Values Care and Empathy

  1. The test will be held Friday October 20th.
  2. It will take place the usual class time allotted to us.
  3. Bring
    1. your notes on paper, as many as you like
    2. Something to write with
    3. and Paper
  4. I will give you 4 questions, you will choose 2 of these to answer.
  5. There is no word minimum or maximum, however successful tests will answer the question entirely.
  6. We will now talk about what a successful answer will look like.

Your paper must offer an argument. It can’t consist in the mere report of your opinions, nor in a mere report of the opinions of the philosophers we discuss. You have to defend the claims you make. You have to offer reasons to believe them.

So you can’t just say:

"My view is that P."

You must say something like:

"My view is that P. I believe this because..."

or:

"I find that the following considerations...provide a convincing argument for P."

Similarly, don’t just say:

"Descartes says that Q."

Instead, say something like:

"Descartes says that Q; however, the following thought-experiment 
will show that Q is not true..."

or:

"Descartes says that Q. I find this claim plausible, 
for the following reasons..."

Value Theory

  • Ethics of Care and Empathy

  • Ch. 2 Our Obligations to Help Others

Thomas Hurka:

  • The theory of value/of the good versus theory of the right.

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  • a theory of the right action which says right actions are right if and only if they promote the most good

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  • two individuals of virtue make the best friends

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  • another implication of virtue ethics according to which right actions are right if and only if they are done from a motive expressing care or empathy

???

We’ve already looked at consequentialism which is a theory of the right action which says right actions are right if and only if they promote the most good. We saw embedded in this are various views as to what the good is, and there were some questions.

We also looked at one implication of virtue ethics, one that falls under value theory more broadly rather than a particular ethical theory. Accordingly, two individuals of virtue make the best friendships. As a value theory, it answers the question of what is the good, or what is good, etc.

Here we look at another implication of virtue ethics according to which right actions are right if and only if they are done from a motive expressing care or empathy. Rather than a value theory more broadly however, like consequentialism, this is an ethical theory. However it is not consequentialist because it is not about promoting the most good, but rather it is concerned with right actions regardless of the consequences.

• Let’s imagine that you see a child drowning. Do you have an obligation to help the child?

• Let’s imagine that there is a child drowning in Ireland. Do you have an obligation to help the child?

• Let’s imagine that there is a child drowning in Africa. Do you have an obligation to help the child?

???

Let’s assume that we’ve just read Mill’s defense of consequentialist ethics. According to consequentialism, you have an obligation to promote the most good.

However, Frances Kamm thinks that we do not have an obligation to help the child in Ireland or Africa because such an obligation is not intuitive in the same way that our obligation to help the child we see, is.

Are these obligations intuitive?

  • two strangers on opposite sides of a boat, who do you save?

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  • 3 strangers on one side of a boat and one on the other, who do you save?

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  • 5 strangers on one side, 1 friend or family member on the other, who do you save?

???

Let’s imagine that a stranger fell over one side of a boat and three additional strangers fell over the other side. While you are a prominent swimmer possessing certifications in cardiopulmonary resuscitation, automated external defibrillator, and basic life support, it is beyond your capabilities to rescue the lone stranger on one side of the boat, and any of the other individuals from the other side of the boat. As such, you could either rescue the three individuals on the other side of the boat, or the lone stranger.

Let’s imagine that your brother or sister fell over one side of a boat and three strangers fell over the other side. While you are a prominent swimmer possessing certifications in cardiopulmonary resuscitation, automated external defibrillator, and basic life support, it is beyond your capabilities to rescue your sibling and any of the other individuals from the other side of the boat. As such, you could either rescue the three individuals on the other side of the boat, or your sibling.

From the perspective of the broader sense, too, there seems to be no more reason to think that empathy for distant groups of people is beyond our developed moral capacities than to think that conformity to the principles Singer et al recommend is unsuited to our powers. In fact, rather, the various forms of partiality built into human empathy would naturally lead someone with fully developed empathic concern for others to resist making some of the choices that Singer et al require in the name of overall or imaparitally considered good. So an ethic based in empathic caring gives us reason to bleieve that Singer et al type principles are not morally binding on us because they require people to go geyond … the speicfic human capacities or powers that … are most relevant to questions about our obligations to others. p. 33

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  • prescriptive
  • descriptive
  • Does an is imply an ought?

???

Slote argues that it is quite natural for you to prefer to save your sibling, parent, child, before attempting rescue of the strangers. But does this mean that we have an obligation to those we can see versus those we are not close to? There is greater psychological pressure to provide assistance to the child we see than the child we merely hear about. Therefore we have a greater obligation to help the child we see while we do not have an obligation to help the child we merely hear about. Geographic distance is not the only concern however, emotional attachments can also create psychological pressure in that we are more likely to help family members, neighbors, relationship partners than strangers.

However, what is more important here, is that regardless of capacity we have to empathize with others, for instance friends and family versus strangers, Slote argues that we can plausibly see an ethic grounded in an obligation to empathize with others.

• Why should we propose that we have an obligation for an action that only some do reliably? • How do we blame someone for lacking a given capacity?

If we …. haven’t in fact yet made our best efforts to stimulate and educate our empathic capacities for concern with people we don’t know, then we presumably don’t how far those capacities can or eventually will take us; and although I suspect … that those developed capacities wouldn’t lead us to sacrifice our own welfare … on behalf of distant others to anything like the extent that Singer, Unger, Kagan et al regard as obligatory, I also believe that (more) fully developed empathic concern for others would lead to *greater personal sacrifices than most of us now make and than are (or seem to be) required by Bernard Williams’s well known views about the integrity of individual agents. p. 33

  1. We know that we have the capacity to empathize with those we know.
  2. We know that empathy can be encouraged through moral education.
  3. Therefore, we do not know what we are capable of regarding empathy.
  4. Therefore, we do not know the extent of our moral obligations.

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  1. We have an obligation to stretch our moral capacity as far as we can.