to people . In example 31, Nihar and Arthita cannot be regarded as a possessor of the virtue of kindness in the Aristotelian sense.  The ethical and cordial virtues are also highly context-sensitive. A virtue is a stable trait which is sensitive to the needs of a situation. In that sense, a vice is also a disposition to choose acts incorrectly, or to have inappropriate feelings towards a situation. The incontinent or the evil typically is inclined to have inappropriate reactions and feelings about a given situation. Example 32 Joshi has anger management issues. His anger is triggered by the slightest provocation and sometimes even without provocation. It expresses itself even where it is not the appropriate response. At a funeral of one of his family members, he made a huge angry scene in front of many well-wishers who have come to express condolence, much to the shame and consternation of his immediate family. In example 32, for Joshi, anger is clearly a vice, not a virtue. In Aristotle’s ethics, Joshi’s problem is not just that he cannot control his emotion, but also that he tends to react to a situation with inappropriate responses and feelings.  An ethical virtue or Hexis is also understood as a state or condition a person is in. To possess a virtue is to have it deeply entrenched in one’s mindset, so that it is not merely a habit, but is a way of life for the person. Example 33 A person who is honest (honesty is a virtue in him) does not merely not cheat or deceive. The honest actions come as natural tendencies from him. The virtue in him manifests in his beliefs, actions, aspirations, and

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dreams. He values honesty, and disapproves dishonesty, has relationships based on honesty, and also inculcates in his students and children the value of honesty. This is how the virtues in a person exude the inner character of a person. They reflect the mindset the person is in. Quick Question 7.13 1. Give your own example of a tendency slowly developing into a stable personality trait. Show how by the same process, a virtue and a vice both can be born. 2. Which of the statements is/are true about Aristotle’s conception of a virtue? (a) A virtue is an activity. (b) A virtue is not merely a disposition. (c) People are born with virtues. (d) Ethical virtues are positive virtues, and intellectual virtues are negative virtues.

7.4.1.4

Ethical Virtue as a Golden Mean

In Aristotle’s view, almost every ethical virtue lies in a middle point, or a golden mean, between two extreme ends, which are vices. Pic. 7.8 illustrates this. One extreme end is excess, and the other one is deficiency. Thus, an ethical virtue is a balance between the vices of two extreme responses and is an appropriate and correct response towards the situation in hand. Extreme Excess

Extreme Virtue

Deficiency

Pic. 7.8 Virtue as a golden mean between two extremes

Example 34 Courage is a virtue that lies in the precious middle ground, as shown in Pic. 7.9, in between two extremes:

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(a) Excess of courage and (b) Extreme lack of courage.

Cowardice

Courage

Rashness

Pic. 7.9 Courage as a golden mean

Both extremes are vices. A person who has excess of courage is so extremely fearless that he practically has no fear and considers every danger as worth confronting is not courageous; he is a rash and a foolhardy person. Whatever he has, he does not have courage as a virtue. For, this person would be tempted to get into every situation taking an inappropriate amount of unnecessary risk. On the other hand, a person has extreme deficiency of courage which is someone who cowers at the slightest threat and runs away from every situation, even from those which requires a courageous response. That person is not courageous; he is a coward. On the other hand, a courageous person, or a person who has courage as a virtue, knows which situations are worth confronting to, and which are not, and shows courage in an appropriate degree to respond to such situations. Aristotle took examples of twelve virtues to illustrate how a virtue can lie in the golden mean between the vices. Some of these are mentioned below. For instance, good temper or appropriate anger is a virtue, which lies between excessive anger and complete lack of anger. Excessive anger which does not listen to reason and is triggered in every situation is a vice; just as total lack of anger, which is not triggered even at a most outrageous situation is also a vice. Self-confidence is a virtue, but it lies between two extremes of total shyness or fearfulness, and an excessive narcissistic conceit. Friendliness is a virtue, which walks a middle path between unfriendliness and excessive sycophancy. Aristotle opined that most ethical virtues fall in between two extreme vices of excess and depravity.  From this, we learn that as per Aristotle, too much of a virtue is not a virtue; then it becomes a vice. Similarly, a virtue, when it is too little, is no longer a virtue; it is a vice. Finding the golden mean, therefore, is the actual challenge in the path of virtue.  With this, however, he also added that not all virtues lie at a middle point of two vices. For example, justice is a virtue which according to Aristotle does not have a golden mean. That is, in his opinion, there is no excessive justice. There is either Justice, or its contrary; namely injustice, which is unlawful, unfair, and unethical.  A key question, therefore, for Aristotle’s ethics is: How to determine the middle point or the golden mean so that the virtue can be found? Aristotle does not give us a direct answer in terms of a method or an algorithm, but he tells us that finding the mean would depend upon understanding the situation and its requirements well.

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Example 35 There is no universal algorithm to tell where the golden mean lies for patience with the young learners in a classroom. There is no clear cut point to use to say how much patience is the right amount and kind of patience which one needs to show to teach a student. For, every student may be different, and their learning abilities may differ. Hence, their training needs are also different. Understanding the situation and the different needs would help to show the way to a sensitive teacher (Pic. 7.10).

Pic. 7.10 Classroom of students with different training needs

Aristotle also asserts that the golden mean of virtue is not an arithmetical mean. Finding the golden mean is not a matter of taking an average. There is no quantitative answer to this. Every occasion differs from other occasions in their particular aspects, so it is not possible to come up with a rigid rule to solve every practical problem. Therefore, in finding the golden mean, arithmetic will not help; an algorithm also would not help. Yet, fortunately, there is a solution.  Aristotle tells us that this is where Phronesis or practical wisdom would help. A virtuous person knows how to find the golden mean in a certain situation by his Phronesis or practical wisdom. He says that the intermediate point or the golden mean is determined by logos, or reason, and also by the way a person with practical wisdom would deliberate. So, Phronesis or practical wisdom is our next point of discussion. Quick Question 7.14 Aristotle conceives of most virtues as a mean. (a) What would be the excess of being caring? Explain with example. (b) What would be the deficiency of being cooperative? Explain with example in what sense it would be a vice

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7.4.2 Aristotle on Practical Wisdom Wisdom in practical matters: The Greek term Phronesis is translated as practical wisdom or prudence. Aristotle emphasizes on the importance of developing Phronesis or practical wisdom in the practice of ethical virtues. We learn from him that the kind of wisdom is needed for deeply understanding abstract concepts and theories, and for developing them is theoretical wisdom. Practical wisdom, however, is not wisdom about understanding abstract theories and entities. As its name suggests, practical wisdom or Phronesis is a kind of deep understanding and knowledge about practical matters in real life. It is a kind of wisdom which enables a person to develop insight about how best to deal with complex situations which life presents to us, and how to properly respond in any situation in the most appropriate manner. It is a situational wisdom which advises us how to behave appropriately to a situation, and what that appropriate behavior should be. This is what guides a virtuous person to find the golden mean of virtue in various situations. Aristotle writes that practical wisdom has two components: (a) It involves an intuitive knowledge about the ultimate purpose of our life, which is eudaimonia. Practical wisdom is guided by that intuitive knowledge. So, part of it is intuition. (b) It involves planning and deliberating over the best way to achieve that purpose. Part of it is a long-term strategic plan about how to conduct one’s life to best achieve that purpose. With each complex situation in life, practical wisdom helps us with the right conduct which will facilitate the attainment of that purpose. It is developed over time: Aristotle holds that though a part of it is intuitive knowledge, practical wisdom is not to be confused with the conscience. For, unlike our conscience, practical wisdom does not come to judge every action of ours. We are not born with practical wisdom. In Aristotle’s opinion, practical wisdom develops in a person over a life time. In a sense, it is partly the collection of experience over time. As time creates experience, the virtues are cultivated gradually; gradually a sense of our purpose in life also grows. A practically wise person is someone who learn by doing and with experience. People learn how to be just by being fair, and learning from that experience. People learn how to be loyal by being loyal, and by learning from that experience. With experience, a situation and its peculiarities are better read and understood through the experience of life, so that even the unforeseen does not appear as a surprise. The practically wise, being experienced, not only can pay attention to the given situation but also can anticipate possible consequences of a response well. Practical wisdom thus is a result of an experiential learning over a long period of time.

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As a marker of maturity: For Aristotle, typically young people do not have practical wisdom, simply because they do not have the long experience from life, being young of age. Practical wisdom is a marker of maturity. The required maturity is not just in age, but actually in the ripened understanding of the humans and the human life. The maturity of age provides a long opportunity to observe and learn from situations. The underdeveloped or inexperienced people, young in age, are typically unaware about people, and about the goodness and the badness in the people. Repeated exposure to various situations in life makes one wise about humans and the human situation.  Practical wisdom is an intellectual virtue but is a requirement for ethical virtues: Practical wisdom itself is an intellectual virtue, but it plays a crucial role in the cultivation of non-intellectual ethical virtues. Practical wisdom is a requirement for having an ethical virtue. As said above, in Aristotle’s view, a virtue in a person is not completely developed unless and until it is guided by practical wisdom of the person. • A person who has collected all the virtuous qualities but does not have practical wisdom would not know which goals to pursue in life and in what way. • On the other hand, a person who has practical wisdom but does not have ethical virtue would be clever but not good. He may put the wisdom to pursue goals which are not noble. Therefore, both practical wisdom and ethical virtues are linked in virtue ethics. A balanced approach: A part of practical wisdom is knowing the balanced approach. Aristotle holds that an ethically good person is also good at deliberation, where deliberation means a balanced, rational approach to a given problem. This means that application of virtue would require thinking over the given situation, noting and assessing its details and particularities, and then acting or reacting based on that assessment. Box 7.14 Practical wisdom or Phronesis in Aristotle’s virtue ethics Practical wisdom is an intellectual virtue, which develops in a person over a life time. However, it is different from theoretical wisdom, as it concerns itself with practical matters in life. Without it, cultivation of ethical virtue is not complete, as it enables a person to find the golden mean of virtue in any given situation.

Quick Question 7.15 How does Aristotle view the difference between theoretical wisdom and practical wisdom? In your opinion, why Aristotle thinks that practical wisdom is necessary for being virtuous?

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7.4.3 Aristotle on Character Other than virtue and practical wisdom, the concept of character is an important element in Aristotle’s virtue ethics. Etymologically, the word character comes from the ancient Greek word charaktêr, which means the mark impressed on a coin. It signifies an imprint; that is, a mark that cannot be erased too easily. In this sense, a charaktêr is an identifier of an object. From this, the term character has gradually acquired a meaning which applies to the humans. It has acquired the meaning of some distinctive attributes or characteristics which differentiate a person from the others. In ethics, however, the term character has a special ethical import. Ethics has a long and established tradition of emphasizing on developing one’s moral character through ethical conduct. Aristotle follows Plato and the ancient Greek tradition in his understanding of character building as the goal of practice of virtues and of being ethical. Like Plato, Aristotle also was convinced that ethics is about what kind of person we should be, and that the answer to the question what kind of a person so and so is can be found in the character of a person. Aristotle speaks of a good ethical character as constituted by virtues or excellences of the human soul. He means that a person with a good ethical character helps its possessor to live an excellent life. On the other hand, vices undo whatever goodness is there in the human soul, and over the time the vices lead to defects in one’s character.  Character is also said to be a state of being in a person. To have a certain kind of character is to be a certain kind of person. To have a certain kind of character is to be a certain kind of person. By this, Aristotle means that a character is not simply a tendency. It is to be in a steady state when the tendencies and accompanying feelings are all settled in the person. Thus, character traits are relatively stable, and reliable, traits in a person. Over a period of time and with a steady effort, one acquires them. Just as virtues are acquired and cultivated, so are the vices. Just as virtues are stable traits, so are the vices. Therefore, one needs to be careful about which traits one acquires in life, and which traits one allows to become stable character traits. Virtues and vices make up our character. A character is built through repeated choices and behavior (a habit) over a long period of time. And it is important to develop the right habits, and wean the wrong ones: moral development.

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Quick Question 7.16 Recall earlier lesson and answer which of the statements is/are true: (a) As per Aristotle, a continent character person would enjoy doing the virtuous actions, but a virtuous character would do virtuous action only out of habit. (b) As per Aristotle, a friendly person is a person with a friendly character. (c) As per Aristotle, a person with a virtuous character would enjoy doing the virtuous actions, but a person with a continent character may do the virtuous actions but do it grudgingly.

7.4.4 On Eudaimonia In Aristotle’s ethics, eudaimonia is the highest goal for a human being to attain in the life of virtues. Though the term eudaimonia is often commonly translated as happiness, eudaimonia is not simple happiness. Scholars maintain that the Greek term eudaimonia has no single-word translation in English. It has been described as a composite of well-being, flourishing, and happiness (Hursthouse, 1999). Eudaimonia is the highest goal for a virtuous character. It stands for a combined state of overall well-being, human flourishing in every way possible, and of happiness. It is argued that Aristotle’s eudaimonia is related to happiness but is certainly not equivalent to it. For: (a) Aristotle’s eudaimonia has many distinctively different constituents. For example, as the external factors it requires a state of justice. It also requires the person to live in harmony with the society, so that companionship, camaraderie, and the delight that come from social exchanges enrich the social life. Eudaimonia is connected to a person, but it is also connected with the harmonious relation with the others in the society, and to a just order in the society. In this way, it is a much broader concept than personal happiness. (b) Moreover, happiness may be a subjective state of mind in a person; whereas eudaimonia is meant as an objective standard of a good life which has many manifest indicators. A good, well-lived life can be assessed by its quality, and the indicators can point at the quality of life achieved.

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(c) Happiness may be short-lived. Eudaimonia is not supposed to be a transient, temporary state. Eudaimonia is the result of a life successfully lived well. Aristotle wrote: For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy. (Nicomachean Ethics, Book I, Chapter 7) Living in blissful life, in Aristotle’s opinion, is the product of a long effort over a life time. This is why many scholars claim that bliss or human flourishing is a better translation of the term. Aristotle believed that eudaimonia, or well-being, is the highest good for a human being. Something is a highest good provided: (i) It is desirable for itself. (ii) It is not desirable because it gets us some other good. (iii) All other goods are desirable because of it (Kraut, 2018). People desire health, or honor, or any other good, because they promote well-being. According to Aristotle, eudaimonia is the highest good for the human beings; it is the only good which is desirable for itself, and not for some other purpose. He argues that the highest good for a human being has to do with the distinctive ability that the human beings have. Namely, it is the ability to guide ourselves with reason. In his view, the human beings not only have the lower abilities, such as motion, growth, and reproduction, but it also has a rational soul. The attainment of well-being of a human being is connected to the human’s ability to use reason well over the entire span of one’s life. In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle states that eudaimonia is to contemplate philosophically with the intellectual virtues of theoretical wisdom and also to practically act in political sphere with the ethical virtues of practical wisdom. So, eudaimonia is both intellectual bliss as well as flourishing in one’s social and political activities. In his Eudemian ethics, however, he described eudaimonia as an activity of the soul as per the complete or perfect virtue. It is a matter of debate among the scholars whether the two descriptions in two of his treatises are different or are interlinked. It is claimed that eudaimonia in both descriptions is upheld as an activity and not simply as a state in an individual. Eudaimonia as a telos: In Aristotle’s ethics, eudaimonia is linked to the best possible life one can have. Aristotle believed that everything has a telos or a purpose. A purpose is what the object is meant to be or to do when it has reached its full potential. A small seed has the telos to grow into a fully grown tree. A seed which cannot grow into a full tree cannot reach its full purpose (Pic. 7.11).

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Pic. 7.11 A seed has the telos to grow into a tree

Aristotle claims that the same is true about the human beings. The telos of a human life is eudaimonia, which is a fully flourished, life rich with the satisfaction that comes from living a fully realized life. He also opines that all that the humans do or desire in life, is towards the achievement of eudaimonia, even when we may not be aware of what eudaimonia actually is. Friendship, wealth, or power, whatever that the humans desire and strive for in life, they ultimately want these in order to have a richer quality in life. The humans seek the ultimate telos throughout their lives. In his view eudaimonia is achieved by a human only through living a virtuous life. A virtuous life is thus essential for the achievement of eudaimonia. It is a life in which one is dedicated to developing the excellence or virtues that a human can and should have. However, just like all seeds cannot achieve their full potential to be a full-grown tree, similarly all humans cannot cultivate the virtues. For, the cultivation of virtues depends on certain factors. In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle writes that whether one can cultivate the virtues or not depends on one’s upbringing, the values one has been taught by the parents and the teachers and by the circumstances in life, the role models that one is lucky to have, as well as by the choices one has made. Quick Question 7.17 Identify the statements which are not correct. Aristotle claims that: (a) In Aristotle’s ethics, happiness is the highest goal of a life of virtue. (b) The final purpose of a human life is to attain eudaimonia. (c) Aristotle’s eudaimonia has no intellectual component.

7.4.5 Summary of Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics From the above, we learned that: • In Aristotle’s virtue ethics, virtue is the central concept.

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• Virtues are dispositions which are to be developed and nurtured through practice throughout the life. • Virtues are of two types: Intellectual and ethical. Both are required. • Virtues are also golden mean between two extremes, excess and deficiency. Both the extremes are vices. • Ethical virtues must be guided by the intellectual virtue of practical wisdom. • Practical wisdom is crucial to know how to find a golden mean and also to act rightly in different complex situations throughout life. • Practical wisdom is not intuition. It is also not conscience. It is times-tested experience gathered over a life time. This is why practical wisdom is a marker of maturity, and young people usually do not have it. • By a character, we come to know what kind of a person is. Character is a stable state of being. It is constituted by the repeated choices made in life, and by the virtues and vices. • Only by living a life of virtues, and having a virtuous character, one can attain the ultimate purpose or telos of life: Eudaimonia or a state of human flourishing. Vices are to be avoided to stay away from the wrong path which leads us away from eudaimonia. • The goal of ethics is have a good life. A good life is the life of virtue when a character has developed based on the virtues. This is what a moral agent should aspire for. We may sum up as follows: Doing anything well requires virtue or excellence. Therefore, a good life or a life of Eudaimonia is a life of activities under the guidance of reason and in accordance to virtue or excellence. Thus, Aristotle followed his predecessors Socrates and Plato to put virtues as the pivot of a good life. He held that in order to be ethically good, we as moral agents must acquire virtues, such as courage, benevolence, truthworthiness, and avoid vices. However, that is not all. Aristotle further asserts that through practice, we must acquire practical wisdom to know how we should engage in virtuous responses in a practical situation. To Aristotle, a good life is a life of virtues; and the kind of person to attain it must have a virtuous character to do the right deeds all the time throughout the life. For Aristotle, ethics, and ethically right actions or virtue-based actions, are for building that character, and unethical actions or vice-based actions are for undoing the good in that character. Along with Utilitarianism and Kant’s deontological ethics, virtue ethics is counted as a major approach in normative ethics. However, there are important differences between virtue ethics and the other two dominant approaches. Explanation follows. In contrast to consequentialist Utilitarianism, the prime concern of which is the overall utility or happiness as a consequence of an action, virtue ethics puts virtue as its central theme. In the discussion below, you will find that a virtue is not an outcome of an isolated action by a person; so there is no program for weighing the cost–benefit of a single action in virtue ethics. In that sense, virtue ethics is not a consequentialist approach at all. Moreover, if Utilitarianism is concerned about the outer impact of an action on the society, virtue ethics is concerned with the inner

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impact of an action on the agent. Utilitarianism emphasizes on the external outcome of social utility of a particular action. Virtue ethics is deeply concerned with what consequences an action can leave on the doer himself or herself. It is concerned with what the choice or action of a person can do to the character of that person. Similarly, non-consequentialist deontological ethics proclaims that doing one’s duties conforming to a right rule with a right motive is essential. In contrast, as you shall see, virtue ethics is not a rule-obsessed ethics at all. It allows for context-specific assessment of rightness of an action. It makes practical wisdom, or experienced wisdom in practical matters, an essential requirement for ethically correct actions. So, it does not believe in a universally applicable, fixed action rule as a guiding principle for ethical rightness. Actually, each of the three major normative theories has a distinct approach when examining and evaluating the ethical worth of an action. Example 35 is meant to illustrate the distinctness. It shows how the same action of Yogesh can be evaluated using the three different criteria by the three theories. Example 36 Nishith is going through a rough patch in life. His friend Yogesh ought to help him.

Box 7.15 Example of three different ethical approaches  Utilitarianism: Yogesh ought to help Nishith, if the outcome of the assistance will be an overall increase in the well-being of all concerned.  Deontological ethics: Yogesh ought to help Nishith, because such assistance will be a duty, as its maxim is universalizable, and treats humanity as an end.  Virtue ethics: Yogesh ought to assist Nishith, because such an act of assistance is guided by the virtues of benevolence, compassion, and friendliness. Such an act would reinforce the virtues in the character of Yogesh and is also appropriate response for such a situation.

7.4.6 Other Virtue Theories The Greek notion of virtues, and Aristotle’s virtue ethics, remained the pre-dominant approach for long in the Western ethics tradition. Immediately after Aristotle, the rival Greek schools of thought proposed alternative versions of virtue ethics. Epicurus, for example, espoused a hedonistic ideal for a virtuous life. However, those alternative views did not stand the test of time as did Aristotle’s virtue ethics. Centuries

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after, medieval philosopher Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) wrote commentaries of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, which helped to further perpetuate Aristotle’s virtue ethics. Until the renaissance period, Aristotle’s virtue ethics reigned as the dominant ethical theory in Western ethics. Its popularity dipped after that until the 1950s. From the 1950s, it was revived by philosophers because of the growing dissatisfaction with Utilitarianism and Deontology to address very important, the-then contemporary questions about what kind of person we should be. Anscombe (1958), for example, powerfully argued for a return to the Aristotelian concepts of character, virtue, and human flourishing, which were the core concerns of virtue ethics, but which Utilitarianism and deontological ethics at that time did not adequately address. She also argued that virtue should be given a more central place in ethics, and that ethics would benefit from the philosophical psychology and the concept of human flourishing which virtue ethics brought into the discussion. After that, virtue ethics has undergone a resurgence, with a number of philosophers following Anscombe’s recommendation to come up with a number of theories. These are modern virtue ethics theories. The thoughts of two other modern philosophers have been instrumental to change the direction of modern ethics towards Aristotle’s virtue ethics: Bernard Williams, and Alasdair McIntyre. Bernard Williams, and Ethics Versus Morality: Williams (1985) argued for a distinction between morality and ethics. He claimed that morality is what Kant has conceived in terms of duty and obligation in his deontological ethics. In such ethics, blame gets a central place, since violation of duty is a blameworthy action. William also claimed that morality is quite restrictive because there is no place for any factor which is not in our control. Since morality is conformity with a rule that obligates us, then no other factor can find a place in such a theory. Instead, Williams recommended ethics as a wider concept in contrast. In its wider ambit, ethics includes concerns for family and kins, friends, and larger society. In his conceptualization of ethics, Williams’s ethics included many emotions which morality rejects, and ideals such as social justice, for which morality has no room. His conception of ethics is closer to Aristotle’s conception of a good life based on various feelings, emotions, reasoning, and yet on virtues. Alasdair McIntyre: McIntyre (1985) offered a different account of virtue. He argued that every theory of virtue presupposes certain features of the-then society, and the practices that realize certain goods ethically accepted by that society. Virtues, therefore, are to be understood in the frame of the coherent social activities and the goods. He also proclaimed that the virtue of integrity constitutes the telos of all such practices and the ultimate good for a human life. The combined arguments of above two have led to various modern philosophical accounts of virtue ethics. For example, Hursthouse (1999) has argued that virtues not only make their possessor excellent, but also benefit the possessors by leading them to eudaimonia. Without the virtues, human flourishing cannot be attained. Thus, being virtuous in a sense serves the self-interest of the virtuous.

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Similarly, Philippa Foot (1978, 2001) has presented an account of virtues in which virtues are not only beneficial for the possessor but also for the society and the community. In her exposition, virtues do not constitute a good life, but they contribute to a good life.

7.4.7 Objections to Virtue Ethics As with the other normative theories, virtue ethics also has attracted many criticisms. Being an ancient theory, its criticisms also are spread over the centuries. 1. Grotius against Aristotle’s golden mean: Hugo Grotius (1583–1645), a Dutch humanist and a legal scholar, was quite influenced by Aristotle and his ethics. However, he objected to Aristotle’s conceptualization of virtue and in particular to Aristotle’s idea of finding a virtue in a golden mean between two extreme vices (Blom, 2015). Grotius argued that, among other things: (a) A virtue is not necessarily a middle point: By reducing the complex relation of virtues and vices to a simple contrast between two extremes of excess and deficiency, Aristotle’s golden mean doctrine oversimplifies it. Honesty, for example, is a virtue, but it is not so simply situated at the middle ground between boastful truth-telling and total deceit. The actual relation between virtue and vices does not always fit into the scheme of mean, excess, and deficiency. That is, his point is that there may be virtues which are not middle points between two extremes. Similarly there may be vices which too are not an extreme end of a virtue. Some extreme states are not necessarily vices. Grotius gives the example of hatred for sin, and argues that no matter how extreme hatred for sin is in a person, it is not blameworthy as a vice. Sin is to be hated, and that hatred, even if extreme, need not be a vice. In response, the defenders of Aristotle’s virtue ethics could point out that Aristotle himself admitted that not all virtues fit into the golden mean doctrine. He specifically stated that some virtues cannot be approached by a golden mean, such as justice. He meant only that most virtues lie in the golden mean between extremes, but not all. Grotius may have misunderstood this point. 2. Virtue ethics is a self-centered ethics: It has been objected that Aristotle’s virtue ethics, and other Aristotelian versions of eudaimonistic ethics, is a self-centered ethics. In Aristotle’s virtue ethics, the ultimate end of ethics for a person is his or her own eudaimonia. It advises a person to continuously strive that self-oriented goal; concern for the others has little or no room in it. Various critics have argued that virtue ethics fails to put due value to the others (Nagel, 1986, pp. 195–197) around us; and that it is almost exclusively concerned with the agent and the agent’s lifelong project of improvement of agent’s own character

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(Pritchard, 1995). According to the critics, this shows an objectionable extent of selfcenteredness and self-absorption, which is a defect for any ethics. For, ethical actions are also supposed to be about the others around us. Pursuit of cultivation of virtues, such as kindness, generosity, is an excellent ethical project in itself. However, these are other-regarding virtues. That is, they are excellent traits about how we should treat the others. However, in Aristotle’s ethics, they are supposed to make only the possessor excellent and to benefit the agent. In this way, Aristotle’s virtue ethics and other versions of eudaimonistic ethics are deficient as a normative theory in ethics. To this, the supporters of Aristotle usually respond by pointing out that in Aristotle’s virtue ethics, there is plenty of room for virtues which are other-regarding; such as kindness, compassion, and generosity. Those virtues teach the agent to look beyond his or her own desires and needs and to attend the desires and needs of the others. This defense, however, does not completely address the objection of selfcenteredness. For, despite there being other-regarding virtues, the primacy of duty to build one’s own character and tend to one’s own flourishing, remain central in virtue ethics. 3. Virtue ethics is anti-codifiable, hence cannot provide action guidance: Utilitarians and Deontologists are strong believers in universal, ethical rules. They object that virtue ethics, which does not endorse any universal ethical code to follow, is anti-codifiable. Because virtue ethics; that is, it does not believe in any universal ethical rule or code. Instead, it asks to develop practical wisdom and sensitivity towards each situation. Therefore, for a common person, since there is no decision procedure available, a problem of application is likely. Absence of an ethical code makes it difficult to apply the lessons from virtue ethics to a situation at hand. They imply that an ethical theory should come up with a framework of universal ethical rule or rules, which would then act as a decision procedure to guide people to identify the right action. Specifically, Kant opined that the virtues, unless they are guided by some universal ethical principle, tend to become vices. For example, good temper is supposed to be a virtue. However, when a criminal without any moral scruples has a good temper, with cool head and demeanor, the person is considered as more vile than others. Thus, Kant’s point is that the practice of virtues must be supported by an overarching ethical code or a rule. Defenders of virtue ethics have responded in different ways to this objection. First, it is claimed that it is quite unrealistic to imagine that there could be such universal ethical rule in the matters of ethics. In practical situations where ethical issues are involved, we find that for ethical decisions people, whether laypersons or experts, rely more upon astute perception, ethical sensitivity, and experience gathered over the years than on any general, abstract rule. This is what Aristotle has called Phronesis or practical wisdom, without which virtues cannot be identified or practiced properly. Second, it is argued that a lot of action guidance from virtue ethics can be found from the virtue and vice terms themselves (V-rules) (Hursthouse 1999). Virtues, such as generosity, honesty, give us action guidance, such as: (i) Generosity: Be generous/Do what is generous

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(ii) Honesty: Be honest/Do what is honest Similarly, the vice terms provide clear action guidance on what actions we are to avoid. For example, ungratefulness and disloyalty are vice terms, and from them we can generate action-guiding rules: (i) Ungratefulness: Do not be ungrateful/Do not do what is ungrateful. (ii) Disloyalty: Do not be disloyal/do not do what is disloyal. Third, it is claimed that ethical decisions are supposed to be imprecise, flexible, and context-sensitive. Following this insight, virtue ethics emphasizes on the development of moral judgment in the agent. The agent is supposed to make a conscious choice, and find a way through exercising his or her own intellectual virtues, and not rely on instant rules from outside. 4. Conflict problem: Critics argue that virtue ethics is not equipped to handle ethical dilemmas, as there is no mechanism in it to resolve such conflicts. If two virtues are in conflict, what can virtue ethics offer us as a solution?

Example 37 Honesty is a virtue, and compassion is also a virtue. However, when one is dealing with a terminal patient in a frail condition, the virtue of compassion clashes with the virtue of honesty. Honesty bids us to tell the bitter truth to the patient about the terminal condition. Compassion forbids us from being brutally honest. It proscribes us from disclosing the harsh truths about the progress of the disease to the patient. Though we may devise solutions for ourselves, virtue ethics does not offer us any solution to address such cases of conflicting virtues. The defenders of virtue ethics may respond that the dilemma generated by a virtue-conflict can be resolved by a keen understanding of the virtue by those who possess Phronesis or practical wisdom. They will typically understand which virtue rule overrides another virtue rule, and under what circumstances. For example, in the situation mentioned by example 37, one may remain tactfully silent, or soften the truth, or divert the issue. 5. Virtue ethics leaves being good to moral luck: It is objected that virtue ethics leaves being virtuous to the luck of a person. For, virtue ethics tells us that whether a person can cultivate the virtues and pick up the right habit, depends on many external factors. For example, from childhood, one needs to have the right set of parents, and the encouragement for picking up the right kind of habits, along with right kind of education, and in addition one needs the right mentoring and right type of role models in life. Critics point out that having all these in one’s life is a matter of chance, or moral luck. A child, who unfortunately has to grow up in a violence prone neighborhood, with parents unsure of their own physical and economic security, may never learn to

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choose traits which Aristotle calls virtues. Thus, for that child, chances of leading a virtuous life in Aristotle’s sense are low. The child is not lucky enough to have the right and the conducive conditions for being a virtuous person. This is known as the problem of moral luck. The point made here is deep and it unravels a set of unwarranted assumptions in the core of virtue ethics. The problem of moral luck arises because we usually hold it as a principle that people are to be evaluated for their moral worth based on factors which are within our control, and over which we can meaningfully exert our own choices. However, our everyday judgment and practices seem to show that moral luck does prevail (Nagel, 1979; Williams, 1981). Critics claim that virtue ethics seems to unfairly put the assessment of one’s character, and of one’s ethical standing, based on factors that are not within that person’s control. Some people may not have the moral luck to receive the positive environment and the guidance they need to develop a virtue; while others may be lucky to have them. If this is so, then being virtuous is a matter of moral luck. Things which are not in our control appear to determine whether we are virtuous or not. Then can we truly praise someone for being virtuous, or blame someone for being with vices? Can we then advise all people to pursue a life of eudaimonia, when not all would have the moral luck to have the same kind of opportunities and advantages in life?

7.4.8 Conclusion on Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics From the above, you now have an idea about Aristotle’s virtue ethics and also about the other virtue ethics theories. From the above, you must have also realized the difference and distinctiveness of Aristotle’s virtue ethics from the theories introduced earlier; namely Utilitarianism and deontological ethics. As is the case with Utilitarianism and Deontological ethics, Aristotle’s virtue ethics too has its limitations, which are discussed above. However, in ethics education, virtue theories have a special place. They argue that the whole point of learning ethics is to have visible impact on one’s conduct. They insist upon developing virtuous dispositions, and weaning out the wrong tendencies; and on slowly developing virtuous habits and throughout life a stable, virtuous character. The lessons in ethics are supposed to have this practical effect on us by instilling goodness in us and by inspiring us to remain good. In this regard, virtue ethics touches an intuitive point about the practical side of ethics. For teaching ethics, virtue ethics has an unique appeal. Virtue ethics also wins in its context-sensitivity. In sharp contrast to the other normative theories of ethics, whose goal is to produce overarching universal rules of ethics, virtue ethics wins in terms of its prudent and flexible approach to complex situations. It allows an agent to use the inner resources to assess a situation and to gage the appropriateness of the response using a reservoir of experiential wisdom.

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The contributions of virtue ethics in this regard are highly realistic and relevant even to the chaotic ethical situations which present themselves at present. This ends our exposition on the classical theories of normative ethics. Next, we start our foray into a contemporary and a very different kind of ethics.

7.5 Ethics of Care The last theory on our list of theories of normative ethics to discuss is ethics of care. Compared to the three theories discussed previously: Utilitarianism, Deontological ethics, and virtue ethics, ethics of care is a more recent development. It is also starkly non-traditional, when contrasted with the aforementioned three traditional normative theories. Finally, it is a theory which represents a feminist approach to ethics or a feminist ethics. A feminist ethics is a distinctly different kind of ethics, with a very different way of doing ethics in comparison with the theories we have learnt. Therefore, before we start the exposition on ethics of care, a brief introduction to feminist ethics, and its unique approach to ethical questions, would be appropriate. So, we shall start by first knowing what a feminist ethics is, and what its special characteristics are.

7.5.1 What is Feminist Ethics? A feminist ethics, or a feminist approach to ethics, is to accept gender as an important factor in discerning ethical problems, and in epistemology, methodology and tools adopted for ethical analysis. It is also an ethics which acknowledges and validates women’s ethical experiences in its holistic approach to ethical issues. It is defined as an: attempt to revise, reformulate, or rethink those aspects of traditional Western ethics that depreciate or devalue women’s experience (Tong, 2012).

That is, feminist ethics employs gender as a lens in matters related to ethics. It uses gender to not only point out the omissions, oversights, and devaluations which traditional ethics has made with respect to the women, but also to rebuild ethical conceptual tools, analysis, and theories to fill up those gaps in ethics. Thus, feminist ethics has two major aspects: (a) A sustained critique of the traditional ethical approaches from a gendered perspective (b) A constructive contribution in ethics in terms of development of new theories and conceptual tools, and identification of ethical concerns and issues. In the sections below, we shall briefly touch upon both of these aspects of feminist ethics.

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Critique of Traditional Approaches to Ethics by Feminist Ethics

A basic common trait among the contemporary feminist ethicists is their strong critique of the traditional normative ethics theories, such as Utilitarianism, Deontological ethics, and virtue ethics. They attack at the foundations of these theories and their pre-suppositions. We may say that the onslaught of the traditional approaches to ethics is an identifier for feminist ethics. Through their critique, feminist ethics has distanced itself from being a traditional approach to ethics. Simultaneously, it also has created its own distinct identity. It has put forth insightful arguments to demand a reexamination of the traditional way of doing ethics and the presumptions made. Thereby, feminist ethics has carved its own path in ethics. One of its distinctive markers is to give due importance to gender in ethics. So, our first step to understand what feminist ethics is will be through the feminist critique of the traditional ethical approaches. Feminist ethics is based on the premise that the traditional ethics and the traditional way of doing of ethics are (1) male-biased, (2) fragmented, and (3) incomplete. 1. Gender-bias in traditional ethics: A major claim of feminist ethics is that the traditional approaches to ethics all have male proponents, who choose, approach, and analyze ethical issues from a male perspective, and offer solutions also from a male perspective. They are oblivious of this bias because it is so inherent in their perspective. Consequently, these traditional approaches typically and routinely have overlooked how gender operates even in our ethical beliefs, practices, and methodologies. They have systematically undervalued women’s ethical experiences and practices, because they were not even aware that there can be a different perspective. As a result, they have routinely dismissed or suppressed ethical concerns, evaluations, and experiences from a woman’s perspective. To borrow the words of a feminist ethicist, the traditional theories of ethics have consistently shown “a sleepy inattentiveness to women’s concerns” (Tong, 1993, 160). This blinkered traditional approach to ethics is contested by feminist ethics. Feminist ethics takes the step to correct this by instilling a lens of gender in the discourses on ethics. In our subsequent discussion, we shall come to know how a gendered perspective may alter our ethical approach. 2. Fragmented: Feminist ethics claims that the traditional ethical theories are fragmented. Because, typically the traditional normative theories are based on a presumed description of a common human nature which is primarily rational and speculative. It is a mistaken assumption, since empirical evidence shows that all human beings are not the same. Hence, there is no common human nature which manifests itself universally in every human being. Feminist ethics argues that the depiction of a human nature, which traditional ethics is founded on, is not only gender-biased, but also is oblivious of the fact that what it claims to be universal actually do not represent many. The ‘lonely rational man who decides

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only by himself and for himself’, for example, does not represent many in the society. Because of an incorrect underlying assumption about universal human nature, the traditional theories of ethics fall short of being universal and correct. They at most represent a fragmented part of the people and their thoughts. 3. Incomplete: Feminists also have argued that the traditional theories of ethics are incomplete, because the traditional ethical theories do not appear to be comprehensive in their consideration of issues. They choose only those ethical issues which are visible from their male-oriented perspective. Thus, they suffer from a narrow focus. Examples Baier (Baier, 1985) has argued that deontological ethics, for example, has taken on obligation or duty as the central concept of ethics, without showing any awareness the fact that a lot of ethical actions and decisions are not covered by that concept alone There are many other important areas and practices in a human life which are not driven by the concept of ethical duty, but they deserve inclusion in the ethical deliberations. Baier, a prominent name among the feminist ethicists, names some of those areas as follows: Wrongs to animals and wrongful destruction of our physical environment are put to one side by Rawls, and in most “liberal” theories there are only handwaves concerning our proper attitude to our children, to the ill, to our relatives, friends, and lovers. (Baier, 1985, 55)

In the quoted passage above, Baier claims that in Rawls’s justice theory the consideration of justice does not permeate to the level of our behavior towards the animals or towards the natural environment. Yet, there are well-known issues of fairness and justice in our treatment of animals and of the natural environment. She also claims that similarly the liberalism of Mill or of the other Utilitarians has not been particularly attentive to the need to have ethical parameters in our behavior towards our children, or towards the sick, or towards who are our family or the loved ones. Yet, incidents of overbearing or overdemanding parenthood, child abuse, or the illtreatment of those who love us, raise the need for expanding ethical considerations to those spheres too. Similarly, in Chap. 5 (see Sect. 5.5.5.4.1), we have learnt that Virginia Held, another important feminist philosopher, argued against Rawls’s theory of justice that with its narrow focus on delivery of justice in the public domains, it has completely missed how justice is needed also in the private space of a family or within a household. She has argued that Rawls, with his narrow focus on the fair process of delivery of justice in the public sphere, has completely failed to notice that injustice and oppression can happen within the closed walls of a home too. The victims of such injustice in the space of family and household are typically the women and the children; but Rawls’s theory fails to take note of them and the justice that they too deserve. Rawls’s theory of justice, thus, does not address issues of justice for women at all. This point has been similarly very powerfully argued by Susan Moller Okin (Okin, 1989), yet another feminist ethicist (also discussed in the same section in

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Chap. 5). Okin too argued that Rawls’s theory of justice, just like the other traditional approaches to ethics, has completely missed the consideration of the family and the personal space within a household, and thereby it has missed the consideration of the women and ethical issues that pertain to the women. In her opinion, this makes the theory fundamentally flawed. Allison Jaggar, another major feminist philosopher, has also commented on how the traditional choice of ethical questions and problems was all consistently selected from the public and political domains, where traditionally women have been systematically excluded. On the other hand, the spheres associated with women, such as the personal relationships and the family, have been systematically neglected in traditional ethics (Jaggar. 1991). Thus, women’s lives and issues have no representation in traditional ethics. Thus, at most the traditional theories of ethics are incomplete. The feminist critique of the traditional approaches to ethics also encompasses various other theoretical points where they think the traditional theories have fallen short. Examples (i)  Ethics abstracted from society and other people is a flawed approach: Kant’s ethics upholds universal, abstract principles for guiding us to our ethical duty, whereas situational details, contextual particularities, the empirical experiences, and the people involved and their interrelationships are all completely dismissed. This, in the opinion of the feminist philosophers, is a very skewed, and flawed ethical approach. For, in their opinion, our ethical beliefs and practices are all situated in a context, where real people and our relationships to them feature. Also, they argue that the ethical duties which people take upon themselves are not apriori principles grounded in the pure rationality of an abstract and universal schema, as Kant has advocated in his theory. Instead, in their view, ethics is not an abstract exercise at all. They view ethics as a collaborative effort among many in a society, and the moral understandings are borne out of various interactions that people have among themselves. They claim that the beliefs in what is ethically right or wrong are borne out of the shared values in a society, out of shared understanding of cultural identities, and of what accountability means. Thus, ethics, in the view of feminist ethicists, is a social construct; it cannot be disassociated from all social contexts, as Kant had envisioned. In a less than ideal world, our ethical duties emerge as a result of various circumstantial and social interactions, in which gender, along with other factors, plays a role (Walker 1998; Walker 2003). (ii)  Undue emphasis on reason and the unjustified neglect of emotion: It is argued that there is an undue emphasis on our reason and rationality in traditional ethics, and with it there is corresponding deliberate undervaluation of the role of emotions and feelings in ethical decisions. For example, Utilitarianism sets its goal to be objective by being thoroughly rational. Bentham brought out a hedonistic calculus to bring objectivity in the ethical decision by any rational person. Aristotle upheld the rational aspect of soul as the highest and

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the noblest, and placed the aspect of emotions and desires at a lower rank as the unruly element to be leashed and controlled by cold and wise reason. In his ethics, the practice of virtue is seen as a veritable strife between the reason and the temptations of emotions. The virtuous character is the one who has successfully subjugated emotions and their temptations by reason. Kant too dismissed the feelings and emotions as unworthy to be the right kind of ethical motive and driver of our ethical judgments. Kant’s moral agent does his duty irrespective of what he feels about it or whether he is inclined to do it. Even in Rawls’s theory of justice, the agent is supposed to be an emotionally detached, rational person, who is disinterested in other people, or in details about a situation. The feminist philosophers point out that in all of these theories, reason and rationality are given an unquestioned priority, along with a total dismissal of the emotions and feelings. Proponents of feminist ethics argue that this subscribed to an unnatural separation between the rational element and the irrational element in us, when actually our emotions and feelings also play an important role in ethical decisions. Gilligan (1982) showed in her research that feelings and relationships occupy important position in ethical decision-making. The repercussion of this critique of traditional undervaluation of emotions by feminist ethics has been significant in contemporary philosophy. Some contemporary philosophers have taken up the cue from feminist ethics and have developed arguments that emotions are not at all the irrational elements; instead they have their own logic, and they constitute the meaning of our lives and are the reasons why we engage in many activities in our lives (Solomon, 1993), Feminist ethics also argues that in traditional ethics there is also a distinct undervaluation of the emotions and passions, as naturally inferior, or at least as unruly and problematic component in ethical matters. This undermining of the emotions and the passions as lowly or unworthy has been alleged to show a presumptuous gender-bias, which is perhaps due to the fact that emotions and passions are traditionally linked with femininity and with women in general (Noddings, 1984; Held, 1993). (iii)  Unrealistic emphasis on impartiality: Feminist ethics also has objected that traditional ethics suffers from its insistence on impartiality and universalizability. Both Deontological ethics and Utilitarianism emphasize that ethical principles must be impartial, which would universally apply regardless of all particularities that might be in the situation. For example, Mill in his time was very vocal against the subjugation of women in his society. Consequentialist as he was, he argued that the consequence of social inequalities between men and women adversely impact the overall human moral progress. When, for example, women are deprived from voting rights or from legal rights whereas men have all the privileges, in that society not just the women, even a man’s moral character suffers (Mill [1869], 1987; Okin, 2005). However, as a remedial measure to correct that gender inequality, Mill argued for a universal principle of impartiality, which would count everyone as an equal and everyone’s preference also as equal. The universal impartiality concept is a bedrock of the Utilitarian Greatest Happiness Principle.

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Feminist ethics has sharply criticized this expectation of impartiality in Utilitarianism, or in any of the traditional theories. It is argued that Utilitarianism has failed to notice that the assumption of universality is not borne out by differences among the people, and also the differences in situations. These differences are significant enough to deserve a difference in our responses towards them. Because of these differences, doing an action may be right in one situation, but could be ethically wrong in another situation. What may be ethically right for a physically disabled in a specific situation and may be ethically wrong for an able-bodied person engages in a completely different situation. In short, it is a gross mistake to try to implement a single, universal, and impartial ethical rule which brushes all important differences among people and situations aside and applies regardless of the situational details. In the words of Noddings: A and B, struggling with a moral decision, are two different persons with different factual histories, different projects and aspirations and different ideals. It may indeed be right, morally right, for A to do X and B to do not-X. We may, that is, connect right and wrong to the ethical ideal. This does not cast us into relativism, because the ideal contains at its heart a component that is universal: Maintenance of the caring relation. (Noddings, 1984, pp. 85–86)

(v)  The misconception of the moral agent as an isolated, socially detached, and individual: Feminist ethicists also point out that a moral agent by the traditional normative ethics theories is conceptualized as an individual, who is isolated from all others and from all that are taking place in the society. For example, Deontological ethics expects its moral agent to be a fully autonomous human being. The autonomous moral agent is not influenced by external opinions, such as dictates of a religious body, or by one’s own internal desires and feelings. In the process, the individual agent is detached from everything else. The agent is to remain in a private cocoon of reason, where nothing and nobody matter in ethical matters except for her own rationality. Her own reason alone is to determine what is ethically obligatory. Similarly, the Utilitarian Greatest Happiness is also a principle which is to be practiced by remaining dispassionate towards oneself and to the rest of the others to ensure impartiality, objectivity, and fairness. Feminist ethicists point out that people do not live or behave in that way. People live among other people, and they live in a community where people have so many different relationships to the other. For example, they are someone’s sibling, someone’s colleague, someone’s teacher, someone’s client, someone’s fan, someone’s employer or employee, someone’s friend, someone’s advisor, or even some community’s leader. Feminist ethicists argue that these relations are not accidental; they make us what we are. They create our identities. Therefore, when it comes to ethical matters, to expect total detachment from one’s relationships, or from the social context in which one is situated, is an unusual demand on the part of the traditional approaches in ethics. Similar point was made by Held (see Chap. 5, Sect. 5.5.5.4.1) against Rawls’s theory of justice. Influenced by Kant, Rawls too expected his moral agents to be

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purely rational, who are mutually disinterested in the others around them. Rawls’s moral agents believe in mutual non-interference: They would not interfere with the lives of the others, and they also expect others not to interfere in their lives. Held argued that Rawls’s model of a moral agent, who is mutually uninterested and noninterfering, is implausible in real life, and is somewhat alarming for a community or a society (Held, 1987). For, what holds a community or a society together is a bond of mutual fellow-feeling, which a uninterested or unintefering moral agent cannot measure up to. (VI)  Mysogyny: Regarding virtue ethics, feminist ethicists have been very vocal about the pronounced sexist bias in Aristotle’s theory. Aristotle did not think women can be rational, and thought that women and children should be under the control of rational men. As a consequence of this overt male-bias, his choice of the virtues are also what suits the men; such as being courageous in a battle. Even the selection of the traits as virtue, and their characterization is such that they are less accessible by the women. The feminist ethicists argue that there are enough feminine virtues which have not found any room in Aristotle’s theory; such as the virtue of being patient, the virtue of having the ability to nurture. Thus, from the above we learn that a common core trait in feminist ethics is its critique of the traditional ethical theories: Utilitarianism, deontological ethics, virtue ethics, and social contract theory. We may summarize some of the points above (Table 7.1). However, we need to remember that in this book, we are merely being exposed to feminist ethics as a preamble to pave the ground for the exposition on our last theory, the ethics of care. So, we shall not discuss feminist ethics and all its characteristics in great details. Among its salient characteristics mentioned above, we shall only present a brief outline on the point how feminist ethics highlights the differences between the men’s and the women’s experiences and situations in life in the section to follow. Quick Question 7.18 1. Which of the following best describes feminist ethics? (a) (b) (c) (d)

A theory which emphasizes on abstract principles A theory which demands gender equality in ethics A theory which upholds universal ethical rules A theory which appeals to the common human nature.

2. What does feminist ethics mean when it claims that traditional ethics has been male-biased?

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Table 7.1 Critique by feminist ethics Traditional ethical approaches

Feminist ethics

Emphasis on abstract principles

Context and situational details

Emphasis on supremacy of Inclusion of ethical emotions reason and rationality in ethics above emotions and desires Expects the moral agent to be an isolated, socially detached, individual

The moral agent as a socially connected and situated agent, who has various relationships with the others around

Assumes a common human Understands and duly considers the diversity that exist among nature which is universally true people, and among the situations. It highlights the differences between the men’s and the women’s experiences and situations in life Insistence on impartiality and abstract ethical principle

Insists on importance of the situational particularities in ethical decisions

Has a narrow focus of ethical issues, and concerns

Inclusive in its consideration of ethical issues and concerns

Male-oriented, with an inherent gender-bias towards the males

Feminist ethics aims to develop a gender-equal, holistic ethics (Tong, 2012)

Explicitly or implicitly male-chauvinistic in character

Feminist ethics recommends ways to counter-act the subordination of women (Tong 2012)

7.5.1.2

Feminist Ethics on Women’s Different Voice and Different Experience

In the above, you came to know about the feminist critique of the traditional approaches to ethics. Apart from that critique, there is a lot that feminist ethics has brought into ethics. One of their significant contributions is to draw the attention of the academic community to the differences between the lives and experiences of men and women. Emphasizing on that difference, they argue for a change: From a gender-biased approach to a more holistic approach to ethics. This is to counter what feminist ethics has called the typical and traditional western male perspective in traditional ethics. But, is there really a difference between the lives and experiences of men and women? Do they really approach ethics differently? We shall discuss this, because the answer to these questions forms a very important part of feminist ethics. Carol Gilligan and ‘In a Different Voice’. In 1982, Carol Gilligan published her seminal work In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (Gilligan, 1982). In it, she presented her research findings about the different ways in which men and women approach ethical issues and dilemmas. She reported that she heard a distinction in the voices, when

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men and women talked about ethics, and its important concepts, such as responsibility and duty. She asserted that the differences showed up sometimes when men and women are deliberating about the same situation. The impact of the book perhaps would be best understood by placing it in the context of the 1980s, when moral development of a human used to be understood by default only through a model for western men’s moral development. Gilligan specifically mentions Kohlberg’s psychological theory (Kohlberg, 1981) of six stages of moral development based on his study on 84 boys for 20 years from their childhood to adulthood (Pic. 7.12). Post-conventional stage of morality Stage 5 and Stage 6 Conventional stage of morality Stage 3 and Stage 4 Pre-conventional stage of morality Stage 1 and stage 2 Pic. 7.12 Kohlberg’s six stages of moral development model

Kohlberg’s six stages of moral development: Kohlberg claimed that his study showed that moral development in a person progresses with age through three stages from preconventional to post-conventional through conventional stage. The pre-conventional is a lower stage to the higher stage of post-conventional stage. He claimed that in the lower stage of pre-conventional morality, people merely obey the ethical rules because of a fear of punishment for disobedience. In the conventional stage, people follow ethical rules as a part of interpersonal relationships in order to belong to a society and to follow a social order. As moral development matures in a person, in the higher stages the development progresses towards individual rights and universalized, abstract rule-based thinking. In the highest stage 6, only the appeal to universal principles, such as justice, become important. As said earlier, Kohlberg’s study was based on 84 boys for 20 years from their childhood to adulthood. In Kohlberg’s study, girls were included only later. He claimed that he found: (a) That the girls scored significantly lower than the boys; (b) That they rarely go above the lower stages of moral development, as their moral thinking remains confined to interpersonal relationships and attachment with the others; and (c) That the girls do not reach the level of appeal to the rational, universal principles. Gilligan’s critique: Gilligan’s work challenged both the implicit assumptions of and the universal applicability of Kohlberg’s theory. She claimed that Kohlberg’s model is such that by it the ethical evaluation of women and their decisions cannot ever have a fair outcome. She disputed Kohlberg’s study subject selection, which

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comprised of 84 boys, and did not take into account any girl’s experience in the beginning. Gilligan argued that there is an inherent gender-bias in Kohlberg’s model, according to which women will always fall short and remain stuck at an interpersonal stage, which Kohlberg graded as lower. Through her research, Gilligan disputed Kohlberg’s model. She claimed that when interviewing people over an ethical dilemma, she heard a different voice. It is a different voice of the women in which the women spoke about ethical issues, or evaluated someone’s action, in a very different way. The women prioritized concerns about interpersonal relationships and spoke of obligations that come from such relationships. She argued that Kohlberg in his model has unwarrantedly prioritized an ethics of justice and rights as better than or as superior to an ethics of responsibility and relationships. She also claimed that the ethical deliberations of women are to be evaluated differently, as they think, experience, and articulate their ethical assessments in a different voice from the men. She also said in among women, she found an ethic where the core concepts were care, responsibility, and relationships. Gilligan used three studies to examine people and their attitudes (a) towards themselves, (b) towards their relationships with the others, and (c) in general towards their lives. Based on these, she developed a critical analysis of how women are perceived and misjudged if and when looking through a male-only perspective of ethics and moral development. Gilligan claimed that her research showed that there may be important differences between men and women as they understand themselves, and the others in their lives, and try to solve ethical dilemmas, such as (Table 7.2). Based on her findings, Gilligan claimed that it is a mistake to accept the malecentric perspective as the only perspective in ethical reasoning. Apart from the ethics of impartiality, rights, and justice, she argued that there should also be an equally legitimate ethics of care, which is based on relationships and emotional attachments. Table 7.2 Different voices from Gilligan’s research Voice 1

Voice 2

Men tend to create their own identity in contrast and as distinct from the others

Women tend to construct their identity with reference to their relationship with the others

Men prefer to view themselves as isolated individuals

Women prefer to view themselves as related to the others and find it difficult to view themselves as distanced and unrelated to the others

Men tend to view ethics as a matter of abstract Women tend to emphasize on the situational universal principles particulars in ethics Men tend to view ethics as a matter of settling competing claims and see ethics primarily through the lens of rights and justice

Women tend to view ethics borne out of responsibilities and relationships to the others

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She stated that men and women speak in two different languages, emphasizing on two different sets of concerns. She claimed that her findings indicate that women tend to think more in terms of what would constitute as caring behavior towards the others involved in the situation and what the interpersonal relationships are. Avoiding hurt to the others was centrally important to the women in her study, more so than equal and impartial treatment to the others. We may summarize the following from the discussion above: • Gilligan is claiming that there can be an equally legitimate approach to ethics can be also based on relationships, closeness of that relationship (intimacy), and values which arise from such relationships, such as caring for the others, being responsible for the others. • In the earlier, traditional ethical theories, the acknowledgment of relationships among people, or caring for the others, as the basis of ethical obligations, commitments, and judgment, are not found. Hence, this ethics based on care is a distinctly different, alternative approach. Later, Gilligan and her coworkers (Gilligan, Lyons, & Hamner, 1990) argued that between the age 11 and 16, girls are encouraged to suppress their natural inner caring intuitions and to move towards more rule-bound approaches in ethical reasoning. Consequently, over the years, as adult women they experience dislocation of body and mind, which may result in behavioral problems, such as eating disorders and low aspiration. Gilligan’s work and its claims have been contested by many. Many thought that she is arguing for a separatism on gendered lines between men and women. However, Gilligan herself clearly stated that her intention was to establish the distinction in the ways of thinking about ethics and not to subscribe to a view about a polarity between men’s and women’s approach to ethics. Instead, she wanted to show that there are multiple ways to approach ethical issues, contrary to the supposition of a singular way as advocated by the traditional theories of normative ethics. Nonetheless, a lot of objections were hurled at Gilligan’s claims. However, the criticisms cannot hide the fact that the work was important enough to greatly influence the philosophers. Although Gilligan’s work was an empirical study, it had serious implications for ethics in general. It was a significant piece of work in psychological theories to show that there can be valid, alternative ways of psychologically experiences about ethical situations, which are not inferior to, but are different from what the traditional theories of normative ethics have endorsed so far. It opened the eyes of many philosophers to reexamine the pre-suppositions of traditional ethics and the criteria of assessment which traditional ethics has been using. Gilligan also consistently spoke of the connection between women and an ethics based on relationships. Gilligan’s work has inspired many feminist ethicists and will continue to do so.

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Quick Question 7.19 What was the main contention of Gilligan’s critique of Kohlberg’s model of moral development? What does she mean by “in a different voice”?

7.5.2 Characteristics of Ethics of Care A perspective of care: Carol Gilligan claimed that in her study she had found an ethic of care as a different, alternative approach to ethics. In her studies, the women did speak in terms of justice, but they were found also to speak from a perspective which valued intimacy, caring for others, responsibility, and relationships. This perspective has been called the perspective of care (Friedman, 1991; Driver 2005). After Gilligan, many feminist philosophers, inspired by the arguments of Gilligan, came forward. Their thoughts on and arguments in favor of an ethics of care have helped ethics of care to grow into an alternative ethical theory. Through their writings, ethics of care has proposed alternative ways in which we may view ethics in the treating and managing our personal relationships, professional relationships, public policy, and even international relations. From its inception in Gilligan’s writings, ethics of care, or care ethics, is a gendered theory of ethics. As a theory espoused by feminist ethics, it challenges the assumptions of the male-centric, traditional ethical theories as being the only and a better way of doing ethics. It recognizes and employs gender as an influencing factor in our ethical decision-making. It endorses the view that there is a different kind of feminine ethics, which thrives on the values of care and concern, relationships and ethical responsibilities that emerge from accepting the relationships. Its main proponents include the names of many prominent feminist philosophers, such as: • • • • •

Nel Noddings Virginia Held Annette Baier Eva Feder Kittay Joan Tronto.

The list above is not exhaustive. There are many other important thinkers who have contributed and who continue to enrich the discourse on ethics of care. However, in this book I shall briefly present the views of a selected few proponents. Since the proponents differ among themselves on how the care perspective should feature in normative considerations. Their individual views on ethics of care will be presented below.

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However, before the individual proponents’ view is presented, for ourselves we need to get acquainted with the main characteristics of ethics of care. These may be summarized as follows: 1. It is an ethics which consciously distances itself from the traditional normative ethics, which it alleges to be male-centric, and proposes an alternative, gendered conceptualization of ethics. We need to remember that ethics of care has its root in being a different voice in ethics. This difference is not only in gender. That is, ethics of care represents a perspective which is different from a typical male perspective. But that is not all. The uniqueness of ethics of care also manifests in the choice of the core ethical concepts, argumentation, and the ethical issues. Thus, it maintains a separate identity as a unique voice among the normative theories of ethics. 2. It validates women’s experiences. In the traditional normative ethics theories, women and their viewpoints on ethical matters, or about evaluation of situations, are conspicuously absent. In fact, the feminist philosophers argue, as discussed above, that systematically women’s ethical observations and experiences have been dismissed in traditional ethics as not being important. Ethics of care begins by validating women’s experiences and observation in ethical matters. It presents an ethical issue as seen through a woman’s perspective. 3. Traditional normative ethics puts extra emphasis on reason and on being rational and has considered emotions and desires as inferior and unworthy. Ethics of care follows a non-conventional path in ethics. Instead of reason alone, emotions and feelings, along with the body, are given an equally important position in ethical deliberations. Ethics of care stands apart in its recognition of the role of the softer emotions and feelings, such as care, empathy, and compassion, as central elements for accepting ethical responsibilities, obligations, and even for altruistic acts. Caring is accepted as an ethically justified motive for doing one’s ethical duty. The proponents of ethics of care believe that our emotions and feelings are as much part of our ethical life as is our reasoning ability. Caring for the others is validated as the noble ethical emotion behind our behavior towards the others who are dependent and vulnerable without such care. Example 38 in a hospital setting will give an idea how caring for others who are vulnerable without care could involve normative considerations.

Example 38 In the hospital where she works as a nurse in an intensive care unit, Ileana attends to the high-risk, invalid patients. Their sufferings vary from cardiac diseases, accident injuries, brain injuries, to recovery from major surgeries; but one thing remains common. Their lives and well-being are so hopelessly dependent on the care and support by the healthcare workers like her. The high-tech equipments, such as a heartbeat monitor, help by reporting

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the physical parameters, but Ileana thinks that caring of the seriously ill patients is not like any other job. A critical care nurse also needs to draw upon her own empathy and compassion to provide the proper nursing care. Typically, the patient is not in a state to communicate; the nurse needs to assess the patient’s needs and condition and respond quickly. Example 38 is a representative sample of a perspective on what caring in a highly specialized set-up should be and what it should not be. Ileana thinks caring for the ICU patients should not be viewed merely as a job. It should not be treated merely as a routine surveillance. It needs a dedicated approach where an ICU nurse need to use her empathy along with her competence. 4. Instead of a rule-bound approach, in which one should follow the abstract and universal ethical rules, ethics of care believes in a situated, context-sensitive approach in ethics. It believes that ethical judgments are formed with reference to given situations. Ethics of care accepts reasoning based on the particular details of the situation as important for our ethical judgments. Therefore, according to ethics of care, ethical judgments typically are not universalizable. They are situation-specific. In this, ethics of care is similar to virtue ethics and its contextual approach. For, virtue ethics also does not believe in universal ethical rules. It asks the employment of practical wisdom to address the situational needs in a judicious manner. Moreover, ethics of care firmly believes that the ethical judgments are not abstract thoughts. They are based on lived and actual experiences of embodied humans, who live in close contact with the others. In contrast, traditional normative ethics posits hypothetical, decontextualized moral agents, and the abstract rules formulated by such agents. 5. Traditional normative ethics considers the moral agent as a solitary individual self. Ethics of care gives primacy to interpersonal relations over the self or the individual. Ethics of care subscribes to a very different worldview than what the traditional ethics theories believe in. It views the society as a Web of relationships among people, where individuals are not primary units, but their interrelationships are more basic. The identity of an individual cannot even be defined without referring to our relationships to the others. Even the dependencies that emerge from the relationships are also ethically significant. We shall find out below that Noddings, for example, posits that relationships are ontologically basic; they are the primary elements which constitute the reality. The above-mentioned five traits should prepare you for an entry into ethics of care through the views of the individual proponents. We shall now start our acquaintance with ethics of care through the discussion of the individual viewpoints.

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Quick Question 7.20 1. In connection to trait 4 of ethics of care, discuss the possible advantages and disadvantages of an ethical approach which does not believe in universal, abstract ethical rules to apply in situations.

7.5.2.1

Nel Noddings on Ethics of Care

Noddings was one of the first philosophers to offer a theory of care as a theory in ethics. In her seminal 1984 work (Noddings, 1984), Noddings developed a theory of caring as a feminine approach to ethics and to moral education. She argued that the caring perspective is a distinctly feminine approach, and that it is a “different door” to enter the arena of ethical action. She argued that it is a feminine approach, because it refers to the experiences which historically have been more typical of women than of men. In contrast to the justice perspective, Noddings offered her theory as a voice of care in ethical actions. In her view, instead of being concerned about universal and abstract ethical principles, the moral agents need to ethically commit themselves to the needs of those who the agent cares for in a relational context. A relational context means a situation in which the moral agent is in a relationship with the other or the others in the situation. For example, a situation between a parent and a child would be a relational context. The caring that a mother does to meet the needs of her child, who she cares for, is an example of ethical commitment. She rejected the view that universal principles need always to be the bedrock for the ethical judgments, and argued that caring is a human affective response which is triggered by a situation. An affective response is supposed to be an emotional response to a situation. It is a psychological state which include emotions (Haile, Gallagher and Robertson, 2015). So, according to Noddings, caring is an emotional response in a human, and the response is spontaneously triggered by certain kind of situation. Since the situation triggers this response, caring is a context-sensitive response and therefore is not founded or derived from universal principles. The maternal perspective as a paradigm: Noddings opined that traditionally the mother’s voice has been silent in ethics. Yet, as our experiences tell us, the mother engages in actions of care with an unsaid, self-imposed ethical commitment, which she does not waver from. She treats those actions as her duties, and moral responsibility; and she does these because she cares. Traditional ethics has not passed any evaluated judgment about this commitment and has not recognized any ethical worth in it. Thus, traditionally ethics has failed to acknowledge and admit that the duties done out of caring can be every bit an ethical duty. To rectify this omission, Noddings took the act of caring by a mother as a paradigm in her theory. Speaking from a maternal perspective, she claimed that relationships of caring between the humans are fundamental for the human existence, and they

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define our identities. From the moment of birth to the end of life, humans need caring and nurturing from the others (Pic. 7.13).

Pic. 7.13 Mother caring for a child

In her conceptualization, in a caring relationship, there are at least two parties; the cared-for and the one-caring. Both sides have a duty to care in a reciprocal manner, or an ethical commitment to look after each other, though not in the same way (Pic. 7.14). The one-caring

Duty to care

The cared-for

Pic. 7.14 Nodding’s conceptualization of caring relationship

From a maternal perspective, Noddings asserted that caring can be an act of engrossment. An engrossed act of caring is a case of total engagement where the one-caring is immersed in the caring for the cared-for. Selfish motives are put aside to care for the cared-for. This is a rather extreme kind of caring. Example 39 Dhara tends to her old and ailing mother suffering from cancer at home. She and her mother are the only two who live in that house. She says that for her, her mother is the world, and her goal of life is to offer the best care for her mother. She says that she cannot tell anymore when the each day turns to a night, or a night becomes a day, as her time goes entirely to the daily caring for her mother. What must be highlighted, however, is that the engrossing caring relationship is a major responsibility. The act of total engagement with the other actually demands much from the one-caring for, in both physical and mental terms. The one-caring

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responds to the perceived needs of the cared-for with deep empathy, as the caredfor typically is not in a position to articulate the needs. The one-caring senses the unarticulated needs of the cared-for and responds appropriately. This may result in draining the one-caring for, and the one-caring for may neglect her own needs. Noddings, however, did not claim that all acts of caring are acts of engrossment. In fact, she mentioned that there can be three distinct levels of caring. One, where the self is obsessed about caring for itself, and the others are excluded. Two, the self is engrossed with the caring for the cared-for, to the oversight of caring for oneself. Three, the self is engaged in caring for the cared-for, but the needs of itself are also attended to. In level one, the agent is completely self-oriented and takes care of one’s own needs. This is the level of self-caring. In level two, the agent is oriented completely for the cared-for, so that the needs of oneself are not attended to. This is the level of engrossment. However, level three is a balanced act of caring. She thinks that with ethical maturity, one can learn to attain the level three, where the acts based on ethics of care can be carried out understanding one’s own needs as well as the needs of the cared-for. That is, every act of caring relationship need not become an act of obsession with the needs of the others so as to neglect one’s one needs. The level of balanced caring is what is desirable. This categorization of level of balanced caring has prompted some scholars to interpret the caring relation advocated by Noddings as a virtue or as a golden mean, as Aristotle had advocated in his ethics. Caring, when balanced properly between the one-caring and the cared-for, would be a virtue. The vice of excess would be the second level, where the total absorption in the cared-for is such that the self is excluded from the caring. The vice of deficiency would be the state of self-centeredness of level one, in which the self is cared-for but the others are excluded from the ambit of care. − Total self absorption Total engrossment −→ Balanced care ← Noddings carved a distinction between natural caring and ethical caring. Natural caring is a natural inclination borne out of love and care for those who are close to the one-caring. In example 40, Sumit is engaged in an act of natural caring. Caring for one’s own children is part of the natural inclinations for a human. The cared-for are close and dear ones for the one-caring. Noddings considers it as distinct from ethical caring. Example 40 Sumit, as a father, is engaged in caring for his two children. Ethical caring, on the other hand, can rise in a person towards someone who has no relationship at all; that is, towards a complete stranger. Ethical caring is an inclination to care because one should care: The one-caring feels a sense of obligation

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that he or she must do something to show care. Ethical caring grows out of natural caring. Even about complete strangers, with whom one has no relationship at all, the inclination to care can come from the memories of natural caring. Example 41 While out on an evening stroll, Surinder saw an old man lying unconscious on a busy roadside, hit by a careless runaway auto. The old man was bleeding from the injury. Surinder called for an ambulance and escorted the old man, still unconscious, to a nearby hospital for emergency care. In example 41, the injured victim of a road accident is not related or known to Surinder. Yet, Surinder takes the trouble to call an ambulance and to accompany the bleeding man to the nearby hospital for emergency care. For, he senses the victim’s need and responds with an ethical caring. As Noddings sees it, the caring response is somewhat irrational, moved by an urge to improve the situation for the cared-for. There may be reasons to explain that response, but at the moment it is more instinctual than a rationally processed decision. In viewing caring as a human affective response, Noddings claimed that the impulse to care is a universal human attribute. Certain relationships and situation evoke that impulse in all of us. Although she admitted of ethical caring, Noddings, however, claimed that the obligation for caring works well within a limited scope. In her opinion, she opined that it is impossible to care for all, and that the obligation for caring works within a certain circle. It is strongest towards those who are in a reciprocal relationship; as for example, two neighbors can engage in ethical caring for each other, as there is plenty of scope for each other to return the favor. However, she claims that it gets weaker with geographical and relational distance. It is very weak for the distant others in another continent, as in an international situation, particularly if there is no hope to complete the caring. These claims by Noddings were severely criticized by those who felt that the ethical commitment to the distant humans in another continent should not fade out. Subsequently, Nodding revised her claims to suit ethics of care to be extended to global and international scenarios. Quick Question 7.21 What point does Noddings want to make when she takes the maternal perspective as a paradigmatic perspective for ethics of care? Why does she introduce the idea of balanced caring over and above the idea of caring as an act of total engrossment?

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Virginia Held on Ethics of Care

Held is considered as one of the major contributors to ethics of care. She has authored number of books in which she has articulated and defended ethics of care. In addition, she has edited several volumes with important articles on ethics of care. For Held, care is the central most value in ethics. She has also expressed the view that ethics of care is a promising alternative to the earlier dominant normative approaches. Most significantly, Held has argued that ethics of care has the capability to transcend the personal sphere and to be extended in personal, political, and even in the global spheres (Held, 2006). She has argued that it can be applied to the families, to workplaces, to the relationship between the state and the citizens, and even to the relationship between governments of different countries at a global level. So, in Held’s opinion, ethics of care has a wide scope of applicability. Held claims that ethics of care has some definite advantages over many other ethical theories: (a) It does not carry any religious pre-supposition and does not endorse any divisive boundaries based on religion: It extends to people in general without any specific qualifying requirement. (b) Held finds the claim about overarching, universal, rational norms of ethics as contentious. To her, it goes to the credit of ethics of care that it neither presumes any such norm, nor does it employ such norm to deliver ethical judgment. In her words, feminist ethics believes in actual people, their actual lived experiences, and based on those experiences, it develops “an understanding of most basic and most comprehensive values” (Held, 2006, p.3). Some feminist ethicists opine that ethics of care is not a single theory, instead, it is a mosaic of varied insights put together. According to Held (2006), however, still some common features of ethics of care can be identified, and they are as follows: 1. Recognition of the ethical salience of care and need for care: Though we may not always realize, Held opines that the reality of need for care in human lives is stark. All human beings need care at least in their infancy and childhood years. As adults, many persons become ill and become dependent on others for care in their later life. And often in old age, some people become permanently disabled and need care. Ethics of care realizes this pervasive need for care among the human beings. In Held’s opinion, ethics of care focuses on the ethical importance of addressing and meeting the needs of care for the others for whom we take responsibility. It starts with the ethical claims of the others dependent on us for care and debunks the claims of the ethical theories which start with the concept of independent, autonomous, and rational individual self. 2. Ethics of care values certain ethical emotions: The dominant traditional ethical theories typically look down at emotions and desires, because, they claim, emotions and desires are selfish, and being selfish they undermine impartiality.

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The aggressive impulses which come in the way of ethical action are also viewed as unwanted. Held argues that these theories wrongly assume that all emotions are of these types. Ethics of care, on the other hand, actually values certain emotions as ethical emotions which help us to determine what ethics recommends in a situation. Some examples of these ethical emotions are as follows: • Sympathy • Empathy • Responsiveness For example, empathy and compassion enable us to assess the need in the others and to respond in an ethical manner, particularly when the others are not in a position to articulate their needs themselves. Held observes that since even the helpful ethical emotions require some evaluative guidance that is why there has to be ethics of care. For example, excessive sympathy may lead to gross neglect of oneself, or too much of compassion may sometimes lead to overbearing domination. Therefore, evaluation and examination of even care and caring relation require an ethical scrutiny. So, from the perspective of ethics of care, certain emotions are welcome as ethical emotions. On the other hand, Held finds the ethical theories, which rely exclusively on reason and rationality, and completely dismisses all emotions, as “deficient” (Held, 2006). 3. Contextual and relational details about the others matter in ethics: Ethics of care rejects the view, subscribed by the dominant ethical theories, that abstract reasoning about an ethical issue is better to avoid bias and arbitrariness in ethical judgments. Instead, in Held’s view, ethics of care believes that the particularities about the others with whom we have actual relationships are to be respected at times. Certain kind of partiality may be ethically required at times to understand the specific nature of an ethical obligation.

Example 42 Who should get birthday gifts from me? When I wish to choose people who I think deserves a special token of friendship on their birthdays that decision cannot be settled in abstraction. It will require specific inputs about who among my friends I consider to greet with birthday gifts as a special gesture. The question assumes certain details about the others with whom I stand in particular relationship, and the decision too requires some partiality towards specific persons in my circle. Similarly, when applying ethical considerations to family or friendship, the contexts and the particularities of the relationship cannot be and should not be ignored. Held argues that the traditional ethical approaches are mistaken when they think that if we do not remain on abstract level in ethics, we shall necessarily be degenerated

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to bias and arbitrariness. They are mistaken because there is a large area which lies in between these two extremes of pure abstraction on one hand and bias and arbitrariness on the other hand. Held opines that ethics of care focuses in that large area. That is, through caring one can come down to the situational level and yet satisfy the demands of fairness. She reminds us of the people who are in non-contractual caring relationship with the others, as for example, friends, colleagues, neighbors, and parent-child. A non-contractual relationship is one which is not secured by a legal contract. There can be caring relationship even in non-contractual relationships, and they are not necessarily always self-serving selfish relationships, but they are also not based on some abstract, universal ethical norm. The natural and ethical caregivers, and the cared-for particular others, between whom there is a real human relationship, would be in this category. 4. There is need for ethics even in the private sphere: Held claims that ethics of care also challenges the traditional notion that ethics applies only to the public domains, such as in the political sphere where a government and the society are the actors. Feminist thinkers have shown that the same economic, political, and cultural power, which men wield in the public, permeate into the private sphere of family and household, where women and children suffer. Typically, ethics has not traditionally stepped in into these private spheres. Ethics of care addresses even these issues, where there are concerns about equality and dependence. 5. Ethics of care views a person as relational and interdependent: The dominant ethical theories perceive a person through the lens of the liberal political and economic theories. They view a moral agent as an autonomous, rational, or a selfinterested, isolated individual. On this view, a society is made up of independent, autonomous units who cooperate only when it is in their mutual, rational selfinterest. Held asserts that ethics of care rejects this view of a person and of a society. Instead, it sees people as “relational and interdependent”, with relations constituting our identities. For, it obscures the fact that many in the society are ill, infirm, disabled, or are children, and are dependent. It also hides the numerous ways in which people and groups are interdependent in the real world. Example 43 A common person is dependent on so many service providers: Education, healthcare, household supplies, household maintenance. The service providers, on the other hand, are dependent on the consumers for their livelihood. Similarly, the group of doctors are dependent on groups of nurses, paramedics, pathologists, medical technicians, hospital infrastructure, patients, etc.; whereas the patients are dependent on many services provided by the healthcare services.

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As Held puts it, ethics of care finds many of our ethical responsibilities not chosen but is “presented to us” by the accidents of being in a certain family, or in certain community. Those are relational responsibilities which too have ethical worth. Held has also argued extensively to indicate how all social relationships may change when based on this central value. For example, an individual person will have to undergo transformative changes to become a caring social individual; similarly, the politics and culture of that society also would have to undergo similar changes to uphold the values and responsibilities based on social relationships (Held, 1993). With this, we end the exposition of ethics of care through the individual views of its two major proponents, Noddings and Held. Next, we take upon ourselves to follow how care as a concept has been conceptualized by the feminist ethicists. Quick Question 7.22 Which of the following is/are true about Virginia Held’s views on ethics of care? (a) Ethics of care considers all emotions as ethically important. (b) Ethics of care is a theory of ethics exclusively based on the caring relationships among the intimately related people. (c) Ethics of care recognizes the importance of the need for care among all humans. (d) Avoiding bias and favoritism is not possible in ethics of care

7.5.3 What is Care? The core value of ethics of care is care. But what is care? We find that the replies to this question from the care ethicists are varied. We shall first go through some of their answers and then try to collate the salient ideas from the responses to arrive at an understanding of care in the context of ethics.

7.5.3.1

Care as an Activity

Many of the care ethicists that care which is relevant to ethics of care should refer to an activity of taking care. Such as. Taking care of a person The activity of taking care involves work, effort, and also energy on the part of the caregiver. Care, therefore, is a kind of labor. However, it is not just labor, and there

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is much more involved in it. Some care ethicists argue that the labor of taking care should also be accompanied by some feelings. Caring labor is by nature relational, i.e. based on some sort of relationship. They argue that this is why care work on the whole cannot be replaced by automated robots in the way other labors can be. Box 7.16 Examples of the activity of taking care Example 44 • • • • • • • • • • •

Taking care of the family and the well-being of the family members Taking care of the elderly residents in an old-age home Taking care of the elderly family members Taking care of the newborn baby by a parent Taking care of the newborn babies in a neonatal ward of a hospital Taking care of a sick baby by a parent Taking care of sick babies in a hospital pediatric ward Taking care of ailing family members Taking care of the patients in a hospital Taking care of friends in trouble Taking care of family members in trouble.

Box 7.16 illustrates some examples of the activity of taking care, as we find in the real world. In it, consciously examples have been chosen from both personal and professional activities of taking care. It gives examples from the personal life; such as taking care of the family members, or taking care of a child or a newborn by a parent. However, it also gives examples from the professional life, such as taking care of the elderly in an old-age home; taking care of the sick patients in a hospital ward. The point here is that ethics of care does not only cover personal activities of taking care, but it also meaningfully engages itself in the public or professional fields also. Originally, ethics of care was advocated as the ethics which bring out the ethical concerns and ethical obligations that are present in the personal and intimate relationships. Subsequently, the care ethicists argue that the need for care and the ethical obligation to address that need are almost ubiquitous. It can be found even in politics and among various functionary groups in the society.  Held (2006), in particular, argued that caring need not be always maternal in character. The need for care, as well as the activity of taking care, can easily be also extended in the public spheres. Such as, in a hospital, or in education sector between teachers and the students. In her opinion, ethics of care provides an alternative normative outlook for interpersonal relationships in a society, which if followed properly can transform the society to be more humane, tolerant, and kind. Held gave the example of police work to illustrate (Held, 2006, p.39). The police works on behalf of the justice system of the society; however, if they approached the common people with less brutality and more care, as guided by ethics, the relationship between the police and the society would become much better than what it is today.

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She also stated that caring as an activity may also be extended to those engaged in hunger alleviation or access to healthcare either from the government or from the civil society. We may use the following terminology to separate, but not to delink, the two kinds of activity of taking care: (a) Non-contractual care relationship: Certain relationships and the caring relationships are not articulated or formalized by any technical or legal agreement. For example: • Caring relationships among the family members • Caring relationships between two best friends. There are ethical obligations which are embedded in these relationships, but they are not part of any legally binding agreement formed by the two sides. (b) Contractual care relationship: A contract is understood as a legally binding agreement entered on by two parties based on mutual agreement. There are obligations in these relationships as well. However, in a contractual relationship, the nature of the obligation is determined by the terms mentioned in the contract. For example: • Caring relationship between a hired attendant and an invalid person • Caring relationship between a hospital and a patient admitted in the hospital. Held claimed that the modern society is heavily influenced by the contractual thinking. We are informed that modern democracies rest on a social contract between the government and its people. Economies are viewed as a marketplace where the employer, employees, the manufacturing businesses, suppliers, and the consumers are all in rational, mutual agreements by self-interested parties. Held argues (1987) that for social cohesion and social harmony, the contractual model of a society cannot be adequate. She also argues that the society will be much improved if a non-contractual model of social relationships, as between a child and a mother, is followed. She writes: Care has the capacity to shape new persons with ever more advanced understandings of culture and society and morality and ever more advanced abilities to live well and cooperatively with others. (Held, 2006, p.32)

Bubeck too sees care as an activity; however, she also believes that care is essentially a human response to meet certain basic needs of the others, when the others themselves cannot meet the needs. In her own words, Caring for is the meeting of the needs of one person by another person, where face-toface interaction between carer and cared-for is a crucial element of the overall activity and where the need is of such a nature that it cannot possibly be met by the person in need herself.(Bubeck, 1995, p.126)

She also specifically mentions about the face-to-face interaction between the two sides as a central element in care. At the same time, she insists that there need not be any particular emotional bond between the two sides.

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On this ground of delinking the emotional bond from the activity of care, Held raised the objection that in that case acts of outward caring without any feeling of care also would become ethically approved by ethics of care. For example, someone, who only outwardly cares for a child while wishing the child dead, also may qualify as being a caring situation. A Utilitarian may ethically approve the situation as long as the child is fed and clothed despite the evil intentions of the caregiver; however, Held, as a care ethicist, cannot approve that. Held believes that the right attitudes and relationships are important aspects of care. Bubeck’s definition, however, was to make care more widely applicable in the public domains. Bubeck wanted the activities of a Welfare State, or a government, that works for the welfare of its people, to come within the purview of ethics of care. She endorses that care can be publicly provided too, as in public healthcare or government healthcare.

7.5.3.2

Care as a Practice

Tronto sees care as a practice and also as a relationship. She claims that a caring relationship has four subelements, with an ethical element or a value corresponding to each (Tronto, 1993, pp. 126–136): (1) Care as attentiveness: The activity of caring about, which is to recognize the need, or to become aware of a need in the other. The corresponding value is attentiveness. Each caring relation includes at least two people: Caregiver and the carereceiver. The relation may be reciprocal, interdependent, but also may not reciprocal. But, the distinctive characteristic is that caregiver recognizes a need for care in the other. The other person is in the focus of attentiveness. (2) Care as responsibility: The activity of willingness to respond to the need of the other. After the first phase, where the need is recognized, the second phase is to adopt a stance to address that need in the other. It is an element of ethical commitment to provide care to improve the cared-for’s situation. The ethical element or the value is responsibility. (3) Care as competence: The actual action of taking care of the need of the other requires competence. The caring requires to be competent care. It should be a well-conceived activity based on a certain degree of skill ensuring good and successful effort to address the need. The ethical element or value here is competence. (4) Care as responsiveness: The activity is reaction to the caring. It includes the consideration of the position of the others and recognition of the potential for abuse in care. Elsewhere, Tronto gives us a quite broad definition of care as an activity which includes. everything that we do to maintain, continue, and repair our ‘world’ so that we can live in it as well as possible (Fisher and Tronto, 1990, p.40)

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According to this, care need not be an activity only towards a person or persons. It may be also towards objects, plants, pets, and even towards the environment. Similarly, it could be the economic activity of selling a product, maintenance of a machinery, etc. On the whole, it is a nurturing and “repairing” activity.

7.5.3.3

Care as an Attitude

Noddings understood care as an attitude which typically accompanies the activity of caring. It is an attitude of close attention and understanding with empathy of the needs and desires of the cared-for. In some cases, it may be an attitude of engrossment with the needs of the other. However, it is an attitude which is tempered by due care towards one’s own needs also. The caregiver acts on behalf of the cared-for’s interest, but they also care for themselves. Otherwise, the caring relationship cannot be a sustainable relationship.

7.5.3.4

Care as a Value

Care is a practice and a value (Held, 2006, p.38). Held argues that like justice, which is both a practice and a value, care too is both a practice and a value. The practices of justice in activities, such as the court proceedings, are evaluated by the normative standard which justice as a value provides. Justice as a value picks out certain concepts and considerations from the entire range of ethical concepts. For example, justice as a value picks out concepts of equality, fairness, etc., and the associated concerns. Similarly, Held maintains that for the practices of care, and we need care as a value or as the normative standard to evaluate such practices. For, such practices at times can be deficient from an ethical perspective. Care as a value picks out a cluster of ethical concepts and considerations, such as sensitivity, trust, mutual consideration, and responsiveness. A caring relation requires certain attributes in the people involved. For example, in the caring relationship among interrelated people we may look for the following: • Trust: Caring and trust sustain each other. They implicitly require each other. • Mutual consideration: A caring relation thrives on mutual consideration, except in circumstances where one side is not in a position to return the consideration. For example: The relationship between a parent–child, or between a nurse and a comatose patient, cannot be reciprocal. Yet they are caring relationships. • Responsiveness to each other’s needs • Attentiveness • Sensitivity • Empathy

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These attributes, or characteristics, are character traits, which may be cultivated. Finding them in a person, or not finding them, is not only to describe a certain disposition in the person, but also to pass a normative judgment about the person. We value their existence in a person in a caring relationship. In this sense, they constitute care as a value. Just like the virtues, a caring relation needs to be cultivated. Between two persons in their personal lives, or between the members of a society, or between a government and its people, caring relationship needs to be cultivated over time with a conscious choice of behavior and with diligence. Quick Question 7.23 1. What is a key difference between Held’s view and Bubeck’s view on care as an activity? 2. Do you agree with Fisher and Tronto’s wide definition of care as an activity covering “everything that we do to maintain, continue, and repair our ‘world’ so that we can live in it as well as possible”? Explain.

7.5.4 What is Ethical in Care? Ethics of care is advocated as an alternative ethical approach by its various proponents, as you have seen above. Nonetheless, one may still ask: What is the ethical aspect in care? In what follows, I shall try to answer this question based on the rich contributions of the feminist ethicists, and the distinctive normative concepts and evaluative ethical criteria which they say uniquely characterize ethics of care. The ethical in care as expounded in ethics of care has many ethical aspects. For example: 1. The caring relationship itself is constituted by ethical considerations: When ethics of care speaks of the caring relationship between two sides as a fountainhead for ethical responsibilities, it does not mean merely a sudden emotional response. It also does not mean responsibilities based on just a causal relationship. A causal relationship may pave the process of caring, but in the end, a commitment to care is required to take it to the level of care which ethics of care focuses on. The nature of the relationship, and the engagement with each other in the relationship, and the commitment to care, all are part of the normative considerations: How an ethically desirable caring relationship should be. There are specific evaluative concerns such as: (a) The care should be competent care (Tronto). That is, the caregiver must be qualified and able to address the problem of the other. The care is not just an impulsive, one-time response.

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(b) It is ethically desirable that the care should be a balanced approach (Noddings, Held). It should not end up in being abusive either for the other or the cared-for, or for oneself or the one-caring. Too much care for the other may stifle the autonomy of the cared-for in an undesirable way; it may become a burden on the cared-for. Too little care for the other may actually be deficient and neglectful for the other. Similarly, one must not neglect one’s own needs while taking care of the other. Deprivation of one’s own basic needs does not augur well and is not ethically permissible by ethics of care (Held). Therefore, the act of caring which ethics of care speaks of is how care should be. In various ways, the proponents have expressed that it should be a well-balanced activity, guided by intuition but also by introspection and normative considerations. The act of caring, which the feminist ethics of care upholds, is an act of being troubled by another’s trouble, and an act of engagement with the other to address the trouble. As discussed above, it is an activity or a practice which is tempered by normative consideration. (2) Duty in caring: Care in ethics of care is also quite emphatic about ethical obligation or duty which may arise out of non-contractual caring relations. It expects the moral agent to respect and honor the corresponding obligation, and commitment, that accompany the act of caring. Ethical duty of care particularly becomes evident when the other’s well-being depends significantly on the decision of the one who cares. Consider the situation involving asymmetrical dependence between two individuals and caring as a relation between the two. Let us suppose that an invalid, ailing person requires care. The situation is such that he or she has to be asymmetrically dependent on his or her caregivers. The dependence is asymmetric in the sense that there is no room for reciprocity in caring. The invalid person has to completely depend on the caregivers to meet his or her needs; and cannot in return care for the others. Ethics of care opines that in situations such as these the vulnerability of the one-sided need for care creates a special moral ground for a duty to care. There is an ethical obligation that comes from the helplessness of the dependent on care. That duty is as much based on justice as it is on care. The asymmetrically dependent deserves that care; and also from the one-caring the care should flow as a spontaneous, human response. In particular, ethics of care insists on recognizing the relational interdependency and the asymmetrical dependencies (Kittay, 2005). It asks us to use that acknowledgment as the basis for maintaining just and caring relationships. Similarly, we have a duty to take special care towards those with whom we have such special relationships. In the discussion above, we have also seen how a proper caring relationship may require certain virtues, or character attributes, in a person. These are requirements from a set of normative considerations about how a caring relationship may be.

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7.5.5 Limitations of Ethics of Care A radically different ethical approach as such attracts a lot of critical comments. In addition, ethics of care threw a challenge to the longstanding and established traditional approaches in Western ethics. So, it is understandable that critics have not spared ethics of care to highlight any of its weaknesses. However, the feminist ethicists have used the criticisms as opportunities to respond more fully and thereby have helped the position to grow from strength to strength. In what follows, I shall try to summarize the main criticisms, and, to be fair, also the responses from the proponents of ethics of care as far as possible. 1. Encourages arbitrary favoritism: Critics fault ethics of care that in the name of special obligations in special relationships it ethically permits what should be unethical; such as arbitrary favoritism. They claim that by giving primacy to the demands of the near and dear ones in one’s immediate circle of family and friends, it makes it possible for cases of unfair cronyism, and parochialism to attain ethical approval. The outcome is a level of impermissible partiality in ethical judgments, which undermines the claim of ethics of care to be a viable approach in ethics. Critics argue that this possibility looms large unless the value of justice is given a place in ethics of care (Friedman, 2006, 61–77.) In response, some feminist ethicists have argued that ethics of care is not devoid of concerns of justice. In fact, they have tried to show how the principle of justice can be meshed with the normative kind of care which ethics of care espouses (Held, 1995). Held, in particular, has argued that justice and care are both highly important values and that neither can be dispensed. She further shows how, instead of being incompatible, the two elements can be compatibly used in one’s ethical judgment. She agrees with other feminist ethicists that it is a grave mistake to think that justice only applies in the public sphere, and care applies only within the private sphere; when actually, both may be applied in both spheres. She writes: Care and justice, then, cannot be allocated to the separate spheres of the private and the public. (Held, 1995, p. 129)

Held claims that care is a core value and without it we, the humans, cannot have a life. For, every human requires a great deal of care in the early years and needs care throughout the life. A caring relationship is what is required to nurture a human being. Children, who get their only their basic necessities met without the nurturing of a caring relationship, do not develop well. She opines that justice demands that in a society we treat each other with due respect, but the social fabric of mutual trust and concern require a caring relationship. She endorses that within the broader framework of care, we can fit justice. For example, we may develop a welfare policy that each person is entitled to the care needed for appropriate development. 2. Against Nodding’s limiting care only to the close ones: Other critics have argued that the early version of ethics of care as advocated by Noddings unfairly excuses moral agents from showing care to international people in the distant shores who

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need care just because they are distant (Tronto, 1995, 111–112; Robinson, 1999, 31). Critics point out that actually the plight of someone in a distant country, without food or necessary medical intervention, puts the same moral demand on us as that of the person who is closest to us or dearest to us. Noddings in response have revised her version of ethics of care and have tried to extend the ambit of care to the public sphere and even to the international areas of concern. For instance, she dropped the term engrossment used earlier, because she thought that the term implied an undue miscontrual as infatuation. Instead, she offered the expression receptive attention to the needs of the other in a caring relationship. The caregiver gives receptive attention to the cared-for in the sense of being open to the feelings and vulnerability of the other.  Michael Slote on the role of empathy: Michael Slote (2007) in his defense of ethics of care as a proper alternative ethical approach used the term empathy. Slote argued that using the concept of empathy, ethics of care can develop its own persuasive account of ethical phenomena. He also argued that ethics of care contains deontological elements; such as a commitment to caring as a way of life. At least a universal principle also seems to be part of ethics of care: Never to inflict pain deliberately and unnecessarily. In this way, Slote has tried to fortify ethics of care by linking it to some of the established, traditional approaches. Noddings concurs and states that though we are naturally predisposed to respond with empathy to those who are close, this does not mean that we cannot extend empathy to strangers and to people in distant lands. Yet, she still holds that distance matters in caring and in empathy. 3. Ethics of care is not applicable beyond a certain personal level: It has been objected that ethics of care is not an ethical approach which can be adequately broadly applied. In the public sphere of politics and global justice, ethics of care and its key concepts fall short. In response, feminist philosophers have woven an explicit component of politics and justice in ethics of care to extend the theory to a global context. Held, for example, adopts a ethics of care perspective towards international relations (Held, 2006). She argues that international politics and international relations could significantly benefit from the transformative perspective of ethics of care. Instead of the overemphasis on military power and economic superiority, governments may benefit from engaging more with the social sectors and environmental concerns, and paying better attention to cultivating and maintaining cooperative relationships with other countries. 4. Gilligan’s methodology is questionable: Carol Gilligan’s work in a different voice has inspired and encouraged many feminist scholars and ethicists to gather under the banner of ethics of care. However, critics, which include some feminist philosophers, have argued that Gilligan’s methodology was problematic, therefore, the empirical validity of her findings are also questionable. In other words, the objection is that the origin and the foundation of ethics of care are inaccurate and unreliable.

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For example, it is argued that Gilligan’s sampling was too narrow and unrepresentative. It is claimed that her samples were from a homogeneous population group; namely college students of elite colleges and of women who supported abortion. Hence, people from other social categories or with different beliefs were not included (Kohlberg, 1982, pp. 517–519). It is also argued that wider samplings from more diverse perspectives could have led to more diverse results than what Gilligan took to be only two kinds and gendered voices (Haan, 1976). For example, if the moral agent is identified as a Black American male, an ethical dilemma and its punitive consequences would certainly be viewed differently (Walker and Snarey, 2004). Therefore, the critics raise a question whether ethics of care can truly make a claim about finding a different voice. Even if we grant that Gilligan’s research findings represent the voice of some women, critics question whether it sufficiently establishes a binary gendered division between the genders. They claim that it is questionable whether Gilligan’s work adequately show that the voice of care is the only alternative approach that could be there. In response, as we have already discussed, Gilligan and other feminist philosophers have pointed out that Gilligan’s point was not to affirm the practice of bifurcating along the genders, as the critics mistakenly think, but to show how the expressions of girls and women have been wrongly interpreted and evaluated within traditional psychology. Kohlberg’s claimed findings, for example, are based on such interpretations and evaluations of remarks by girls and women. The critics therefore have misunderstood. In Gilligan’s own words: I am saying that the study of women calls attention to a different way of constituting the self and morality; they are focusing on the issue of sex differences as measured by standards derived from one sex only. In other words, my critics take the ideas of self and morality for granted as these ideas have been defined in the patriarchal or male-dominated tradition. I call these concepts in question by giving examples of women who constitute these ideas differently and hence tell a different story about human experience. (Gilligan, 1986, p. 325)

Gilligan explained that she pursued a different set of questions in her work; how much are the women like men? How much do women deviate from a male-defined standard? The questions came up because a consistent conceptual and observational bias was noted in developmental psychology, identity development, adolescent development, and adult development theories of her time. The practice was to leave out girls and women from the sampling in research and from the consequent theory-building. Gilligan rejected the criticism that her research empirically stereotypes a woman and the female point of view. She argued that her project was more about questioning the stereotypification upheld by the traditional psychologists. She also says that the title of her work was ‘in a different voice’, and not ‘in a woman’s voice’ to indicate that this voice is identified by theme, and not by gender. She writes: Thus, the care perspective in my rendition is neither biologically determined nor unique to women. It is, however, a moral perspective different from that currently embedded in psychological theories and measures, and it is a perspective that was defined by listening to both women and men describe their own experience. (Ibid., p. 327)

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5. The maternal paradigm is problematic: Some critics have questioned the construal of all caring relations in terms of a mother-and-child dyad. They claim that the paradigm of mothering is limited and problematic framework for ethics of care. Maternalism and the mother–child paradigm were very strongly in the early versions of ethics of care. Critics have argued that a maternal viewpoint represents a special perspective, but mothering is not confined to women only. Certain attributes, such as virtues associated with mothering, fostering and nurturing abilities, cognitive capacities, may also be present in a male.

7.5.6 Conclusion on Ethics of Care Though the beginning premise of ethics of care was to introduce an alternative to traditional approaches in normative ethics, scholars have found in ethics of care resonance of other ethical theories. Though large part of criticisms of ethics of care have come from the proponents of traditional approaches in normative ethics, the credit goes to ethics of care for rekindling interest in the traditional theories to examine what many taken-for-granted assumptions ingrained in them. Some say that the feminist critique of traditional theories by ethics of care and by feminist ethics has aroused traditional ethics from its dogmatic slumber (Tong, 1993, p.160). Consequently, the reexamination of the traditional theories has also led to finding affinities and connections between the traditional approaches and ethics of care; e.g. with Hume’s sentimentalism (Slote, 2019). The comparison between virtue ethics and ethics of care has been most argued for. In fact, according to some, ethics of care is a kind of virtue ethics. It is pointed out that there are important affinities between ethics of care and virtue ethics. Though Aristotle’s virtue ethics, whose moral agent is presumed as male, is not exactly a favorite with the feminists, similar to ethics of care, virtue ethics also does not feel itself governed by any abstract, universal principles. Instead, it allows for situational complexity not to be codified or reduced to a single set of ethical rules. Moreover, similar to ethics of care, virtue ethics does not believe in a tension between reason and emotion; nor does it subscribe to the view that all human beings share a common human nature (Groenhout, 2014). Others have asked for an integration with virtue ethics. It is claimed that care ethics lacks the normative justice standards which virtue ethics has, and justice can guide care in its distribution and practice (McLaren, 2001). Some feminist philosophers, however, oppose this integration on the ground that it effectively undermines the unique approach of ethics of care. Held (2006), for example, insists that it is possible to accommodate concerns of justice within the larger theoretical framework of ethics of care. References • Kamm, F.A. (2013). Nonconsequentialism. In H. Lafollette and I. Persson (eds.), The Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory, Chap. 12.

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• Noddings, Nel. Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education. Berkeley: University of CA Press, 1982. • Tronto, Joan. Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care. New York, NY: Routledge, 1994. • Held, Virginia. The Ethics of Care. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Study Questions 1. Do you agree with the statement that “consequentialism by itself does not say what kind of consequences are good or bad; it merely tells us that we should judge an action its outcome”? Explain your answer. 2. Comment on the claim of non-consequentialism: Of two actions, A and B, even if they have the same consequence, A may still be ethically right and B may be wrong. What are some of the factors which non-consequentialist ethics may appeal to in order to call A ethically right and B ethically wrong? 3. In the context of Kant’s deontological ethics, explain carefully the differences between: (a) Military model of Duty and Kant’s conception of duty (b) Perfect Duty and Imperfect Duty in Kant’s ethics (c) Political autonomy and Moral autonomy 4. In Kant’s ethics, an autonomous will is understood as not only self-legislating, but also self-motivating and self-constraining. In your opinion what is the necessity for adding self-motivating and self-constraining? Does not self-legislating imply that the will also be self-motivating and self-constraining? Explain. 5. What does Kant mean when he states that the humans have a value which is “above all price”? Is this value acquired by the humans as they live their lives? 6. Explain in your own words what Kant conceives the good will as. Is the good will good for the good consequences that it brings? In what sense is it a requirement for doing a duty out of the duty motive? 7. What is Kant’s reason for maintaining that a hypothetical imperative cannot be an ethical rule of conduct? 8. Explain the four steps of a decision procedure which some philosophers claim is provided by the first formulation of Categorical Imperative. 9. Comment on Onora O’Neill’s explanation of ‘to treat someone merely as a means’. Is there something else which can be added? What is it to ‘treat someone as an end in itself’ in Kant’s ethics? 10. What is a virtue according to Aristotle? Explain how Aristotle differentiates between the intellectual virtues and the ethical virtues. 11. How is Aristotle’s theory of human psyche linked with his conception of vices?

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12. What does Aristotle mean when he claims that an ethical virtue or Hexis is also understood as a state or condition a person is in? 13. Explain what Aristotle mean by most virtues lie in the golden mean between two correlative vices. Does he mean by the golden mean the average of the two extremes? 14. Is Aristotle’s practical wisdom an intellectual virtue? Do you agree with Aristotle that practical wisdom is typically not there among young people? 15. Bring out the unique features of Aristotle’s conception of eudaimonia. 16. Summarize the arguments of feminist philosophers for their claim: Traditional ethical approaches are male-biased, fragmented, and incomplete. 17. What are the positive and novel contributions of the feminist philosophers in the discourse of ethics? 18. Gilligan’s work ‘in a different voice’ is considered as a very important beginning for ethics of care. Show how Gilligan’s work and arguments have helped to give an initial impetus to ethics of care. 19. What are the important similarities and differences between the conceptions of ethics of care by Nel Noddings and Virginia Held? 20. Why does Held refer to non-contractual caring relationships to enunciate her vision of care as an activity? What does Tronto add to the concept of care when she speaks of elements of care as a practice? Is it important to bring in the concept of competent care? 21. Feminist philosophers such as Kittay have based the ethical concept of duty or moral obligation in interpersonal dependencies and on asymmetric dependencies. Compare and contrast this conception of duty with that of Kant in his deontological ethics.

Research Exercises 1. Do you agree with the objection against Kant’s ethics that its presumption of a uniform human nature is empirically unsubstantiated? How may Kant defend himself against this criticism? Explain your answer. 2. Compare and contract Aristotle’s virtue ethics with Utilitarianism and deontological ethics. Is virtue ethics is truly self-centric and inapplicable to situations? 3. What is the problem of moral luck? Does it pose a serious challenge against Aristotle’s virtue ethics? 4. Do you think Held or the other feminist philosophers have satisfactorily addressed the objection of possible degeneration of ethics of care into arbitrary favoritism?

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Case Study Discussion Ethics Case 7.1 Seaman Holmes and the Longboat of William Brown Case This case is actually a real-life incident that occurred in the 19th Century. The USS Williams Brown was a massive American ship. It set sail from Liverpool to Philadelphia on March 13, 1841. Although it was a cargo ship, court documents show that there were 65 passengers and 17 crewmen on the ship. The passengers were mostly immigrants from Scotland and Ireland going to America in search of a new life. After a month, near Newfoundland the ship struck an iceberg in the rough seas and started to sink. A jolly boat (a smaller lifeboat) and a long boat (a longer lifeboat with oars to row through the water) were lowered. Life boats were there, and they were manned. The jolly boat was taken by the Captain, his 8 crew member and a female passenger, and they left. In the long boat, around 33 passengers, the First Mate Francis Rhodes, and his crewmen, managed to scramble in. The rest of the 31 passengers were left abandoned with the sinking ship. Though initially the two boats sailed together overnight, in the morning the Captain decided to sail for Newfoundland, some 200 miles, despite knowing that the longboat has a damaged rudder. The two boats thus got separated. Next day, the sea was rough. The longboat began to leak. Fearing that the longboat would sink in the rough sea, the longboat crew and passengers started to bail the water out. The situation started to worsen. The First Mate Rhodes decided to lighten the load to sane the longboat. His idea of lightening the load was to throw passengers out of the longboat! The First Mate ordered a sailor, Seaman Holmes, to throw 14 people out of the boat. Fourteen men were thrown out, and a woman leapt over to be with her lover. The sea was freezing and the people thrown out did not survive. An hour later the long boat and its surviving passengers were rescued by another ship called the Crescent. It brought the victims to their original destination. There were total 19 survivors of the 65 passengers left from this incident. Interestingly, none of the crews lost lives. The incident was reported by newspapers all over, and the public expressed a strong consternation. After reaching their destination, many of the surviving passengers of the USS William Brown filed a complaint with the district attorney. Only one of the crewmen, 26 year old Swedish Seaman Alexander Williams Holmes was found in Philadelphia. Holmes was charged with murder, which later was reduced to the charges of unlawful but not “malicious” manslaughter. Holmes argued that though pushed the passengers overboard, his act was out of ‘necessity”. His Captain and second Mate vouched for Holmes’s

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character and cited that Holmes gave away most of his own clothing to the women and children in the longboat so that they can stay warm in the open, frigid sea. The Prosecutors argued that the danger in the boat was not immediate since the longboat failed to capsize, even as men struggled against being thrown overboard. The Prosecutors also noted that sailors should have prioritized the passengers’ safety over their own. Holmes was found guilty in a Philadelphia court. The jury found him guilty but also asked the Judge for leniency. He was sentenced for six months of jail and a $20 fine. Why the First Mate who first ordered the passengers to be thrown out was not charged was never made clear. During the trial the criteria of selection of the passengers overthrown was under discussion. It was found that the crews were all spared on the presumption that they could row. Children, married men and women, single women were mostly spared. But single men were considered expendable. Case 7.1. Questions 1. What, according to you, is/are the prominent ethical issue(s) in this case? Explain in your own language clearly identifying the ethical concepts involved. 2. Consider Seaman Holmes’s action. If you were a consequentialist, how would you have defended Holmes’s action? 3. Would a Utilitarian approve of what Holmes did? Justify. 4. How would a non-consequentialist view the incident? 5. From the perspective of deontological ethics, is the action of the First Mate, or of Seaman Holmes, ethically permissible? Explain. 6. How do you ethically evaluate the action of the Captain of the ship, USS William Brown? Explain. 7. How do you ethically evaluate the decision of the First Mate to lighten the load of a sinking longboat? Explain.

Ethics Case 7.2 Making Vulnerabilities Visible: Punkspider3 A Cybersecurity Ethics Case Study.

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Case developed by Irina Raicu, Markkula Center of Applied Ethics

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A recent article in Wired magazine details the anticipated rerelease of a tool called PunkSpider. While constantly scanning the web, PunkSpider “automatically identifies hackable vulnerabilities in websites and then allows anyone to search those results”—by URL keywords, or type or severity of vulnerability. PunkSpider collects a catalog of unpatched vulnerabilities and makes them public. Its developers hope that the tool will force website administrators to fix those vulnerabilities. However, malevolent actors might exploit the disclosed vulnerabilities first. The tool’s creators are aware of this risk. One of the creators, Alejandro Carceres, pointed out to Wired that “scanners that find Web vulnerabilities have always existed. This one just makes the results public.” He added, “You know your customers can see [the publicly disclosed vulnerability], your investors can see it, so you’re going to fix that…fast.” According to Wired, an earlier version of PunkSpider had been repeatedly kicked off Amazon Web Services in response to “abuse reports from angry Web administrators.” In its new incarnation, the tool now includes “a feature that allows Web administrators to spot PunkSpider’s probing based on the user agent that helps identify visitors to a Website, and… an opt-out feature that lets Websites remove themselves from the tool’s searches.” When asked about the ethics of creating and deploying PunkSpider, cybersecurity expert Katie Moussouris argued that “[v]ulnerabilities themselves are what would lead to the hacking of websites”; she added, “a tool like this just makes those vulnerabilities visible.” After years of warnings about vulnerabilities that continue to be ignored, Alejandro Carceres says, “we need to try something new.” Case 7.2. Questions 1. What does PunkSpider do? What is the justification the developers of PunkSpider offer for what it does? 2. What are the risks associated with what PunkSpider does? Are the risks ethical in nature? 3. Who are the major stakeholders involved in this case? 4. Consider the case through the ethical lenses of ethics of rights, justice, virtue, and identify the issues that they bring to attention in this scenario? 5. Does the inclusion of an opt-out feature change your ethical analysis of the project? If so, how?

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Ethics Case 7.3 Ana’s Story4 Ana is a 52 year old primary caregiver to her mother, Mrs. C. Ana is a secondgeneration Mexican American born in Northern California. Ana is the oldest; she has one sister and two brothers. Ana completed a high school education and earns between $30,000–45,000 a year working 40–60 h a week taking care of people with disabilities. Ana is unmarried and lives with her mother and her sister Rose’s two teenage children. Because she is single, Ana became the primary caregiver, attending to her mother’s daily needs, while Rose assists by taking charge of their mother’s medical appointments. Mrs. C. was born in Northern Mexico and is 73 years old. Though she has lived in the US for almost 50 years, Mrs C remains primarily Spanish speaking. Ana has lived most of her adult life with her mother. She is 8 years older than her sister and 13 years older than her brothers. She reported that she “played the mother role” with her siblings at times, preparing her siblings for school and attending school meetings and parent conferences, as Mr. and Mrs. C. did not speak English well. Understanding Her Mother’s Illness Two years ago, Ana began to notice that her mother would start to forget (leave the stove on and wander off). Sometimes she would sit down and watch TV and then forget what she was doing, or go into another room and she would forget what she actually had started doing. Mrs. C. also began to miss taking her medications. When asked about her forgetfulness, Mrs. C. would minimize the incidents, or deny that such situations had happened altogether. As Ana had worked with Alzheimer’s patients, she was familiar with its presentation and began to look for signs. She began to ask her mother if she was forgetting things. Mrs. C. invariably denied she had memory problems. At Ana’s sister’s insistence, Mrs. C. went to see her primary care physician. Ana has not spoken to Mrs. C.’s physician directly; furthermore, Ana has not discussed the matter with any informal support groups to help her deal with her mother’s symptoms. She reported looking for information from other sources and participating in the research project in hopes of receiving some guidance: That is why I came to this, you know. I feel like I am getting burned out here. And I need to get more motivated, you know, because the other part is I work also with disabled people, so that’s kind of like carrying two loads.

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Excerpt from the case developed on the basis of interview and cited in Flores, Y. G., Hinton, L., Barker, J. C., Franz, C. E., & Velasquez, A. (2009). Beyond familism: a case study of the ethics of care of a Latina caregiver of an elderly parent with dementia. Health care for women international, 30(12), 1055–1072. https://doi.org/10.1080/07399330903141252.

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When interviewed, Ana described her mother as forgetful, combative, at times physically and often verbally aggressive, and frequently nervous and obsessive about the well-being of her teenage grandchildren, who live with her and Ana. Ana had become concerned, however, because the intensity of her “stressfulness” had increased substantially. Ana appeared unaware that her mother’s behaviors were symptoms of dementia and were not solely an exacerbation of her tendency to “stress easily.” Mrs. C. suffers also from hypertension and arthritis, a sleep disorder, and a hearing loss; she also has a pacemaker. Mrs. C. has Medicaid/Medicare as her health insurance. Mrs. C. sees her primary care physician regularly for her medical problems. While her daughters generally accompany her to the appointments, they do not routinely go in with their mother to see the doctor, as Mrs. C. refuses to let them accompany her in the examining room. Out of respect, Ana and her sister comply. Ana’s sister did speak to Mrs. C.’s doctor on one occasion regarding their concerns about Mrs. C.’s symptoms. At that time, the physician had diagnosed Mrs. C. with mild dementia. However, Ana does not know to what extent the doctor is aware of Mrs. C.’s behavioral symptoms. Ana’s behaviors are indicative of the passiveness that is viewed as culturally appropriate for children and women in the face of a parent’s illness. Ana reported that over time her mother’s combativeness has grown, and, in some instances, Mrs. C. has become physically aggressive towards Ana and other family members. On one occasion, Mrs. C. became so angry at her daughters that she locked them out of the house. Though Ana reported her concern over a number of cognitive and behavioral changes in her mother, she stated that for her the most challenging change in her mother is “her forwardness”: She’s very vocal; she’ll tell it like it is. She’s not, she doesn’t sugar coat-things, not that she ever did, but what I’m saying is if she had a real nasty opinion about somebody, she would reserve it. Now she doesn’t; she just blurts it out, you know.

Along with her memory lapses, Mrs. C.’s deviation from culturally expected behaviors for her age and gender, i.e. being reserved and polite, led Ana to suspect her mother suffered from Alzheimer’s. Ana also believes that her mother’s combativeness is the result of pent up-anger, perhaps relating to how Mr. C. treated her during the marriage. My mom used to be a very reserved woman, even though she knew that the other person was in the wrong, she would reserve her opinion. Now she just voices everything that comes out, no matter who she hurts or what, who she says it to, and … she was brought up to be a reserved woman, to keep everything in; now she’s just letting it out. I don’t know, you know, I know that some of it is not a normal behavior.

Although Ana expressed concern about the behavioral changes evident in her mother, she normalized them:

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[She] has always been a stressful person; she’s always been a worrywart. She has always been a nervous person, a tense person.

Ana described her mother as a traditional woman who never handled financial matters. Thus, when her mother and father separated, Ana returned to the family home and assumed some of the tasks her father had performed: It goes back to the Hispanic culture, that the woman always is by the man, and my dad always took care of my mom, financially, and for everything basically, so she had no need to go to the grocery on her own, to budget a checkbook, you know, all those things, which I now do because she’s used to that, you know, and she’s kind of lost in that point. It’s common among the Hispanics, especially if they’re from the old, we’ll say old school, you know. It’s a tradition. It’s like I’ve carried through it, you know, and I found myself that I’ve been caught into that.

Thus, Ana unquestioningly assumed her role as caregiver even before her mother became ill, following the “old school” tradition of children helping the parents when needed. Unmarried and already living with her mother, Ana was regarded by the family as the logical hands-on caregiver when Mrs. C. became ill. Her younger sister helps with medical appointments but because she is married and has children, she is not expected to be as involved in her mother’s care. The two brothers participate minimally, visiting occasionally but not providing any other form of support. Ana explained their lack of involvement in the following way: My brothers are kind of in their own little world, you know. I think it has to do with the culture a lot of it, you know, how they’re brought up. Like my mom has always had this thing that men are to be catered to and women are pretty basically on their own.

Ana accepts the brothers’ lack of support as a culturally appropriate fact. As the eldest child and as a daughter, particularly being unmarried and having no children, she somewhat unquestioningly conforms to the cultural (and possibly familial) expectation to become her mother’s main companion and hands-on caregiver. While female caregiving of elders is not a uniquely Latino phenomenon, Ana assumes the primary caregiver role because she sees it as a cultural mandate rooted in familistic values; thus, she carries forward the tradition by assuming the caregiver role for her mother. Though Ana accepted becoming her mother’s assistant in handling the details of her mother’s life, which was previously done by Mr. C., she struggles to make sense of Mrs. C.’s behavioral symptoms and to respond in a caring and respectful way without overstepping what she perceives to be the boundaries of her role as a daughter. As Ana struggles to maintain her mother’s autonomy, Ana oscillates between empathic responses she considers appropriate and angry responses that lead to guilty feelings, as she is violating the ethical rule of treating parents with respect. Ana reported relying on her love for her mother to remain patient and compassionate; she alternates between

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accepting her caregiver role as an obligation, given her cultural upbringing, and wanting to run away and escape her mother’s outbursts, which she sometimes does by locking herself in her room. Case 7.3. Questions 1. Carefully delineate the characteristics of the relationship between the caregiver and the cared-for as described in the case. 2. What is Ana’s argument for accepting a duty of care in this case? Do you think that for Ana it would be possible to sustain this duty? Explain. 3. What is balanced care, as Noddings and Held spoke about? Does this case exhibit that? 4. According to you, what is a fair for all solution in this case? Explain

Key Terms • Autonomy: Autonomy means to be ruled by oneself, or self-legislation. • Categorical Imperative: A Categorical Imperative is a self-imposed command or an ethical duty, which is unconditional in character. It is also a universal duty, which holds irrespective of the consequences. • Deontological ethics: The name deontological ethics is derived from the Greek term déon, which stands for duty or obligation, and the term logos, which stands for a study or a discourse. Hence, from the Greek terms, deontological ethics roughly means that ethics, which is based on duty. Kant’s ethics is deontological ethics, as its central concept is duty. • Ethical virtues: Ethical virtues are excellences of character. They require the guidance of our reason, but themselves cannot reason. E.g. excellence of self-control. They are multi-track dispositions and are complex combinations of realization, knowledge, feelings, desire, expectations, values, and actions and reactions in a person. • Feminist ethics: It is an approach in ethics which accepts gender as an important factor in discerning ethical problems, and in the epistemology, methodology and tools adopted for ethical analysis. It is also an ethics which acknowledges and validates women’s ethical experiences in its approach to ethical issues. • Hypothetical imperative: This is a kind of imperative, which is conditional in nature. It is a command, given that the agent wills a certain goal. It states that an action is good for some purpose. If the agent wants to achieve that goal, then the agent should perform the action. In Kant’s ethics, these are mentioned but these are not accepted as the ethical imperatives. • Informed consent: Informed consent means a consent given by a person which is informed, voluntary, decisionally-capacitated or competent consent.

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• Intellectual virtues: Intellectual virtues are excellences which are linked to our rational side, which assume powers of reasoning and deliberation. • Maxim: A maxim is a personal rule or a policy on which a person’s act is based. If the person does not have a policy, then maxim is the principle behind the decision on which the person acts. Kant uses this concept in his ethics. • Moral autonomy: In Kant’s ethics, the term means the capacity to consciously think over and to generate the ethical rule for oneself. • Non-consequentialism: It is a position in normative ethics that consequences of an action should not be the only criteria to determine the ethical rightness or wrongness of the action. There are other important criteria, such as properties that are intrinsic to the action, which must be taken into consideration. • Practical wisdom: Practical wisdom is wisdom about the practical matters. It is a kind of wisdom which enables a practically wise person to know how to deal with complex situations which life presents to us, and how to properly respond in any situation in the right manner. Aristotle insists upon it as a requirement for finding the golden mean of ethical virtues. It is wisdom about actual situations, and what count as appropriate responses to them. It is a product of time and is based upon experiential learning. • Self-legislating: It means being ruled by one’s own ethical rule or the moral law. Self-legislating also means that the moral agent’s will is not governed by ethical rule from any external source. This is part of the meaning of being morally autonomous in Kant’s ethics. • Self-motivating: It means that the will can motivate itself to follow the selfimposed rule. No one else needs to make the will to obey the rule, either by threat, or by social pressure. This is also part of the meaning of being morally autonomous in Kant’s ethics. • Self-constraining: It means that the will can also voluntarily accept to be constrained by that rule. That is, it can willingly surrender itself to the instruction from the rule and behave as the rule instructs. This is also part of the meaning of being morally autonomous in Kant’s ethics. • Virtue: A virtue is an excellence or an excellent trait in a person, which makes its possessor excellent or good. Virtue is a core concept for Virtue Ethics. • Vice: A vice is a bad trait, or a defect, in the character of a person. Instead of making its possessor good, a vice makes its possessor bad, and leads the person to continuously choose wrong action.

Chapter 8

Applied Ethics: AI and Ethics

In this chapter we shall: ˛ Gain an understanding about how we can proceed to apply ethics ˛ Understand what the possible ways are to apply the normative ethical theories which we learned ˛ Be acquainted the major ethical issues raised by the recent advances in the field of artificial intelligence or AI ˛ Explore the insights which the normative ethical theories may have to offer in this regard. Main Topics in this Chapter Applied Ethics Rise of Applied Ethics Methods of applied ethics What is artificial intelligence or AI Turing Test Recent advances in AI AI and Ethics: Its importance AI and Ethics: Moral status and moral agency AI and Ethics: Major ethical issues What can normative ethics bring to the table in the discourse of AI and Ethics

8.1 What is Applied Ethics? Applied ethics is a branch of ethics which brings ethical discussion to the practical problems of lives. It is also known as practical ethics. Instead of the abstract and theoretical questions, such as which criteria to use to distinguish between ethically © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 C. Chakraborti, Introduction to Ethics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-0707-6_8

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right and wrong actions, and how to justify the criteria, applied ethics dedicates itself to identify and comment on ethical problems in personal and professional lives in the real world. For example, it is often used to understand and to assess the ramifications of new and emerging technologies for the human society and also for the other species in the natural environment. Box 8.1 Applied Ethics Applied ethics is a branch of ethics which brings ethical discussion to the practical problems of lives This practical aspect of applied ethics is evident in the following definition of applied ethics offered by Childress: The terms “applied ethics and “practical ethics” are used interchangeably to indicate the application of ethics to special arenas of human activity, such as business, politics, and medicine, and to particular problems, such as abortions. (Childress, 1986)

From the above quotation, we learn that in Childress’s view, applied ethics is basically the application of ethics to specific areas of human activity and to specific real-life issues. In the definition above, Childress specifically mentions “business, politics, and medicine” as exemplars of such specific human activities. Indeed, applied ethics began with medical ethics, which comprises discourse on ethical issues which are pertinent for the field of practice of medicine. This was closely followed by business ethics, which again is a discourse on normative considerations of issues relevant for business. In Chap. 1 of this book, we have already mentioned medical ethics, business ethics, but also few other fields such as engineering ethics and bioethics, as some of the prominent exemplars of subfields of applied ethics. As more and more areas of human activities came under the lens of ethical appraisal, naturally the number of “special arenas of human activities” in which applied ethics is active has grown over time. For instance, in addition to medical ethics, nursing ethics is now added as a branch of applied ethics, which focuses on ethical issues related to the profession of nursing. Similarly, as Information Technology (IT) flourished, Information Technology ethics emerged as a branch of applied ethics to deal with the ethical issues which arise out of the development and use of that technology.

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Box 8.2 Some newer branches of Applied Ethics

Technology Nano

Each of these has room for normative considerations: Right, wrong, Good, Bad

Bio Information Digital Cognitive

With competence, there comes the normative considerations of: Responsibility Liability Accountability

In brief, as newer advances in knowledge have opened up a new field of inquiry, or a new technology opens the door to a new set of possible actions, newer ethical concerns and queries have emerged. Soon with the collective interest in the ethical dimensions of the practical problems of the new area of knowledge, a new subfield of applied ethics has emerged. In what follows, as an example I shall provide a glimpse of a newer branch of applied ethics which has become pertinent to our lives: Ethics of Gene Therapy. However, later in this chapter we shall discuss more elaborately Ethical issues in AI (Artificial Intelligence) as an exemplar of applied ethics.

8.1.1 Example: Ethics of Gene Therapy We may take the subfield of applied ethics of gene editing or gene therapy as an example. As advances in human genome research brought us knowledge about the DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), a body’s basic building blocks, and gene therapy became a distinct possibility, new ethical questions arose about the ethical implications of application of that knowledge and technology. Gene Therapy is a medical technique which modifies a person’s genes to treat or to cure a disease. It can either replace the disease-causing gene by a healthy substitute gene or can inactivate a malfunctioning gene.

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Box 8.3 Gene Therapy Gene Therapy is a medical technique which modifies a person’s genes to treat or to cure a disease. It can either replace the disease-causing gene by a healthy substitute gene, or can inactivate a malfunctioning gene. Gene therapy involves making changes at the DNA level using genome editing. Genome editing, or gene editing, or genome engineering, is a specialized group of engineering technologies in which the DNA is replaced, added, or deleted, or modified, in the genome of a living organism. For example, genome editing has been done to improve certain crops. Box 8.4 Genome editing Genome editing, or gene editing, or genome engineering, is a specialized group of engineering technologies in which the DNA is replaced, added, or deleted, or modified, in the genome of a living organism. Since this technological power to change a body’s DNA is now available, the ethical responsibility to harness this power for beneficial usage for the society becomes a very important ethical issue. For, with power, comes the moral responsibility of putting that power to ethically informed usages. A major ethical concern in ethics of gene therapy is about the possible ‘wrong usages’ or misuses of the gene therapy technologies. A possible resurgence of eugenics: A hard lesson from the usage of ultrasonography (USG) technology for prenatal sex determination of a fetus and then the subsequent widespread practice of female feticide (Madan & Breuning, 2014) has taught us to be doubly cautious about any medical technology and its unethical uses. An exercise in the probable unethical uses of genome editing brings us to the idea of eugenics. Eugenics is the term which refers to a belief system and practices which advocate the improvement of the genetic quality of humans by selective breeding. It supports the measures (positive eugenics) taken for the inheritable ‘desirable human traits’, such as selective mating of the humans, to ensure that the future generation live a better life and are capable of contributing to the better lives of the others. Consequently it supports the discontinuation of the inheritable ‘undesirable human traits’ (negative eugenics) by sterilization and other methods. Many followers of eugenics believed that compulsory sterilization is the most effective way to eliminate from a population of ‘inferior’ people. The term eugenics was coined in 1880 by Francis Galton, and it was popular even among the scientists of that time. Its popularity ebbed when the Nazi Germany used the concept of eugenics to support its extermination of the Jews and other communities as socially weak and genetically inferior kind. It should be understandable why eugenics cannot be ethically endorsed. As Buchanan et al. (2000) have argued, one of the arguments is value pluralism, or

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the existence of more than one set of values in the same society; and this is what the supporters of eugenics disregarded. The supporters of eugenics from the USA or UK were mostly from the elite class, and they looked down on those whose manners, appears and practices looked different to them. They failed to acknowledge that there can be more than one opinion about what they consider as the “desirable” or “undesirable” human traits. They also failed to appreciate the fact that people in a society can be different and that they alone cannot be the authority to decide whether a certain human trait should be desirable, and which ones are aberrant, or a disorder. Exhibiting a phobia or disdain about anyone or anything that is different reeks of discrimination is not ethically tenable. It is also possible to argue whether having a homogenized society of people who have edited traits of a certain kind necessarily is the best place to live in. The other important ethical argument against eugenics is the unfair distribution of benefits and burdens. The unjust treatment and often the cruelty of eugenics had to be borne by the underprivileged class, whereas the policies were devised by the privileged class (Ibid.). In 21st CE, genomics has the power to understand genetic material at a large scale. Now genetic factors can be identified which are the cause of a certain disease. Earlier eugenics wrongly connected hereditary diseases and disorders to appearances, looks and personality. Now, the advancement in genetic research and technology has brought us the power and the tool to edit, change, or delete the traits of a human being at a genetic level. It has opened up a whole host of genomic possibilities. As different people carry diseased genes, if these power and technology is misused to create stigmatization and discrimination for people with diseased genes, once more there could be a resurgence of eugenics. Though the eugenics of 19th CE or WWI or II may not exactly be there, a tendency to link an undesirable trait to a biological or a biochemical explanation is often visible in the scientific reports. For example, there have been attempts to link homelessness, drug abuse, mental illness, alcoholism, and abusive behavior to a biological or a biochemical account (Duster, 2003, p. 132). Hence, the concern about a possible genetics-based discrimination cannot be dismissed so easily. Moreover, given that gene therapy makes a promise to cure genetic disorders, there is also a larger question of social justice. Since gene therapy is an expensive proposition, the vulnerable people would be those who would not be able to afford gene therapy (Aultman, 2006, p. 38). There are other kinds of concerns as well. Gene therapy can also be targeted towards the sperm and the egg cells, which would mean that the genetic changes would be passed onto the future generations. While this may provide a preemptive possibility of avoiding a particular genetic disorder in the next generations, it also opens the door to a host of ethically problematic issues. For, a gene therapy in an unborn fetus may have some long-term side-effects. Characteristics of Applied Ethics From the above, you can at least have an idea how newer branches of applied ethics grow out of a set of newer societal concerns. It also shows how applied ethics may be understood as application of ethics in a specific area of human activities. We finish

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this section with the observation that as there is no dearth of areas of human activities which require ethical assessment, the inquiries under applied ethics as a branch of ethics also have increased with time. Applied ethics is specific in its focus: From the above you can also understand that the clear emphasis of applied ethics is on real and practical issues. This point would become even clearer when we look at some of the early and seminal textbooks on applied ethics. One of the earliest and very influential textbooks in applied ethics was Singer’s Practical Ethics (Singer, 1979, 1993). It covered a range of important contemporary and practical issues on which ethical deliberation can be applied, such as: Animal rights Abortion Civil disobedience Environmental obligations Duties pertaining to the world hunger. Singer chose to discuss these issues from a Utilitarian perspective, and he did not hesitate to draw some conclusions which are somewhat radical and even controversial. The book was quite popular. It was particularly successful to show the powerful sway of social opinion which applied ethics can wield. Another textbook of applied ethics is Causing Death and Saving Lives by Glover (1977). It is considered as a classic among the readers on the ethics of killing. The book brought out the complex but very pertinent issues involved in the contemporary practices involved in saving lives and causing death involved in many practices such as: Abortion Infanticide Suicide Euthanasia Capital Punishment. You may find that since then many ethics textbooks have used euthanasia and abortion as core examples of practical applications of ethical argumentation, and many journal papers in applied ethics have chosen these areas as their focal topics. In medical ethics, the book Principles of Biomedical Ethics (1977), by Tom Beauchamp, a Utilitarian, and James Childress, a follower of Kant’s Deontological Ethics, is considered a landmark in showing the path in applied ethics in the field of biomedical ethics. Beauchamp and Childress offered four principles as a basis for making ethical decision in medical ethics. The approach was exceptionally well received as an immensely applicable framework for guiding decisions related to biomedical issues. These texts have left a very strong influence on the real-life topics and practical problems which are the forte of applied ethics.

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Interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary collaboration in applied ethics: Since applied ethics concerns itself with specific fields, it requires knowledge of that specific field and perhaps also of related other fields. For example, working on a multi-disciplinary topic such as poverty philosophers need to consider the research literature that already exists in subjects such as economics and sociology, and are required to consider the social and economic, psychological implications of poverty. Moreover, in applied ethics the discussion may not always be theoretical, but also may require a practical solution. For this, collaborations among experts in different fields may be required. Quick Question 8.1 1. Identify the ethical values used in the discussion concerning the ethical issues about gene therapy. 2. In your opinion, at present which specific area of human activities, apart from the ones mentioned by Childress and by the textbook in this section, need special attention from applied ethics? Justify your answer.

8.1.2 Is Applied Ethics Merely Ethics Applied? Before we leave the topic, we must pay special attention to a certain issue in Childress’s definition of applied ethics. As you have noted, Childress claims that applied ethics is “application of ethics” to special arenas of human activity. Some question whether this is completely correct. They ask: Is applied ethics nothing more than the application of ethics and its general normative theories of ethics to specific ethical problems? They are of the opinion that to think so is to take an overly simplified view of what applied ethics is and what applied ethics does. As Wolf argues (Wolf, 1994), to think of applied ethics as ‘application of ethics’ is to subscribe to a question-begging standpoint that the method of ethics consists of applying a previously established standpoint to particular cases. For, there are ethical positions which do not subscribe to that view, such as situation ethics. She argues that the term applied ethics stands for a movement which believes that ethical theories need not be neutral about the practical problems. They may be abstract, but they need not remain neutral about the ethical dilemmas and practical problems that rise in our lives. So, according to some, applied ethics is not merely a derivation of the applicable rules from the general theories of ethics to the practical issues at hand. In their opinion, there is much more to it than just the blind deduction of rules from the ethical theories and principles set already. For example, applied ethics involves reflection, discretion, and interplay between the normative principles and the context, instead of blind application of the normative theories.

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Four topics approach, Medical Ethics: For example, Albert Jonsen, a pioneer and founder in bioethics and clinical ethics and an emeritus professor of medicine at University of Washington, USA, brought out a practical approach in partnership with the doctors to help them navigate in the ethical issues that they face in their clinical practice. In his work, Jonsen (Jonsen, 1982) carved out an approach in clinical ethics which came to be known as the ‘four topics approach’ to make the right choice when confronted with complex ethical dilemmas in everyday patient care in a clinical setting. Jonsen proposed: (a) (b) (c) (d)

Medical indications Preference of the patient Quality of life Other contextual considerations.

He proposed the above-mentioned as the four key topics to a practical approach to medical ethics, which is one of the key areas of applied ethics. He did not believe in an approach which relied on a distant reflection over the ethical norms. Instead, he believed in deep engagement with the practical issue at hand in its clinical context. Thus, in the opinion of some, applied ethics is not merely ethics applied. It is a field on its own, which utilizes the ethical principles but also employs many other resources of its own. As a consequence, we find much wider definition of applied ethics. For example, Tom Beauchamp offers a more expansive definition of applied ethics, which stands in contrast to the definition articulated by Childress: … ‘applied ethics’ refers to any use of philosophical methods to treat moral problems, practices, and policies in the professions, technology, government, and the like (Beauchamp 2003, 3, italics mine)

Note that in his definition Beauchamp has opened up applied ethics to the use of any philosophical method for the treatment of a wide array of ethical problems. This is neither merely nor strictly the ‘application of ethics’, where ethics refers to the normative theories. This is a wider definition of applied ethics which allows applied ethics to range over a variety of approaches to an ethical issue and to adopt any philosophical method to that purpose. Beauchamp further added that even nonphilosophical methods can be used in applied ethics. In short, on this view applied ethics is not shackled to normative ethics and its theories alone. It should also be mentioned that as a practice, the nature of applied ethics has become increasingly interdisciplinary over time. The technical nature of some of the subfields has made it practically essential to apply a multiplicity of methods of various kinds and knowledge of diverse domains. Clinical ethics, for example, specifically considers the hard-core medical parameters along with the non-medical factors in its decision-making process. In Business ethics, knowledge of various functional areas of business, such as corporate governance, production and design, and marketing, is required along with empirical data that are relevant to the field.

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8.1.3 The Rise of Applied Ethics The applied aspect of ethics, according to many, is not something entirely new. In western philosophy, from the classical Greek period, Plato and Aristotle both have viewed ethics as practical philosophy which concerns itself with the practical problems of life. Although not to that great extent, we do find occasional and astute observations on real-life ethical problems by philosophers belonging to medieval and modern era also. Among the Medieval devout Christian philosophers, also we find some observations on specific practical problems. For example, Augustine had deliberated on whether it is ever right to lie and under what circumstances. He also had written on when a war is just, namely, when it is fought for peace. Thomas Aquinas made several arguments against suicide and claimed that suicide is “unnatural”, which implied that suicide is ethically objectionable. Among the modern philosophers, in his famous letter to John Home, David Hume offered a series of skillful counterarguments to Aquinas’s arguments and claimed that suicide was no transgression of our duty to God, as the earlier philosophers have thought. As you know from our discussion of Utilitarianism, Mill and Bentham were social reformers and they were seriously engaged with practical problems such as legal reform, social welfare, social prison reform, and social status of women. Yet, it is true that on the whole in the world of western philosophy, till about the 1960s, there was not much attention to real-life problems in ethics. The academic discussion in ethics in general used to be confined to purely conceptual and theoretical, philosophical questions. Despite the fact that momentous events occurred in the real world in those years, such as the two World Wars, the ethical issues of the real world were largely neglected by the moral philosophers. The discussion in ethics remained not only abstract but also neutral and uninvolved in the happenings in the world out there. As a result, ethics was viewed by people as a purely academic, philosophical subject, which had no bearing on the real world. In the world of western philosophy, the rise of applied ethics was a spontaneous reactive response in the 1960s to many changes that were happening in the social and the political environment. In the United States, there was a growing political activism and social unrest over certain tumultuous happenings, such as the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, and the student unrest. As Encyclopedia Britannica1 writes: What was not generally considered was whether moral philosophers could, without merely preaching, make an effective contribution to discussions of practical issues involving difficult ethical questions. The value of such work began to be widely recognized only during the 1960s, when first the U.S. civil rights movement and subsequently the Vietnam War and the growth of student political activism started to draw philosophers into discussions of the ethical issues of equality, justice, war, and civil disobedience.

The turmoil in the real world touched the academic philosophy also, and gradually, applied ethics started to grapple with the issue thrown up by the events of that time. 1

Encyclopedia Britannica (Online). Applied Ethics. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/ topic/ethics-philosophy/Applied-ethics.

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Applied ethics soon became a part of Philosophy curriculum in the universities in different countries, The situation with applied ethics reached another turning point in the 1970s. In the 1970s, advances in medicines and medical technology brought completely new and acute, real-life ethical questions to the forefront, about which no academic discussion or ethical theory had a ready-made solution. Suddenly, there was a great need for ethics and ethical discussions in the practice of medicine. Ethics was once more in demand. Philosopher Stephen Toulmin (Toulmin, 1986) famously had quipped that “medicine saved the life of ethics”. For example, with the introduction of the life-support system or the mechanical ventilator machine, it was possible to pump air in and out of a weakly functioning or a non-functional lung in a human body. The machine is often used in the Intensive Care Units (ICUs) of a hospital for patients who cannot breathe on their own. They can help to decrease the breathing work for patients until patients improve enough to no longer need it for breathing. The use of the machine has serious implications for prolonging the life of a patient. It not only enables a patient to ‘breathe’, when the patient may have been unable to do so on his or her own, but with its support a vegetative patient can remain alive as long the patient is on ventilator support. However, commonly a life-support system such as a ventilator is supposed to be a temporary support, and most hospitals do not have a large number of ventilators at their disposal. Therefore, it is a genuine ethical quandary for the medical professionals whether or not to withdraw the ventilator machine from a patient, and under what circumstances. For, withdrawal of the ventilator means the death of the patient. So, what should be the clinical and ethical norms for withdrawing a life support? Where should a doctor set the limits of prescribing continuity of a ventilator? Who should take the decision to withdraw for the incapacitated patient? Complicated questions such as these brought applied ethics alive on issues such as difference between killing and letting die, about saving lives and causing death. Incidentally, in the recent COVID-19 pandemic (2020–2021) years, we saw similar situations where new and acute ethical problems with the distributive justice of ventilators once more showed that there is no ready-made ethical solution for them. For example, the shortage of ventilators in hospitals against the burgeoning number of COVID patients in various countries created a very different but a very serious ethical dilemma in a crisis hour. The decision to allocate ventilators from a critically ill patient to a critical COVID patient has been a particularly tough decision due to its ethical implications. Similarly, the desperate decision to use a single ventilator for more than one patient also has been ethically quite challenging (Bhatt and Singh 2020). So, from the above, we may understand that part of the reason of the rise of applied ethics was the significant changes in the real world and the new ethical challenges which the society had to face because of those changes. However, it is not to be understood as the only reason.

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Kolste (2012) observes that other possible factors also were behind the rise of applied ethics. According to Kolste, in the 20th CE, in the western countries gradually people detached themselves from the churches and from the religious authorities, who used to be the ethical counselors on matters which were ethically problematic. People became more and more self-reliant in thinking. Moral autonomy became the standard practice where people sought their own answers about ethical questions, instead of running to religion or to a religious authority to find the answers. This is the void which applied ethics tried to address. The analysis and the well-reasoned answers in applied ethics led the way to have ethically sensitive decisions, at both personal and professional level, and policies, on matters that affected all. So, the upshot from the above discussion is that moral autonomy as a preferred mindset among people, combined with the newer ethical challenges thrown to the society, facilitated the rise of applied ethics. Quick Question 8.2 1. In what sense can one claim that applied ethics is not simply ethics applied? Explain in your own words. 2. In the discussion in this section, what are the factors identified for the rise of applied ethics since the 1960s? In the context of India, which contemporary issues in your opinion are worthy to generate applied ethics discussion? Explain briefly.

8.2 Methods of Applied Ethics What methods does applied ethics follow? To answer this, broadly two approaches are cited. As Lantz (2000, 22) puts it, they are “ethics from above” and “ethics from below”. We also may know them by the names ‘Top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ approach.

8.2.1 Top-Down Approach “Ethics from above” or the top-down approach is the deductivist approach in applied ethics. That is, it follows the approach which deductive logic follows in an argument: from the general to a particular case. In this approach, the starting point always is a general principle of normative ethics. This principle is then extended to a given situation as an application. The facts of the situation are interpreted according to the principle, and a conclusion is drawn about the situation. Thus, essentially this approach is

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the theory extended to the facts. The “above” in the “ethics from above” is a direction indicated where the overarching general normative principles are supposed to be. Lantz cites the following deductivist application of Utilitarianism as an evident example of “ethics from above”: 1. One ought to choose from among the alternative actions the act which results in more utility (the principle of utility). 2. Act A results in more utility than alternative acts (B, C, D…n). 3. Therefore one ought to choose A. (Lantz, 2000, 22). The beginning of the top-down approach is a general normative principle. In this example, the statement 1 is the general ethical principle of utility from Utilitarianism. Statement 2 is a specific claim about Act A fulfilling the condition of resulting in more utility than any of the other alternative acts. We may imagine a specific situation as the background for statement 2. For example, we may think of action alternatives in which locations for building a school are being contemplated. Statement 2 refers to one of the alternatives Act A, which is more utility producing than the alternative acts. Statement 3 puts Statements 1 and 2 together to derive the conclusion in a deductive manner. Although the example cited above uses only one theory, the top-down approach need not be so singular. There can be a pluralistic approach also within the top-down. That is, in top-down approach, it is also possible to use more than one theory. Such an approach can draw justification from more than one principle taken from different ethical theories, such as Deontological ethics, Justice theory, and virtue ethics. From the combined principles, one may assess a given practical situation. In biomedical ethics, this approach is widely used. Known as principlism, biomedical ethics, as espoused by Beauchamp and Childress (2001), adopts an approach which is basically dependent on the four fundamental ethical principles: Nonmaleficence, Beneficence, Justice, and Respect for Autonomy. The principles can be traced to the theories of normative ethics. Box 8.5 The top-down approach In top-down approach in applied ethics, the beginning is from a general normative principle, or principles, of one or more theories of normative ethics, and then the principles are applied to a given situation to arrive at an ethical judgment about the situation.

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8.2.2 Bottom-Up Approach The starting point for “ethics from below”, on the other hand, is a given ethically problematic particular situation, and the knowledge and accurate description of its details and then from it an ethical judgment is derived. The derived ethical judgment may be applicable only to the particular case, or it may be a defeasible general principle, where defeasible means it may be overridden by other considerations or principles. The approach is also known as the inductivist or the bottom-up approach, for the obvious reason that the approach starts from the grassroot level with a specific situation, or a case study, and then arrive at a conclusion. Box 8.6 The Bottom-up approach The bottom-up approach in applied ethics is to start from particular situation, and then from it an ethical judgment is arrived at. The ethical judgment may be applicable only to the particular case; or, it may be a defeasible general principle, where defeasible means it may be overridden by other considerations or principles. A good example of such approach would be Jonsen’s approach in clinical ethics. To address ethical dilemmas or complex questions in patient care in a clinical setting, Jonsen does not recommend starting from an ethical principle. Instead, he gives us the ‘four topics’ method to understand and to assess the situation with the patient first. The bottom-up approach can also use the method of casuistry and argument from analogy. Casuistry in ethics is case-based reasoning. It starts with a particular case, which is clear cut. These are called ‘paradigm’ cases. From these clear-cut cases, it goes to a similar but somewhat less clear cut or more complex cases. A paradigm would be a similar but a more clear-cut situation. On the ground that similar cases should be treated similarly, casuistry approach then examines what decision was taken in the paradigm case, and argues for similar treatment in terms of theoretical and practical ethical considerations in the problematic case, for example, the present case of employee malpractice and decisions taken in earlier similar cases. Generate the rule of action for present case. For example: The present case of employee malpractice may be dealt by decisions taken in earlier similar cases. Casuistry has a long history. Starting with ancient Greek and Roman Philosophers, casuistry thrived in the reasoning of 16th and 17th CE Catholic priests until the misuse of casuistry was sharply criticized by French Philosopher and Mathematician Blaise Pascal in 17th CE.

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Box 8.7 The bottom-up approach In the bottom-up approach in applied ethics, the beginning point is a given case or situation, and the details of it. Then, based on the case, by casuistry ethical judgment in a paradigm case is extended to the given case on the basis of relevant similarity. Or, based on the given case, an ethically intuitive judgment may be arrived at, which then can be further fortified in connection with relevant ethical principle or principles. Apart from these two mainstream approaches, there are also other methods which we can mention.

8.2.3 Reflective Equilibrium Reflective equilibrium is a method which aims to find coherence among the principles of the general norms with our ethical judgment about a situation. As Knight puts it, “The basic idea of reflective equilibrium is to bring principles and judgments to accord” (Knight, 2017, p. 46). We hold an ethical judgment about an issue, and then we look for coherence among our beliefs about other related ethical issues and the principles on the basis of which we hold those beliefs: This is the basic nature of reflective equilibrium. The method of reflective equilibrium consists of going over and working back and forth over one’s own judgments about particular cases, over the principles which we think rule over these cases, and also over the justifications for holding these judgments. This is the reflective part. It also involves revising any of these (revision). In the process, we may revise many of the previously held beliefs, or may add new beliefs. The goal of this method is to reach a well-reflected acceptable coherence among them through the processes of reflection and revision. Acceptable coherence means that there is not only consistency among the beliefs held, but also some of them provide the best explanation or justification for the others. The state of acceptable coherence among the beliefs may not be a permanent one, with time one may again need to do revision to readjust and achieve an acceptable revision. However, the reflective equilibrium still considered as an end-point, even if it is not a permanent one. Since this method expects us to revise our beliefs and judgments at all levels, this method implies that there is no subset of ethical beliefs which are unrevisable or are foundational so as not to be altered. It is a method which is available for applied ethics as well as in non-moral thinking as well. In logic, this approach was proposed by Nelson Goodman (Goodman, 1955). Goodman proposed that the rules in deductive or inductive logic are justified by bringing them and checking their coherence with what we consider to be acceptable

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inferences in widely various particular cases. This is the process of bringing them to reflective equilibrium. If we find that the rules are incompatible, or our examples of acceptable inferences are not in coherence with the rules, then we correct and revise by going over both what we consider as acceptable inferences and the rules. Thus, in simpler terms, the method of reflective equilibrium is a process of thinking, in which we think over our own thinking about a certain question, which may be ethical or non-ethical, and revise our thinking when needed. As explained by Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Daniels, 2020): Viewed most generally, reflective equilibrium” is the end-point of a deliberative process in which we reflect on and revise our beliefs about an area of inquiry, moral or non-moral. The inquiry might be as specific as the moral question, “What is the right thing to do in this case?” or the logical question, “Is this the correct inference to make?” Alternatively, the inquiry might be much more general, asking which theory or account of justice or right action we should accept

In the quotation above, “the end point of a deliberative process” means the outcome of the reflective process. The “equilibrium” refers to a state of balanced repose reached after the act of reflection and revision. Example If we wish to pass an ethical judgment that capital punishment is ethically wrong because taking a life is ethically wrong, then we need to reflect over our other beliefs, such as hunting an animal is ethically permissible, or euthanasia is ethically right, and revisit our justifications for holding such beliefs, and revise the beliefs until an overall reflective equilibrium or an acceptable coherence is reached. Reflective equilibrium is supposed to be the most widely used methodology in ethical and political philosophy (Sinnott-Armstrong et al., 2010), made popular by John Rawls’s use of it in his seminal work A Theory of Justice (Rawls, 1971). As discussed in our discussion of distributive justice, Rawls mentioned that the goal of a theory of justice is the rational but cooperative contractors would choose hypothetical social contracts on fair terms. Moreover, he made it a requirement that the chosen social contracts should cohere with our well-considered judgments about justice, and the process adopted should be that of reflective equilibrium. There should be much deliberation over the principles, the reasons and the held beliefs, and if needed, there should be revisions, before the choice is made. Thus, method of reflective equilibrium is viewed as an important part of Rawls’s theory of justice (Daniels 1996). As Daniels (Daniels, 2020) points out, Rawls believed that reflective equilibrium can be of two types: narrow or wide. When we subject our views for coherence only to a handful of particular cases and the principles in them, and when we do not subject our views to an extensive critique from other alternative perspectives, we are following a narrow reflective equilibrium. However, Rawls proposed a “wide reflective equilibrium”. That is, we can determine whether the choices the contractors

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make are justified or not only if we widen the circle of beliefs that it must cohere to. We should be willing to test our judgment established moral theories of many different kinds. It should include the competing beliefs, alterative beliefs, and beliefs of all of those whose views should be included. The key elements of reflective equilibrium are: (a) Reflection: This means thinking over or introspection. (b) Revision: This means modification in our thinking. For all practical purposes, this method may help us to come to conclusion about an ethical issue which we were not sure earlier. Or, it may also make us aware about which of the beliefs we are more attached to such that we are not inclined to revise them. As said earlier, this method can be used whenever we require coherence among our beliefs to come to conclusion about something. In applied ethics, belief in an ethical judgment held about an issue would be justified if it, after a deliberative process of reflective equilibrium along with necessary revisions in the belief system, is found to be coherent with the other relevant beliefs, or with the other relevant ethical judgments about the issue. This method can be applied by individuals acting on their own alone, or as a group. When it is among a number of individuals, a lot of dialogue and discussion would be expectedly part of the process. The method of reflective equilibrium is considered as an approach in between the “top-down” and the “bottom-up” approach. As it involves working back and forth on one’s ethical judgments, beliefs and conceived opinions, it is not a straightforward application of a normative principle. So, it is not the same as a top-down approach. It is a deliberation over one’s reasons for adhering to a certain principle and if necessary, and to make certain amendments in one’s reasons for believing or even in one’s principles. Similarly, since it is a deliberative process seeking out an overall coherence with the other beliefs and judgments, it is not merely a bottom-up empirical investigation into a specific situation. It goes over and over to find, to adjust, and to revise in order to find an overall, coherent explanation. Box 8.8 Reflective equilibrium Reflective equilibrium is a method in applied ethics which refers to a deliberative process, in which we reflect over our beliefs and justifications about an issue, and revise them seeking an overall coherence with our other relevant beliefs and judgments about similar and related issues. The process stops when a reflective equilibrium or overall coherence as an outcome of reflection is reached. Glover on the method of ethics: Jonathan Glover (1977), who we have mentioned at the beginning of this chapter when seminal textbooks on applied ethics were mentioned, did not subscribe to either “top-down” or the “bottom-up” approach.

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However, he argued that the method to be followed in applied ethics is “interplay of responses and general beliefs”. This means that the ethical judgment needs to take note of prevalent beliefs among the others. It also needs to consider the various responses from the others obtained about the judgment. Does the “interplay of responses” mean going back and forth in the way Rawls meant for reflective equilibrium? In an interview with Basse (Basse, 2019), Glover made it clear that there is a difference between what he prescribes and what reflective equilibrium is all about. In other words, he does not think that his method is the same as reflective equilibrium. The difference between his method and reflective equilibrium is that his method does not presume that a solution can always be reached. In Glover’s opinion, Rawls optimistically believes that if we test our principles against our common intuitions and we also revise the intuitions with our principles, we shall certainly reach a firm position of coherence, both in narrow reflective equilibrium and wide reflective equilibrium. However, Glover says that he is skeptical about that. It is not necessary that always a firm, i.e. unchanging, position of coherence either within an individual’s belief system, or among a group, can be found. That is, in Glover’s opinion, he did not recommend a method which is certain to bring a solution. His method is to point out that deliberations on ethical matters need to be cautious and inclusive.

8.2.4 Conclusion on the Discussion on the Methods Method in applied ethics means the methodology followed in the identification, analysis, and resolution of ethical issues. In the above, we found that there are several possibilities to determine the ethical rightness or wrongness of actions. This multiplicity may be worrisome for some. For, it is not clear which method to follow when for figuring out which action is ethically permissible and which action is not. Ultimately, it will have to be your choice, supported by justifications which you consider as particularly strong. Having said that, I should also add that our ethical judgments about various issues should not be viewed as if they are subsumed under exclusively under any one particular approach. That is, it is not that we should apply the methods exclusively and in an unmixed manner. Actually, the capacity for ethical judgment in the humans is a hybrid capacity mingling the theory-driven top-down considerations, the ethical intuitions created by the bottom-up mechanisms of experiences in life, and also by the reflective habits of a well-trained, thinking mind own keeping the facts of the situation under consideration and using the relevant ethical If you favor ‘top-down approach’, it may help you to identify key ethical issue with a theoretical lens. For example, you might use the rights-based ethics to find out which rights of whom have been respected or violated in a given case. Or, you may adopt virtue ethics to ask which action in this situation would help to develop an ethical virtue. In the end, one need to deliberate on one’s considerations.

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8.2.5 Anti-theory As we close the discussion on the methods of applied ethics, perhaps we should also briefly mention a philosophical position which expresses a deeply skeptical attitude towards the theories of normative ethics and their abilities to provide action guidance. We discuss this as a contrast to the methodological approaches, in particular to the top-down approach, in applied ethics as discussed above. The position is referred to as anti-theory, because of the reluctance of its proponents to accept the ethical theories as the guiding beacon in ethical considerations. The term anti-theory actually is a multi-pronged critique of the theories per se of normative ethics. However, it is not a critique of the individual theories of normative ethics, but a wholesale rejection of the theories per se. The philosophers who belong to this position share a common belief that the theories of normative ethics cannot do justice to the actual complexity that exist in situations in everyday life. They argue that the nature of theories is reductive. That is, the normative theories tend to reduce all ethical considerations to a handful of universal or general principles which they offer for all situations. However, the real-life situations offer countless variety and enormous complexity. Hence, the anti-theorists claim that the aspiration of the theories of normative ethics to be the ethical authority in all matters related to ethics is doomed to fail. Having said that, I must also add that it is important to understand that in his or her rejection of the ethical theories, the anti-theorist does not reject ethics. Their point is that the ethical theories are in some fundamental way limited. They either are inadequate to understand and to motivate human ethical judgments, or to apply to different kinds of situations. So, our ethical judgments and practices cannot be derived by a formal means from the prescriptions of the theories of normative ethics. Moreover, their arguments are against the traditional theories of normative ethics, such as Utilitarianism and Kant’s deontological ethics. The anti-theory position is often traced back to Philosopher G.E.M Anscombe’s scathing critique (Anscombe 1958) of what she called modern moral philosophy or ethics and its proponents, from Sidgwick to present day, as not worth much. However, she specifically criticized Utilitarian and Kantian ethics for advocating a law-like approach in ethics, which unlike virtue ethics did not pay adequate attention to the situational needs, and to the ethical intuitions of a human agent, who is not always rational. As we can see, Anscombe’s critique was not against the theories of normative ethics, but specifically against the two dominant approaches. Although there were other philosophers who sympathized with the anti-theory position and have contributed in a positive manner to the position, the most influential anti-theorist philosopher was Bernard Williams. In his Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Williams, 1985), Williams provided a critique of the theories of normative ethics.

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Williams understood an ethical theory broadly as “a theoretical account of what ethical thought and practice are” (Ibid., p. 72). He further observed that “Ethical theories are philosophical undertakings and commit themselves to the view that philosophy can determine, either positively or negatively, how we should think in ethics” (Ibid., p. 74). And then, Williams comments: “In contrast, I want to say that we can think in ethics, and in all sorts of ways, … that philosophy can do little to determine how we should do so”. In other words, he rejects the idea that philosophy, i.e. the philosophical theories, can do very little to determine what they prescribe is the best way to think in ethics. Williams also explored the role of emotions in ethical practices of the humans (William, 1973, pp. 207–229.) Moral particularism, a philosophical position, also strongly opposes the theorybased approach in ethics. Moral particularism is the standpoint which believes that: (a) There is no ethical principle which is defensible. (b) Ethical consideration does not consist in application of the ethical principles to the particular cases. (c) An ethical person should not be thought of as a man of principle (Dancy 2017). Each of these (a)–(c) contests the faith in the theories of normative ethics and even questions the necessity and relevance of the theories in ethical considerations. Overall, these claims exhibit the anti-theory element in moral particularism. The main reason of moral particularism to reject the general principles of ethics is to believe that in ethics the ethical ground sand reasons vary from case to case. Moral Particularism insists on the variability of ethical reasons and grounds. It supports the claim that what is a good ethical reason in case a may not be acceptable as a good reason in case b. In ethics, a reason which makes an action ethically better in one case may make another action worse, and in a third case it may have no effect at all on the action. For example, Shipra makes a false promise in one case. Let us suppose that it is good in her case. However, making a false promise could be bad in another case. The reasons and their ethical permissibility may vary from case to case. On the other hand, a theory of normative ethics speaks of general principles or norms which are supposed to apply either universally or at least to many situations. That is why the principles are called general or universal. A theory of normative ethics also believes in absolute principles, which usually do not allow for variability. Moral particularism rejects both of these features of the principles; hence it is anti-theory in its attitude.  What does this imply for applied ethics and its methodologies? If we are to agree with the arguments of anti-theory, then one of the consequences is to reorient our thinking about the top-down approach. If anti-theory is to be taken seriously, then the ethics applied may need to include more than just the normative principles as espoused by the traditional ethical theories. For example, perhaps one needs to pay attention to the situational details, as virtue ethics speaks of, and one also need acknowledge the social context of an ethical issue, the details of the individuals involved in the situations and their interpersonal relationships, as

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Care Ethics recommends. This means that the top-down approach may have to be supplemented further. Also, within top-down approach, there is the provision of a pluralistic approach, which permits a combined approach from more than one theory of normative ethics. The blindside which may be present in one of the theories may be complemented by the insights from the other theories. Thus, the inadequacies mentioned by the anti-theorist could be mitigated. Moreover, let us remind ourselves that even if we agree with the anti-theorists, applied ethics has other methodologies which are not so exclusively reliant on the theories of normative ethics. Reflective equilibrium, for example, acknowledges a mutually enriching dialogue between multiple theoretical beliefs and applied approaches. The goal of applied ethics need not be to force a harmony with the principles of normative ethics, but to propose a variety of solutions to the ethical problems which bother us in real life. As Hämmäläinen (Hämmäläinen, 2009) puts it, In applied ethics the aim of inquiry is to find morally defendable practical ways of going about, rather than a harmony of theoretical and practical considerations… [M]ixing theoretical approaches in applied ethics suggests th at moral life and moral policy making do not require a coherent, action-guiding theory, but rather a pool of intellectual devices to illuminate aspects of moral problems. (p. 551)

With this, we come to the end of our discussion on the methods of applied ethics. Next, with this introduction to applied ethics and its methods, we shall now take on ethics of Artificial Intelligence or AI as our example of applied ethics to a real-life situation. The discussion will start with what AI is and will gradually ease into the discussion of the ethical issues in AI. Quick Question 8.3 1. If you are a follower of the Second Formulation of categorical Imperative or the Humanity Principle of Kant in his Deontological Ethics (see Chap. 7, Sect. 7.2.6.2), and you wish to begin your ethical argument against the practice of slavery using the top-down approach, illustrate how your argument may look like. 2. Illustrate the bottom-up approach in an ethical argument in which the conclusion is: Wasting water is ethically wrong.

8.3 What is Artificial Intelligence or AI? What is this artificial intelligence or AI? How do we define it?

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Commonly, we may have a vague understanding that the term AI refers to artificial intelligence. That is, it refers to the intelligence exhibited by artificial agents or systems such as a computer, a coded computer program, or by a robot. Artificial here means something which is made or created by the humans or something which is not naturally so. So, roughly, AI refers to the intelligence exhibited by the machines. ➤ The term intelligence in artificial intelligence, however, is not so easy to settle. When the term intelligence is used in the context of machines, it raises many commonsensical and philosophical questions in our minds. For, intelligence is generally assumed as a human attribute, and the claim of its presence in a machine, even if it is a man-made machine, or in a bunch of algorithms, evokes many objections. We shall discuss this issue separately in what follows. Let us note that despite the philosophical controversies, the term artificial intelligence or AI is now a widely accepted term among wide population, and it is used to refer to certain human-like behavior demonstrated by an artificial agent. Box 8.9 Common understanding of AI AI is human-like intelligence exhibited by artificial or man-made agents or systems; such as a computer, or a computer program, or by a robot. Where is AI in our lives? To answer this question, all we need is to highlight some familiar activities in our daily lives. If you are trying to contact an airlines, and a ‘chat’ box opens up with a ‘help assistant’ asking you by chat what you need help on: You are in contact with AI. You are very probably chatting with a chatbot. If you ask Alexa to lower the volume of your TV, or give voice command to Alexa to order food for you: You are interacting with AI, whether you realize or not. Alexa is Amazon’s digital voice assistant, a popular AI application. If you open Netflix, and after finding out that it is you who is watching, Netflix starts making movie suggestions which are what you like: You are engaging with AI, whether you realize or not. If you are looking for an item to purchase in Amazon, or Flipkart, and you find on-screen recommendations for items, from what you earlier purchased and what

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you may also like to purchase now: You are engaging with AI; the suggestions are made by AI. If you are writing an email, and you find that the email program is finishing your word or even your sentences and suggesting editorial changes: You are being advised by AI. The above examples are randomly picked from what may be part of daily lives of some of you or many of you. Their point is that AI or artificial intelligence is practically pervasively present in our lives today. It is predicted that its presence in our lives will grow further in the future. This chapter is an endeavor to discuss and analyze the ethical issues that have emerged and may emerge in our lives because of this new presence. In the above, we have begun with our ordinary understanding of AI as given in Box 8.9. The definitions of AI by the experts, however, are more precise, and it behooves us to take note of them. In this section, we shall discuss some of those definitions to develop a basic understanding of the concept of AI. However, we need to keep in mind that as the field of AI is still growing and evolving, therefore, the expert definitions of AI are also evolving with time.  The term artificial intelligence was coined by a group of researchers in 1955, John McCarthy, emeritus Professor at Stanford University, Marvin L. Minsky, Nathaniel Rochester, and Claude E. Shannon. Their definition of artificial intelligence was: It is …the science and engineering of making intelligent machines.

The goal was to make intelligent machines by the human programmers, such as a chess playing machine or a computer which would play chess with an intelligent, human chess player. Since then, AI and its goals both have evolved. As you shall find below from the other more recent definitions of AI, recent visions of AI include a learning machine, which can be trained or educated in the way the humans can be. More recent visions aim at developing various kinds of self-learning machines, i.e. machines and algorithms which can learn independently of human supervision. Encyclopedia Britannica defines AI as: … the ability of a digital computer or computer-controlled robot to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings. (Copeland, 2022)

The definition above is given in terms of certain ability of an artificial agent, such as a digital computer or a computer-controlled robot. Moreover, it defines AI in terms of the activities associated with the intellectual processes which are characteristic of intelligent beings. The definition does not specifically mention human beings as the intelligent beings, perhaps to avert the obvious criticism whether humans alone are the intelligent beings. For, now we know that there are other beings, which are intelligent too, such as the dolphins. Boden, for example, claims that perception, planning, etc., cognitive skills which are indicative of a higher order of information-processing capability are visible even in some animals (Boden, 2016, 1).

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This kind of ability-based definition of AI is also offered by others. For example, Kaplan and Haenlein (2019) have defined AI as: a system’s ability to correctly interpret external data, to learn from such data, and to use those learnings to achieve specific goals and tasks through flexible adaptation.

In this definition also AI is seen as certain specific abilities. These abilities of a “system” would be taken as indicative of intelligence. Once more, the definition does not specifically mention human beings and their abilities, and neutral expressions such as system is used. Being Human-like: Even if it may not be explicitly stated in all the definitions of AI, a major target of many research projects in AI continues to be the development of programs which can attain the performance level of the human experts in the field.  In Jansen et al.’s definition of AI this characteristic of AI is evident: …the science and engineering of machines with capabilities that are considered intelligent by the standard of human intelligence. (Jansen et al., 2018, 5).

In AI, being like an intelligent human is an aspiration. In fact, the trends in AI research show that AI is more and more designed in a way so that the user does not realize that he or she is interacting with a machine. Various levels of human intelligence are used as the ideal target for testing the efficiency of various research programs in AI. The aspiration of some AI research is to create intelligent systems with capabilities which can emulate or imitate human intelligent behavior of different kinds for various purposes. Human intelligence is used both as a goal and also, as Jansen et al. mention above, as a criterion to test the capabilities of AI. However, in 2019 European Commission High-Level Expert Group Artificial Intelligence (AI HLEG) has defined AI without drawing any explicit analogy to the humans. Instead, it has referred to the features of a system which exhibits certain kind of behavior. The definition is as follows: Artificial intelligence (AI) refers to systems that display intelligent behaviour by analysing their environment and taking actions—with some degree of autonomy—to achieve specific goals (AI HLEG, 2019b, p. 1).

It further tells us that AI-based systems can be software based, such as the Google search engine, or it could be embedded in hard devices, such as a robot or an automated car. Depending upon the extent of the functions and applications of an AI system, AI may be classified into two broad categories: (a) Narrow AI: Narrow AI refers to intelligent systems for one specific task. For example, an intelligent system which only does facial recognition. (b) General AI (AGI): General AI refers to intelligent systems which are broadly intelligent, can perform many tasks, and is aware of the context. It is at par with human capabilities, and should be able to perform any task which a human can,

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perhaps with greater efficiency. At the time of writing this book, AGI is still not achieved. A recent addition to these categories is: (c) Human-centered AI (Stanford University, 2020): This is AI which is supposed to augment the abilities of a human or to address the societal needs of a human being, in the way a human would. For example, AI system which would take care of an elderly person or would help in the household chores. This shows that AI, as we commonly understand it, has different purposes, and according to the functions and objectives set for the AI systems, there can be different types of AI. In the Sect. 8.3.4, in which we discuss Searle’s Chinese Room Argument, you will find that Searle has classified AI into strong AI and weak AI as per the strength in the claim about AI by the researchers. That is a different classification and we shall discuss it in connection with Searle’s argument in Sect. 8.3.3.

8.3.1 ‘Intelligence’ as in the Artificial Systems One of the vexing questions about AI is: What does intelligence mean in this context? What does it mean to act intelligently when the agent is a machine? There are more than one ways to answer this question. One, we may try to define it in terms of the human mind and the internal, special properties and cognitive states it can have when engaged in intelligent behavior. Or, two, we can define it in terms of the abilities which are exhibited by tangible and testable external behavior which in case of a human would be considered as indications of intelligent behavior. Although many philosophers prefer the former understanding of intelligence, the computer scientists and the AI researchers mostly have operationalized the latter understanding in their work. The latter approach offers a definition of intelligence based on certain abilities, or on the performances of certain kind of abilities, as mentioned in the definitions discussed above. In the latter sense of intelligence, an agent can be understood to act intelligently when: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Its actions are appropriate for its circumstances and its goals It is flexible to changing environments and changing goals It learns from experience, and It makes appropriate choices given its perceptual and computational limitations (Bartneck et al., 2021, p. 2).

Items 1–4 point at abilities which are demonstrable as behavior, which when manifested by a human, or by an artificial system or a machine, would be considered as intelligent behavior.

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Some more examples of abilities associated with the intelligent behavior in a human would be: • Sensory learning: From vision (computer vision), speech (computer voice) • Natural language processing: Processing text or audio in ordinary language (not in programming language) • Problem solving: To be able to solve problems by reasoning • Planning and execution of action as per plan: To plan an line of action • Comprehension and meaning-making: To demonstrate comprehension by discovering a meaning, this requires interpretation skills. From the data given, a system has to correctly learn and interpret the data and apply that meaning to further tasks • Decision-making: To make a decision by going through the data and by weighing the options available • To generalize from the previous experiences: This is different from learning by rote, or by repetition, which is a fairly simple act of memorization of items and procedures to follow if the same item is produced. This is easily implementable on a computer. The more challenging task is to learn to generalize; that is, to create new knowledge by applying past experiences to analogous situations. If demonstrated in a human being, the above-mentioned tasks, if successfully completed, would be taken as signs of intelligence. If an artificial system can demonstrate some of these abilities consistently at a satisfactory level comparable to a human, it would be considered as an artificial intelligent system or an AI system. By AI system, we mean a system which comprises of both the software and the hardware and has certain abilities of learning, which include using the lesson learnt to decide, to plan an action and to adapt. In its document “Ethics guidelines for trustworthy AI” (2019a), European Commission High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence (AI HLEG) has defined an AI system as follows: Artificial intelligence (AI) systems are software (and possibly also hardware) systems designed by humans that, given a complex goal, act in the physical or digital dimension by perceiving their environment through data acquisition, interpreting the collected structured or unstructured data, reasoning on the knowledge, or processing the information, derived from these data and deciding the best action(s) to take to achieve the given goal. AI systems can either use symbolic rules or learn a numeric model, and they can also adapt their behavior by analyzing how the environment is affected by their previous actions. (AI HLEG, 2019a)

It also asserts that in AI research, intelligence in an AI system is mostly understood as rationality, where rationality in an AI system is manifested by three key capabilities: (a) Perception of the relevant data present in the environment for a goal set before the system (b) Reasoning or information processing, and decision-making (c) Actuation. We may approach intelligence in artificial intelligence in an AI system in this way as basically a kind of behavior by an artificial but rational system.

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8.3.2 Types of AI Research The research on AI is said to be classifiable into four broad groups as per the main focus: 1. Research on creating machines which think like the humans: The goal here is to reproduce the processes and the outcome of human thinking in a machine. 2. Research on creating machines which act like the humans: The target here is to reproduce the external behavior or the actions which a human does in a machine, and not the internal processes to arrive at the behavior. 3. Research on creating machines which act rationally: The target here is to create artificially intelligent machines which always act in the correct manner or do the correct thing efficiently. 4. Research on creating machines which think rationally: The goal here is to produce machines which can plan and make decisions in the most optimal way (Russell and Norvig, 2010, p. viii). What comes across from the above is that the field of AI is engaged in the study, design, and development of intelligent computational agents or systems with different research goals. However, Group 1 and 2 clearly subscribe to the benchmarking with the human intelligent activities and the simulation of human intelligent behavior. Group 3 and 4, on the other hand, proceed with an ideal of rationality without equating it with the humans. Needless to say, the expectations and the challenges to address in research vary as per the goals set in each group of research. The analogy or the benchmarking with the human intelligence is a thought that was pioneered by Alan Turing. We discuss the Turing Test next which has significantly influenced the conceptualization and testing of AI.

8.3.3 The Turing Test Alan Turing (1912–1954), a brilliant British Mathematician and logician, is considered as the founding figure of AI and modern cognitive science. He proposed “the imitation game” (Turing, 1950) or what has come to be known as the Turing Test,

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as an indirect way to determine an answer the question: Can Machines think? The imitation proposed will be by a machine, and the task will be to imitate a human very well (Pic. 8.1).

Pic. 8.1 Alan Turing

Turing suggested that a machine might be considered as intelligent based on its intelligent behavior if it is indistinguishable from an intelligent human’s behavior in that context. Turing proposed a scenario in which a human interrogator or interviewer converses with two separate entities in locked rooms: One is a human and the other conversational agent is a machine (which today we might call a chatbot) (Pic. 8.2).

Pic. 8.2 Turing test

The human interrogator cannot see who is there in the locked rooms. The aim of the human interrogator is to find out from the responses given in conversation which of the entities is the machine. The goal of both the entities in the locked rooms is to try to convince the human interrogator that the conversation is happening with a human. If the human interviewer is unable to determine whether or not the conversational partner is a human or a machine, then the machine would be considered as having passed the intelligence test. Turing believed that the goal of AI is to develop

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machines which can pass this test, being fluent in language and responses which are indistinguishable from a human. Box 8.10 Turing Test How can we determine that an artificial agent or system, or a machine, is intelligent? Turing: If in a conversation with both a machine and a human, a human interrogator is unable to determine from the responses whether or not the conversational partner is human or machine. That is, if the human finds the machine’s linguistic behavior as indistinguishable from an intelligent human’s behavior. The criterion which Turing recommended is the indistinguishability of machine behavior from that of intelligent behavior by a human. That is, the AI passes the test whether it achieves a perfect imitation of human intelligent behavior. Note that this would include the imitation of usual human mistakes too in the responses. When the goal is to establish indistinguishability with human behavior, AI need not be deadly accurate. It can be programmed to be fallible as humans commonly are. When asked about arithmetic problems, the machine would fumble and make mistakes just as a human would. In Turing’s own words: The machine (programmed for playing the game) would not attempt to give the right answers to the arithmetic problems. It would deliberately introduce mistakes in a manner calculated to confuse the interrogator. (Turing, 1950, p. 448)

Turing’s argument and the proposed test have been highly influential in AI research. It is also the most widely accepted test of artificial intelligence. As discussed above in the context of the definitions, Turing made machine intelligence definable in terms of testable activities or tasks. From an operational point of view, it makes a developer’s work easier. However, there are also considerable arguments against the Turing Test. Turing himself anticipated some of them in his original article and provided cogent responses to them. However, the most famous criticism against the Turing Test is offered by Philosopher John Searle (Searle, 1980) in his Chinese Room argument. We shall briefly discuss Searle’s argument below.

8.3.4 John Searle’s Chinese Room Argument Searle asks us to imagine a scenario, where there is a room. The room does not have windows, but it has two narrow slots. So, it cannot be seen who or what is inside the closed room. Let us suppose that sometimes people come to this room with a piece of paper, which they slip into the room through one slot. They wait until a slip of paper comes out of the room through another slot. The people who come with the slip of

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paper are native Chinese speakers, and the slip of paper which they slip into the room has questions written in Chinese picture scripts. When the slip of paper comes out, the people find out that a line in Chinese scripts has been added as an appropriate and intelligent response to their question. When the Chinese speakers receive these answers, they assume that whosoever is in the room understands Chinese (Pic. 8.3).

Pic. 8.3 Philosopher John Searle

But actually, Searle tells us, in this scenario inside the room there is someone who does not know Chinese at all. All that the person has is a huge rule book, which says when a certain string of Chinese characters comes in through a slot, which string of Chinese characters should be put under it. When a slip with Chinese characters comes into the room through a slot, the person merely follows the rule book and arranges or writes Chinese characters on the slip of paper and sends the paper out through another slot. The people outside the room pose meaningful questions in Chinese and get apparently meaningful, intelligent answers in Chinese. The responses are indistinguishable from the responses of a person who understands and knows Chinese. The entire process happens flawlessly, but fact remains that the person inside the room does not understand Chinese at all. What is Searle’s point here? He is posing the Chinese Room scenario as an analogy to a computer or a machine responding indistinguishably from a human in its responses. This is akin to the situation of a computer program working with some data as input, and then it computes and sends out some response as output. There is simulation of intelligent behavior and comprehension. In fact, the simulation is a perfect imitation. However, actually the program does not understand. It merely follows certain rules. A digital computer can simulate intelligent behavior in a manner which is indistinguishable from human intelligent behavior. In Searle’s opinion, from that it does not follow that it has intelligence. In Searle’s words, syntax does not suffice for semantics. Symbol manipulation by a machine on the basis of some rules does not entail that the symbols are understood by the machine. Therefore, Searle concludes, even if a machine is able to produce a perfect and indistinguishable imitation of the human intelligent behavior, it does not follow that the machine has intelligence.

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In Searle’s opinion, the computer programs can produce output based on the input data, but they do not have intentionality and genuine understanding of what they are handling. Computer programs cannot have genuine cognitive states; they cannot understand the meaning of the symbols manipulated. In other words, Searle’s Chinese Room Argument implies that passing a Turing Test is not enough to confirm intelligence in a machine. AI researchers of his time had high hopes about what AI can achieve. According to the aspirations of those programs, Searle divided AI into two types: (a) Weak AI (b) Strong AI. The Weak AI aims to develop computers which merely simulate thinking and intelligence. The computers are developed to handle a specific task, and they do it efficiently. But their seeming thinking and calculating are only seemingly so, there is no claim about real understanding. According to Strong AI, Searle says, the computer is not merely a tool, but is viewed actually as a mind, which when correctly programmed can actually understand and have other cognitive states. Box 8.11 Searle’s Weak AI and Strong AI Weak AI: AI in a machine only can simulate and imitate human thinking and intelligent behavior. The Machine does not understand or have cognitive states in the way the humans do. Strong AI: A machine with AI, when suitably programmed, can actually develop understanding, and can have other cognitive states. The target of his Chinese Room Argument is the claim of Strong AI. He counters the claim that the representation of information can happen in a well-programmed machines in exactly the same way it happens in a human mind, which can have cognitive states. In his opinion, the Weak AI claim is not so problematic, but the Strong AI claim is certainly not a tenable claim. Rejoinder Understandably, Searle’s Chinese Room Argument caused and has continued to stir a debate among many groups of scholars, philosophers, AI researchers, computer scientists, and cognitive scientists. Opinions are drastically divided on what implications Searle’s argument has for AI. In fact, since about mid-20th CE, philosophers and computer scientists have debated on what computers can do and what they can become, and what the differences are between intelligent humans and intelligent machines. The question of possibility of Strong AI, as mentioned by Searle, has been a bone of contention. Can we create a machine with the cognitive capacities of a human? Can humans and machines become alike in their thinking capacities?

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In 1972, Hubert Dreyfus, a phenomenologist philosopher at Berkeley, argued that human brain is not a computer and mind is not a mere symbol manipulator; they are in a human being and they work with a tacit knowledge of the background of commonsense based on experience, akin to Heidegger’s ‘Being-in-the-world’ (Coeckelbergh, 2020, p. 34). This tacit knowledge, he argued, cannot be formalized and represented in a machine. Only the humans can understand what is relevant in the background knowledge. In addition, the humans are involved in the world in a way the machines cannot be. In sum, he agreed with Searle that the possibility of developing Strong AI is simply not feasible. Though arguments of Searle and Dreyfuss met objections at that time, their import was not lost on the AI researchers. AI research gradually moved away from Strong AI, and from symbol-manipulation models to other new models, such as statistics-based machine learning. In fact, continental philosophers mostly have argued that humans and machines are fundamentally different and that the humans have self-consciousness and a phenomenal awareness of their existence, which cannot be formally represented in a machine. We have already mentioned Searle’s famous philosophical objection above. Some philosophers of the analytic tradition, such as Paul Churchland and Daniel Dennett, however, disagree. Churchland argued that the human brain is a kind of recurrent neural networks, which is replicable in a machine, and denied the existence of non-physical thoughts, mental properties and states, and experiences. Dennett also denies the existence of anything non-physical and argues that since humans are conscious machines, hence developing such machines is possible. AI programs of today are different from what they used to be in the time of Searle and Dreyfus. However, Dreyfus’s and Searle’s arguments still remain relevant. Many still think that we humans have key differences from the machines in our abilities of meaning-making, of being self-aware in the world. Perhaps we should also mention here that skepticism and defensive reactions to new technology have a long history. In the fields of humanities and social sciences, many scholars have viewed technology at its various stages and in its various products a threat to the society and to humanity as such. They have rejected technological efforts that view the humans as a technological product. That tension is also partly reflected in the debate surrounding AI and its progress. We, however, shall proceed forward with the understanding that Searle’s argument is mainly against Strong AI, and most AI research of today do not concern itself to meet the conditions set by Searle’s Strong AI. Although the goal of many AI projects is to develop autonomous systems that can solve multiple problems which are not narrowly defined, there is no further claim that the AI systems can understand or can have cognitive states in exactly the same sense as humans do. Seamless simulation of human intelligent behavior, however, continues to be the target used in most AI tasks.

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Quick Question 8.4 1. Explain what AI is with appropriate examples of your own. What is or are its goal(s)? 2. Why do you suppose the Turing Test is popular among the Ai researchers and developers? 3. Do you agree with Dennett’s claim that humans are conscious machines? Briefly justify your answer.

8.3.5 Is AI the same as Data Science? We shall close the discussion on AI with a frequently asked question: Is AI the same as Data science? People often ask whether the technology based on artificial intelligence, and data science, are same. Perhaps they get confused because AI and Data Science are both buzz words at present, and often they are uttered in the same breath. However, the answer is: No, AI and Data science are not the same. Here by AI we mean the field of study engaged in research, and development of AI. AI and Data Science are two separate fields. They are not subsets of each other either. Data science is a multi-disciplinary field which studies and analyzes the data, and thereby it aims to discover insights from large sets of raw or unstructured data. With the Internet, online shopping and other services and the social media platforms, massive amount of data is being generated by people every day, and data science allows a way into extracting the insights from that data, which the businesses make use of. Our society has become data-driven, where data have become the need for the businesses and other organizations for making key decisions. Big data refers to massive datasets of varied, complex nature, which would be difficult to store and process, and to analyze, using the earlier data software tools. With the increasing number of users of digital technology, and of devices connected to the Internet, huge datasets are now available. How big is big data? Data are measured in bits and bytes. Big is a relative term. In 1999, one Gigabyte or 1 GB (230 bytes) used to be thought as big. Now, it may consist of petabytes (250 bytes) or exabytes (260 bytes), or zettabytes (270 bytes) with billion or trillions of records of millions of people. Big data is defined as data which has three v-s: 1. Variety: Data in greater variety and complexity. 2. Volume: Data of massive volume, in tens of terabytes, such that traditional data software cannot handle them. For example, twitter data feeds. 3. Velocity: Data which come at a fast rate and are to be acted upon in a fast pace. Earlier in the early 2000s, data used to be managed and consolidated as unified systems in data warehouse or silos. From mid-2000s, the scene changed drastically

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with the changes in the Web. Platforms such as Facebook and Twitter arrived, and there were significant changes in the mobile and tablet technologies. People openly exchanged ideas, opinions, and critiques and also gained information from each other. Social media platforms made it easier to disseminate the responses. Consequently, the volume, velocity, and variety of data from the Internet reached an unprecedented level. In other words, suddenly there was immense amount of real-time information which needed to be accessed immediately and dynamically by businesses and other data-collecting organizations. The users of digital technology produce digital data continuously and in high volume, e.g. when people do an online search of a travel destination or when people purchase an item online. These digital data are of high interest to the businesses, but these data are also of interest to the governments, research scientists, and information-gathering agencies. New tools were required to access, collect, store, organize, and analyze the data. However, the computational power of the algorithms increased gradually. AI-based tools, specifically machine learning and deep learning, along with improved data science, and other digital technologies, such as block-chain technology, have made it all rather easy today. Data scientists may use different techniques, such as statistics, mathematics, advanced computing, and programming. Or, they may rely on AI, in particular on machine learning and deep Learning, both are AI-based techniques, which are explained below. Machine learning based on big data has caused a great interest. So, for a data scientist, AI is one of the tools for doing data analytics, such as machine learning, to manage and to analyze big data. However, there is much more to Data science than just the usage of machine learning. It includes other tasks, as for example, data visualization and data preparation. After data collection and before analyzing the data, the data have to be prepared and cleaned. Data science also includes many other data-related activities, such as how to restructure the datasets and how to pick the relevant datasets statistics. Similarly, AI is not used merely for data analytics; it contains much more than data analytics. For example, natural language processing (NLP), Robotics, is part of AI, but this is not part of Data science. Hence, it should be clear that though AI and Data science may work together on certain tasks, they are not the same. Their domains may have overlaps, but actually they are quite separate.

8.4 Advances in AI As we come to an understanding about what AI is, perhaps we can look back in history to see how the present day has evolved over time. In 1950, Alan Turing proposed the idea of computing machinery and intelligence and mathematically explored the possibility of artificial intelligence. In the 1950s, computers were severely restricted in their abilities, e.g. in their storage, and were huge in size and prohibitively expensive. From 1957, however, the storage in computers became better, and computers themselves became more affordable.

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Consequently, AI research flourished, and in the USA, government agencies such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), USA, began to fund AI research in different institutions. Early AI-based systems included ELIZA, developed by Joseph Weizenbaum, of MIT AI Lab during 1964–1966. ELIZA was a natural language processing computer program which could successfully simulate conversation with a human by a simple pattern-matching method with the scripted directives or instructions on how to interact. ELIZA is considered as a precursor of the chatbots of present day (Pic. 8.4).

Pic. 8.4 ELIZA

From the 1960s, expert systems began to be developed as the AI-based knowledge systems. In them, computer programs used AI technologies to store and correctly retrieve information to answer specific questions asked, or to solve narrowly defined problems of a specific field, such as medicine, engineering, and accounting. They simulated the knowledge, expertise and behavior of a human expert in the field, or an organization which has experience in the field. For example, MYCIN was an AI-based expert system for treating blood infections. Its domain was medical knowledge. Developed at Stanford University, USA, MYCIN would try to diagnose a patient based on the medical test results and the reported symptoms. If needed, MYCIN would ask for additional tests to arrive at a probable diagnosis. MYCIN also contained an explanation system. It could answer questions asked in plain English to produce the ‘logic’ or the justification for the conclusion it arrived at. The program used about 350 rules and performed at a higher level than the general practitioners, and at the level of a human specialist in blood infections. As knowledge representation is a major problem in AI, developing expert systems or knowledge engineering has remained a favored area in AI. However, the early computers still faced many obstacles to do substantial natural language processing. They lacked the computational power and the speed required for processing, for example. However, the 1980s brought in two major changes in AI: First, there was a significant improvement in the algorithms. Edward Feigenbaum introduced decision-making expert systems, which simulated the decision-making

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process by a human expert. The industry application of the decision-making expert systems made them a favored choice by the industries. Deep learning techniques were introduced (John Hopfield and David Rumelhart), which made it possible for the computers to learn from their previous experience. Reilley and Cooper used a “hybrid” network with multiple layers, each layer using a different problem-solving strategy. Second, the 1980s also witnessed an influx of research funds in AI. The Japanese Government made significant amount of funds ($400 million USD) available for research on expert systems and other AI-based research. Sadly, many of the ambitious projects under this funding did not materialize and the funds eventually dried up. However, the funds inspired a generation of AI researchers. In the 1990s and 2000s, AI research thrived even in the absence of munificent funding and support. IBM developed Deep Blue, a chess playing computer program, and in 1997, it made world news when Deep Blue defeated the world chess champion and grand master Gary Casparov. A chess playing computer program was an illustration of the calculated moves, the anticipated strategies and development of counter-strategies, and in general the decision-making power of an intelligent artificial system. In 1997, Windows incorporated a speech recognition system, another brilliant example of the ability of AI to interpret and recognize spoken language. From mid-2000s, the Big data revolution came, and with it AI also further evolved as an immensely promising technology. We shall discuss this interesting transition shortly, but after a brief introduction to machine learning and deep learning in the following section. For, machine learning and deep learning helped in a significant way to usher the Big data revolution. Quick Question 8.5 1. Explain the difference between AI and Data Science. 2. Analyze what an expert system such as MYCIN does, and comment on advantages and disadvantages of such systems.

8.4.1 Machine Learning Machine learning has been a game-changer in AI. In order to comprehend the ethical issues with AI, we need to have at least a cursory acquaintance to this important development in AI. Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in AI which is concerned with understanding and developing computer programs which can learn by leveraging data from previous experiences, given a kind of tasks. Some find the term machine learning questionable, because, they claim, that only the humans can learn and true cognition; what the machines do is not learning.

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This is partly admissible even to some cognitive scientists. For example, Margaret Boden writes that machine learning bears “little or no similarity to what might be plausibly going on in human minds” (Boden, 2016, p. 46). Nonetheless, a kind of algorithms continues to be referred to as machine learning. In machine learning, data and algorithms are used to imitate the way in which the humans learn. Box 8.12 Machine Learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in AI which is concerned with understanding and developing computer programs which can learn by leveraging data from previous experiences.

Machine learning is based on statistics. Using statistical methods, in machine learning algorithms are trained to categorize data and create classifications, or to make predictions. Here an important point is to be noted about a key difference between conventional manual data collection, and data collection by an AI algorithm. In social science research, the conventional and manual primary data collection is done using some hypotheses in mind. That is, in the data collected, already some structure is imposed. However, when AI collects data, it collects without any previous hypothesis. For example, let us suppose that a product ‘P’ is about to come to the market. The AI is asked to collect from the various Internet sources and social media platforms all the data in which ‘P’ is being discussed. The data could be images, or videos, or simply texts. Understandably, the raw data collected would be not only really huge in size, but also enormously diverse in nature. It is not possible to manually sort and analyze and classify the data. This is where machine learning comes as a very important tool. Machine learning is often used with the purpose to uncover new insights from the raw but massive data collected. In machine learning, the basic task of the algorithms may be to find out a pattern in the input data amassed. Given that task and the training for that task, the algorithms try to identify a pattern or a rule from the data collected. Then the pattern identified may be used both to explain the present data and sometimes even to predict for the future. Through machine learning, the AI systems can produce new knowledge by finding complex structures and patterns in the input data that was not foreseen by the programmers and trainers. Since the learning of the algorithms relies on the data with which an AI system is trained, clearly the learning is better the more the exposure to the data is. That, the more the AI system gets exposed to large number and diverse kind of data, the better opportunity the algorithms get to learn to identify a pattern, or to improve its previous performance. This larger exposure could be from the sheer size or volume of dataset, as in the case of Big Data. The desirable exposure could also come from the number of iterations the machine is trained on, or from the feedback the machine received on

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its earlier performances. Analogically speaking, this amounts to learning from the previous experience. The humans also learn by opening themselves up to larger set of experiences, or by repeated training and feedback on the previous performances.

In machine learning, the process of identifying the raw data, e.g. images, videos, and adding or more meaningful and suitable labels, such as a name or a type, is called data labeling. Labeled data indicate what the dataset is about. In AI and machine learning, there are two basic approaches: (i) Supervised learning (ii) Unsupervised learning. Supervised learning is a machine learning approach which is defined by its use of labeled datasets. Supervised learning requires a labeled dataset as a training set. The labeled datasets are used to train or to supervise the algorithms as they learn from the labeled data. Supervised learning also requires the presence of a supervisor or a teacher, as its name indicates. When engaged in a supervised learning, under human monitoring an AI system continues to learn from the labeled dataset and do its task. The algorithm may focus on a target variable for doing a specific task. For example, the machine may be trained to classify a large group of applications of people into two groups: Immigrants and non-immigrants. The variables which identify these categories are already known, and the algorithm is then trained on the variable or variables to identify category membership from the textual data of people’s profile from a database. The human programmer trains the algorithm on proper examples and non-examples using a large number of examples. Another example of supervised learning may be where supervised algorithms are trained by a human programmer to classify spam among the emails and put the spam in the spam folder. Unsupervised learning is another approach in machine learning in which the machine is trained using unlabeled or raw datasets. The machine learning algorithms are allowed to learn to analyze, categorize and cluster the dataset without any guidance. The key difference is that the algorithms learn on their own without the need of human intervention; hence they are unsupervised learning algorithms. Given a specific objective, the machine is given the task on its own to try to understand the

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patterns and relations in the given data without any prior training and transform the data from input into output.  The unsupervised learning may be applied for forming groups from the unlabeled data based on similarities or differences of the data points. For example, the machine may be given a dataset containing images of bicycles and cars. The machine is not trained previously about the features of a bicycle or a car, so it cannot label or categorize them as bicycles or cars. But it can categorize them according to the similarities, common patterns, and differences. Thus, in the end it may sort the images into two groups as per their common patterns. The unsupervised learning algorithms may be also used to find association or relationships between the variables in a given data. For example, an online bookstore may take help of recommendations engines, which are AI-enabled software which analyzes the available data to recommend what an online user may consider. From the earlier purchase data, the unsupervised learning algorithm may discover previously unknown preference patterns among the buyers. Let us suppose that it has found the following associations: Those who buy horror stories prefer books authored by Stephen King. Those who like Stephen King’s books, also like stories by Alfred Hitchcock.

Based on the data available, the above-mentioned associations are observed patterns or associations of probabilities. Based on these, the AI-enabled may start recommending books to users who like the horror stories. Once this task is mastered, the algorithms may identify more complicated probabilities, such as predictive probabilities: If a buyer buys a Hitchcock book, the buyer is likely to buy not only a Stephen King Book, but also a book by Bram Stoker.

Accordingly, the recommendation engine may suggest to the prospective buyers on the bookstore website. The learning in machine learning refers to the way these algorithms change how they process data over time. If the probability of correct output value increases with each time the AI system is exposed to new data, it is understood that the machine is learning from its experiences. The learning ability of the machine indicates the AI of the machine. For example, image recognition is an area in which machine learning is widely used. The task may be to identify an object, such as a car or a human face, as a digital image among a large number of images. If each time it is exposed to a new dataset an AI system increasingly correctly recognizes an object (a car or a face) from different dataset of million-plus images, the system may be said to learning from its previous experiences. In the real world, there are many successful applications of image recognition. A noteworthy application of machine learning in image recognition is to accurately detect a mammogram (digital x-ray image of the breast) as of cancer status (Shen et al., 2019).

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When the machine learns without a direct instruction or rules set by the programmer, and when only a task or objective is set, the machine learning functions autonomously. That is, the machine learns rules or patterns on its own. Or, when the machine learns and improves its performance from data and experience without being programmed to do so and without human intervention, the machine learning functions autonomously. The algorithm makes its own variables and forms clusters on its own and generates its own rules (generalization) from a large number of examples to apply for future data. The AI makes its own categories, and rules on the basis of the statistics, and the dataset. The result can be startling in two ways.  (i) The AI may find patterns and categories which the programmer did not even think about but are relevant to the task. In that case, a new insight into the data can be obtained. In that case, the AI learning can be reinforced in terms of ‘reward’ feedback. Or, (ii) the categories and patterns found by the machines may not make sense at all. Then the system gets the feedback that the output was not good. The utility of machine learning is now an accepted fact. More and more companies are using machine learning to keep up with the consumer data and consumer expectations. There are various applications available in the real world already. For example, machine learning algorithms are used in the end-user devices, for example, face recognition for unlocking smartphones, or for parental control over the use of an app by a child. Machine learning is also used by Google Maps. By using the location data of a smartphones, Google Maps can check the status of traffic and with appropriate algorithms can indicate the fastest route to reach the destination. Gmail uses machine learning to filter spam from the words in the messages, and also from whom the mail is sent. Gmail prompts to finish sentences in emails on behalf of the sender. This also has been possible with Ai and machine learning. AI-enabled systems use machine learning to detect fraud in financial transactions. Machine learning is regularly used by the social media platforms. Facebook or Meta, for example, routinely uses machine learning to know which content a newsreader would like to see on her linefeed, and also to recommend which advertisements and videos a particular user may be interested in. Now, for futuristic applications, some have argued that car-sharing companies may use machine learning to predict driver demand (Brahimi et al. 2022). Car sharing is a model for cars to be rented and returned anywhere to an authorized parking lot. This model is used in many countries for renting cars for travel within the city. The goal of a car-sharing company of course is to keep fewer cars in the parking lot (sitting idly) and to keep more cars on the road (cars on the road are rented, hence revenue for the company). This goal can be better served by machine learning by keeping track of the dynamic data than by a manual operator.

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8.4.2 Deep Learning Deep learning is a special type of machine learning. It uses artificial neural networks with three or more layers, which imitate the behavior of human brain closely and allow the machine to learn from large amount of data in a way very similar to what the humans do (Pic. 8.5).

Pic. 8.5 AI, ML, and deep learning

 Deep learning is inspired by the neural networks that exist in the human brain and their neural activities which take place following what may be called hierarchical pattern recognition. David H. Hubel and Tornsten N. Wiesel, who won the 1981 Nobel Prize in physiology, discovered that different neurons in the visual system in our brain respond in a different way to the visual stimuli. Some respond at a basic level and pick up the simple lines in the visual stimuli, while others work at a higher level and pick up the more complex attributes of the stimuli. Though they work at different hierarchical levels, the neurons are part of a multi-layered neuron system, and the levels are interconnected. They work together to represent an object. Hubel and Tornsten received the Novel Prize for their discoveries about visual perception and the primary visual cortex in the brain. They claimed that a complex stimulus may be visually recognized by interconnected layers of abstractions among the neurons, in an increasing hierarchical order. First layer of representation may be the bare lines picked up by some neurons, followed by subsequent layers which would identify the higher-order attributes, such as the contrast and the edges, for example. Finally, the topmost layer would categorize and identify the object. The

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layers are interconnected, and thus, the visual information gets enriched by inputs from each layer. Each layer is a part of a multi-layered neural network, but there is a hierarchy among them. The first layer brings the basic input, on which the subsequent higher layers add higher attributes. Finally, a total visual image is learnt and recognized. This was the discovery of Hubel and Wiesel.  In 1980, neural network researcher Kunahiko Fukushima made AI history by implementing the Hubel & Wiesel brain network model in a computer and called it- Neocognitron. The Neocognitron was a neural network with multiple layers. It had a set of layers which looked like rectangles and were interconnected. In computer vision, when presented with a digital image, the first layer would pick on the bare pixels, and then, the subsequent layers would further analyze the image, pick out the higher-order attributes, such as edges and the contrast, and finally categorize it as the image of this or that object. The final layer is the most abstract and hierarchically at the top (Pic. 8.6).

Pic. 8.6 Neocognitron of Fukushima

This multi-layered, hierarchical model is followed in deep learning. In each layer of a multi-layered (about three) neural network, there are elements which are called the nodes, which may be loosely similar to the neurons in a biological organism. The nodes are interconnected. The connections are called weights. The weights may differ; the larger the weight is between node A to B, the more influence A would have on node B. Deep learning is about machine learning in the way the brain does. The algorithms and the AI-enabled neural network can deep learn to do a task. They can be trained or supervised, or they can autonomously to discover intricate data patterns and structure from the multiple layers. For example, through rounds of trial and error and feedback, they can be trained to associate a certain kind of input (e.g. a pattern in the pixels) to the associated output with (e.g. to learn the name of the alphabet). From each layer, they extract more and more features and create a single representation, which is informed and enriched by multiple levels of abstraction. The depth in deep learning comes from the number of additional layers from which the features are extracted.

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Box 8.13 Deep Learning Deep learning is a special kind of machine learning by an AI system, in which multiple-layered artificial neural networks allow the AI system to learn in a hierarchical manner with more accurate and advanced manner. To this, we may further add the observations of European Commission on Deep learning: This approach refers to the fact that the neural network has several layers between the input and the output that allow to learn the overall input-output relation in successive steps. This makes the overall approach more accurate and with less need of human guidance. (AI HLEG, 2019b, p. 4).

Practical applications of Deep Learning: Some examples of practical application of Deep learning algorithms are object recognition. Earlier it was a challenge for the AI researchers to make a machine learn to recognize an object (e.g. a car). Deep learning has changed the scene by not only performing the object recognition task successfully, but also performing speech recognition. Marcus and Davis (2019, p. 52) report that the performance of Google Translate has improved significantly after leveraging the power of Deep learning and a newer neural network. Deep learning has also helped to achieve major improvements in adding color to old black-and-white images and videos, and in labeling random photographs, and in transcribing speech to text. In driverless or automated vehicles, some Deep learning algorithms are specialized in recognizing the street signs and in identifying the pedestrians. In computer vision, Deep learning has reached accuracy in face recognition, object identification and even in image restoration. Deep learning has been astonishingly successful in creating synthetic art. Deep Art is one example where artwork is created using AI and Deep learning. Using a combination of AI and the General Adversarial Networks (GANs), AI can now create art, music, and even movies for an artist. There are also AI art Generator Apps available which can turn a photo into a painting of a certain style or can create an artwork from text prompt.  DALL-E is an impressive example of a trained deeper neural network which exhibits a diverse set of AI capabilities, which include creating human-like versions of objects and animals, combining any given set of concepts (even if unrelated) from text prompt and representing the outcome as an image (DALL-E, 2021). In the website, one would find the many interesting examples of images from text prompts, such as “a collection of glasses sitting on a chair”, or even a combination of unrelated concepts such as “an armchair in the shape of an avocado”.

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8.4.3 Big Data and the AI Revolution From the early part of 2010–2015, the Big data revolution came. The research around the artificial neural networks became re-energized by the Big data. According to some, the major breakthrough came from the somewhat unexpected area of computer games and the changes which came in the graphic processing unit (GPU) (Marcus & Davis, 2019, Chap. 3). A turning point in AI came when the power of the GPUs, which were originally developed for the computer games and gradually became very powerful and efficient, were repurposed for the artificial neural networks by some researchers. They used the GPUs to train a multi-layered neural network to recognize an image, e.g. a dog, from a large number of images (about 1.4 million) which were drawn from about a thousand different categories. The convergence of Big Data with AI, machine learning, and deep learning has emerged as a single most important and disruptive change which is driving innovations in various fields, and transformations in business processes. More and more organizations are leveraging the wealth of information which Big data bring with the capabilities of AI, machine learning, and deep learning to achieve their targets. AI has streamlined the time-consuming and laborious manual processes associated with data analytics and has helped businesses tremendously to gather new insights and to make real-time decisions based on Big data. Apart from businesses, it is hoped that using the combination of AI and Big data even global development can be accelerated (Cohen & Kharas, 2018). Both machine learning and deep learning benefit significantly from very high volumes of data of various kinds coming at a very high speed. Many AI technologies, which remained dormant earlier because of limited data availability, are now active due to the availability of Big data sets. Similarly, data scientists, who earlier had to rely on limited and representative datasets, can now rely on raw data itself, in massive volume, with the details and granularity intact. At present, further major advances of AI are visible in many areas, including the areas of computer vision, speech recognition, natural language processing, image and video generation and motor control for robotics. Specialized applications of machine learning are seen in a large variety of domains, such as computer games, autonomous driving or driverless cars, and interactive personal assistance. People regularly use their phones to get recommendation for navigation; or for their usual shopping, or for news and entertainment. Visiting a website, people often accept the recommendations made for travel destination, or for next selection of a hotel or a homestay, or on everyday grocery items. The technology behind these is machine learning and deep learning. Chatbots and AI-driven writing aids already demonstrate the language processing powers of preset AI applications. While writing an email in Gmail, you may have found that the email system is more than eager to finish your sentence for you or find for you a relevant, more appropriate, expression. Related to the natural language processing, there has been unprecedented growth in conversational interfaces between an artificial system and a human. Alexa

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(Amazon’s cloud-based voice service), Google Assistant (Google’s virtual assistant software), and Siri (Apple’s virtual assistant software) are prominent instances of such successful interfaces. They not only exhibit voice recognition ability, but also advanced level ability in data organization in voice-based two-way responses (Pic. 8.7).

Pic. 8.7 Alexa of Amazon, Google Assistant, and Siri of Apple

In computer vision, face recognition technology has improved significantly and is now widely used for surveillance in a crowd, and driverless cars. Image processing systems, existing images by new images, seamlessly replace faces in an image or a video. Abuse of these abilities has led to the creation of deep fakes and illegal activities such as fake news creation, identity theft, or maligning the name of a person by creating a doctored image or video of a person as a tool for taking revenge.

8.4.4 Some Notable Applications of AI and Data Science AI and Data Science work together to create applications which impact our lives today in many different ways. In finance, for example, creditor selection is an important task, which relies on data about who the lender is and how creditworthy the lender will be. UK credit reference agency Experian uses machine learning to analyze data about transactions by an applicant, and about past court cases involving the applicant, before selecting and approving a mortgage applicant. BMW, the world renowned automobile company, uses an AI-empowered automated image recognition technology to inspect the parts of its products. The AI technology checks and evaluates the images of the components of a car and compares them in milliseconds with the standards set for the components. The AI solution detects and determines the variations from the standard in real time and also monitors whether all the required parts have been mounted and attached at the right place in a car. Needless to say, from the point of quality assurance of their cars, and also from the view point of passenger safety, the AI solution provides an invaluable support. In education, AI systems have proved to provide important support. They are particularly successful in massive online courses, where the enrollment can easily

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cross hundred thousand. In that highly digital learning environment, AI can assist the students in learning and also in the course organization. Moreover, they also help in retaining academic quality and integrity. To deter cheating by the students in their academic submissions, many universities all over the world now use AIenabled anti-plagiarism software to detect not just all the major sources available in the Internet, but also the unpublished, earlier student submissions. Automated AI agents as teaching assistants are particularly helpful in subjects, in which the good and the correct answers are easier to identify. Quick Question 8.6 1. Explain the difference when an algorithm learns by supervised learning and when it learns by unsupervised learning. If an analogy is to be drawn with a human, provide the appropriate scenarios to explain the differences. 2. Why is it said that Deep learning is inspired by the neural networks in a brain? Explain.

8.5 Applied Ethics: AI, Data Science, and Ethics Now that we have been introduced to applied ethics as a field of study, and very briefly with AI and Data Science, we can now begin from this section the discussion on Artificial Intelligence (AI), Data Science, and ethics as a timely and important area in applied ethics. The discussions in this section will be divided into the following sections: 8.5.1. 8.5.2. 8.5.3. 8.5.4.

Why choose ethics of AI, Data Science as an area of applied ethics? Can a machine be ethical? Is machine ethics possible? What are the ethical issues in AI and data science? Can the theories of normative ethics be applied to issues pertaining to AI?

8.5.1 Why Choose Ethics of AI and Data Science as an Example of Applied Ethics? Before we begin the discussion on AI, Data Science, and Ethics, perhaps we may have to first address a possible question. One might ask, when there are so many other familiar areas of applied ethics, such as abortion, euthanasia, or environmental sustainability, why choose a relatively unfamiliar area of AI, Data Science, and ethics as an exemplar for applied ethics in this book? In response, let me state that for this textbook, the topic of AI, Data Science, and Ethics was chosen after deliberation. The topic was chosen because of its growing

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importance for the contemporary society. Other topics, which may be more familiar, perhaps have been already addressed and discussed in many other textbooks. This textbook decided to stand apart and pursue this topic because of its expanding relevant in today’s scenario. I can also cite at least two important reasons to justify the selection of the topic. One, advancements in AI and Data Science, as discussed above, have been phenomenal in recent times. They are globally among the fastest growing technologies which are increasingly making their presence felt in our ordinary everyday lives. As has been already discussed in the previous sections of this chapter, the promise of artificial intelligence (AI) has been around for quite some now, but at present with together with Big Data and advanced Data Science, it has made giant strides of advancement in computing, technology and engineering. Scholars have emphasized on understanding the inflexions of these new technologies on us and on our society, with special focus on societal well-being. Also, from government agencies, private companies, professional associations, technical experts, there has been a consistent demand to infuse ethics and responsibility in the development and design of AI against an unbridled growth of AI, and to some extent to the tools available to Data Science. ➤ For example, IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems (2017) specifically has prescribed guidelines for ethically aligned design of AI prioritizing human well-being. Similarly, Montreal Declaration of Responsible AI (2018) has emphasized on development of responsible AI based on selected ethical principles and values. It, in fact, has enumerated a long list of possible “ethical challenges and social risks” that development of AI poses: Indeed, intelligent machines can restrict the choices of individuals and groups, lower living standards, disrupt the organization of labor and job maket, influence politics, clash with fundamental rights, exacerbate social and economic inequalities, and affect ecosystem, climate and environment. (University of Montreal, 2018)

European Commission also has laid down Ethics guidelines for trustworthy AI (AI HLEG, 2019a) and thereby has insisted on ethically informed AI development and deployment in the society. The trustworthiness of AI, according to this HighLevel Expert Group, comes from the ethically informed applications of AI and the deployment of AI systems. In addition to the policy guidelines, several researchers have identified the major ethical challenges which AI, together with Data Science, pose (Müller, 2020; Coeckelbergh, 2020; Boden, 2016; Nyholm, 2018a; Nyholm, 2018b, Nyholm, 2020). Some of these will be discussed in the sections below. Together with many other contemporary thinkers, they have argued that there has to be an ethics dedicated to the emerging reality of presence of AI systems and Big Data, and Data Science tools, in human society. In unison, they have claimed that implementation of ethics, either in the AI systems, or in the software that runs them, or in the design of AI systems is necessary for preventing “existential risks to humanity, to solve any issues related to bias” (Gordon & Nyholm, 2021) and to build AI systems that respect humanity and assist the humans to flourish. In general, the opinion is that there are certain risks

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and dangers which AI and machine learning pose for the humans and the human society. To mitigate those, ethical considerations must be built into a responsible AI framework to make the AI systems and their workings fair, secure, and reliable. Together, these discussions, deliberations, and guidelines establish some common ethical concerns. They show that ethics of AI is a much-needed area for applying the normative lens to detect ethical issues and dilemmas pertaining to the AI systems. Together, they also underscore the need for ethically sound actions in this field. That establishes ethics of AI as a field in its own right within applied ethics. As a specialized subfield of applied ethics, the goal of ethics of AI is: …to analyze, clarify, and solve practical problems by relying on ethical theories and principles, and to study the reality in which AI applications and systems are designed and used (Mittelstadt, 2019, 501)

They also show that as a veritable subfield of applied ethics, it is an area which is both timely and important. The selection of this area in this textbook was done from this perspective. Two, as a society, it is said that we are at an important juncture in human history where the advances in AI are ushering us towards a new age. Many call it the Fifth Industrial Revolution or the 5IR (Noble et al., 2022). Let me explain the Fifth Industrial Revolution a little. As a race, the humankind has been through several turning points in our collective history, in which there has been paradigmatic shift in technology, and as a result our lives have experienced unprecedented changes. These turning points are being called the revolutions. When in the pre-historic age, the human race learned to make tools and artifacts out of the rocks with their sheer craftmanship, there was a revolution. Suddenly, the existing materials became the resource for useful tools and implements with knowledge and skill. Similarly, when the humankind learned to extract metals from the molten rocks, there was a revolution. The choice of resource was no longer limited by what was available; the knowledge and the technology were available for making new materials and to build with them. In a similar line, when in 1764 the discovery of steam power brought in a revolution of doing and manufacturing things at a speed which the human or animal (horse) muscles could not cope with. It was the age of steamships, steam engines, and trains. The industrial revolution started from Great Britain and created unsurpassed wealth not only in Great Britain but also in the countries which adopted it. In the end of 19th CE and early 20th CE (1870– 1914), electrical power replaced the steam power. The factory assembly line and the mass production of things came into being. Mass production not only changed the nature of manufacturing and production forever, but also by their sheer volume made the produced items more affordable for people. Mass production of steel, for example, led to a different paradigm in construction and other infrastructure, and created enormous wealth for some. In the 1940s, automation and earlier version of robotics brought in the industrial Revolution in which the machines relieved the humans from backbreaking manual labor and the monotony of the repetitive chores. It created the need for new set of skills. Now with AI, Big Data, 3-D printing, Digital

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Twins, and other technologies, we stand at the juncture of yet another industrial revolution: the age of AI, or the Fifth Industrial Revolution. In 1969, IBM came up with microprocessor, which led to personal computers or PCs, which completely revolutionalized the ways of our data storage, data processing, and data management. Since then, we have come a long way. We have now reached a phase where our smart phones, tablets or other devices control and manage our lives, and even our relationships with the others in our lives, in a manner that is unprecedented. Billions of search algorithms, and sensors, are collecting our data relentlessly and storing them in the cloud. According to many, the next revolution, the Fifth Industrial Revolution (5IR) is being heralded by the advances in AI and Robotics, Data Science, Internet of Things (IoT), by which the human life as we now know will soon be reshaped once more. Given the revolution heralded by AI is going to change our lives, as the presence of AI and Big Data become more and more pervasive in our lives, there will be increasingly more human-machine interactions and human-machine collaborations in the society in the performance of activities. Such interactions and collaborations would necessarily have an ethical dimension. For example, more and more industries, private as well as public sector organizations, are allowing decision-making roles to AI in key domains, such as in health care, economy, finance, defense, and criminal investigation (Pic. 8.8). In the coming days, we are likely to see AI to be entrusted with even more decisions along with data regarding public as well as our personal lives, such as biometric data and personal finances. This ought to raise ethical concerns about trusting the AI-generated decisions, because the potential for social harm from the ethically blind usage of the AI cannot be dismissed. Every now and then, there are disconcerting reports on algorithmic bias, data manipulation, and data privacy invasion with AI-based tools by the corporate giants as well as governments.

Pic. 8.8 Man-machine collaboration

Moreover, as human-machine interactions and collaborations increase, there will be increase in joint activities given by two agents, one human and another an AI system. As a consequence, we must admit that there will be joint responsibility for the consequences of the activity, for which the human will have to share the moral responsibility with an AI system for the outcome of certain actions. That possibility

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creates a host of ethical challenges. Since already substantial ethical issues have been raised about the machine bias of the autonomous AI systems in law and in recruitment processes (the issue will be discussed in details in the subsequent sections of this chapter), it should be clear why we need the guidance of ethics in accepting the AI systems as joint agents or as collaborators can create the need for ethical guidelines. Other authors have expressed their concern about the increasing autonomy of the autonomous AI systems and have argued that with increased autonomy there arises a growing need for ethical standards to govern that behavior (Picard, 1997, p. 9). The points mentioned above indicate why the students in applied ethics should know more about the bounds of ethics in interactions and collaborations between a human and a machine. The issue of responsible usage of AI illuminates the need to train AI systems about the bounds of ethics in their interaction with the humans. Students of applied ethics must be informed and prepared to take an active part in addressing ethical issues pertaining to the well-being of all in a society where AI systems will share the space with the humans. The selection of Ethics of AI and Data Science in this textbook was inspired by such thoughts. Quick Question 8.7 1. It is said that “ethics of AI is needed to identify, prepare for and to mitigate the harmful effects of AI”. Do you agree? Explain. 2. Other than harmful effects or consequences, can there be other ethical grounds to justify the need for ethics of AI?

8.5.2 Moral Status of an AI System: Agency and Attribution of Moral Responsibility In the section above, you may have noted that there is a demand for Responsible AI and ethically informed AI. However, can AI be held responsible? Can it be an agent to whom we can meaningfully attribute responsibility for any damage, harm, or mistake, which may be done by an AI system? Can we consider an AI system morally responsible as we would in the case of human beings? If the AI systems cannot be held morally responsible, then who would we hold liable or responsible for their actions? These important questions about attribution of moral responsibility are taken up in this section along with the associated concepts of moral status, moral agency and moral patiency. We shall start with the concept of moral status.  Moral status: What is a moral status? It is a very important concept in traditional ethics, which is used to distinguish things which qualify to be treated ethically and are ethically valuable so as to treat them with special consideration. Entities which have a moral status are to be treated with respect. They are considered as

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part of the moral community, and in a moral community the members deserve a certain kind of respectful treatment by the other members (Pic. 8.9). Things which have moral status: Deserves ethical consideration, to be treated with respect

Things which do not have moral status: Do not get ethical consideration, need not be treated with respect

Pic. 8.9 The categorization using moral status

Some philosophers (Jaworska & Tannenbaum, 2021) have defined the concept of moral status as follows: Box 8.14 A definition of moral status An entity has moral status if and only if it or its interests morally matter to some degree for the entity’s own sake.

According to this definition, the entity and its interests has to morally matter to get the ethical consideration for the sake of the entity itself to deserve a moral status. In other words, the well-being or the suffering of the entity has to be significant from an ethical point of view in order to qualify for moral status. Traditionally, moral status is conferred upon humans in general. Benefits and harm to them and their society are supposed to matter as a matter of paramount importance in ethics. In Chap. 7 of this book, we learned about Kant’s Deontological Ethics, in which Kant clearly stated that humans (alone) have special and unique intrinsic worth. In his Second Formulation of Categorical Imperative, Kant instructs us not to ever treat humanity, be it ourselves or other members of the human race, simply as a means. Harming the humans, or treating with disrespect, would ethically matter as a reprehensible act. It follows that in Kant’s ethics, the persons or the humans have a moral status and that they are important members of the moral community. On the other hand, objects, such as a pen or a spoon, traditionally are not viewed as entities that have a moral status. Therefore, they are not ethically valuable to deserve any special treatment. One may use them and discard, or misuse them, without any ethical qualms about it. By the way, Kant also did not mention any non-human animal as having a moral status. The question arises more specifically now that we know that certain animals have cognitive capabilities at least at the level of the humans, such as the dolphins and Great apes. Subsequently, philosophers and animal rights activists have argued for the inclusion of animals in the moral community; but even with animals, it is not clear if all animals fall into a category which has moral status. Environmentalists have argued in favor of including other life forms and even inanimate natural environment to be included as contenders for moral status.

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So, usually, and traditionally, adult human beings with full cognitive capacities has been taken unquestionably as having a moral status. With moral status, also moral agency and moral responsibility are attributed to this group. Some link moral status with very sophisticated cognitive capacities, intellectual and emotional. Kant, for example, spoke of the ability to set rules for oneself (self-legislation) through practical reasoning. Contemporary philosophers have proposed other capacities, such as capacity to exercise will (Quinn, 1984), capacity for self-awareness (McMahan, 2002), and capacity to care for the others (Jaworska, 2007). However, in modern applied ethics, this unquestioning assumption is questioned on various grounds. It is argued that the problem with this approach is in what it excludes. As human infants do not have sophisticated cognitive capacities, their moral status remains unaccounted for in this approach. Debates about the moral status of a human fetus are well-known in ethics of abortion, or in stem cell research. In the case of rampant, use of amniocentesis and ultrasonography for female infanticide poses an important question about the moral status of the female fetuses. Should their interests not morally matter for their own sake? To deal with such exclusions, the approach may be modified to acknowledge the potential capacities which are yet to develop as follows: An entity can have moral status if and only if it has significant cognitive capacities, or has the capacity to develop such sophisticated capacities.

As per this, a human infant or a human fetus would have moral status because he or she has the capacity to develop sophisticated cognitive capacities, even if he or she does not possess such capacities at the moment. However, even then, the criterion leaves out persons who are persistently in vegetative state or are so severely cognitive impaired, that there is no likelihood of developing sophisticated capacities. Does that mean we as a society not regard their interests as ethically significant and should not bother about how they are treated by the other able-bodied humans around them? Along the similar line, medical life prolongation technology such as mechanical ventilation has raised similar questions about the moral status of the humans who are in a persistent vegetative state, or about the newborn human babies who are born without the higher brain, and therefore without the possibility of developing higher cognitive capacities. The upshot is that since the attribution of moral status comes with certain privileged ethical considerations and treatment, it is important that we choose the right criterion. In this section, however, for us the main question to consider is about the intelligent AI systems: Q1. Can an AI system have moral status? Should they also have a moral status? If we choose to use the modified sophisticated cognitive capacities approach, at the outset, the AI systems appear to be likely candidates. At least from their skilled behavior, the intelligent, autonomous AI systems of today appear to exhibit sophisticated cognitive capacities. They can learn unsupervised and can devise a plan and execute it efficiently. They are self-aware in the sense that they can report on their

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own functions and processes. They also can choose from given options, which in the case of a human would indicate the presence of a will. The critics, however, object that the sophisticated cognitive capacities include the emotional capacities and that the AI systems do not have those. For that reason, they cannot be regarded as qualified to have a moral status. Moreover, the cognitive capacities that the AI systems exhibit are all introduced in them by skilled programmers. In that sense, the capacities are not really self-generated talents as in the case of humans with sophisticated capacities. Others argue that the capacity to experience pleasure or pain is a pre-requisite for having a moral status., which the AI systems cannot have. These views insist on sentience as a ground of moral status (Singer, 1979, 1993, p. 57). Sentience is the capacity to experience feelings and sensations. From this it follows that there are important grounds for not considering the sophisticated, learning and automated AI systems as things which have moral status. However, this position is questioned by others. We shall leave this ongoing debate to move to a related discussion about moral agency of the AI systems. On some views, the Q1 may be analyzed into two interlinked questions of moral agency and moral patiency (Coeckelbergh, 2020a, Chap. 4) as follows: Q1.1. Should the AI system be considered to have moral agency? That is, can we meaningfully call an intelligent, autonomous AI system a moral agent? If the actions of AI are found to have ethical implications, given its power of automated reasoning and decision-making, can an AI system be held as a moral agent? A moral agent is a repository of rights, and has a moral status. Q1.2. Should the AI system have moral patiency? How should we treat an AI system? Is an AI-system to be treated as a repository of rights for its own sake? Should we treat, for example, a driverless automated vehicle (AV) as different from a food processor? Let us try to understand these two subquestions in the context of the main question Q1.  Q 1.1. Moral agency: In traditional ethics, moral agency implies certain crucial abilities in the agent, e.g. the ability is to discern good from bad, right from the wrong, and to be able to held accountable for one’s own moral choice of actions. These abilities are crucial in an agent for making an ethical judgment and also for owning up responsibility for the agent’s actions.

Box 8.15 Moral agency Moral agency is the exercise or manifestation of an ability in an agent to discern good from bad, right from the wrong, and to be able to held accountable for one’s own moral choice of actions.

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In philosophy of action, however, agency is linked with the ability to act intentionally. Consider, for example, the following. …a being has the capacity to exercise agency just in case it has the capacity to act intentionally, and the exercise of agency consists in the performance of intentional actions, and, in many cases, performance of the unintentional actions. (Schlosser, 2019, italics mine)

What does it mean to act intentionally? The concept of acting intentionally is philosophically contentious. However, we may still attempt a simpler approach to the concept that: An action is intentional if the agent can exercise a sufficient degree of control to bringing behavior as per a plan.

So, an action may be considered as intentional if the agent can control the behavior to go according to a plan. Moreover, there must be causal pathways between the psychological states in the agent and the plan (Shepherd, 2021, p. 65). We can now consider the Q1.1 using these two criteria: Q1.1(a) Can an AI system discern good from the bad and take responsibility for its actions to qualify as a moral agent? Q1.1(b) Can an AI system be an agent to act intentionally and with control to perform an action as per a plan? Many AI researchers would probably enthusiastically support the claim that today with various advancements an AI system can perform and execute an action with sufficient control and a plan. For, in their research they are engaged in design, and development of AI as Intelligent System of different levels of agency. So, to Q1.1.(b), their answer would: Yes, an AI system can certainly be an agent. An AI system as an Intelligent Agent can work for a goal in a planned manner (Tolle, 1997; Wooldridge & Jennings, 2009). On Q 1.1(a), however, there are sharp differences in opinions. Moral agency is not a simple case of execution of a planned action; it has many other elements in it, such as discernment for right and wrong, moral responsiveness. Some argue that the AI systems can be designed and constructed as moral agents with a little modification in their design. For example, in principle it is possible to further enable the AI systems by endowing them with some in-built ethical principles and rule sets to give them a human-like ethicality (Anderson and Anderson, 2011). Thus it would be possible to develop them as moral agents who would apply the rule sets to discern what is right or wrong. It is further argued that the machines might actually be better at applying ethics, as they are highly rational and, unlike the humans, they do not get swayed or distracted by their emotions. Dennis et al. (2016) also have argued that a rank of ethical violations can be integrated in the design of automated vehicles, as examples of AI systems, to further equip them in their ethically informed decisions. Automated vehicles can be designed to be a rational agent with not only beliefs, and plans, but also with the capacity to choose from a set of alternative ethical schemes. Similar point is also raised by Mordue et al. (2020).

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However, this proposal to further modify the design of AI systems to qualify for moral agency has been contested by many on different grounds. Some claim that entire proposal is based on an utterly misconception about the nature of ethics. For, they point out, ethics is not just rule-compliance, and it is also not simply a matter of fitting a situation to a rule. Ethical judgments require a certain discernment, which the machines are not capable of. So, on these views, not having an ethical discernment is not just a technological gap in the AI system. It is their basic limitation. In a similar vein, it is argued that ethics requires emotions, which are essential for ethical judgments. The emotions, such as compassion, kindness, and empathy, in the humans make them ethically sensitive. Given that, an AI, which is faultlessly rational, and superbly intelligent, but is devoid of all emotions within itself, is a dreadful and undesirable agent in ethics (Coeckelbergh, 2010). For, such an agent would apply its rule-based decisions ruthlessly, without any feeling or concern for the people involved. Even if they are developed to provide care to the humans, as in the case of robotic assistant for elderly care, they cannot feel their actions in the way a normal human would. In addition, philosophers have argued that the AI systems can never have free will. They can never have any form of genuine consciousness. In the absence of such capacities and simply on the basis of externally observed behavior, it would be dangerous to assume that the AI systems can have moral agency. So, machines may be intelligent agents, but they cannot be moral agents by themselves. They are produced by certain humans and these humans will have free will and are able to act and decide ethically (Johnson, 2006). We may now recall Searle’s famous objection that a machine, no matter how skilled it is in symbol manipulation, cannot ever be genuinely intelligent, because a machine cannot have intentionality. It cannot perform intentional actions as required to fulfill conditions of agency. To sum up, as of now, a significant number of objections tip the balance against the attribution of moral agency to the intelligent, autonomous AI systems if we follow the traditional conception of a moral agent. However, if we are ready to remove intentionality from ethics, then there are other alternative conceptualizations of agency. Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network theory is one such alternative.

8.5.2.1

Actor-Network Theory (ANT) of Agency

Bruno Latour is a sociologist of science. Latour, Michael Callon and John Law, all sociologists of science, developed the actor-network theory (ANT in short), according to which agency is not limited to the humans, Objects, devices, texts, and even processes can be agents. Earlier sociology constructed the social reality from the human perspective. It claimed that people create meaning of the material objects in our lives, and thus, people create their social and cultural world through their actions. However, in recent times, sociology has taken a material turn (Cooren, Fairhurst, & Huët, 2012), which questions the centrality of the humans in social life and asks why the human subject has to be more basic than any other entity in the meaning-making process.

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Latour’s seminal article (Latour, 1996) was a precursor of this material turn. Latour observed that “Too often sociology remains without an object” (Latour, 1996, p. 236) and misses the objects that are around us and that actually constitute the total reality for us. In the words of Latour: How could you compute the daily balance of an office without formulae, receipts, accounts, ledgers-and how can one miss the solidity of the paper, the durability of the ink, the etching of the chips, the shrewdness of staples and the shock of a rubber stamp? Is it not these things that enable totalization?… Why does sociology, in their hands, remain without an object? (Latour, 1996, p. 235)

Latour claimed that once designed and introduced in an interaction with the humans, artifacts, texts, and objects of all kinds start to have a meaning of their own. Following this line of thinking, subsequent researchers have rejected the traditional dualism and the divide between the subject and object, agency, and structure. They have redefined the concept of a subject and made the object a subject. According to this perspective, being a subject and an agent need not be confined to humans alone. So, even an AI system or a group of medical devices in an ICU in a hospital can be agents (Caronia & Mortari, 2015). This world of things was called by Latour (1996) interobjectivity. It is a world in which objects have meaningful relation with other objects and with the humans. In ANT, Latour proposes that we address the “world of actualities” which is actually hybrid networks or assemblages of changing groups of people, non-human animals, organisms, things, and processes. For example, with the surging popularity of online learning and webinars, we can also see a hybrid network of interconnected devices, technology, and people involved in a network around the phenomenon of learning. As per ANT, all the elements in the hybrid network are actors or agents, or have agency, regardless of whether they are human or non-human. Hence, the name of the theory is Action Network Theory (ANT). The actors or the agents are all subjects, even if all are not humans (Detel, 2001).  The upshot: This sociological theory provides us a theoretical basis for attributing agency to non-human elements. In this sense, an AI system can be an agent. However, the Q1.1 (b) is not addressed by this alternative conceptualization of agency.The question, however, is whether the agency of ANT is the same as moral agency. Even if an AI system can be an agent in this approach, will it qualify as a moral agent without having the intentionality and the prerequisites of freedom and knowledge? The answer still is: No.  Q 1.2. Moral Patiency: The issue of moral patiency has a direct relationship with the nature of human-machine interaction and collaboration. It raises many pertinent ethical and political questions. For example, if one has to share office space with a Robot, or with an AI system which talks and responds to voice messages, how should one treat them? Should it be treated as one would treat an office colleague? If an AI system assists in daily household chores day after day, how should we treat them? Should the AI system be granted the same rights, and respect as a human household help? If a robot provides care for an elderly,

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bedridden patient, could there be personal relationships between the patient and the caregiver (Pic. 8.10)?

Pic. 8.10 Human-AI system robot interaction in office space

If we agree to attribute to them moral agency, then AI systems should have rights, including the right to be treated with respect. On the other hand, if moral agency is denied to them, then the AI systems are to be regarded merely as convenient mechanical tools. In that case, we also do not need to hold ourselves ethically responsible for any harm that a human may inflict upon them as misuse or abuse, or for any mistreatment. Then our social institutions need not develop any mechanism to protect the interest of the AI systems. However, in the above, we have seen that the consensus is that the AI systems, for reasons already explained, cannot be regarded as moral agents. Hence, the question of how should we treat them will be left to the values and ethics of the people involved with the AI systems.

8.5.2.2

Examples of Automated Vehicles and Automated Weapon Systems

Some of you are possibly wondering why we are even discussing the issue of moral status, moral agency and moral patiency in connection to AI systems. For those among you, and also for the general readers, let me provide a little bit of background context for these questions with some examples, hypothetical and real, which are supposed to show how problematic the questions, such as why we should ponder over moral agency, moral responsibility, moral status and moral patiency of AI systems, are. You can also get an idea how absence of ethical deliberation on these issues can lead us into a quagmire can when something goes wrong with the AI systems and devices based on AI technologies, and there is a social impact. Scenario 8.1 Company J is a large and thriving company. It is also a company which uses AI-based Decision Support System (AIDSS). All the company data are fed into

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AIDSS for efficient analysis and faster decision. So far, the strategic actions of J have been based on the analysis and recommendation of AIDSS. However, one of the suggested actions has turned out to be totally disastrous for the company and its investors, and employees. Note that in Scenario 8.1, the analysis and decision given by AIDSS has impact on the organization and its important stakeholders with consequences which have definite ethical import. The action cannot be considered as ethically neutral. Can we hold the decision-making expert system as morally responsible for the harm done? One might say that it was a one-time error by the decision—support system, which so far has been giving its expert judgments as recommendations to the company. May be the data fed into it had some serious error or may be the decision-making algorithms in it had some blind spots. For the sake of further clarity, we may allow the scenario to take two possible shapes: (i) One, in which each action suggested by the AIDSS is then weighed carefully by a group of human top executives of J (ii) Two, another in which decision is fully automated and has no further examination by the humans. Note that the presence of the humans in the scenario as in case (i) does not change the outcome. In case (i), the decision which proved to be disastrous for the company and its stakeholders is both machine-recommended and human-examined. The question of moral responsibility for the decision remains as is. If we deny moral status and moral agency to the AI systems in general, the moral responsibility for the disastrous consequence comes squarely to the people involved in this action, both in the company J and the team of engineers and programmers who have developed the AIDSS. In both case (i) and (ii), only the humans involved are to be held ethically responsible for the adverse impact on all concerned. On the other hand, if we allow moral status and moral agency to AI systems, then the moral responsibility gets shared between the humans and the AI system in question. Even in case (ii), where the decision is purely automated, the top executives of J cannot be totally absolved. For, the welfare of the company J and its smooth running is their job. How are we to answer the question about ethical responsibility in this case, and in cases such as these in the real world of business? As we know, more and more business teams are including AI Decision support systems in key decisions about business processes. Since we cannot postpone an answer forever, ethical consideration to issues such as these is timely and important. In this connection, we may also revisit Scenario 6 and Scenario 7 in Chap. 5 of this book. Both are about accidents involving a smart car or an autonomous vehicle (AV). In each of these a ‘smart car’ or an AI-enabled driverless car is involved (Pic. 8.11).

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Pic. 8.11 Automated vehicle

Scenario 6, Chap. 5 Very late at night, a self-driving smart car has suddenly rammed into the fabulously well-decorated showroom of a Jewelry shop. The damage to the showroom is quite extensive.

Scenario 7, Chap. 5 A driverless, smart car has gone over the right foot of a pedestrian, who suddenly stepped in front of the car. The injury to the toes of the pedestrian is serious.

In each of these cases, the action has ethical consequences which cannot be overlooked. In Scenario 7, a human victim has been included to underscore the urgent need for an ethically informed decision. From a consequentialist ethics approach, who should we hold morally responsible for the outcome in these cases, and why? In case the situations mentioned in Scenario 6 and 7 above appear too farfetched to the readers, let us recount some accidents that have actually happened with autonomous vehicles (AV).  In 2016, Joshua Brown of Florida put his Tesla on autopilot mode, which is able to drive the car in the highway. Against the bright sky, Tesla’s sensor systems failed to identify an 18-wheeler white truck and trailer crossing the highway. It tried to drive full speed under the trailer. The impact tore off the top of the car killing Brown. This is a case of the autopilot of an AV going wrong (Yadron & Tynan, 2016). Since then, Tesla Company claims the sensory equipment of its AVs have been improved. According to U.S. Safety Regulators, between July 2021 to May 2022, nearly 400 crashes happened involving vehicles with partially automated driver-assist systems

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(The Associated Press, 2022). It is alleged that among these AVs, 230 are Teslas. Tesla accidents happened while the vehicles were on autopilot, cruise-control, or some driver-assist program which have control over the speed and the steering wheel. What follows from the reports of the accidents is that the possibility of accidents involving the AVs is a real one, even if it may be lesser than the human-driven automobiles. As a society, we need to come to terms with this fact and address the need for developing some ethical guidelines regarding these. Box 8.12 provides a list of industry standards of grades of autonomy in the AVs. It also mentions that till date most AVs in the market are of Grade 2 and their demands are rising. If the trend continues, Grade 4 AVs may not be that far in future. Ethics prepares us for the future of the society. So, anticipating the potential problems and the ethically problematic complex issues need to be addressed. Box 8.16 Levels of autonomy in automated vehicles. Source: Bartneck et al., 2019, p. 84. What is an automated vehicle (AV)? An automated vehicle is a vehicle which has the capacity to drive itself autonomously, i.e., without human intervention. Both US Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) and the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA) have of mentioned various levels of automated driving according to their levels of autonomy. The levels are: Level 0: Zero automation. Traditional car without any automated functions. Level 1: Driver assistance. The car has only one automated function; e.g. brakes automatically when an obstacle comes. Level 2: Partial driving automation. The car has automated braking, accelerator, and changing lanes functions. But the driver has to monitor the system at all times and take control at any time. Level 3: Conditional driving automation. Under certain situations, the system can function autonomously. Level 4: High driving automation. The car can perform all driving functions by itself under normal condition. The driver is not required to take control under standard circumstances. The levels as mentioned above indicate the industry standards of grades of autonomy in the automated vehicles. Autonomy in this context does not mean Kant’s concept of self-legislation, or the philosophical and metaphysical concept of a free will. It means the ability to function without a human driver or a supervisor. The different levels show that cars in this segment have various degrees of autonomy. The situation in 2022 is that there are very few cars which have achieved a Level 3 approval. Mercedes –Benz is the first to receive the approval for Level

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3 car production and has also started the sales of its Drive Pilot Level 3 cars for public roads in Europe (Sigal, 2022). Drive Pilot can take over the control of the car speed, brake and lane position, and free the driver under certain conditions at 60mph or less speed. That is, its main use will be in congested traffic or in traffic jam to free the driver for other things, such taking a call, answering emails. Currently, most automated cars, such as Tesla, however, are at the Level 2. No Level 4 Car is available for the general public yet. However, the market for the Level 2 cars is increasing day by day. Apart from the automated vehicles and accident scenarios that we have discussed above, Bartneck et al. (2019) has used an ethically thought-provoking example of wrong targeting by an autonomous or automated weapon. ➤ Autonomous or automated weapon system (AWS) are weapon systems which can use AI to independently (without human intervention) search for, identify, select, and attack or kill a target, based on the descriptions and constraints programmed into them. Consider for example, a drone which is programmed to carry an explosive missile and fly to a location and identify a programmed target and to fire the missile on the target and destroy it. It is said that AI is driving a future into automated warfare. Gradually, AWSs are moving from being mere concepts to reality. The case is presented below: Scenario 8.2 “Let us suppose there is a war between a Red state and a Blue state. The commander of the Red Air Force is Samantha Jones. It so happens, she has an identical twin sister, Jennifer Jones, who is a hairdresser. She makes no direct contribution to the war effort. She does not work in an arms factory. She does not bear arms. One day during the war, Jennifer takes her child to a kindergarten as she does every day. Blue has facial data of Samantha but knows nothing about her twin sister, Jennifer. An “autonomous” drone using facial recognition software spots Jennifer taking her daughter to kindergarten. It misidentifies Jennifer as a “high value target” namely her sister, Samantha. Just after she drops her child off at the school, the drone fires a missile at her car, killing her instantly. In this situation, who or what is to blame for the wrongful killing of Jennifer? Who or what should be held responsible for this wrong. Who or what is liable to be prosecuted for a war crime for this killing? Who or what would be punished?” (Source: Bartneck et al., 2019, p. 40) In Scenario 8.2, an AI-enabled, automated drone with a facial recognition system and a programmed target has killed an innocent civilian Jennifer mistaking her for her identical twin sister, Red commander Samantha. It is a military crime to kill an

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innocent, and the killing is certainly not an ethically neutral action. With the death of an innocent civilian, fingers will be raised towards the Blue Military. The question about owning the moral responsibility and legal liability will certainly be raised: Who is to be held morally responsible in this case? Once more, note that if the drone were not fully automated but remotely controlled by some humans, the outcome would not have been different. If the facial recognition database only had the picture of the Red commander Samantha, and no information about the entire population, and specifically no information about the existence of a twin sister Jennifer, the same error would occur. Even the humans with the remote control would have seen the facial image on screen which would be an exact match with their “high value target”, and would have pulled the trigger. No one would even think about further checking, if they did not have the information about the twin sister. It is the case of intelligence failure about inadequate information about a high valued target. To deal with cases such as these, which may abound in the future, should we consider conferring moral agency on the AI systems? Or, should we always consider the humans behind the AI system as moral agents?

8.5.2.3

Legal Liability and Moral Responsibility for Actions by AI Systems

This brings us to the question of attribution of moral responsibility (Discussed in Chap. 5 of this book). If the AI systems are not moral agents and do not have moral status, then the moral responsibility for any action by them will be pinned onto the humans who created the AI system or are directly or indirectly responsible for its actions. In Scenarios 6 and 7 of Chap. 5, it would be the company, which has manufactured the AVs, and the team which has trained and programmed the AI system. The chain of responsibility may lead to the team of programmers and technologists who developed the sensor systems, for the incidents involving the automated cars. In case of the automated weapon, however, it would be the intelligence team, as they missed a crucial information about a key target, and also did not make the database for facial recognition large enough. In reality in case of automated vehicles, the legal liability has been shifted from the driver or the car to the car manufacturer or the company which developed the software for the automated car. The shift was on the basis of the 2014 version of Vienna Convention of Road Traffic (Bartneck et al., 2019, p. 43). In the German Code of Ethics for Automated and Connected Driving, 2017 (discussed below), this shift has been actually recommended for the cases where it was established that the car’s system was in control when the accident happened. The issue about who was in control of the car, the human or the car’s system, will be a crucial determining factor in case of legal liability and moral responsibility. In law, there is a concept of product liability. It is the legal responsibility of a manufacturing company to compensate for any damage or harm done by a product which the company has manufactured, or by a negligent employee of the company.

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The company is held liable for the problems caused by its product or by its employee. In criminal law and civil law, there is a concept of strict liability. As per strict liability Principle, someone can be held as liable for the consequences of an action, even if he or she is not at fault, and even if there was no criminal intent or intent to do harm while doing the action. For example, in case of accidents, under strict liability people are liable to pay compensation to the victims, even if there was no criminal intent to harm anyone, and even if they took all the precautions to avoid the accident. According to Bartneck et al. (2019), we might think in the similar lines of product liability and strict liability with the accidents involving the automated vehicles and automated weapons. A harm or damage need not be intended or planned in these cases. Nonetheless, there are losses and damages. Hence, compensation according to strict liability framework could be used in these cases to settle legal liability. In case of the decision by expert systems which may go wrong, strict liability may show us the way for setting the compensatory justice. In many cases in AI technologies, there is opacity about how the system operates, and the harm that may flow from some of the output may not be foreseeable at all. Even the programmers themselves may not be able to tell how the AI system arrived at that decision. The machine’s internal decision operations are sometimes opaque to the programmers. Even this opacity also can be handled by the strict liability principle. The harm or the damage done need not based on knowledge of a foreseeable outcome.

8.5.2.4

The ‘Problem of Many Hands’ in AI Systems and Moral Responsibility

Legal liability is not the same as moral responsibility. When “many hands” are involved in the occurrence of an event, who should we hold as morally responsible? In each of the scenarios mentioned above, we may find that there is no single actor to whom the flow of the causal events can be connected. In case of particularly disastrous fall-out from a decision made by an expert system (Scenario 8.1), you might hold not only the company which manufactured or programmed the expert system, but also the company which suffered as responsible for not keeping the sufficient precautionary measures in place. Similarly, for the accidents involving the automated vehicles and weapons, you may find others as also implicated, besides just the manufacturing companies, as has been mentioned above. The question which we are looking at is: When there are many who are involved in the chain of responsibility creating a case of complex liability. So, who should we hold as morally responsible?

This is known as the problem of many hands. Usually, in such cases, the legal solution is to assign the legal liability to a collective entity, such as in case of the automated weapon it has to be the Blue Military, and not to any single individual. In case of automated vehicles also, perhaps the legal liability would be assigned to the company, and not to any specific employee in the company.

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However, as said already, moral responsibility and legal liability may share many of the concerns and principles, but they are not the same. In case of moral responsibility where human agents are concerned, Aristotle set two conditions, as we have already discussed in Chap. 5 (see Sect. 5.2.6): (i) The freedom condition: The act must be a free and voluntary act by the agent. (ii) The epistemic condition: The agent must know what the agent is doing. However, both the conditions presuppose freedom and consciousness in the agents. If we follow these traditional criteria, then we perhaps will have to accept that these two traits the AI systems really do not have, at least not in the human sense. Of course, in ethics of computing and robotics there is extensive discussion on how one may conceptualize responsibility in a different way to suit the AI systems. For example, it has been argued that responsibility can be conceptualized as distributed across a network of humans and machines (Gunkel, 2020); it has been also argued that using Latour’s actor-network theory (ANT, discussed above) AI systems can be attributed responsibility (Hanson, 2009). However, though the intelligent, automated AI systems may appear to be responsible agents, most people will not agree with the claims that the AI system actually has a free will or that it actually knows what it is doing. If AI systems cannot be held responsible, and humans are to be held morally responsible, then the question becomes: Can the humans always take moral responsibility for all the actions of an AI system?

The answer seems to be in the negative. For, it may not be always possible for a human to control every action of an AI system. If an AI system responds too fast, for example, or responds at a pace which outpaces a human response, then how can the human be held morally responsible for the action of the AI system? Even the epistemic condition of Aristotle may not always be applicable. For example, if the programmer team has a bias, they may not know about their own biases, and the biases then may flow into the algorithms designed by them. The developers may not be aware of the ethical significances of their own bias. To address this, and also to address the “problem of many hands”, some have argued for distributed agency between man and machine, and with distributed agency comes distributed responsibility (Tadeo & Floridi, 2018). However, as tempting the proposal may seem, how exactly the responsibility is to be distributed is not made clear. Coeckelberg (2020b) does not subscribe to view that AI systems have agency, more particularly moral agency. However, for attribution of moral responsibility, he proposes a relational understanding of moral responsibility in ethics of AI, which considers the freedom and knowledge of AI experts, developers, and operators (as moral agents) about their own actions and the ethical significance of unintended consequences of the AI system they are involved with, and also considers the people who they are accountable to by the actions of AI system. It includes not only the people who are moral agents with respect to the Ai systems, but also the moral patients, or the people who have to bear the impact of the actions of an AI system.

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For example, if the automated AI system is triggered by faulty data from sensor while an airplane is in flight and causes the airplane to nosedive and crash (as it happened with MCAS system, Boeing 737 Crash, Lion Air Flight 610, 2019), the attribution of moral responsibility will have to take into consideration not just the AI system design team, the sensor developing team, the airlines, the flight crew, i.e. the agents, but also the passengers, their families and relatives, who will bear the brunt of the impact of the faulty decision and action of the AI system. Box 8.17 Ethical guidelines for AV Driving, Germany Ethical Guidelines for Automated Vehicles, Germany: Real-world ethics At the backdrop of growing demand for the partially automated cars (AVs), the ethical exercise for setting the boundaries on what should be done and what should not be done is becoming an urgent need which should be done before a complicated situation arises. In what follows, the actual efforts of a country to establish ethical guidelines about the responsible production, handling, driving of automated vehicles are placed before you as a prime example of applied ethics, or ethics applied, to a real-life situation. In 2017, a 14-member national ethics committee for automated and connected driving was constituted and appointed by the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Architecture, Germany. The committee comprised of three professors of Law, three professors of Ethics, two professors of Technology, and a miscellaneous group of representatives of automobile companies, consumer rights group, Catholic community, public prosecutor, and a former Judge of German Federal Constitutional Court as the Chairman (Luetge, 2017). After rounds of expert consultations and test driving of partially automated cars, the committee came up with twenty ethical guidelines for the automated and connected driving (cars with internet access). For the automated driving, although level 4 cars with high degree or full automation, are not yet realized, the committee gave the possibility of them becoming real a full consideration in its deliberation (Ibid.). In the ethical guidelines, the committee has put the humans at the center of their considerations, and have been guided by the human-centric principles such as Human Autonomy understood as freedom of choice, the primacy of the safety of the humans. This is evident in guideline 7, where protection of human life has been considered as more important than harm to the animals and to property. Guideline 1, for example, introduces the principle of personal autonomy as a cardinal principle. It places the advantage of having the automated cars (such as the mobility advantage for even a physically handicapped person, improved safety) under the principle of personal autonomy. Personal autonomy allows the individual persons to enjoy freedom of action but to own responsibility for that action. Guideline 6 underscores personal autonomy in the Kantian sense

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as a pivotal principle, as it forbids automated driving if the technology merely demotes a human being into an element subjugated by technology. The main argument in favor of automated vehicles is often a promise of significant safety improvement by minimizing the role of a human driver and thereby by significantly reducing human errors which remain the main reason behind road accidents and car crashes (Petrovic, Mijailovic & Pesic, 2020; Crew, 2015). This is a typical consequential argument in the Utilitarian spirit. It cites social utility, in terms of improved public road safety, as the justifying ground for choosing the automated vehicles. Guideline 1, however, asserts that Utilitarian argument in favor of the advantages of technological development in automation in the cars and devices should not be treated as the ultimate argument. There are other, more serious considerations. This point is made clearer in Guideline 2, which puts safety of the individuals above all Utilitarian arguments of benefits of automated driving. So, according to Guideline 2, the consideration of safety of the individuals should override any Utilitarian cost-benefit analysis of automated cars. In fact, purely Utilitarian arguments for the purported benefits of the AVs are not found compatible with the deep seated principles in many Western jurisdictions (Santoni de Sio, 2017). In fact, in Guideline 2, the committee has given its verdict in favor of the Negative Utilitarianism (See Chap. 6, Sect. 6.7 of this book) and its principle of minimization of harm. Instead of looking at the cumulative benefits of having the automated and connected driving, the committee draws our attention to the topmost duty of the automated system to reduce harm in comparison to the human driving. It mandated a “positive balance of risks”. The comparative risks from human driving and risk from the automated car driving are to be assessed and the automated cars may be allowed, provided they show reduction in road safety risk for the humans, compared to the risks involved in human driving. So, instead of cost-benefit analysis, the committee wanted a risk-risk comparison with a clear reduction in risk to decide in favor of the automated vehicles. This point is also reiterated in the recent report of the EU expert group on Ethics of Connected and Automated Vehicles (EC Expert Group E03659, 2020). The report asks that an objective baseline and a comparative metrics of road safety should be available to assess the road safety merits of automated vehicles as compared to the non-automated vehicles. Guideline 4 highlights the ethical importance of maintaining a balanced approach between maximum personal freedom of choice and the freedom and safety of the others in the society. In ethics of automated vehicles, the discussion is often centered on accident scenarios like the Trolley Problem (See Chap. 4, Sect. 4.8.1 of this book). In them, the situation is an ethical dilemma such that an accident is inevitable and the automated vehicle has to choose between two undesirable outcomes

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(Bonnefon, Sharif & Rahwan, 2016; Lin 2016). For example, should the automated car avoid hitting three blind and deaf pedestrians in front and swerve to the next lane and kill its one passenger in front collision with a truck coming from another direction? Should it matter if the one passenger is a young person and the three pedestrians are octogenarians? To address this problem of ethical dilemma concerning unavoidable accidents testing the ethical decision-making power of the automated vehicles, guideline 5 clearly lays down the rule that the job of the automated vehicle is to ensure, through its sensors and other technological support, that such critical situations do not arise at all. The vehicles should be programmed and designed in such way to ensure that they drive in a defensive and anticipatory manner, such that pedestrian safety and passenger safety both are ensured.

8.5.2.5

Conclusion on Moral Agency, Moral Responsibility of AI Systems

The discussion above was to examine the plausibility of attributing moral status, moral agency, and moral responsibility to the AI systems. In this section, we have gone through philosophical conceptualizations of moral agency and moral status and have deliberated upon the arguments in favor and in against conferring these to the AI systems of today. We have gone through actual examples and hypothetical scenarios which are supposed to provide us a context for understanding the import of these considerations in ethics of AI. An alternative conceptualization of agency, namely the ANT approach from sociology, too was examined for a way forward. In the end, however, we come to the conclusion that at present, with the current status of the AI systems and our technical expertise, the prevalent view is that only the humans can have moral agency and moral status. In connection to the AI systems and their actions, it will be primarily the people behind the AI system and the actions in question who will be held as morally responsible, even for the unintended consequences. The ethical guidelines for AV, Germany, (Box 8.14) also follow a similar line of thought. In the attribution of moral responsibility, we may follow Coeckelbergh (2020b) and consider expanding the circle of people even to the moral patients. Surveys Show Variances With the AI systems, our ethical thinking and reasoning are still at a nascent stage. Given the differences between different countries in the world, it is only natural that there would be wide variation among the countries and cultures in the perception of risks and in the acceptance of the AI system, such as the AVs, in our lives. Papadimitrou et al. (2022) speak of this wide variation with examples: A survey in Finland showed that the Finnish are more concerned about traffic safety while the automated vehicles are on the road, and whether the automated vehicles would be

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capable of making ethical decisions. In the US, the survey showed that people there are more concerned about whether the automated vehicles would drive as well as the human drivers. Box 8.18 Moral Machine by MIT Lab Moral Machine: Moral Machine is an online application developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 2016. It generates ethical dilemmas and collects data from the human responses on the choices made by artificial intelligence (machine intelligence), such as an automated vehicle, between two undesirable outcome in an ethical dilemma. It was designed to collect data on the ethical acceptability of the decisions made by the AVs.

Apart from the difference in perceived risks and areas of concern with the AI systems, there are differences also in the attitude towards the AI systems. Surveys have found that people from affluent countries do not have a highly optimistic perception about the safety of automated vehicles, but people from low and middle-income countries with high road fatalities have an optimistic attitude about the automated vehicles (Papadimitrou et al., 2022, p. 3). These variances indicate that the user expectations and acceptance of the automated vehicles in different populations are yet to come to a common standard. Similarly, ethical considerations in different populations about the AI systems and their status are yet to converge. Rhim et al. (2020) claimed that the responses provided to the Moral Machine (see Box 8.18) revealed various clusters of morality, such as deontology and altruism, which indicate that ethics about automated vehicles has to be pluralistic. Quick Question 8.8 1. According to you, which of the following follows from discussion above in Sect. 8.5.2 and its subsections? (a) (b) (c) (d)

AI systems can have moral status but not moral agency. AI systems can have moral responsibility but not moral status. AI systems can have moral agency but not moral patiency. AI systems can have agency but not moral agency.

2. Should all kinds of animals have moral status? Briefly justify your answer.

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8.5.3 Key Ethical Issues in AI and Data Science There are several ethical issues with the AI systems, their deployment and the use of Data Science. We shall discuss some of the salient issues in the section below.

8.5.4 Data Privacy and Privacy Protection Major advances in AI are data driven; they include areas such as computer vision, speech recognition, natural language processing, image and video generation, and motor control for robotics. For example, in computer vision, the driving factor is the amount of data we generate, which is then used to train computer vision better. Countless images and videos from mobile cameras (>3 Billion images shared online each day) create datasets for vision, plus there are data from infrared, heat and motion sensors. If a machine has to learn to read x-ray images, it needs large and diverse datasets to train with. Similarly, if a machine has to recognize a car from the images of a car, it needs large and different visual datasets to start with. Where do these data come from? The answer is abundantly clear: The data come from us, the Internet and online users. We add to the datapile each time we turn to our search engines for answer. Each time a customer interacts with a product online, data are generated. Big online Tech Giants (Facebook, Google, and Amazon) make some of their data free to attract people to use their platform more and thus generate more data for them. For example, Google trends, Google Ads Keywords offer free data, and Facebook allows one to use their audience feedback if one books an ad with them. How much data do we create every day? Table 8.1 would give an idea about the staggering amount of data which we create every day through our daily activities. Our daily data trail has a combination of texts, emails, GIFs, emojis, with digital images. It also has service requests from app cabs such as Uber and Ola, and online Table 8.1 How much data we produce everyday SI no.

Items

1.

In 2022, the world would produce and consume

94 Zettabytes ( a zettabyte is 2 to the 70th power)

2.

As of 2022, size of people who globally use the Internet

4.9 Billion

3.

As of 2022, Google search engine alone processes

99,000 searches per second

4

In July 2022, Facebook, the world’s most active social media platform

2.93 Billion active users

5

In 2022, YouTube has

2.6 Billion users

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transaction through UPI and other apps. The Internet of Things (IoT) or connected smart devices which interact with each other also generate data. Amidst this data explosion, comes the question of protection of data privacy and security. While data are pervasive, data tools for capturing the data also are widely available, starting from online data mining to AI/ machine learning analytics. Privacy concerns, therefore, are paramount. Online user information is more vulnerable than ever. From data fraud to data selling, exploitation of data for purposes which are not to the best interest of the users is a palpable reality. Privacy Privacy, to put it simply, is the right not to be observed publicly. An individual has the right to decide when and where he or she does not wish to be observed publicly. Behaviors, such as closing a door, drawing the curtains or blinds on the windows, using opaque glass in a glass cubicle, are all indicative of a person exercising a choice about his or her privacy. In law, The Right to Privacy (Warren and Brandeis 1890) is considered as the first attempt to define privacy. In it, the authors defined privacy as the “right to be left alone” and established the limits to that right, arguing that privacy cannot be an absolute right. Privacy may be also understood as “the freedom to selectively reveal one’s self” (McCreary, 2008). It is a kind of self-possession: taking ownership of the facts of one’s life (Ibid.). If someone uses a device to look through the walls of a house to observe the behavior of the residents of the house, what he or she is doing is unethical. For, he or she is violating the right of the residents not to be looked at in their own homes. Philosopher Thomas Scanlon (Scanlon, 1975) argued that there are socially designated zones of privacy, e.g. in one’s own bathroom, which allows us to act with the assumption that in those zones we are not to be monitored. So, privacy is these socially granted space opportunities to not to be observed at all times. Rachels (Rachels, 1975) opined that privacy is about relationships, we use varying degrees of privacy to establish degrees of intimacy in our relationships. In recent times, however, control of information has been underscored as an important issue in privacy (Parent, 1983; Nathan, 1990). Historically, political scientists have discussed privacy of individual citizens in relation to the power of the ruling body, the state or the Government, and commented on the frequent tussle between the two. They have argued that an individual citizen has the right to privacy as a political right and as a form of self-determination. The governments, however, almost always had a different perspective on that. On various grounds, e.g. the common good, prevention and control of crimes, prevention of subversive activities, and compliance, the governments have argued in favor of curtailing citizen privacy and increasing surveillance over the citizens. Considerations promoting the common good undoubtedly carry some normative weight particularly against the background of the interdependence between the people and the Government. Now, there is also the looming threat of terrorism. Usually, the democratic governments have tried to walk a path of balance between citizen’s right to privacy and the national need for surveillance, but not always.

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With digital data, however, privacy rights between an individual citizen and a Government have become even more contentious. For instance, the Chinese government, however, has taken a rather extreme stance on this issue about personal digital data collection of its citizens for its National Social Credit system (See Box 8.19). China has put its citizens under a total data surveillance. It collects private data to build a national credit score system. Based on the data collected, with AI analytics, it ranks the people in terms of their financial creditworthiness and social behavior. Many think that the credit system and its collection of private data go counter to many of the privacy apprehensions. That is, the credit ranking system intrudes in private domains violating privacy rights of the individuals. As we find in Box 8.19, it is a state-sponsored total data surveillance, which not only collects personal data of citizens without any pretence, but also utilizes the personal data to issue a social score keep them under control. Box 8.19 The Chinese National Social Credit System. Source: (Bartneck et al., 2021, p. 69; Ma, 2018). The Chinese National Social Credit System From 2014, the Chinese government has started a national Social Credit System which is said to be fully operational from 2020. This is part of Xi Jinping’s vision of data-driven governance. It collects a huge amount of personal information about its citizens, corporations and governmental entities across China, and reports about their ‘trustworthiness’. It goes beyond what the usual financial credit rating agencies would collect elsewhere. Based on the assessment of that personal data, they issue a financial credit score to calculate the person’s credit worthiness. However, the score is also a social score based on the good behavior of the person, and the score may move up or down depending on what is found out about the person. For example, a bad driving incident, or smoking in a non-smoking zone, could push the personal score down. The consequences of a poor credit score can be very serious. For example, it may affect travel opportunities, employment opportunities, finance prospects, and prospects of getting into contracts. It is alleged that based on this score, nine million people with low score were debarred by Chinese Government from buying domestic air tickets. Thus, the social credit system takes on the role of a moral police also. Any foreign business consolidating or establishing their business in China must seek professional help to manage a social credit score. In situations such as in China, just because the violator is the National Government itself and their usual justification is the greater good, the issue of individual rights of data privacy does not disappear. As we have seen in the example of China above (Box 8.19), another value, namely financial security or creditworthiness, has been put cited as a more important reason for overriding the privacy of individual citizens. In other countries, the need for internal security against the global threat of terrorism

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is often upheld as a prioritized value to put individual citizens under surveillance. In the process, the surveillance capabilities of certain countries have been so magnified that some privacy advocates have opined that the fight against terror with its increased insistence on greater surveillance spells the end of privacy (Travis, 2009).

8.5.4.1

Why is Privacy and its Violation a Major Ethical Issue?

Various privacy scholars have argued that privacy is an enormously important ethical value. Ethically, one of the dominant views of privacy violation is that it is unethical because it affects a person’s moral autonomy. Without privacy, personal autonomy suffers. For example, Kupfer (1987) has argued that privacy is a “necessary condition” (p. 81) for the development of an autonomous self . To act autonomously is to act as empowered to determine one’s own life. He claims that privacy is essential for such a self-concept to develop. So, in his opinion, privacy is indispensable for autonomy requires a conception of self , and for that conception. Others have argued that privacy violations not only violate moral autonomy, but also a range of other values, which are supported by privacy (Laas-Mikko & Sutrop, 2012). Several privacy scholars (Gavison, 1980; Kupfer, 1987; Solove, 2007) have claimed that privacy as a value promotes other values, such as: Liberty Selfhood Human relations The existence of a free society. Rossler (2005:44) has argued that privacy in a liberal society is required not just for the freedom of each individual, but ultimately also for the sake of a life which is rewarding. Gavison has asserted that privacy is crucial for a democratic society because it also fosters and encourages political autonomy, or participatory selfrule, which is an absolute requirement for a democracy (Gavison, 1980, 455). Thus, privacy and autonomy, which are violated with massive surveillance and data surveillance, are not just individual values, but also central values for a democratic society. Erosion of these values ultimately leads to the erosion of the foundation of a democratic, liberal society. Privacy cannot be an absolute value which is to be protected unconditionally, However, this does not mean that privacy and autonomy of an individual is not respected. As Laas-Mikko and Sutrop put it: “…it is therefore dangerous to take relinquishment of privacy lightly” (Lass-Mikko & Sutrop, 2012, 379).

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Different Types of Privacy

Privacy can be of different kind. Clarke (1997) has classified privacy into four types: 1. Privacy of the person: This may be understood as bodily privacy or physical privacy. It would cover protection from physical intrusion, such as invasive treatment, torture, and compulsory biometric measurement. 2. Privacy of personal data: This may be understood as informational privacy. This may cover protection from compulsory disclosure about religious faith and political opinions. 3. Privacy of personal behavior: Clarke thought that this privacy indicates a privacy of personal space to carry out personal behavior and the freedom from being continuous monitoring public space. 4. Privacy of personal communication: This privacy is about protection from surveillance on personal telephone calls, emails and direct person-to-person communication. Data privacy used to be thought of as “informational privacy”, as mentioned under Clarke’s #2 Privacy of Personal data. ➤ However, as technological surveillance has made more advances in recent times, some find these four types of privacy as inadequate to cover the possible privacy issues. For instance, now there are whole body imaging scanners which are installed in public spaces, such as an airport. These scanners can not only reveal one’s body image in front of so many others in a public place, but also can reveal one’s medical condition to the others. Similarly, now there are drones or unmanned aerial surveillance devices. By using drones, now one can observe and collect data from a safe distance. There are more advanced DNA sequencing technologies, such as genetic mapping, which reveal a lot more about a person than before. It can reveal, for example, evidence that a disease, such as diabetes, transmitted from a parent to the child is linked to one or more genes. It can also reveal future disease risk of a person. Since these technological advances raise newer kind of privacy invasion possibilities, Fridewald, Finn and Wright classifies privacy into seven types including Clarke’s four as mentioned above (Fridewald, Finn & Wright, 2013): 1. Privacy of the person: This covers, as before, the privacy of the physical body of a person, but it also covers data about the bodily functions and physical condition of a person, and physical characteristics, e.g. data about the genetic codes and biometric information. At present, the whole body scanners, as are used in some airports for screening the passengers, can reveal the image of a body as naked and reveal its medical conditions. That is personal data. 2. Privacy of the behavior and action: The earlier privacy of personal behavior is extended to privacy of personal behavior and action. This, as earlier covers sensitive personal behavior and actions, such as political choices and religious choices. However, this additionally covers the protection of the liberty to behave in the way one want, as long as it does not harm or offend anyone. It also is about

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protection from being recorded and storing that data, even if the activities take place in a public or semi-public space. Privacy of communication: As before, it covers protection from surveillance and interception of personal communication of all kinds, including the use of hidden electronic recorders and cameras. Privacy of data and image: Personal images and data include capture of such data. Its covers protection from having personal data and image made readily available to other people and organizations. The aim is to provide a person some control over personal data and its use by the others. Privacy of thoughts and feelings: New and emerging technologies, such as neurotechnologies or ‘brain-reading technologies, now can potentially read or capture a person’s thoughts and feelings. Brain-computer interface (BCI), for example, has been used to decode neural signals in the brain which represent writing of letters into text. So, now there is need to talk about privacy of thoughts and feelings. This privacy includes a right of the people to not share, or reveal, their thoughts and feelings. People should be free to think what they want to. Privacy of location and space: This refers to the right of a person to move about in public spaces or semi-public spaces without being identified or tracked. This conception of privacy also covers the privacy of a person with a right to solitude and to be left alone in spaces such as at home, in car. Newer technologies have made it possible now to track the location of a person. Privacy of association: This kind of privacy includes the privacy to socialize and to associate with anyone they wish without being monitored, such as political groups and religious groups. For a democracy, such kind of privacy is desirable. This was not there on Clarke’s four types.

The proposers of these seven categories of privacy, which include newer and subtler categories in privacy, have justified their proposal with the rise of invasive power of the newer technologies to invade privacy at subtler levels. This concern applies to an extent about AI and its growing power too. Because now massive digital data storage is possible, and computers are advanced enough, many governments and businesses collect, store, and analyze massive data of people, not just of its own citizens or consumers, but of people in general all over the globe. Even the data of non-digital activities of people, such as dining or walking, can be collected and stored, given the advanced sensor technology of today.

8.5.4.3

Data Privacy

In the digital age, we must pay attention to data privacy separately. Data may be defined as information, which may be in digital form. Data can be of two broad types: (i) Personal data (ii) Non-personal data. In European Union’s (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), 2018, personal data refers to “any information relating to an identified or identifiable

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natural person”. It considers any information which may lead to the identity or identifiability of a real, natural person as personal data. Thus, personal data would include not only a name or a contact number, but also location data, physiological characteristic, genetic, social, or cultural identity, etc., because such data helps to point at the person. Very recently, August, 2023, the lower and upper houses of Indian Parliament has passed a data protection Bill: Digital Personal Data Protection Bill (2023). The Bill lays down obligations of private business and government about collection and processing of a citizen’s data. Personal data may be categorized into different types: (a) Credential data: This is sensitive personal information which are uniquely personal, e.g. Aadhar card number in India, passport number. (b) Historical data: The personal records, such as educational degree certificates, health record. (c) Title data: The data which act as the proof for ownership for a property, such as the property deed for a house. (d) Digital possession: The cryptocurrency possessions. Non-personal data are those data which cannot be used to identify an individual. For example, huge computer databases, for example, on the primary health of the country is an example of non-public data. As mentioned above, data privacy is a kind of privacy. When understood in the context of personal data, it covers the right over personal images and data. It covers the protection from misuse of personal data and image being made readily available to others, people and organizations, without consent. The aim is to provide a person some control over the personal data and its use by the others. In its present form, AI is primarily data-driven. And the protection of privacy of the personal information in data has become more and more important. It is at the heart of the privacy regulations such as GDPR in European Union. GDPR has clearly articulated how personal information is to be handled in data collected by the companies. China is also supposed to have a Cybersecurity Law (2017) which mandates protection of personal privacy (Liu, 2022) particularly by the network operators. India is also preparing PDPB as a privacy regulation. The collection, and use, of sensitive personal information online or offline without the consent is now legally liable in the regions where privacy regulations are in place. Part of the data privacy problem lies with the fact that data collection has been never easier. These days, data seem to be produced at an unprecedented scale. The data are all around us; sensors, wearables, and devices continuously translate physical movements and situations into data points, and smart phone or using the social media both actually leave a long trail of data. Each and every Facebook post likes can reveal to the data analysts various characteristics of the Facebook users: ethnicity, religious faith and political opinion, personality traits, addictive habits, and so on. Automated vehicles and networked cars by design gather a large amount of data about the inside of a passenger car, the traffic location and condition, and about the vehicle performance.

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Many of these data are shared, knowingly or unknowingly, by the people themselves. For example, people willingly post travel destination pictures online, from which the data about their geolocation and movement can be collected. People willingly post on online social media platforms, images and reels their personal pictures, of themselves, their family members, friends, the food which they liked, of the artwork they created, whom they are getting married to, on. Tracking the details of someone’s personal life through posted personal data has become quite easy these days. Some people do not know the privacy breaches possible from such personal data sharing online. Most people do not seem to care. Very few realize or care for the fact that just by the act of uploading the information and the image on a social media platform, they actually transfer the legal copyright of the data to the platform provider. If it is personal data posted on Facebook or Meta, then Facebook or Meta not only owns such data but also uses the ownership clause to sell the data to a third party, or to the others. Google collects personal data from the search terms and topics used in the Internet searches using its “free” search engine. Google collects personal data from gmail users also. Although Google claims that it does not sell the personal data collected, advertising remains the main revenue-generating segment for Google in 2021: 81.3% of revenue came from advertising. Hence, some way or other, the data are shared with the advertisers. In this setting, protection of personally identifiable information (PII) is a big challenge, particularly when people themselves are unaware or uncaring about protecting their own privacy. The popular social media platforms comply with the legal minimum by positing their privacy policies and user regulations, but very few users actually scrutinize these to make an informed decision. Therefore, personal data privacy in such situations is difficult to maintain. On the other hand, in today’s data-driven world, the phenomenon of privacy violation and data breach happens all the time. Facebook Cambridge Analytica (See Case 8.2., in Sect. 8.5.5. of this book) data scandal of 2018 is a great exemplar of that. More than 80 million Facebook users’ personal data were compromised without consent of the users. There is another and a very important issue here. Machine learning thrives on data. It needs big data to improve its performance. So, to some extent, machine learning applications themselves are always at risk of data privacy breach. In traditional machine learning training, data are needed. These data are collected by data collectors, and the machine is trained by the data scientists and analysts. In centralized learning, both data collector and data analyst can be part of the same group or organization. Still, once the data are collected, the users have very little control over the data and its further usage. So, the privacy violation risk remains, as shown in the Facebook Cambridge Analytica case. However, there can also be multi-party collaboration, where the developers may share the data collected with other data analytics companies for the data analysis. In that case, the data sharing with different agencies increases the privacy violation risks. Some researchers have tried to provide a solution to data privacy breach from data sharing by keeping all data locally in some local devices. The AI researchers in Google (2016) came up with the idea of Federated Learning in this line. They

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suggested that on-device data can be used to train the device; as the data will never leave the device, data privacy breaches will not be possible. Federated learning is a machine learning technique which trains an algorithms by keeping the training dataset decentralized. Instead of the usual way of putting all data in a centralized cloud server, it trains by the local data generated by the user history on a particular device, such as a mobile. However, it is claimed that Federated Learning is not a complete defense against data privacy violations (Liu, 2022). When personal data summaries are finally sent from the device to an external server, hackers could still intercept them and retrieve the personal data.  Moreover, machine learning models themselves are vulnerable, because privacy-sensitive data can be retrieved from them (Shokri et al., 2017). A machine learning model is a program or a file which has been trained to recognize certain patterns in an unknown dataset. That is, it is a program which has been provided with an algorithm and a dataset to recognize a certain pattern; so that it can learn the pattern recognition in such a way that even if it is presented with an unknown dataset, it can still recognize the pattern. Or, it has been trained to make a decision given a previously unseen dataset. For example, in computer vision, a machine learning model can be trained to recognize an image, e.g. a cat. It can do so by learning from a large dataset of different kind of images, which includes cat images. During training, the machine learning algorithm can help the machine to learn the pattern. Finally, when the machine learns, the outcome is a computer program with rules and data structures, and that outcome program is the machine learning model. For example, in natural language processing, a machine learning model can parse and correctly identify the intent behind a previously unheard collection of words or a sentence. The machine learning models are themselves vulnerable to data privacy breach. For, they learn with large datasets, which often contain personal and private information. Even when the personal fields are removed, such as name and address of a person, and data are anonymized, other identifiers can be used to identify a person precisely. Researchers have shown that from a large anonymized dataset, de-anonymization and re-identification is possible. They successfully showed how personal records, even if anonymized, can be easily re-identified with the help of a second, freely available dataset, with disclosures about sensitive personal information (Narayanan & Shamatikov, 2007). Hackers can easily get access to personal information from the machine learning models, causing a company to face legal risk as well as reputation risk. According to a 2021 report (Goldsteen, 2022), for a business the data breach cost is over $4 million, and the average cost for each data record compromised is $180. With Big Data Analytics, and with machine learning and other tools, personal data privacy violation thus remains a challenge. Using people’s personal data, AI can develop psychological profiles which can then be used for marketing to develop and to test marketable products. With a psychological profile ready, a highly effective

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marketing can be done. The main issue, therefore, is the increasing possibility of invasion of privacy at various levels.

8.5.4.4

Privacy Preserving in Machine Learning (PPML)

The machine learning community is deeply concerned about the data privacy concerns embedded in the machine learning and deep learning processes. At present, a lot of research is going on to develop privacy preserving machine learning (PPML). The PPML protocols are protocols which allow to train machine learning models to train on personally sensitive datasets, such as health data of patients, and at the same time protect the data and machine learning model from privacy breaches. This is an emerging field of research. Various methods, such as Homomorphic encryption and Differential Privacy, are being examined (Al-Rubaie, 2018; Schneider, 2020). What this shows, however, is the intent and commitment of the machine learning researcher community to address the challenge of data privacy violation that are linked with machine learning process and models. Some privacy regulations, such as EU GDPR, ensure that some personal data cannot be collected without consent, and they cannot be sold. For example, the bank details and the health records of a person are not monetizable, because they typically are legally protected and are not available for collection. One requires explicit user consent to collect this kind of data.

8.5.4.5

Data Ownership

Personal Data Data ownership is the principle which is often invoked in connection with personal data for ensuring protection of data privacy rights. We assume that personal data belong to the person and that the person is the owner of the data. In legal terms, the individuals whose data are collected and processed are known as the data principals. They can express their ownership over the personal data by exercising control over how their personal data are to be used. We may trace the principle of ownership of anything personal back to the right of self-ownership, which the libertarian philosophers upheld (See Chap. 7, Sect. 7.2.9, of this book). From the time of John Locke, the right of self-ownership was championed: A person alone is the owner of himself or herself. That is, people own their bodies, skills and abilities, talent, and their own labor. What one does with one’s body is a matter of that person’s right; or what one creates by one’s own talent are one’s own. No one can own another person’s body, thoughts, and labor, unless the person willingly gives another the right. With the explosion of digital data of personal nature, the principle of data privacy with the principle of data ownership has become ethically very significant. Data ownership also means possession and control over the data. If there are any economic

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benefits from the data, then it rightfully should go to the data owner. The rights on an owner include the ability to grant the rights and the access to the personal data. However, in a developing country such as India, where digital literacy is uneven and where the market of data is yet not regulated, the concept of data ownership, be it of personal data or non-personal data, is at a nascent stage. The consumer, the private citizen, does not think twice before giving personal information to the companies in exchange for services and a few additional benefits. This makes it quite advantageous for the companies to utilize and also to encroach on the data privacy. However, for a fair marketplace and a sound economic growth, both personal and non-personal data should be protected. Why data ownership is important? Social media-based companies and ecommerce companies regularly buy personal data. Data brokers are businesses who aggregate information from various sources, process, and make available for other organizations through licensing. Facebook and Google are examples of Data Broker companies. The harvested data then are used in selling the data to the advertisers and other organizations. Since the data are not directly collected from the consumers, the data principals do not even know where their data are going, so there is no question about consent also. Every piece of data is collected by the data brokers and is openly traded in the data markets. The tech giant companies buy the data to later sell it to others for advertisements and to earn money. European Union’s GDPR has conferred the right to a European Union citizen to trace their data by demanding copies from the entities which hold and store their data. Due to this, the European citizens can trace their data and know where it is going and who has access to it. In India, however, due to lack of regulation, the right to data privacy remains really more of a hope. The most pressing question, therefore, is what it would take to ethically safeguard the interferences of the rights to data privacy and data ownership of individual people? Typically, this is where data ownership principle is invoked to seek protection. However, the matter is a bit complicated. Though it may come as a surprise, according to most jurisdictions, data cannot be owned. In law, individual data ownership rights are not legally recognized as property rights, because information is not paradigmatic property. Unlike a property, possession of data does not imply sole and exclusive possession. Data may be duplicated, and several people at a time may use data. Also, data are non-depletable; that is, they can be used repeatedly without a loss in quantity or quality (Hummel et al. 2021). The ownership rights over physical property is absolute and is in a clear-cut terms. The rights over data, even if personal data, is not so clear-cut and is in layers. Indian law also does not recognize a property right, i.e. an absolute, exclusive ownership over data. Instead, it allows for a limited proprietary right. Allocation of exclusive property rights over data is not supported by legal scholarship.  Thus, the law acknowledges data ownership, but does not consider it as an absolute, property right. Legal scholars recommend that instead of data ownership,

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we should instead focus on access to data. Instead of treating data as a property of the person, the law advises that the primary issue should be access to the data: Who is accessing the data, who is storing the data and where it is being stored? As expressed by Evans (2011, p. 77): “The right question is not who owns health data… Instead, the debate should be about appropriate public uses of private data and how best to facilitate these uses while adequately protecting individuals’ interests”. It follows that on this view, data ownership need not imply unconditional and absolute control rights. The legal status of personal data ownership, therefore, remains more of a myth. It is often clear who owns the data at times. Based on that, to seek protection of private data is also therefore not on a very solid ground. On the other hand, an intuitive response is that the individuals should have ownership over their personal data as private property. For example, patients should have ownership over their personal health data (Kish & Topol, 2015; Mikk et al., 2017). So, ethically perhaps we may feel that the legal understanding of data ownership is not adequate. We can still argue and renegotiate on ethical grounds for personal data ownership. One of the ways would be consider personal data rights as a kind of Human Rights. For example, European frameworks, such as Convention for the protection of Human Rights, view personal data-related rights as extensions of Human Rights. However, note that this makes personal data inalienable and also unsuitable for commercialization and treatment as marketable commodities. Because, property is alienable, that is, separable from the owner; it can be sold as a commodity. If personal data rights are inalienable as Human Rights, they cannot be treated as property rights. This implies that the data owner cannot ever trade their personal data. ➤ Others have claimed that data ownership is there, but the owner is not any one particular individual but a society or a collective as a whole. Protection of data should be understood as the protection of a data commons. A data commons is an open repository of data in which data are aggregated from various sources into a unified database. It has been suggested that a data commons could be the way to address the power asymmetries that exist between an individual as a data principal and the large private organizations which collect and process the data (Prainsack, 2019). Through the data commons, an individual data principal can enter data, use data, and also enjoy the benefits of the data and can participate in the data governance. It seems like a workable compromise. In this proposal, when data ownership held by a collective or a society, further ownership or control rights at the individual level is not excluded. However, tensions and competition between individual and collective, the individual freedom, and the corporate authority, as well as local and global interests are conceivable. Thus, as Hummel et al. (Hummel et al. 2021) puts it: “the notion of data ownership is rife with tensions and perplexities”.

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Non-personal Data In case of the non-personal data, these are data which are supposedly not related to identified or identifiable real person. For example, the countrywide datasets on malnutrition, for example, stored in a computer database would be an example of a non-personal data. Clearly, it is not possible to identify any data principals in case of non-personal data. It is suggested that while determining data ownership for non-personal data, we need to follow and recognize intellectual property rights (IPR). Box 8.20 The legal view of Data ownership Law does not view digital data as property; hence data ownership rights are not absolute property rights. For personal data, data ownership is to be understood as limited proprietary right, where the person can exercise control over the access of the data. For non-personal data, limited copyright and IPR rights are to be followed. Big Data, Data Lake, and Data Ownership Apart from the legal ambiguity, further complications regarding data ownership come from the Big Data analytics. Big Data analytics now routinely use data lakes. A data lake is a vast pool of raw data of various kinds. It is a central repository of data, where large volumes of structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data are stored for further processing and analysis. It can also store relational data such as in operational databases, and non-relational data, such as from IoT devices, social media. In a data lake, data are stored in their original format. But one can understand what data are in the lake from the catalogue and indexing of data. A data lake is different from a data warehouse; in a data warehouse, only structured and filtered data are stored for a specific purpose. A data lake is more of a pool of data of all kinds of format without any specified purpose. A data lake is supposed to enable innovation through data exploration (Madera & Laurent, 2016). However, this creates complexity in data ownership. For, data from various sources and various kinds are aggregated in a data lake. Subsequently, data from that repository are further processed for use. Though the data are generated by people, the storing, processing, and analytics of the data are done by private sector companies. Therefore, the data ownership question in these cases is complex. Practitioners indicate that with Big Data and Data Lakes, a different approach must be adopted towards data governance and data ownership (Chessell et al., 2018). The idea of a data commons, as mentioned above, could be an approach to consider in this regard. Ethically, however, having a good policy of ethical data usage and enforcing it is a sound idea. A good and ethically sensitive policy will not only aim at protecting data privacy, but will also focus on providing transparency about which data are collected and how, the purpose of the data collected, and whether the uses of the data are appropriate. In case of individual data, the debate gains a new aspect because it remains

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unclear who owns the personal data collected by the machines (Janeˇcek, 2018). For example, the data collected by smart electricity meters can provide the electricity companies data to optimize their network and services, but they in the process also collect a lot of private, sensitive data about each household, which could be misused. Nonetheless, data ownership is required to clarify rights and responsibilities with effective data governance. Some argue, however, that on an ethical ground recognition of data ownership is a necessity, not because the data can be commodified or can be marketable, but because the personal data constitutes a person. Floridi, for example, envisions personhood as constituted by the personal information. He writes that a person is: …informational interpretation of the self. The self is a complex informational system, made of consciousness activities, memories, and narratives. From such a perspective, you are your own information (Floridi, 2014, p. 69)

He argues that data privacy breaches infringe upon the identity of people. Hence, ethically data privacy breaches are offenses against a person. Read the case and answer the questions carefully. Case 8.1. Meta (formerly known as Facebook) is a popular social media platform; however it has always had problems with user privacy. From time to time, the platform has been accused of serious user data breaches. Though the company claims to have privacy control options, the data leaks have become almost a regular phenomenon. The most recent Facebook data breach happened in April 2021 when the personal data of 533 Million Facebook users in 108 countries were made public on an online hacking forum. The user information included names, phone number, emails and names of workplaces, and were collected by using Facebook’s contact importer from 2019. Facebook said that the data was old, from 2019. Facebook fixed the data leakage but decided not to notify the users whose data have been made public. Questions Q1. What does data breach or data leak mean? Q2. What exactly is the ethical issue here with Meta and its 2021 data breach? Why should it be a matter of concern? Q3. What could be ethically problematic in Meta’s decision to fix the data leakage but not to inform the users whose data have been made public? Source Staff reporter. BBC News. April 20, 2021. Facebook downplays data breach in internal mail. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56815478

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The Problem of Continuous Surveillance: The Panopticon

In his contribution to prison reform, Jeremy Bentham (see Chap. 6 of this book) proposed a prison system called the Panopticon. The name comes from the Greek mythological giant Panoptes, who was a giant with 100 eyes. In 1785, Bentham came up with the design of a prison building which would be able to house maximum number of prisoners with fewest prison guards and thus would make it possible to drastically reduce the security costs. The building would consist of a central Guard tower, from where the guards would monitor, surrounded by a circular building of prison cells. The circular prison building will be just one cell thick, with one open side with bars facing the central tower, such that every prison cell fully exposed to the Central tower. The panopticon allows unobstructed supervision and conveys to the prisoner effectively the idea of a unimpeded supervision. Thus, the Panopticon prison model provides an opportunity of continuous surveillance of the prisoners. The cell and its inside will be always visible to the guards, but the Central tower will be sufficiently distant from the cells and will have small windows so that the prisoners cannot see the guards inside the Central tower. Moreover, since the prisoners are always exposed and are aware of the presence of the authority but they cannot always know whether they are being observed by a guard, the effect is that the prisoners will automatically discipline themselves. Bentham suggested that the mere suggestion to the inmates that they are under constant monitoring, even if they were not, would keep them constrained and deter them from any undesirable behavior. Thus, with a small set of guards it is possible to maintain a prison of a large number of inmates (Pic. 8.12).

Pic. 8.12 The Panopticon building plan

The panopticon has been understood as a symbol of social control (Foucault, 1977). Foucault used the Panopticon concept as a metaphor of tendencies of disciplinarian societies for social control through surveillance to subjugate the citizens of

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a society. Ever since Foucault’s discussion of the Panopticon, it has influenced the discussions on privacy. A similar idea of a social control through continuous surveillance can be found in George Orwell’s novel ‘1984’, written in 1949. Orwell’s novel is a fiction. It is an imaginary tale about a future dystopia, when the world is ravaged by perpetual war, government’s continuous and omnipresent surveillance, and propaganda. The “Big Brother” is the autocratic leader of a totalitarian government. Orwell extended the idea of continuous surveillance and social control to a large screen, through which the authoritarian Government kept surveillance of every citizen and every household, such that every citizen in Orwell’s novel knew that “Big Brother is watching you”. The novel warns the reader about a totalitarian society, where mass surveillance, and repressive regimentation of people under the rule are accepted. It also presents how in a propaganda by a totalitarian government truth and facts can be manipulated and distorted. In the 1970s and 1980s, the idea of mainframe computer and central databases raised the spectre of the Panopticon and “Big brother” in Europe. It led to strong privacy rules to prevent centralized monitoring and surveillance, and to empower the individual citizens. The question, which both Foucault and Orwell raise in their own way, is: If we agree that privacy is important in human lives, what are the ethical implications of putting people under centralized or some other form of continuous surveillance? Panopticism: Panopticism has come to known as a position which questions mass surveillance. It also has two other aspects: (a) There is a centralized surveillance. That is, there is a central place where all the surveillance perspectives converge and from that central place one observer can see everyone and everything. (b) Continuous surveillance: There is a temporal reference that people are continuously under surveillance. Continuous Surveillance from Smart Devices Technological surveillance devices such as the closed-circuit TV (CC-TV) at various points put by various organizations, government and private, have brought the Panoptic continuous surveillance one step closer to the reality. In a digital age, the Panopticon represents a real possibility of being under continuous surveillance or being under data surveillance with the assistive tools based on AI technology. Some point out (Den Hoven & Vermaas, 2007, p. 291) that nanotechnology is due time can contribute to building a social Panopticon. Extremely small or invisible sensors can be put to work to contribute to a central database. A combination of widely used Radio Frequency Identity Chip (RFID) chip or tag, used for identifying or

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tracking products and objects, and Internet of Things (IoT) can create an effective net of invisible surveillance. Thus, constantly and systematically information about an individual and the environment the individual is in can be obtained. Carpets could log footsteps and the soles of your shoes could produce a report at the end of the day of where you have been. (Ibid.)

Continuous and invisible surveillance can become a household issue. In the Panopticon model, with the presence of the central tower at least the prisoners know that they are being watched, though they cannot tell when they are being watched. In the digital age, surveillance can be invisible and unobtrusive. It may take only an Internet search or an entry to an website to be under digital surveillance, by a government or by some other organization: There is no looming tower, no dead-eye lens staring at you everytime you enter a url. (McMullan, 2015)

Another difference between the Panopticon and the data surveillance of today is that in the former, the face of the authority in control is somewhat tangible. It is represented by the looming physical presence of a central tower. In comparison, the data surveillance of present times is intangible in nature. One does not feel exposed while browsing a website, and when sharing personal details on a social media platform. Yet, the person, and the personal data, are both under the surveillance, and often for a benefit by a third party.Digital Assistants such as Alexa (Amazon’s cloudbased voice service), Google Assistant (Google’s virtual assistant software), and Siri (Apple’s virtual assistant software) are household items which have features to transmit data from the household to the parent company. They keep on collecting data generated by the digital assistant user, and transmit the audio stream continuously to the parent company, where the data are collected, stored, and processed. Thus, the user remains under continuous surveillance, whether he or she is aware of it or not. Having Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant may be convenient when turning off the lights or ordering in, but it also opens a window into your home with a possibility of thousands looking in, listening from anywhere in the world. Cloud connectivity and “always-on” power model raise significant ethical concerns, with consumers understandably wary of their every word being recorded and transferred online. (Lippet, 2022)

This brings such surveillance under the violation of already-discussed privacy of behavior and action, privacy of personal communication (in one’s own home, one does not expect to be listened to), privacy of personal location and space, privacy of association (socialization can take place at home too), and perhaps privacy of thoughts and feelings too. Apart from the privacy advocates, in a fairly recent survey the household consumers showed concern about the spying feature of their digital assistants at home (Shields 2018). The invisible data collection is not confined only to the digital assistants. Today, in a smart home all kinds of connected devices collect and forward information, e.g. a fitness watch company, a smart phone, a laptop, home security alarm security system, a smart car company. They need to collect a base level of user data to improve on their

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functions. The data from one source could create a problem, but the combined data from all the smart devices can certainly create a much bigger problem of revealing a greater amount of information about an user or an organization. And, there is always the potential risk of data getting stolen or shared with unwanted third parties. In that sense, every smart device is a potential intruder into our privacy. Addressing this kind of invasion of privacy, the parent companies claim to have incorporated feature that limit the data-collecting ability of the digital assistant. Amazon claims that using the word Alexa to turn the device on prevents the device from being on continuous surveillance. Amazon, Apple, and Google all claim to use anonymous voice recordings to train their digital assistants to reduce the reliance on voice-recording in the household. They also claim to offer solutions even for deleting the past recordings. Some technology experts identify the root of the privacy invasion problem in the dependency of the smart digital assistants and devices on the cloud, and recommend the shift to a local solution of Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT) by embedding intelligence and processing power into the smart home device (Lippet, 2022). From these efforts, a fact emerges that there is still an uneasy relation between the smart devices and the household privacy. Yet, the number of Internet users is on the rise, just as is the number of users of smart devices.

8.5.4.7

Ethics of Massive Centralized Surveillance

Bentham’s panopticon model and the questions raised by Foucault and Orwell about the societal implications of continuous surveillance have created a multidisciplinary field of study called surveillance studies to examine the issues rising from surveillance.  From an ethical perspective, the values which get most affected are autonomy, trust, and privacy. We have already discussed the effect on privacy and autonomy. Let us now examine the effect on trust. Rachels (1975) argued that privacy has an inverse relationship to trust. Usually the more trust exists between two people, the lesser the need for privacy. A higher degree of trust is usually accompanied by a reduced level of privacy. When one of the elements is breached, either a breach of trust or an intrusion in privacy, the relationship is damaged. Therefore, increased surveillance indicates a diminished level of trust which is reciprocated. When the target of surveillance comes to know of the continuous surveillance, there is a trust deficit. For massive and continuous surveillance, often a consequentialist ground of greater good is used. A government, for example, may justify its surveillance actions by appealing to the security of all by putting all under surveillance. Deontologists, on the other hand, are likely to resist that argument by raising question about in what way a group or a person should be exposed to surveillance. Deontologists would object to indiscriminate surveillance when it violates major values such as privacy.

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However, the key issue here is: When is surveillance necessary? Is it, like war, ever justified by necessity? John Lango (2006) has proposed two criteria for necessity: (a) The feasibility condition and (b) the alternatives are worse condition. Under (a), an action is necessary when there is no feasible alternative, and under (b) an action is necessary when the alternatives are even worse. We may endorse that surveillance is necessary when either of this conditions is met: either when there is no feasible alternative, or when the alternatives are ethically worse. Other have proposed that we apply normative considerations, among other things, to: (a) Manner or means of surveillance (b) Context of data collection (c) To the uses of the surveillance data (Marx, 2008). For example, regarding the manner or means of surveillance technique, we could raise questions about possible harm from the means or manner of surveillance: Does the technique of surveillance cause physical or psychological harm to the target? Or, questions can be raised about the boundary to be respected: Is the technique coercive or invasive without consent? Similarly, we could raise questions about consent about the data collection context: Was the data collection agreed upon by some public decision-making or consensus? If the answers are not satisfactory from an ethical perspective, then adopting the surveillance cannot be said to be ethically permissible. Quick Question 8.9 1. What does Bentham’s Panopticon model address? 2. Does Betham’s Panopticon properly represent the continuous data surveillance that we experience at present? Explain your answer.

8.5.5 Data Sharing, and Data Re-use for Non-intended Purposes Data are said to be the new gold. Consumer data are continuously collected and sold by a variety of companies, websites and analytics firms. Whether we like it or not, data collection and sale is a part of digital economy of today. User data are collected for sales, marketing, product development, user experience and many other things. A company which collects user data may collect it for its own purpose, e.g. for sending marketing information. Or, it may sell it to other companies or to a data analytics firm. They may put the data to different uses, e.g. for improving their product, to make advertisements more personalized, or for some statistics. Or, the companies which collect data may share the data with other parties.

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Why do companies share data? There can be different reasons. For example, shared data management help to eliminate redundancies in the information relating to the same customer. Also, sharing data can help to increase the market reach. For example, a gym company may share its user data with fitness and health companies. Sometimes, the data sharing among the companies occurs also as part of a corporate partnership. However, each of these can be ethically problematic, if the personal data of a customer are shared without the consent. For example, in 2018 the New York Times investigative reporting disclosed that Facebook shared access to its user data with other Tech firms, such as Apple, Netflix, Amazon, and Spotify (Staff Reporter, BBC News, 2018). This was after Facebook publicly announced that it has ended third party access to Facebook user data. The purpose was to maintain market dominance among the corporate partners. One ethically problematic aspect of personal data sharing could be the use of that data for some non-intended purposes, which may actually harm the data principal. The users cannot keep track of and are often unaware of how and to whom their data will be sold and shared and for which purpose. For example, personal data collected for tracking purchase habits of a customer could reach through layers of data sharing to pregnancy detection companies, and if data analytics assigns a high likelihood to the customer, the customer may be approached with brands and devices related to pregnancy. With genomic data, this concern about data sharing and the data revealed from consequent analytics is even more, as genomic data are shared among various agencies, private and public across the domains. The violation of the ethical norms gets more serious if the data collected from people in one context are shared without their consent with other parties for use in a completely different context. When the data are sensitive and personal, this may lead to serious transgression. For example, if the data provided by a user for playing an online game, which contain personal preferences information is transferred without the user’s consent to a third party, who uses it for their marketing. What are the risks from such data sharing? Privacy lapse is the major risk, but with it there could be other risks associated. For instance, identity theft may happen due to data sharing. In the hand of a crook company, user data of credit card number or birth date, and phone number, may lead to accessing the user’s bank account. Or, the passport information in the wrong hands could be used to issue fake passport with the original name but the picture of a criminal. Or, the shared data may result in vendor lock-in for an user, such that it becomes too costly or too time-consuming for the user to change the vendor for a product. These are undesirable and ethically problematic outcome. In order to deter and to mitigate such risks, privacy regulations insist that personal data, if collected, should be collected with consent, with a stated purpose. The consent is valid only for the use of the data collected for the stated purpose. The principle of purpose limitation is used specifically in the context of data trading and data sharing. The principle of purpose limitation says:

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Data collected for one specific purpose should not be used for a new, incompatible purpose.

Basically, the principle says that the data collected with one particular purpose should not be re-used for a completely new, and unrelated purpose. This in a way provides a protection against the use of same data for non-intended purpose. However, you may be wondering what ‘incompatible purpose’ may mean. Let us explain that with the example of GDPR regulations. European Union’s GDPR says: If the same data is to be used for another purpose it has to be checked whether the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose.

If the new purpose is found compatible, no new consent is required. If not found compatible, then a new set of consent will be required. GDPR uses the following to examples to illustrate the point. For example, a bank may use a client’s personal data to check whether the client is eligible now for a better savings scheme or a better loan arrangement. This personal data were collected from client originally with a contract to provide a savings bank and a loan scheme. The new purpose is compatible with the original purpose. Hence, the bank can use the same personal data for the new purpose. However, if the bank wants to access the client’s personal data to share with some insurance firms, that sharing is not permissible without the explicit consent of the client, because the new purpose is not compatible with the original purpose. As the principle of purpose limitation indicates, there is need to demand from the outset for the purpose of the data collection. For, unless some data ownership regulations and data governance mechanisms are in place, once the data are shared with others, the data go out of control of the original data holder or the data principal. The risk of loss of control increases as the data are further shared downstream. This is more so if the data are shared in multiple locations under different legal regimes. Thus, lack of control over data due to data sharing is a major concern for both individuals and organizations. Consent of the data principal is cited as a main mechanism to allow data collection, use, and re-use of data. However, as shown above, data can be re-used and down the stream often in ways which are inconceivable at the time the data were collected. Box 8.21 Ethical use of Data Who do the data belong? The clear answer in the case of personal data is that individual person or the user is the rightful owner of one’s own personal data.

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There are important data rights, which an ethical use of data must respect the following rights of the user or the data source: • • • • • • •

Right to privacy Right to confidentiality Right to be informed that their data are being collected Right to object to data collection Right to know the purpose of data collection Right to know what happens to their data Right to access their data

In case of manual collection of data as in the case of social science research, many of these issues are addressed if the researchers follow the obtaining the informed consent process rigorously and in detail. However, in case data collection by AI-enabled machine learning, it is often not known that data are being collected. An ethical use of data requires that data are collected and processed in such a way that the privacy rights of the individual users are respected and protected. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is in effect in the European Union since 2018, and it tries to control and minimize the data privacy violation by the companies. However, there are many other countries where there is no such regulatory protection. Read the passage carefully and answer the questions: Case 8.2. Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, 2018: Unauthorized Data Collection and Use for a Political Purpose Cambridge Analytica is a data analytics, marketing and political consulting firm based in the UK. In 2018, it was involved in a huge data scandal. It was accused of illegally acquiring Facebook Users’ data from their Facebook profile without the consent of the Facebook users, and of using the data for political advertisements for various political campaigns. Alexandr Kogan, a researcher based in UK, developed a Facebook Personality Quiz app “Thisisyourdigitallife” in 2013 and used the Facebook data collected through the app for academic purposes. Once the app is downloaded and installed, it would start to collect the person’s personal information, such as profile information, Facebook activities. Around 300,000 people installed the app. Kogan’s app included over 100 personality traits which a respondent may agree or disagree. In 2014, Facebook’s terms of service allowed app developers

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to harvest data not only from the people who installed the app, but also from their friends. The app collected the data of 87 Million people. In 2014 Kogan was approached by SCL Elections, an entity which owned Cambridge Analytica, with an offer to pay the people who took Kogan’s quiz. In return, SCL wanted Kogan’s app. Cambridge Analytica used data to determine voter personality traits and behavior. Through SCL, Cambridge Analytica harvested the personal data of about 87 millions of Facebook users without their consent. Later Cambridge Analytica used the data to help the conservative political campaigns to provide insights into the voter’s choices and political opinions, and to to aide with targeted online political advertisements. It helped important political campaigns, including the Presidential campaign of Donald Trump, USA, and to Brexit Referendum, UK. From the public response to this incident, it was clear that the vast majority of the Facebook users did not give their consent to have their personal information used in this way. Information about the misuse of private data was disclosed in 2018 by Christopher Wylie, an ex-employee of Cambridge Analytica. When Facebook learned about it in 2015, it removed Kogan’s app, and demanded certifications from Kogan and Cambridge Analytica that they have deleted the data. However, Facebook did not make any public statement about the incident in 2015, and did not inform the users whose data were shared with Cambridge Analytica. In July 2019 Facebook was fined $5 Billion by Federal Trade Commission for privacy violation and serious breach of the law. Facebook apologized and allowed users to check if their data has been accessed by certain apps. In October 2019, Facebook was further fined GBP 500,000 by UK Information Commissioner’s Office for its role in exposing the private user’s data to a serious risk. The allegation was that the company failed to protect the personal data of its users from abuse. Representative claimant asserted that apologizing for breaking the law is just not enough; “Facebook, you owe us honesty, responsibility and redress”. Questions: 1. What was the offense for which Facebook was first fined? 2. Why was facebook fined twice? Are the charges the same? 3. Was the shared data used for the stated purpose with which the data was originally collected? 3. What should be done by the Facebook users to protect themselves? Source Cristina Criddle, BBC News. Oct 28, 2020. Facebook sued over Cambridge Analytica Scandal. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-547 22362

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Some countries have tried to address this data sharing and associated problem by regulation. In 2018, Australia came up with Data Sharing and Release Legislation (DS&RL) to propose some institutional arrangements, such as Office of National Data Commissioner (NDC). NDC would address the risks of data sharing and reuse of health data in particular. In 2018, Denmark also established an Expert Group in Data Ethics to oversee data governance and to instill consumer trust in digital economy.

8.5.6 Newer Forms of Manipulation and Exploitation by AI and DS Another important ethical issue in data ethics is that of newer forms of manipulation and exploitation of ordinary people by AI-enabled data science. In this section, I shall specifically discuss two major areas where these newer forms exist: 1. Marketing 2. Newspaper reporting. Manipulation Manipulation is understood predominantly as imposing a hidden influence: Covertly influencing someone – imposing a hidden influence – means influencing them in a way they aren’t consciously aware of, and in a way they couldn’t easily become aware of were they to try and understand what was impacting their decision-making process. (Susser et al., 2019, p. 4)

According to this definition, manipulation is to impact an individual’s free decisionmaking process. However, the impact is created by techniques which exert covert influence; that is, the fact that the person is being influenced is kept hidden from the person through different ploys. It is opined that the success of manipulation lies in keeping the target unaware of the machinations. For, no one actually liked to be manipulated. Hence, manipulation involves art or skill, and sometimes use of unfair and insidious means, for one’s own advantage. For example, manipulative language is used in advertisements. A diet pill advertisement may say: Lose weight permanently without dieting. The claim is manipulative to make the buyer go for the pill, without realizing that the scientific opinion is that there is no such magic pill for losing weight. There has to be consistent effort at losing weight, along with low calorie diet and regular exercise. Note that the language is not coercive, but it can covertly influence a buyer’s opinion. However, sometimes, manipulation may not also be so well hidden. For example, the parents may try to manipulate their children from not going on dangerous trips by mentioning their own doubts, ill health, or personal experiences. The detection of manipulation depends also on the target and what level of awareness the target exhibits about the environment in which the manipulation occurs.

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AI in Marketing Manipulation of the customer through marketing strategies always existed in business. In the digital age, however, with the greater reach and power of the data-driven technology, the power of manipulation and exploitation of the consumers has only increased. Factors, such as easy access of large datasets, deployment of machine learning, and deep learning to uncover undiscovered patterns from the consumer datasets, have heightened the threat from manipulative marketing strategies. Moreover, AI can be trained to be a persuasive agent to manipulate human frailties to make them accept a point, or to buy a product that they originally did not want to buy.

8.5.6.1

Persuasive Technology

The point of concern here is that these days, digital technologies and AI algorithms are being used to influence and manipulate human behavior in an unprecedented manner. Algorithms are being routinely designed to change the attitude and behavior of an individual by • • • •

Suggestion Reduction of choices By tailoring the feed By surveillance and conditioning (Fogg, 2003, pp. 32–53).

Online and offline data, found in tracking cookies, website analytics, search engines, etc., are further refined into ‘Persuasive Systems Design’ for influencing the attitude and behavior of target user groups. Persuasive technology is a term coined by Fogg (2003), Behavior Design Lab, Stanford. Persuasive technology is a kind of computer technology. Not all computer technologies are persuasive. However, some technologies are solely and intentionally designed to persuade and alter human cognition to a pre-determined state. The intent makes it clear that the persuasive capabilities are not a side-effect; they are meant to be there. In his eponymous book, Persuasive Technology, he discusses how computers can be used on websites, software applications, and mobile devices to change attitudes, opinions, or behavior of the users through persuasion and social influence, but not through coercion. Persuasive technology is not coercive; nonetheless it tries to manipulate and influence people. In 1996, Fogg proposed the name captology from the acronym CAPT, which stands for Computers As Persuasive Technology. Captology refers to the study of every aspect of interactive computing products, and devices, and how they can be used to change human behavior and attitudes. Examples of captology can be found in videogames, computer games, online games, phones, apps, websites, etc. So, persuasive technology is basically automated persuasion. It is said that very popular social media platforms are based on this. They create subtle suggestions to influence the user to behave in a certain way, or to form an opinion about something.

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In particular, they persuade people to continue to use the website’s services. The appeal is created on increased insistence on how easy, how convenient, and how quick it is to use the services. Slowly, the user is persuaded to alter the old habit and be a regular user of the technological services. Box 8.22 Example of persuasive technology The phone is an example of a successful persuasive technology. Behavioral changes: Examine your behavior with your phone: How often you check now, how indispensable it has become to you, how important it has become to you to message instantly. The social media platform ensures that a certain kind of feeds are shown more frequently. If one participates by a ‘like’ or by posting a comment, one gets more of the same kind. The feed is persuasive technology; it is trying to persuade the platform user that what it is showing is the most important discussion item at present. The popular subscribed online movie platforms have a feature: They start automatically playing the next episode of a show, unless the user stops it. This is because the platform want the user to continue watching. It makes it easier to continue to watch. That is soft persuasion. It takes more effort to stop the video from playing. Other Forms of Manipulation and Persuasive Technology Filter Bubble Filter bubbles are yet another kind of technological manipulation. A filter bubble is an intellectual isolation which can occur in personalized searches when websites make use of algorithms to guess what the user would like to see based on information about the user, such as location and previous search history, and display only those items to the user. So, the user does not get to see the full array of the choices available. The website decides it for the user; hence user’s liberty and autonomy both get compromised. Algorithms are devised to create filter bubbles which narrow down the focus people’s interests and prevent them from considering other alternatives or opinions on disagreement (Zuboff, 2019, p. 399). Above all, the user does not get a free choice as he or she is entitled to. In a sense, filter bubbles distort reality, because they skew or limit the information that a user sees on the Internet. Creating Addiction Manipulation can take many other forms: 1. Personalized addictive strategies for consumption of online goods: Internet addiction is a fact. It has emerged as a potential problem particularly among the young people, and it refers to excessive use and obsession with the Internet which interferes with their normal, daily life activities (Beard, 2005). Similarly, now we

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speak of digital addiction, which is a kind of Internet addiction. It is a problematic relationship of a human with the digital technology, resulting in obsessive, compulsive, impulsive, and hasty digital behavior. According to experts, playing online games leads to serious gaming addiction, which has been considered as a disorder. In particular, during the COVID-19 pandemic years, in India gaming reportedly increased significantly among the age group 25–35 Years (Bora, 2020). It is slowly being realized that AI and AI-enabled digital technology actually contribute to these addictions. For, they are the crucial tools for creating the immersive and personalized spaces, and also to catch a person’s interest constantly. This raises particularly problematic ethical issue about the role that AI and digital technologies play for the more vulnerable groups, e.g. those who have poor impulse control, or suffers from anxiety. 2. Taking advantage of human emotions to promote goods and services: In marketing, human emotions matter a lot. For, the emotional connect is a significant determinant for the choice of a product by a consumer. Therefore, a marketing professional has to understand and appeal to human emotions to attract the target consumer to get interested in a product or a service. Now, there is use of emotion in AI. Emotion AI or Affecting Computing is an emerging research area which refers to AI which can detect, interpret, and simulate human emotions. Affective computing refers to a computer’s abilities to recognize a user’s emotional states, to express in language about emotional states, and to simulate human emotions (Daily et al., 2017)

This technology combines cameras with other technology to capture facial expressions, body language, vocal intonations, and other cues. The promise of Emotion AI or Affective Computing goes far beyond mere recognition of human emotions. It can potentially uncover many emotional cues, feelings, motivations, and attitudes of people in the images and generate enough data for marketers to delve in for further consumer manipulation. Now, there are emotion-recognition software available. For example, 4 Little Trees is a system developed in Hong Kong which assesses children’s emotions as they do their homework. It maps the facial features of the children and assigns a category to each student’s emotional state: happy, sad, angry, afraid, disgusted, and surprised. Similar software has been developed to do surveillance of remote workers. The Impact The cumulative effect of these persuasive and manipulative technologies is a matter of concern. As expressed by a scholar: The harmful effect is “…the silent and gradual chipping away of individuals’ autonomy needed to exercise properly considered decisions, while doing so at a scale which is only possible in a digital world”. (Botes, 2022).

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This has at least two potential problems: (a) Digital technologies may be wielded by humans or by the companies in a manipulative manner (b) Digital technologies sometimes may act autonomously and manipulate, e.g. a recommender engine on a website. The option (b) looks at acts of manipulation by a machine. This may sound a little strange, as attributing agency to a machine. Scholars warn that as we interact increasingly with machines, offline and online, a closer examination shows that many of these interactions are manipulative in character (Susser, Roessler & Nissenbaum, 2019; Klenk, 2020; Dezfouli, Nock & Dayan, 2020). In fact, they claim that human interactions with intelligent machines go beyond mere fairness in exchange, and they appear deeply manipulative raising concerns for human welfare and autonomy. For example, a new study by neuroscientist and machine learning expert Dr Amir Dezfouli, of CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, claims to have shown that AI can manipulate human decision-making to its own advantage. In the study, conducted jointly by Australian National University (ANU) and Germany’s University of Tubingen and Max Planck Institute for Cybernetics, scientists did three experiments where human participants played games with a computer. As the machine learnt from the behavior and responses of the participants, it identified and then targeted the vulnerabilities of the human participants to nudge them towards certain actions or goals which are of advantage to itself. Dr. Dezfouli claimed that the implications show the potential manipulative power of AI and the need for governance in the area. Dr Jon Whittle, Director of CSIRO Data61, also underscored the need for ethics in AI and machine learning (CSIRO, 2021). (a) is more common. Acts of manipulation by marketers, in which digital technology is being used in a manipulative and exploitative manner by a person, or a company, occur more frequently. The fact remains that in digital manipulation some users of AI will be more vulnerable than the others. These will include people who are not well versed with new technology, or are not so well informed, and the children. These vulnerable users will be more at risk for manipulation and exploitation by AI-enabled tools. AI provides newer ways to manipulate and to exploit them, and to violate their privacy. When is AI-aided manipulative marketing ethically wrong? One clear case is when the benefits from such manipulation are not equitably distributed between the manipulator and the user. Consider for example the fact that in the world of business, AI systems are increasingly being used to organize and present digital information to the users in a manner which is advantageous only to the businesses. The users do not get a fair share of the benefits. For example, when doing an Internet search, users usually visit the search results on the top or close to the top of the list of search results. The results listed on the 4th or 5th page of the search results are usually ignored. Keeping this mind, there is evidence that big Tech companies organize the relevant search results on the Internet

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in a certain way to influence and to manipulate people’s choices to the advantage of the companies themselves. That is, when the search results were shown to the user, the search engine company manipulated the list to put its own product at the top of the search results, as you may find in Case 8.3. Read the case and answer the questions Case 8.3 Google’s search engine is a popular choice for online search for consumers. In return, the service users, knowingly or unknowingly, provide their personal data. Google uses these user data for targeted advertisements which it shows to the consumers a google search is used. From these advertisements, Google’s 90% revenue comes. In 2017 Google was fined e2.42 Billion by the European Commission for abusing its market dominance as a search engine to give illegal advantage to its own Google online Shopping in its search results. It showed the Google Online Shopping at the top of its search results, while pushing the competition to a much lower search list. So, when Google was used as a search engine, it promoted its own comparison shopping service. The European Commission viewed this as anti-competitive behavior, which denies the European consumers a genuine choice in choosing a service. In 2004, Google entered the comparison shopping market in Europe with its own product Froogle. Retailers list their products on the comparison shopping services, and the more popular ones get more traffic and more eager retailers to list themselves. At that time, there were already other established competitors in the market, and Google also was aware that Froogle’s performance was not very good. From 2008, Google started to push its own renamed product Google Product Search through its dominant search engine. In response to a search done with Google search engine, its own product showed up at the top or near the top of the search result. Google also added certain criteria in its generic search algorithms, as a result of which the competitor comparative shopping services appeared much lower, and most often on other pages, on the search. Its own comparative shopping service was not subjected to Google generic search. In other words, Google trained its algorithms to make its own product as the topmost visible choice to the consumers, and pushed the rivals down on the search list to keep them out of the consumer’s immediate attention. In general, consumers click on the results appearing on top or close to the top of the search results. Thus, Google knowingly manipulated the consumer choice towards its own advantage, and breached the Antitrust law.

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Questions: 1. In the case above, was Google strategically influencing the behavior of the consumers? Justify your answer. 2. What does it mean to restrict or to manipulate consumer choice? How does that play to the advantage of a business when that is done? 3. What was the role of AI in Google’s behavior? Source European Commission. Press release, June 27 2017. Antitrust: Commission fines Google e2.42 Billion for abusing dominance as search engine by giving illegal advantage to own comparison shopping service. [https://ec.eur opa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_17_1784]. What Case 8.3. shows is a new way of manipulation of a consumer’s choice by a business. AI and machine learning have provided a new opportunity to the Technology giant to use its dominance in the market to showcase its own product and to demote its rivals. The end result is that the consumer is deprived of a fair and free choice in choosing a product, and the market is also distorted as the rivals are gradually pushed out of the market. It shows the misuse of the power of AI to create newer ways to manipulate. A recent research report argues that the enhanced role of data, commercial interest in using AI and machine learning to process user data to influence the consumers, and the strong networks, may lead to the market defect of highly concentrated market with only a few dominant corporate players left in the field, unless policy level interventions are placed (Cremer et al., 2019). That is, unless checks and balances of governance are in place, the corporate giants, who will have more power of the digital technology in their portfolio, are likely to drive the smaller competition out of the digital market. This is exactly what happened in Case 8.3. The net result would be a loss of free choice and of bargaining power for competitive prices for the consumers of the digital era. People may suffer being captive consumers in a market run by a few technology-enabled corporate giants. Or, consumers’ psychological profiles may be exploited by the multi-national giants to manipulate their purchase choices (Tucker, 2019). The upshot is that the tactics to influence consumer choice, through the help of AI and data analytics, as discussed above, seriously undermine a consumer’s free choice and autonomy. Being in control of one’s choices gives a sense of agency to the consumers. A lack of self-determination from a loss of agency and diminished autonomy imposes a kind of helplessness onto people and affects them psychologically. Scholars also suggest that data-driven marketing, including micro-targeting, are psychologically reductive in character (Andre et al., 2017). For, from Google searches or from browsing history, it merely focuses on the behavior of the consumer and neglects higher-order psychological processes such as preferences, emotions, and moral judgments.

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Newspaper Reporting The risk of manipulation and exploitation by misusing the AI tools is not confined to the technology sector. In the recent times, in journalism also, the uses of AI are many and varied. News organizations are utilizing the power of AI to change the way news is generated, published, and shared. Media houses are using AI systems to garner data from various sources and to automatically summarize them into articles or into supporting research documents. By using machine learning, an enormous quantity of data, in terms of press releases, blogs, social media posts, and all sorts of other data can now be processed to generate breaking news content which reports on an emerging situation. Forbes, The Washington Post, Reuters, and The Guardian are some of the names that we can take of the big news organizations which are using some kind of AI system or other. In Brazil, it is reportedly a common practice in the news industry to mainly rely on the Twitter bots that use AI models, particularly natural language processing, machine learning, and optimization to process large volumes of data and interact on digital media platforms (DalBen and Jurno 2021). Now, there are many advantages of using the AI for preparing the news content. It is a much cheaper, faster way to collect news from all over, and to create a news report. However, another aspect is the risk of organizing news in a way to suggest in a subtle way to the online news readers. AI use in journalism includes the use of the machine learning recommendation engines for choosing to display the news as a personalized content for a reader. It opens the door to subtler manipulations that people may not even notice to influence future purchase decisions as well as political opinions. There is the further fact that as we use the free digital services, we make ourselves and our data available to the service providers. For example, as users of social media, we produce free data for the social media companies, who do business with the data. We become the unpaid workers providing free “digital labor” (Fuchs 2014) to the companies. The companies then put that data for making their own profit and that may include sharing the data with the third parties too. AI can also be used to manipulate political choices. The case of Cambridge Analytica and Facebook (Case 8.2. in this chapter) underscores this point. Without the consent of the users, user data were used for political purposes in the Presidential campaign of 2016. Bots can be employed to post messages on social media to influence voter’s preferences. Thus AI may lead to new forms of exploitation and manipulation.

8.5.6.2

Targeting the Vulnerable Using AI and DS

Recent developments in AI and data analytics can contribute to consumer wellbeing by making consumer choices more efficient, and easier. However, they can also undermine consumer well-being in different ways. In this section, we shall

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discuss a particular example of the latter kind of activities: targeting the vulnerable with the help of AI and data-driven tools. Privacy violations, manipulations and exploitations create different impact on different populations. For the vulnerable populations, however, the impact could be more perilous. Therefore, the ethical issues related to the vulnerable populations where AI is concerned deserve to be addressed separately. Who are the vulnerable populations with respect to the AI systems and AI-based technologies? Some general examples would be: • • • • • • •

People who are not so well informed People with low digital literacy People with underdeveloped cognitive abilities The children The elderly Those with medical conditions The socio-economically disadvantaged.

Vulnerability Vulnerable populations, to put simply, are populations with an increased risk. In the context of the emerging AI technologies, the vulnerable populations are those for whom the risk from the powerful AI technologies is worsened by their existing conditions, the social or economic status, or their incapacities. For example, those with medical conditions are at a greater risk if their medical data privacy is violated with the AI-enabled machine learning. Health data of a person are private. If private health data are accessed, collected, stored, and analyzed, then with data analytics a medical profile can be created. The profile will contain not only all about the person’s medical condition, but also can be used for assessing the person’s physical and mental limitations, or the health implications for the family in case the disease is hereditary or genetic and may even be used to do prediction about the death of the person (White et al., 2012). For an employee, this could have serious effect on his or her job prospect. For the medical insurance industry, this may mean charging a higher premium. For the family, this could imply job restrictions, if the medical condition is found to be hereditary and debilitating. In short, data privacy violations by AI-assisted technologies can have more serious adverse implications for the vulnerable populations. Targeting The ethical issues concerning the vulnerable populations are worth discussing, because unfortunately they are also more likely to fall prey to the predatory activities by people and businesses, who target the vulnerable specifically to take unethical advantage of the vulnerabilities. In the process, the vulnerable consumers can be more harmed. In what follows, we shall mention a few of the ethically objectionable examples of targeting the vulnerable for manipulation and exploitation.

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In the world of marketing, there is an expression predatory marketing and predatory advertising. Predatory advertising targets the vulnerable people or populations and exploits the vulnerability to sell a product. Vulnerable people are often preyed on by companies to sell a product that a normal, sensible adult, able-bodied, healthy or in full cognitive capacity person would never ever purchase. With the deepening impact of AI-enabled technologies, Big Data-driven micro-targeting of the consumer has emerged. Micro-targeting is a marketing strategy which uses consumer data and demographic data to identify specific individuals, or very specific groups, to influence their opinions, thoughts and behavior.

The data of a consumer can be collected through an app, or through a website visit; and that data may be processed further to predict the consumer behavior. For example, it would predict which content or product the targeted consumer would be likely to buy. Personalized content recommendation algorithms can organize the marketing information and the product information according to the consumer profile. The assessment of the existing vulnerabilities in a consumer is also part of that data, which can be processed to predict which products would best appeal to the vulnerable customer. For example, a company may target the people suffering from a painful condition to sell an ineffective product with a promise of a miracle cure. Predatorial marketing is also visible in the financial market. For example, Royal Banking Commission, Australia, reported in 2018 that financial institutions are targeting the Aboriginal and Islander tribal population with exploitative money lending and insurance deals. This was done specifically to take advantage of the low financial literacy of the Aboriginals and the tribal Islander populations (The Guardian, 2018). The goal is clearly to benefit the financial institutions and to impose more harm in terms of financial loss on the gullible aboriginals and the tribal populations. Targeting the vulnerable, or predatory techniques in marketing, has become even easier with AI. Using AI and the data-driven tools, groups of consumers can be identified. Based on the information about the consumer, AI technology can now create advertisements, products, and services, as more personalized experiences for the consumers. Similarly, with the personalized profile on the consumers, marketing can be highly exploitative. Box 8.23 Example of targeting the vulnerable Let us suppose that Hari has addiction towards online gambling. Knowing this from the data collected by data-driven tools from Hari’s personal data,

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Company G regularly sends marketing information of gambling–related products to Hari.

The children are one of the most vulnerable groups of consumers. Children’s inability to understand the risks present in the products and services available on the Internet, or in the products enabled by AI and data-driven technology, makes them extra vulnerable and susceptible to the manipulation and exploitation techniques. AI-based technology, as said before, opens up a whole new set of possibilities of exploitation of the vulnerable in this regard. Smart toys or AI-enabled toys are now available in the market. Some of them are education-assistant, i.e. they help the child to learn something. Some are companions. These are marketed with children as the targets. Children do not realize all the risks which having a smart toy at home may entail.

What could be risky about having a smart toy at home for a child? The answer is a bit upsetting. The group of smart toys which is marketed as companions for a child is actually adaptive learner devices powered by the AI. They use AI to learn about the child user. That is, this type of toys collect various information about the child and the child’s preferences, it analyzes and personalizes the play experience for the child user. For example, they can learn what the child’s favorite color is, or what the child’s favorite ice cream flavor is. They learn and improve how they communicate with the child user, and how they can best respond the child user’s demands. Given time, the toy can know more about the child than the parents do. The point of concern here is that AI-enabled toys or bots as toys in the hands of children can collect a lot of information about the child, family and the household in general, and disseminate it to the connected AI system without knowledge of either the child or the family. Moreover, the language and the voice interfaces of the smart toy can influence an unsuspecting child’s mind.

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Read the case and answer the questions Case 8.4 Genesis ‘s My Friend Cayla Between 2014 and 2017, Genesis, a toy company, sold an AI-enabled toy named My friend Cayla, an interactive doll, which listened and responded to the children. As part of its adaptive training, the toy was recording the conversations with the children and with the parents, other members of the family, whoever was around the doll. It recorded, and used the voice recordings of the child and the family without parental consent. The toy, as it was connected to an AI system as part of its technology, in principle could share the recorded data with the third-party companies without any knowledge of the child or of the family. This feature of the doll was found highly problematic and troublesome by many, as it was breach of privacy. Germany banned the toy as a piece of concealed espionage device, and instructed anyone who has brought the toy to destroy it. Mattel’s Hello Barbie doll (2015) was yet another AI-enabled interactive toy which talked with the child user, collected information and created a psychological profile of the child user without the parent’s knowledge. Questions 1. What are the pressing ethical concerns in this case? 2. Do you think that the children need special protection from toys such as Cayla? Is this a case of targeting the vulnerable with a product? 3. What could be the potential ethical problem if an AI enabled toy collects information and prepares a psychological profile of a child without the parental knowledge? Source Cohen. M (2021). Case 8.4 brings to our attention a frightening possibility of a data collection through an AI-enabled toy from an unsuspecting child. It is also a cautionary story to understand the need for protection of the vulnerable from the AI-enabled intrusion. In the US, there is the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), a law which protects children who are 13 years and younger and their personal information on the Internet from being taken without express approval from parents. At least, there is a law to protect the data privacy of the minors in social media and other platforms. In many countries, the law still does not protect children’s data privacy from the intruders. In India, there is a Personal Data Protection Bill (PDPB 2019), which is a proposed legislation but is yet to become a law in the country. It classifies anyone under the age 18 as a child and aims to protect the children’s personal and sensitive data from exploitation.

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In marketing ethics, the orthodox view is that it is ethically not permissible to market good to the specially vulnerable population in a way that does not treat them fairly and may harm them, and that marketing strategies engage in this prohibited practice are unethical or unscrupulous (Brenkert, 1998). We can add to that the following: To treat the vulnerable as equal and capable as any other consumer in the market is an act of gross injustice. It treats the vulnerable unfairly and also treats them as “merely a means”, which Kant proscribed for any human being, and thereby shows them utter disrespect. Quick Question 8.10 Mrs Tumkar has recently lost her husband and is yet to fully come out of the grieving. However, when she opened her email this morning, she found three mails from three peviously unknown companies: A pharmaceutical company trying sell her medication for anxiety and depression; a counselling clinic is offering her a reduced entry fee to attend its expert sessions on ‘How to handle personal grief’; and a realtor company is asking if she would be interested to put her house for sale and move to a smaller apartment. Questions: 1. Explain in what sense Mrs Tumkar may be considered as vulnerale. 2. Would the emails Mrs Tumkar has received be considered as microtargeting the vulnerable? Justify. 3. Will the case qualify as an instance of targeting the vulnerable marketing?

8.5.7 Digital Divide and Inequalities We now come to a pertinent ethical issue related to the phenomenon of digital divide. A digital divide is a divide or gap created in the world population due to Internet and related technologies. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) defines the digital divide as: …the term “digital divide” refers to the gap between individuals, households, businesses and geographic areas at different socio-economic levels with regard both to their opportunities to access information and communication technologies (ICTs) and to their use of the Internet for a wide variety of activities. (OECD, 2001, p. 5)

In other words, the digital divide refers to a new form of inequality among the population of a country in terms of their access to, knowledge of, and empowerment by the Internet and the different kind of information and communication technologies (ICTs). Some countries and some populations have easy access, knowledge of, and wider use of the Internet and the ICTs, whereas other countries and some populations lag behind in each of these. As a result, opportunities created by these technologies cannot be evenly distributed due to the digital divide.

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Box 8.24 Digital divide Digital divide refers to a new form of inequality among the population of a country in terms of their access to, knowledge of and empowerment by the internet and the different kind of information and communication technology. The term digital divide typically refers to the decreased access to digital technologies and the Internet, and the consequent decreased opportunities. Globally, the digital divide is typically visible among the ethnic minorities, racial minorities, rural populations, people with disabilities, and those with low socio-economic status (Chang et al., 2004). Like any other social disparities, digital divide in a society also works against an overall growth of the society. It obstructs a level playing field for all and obstructs the delivery of equal opportunities in a society. In 2022, the data show that unfortunately, the digital divide still remains problematic new data from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations specialized agency for information and communication technologies (ICTs), reveal that 2.9 Billion people in the world are still offline and have never used the Internet (ITU, 2021). The World Economic Forum report (2022) also cites this data. Only 1/3 population of Africa use the Internet, whereas, in Europe, 90% of the population of Europe are connected online (Vestberg, 2022). The data are stark reminder of the fact that the ability to connect to the Internet still remains profoundly unequal. Availability, accessibility, and digital literacy are the usual parameters to measure the digital divide. The problem of digital divide still remains a triad of barriers: • Affordability barrier: Internet, mobile, and other ICTs are not affordable • Accessibility barrier: Internet, mobile, and ICTs are not accessible • Usability barrier: The use of Internet, mobile and ICTs are not wide, or efficient. As a result, people who are on the wrong side of the divide are not included in the digital economy or its benefits. The picture of India in this regard is as follows. The National Family Health Survey (NFHS)-5 (2019–2021), Government of India, shows that in India only 57.1% males and 33.3% of females have used the Internet. NFHS -5 shows this digital divide exists across the states. There is also a pronounced rural-urban divide. In urban areas, expectedly, the users of Internet are more, and among them males are more (urban males 72.5%, urban females 51.8%), and in the rural areas, only 48.7% of males and 24.6% females have ever used the Internet. The digital divide is expectedly sharper in the scheduled tribe population in the remote areas. Niti Ayog, in its report “Strategy for New India @ 75” (2018), has underscored the need to eliminate the digital divide in the country by 2023. It concedes that almost half the population of India does not have access to the Internet.

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From the above, it becomes glaringly evident that as India is gearing up for the AI-enabled future, unfortunately there is a wide gap between the digitally able and the digitally disabled among its population.  These days, with the proliferation of Internet, AI-enabled data-driven technologies, information, and communication technologies all over the world, access, knowledge, and use of these technologies play a decisive role in creating advantages in political, economic, and social aspects of life. Hence, striking inequalities between those who have access and knowledge and use of the technologies and their advantages and those do not have those will imply an increased gap in the society. Digital technology creates opportunities to participate in a digital economy. It creates new capabilities to engage in entrepreneurship. It provides opportunities to network with peers not just in one physical location, but with peers who are spread globally. It provides access to critical financial and career opportunities, crucial health, and educational information. A yawning digital divide can only produce unfair access and knowledge limitation for one section in the society, and unfair advantage for the other section.  Moreover, it makes the digitally disabled a vulnerable group at risk. The risk of manipulation and exploitation that a vulnerable user has from the Internet or from the AI-empowered industries should be particularly a matter of concern for countries where the digital divide is visibly pronounced, such as in India. The digital divide also points at the great risk in which the digitally unable population of India stands as a vulnerable population, as the new form of doing business as empowered by AI technology and with its newer forms of manipulation, exploitation, and surveillance rolls in.

Quick Question 8.11 1. If poverty is the reason for digital divide, what kind of barrier would it produce? (a) Affordability barrier (b) Accessibility barrier (c) Usabiity barrier 2. Is poverty alone the reason for digital divide in a country such as India? Justify your answer.

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8.5.8 Gender Digital Divide and Inequalities Just as digital divide exists, data show that there is also a gender-based digital divide. In recent times, Big Data has widened our understanding of a gender digital divide which exist among the adult women of the world. Big Data analytics shows clearly there is a widening gap between men and women all over the globe in terms of access and use of Internet and related technologies. The women either do not have access, or are denied access, to the Internet, and to the information and communication technologies. Men are more likely to own a mobile, and women are more likely borrow or share the mobile of a household or male member. Women are more likely to have cheaper phones which do not connect to the Internet, and less likely to own a smartphone. Although there is paucity of data in the adolescent age group of girls, it is highly likely that the alarming divide also exist in the girl cohort (UNICEF, 2021). The gender digital divide is an ethically problematic issue. For, as already explained above, the digital divide creates disproportionate disadvantage for the digitally excluded. For women, this creates even greater disadvantage and vulnerability, as the existing gender norms in patriarchal societies already put them at a socio-economically vulnerable position. Denied access or restricted access means that the women are also denied or kept away the potential for change and achievement which these technologies bring with them. It also restricts them from gaining agency and control over their lives and future. Moreover, the Internet access and use can significantly help women in remote locations where it may be very difficult to make meaningful improvement of their lives. Box 8.25 Gender Digital Divide Gender digital divide is a gap or inequality which present itself between men and women in terms of access, affordability, knowledge and use of internet and the related digital, information and communication technologies. The facts are stark. More than 50% of women in the world do not have access to Internet. However, the percentage is likely to be higher in the low- and middleincome countries (ITU, 2019; UNICEF, 2021). Clearly, in different regions, the Internet penetration rates for men and women are different. In India, in 2021 for men the Internet penetration rate was 57.1% of male population, but only 33.3% among the female population. There is a noticeable gender gap in mobile ownership, and it is much larger in South Asia (23%). The gender divide shows up even in the use of the mobile phones. The women use the Internet less frequently and make use of digital services less intensively than men. The gender digital divide is not a simple technological problem. It is also a complex issue of various socio-economic factors. The gender digital divide is a manifestation

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of systematic discrimination against women and can pose as a significant barrier to their participation in the increasingly digital economy and society (FerMUN, 2021). Quick Question 8.12 What is gender digital divide? Does it hinder the attainment of any of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)?

8.5.9 Fake Data, Fake News, “Deep Fake” 8.5.9.1

The Fake and the Synthetic

In empirical research, in social science or in science, data provide the backbone of the research. Fake data or fabricated data in that context is a mark of devious malpractice, in which the researcher manufactures the data without going through the time-consuming and hard work of actually collecting the field data, or of conducting intricate experiments. In case of AI, however, fake data or synthetic data do not always have a bad connotation. Synthetic data are created artificially by machine algorithms and are not generated by the actual events in the real world. AI needs to be trained on huge datasets. Often, real data in the required quantity may not be available, or may lack the quality, and may have gaps. Or, using the real datasets may cause privacy problem. This is why for training AI and for developing analytics solution, synthetic or artificially generated data are used. With the synthetic data, the AI goes through mock trials to learn a task. Now, there are companies which use their own software to produce realistic data which, they claim, effectively imitate the full complexity and the nuances of the real data. Synthetic data, when disclosed and used as fabricated data with very specific purposes, are not ethically contentious. Fake news or fake video, however, are created and are false or misleading information, but which are presented as real. Fake information is ethically questionable. Taxonomy of Information We may follow the taxonomy of information by Baines & Elliot (2020), along with the examples that they cited: Misinformation: If there is no intention to deceive, but the information and the proposition containing the information are not true. In the context of print media, the concept earlier was called yellow journalism. Yellow journalism was fabricated news which had no basis in evidence.

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Example ‘Dettol is proven to prevent human coronavirus’. Circulated over Facebook, this information was not true, but there was perhaps no intention to deceive. For, Dettol is known as an anti-bacterial agent, and the sharers may have trusted its preventive power to extend to human Coronavirus.

Disinformation: If there is an intention to deceive, and the information and the proposition containing the information are not true, it is disinformation.

Example ‘Covid-19 is caused by 5G’. Again, this was disseminated all over Facebook by a medical practitioner who charged money for his consultation in alternative medicine. Baines and Elliott (p.14) claim that perhaps the practitioner had some intent to mislead and to persuade people to distrust the mainstream medicines and to flock to him for alternative medicine.

Malinformation: If there is an intention to deceive, and the information and the proposition and its truth value is repurposed to deceive, it is malinformation.

Example “Even with corona virus panic buying, no one is buying vegan food”. The statement was posted in Facebook with an image of shelves of vegan food full with food in the middle of empty supermarket shelves. The overall message is misleading and the truth value has been, because the image was taken from another context: from 2017, after the hurricane Harvey in Texas. In fake news and fake videos, we mostly find disinformation and malinformation.

We must also note that fake news need not be entirely false; in fact, for the sake of credibility it mingles a bit of facts with the false or fabricated information. Fake news is often viewed as a continuum. As cited by Molina et al. (2019, 2021, p. 185), the real-life fact-checker organization such Snopes.Com classifies fake news not in binaries (true or false), but into 12 different categories, which include: true, false, mostly true, mostly false, mixture, misattribution, legend, and scam.

8.5.9.2

Problem of Fake News

Once the data integrity is compromised for the sake of expediency of businesses or for the quality of data, it leaves the door open to other, more problematic variety of data generation by AI. The AI can be also trained to produce false information, false stories, and finally, fake news. Fake news is news story, or news article, or news video, which are created and are false or misleading information, but which are presented as news. The concept, known as disinformation, earlier was called yellow journalism. Yellow journalism

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was fabricated news which had no basis in evidence. With the online content and the ingress of AI in the scene, the fabricated online news is now referred to as fake news.

Earlier, even to do yellow journalism, one needed to be associated with a news organization as a reporter. Times have changed. Now, anyone can create content online, curate, and even disseminate content online. Now, purely personal opinions, without any basis on facts, can be easily disseminated using the traditional and dominating social media platforms. Studies show that even readers are not keen to discern; they prefer the fake news better than the credible news sources, if the opinion expressed agrees with the reader’s own, prior beliefs (Bode and Vraga, 2015). Fake news exhibits a remarkable tendency to multiply and to become viral, through fast and repeated online dissemination by the receivers. Fake news is often attributed a deceitful intent on the part of the fake news creator (Allcott and Gentzcow, 2017). They are disseminated with a mal-intent to deceive or to mislead people. Or, sometimes, their aim is to damage the reputation of a person or an entity. This is particularly true of use of fake news as political propaganda. However, some scholars argue that fake news need not always have intent to deceive. They point at reports by credible organizations such as The Washington Post, New York Times, and Associated Press, who at one point allegedly were all publishing false information or fake news, not because they had an intent to deceive people. They were being manipulated and lured by the Soviets and the Conservative political actors (Benkler, Faris and Roberts, 2018). Fake news need not be entirely false; in fact, for the sake of credibility it mingles a bit of facts with the false or fabricated information. Fake news is often viewed as a continuum. As cited by Molina et al. (2019, 2021, p. 185), the real-life fact-checker organization such Snopes.Com classifies fake news not in binaries (true or false), but into 12 different categories, which include: true, false, mostly true, mostly false, mixture, misattribution, legend, and scam.

8.5.9.3

Impact of Fake News on the Individual and the Society

The ethical analysis of fake news can begin by examining its impact on people and the society. Fake news has a huge potential to harm people. For example, fake information and news about medical treatments and miracle cures, and medicines for major diseases, such as cancer, can not only lead to financial loss but also despair and hopelessness. Or, consider the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the early years of the COVID pandemic (2019–2020), the virus was new. Also, there

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was no vaccine available yet. Consequently, there was a huge uncertainty, anxiety, and panic among people about this new virus and the illness which it brought. Above all, there was a great need for more and urgent information about the new pathogen, abut its clinical manifestations, its transmission routes, and the preventive measures that ordinary people can take as protection. Being confined at their respective places, people tried to fill in the information gap from gleaning all kinds of information from the social media posts, and from Internet searches, blogs, and discussion forums (Depoux et al., 2020). In that information, facts and fake news were not differentiated. Fabricated and fraudulent information ranging from conspiracy theories, such as a biological weapon produced in Wuhan, China, to recommendations for pseudo treatments of the virus, such as hot water with lemon can kill the virus, stories about its spread and origin flooded the online content so much that the WHO Director General had to express a concern that in addition to fighting a pandemic, WHO is also fighting an “infodemic”. WHO considered this barrage of false information epidemic about the COVID-19 a serious threat to public health (WHO, 2020). A study done on fake news stories during the early days of the pandemic identified 1225 pieces of COVID-19 fake news stories (Naeem et al., 2020). The psychological impact of the fake news, particularly in a crisis, on the people is often deleterious. Consider for example the fake news of Chloroquine, used for treating Malaria and rheumatoid arthritis, as a powerful cure for the coronavirus. In March 2020, the-then US President Donald Trump claimed that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had approved Chloroquine to treat COVID-19 and acclaimed that Chloroquine had shown very encouraging results. After the briefing, FDA issued a statement that it had not approved the drug and considers it at an experimental phase for COVID-19 treatment. However, endorsement from the US President led to a lot of people all over the world to stock up on the medicine, which led to a drug shortage and a price hike of the medicine. In Nigeria, three people were hospitalized from Chloroquine poisoning, as they overconsumed the medicine to protect themselves from COVID-19 (Busari and Adbayo, 2020). Various research studies report that fake news and the misinformation and disinformation contained in them can cause the following disruptive mental conditions in people: • • • • • • •

Fear and panic Confusion Stress Insomnia Anger Anxiety Depression (As cited in Rocha et al., 2021).

Fake news is also known to incite mob violence. During the vaccine drive for corona virus, the anxiety and stress caused by the fake news about COVID-19 was high enough to even lead to physical harassment and violent attacks on healthcare professionals in India. It went to such deplorable extent that Indian Medical Association had to ask for intervention from the Prime Minister to protect the doctors from physical

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assault by fake news-driven mobs (Mordani, 2021). In India, there was also a spate of very unfortunate incidences where innocent people became a victim of brutal mob lynching, leading to injuries and even seven deaths, spurred by false rumor spreading over WhatsApp (Staff reporter, BBC News 2018; Daly, 2022). Fake news can be intentionally put to more sinister purposes to create an adverse impact on the society. Hate speech is a widely known example of it. Hate speech refers to the “offensive discourse targeting a group or an individual based on inherent characteristics- such as race, religion or gender- which may threaten social peace” (UN, 2022). In the online content, it can take the form of an incendiary post or a video to deliberately provoke hatred for a person or a group of people. Hate speech and crimes based on hate speech are on the rise in the world. Fake news generation has added a new dimension to the hate speech. Fake news, fake images, and even fake videos are being created to fuel hate speeches.  You might be wondering about how to know which news or video is fake. In general, it is suggested that we need to inculcate in ourselves the ability to think critically about the information we receive and consume. Instead of mindlessly assisting in its further transmission by forwarding., we should try to critically check the information against our commonsense to verify its truth. We should also learn how to distinguish facts from mere opinions. This is known as media literacy. Media literacy is the ability to be a critical thinker with regards information and media, so that one does not fall easy prey to false information and undue persuasion. Other than that, there are some fact-checking organizations. They keep checking the facts and also check information spread through various media against those facts. Snopes, for example, is a fact-checking website. One can also check news and information in their archives. Factcheck.org is another website which aims to oversee factual accuracy in news and information related to American politics. Its objective is to reduce deceptive, misleading, and false information which abounds. Australia has its own AAP factcheck as part of its national news agency. India has several of such fact checking organizations, including some from the news services, such as India Today. However, Govt of India has its Press Information Bureau fact checking portal.

8.5.9.4

Deep Fake and its Implications

Deep learning has now advanced far enough to enable the creation of such realistic photo images and videos of such great quality that it is very difficult to identify them as fake. The created content appears to be the original. Since they are the fake created by the data-driven deep learning algorithms, the term used to refer to them is deep fake. The term deep fake is a clever portmanteau word: It is a combination of the two terms, deep and fake, and covers all AI-generated fake multi-modal content, such

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as audio, video, and pictures. Deep fakes are artificially construed but extremely convincing items. Tools for altering images and videos have been around for a long time. For example, image editing software tools are abundantly available on smartphones to gloss over one’s image and to smooth over the flaws of the skin tone. Deep fakes are more sophisticated, more empowered extensions of these. With immersive Virtual Reality (VR), one may build a 3-D model of a person from a 2-D image using photogrammetry and other techniques and create even more impactful VR deepfake (Hancock & Ballenson, 2021). Deep fakes are falsified multi-modal content created by deep neural networks (DNN). The rapid development of the DNNs has made creation of deep fakes easier and quicker. Generally, we find three types of deep fakes (mostly videos) (Lyu, 2020): (a) Head puppetry: Synthesizing someone else’s whole head up to shoulders onto the video of another person’s head, so that the synthesized target person appears to behave as the source person. (b) Face swapping: Replacing the face of the source video by a synthesized face of the target person keeping the facial expressions intact. (c) Lip syncing: Manipulating the lip area of a video to make it seem that the person in the video said certain things which the person did not say in reality. The deep fake is a double edged sword. It can be used for positive outcome. For example, deep fake technology can be used for revolutionizing education. Historical events or characters may be made virtually alive in a video and can speak to the people. Deep fake technology can also be used for disseminating awareness and socially useful messages using a celebrity figure. For example, in Malaria Must Die campaign, David Beckham, a former star football professional player and a longterm Malaria eradication ambassador, was seen in a video speaking in nine different languages (https://malariamustdie.com/news/david-beckham-launches-worlds-firstvoice-petition-end-malaria). Beckham cannot really speak all the languages. But, with the help of deep fake technology, his lips could move and match with none different languages; and he could reach out to various kinds of populations who speak and understand these languages. Deep fake can make the voices sound like the original voice of a person and can even match the lip movements with the words spoken. In the fashion industry, deep fake technology can enable the consumers to virtually act as the model for the clothes before a purchase. So, from the above, we can see that deep fake can be used for positive outcome which are beneficial for people. Deep Fake used with Malicious Intent However, deepfake can also be used with a malicious intent. Deepfakes are one of most potent and effective sources of spreading misinformation, and provocation, such as hate speech. A convincing video of some important politician, for instance, doing a sacrilege in a site which is considered as holy in a certain faith can start a riot between religious communities and can incite war between the countries.

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In 2017, University of Washington, USA, researchers produced a fake Barrack Obama video using AI. Their technique allowed putting any words in Obama’s mouth. The lips and mouth would move in the exact way in which Obama moves his lips and mouth (Pic. 8.13).

Pic. 8.13 Deep fake obama video

In 2018, in a video Barrack Obama appeared to curse and call Donald Trump names (Fagan, 2018). It was revealed that the video was a deep fake. The voice of an actor and director John Peele was used and inserted in an original video of Obama, and an effect was created of Obama saying things he did not. The effect was chillingly real. Although the University of Washington researchers or the Obama-Trump Video did not have a criminal intent, there are incidents, however, of using the deep fake technology for nefarious purposes. For example, in Reddit, with deep fake technology a user was able to swap the faces in pornographic videos with faces of celebrity actresses (Statt, 2018; Price, 2018). In March 2018, a deep fake video was posted on Reddit in which the face of Michelle Obama, the then First Lady of the USA, was superimposed on the face of a pornstar. As already mentioned, deep fake videos of Mr. Obama were also widely circulated on the Internet (Supasorn et al. 2017). In the wrong hands, on the social media platforms, the deep fake has already caused political conundrums and obscene content. Deepnude is a software that removes clothing from a person in an image, and the end result is a deepfake image or video of a person in the nude. In India, cybercrime officials are wary about deepnude apps and websites, as they have led to a spate of criminal efforts to blackmail the innocent victim. The image could be used on social networking sites or dating sites to seek revenge, or even to commit a fraud (Gill, 2020). This shows the great potential of danger that the deep fake has. Since it is very difficult to distinguish from the real, they can be created and disseminated with malicious intent to manipulate, persuade, and mislead people. The adverse impacts of deepfake are deep on an individual and on the society. One of the major insidious impact of the deepfakes is distortion of truth. Because

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of their practical indistinguishability from the original, they have a rare power of convincing people that the fake event or activity has actually happened. Moreover, one of the effects of the deep fakes is to gradually lose trust on common media. It is natural for people to become deeply suspicious of any media that they see. The outcome is a general erosion of trust on media. People would start to be skeptical about the authentic audio and video clips as deepfakes. The more disinformation spreads, the more confusion about the truth increases. A thought-provoking public example is that in 2020 Winni Heartstrong, a Republican Congressional candidate, brought out a long report to claim that the video of George Floyd’s murder was a deepfake (Farmer, 2021). On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, an African-American man, was murdered by a police officer during an arrest on suspicion in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. The false report brought out by Heartstrong also claimed that George Floyd has been long dead. As Hancock and Ballenson (2021) reports, deep fakes can have interpersonal consequences too. Video deep fakes have potentially deep impact to modify memories or even implant a false memory and can effect a change of attitude towards person whom the deep fake video is about. Research also shows that since many social media users do not have the skill or experience to distinguish facts from fake news. Consequently, fake news and deep fake videos, which are viral in social media, indeed adversely affect their personal well-being and also disturb harmony in the community. A corollary effect is that deep fakes can easily lead people to acquire false beliefs. Deep fakes can also have effect on perception of the unethical. Studies report that encountering fake news headlines again and again make them seem less unethical for media to publish and to share online (Effron & Raj, 2020). Deepfakes when used to malign or disrepute a person can inflict serious psychological harm on an individual. Some legal scholars have claimed that deep fakes can potentially distort the democratic exchange of opinions, influence public opinions and consequently election results, raise mistrust in social institutions, put public safety and national security at risk, defame an innocent person or organization, and erode trust in actual journalism (Chesney & Citron, 2018). Epistemic threat of deep fakes: Philosopher Don Fallis (2020) has claimed that the deep fakes pose epistemic threat to us. He argues that the visual system is dominant source of information to us, and because deep fake videos carry high load of information, we tend to believe them and the videos become truth for us. But, as we later realize that such apparently accurate videos also can be fake, the ensuing deep distrust would come in the way of trusting any media whatsoever that one sees. Thus, the epistemic threat of deep fakes is that they interfere with our ability to acquire knowledge about the word from media. The concerns are not exaggerated. Studies (Vaccari & Chadwick, 2020) have claimed that exposure to deep fakes increased uncertainty about media in general, in news in particular.

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Quick Question 8.13 1. How is malinformation different from disinformation, according to the taxonomy of information given?

8.5.10 Trust in AI Systems The discussion above about AI and the various ethical issues in connection to its use may boil down to a single issue about trust. According to some, in the interaction with the AI system and data-driven technology the issue of trust is said to be “AI’s biggest problem” (Chintada, 2021). In human-to-human interaction in a society, trust is certainly an important element. Trust is said to be foundational in a close interpersonal relationship. Trust binds people together. To trust someone is to rely on someone and to feel that the person will not hurt, disrespect, or violate in any way. Lack of trust, on the other hand, creates suspicion and feeling of vulnerability with a concern of being harmed by the one who is not trusted. Example For example, a deficit of trust on one’s doctor may make a patient wonder about harm from the doctor’s prescribed medicines and treatment. A lack of trust about one’s spouse may make one feel unsafe while being under the same roof. A deficit of trust about a hired babysitter may make a parent put the babysitter and the baby under CC-TV surveillance. Lack of trust makes people uncertain about the other person and encourages one to remain on guard, and not to share anything important. These attitudes and behavior remain true even with the human-AI interaction. AI technology is showing the signs of becoming pervasive in certain important fields; but people in general do not appear to trust the AI systems. Empirical surveys (Maru, 2019; Cannon, 2019) show that though AI systems have been delivering relevant experience which the consumers demand, consumers in general do not trust AI systems, and consumers are cynical about the promised benefits that AI can bring to businesses. Many believe that AI systems lack empathy and therefore cannot make ethically correct decisions. In business as in health care, most consumers still prefer the human touch. Thus, on the ground, the distrust about the AI systems is palpably present. However, the issue of trust between the human-AI system is not exactly the same as the issue of trust between the humans. In case of the humans, the one who is trusted knows that he or she is being trusted and shows signs of understanding the responsibilities which comes with acceptance of that trust. For example, in a flight,

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the passengers have to trust the skill and the competence of the pilot. The pilot knows that and shows signs of accepting that entrusted responsibility in terms of ensuring passenger safety and safety measures in flight and in landing and take-off. In case of interaction with an AI system, however, there is no obvious way to ensure that the system understands the responsibility entrusted and can meaningfully assure an user. It is also not known clearly what behavior is to expect from a trustworthy AI system. In the middle of such uncertainties and knowledge gaps, increasingly AI technology is being used as decision-support in certain key decision areas: Such as: • In medical diagnoses: The use of AI is rapidly growing in particular in the fields of medical diagnostics and in management of treatment. For example, machine learning is being used for checking the symptoms, and to arrive at diagnosis. AIdriven programs can be trained to identify a disease from medical images such as X-Rays, MRIs, and CT Scans. • In banking sector decisions: Banking sector also has adopted AI systems in its different operations. AI-driven chatbots, AI-based facial recognition technology, fraud detection systems are some of the examples of such adoption. AI is integrated in many banking mobile apps for the ease of customer interactions. Customer data are being analyzed by data analytics in banking sector to avoid financial risks, and even to decide on who should be given a financial loan. • In the military weapon systems: AI is incorporated in weapons and other military systems deployed in land, water and space by many countries. It is claimed that inclusion of AI has led to more sophistication in military weapon systems. As discussed earlier, there are automated weapon systems which, if necessary, can identify, engage and destroy targets without human control. These are some examples among many other important areas. It is understandable that a lack of trust in AI systems raises question about the wisdom behind allowing AI systems a decision-making role in such important areas. An error in AI-enabled decision-making or decision-support in any of these key areas may jeopardize people, may create irreparable damage to an organization’s reputation, profit, and good will, and can drive people away in hordes. Just as there are many advantages of shifting the load of work onto automated AI systems, there is also an element of risk in it. The question of trust between an user and an AI system, therefore, is a crucial one. It invokes certain fundamental normative considerations. Europe began its AI strategy in 2018. European Commission appointed The European Commission’s High-Level Expert Group on AI (AI HLEG) in 2018, and the expert group brought out the Ethics Guidelines in April 2019. The Guidelines is very clear in its emphasis on the necessity of “Trustworthy AI”. Its tone is explicitly cautionary. According to the guidelines, truthworthy AI should be: (a) Lawful: Respecting laws and regulations (b) Ethical: Respecting ethical principles and values

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(c) Robust: Must take into account its social environment (AIHLEG, 2019). The guidelines set these as the basic expectations for a trustworthy AI. While the well-intentions behind the expectations mentioned are clear, it is not clear what the guidelines desired in (b). It is easier to ensure that the AI system complies with the law and is aware of its social environment. However, it is not so easy to ensure whether it is being respectful towards ethical principles and values that are present in the humans, unless the respect is understood as compliance to the stated ethical norms. It has further stated seven key requirements that AI systems need to fulfill in order to be trustworthy: (1) Human agency and oversight: Even though the AI is there to empower the humans, the human supervision is a must in AI operations. (2) Technical robustness and safety: The AI system must be resilient to rectify any mistake promptly, and be safe, accurate and reliable, to minimize and to prevent any unintentional harm that may arise. (3) Privacy and data governance: To ensure data privacy and also quality and legitimate use of the data. (4) Transparency: Traceable mechanism should make the decisions by the AI system clear to the human users. The human users must also be made aware of the presence of the AI system, and its abilities and limitations. (5) Diversity, non-discrimination and fairness: Unfair discriminatory bias must be avoided. (6) Environmental and societal well-being: Ai systems should operate in a sustainable and environment-friendly way. (7) Accountability: Mechanisms must be put in place to ensure responsibility and accountability for AI systems and their actions and outcomes. There must be audit of critical operations, and redressal should be made possible (Ibid.)

8.5.11 Trustworthy AI We now come to the end of our discussion of ethics and AI with a set of positive recommendations about how to develop trustworthy AI. The problems have been delineated in the sections above. The outline of suggestion for a solution is listed here below. Although different thinkers have made several suggestions, we shall summarize here what Floridi et al. (2018) have recommended. They have recommended a framework of five ethical principles as the guiding norms for developing trustworthy AI. The ethical principles are as follows:

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Principle of Non-maleficence

This principle is the well-established ‘no-harm’ principle. It directs that one should not do anything to harm the others. In Medical Ethics, the principle of non-maleficence occupies a central position. It directs a physician to not do anything to harm the patient. Since the time of Hippocrates, the primary ethical obligation for a physician is not to harm anyone. In the context of the AI system, the principle cautions us about the potential negative consequences of AI technologies, including its overuse, misuse, and abuse. The principle of non-maleficence dictates that all the key agents involved in the development of an AI system (such as the software developers of the AI system, the companies which make the AI systems, the companies deploy the AI systems, and make AI available to the people) must ensure that the AI does not harm the people. This is a prime directive for trustworthy AI. It is not clear whether the directive is meant for AI technology itself or for the people who develop, and use AI. We take it primarily as an instruction to the developers of AI systems, companies which manufacture and sell devices and systems based on AI technology, and also those who are in charge of using AI in public space.. In case of automated vehicles, as we have seen, the ambit of this principle expands to cover other animals and inanimate property too. This means that the automated vehicle must not cause harm or damage to any animal or inanimate property either. Harm and Non-maleficence The term harm in the context of AI needs to be understood carefully. The term harm covers all the risks that may arise from the use, deployment, and development of AI systems. Some of these harms can be intentional, as in the case malicious use of AI. For example, hacking, identity theft, privacy violations, manipulation, and exploitation of unsuspecting AI user are instances of harm arising from the use of AI with a malicious intent. Other harms may arise unintentionally or inadvertently, e.g. risks from technical failures. The principle of non-maleficence is invoked in ethics of AI to minimize or to avoid all such harm. The harm from AI may be also understood in the following two categories: (a) Physical harm, such as injury, from interaction with an AI system (b) Psychological harm, such as in receiving threats through AI technologies, being a victim of cyberbullying, being targeted by hate speech.

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Physical Harm A physical harm is understood as a physical injury, bodily pain, impairment, or a disease. It can take different forms, such as hitting, causing injury and physical pain. The possibility of physical harm to the humans from AI systems is not a matter of fiction, as has been seen in particular in the case of AI-enabled robots and automated vehicles. Examples In 2015, a robot killed a 22-year old contractor at a Volkswagen plant in Germany. It grabbed and crushed the man against a metal plate (Associated Press, 2015). It was not made clear if a human error was to be blamed for the robot’s actions, or the problem was with the robot. Nonetheless, incidents such as this shakes our trust in an AI system (Pic. 8.14).

Pic. 8.14 A humanoid robot

Similarly, in July 2022, according to the reports and video from Russian media, in Moscow open, a chess tournament held July 13–22, 2022, in Moscow, a chess playing robot reportedly grabbed and broke a finger of a seven-year old boy. It is claimed that the robot grabbed the finger of the boy, because the boy made more than one move quickly and thereby broke the rule (Henley, 2022). In this case, although the error which triggered the robot’s action may have been on the human side, the outcome is unfortunate. The robot’s mechanical arm perhaps did not know how much pressure should be exerted on a human hand, and its grip was powerful enough to break a finger in a human hand (Pic. 8.15).

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Pic. 8.15 Chess-playing robot

Stray incidences, such as the above, underscore the need for a more careful approach in human-AI-robot interactions. Earlier in this chapter, incidents involving error of automated vehicles resulting in loss of human life have been reported. People need assurance that utmost precautions are taken to prevent such undesirable physical harm from the AI systems and robots. Psychological Harm A psychological harm refers to harm which is mental or emotional in nature causing psychological injury to a person. Psychological injury can take different forms, such as trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety, and certain phobias. AI systems and AI technologies can be used to cause psychological harm in humans, such as mental unrest and disquiet. In what follows, we shall mention a few examples of such uses of AI and related technologies. Cyberbullying as a Psychological Harm Bullying means aggressive intimidation and the effort to forcefully dominate another person. Bullying also may consist of continuous hurtful teasing and threats to another person. Its aim is to make fun of, belittle and forcibly put the target in continuous discomfort and shame in public. Bullying in general, at school and at workplace, is an extremely objectionable but an unfortunate common phenomenon all over the world. The adverse psychological impact on the bullied is serious; the psychological harm caused may lead to deep anxiety, depression and even suicide. Recognizing the need to control and prevent such socially undesirable behavior, many countries have passed anti-bullying laws. Sweden was the first among the countries to pass a law against such behavior, then Belgium, Australia and other countries followed the suit. In Asia, China and Japan both have a strict anti-bullying law (Pic. 8.16).

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Pic. 8.16 Bullying

In connection to AI systems, bullying takes the form of cyberbullying. Cyberbullying is bullying in the cyberspace using digital technology (UNICEF). It can take place in social media platforms, such as Facebook, or in messaging platforms, such as WhatsApp, or even in gaming platforms, or in mobile phones. The behavior chooses a target and uses the digital technology to repeatedly intimidate or threaten, or to provoke or to shame the target person. It can take many forms. For instance, the bully may spread lies about the target by making social media posts or may use embarrassing pictures and videos and post them in the social media to put the target in shame. Or, the bully may continue to send hurtful or abusive messages using digital technology or messenger platforms. Or, the bully may even impersonate the target and hack into the target’s account to send hurtful and insulting messages to the target’s friends and acquaintances. Needless to say, the intention of the bully is to dominate the target by showing the power to create a negative impact on the target. It is a very objectionable and unethical behavior. Just as with bullying, the effects of cyberbullying also cause psychological and physical harm. The effects may be at the emotional and psychological level, but they also get manifested in the body, e.g. in causing loss of sleep. Box 8.26 Cyberbullying Cyberbullying is bullying in the cyberspace using the digital technology. Using the social media platforms, smart phones, AI-enabled gaming platforms, repeatedly the target person is threatened, intimidated, or shamed in public. Unfortunately, cyberbullying is a common behavior among the teenagers and young adults (age group 18–25 years), who have access and knowledge of the digital technology and the tools associated with them. As more and more teenagers and young adults are spending more time online than before, the menace of adverse impact of bullying in the virtual space is also growing. Studies show that aided by the AI-enabled tools and digital technology, targets of cyberbullying are more likely

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to report suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts than the offline bullying (Arnon et al., 2022). The realization of potent social harm from cyberbullying has led many countries to specifically pass legislation to ban it. For example, in 2014, with a new law Singapore has criminalized cyber harassment, cyberbullying, sexual harassment at workplace, and stalking. One of the benefits of the law is that the victims of cyberbullying under this law can seek legal protection to desist the bully or the harasser to cause more harm to them. In Philippines, cyberbullying is among the top five cybercrimes. To protect the minors from the aggressive act of cyberbullying, Philippines has passed a legislation against different forms of cyberbullying. Cyberbullying is also a crime in Australia. Preventive measures which are recommended include screening for cyberbullying, cautionary advices for teenagers and young adults not to post personal information in the public platforms of the Internet. Hate Speech Using the Social Media as a Psychological Harm Hate speech, as already discussed, is a kind of speech that aggressively spreads hatred against a person or a community. It typically uses offensive language. For example, it could against a racial minority group, or a religious group, or the followers of a political party. It could also be based on gender, disability status, or even native speakers of a language. Though hate speeches are mostly intended to cause psychological harm to the target group, its purposely discriminatory and inflammatory content is also known to incite physical harm, e.g. hate crimes and violence. Digital technology, Internet, social media platforms, instant messenger services, etc., have made it much easier to spread online hate speech. Online hate speeches have been linked with extremism, terrorism, and even hate crimes. Box 8.27 Online hate speech Online hate speeches are any online communication or expression which promotes hatred, discrimination and violence against a person, or a specific group of people or a community.

Online hate speeches are on the rise, because the Internet allows unlimited freedom of expression, and many people misuse and abuse that freedom. In the Internet, we find trolling as a regular phenomenon these days. Trolling is an Internet slang for an online activity, the sole purpose is to provoke, or annoy, or insult, someone by leaving an irksome or demeaning message. There are people who purposefully try to instigate conflict, hostility, and hatred in an online community by posting offensive messages. Trolling is not as extreme as online hate speech. However, it too is the manifestation of a mindset which shows online aggression towards the others.

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Box 8.28 Trolling Trolling in the context of internet behavior is to leave a scornful, or offensive, message to provoke, or to annoy or to insult a person in an online community. Because of its malicious nature, Belgium passed a law in 1981 which makes hate speech against any nationality, ethnic, race, or religious community illegal and punishable offense. Similar laws also exist in Canada, and New Zealand, among other countries. In 2017, Germany passed a law which criminalized online hate speech on social media. Moreover, the German law allows the social media network companies, such as Facebook, to be fined if the companies do not proactively deter and remove such content within a week. One of the positive advantages of the law was that Facebook and Twitter became more proactive to remove objectionable content. Recently, automatic hate speech detectors have started to detect online hate speeches. Online hate speeches are unethical behavior for a number of reasons. One, their emergence is often rooted in a malefic intent to cause harm to the target on the basis of some perceived justification. A major danger of hate speeches is that they can easily provoke harmful actions, such as violent attacks, on the target person or group. This goes against the principle of non-maleficence. Two, hate speeches also dehumanize the target and often make the target a scapegoat for all misfortunes. This is a behavior which conveniently, but very unfairly, lays all the blame onto the target. Three, as per Council of Europe, online hate speeches are considered as a threat to democracy and human rights. Some argue that legislation against online hate speech has the counter-productive consequence of curtailing freedom of speech. However, from an ethical viewpoint, such argument is not tenable. While living in a society, unconditional freedom of speech is not feasible; for various reasons, publicly made speeches have to comply with standards of social sensitivity. A politically or personally motivated hate speech, online or offline, is against the usual social standards of propriety and against the ethical norms of human dignity and ethical values of inclusion and respect for members of vulnerable minorities (Waldren, 2014). However, the point here is that the non-maleficence principle issues an ethical imperative to not to harm, and requires that steps should be taken to prevent the harm done. The developers, manufacturers, regulatory bodies and all other key players in AI systems and AI technologies must ensure to avoid the risks and harm which can arise from AI applications.

8.5.11.2

Principle of Beneficence

The Principle of Beneficence speaks of an ethical obligation to act for the benefit of the others. In normative language, this principle mandates that: One should act for the benefit of the others.

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In applied ethics, this injunction is understood as the duty to help others to achieve their goals and interests, and to protect them from possible harm. The principle covers acts on and practice of personal qualities such as kindness and generosity, and in terms of actions it suggests altruism, promoting the good of the others (Beauchamp, 2019). The principle does not merely stop at saying: Do no harm. It goes one step ahead of the Principle of Non-maleficence to assert that one should act for the benefit of the others. In the context of ethics of AI, the Principle of Beneficence prescribes that AI should be beneficial. That is, it prescribes that: AI must do good for the people.

In the context of AI, the term beneficence or doing good may be interpreted as contribution to the benefit of humanity. AI should be developed to promote what is good for the human beings and should actually benefit the society. Montreal Declaration for Responsible AI (University of Montreal, 2017) and IEEE (2017) both use the term well-being to interpret the beneficial character of AI. IEEE (2017) states that AI development should prioritize human well-being as the outcome of all systems design. Montreal Declaration (2017) mentions that AI should be developed to promote the well-being of all sentient creatures. House of Lords Artificial Intelligence Committee (2018), henceforth referred to as HLAIC, understands the principle of beneficence as AI contributing for the common good and for the benefit of humanity. European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies (EGESNT) (2018), on the other hand, understands the principle in terms of sustainability. It proclaims that AI should sustain the life on planet, help in sustaining the prosperity of humans, and preserve a good environment for the future generations. Altogether, as discussed above, it is evident that various Ethics of AI policy documents do not think that for AI only prevention of harm is adequate. In unison, they emphasize that in addition AI must promote the well-being of the people and the others in the planet.

8.5.11.3

Principle of Autonomy

As discussed earlier in connection to Kant’s ethics, in ethics personal autonomy means self-legislation. In other words, personal autonomy means being ruled by one’s own rule without the interference of any other. It promotes the idea that individuals have the right to decide for themselves. In ethics, personal autonomy is the basis of personal responsibility and moral personhood. In the context of AI and ethics, however, the notion of autonomy applies somewhat differently. In a sense, to use AI for decision-support or as the decision-making system is to surrender one’s autonomy to some extent. As Floridi et al. (2018) puts it: when we adopt AI and its smart agency, we willingly cede some of our decision-making power to machines.

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So, in Ethics of AI, we need to understand the principle of autonomy as a balancing act between what decision-making power we preserve for ourselves and what we cede to the AI-enabled systems. A technically autonomous AI system is the system which is capable of functioning without human intervention. This is a notion of functional autonomy, which refers to the capacity of the AI system to act independently. In the context of trustworthiness of AI systems, however, there are caveats. In this context, autonomy means that AI should show consistent signs of respecting the individual human’s wishes. AI’s respect for people’s autonomy should be shown in terms of restraints that an AI system can show, when people interacting with it expresses a wish. The AI must not impair the personal freedom of the humans to set their own rule and norms. Having said that, let us also add that there are ethical limits to respect for autonomy. An AI system should not misused by a human to perform illegal or unethical actions. For example, in the name of autonomy AI technologies should not be used to nudge or to manipulate an individual consumer’s free choices. Similarly, an AI system used in patient care or elderly care must be designed and programmed in a way to adapt its actions within a reasonable limit in tune with the patient’s choices. A robot should not be asked to torture an innocent person. Similarly, HLAIC (2018) cautions that the development of AI should also ensure that the autonomous power to hurt, deceive, or destroy a human being is never to be given to AI. Thus, just as the AI users’ autonomy needs to be restricted so as not to misuse or abuse AI, similarly, the autonomy of machines needs to be restricted. As Floridi et al. (2018) point out, a machine’s autonomy needs to be reversible, if there be the need. That is, for overriding reasons it should be possible to break a machine’s autonomy if needed, and to re-establish human autonomy. Montreal Declaration (2017) asserts that AI should be developed while promoting the autonomy of all human beings. The EGESNT (2018) also mentions that development of AI should not impair the freedom of the human beings to set their own rules and live according to those rules. In other words, dependence on AI must not be at the cost of human autonomy.

8.5.11.4

Principle of Justice

The concept of justice and its various types are already extensively discussed in previous chapter in this book. Therefore, we shall not repeat what has been said. However, this opportunity will be used to remind ourselves that in a society which is steeped in social injustices and systematic discrimination, such as against certain castes, or against certain gender, or religious community, or race, products, services, and algorithms are likely reflect some of the social injustices. For, the programmers, the software developers and the AI design teams are also part of that society, and their mindsets are conditioned by the social reality.

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In the context of Ethics of AI, the principle of justice conveys the message of elimination of injustices ensuing from the development, use, and deployment of AI systems ad devices. Its interpretation, however, are different in the policy documents. Montreal Declaration (2017) argues that development of AI should promote justice and eliminate all kinds of discrimination. In other words, it views application of justice in AI as corrective justice: AI should be used to rectify all past wrongs such as elimination of unjust discrimination

The EGESNT (2018) opines that AI should contribute to global justice and equity by equal access to AI technologies. It specifically mentions that AI should empower as many people all over the globe as possible. It also warns us of the peril of biased datasets when training the AI systems. In other words, justice would ensure that: AI should promote equitable sharing of the benefits through equal access, and thereby address global justice

The HLAIC (2018) argues that development of AI should also make fair provision for the emotional and economic flourishing of the humans. So, according to it, AI should prevent creation of newer injustices which will come if AI development does not contribute to overall flourishing in a human life.

Algorithmic Bias In the discussion of justice in Ethics of AI, addressing the issue of algorithmic bias holds a central place. Algorithmic bias is systematic and repeated bias in computer algorithms which results in unjust outcome for certain populations. For example, a computer program may give unfair privilege to one section of people over another set; or, it may put one section of people always at a disadvantage over another set of people. We shall discuss the specific examples shortly in this section. Box 8.29 Algorithmic bias Algorithmic bias is bias in the computer algorithms because of which the computer makes repeated and systematic error, and thus create unjust outcome for some populations. How does bias or prejudice creep into an algorithm? It may be difficult to say exactly how algorithms could be susceptible to bias. The answers can be varied. Bias in algorithms may stem from the oversights or biases of individual human programmers. The person or the team which developed the algorithms may carry a bias in their minds and that may get reflected even in the algorithms which they develop eventually. It is said that algorithmic bias can also show up from natural language processing. Inherent biases based on gender or race or caste get propagated into different apps including natural language processing.

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Algorithmic bias can also emanate from the entrenched systemic biases in the social institutions. Example 1 Misidentification of non-whites by facial recognition technology. In the US it is reported that facial recognition software misidentifies non-white people more often than the white people. In fact, the face recognition technology cannot tell black persons apart. This raises the concern that if used by the police, the same facial recognition software could increase the risk of non-white people getting arrested on being wrongly identified. In fact, this is what happened in the case of the arrest of Robert Williams in front of his wife and two children in his home in Detroit suburb, because the face recognition technology misidentified him as a watch thief (Burton-Harris & Mayor, 2020). Accordingly, bias in algorithms can be divided into two kinds: (a) Algorithmic bias or data bias, where the AI system machine learning is trained on data which for some reason is exclusionary or selective, or is biased. The result is that the system cannot give generalized results. It may run in trouble when the data presented to it is not among the data it is trained on (b) Societal bias in AI, where the entrenched societal bias creeps in to the algorithm and creates a blind spot.

Example 2 Twitter and bias in its photo-cropping algorithm. For long, Twitter has automatically cropped images to stop them from taking up too much space in the feed and to allow many images to be shown in the same feed. However, in 2020, Colin Madland, a white Ph.D. student, raised the issue of bias in the Twitter photo-cropping algorithm. He posted an image of him and his black colleague in a zoom call, but the black colleague’s face was automatically cropped and only the white face of Madland showed up in Twitter feed. Other Twitter users did targeted experiments and showed that when an image contained both a white and a black person, the Twitter photo-cropping algorithm would consistently crop out the black face and center the white face in the feed. Ironically, similar results were found for Simpsons characters, Lenny (white) and Carl (Black), and even with images of a golden Labrador and a black Labrador. Twitter admitted that its face-cropping algorithm has a problem of bias (Hern, 2020).

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Example 3 Google photo service. In 2018, it came out that Google’s photo service labeling repeatedly has mislabeled images of black people as a gorilla, chimpanzee, or a monkey (Ibid.)

Example 4 COMPAS and racial bias in AI-enabled criminal justice system. In 2016, ProPublica reported that Northpointe’s (at present Equivant) COMPAS software, an AI tool used in the courtrooms across the USA to predict future crimes, was biased against the blacks. Black defendants were labeled as ‘high-risk’ repeaters to commit a crime twice as often as the White defendants. Northpointe did not accept the charges of biased algorithms in its software. So, in the context of AI, justice may be interpreted as a conscious effort to eliminate unnecessary discrimination, bias, and prejudice from the algorithms developed, and AI systems developed. This would require continuous vigilance and a multi-disciplinary and diverse innovation team. Biased AI is harmful for social stability and social justice. It can also be detrimental for a company’s brand value and can significantly affect sales, recruitment and retention of talent. However, the task is challenging. AI models often use data that are old. The old data may follow old paradigms, which in the present world are no longer acceptable and would be considered as prejudices.

8.5.11.5

Principle of Explicability

Principle of explicability may be understood as the core demand that AI should be able to explain why the AI arrived at a certain result (Bartneck et al., 2019, p. 35). The basic idea is that the workings of AI are often invisible or unintelligible to all, except may be a few expert programmers. Yet, AI is transforming much of our daily lives. Hence, the principle of explicability is evoked to demand that we need to understand and hold someone accountable for the decision-making process of AI. This explicability is not a just synonym for transparency. Making the thousand of lines of programming transparent that has gone into the AI system would still not explain why the AI system came to a conclusion. Explicability, as Floridi et al. (2018) maintain, is intelligibility and accountability. It is desirable that someone, be it an expert programmer, should understand the system’s way of working and can explain it to the judges, users, and the public. It must be possible to provide justification for what the AI system finally did. On the other hand, the proprietary nature of the algorithms developed and systems owned by companies come in the way of explicability.

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Accountability would be to substantiate the explicability with tangible evidence. For example, a program file or a log book may be produced (Bartneck et al., 2019). In a sense, the principle of explicability is presupposed by the other principles. For example, in order to know whether an AI system is creating benefit or harm, or is reducing autonomy of a person, we first need to understand how AI works. To conclude, trusting the AI systems involves many factors. The users require many different kind of assurances from the developers and from the manufacturers before they are accepted widely in the society. In the absence of clear laws and regulations, ethics shows us the paths that the AI research, development, and design ought to take. Floridi et al. (2018) propose an ethical framework of these five ethical principles to create a conceptual outline of AI for people.

8.6 Summary of the Chapter In this chapter, applied ethics as a field was introduced. With definitions and examples, the approach of applied ethics was explained. It was also discussed why philosophically applied ethics need not be understood merely as ethical theories applied. There is plenty of opportunities in applied ethics to also make use of personal experiences and contextual details, observations, discretion, and intuition. It was also explained that the field of applied ethics emerged from the necessity of finding solutions to live, ethical issues that the society confronted from the emergence of new medical technologies around the 1960s. Like any other field of study, applied ethics also has its own preferred methods. Top-down, Bottom-up, and Reflective Equilibrium were explained as the methods of applied ethics. Anti-theory, or a philosophical position, which raises skeptical questions about the adequacy and the reach of the theories of Normative Ethics, was brought in to keep the reader aware about the concerns that the position raises. After this preamble, the topic of artificial intelligence or AI was introduced. Its basic features were discussed with the help of its evolving definitions, along with the kinds of research undertaken under AI. The famous debate about AI around ‘can machines think?’ was taken up with Alan Turing’s proposed imitation game or the Turing Test, and its rebuttal by John Searle’s Chinese Room argument. The distinctions between AI as a field of study and Data Science as a field of study were made clear so as to avoid any confusion. For the general readers, the topics of machine learning, deep learning, and big data were introduced to pave the ground for the discussion in ethics of AI and Data Science (DS). Next, the ethics of AI and DS was introduced in a few successive steps. First, a justification was provided of the choice of this field as an exemplar of applied ethics. Next, the issue of moral status of an AI system was taken on, basically to address the question of agency and moral responsibility in case of any undesirable outcome from the behavior of an AI system.

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After this, major ethical issues related to AI and DS were taken up. For example, privacy and data privacy were taken up showing the various challenges that are presented for protection for personal data privacy. Finally, some proposed solutions are also discussed. Other ethical issues, such as data sharing for unintended purposes, the digital divide, the manipulation using AI, and predatorial targeting of the vulnerable, were explained. Finally, the five ethical principles for developing a trustworthy AI were discussed as the conceptual and applicable framework.

Study Questions 1. What according to you is a major difference between applied ethics, and the other branches of ethics, such as normative ethics, metaethics? 2. What is value pluralism? How is it violated by the basic tenets of eugenics? 3. Applied ethics is supposed to require interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary collaboration. Use your own examples to illustrate this point. 4. Why according to some applied ethics is not merely a derivation of the applicable rules from the general theories of ethics to a given practical situation? 5. Explain Kolste’s observation that in the 20th CE, the detachment of people from religion and religious authorities and preference for moral autonomy helped the rise of applied ethics. 6. What is top-down approach in applied ethics? Use Kant’s Deontological ethics to illustrate the approach. Is it possible to use more than one ethical theories in top-down approach? 7. What is reflective equilibrium method in applied ethics? When according to this method the process of reflective equilibrium stops? 8. What is the main contention of the anti-theorists? Are they against ethics? Justify your answer. 9. Consider the definition of AI given by European Commission High-Level Expert Group Artificial Intelligence (AI HLEG): Artificial intelligence (AI) refers to systems that display intelligent behavior by analyzing their environment and taking actions—with some degree of autonomy—to achieve specific goals. What does intelligent behavior mean in this context? 10. What is /are the major difference(s) between narrow AI and general AI? 11. Is the narrow AI and general AI classification the same as what Searle referred to as weak AI and strong AI? Explain your answer. 12. Explain what the objective of Turing’s “imitation game” or of Turing Test is. Is it to show a superior level of accuracy and efficiency than the humans? 13. What is the point of Searle’s Chinese Room argument? Which claim does it try to refute?

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14. Which of the sentences is true and why? (a) Data science relies exclusively on AI-based methods for data analytics. (b) Data science uses AI-based tools, among many other tools, for data analytics. 15. Discuss supervised machine learning and unsupervised machine learning highlighting the important differences. 16. What, according to you, are the compelling reasons for discussing Ethics of Ai and DS as an example of applied ethics? 17. Can we justifiably claim that AI systems have a moral status? Discuss the arguments in favor and in against to critically come to a conclusion. 18. Should AI systems be regarded as moral agents, if they are endowed with advanced programming and rule sets for behaving ethically? Justify your answer. 19. What is the Action Network theory (ANT theory), and what important changes it brings to the discussion of agency? 20. Consider the case: A driverless, automated car has gone over the right foot of a pedestrian, who suddenly stepped in front of the car. The injury to the toes of the pedestrian is serious. To whom would you pin moral responsibility of the injury and why? 21. What is the problem of many hands in case of attributing responsibility for an action? 22. In Box 8.19, in this chapter, the Chinese National Social Credit System is mentioned. In that system, what kind of consequences follows from a low score? Is the score computed based only on the financial behavior of a person? 23. Should individual privacy be an absolute right in a society? Justify your answer. 24. Several philosophers have argued that privacy violations are not to be taken lightly, because they also affect something fundamental. Explain this line of thinking. 25. In the seven categories of privacy, as categorized by Fridewald, Finn and Wright (2013), how is privacy of a person different from privacy of the behavior and action? Explain. 26. Explain the difference between personal and non-personal data. Which kind of data the EU’s GDPR is mostly concerned about protecting? 27. Why is it said that “machine learning applications and models are both themselves at risk of data privacy breach”? Explain. 28. On what grounds, does the law not recognize individual data ownership rights as property rights? Explain. Why does the law speak of access instead of exclusive possession of data? 29. What is a data commons? Would it adequately address the problem with data ownership? Would it help in the case of Data lake?

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30. What was Jeremy Bentham’s idea of the Panopticon? How is the idea connected to Orwell’s novel ‘1984’? Why Foucault found the Panopticon as a metaphor for social control? 31. What is Panopticism? What are its two major aspects? 32. Could we be under continuous surveillance inside our homes? Explain with appropriate examples. 33. Is massive centralized surveillance ever justified? Explain your answer. 34. When is data sharing unethical? What kind of ethically problematic issues does it give rise to? 35. Briefly explain the Principle of Purpose Limitation. Does it imply that data collected once should not be re-used? 36. Write brief notes on: Persuasive Technology, Filter Bubble. Explain how these technique can influence people’s choices. 37. What is manipulation in marketing? How is AI brought into manipulative marketing strategies? 38. Can manipulation through AI in newspaper reporting be a matter of ethical concern? Explain briefly. 39. What is predatorial marketing? In the digital age, how does AI-enabled technology make predatorial marketing even more powerful? 40. Why are children considered as a vulnerable group with regard to product and services in general? How is their vulnerability different from, for example, the vulnerability of people with low digital literacy? 41. Explain how digital divide can create an unfair distribution of opportunities and benefits in a digital economy. Do you agree that the distribution is even more limited and skewed in case of women? 42. What is fake news? In what sense its effect on people and the society in general can be considered as unethical? 43. Can deep fakes be threat to social harmony and peace? Explain. 44. What is the epistemic threat from the deep fake? 45. Why the issue of trust is said to be AI’s biggest problem? 46. Write short notes on: (a) Cyberbullying, (b) Algorithmic bias (c) Online hate speech.

Research Exercises 1. If the law recognizes the personal data privacy rights, but does not consider personal data ownership as a property right, what is the implication of that for the common person, who is the data principal? 2. What according to you is the most effective way to get rid of algorithmic bias?

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Case Study Discussion Ethics Case 8.1 Netflix and $1 Million Contest In October 2006, Netflix, the world’s largest online movie rental company, organized a $1 million contest which challenged the machine intelligence experts to come up with a better movie recommendation than Netflix’s own personalized recommendation for movies. The contest caught the attention of machine learning experts from leading academics and private research firms, drawing finally about 50,000 contestants. The Netflix user dataset contained anonymous movie ratings of 500,000 subscribers of Netflix. The data were anonymized before making the data of Netflix users available to the contestants. However, Arvind Narayanan and Vitaly Shmatikov showed that with a second set of information, such as comments on movies on free and publicly available Internet Movie Database (IMDb), it is possible to deanonymize the Netflix user in the dataset. They showed that with the IMDb as the background knowledge, they have successfully identified the Netflix subscribers, along with their political preferences and other personally sensitive information. Several Netflix subscribers sued Netflix for breaching their privacy. The lawsuit charged that Netflix has indirectly exposed the data of the Netflix subscribers and that Netflix customer privacy was not protected. Although Netflix did not admit of any wrong-doing, it settled the lawsuit and forestalled the sequel of the competition as part of the settlement. Case 8.1. Questions 1. Using the seven types of privacy, explain what kind of privacy of the Netflix subscribers was breached in this case? 2. Explain the main learning takeaway from the case. 3. What other precautions should be taken to protect personal data privacy? Justify your claim using ethical principles.

Ethics Case 8.2 Portrait AI There are AI-based apps available on the Internet, by which a selfie may be painted by the AI art in the 18th CE Baroque and renaissance style. One of

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them, PortraitAI (https://portraitai.app/) creates impressive paintings out of a selfie, if the selfie is of a white person. With the selfie images of blacks, browns, or any other skin color, it fails to perform. As the App-making company also admits now, the problem is with the database on which it was trained. The portraits from that era were almost exclusively of the white Europeans. Hence, the database on which the PortraitAI App was trained, consisted of white people only. Consequently, when painting the picture of someone from another race with a different color tone and facial features, the App does not produce satisfactory results. Expansion of database to include more diverse images might have helped. Case 8.2. Questions 1. Does the case establish an algorithmic bias? Justify. 2. Is the bias due to individual prejudice of the developer? Or, is it an example of a systematic social bias? Or, does it demonstrate some other kind of phenomenon?

Key Terms • Anti-theory: It is a philosophical position which rejects the theories of normative ethics. The supporters believe that the theories of normative ethics cannot do justice to the actual complexity that exist in situations in everyday life. In particular, their arguments are against the more prominent theories of normative ethics, such as Utilitarianism, Kant’s deontological ethics. • Applied ethics: Applied ethics is a branch of ethics. With its focus on practical problems of lives, it is also known as practical ethics. It covers ethical issues in specific areas of human activities, e.g. in medicine. • Big data: Big data refers to massive datasets of amazing variety and complexity. It is supposed to have huge variety, volume, and velocity. • Bottom-up approach: It is an approach which starts from a given ethically problematic particular situation, and the knowledge and accurate description of its details, and then from it an ethical judgment is derived which may be confined to the case in hand or may be a defeasible universal generalization. It is also called inductivist approach. • Casuistry: Casuistry in ethics is case-based reasoning. • Data commons: A data commons is an open repository of data in which data are aggregated from various sources into a unified database. • Data principal: The person whose data is in question. • Data science: Data science is a multidisciplinary field which aims to discover insights from large sets of raw or unstructured data.

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• Deductivist approach: This refers to an approach which follows the approach in deductive logic. The approach is marked by a movement always from the general principles to a specific case. • Digital addiction: Digital addiction is a kind of Internet addiction. It is problematic relationship of a human with the digital technology, resulting in obsessive, compulsive, impulsive, and hasty digital behavior. • Digital divide: A digital divide is a new form of inequality among people in a country in terms of their unequal access, knowledge, and use of Internet and other related digital technologies. • DNA: DNA is the abbreviated form of deoxyribonucleic acid. It is the hereditary material in humans and practically all other organisms. It forms a chained double helix structure which carries the genetic instructions for the development, functioning and reproduction of an organism. • Emotion AI: Emotion AI or Affecting Computing refers to AI which detects and interprets human emotions. Using cameras or images with other technology, emotion AI tries to capture human emotions from facial expressions, body language, vocal intonations, and other cues. • Eugenics: Eugenics refers to a belief system and practices which advocate the improvement of the genetic quality of humans by selective breeding either by encouraging practices for the inheritable ‘desirable human traits’, or by the discontinuation of the inheritable ‘undesirable human traits’ by sterilization and other methods. • Fake news: Fake news is news story, or news article, or news video, which are created and are false or misleading information, but which are presented as facts or as news. • Federated Learning: Federated learning is a machine learning technique which trains an algorithms by keeping the training dataset decentralized. Instead of the usual way of putting all data in a centralized cloud server, it trains by the local data generated by the user history on a particular device, such as a mobile. • Filter bubble: A filter bubble is an intellectual isolation which can occur in personalized searches when websites make use of algorithms to guess what the user would like to see based on information about the user, such as location and previous search history, and display only those items to the user. • Gaming addiction: This is addiction to playing online games in a manner which disturbs and interferes with normal daily activities of the person. It is considered as a disorder. • Gender Digital Divide: It is a form of inequality among the population of a country along the line of gender in terms of their access, affordability, knowledge, and use of Internet and the other digital technologies. • Gene therapy: Gene therapy is a medical technique which modifies a person’s genes to treat or to cure a disease. It can either replace the disease-causing gene by a healthy substitute gene or can inactivate a malfunctioning gene. • Genome editing: It is a specialized group of engineering technologies in which the DNA is replaced, added, or deleted, or modified, in the genome of a living organism. It is alternatively called gene editing or genome engineering.

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• Inductivist approach: It refers to the way the Inductive arguments work: from particular cases to inductive generalization. • Internet addiction: It refers to excessive use and obsession with the Internet which interferes with their normal, daily life activities. • Machine learning: It is a field of study in AI in which the machine or the computer algorithms are developed to learn as a human does. • Manipulation: Manipulation is to covertly influence an individual’s free decisionmaking process through suggestion and persuasion. It is not coercive. • Media literacy: Media literacy is the ability to be a critical thinker with regard to information and media, so that one does not fall easy prey to false information and undue persuasion. • Micro-targeting: It is a marketing strategy which uses consumer data and demographic data to identify specific individuals, or very specific groups, to influence their opinions, thoughts, and behavior. • Predatory advertising: Predatory advertising is a kind of advertising in which the advertising company targets the vulnerable people or populations and exploits the vulnerability to sell a product. • Principlism: Principlism refers to an approach in Biomedical ethics which uses four ethical principles as basic principles: Non-maleficence, Beneficence, Justice, and Respect for Autonomy. • Purpose Limitation: It is a principle in data sharing and data selling which states that data collected for a specific purpose should not be used for a new, incompatible purpose. • Recommendation engine: A recommendation engine is an AI-enabled software which analyzes and filters the data to discover certain patterns in the data. Based on those probabilistic patterns, it suggests to an website user what the options the user may be interested in. • Reflective equilibrium: It is also a method in applied ethics. It refers to a deliberative process, in which we reflect over our beliefs and justifications about an issue, and revise them seeking an overall coherence with our other relevant beliefs and judgments about similar and related issues. The process stops when a reflective equilibrium or overall coherence as an outcome of reflection is reached. • Strict liability: Strict Liability Principle is a principle in law which holds that someone can be held as liable for the consequences of an action, even if he or she is not at fault, and even if there was no criminal intent or intent to do harm while doing the action. • Synthetic data: Synthetic data are created artificially by machine algorithms, and are not generated by the actual events in the real world. • Top-down approach: Top-down approach is the deductivist approach in applied ethics. It follows the approach which deductive logic follows in an argument: from the general to a particular case. • Value pluralism: Value pluralism is the concept that more than one set of values can exist in the same society. Each set may be equally correct and basic, even if they are in conflict with each other. • Vulnerable populations: Vulnerable populations are the populations with an increased risk.

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