A2 Religious Studies

Revision Booklet

To be used alongside the textbook and your classnotes.

Contents

G581: Philosophy of Religion

Religious Language......................................................………p.1

Religious Experience........................................................…...p.7

Miracles..................................................................…………...p.12

Nature of God............................................................………...p.16

Life and Death.........................................................…………..p.20

G582: Religious Ethics

Meta-ethics...........................…………………………………….p.25

Free Will and Determinism………………………………….……p.28

Conscience.......................…………………………………….…p.32

Virtue Ethics………………………………………………………..p.36

Sexual Ethics…………………………………………………...….p.40

Environment and Business Ethics……………………………….p.44

Religious Language

Introduction

The problems of religious language: • If we use language univocally about God, then we are limiting him / making him like a human • If we use language equivocally about God, we cannot be sure what the word means when applied to God • Are statements about God supposed to be cognitive – if so, what evidence proves / disproves them? • Are statements about God supposed to be non-cognitive – if so, do they have any meaning?

The Verification Principle

The Vienna Circle
This group of philosophers argued that a statement is only meaningful if it can be verified empirically, or if it is a tautology. This idea is known as the verification principle, or sometimes the strong verification principle. For example, ‘the chair is blue’ is easy to verify with our senses; ‘the widow’s husband is dead’ is a tautology. Both of these have meaning. However, religious statements (eg ‘God exists’) cannot be verified in this way, and so they are considered meaningless.

However, many philosophers (eg Ayer) argue the verification principle makes meaningless many statements that are not really meaningless. It does not allow us to make statements about the past, as we cannot personally verify them. Swinburne notes that it also discounts universal statements (eg ‘all ravens are black’). It also shows opinions to be meaningless – for example, it cannot be proved that a painting by Leonardo da Vinci is any better than a child’s drawing of stick people.

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AJ Ayer
Ayer adapted the verification principle to try to overcome some of its disadvantages. His version is called the weak verification principle. Ayer allows for two types of verification. Strong verification is when a statement can be empirically verified in person (as the Vienna Circle required). Also valid is weak verification, which is when you cannot actually prove a statement is true, but you can show it probably is true beyond reasonable doubt. This allows us to rely on valid historical documents to make meaningful statements about the past, and means we can make statements about the future. Ayer used the example, ‘there are mountains on the far side of the moon’, which when he wrote it could not yet be verified. However, Ayer argues that religious statements are still meaningless, as they have neither strong nor weak verification to verify them.

John Hick disputes this point. He claims that there is eschatological verification of religious statements – this means that they can be verifies, in the future, when we are dead. Others argue that there is weak verification for some religious statements.

A final criticism refers to both forms of the verification principle – it itself cannot be verified. This means that either a) it is meaningless or b) the philosophers are contradicting themselves.

The Falsification Principle

Flew uses ‘The Parable of the Gardener’ to make his point about the use of language:

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Flew is using this story to make the point that religious people continue to believe in God despite the evidence to suggest that he does not exist. For example, they continue to believe in God despite the existence of evil and suffering, arguing that life is a test, or its not God’s fault, or suffering has a purpose etc. Flew says that the statement dies ‘the death of a thousand qualifications’, meaning that the statement has become meaningless.

Two other philosophers replied to Flew using parables of their own:

1. Hare’s ‘Parable of the Lunatic’

Hare argues that the ‘lunatic’s belief is not meaningless because we can understand it, even though the belief is false. It is an example of a ‘blik’. Hare argues we all have bliks, and Flew’s mistake is to treat them as though they were scientific propositions. Instead, they are more like opinions, which are not necessarily based on evidence. 2. Basil Mitchell’s ‘Parable of the Resistance Leader [partisan] and the Stranger’

Here, the stranger represents God, and the resistance fighter represents religious believers. The fighter makes a commitment to have faith and trust in the stranger, whatever happens. Religious believers have a faith commitment to God – they do not simply stop believing in him when things do not seem to be going well.

Note – the difference between the verification principle and the falsification principle
The verification principle claims religious language is meaningless because there is no evidence to prove it true or false. The falsification principle claims religious language is meaningless because religious believers ignore the evidence which would cast doubt upon the truth of their beliefs.

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The Via Negativa

The via negativa is also called the apophatic way (this means the way of not speaking). It aims to make cognitive statements about God in a way that does not limit him to a human understanding of God.

General principle: This statement is factually inaccurate, because God is not powerful in the way that we understand the word. It is also morally wrong to say this, as it limits God to a human level of power.

This statement is acceptable, because whatever we understand by the word ‘weak’, God is not that – so it is true to say ‘God is not weak’. It also is not limiting God, because we are trying to deny what he is not, rather than describe what he is.

Example:
Pseudo-Dionysius, a Christian monk from Syria. He says God is ‘unspeakable and unknowable’, meaning that our limited human minds cannot fully understand God. If we do not understand God, we cannot say anything about him. Using ‘positive language’ (eg God is powerful) limits God to human levels, so instead we should use negative language.

|Advantages of the via negativa |Disadvantages of the via negativa |
|It prevents us making God too much like humans |In practice, a list of what God is not does not tell us much (eg he is not |
|It is respectful towards God |heavy, he is not bad, he is not human, he is not stupid etc) |
|It acknowledges that humans cannot fully understand God – he will always be a |Religious people, and Holy Books, usually speak of God in the positive way eg |
|mystery |‘The mighty one, God, our Lord....’ (Psalms) |
| |How can we say what God is not if we can’t understand what he is? |

Analogy

Aquinas argues that the best way to speak of God is to use analogy. He rejects univocal language as being limiting and equivocal language as not actually telling us anything about God. However, he argues that we can uses analogy to compare language used about humans with language used about God. This is because he believes that humans were made by God, and they were made in the image of God – so there is a valid connection between them. So for Aquinas, language about God is not meant literally, though it is cognitive. He suggests two types of analogy:

1. The analogy of Attribution. Human attributes (qualities) are a reflection of the attributes of their Creator (God). When we see qualities such as goodness, wisdom etc in other people, we are able to understand something of the nature of God, who is the source of these attributes. However, the goodness of God and the goodness of a human are different. Brian Davies helps us to understand this, by using the example of the baker and the bread:

“The good baker makes good bread”
‘Good ‘ refers to the ‘Good’ refers to the baker – it means ‘skilled at baking’. bread – it means ‘softy, tasty, etc’
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We know the baker is good because he has made good bread – the bread would not be good if the baker was not also good. Yet the word good means something different when applied to the baker than when applied to the bread. In the same way, we can know that God is good because humans can be good – without a good God there would be no good humans, and yet the word good means something different when applied to God than when applied to humans.

2. The Analogy of Proportion There is a hierarchical relationship between humans and God which allows us to use analogy to refer to God. God is superior to humans, and so humans can make an upwards analogy to talk of God. For example, we can understand God’s faithfulness by making an analogy with humans faithfulness, whilst remembering that God is superior to humans. So God’s faithfulness is like human faithfulness, only better. We can also make a downwards analogy in relation to animals. We understand what is meant when a pet dog is described as being faithful to its owner – this is like human faithfulness, only not as good, since animals are inferior to humans.

|Advantages of analogy |Disadvantages of analogy |
|It acknowledges God is superior to humans, so it is not limiting him. |Its too vague – saying God’s qualities are like human qualities but different |
|Hick supports the use of analogy, adding that from a Christian point of view, |doesn’t tell us much |
|the belief in the incarnation (that Jesus was God in human form) strengths the |Some religious believers would object to the idea that God can be compared to |
|link between God and humans |humans. |

Symbolic language

Tillich argues that symbols are very powerful expressions of ideas / beliefs. They often provoke a strong emotional response, and allow people to connect to the idea / belief in a deep way. He gives the example of a flag. A flag is not just a piece of cloth – it represents a country’s ideals, people, values, way of life. This is why people can feel a sense of pride at seeing their country’s flag flying eg at an Olympic Games medals ceremony; protestors know the symbolic power of the flag, which is why burning / tearing a flag can be such a powerful, emotional act.

Tillich argues that symbolic language must be used of God: “A symbol unlocks something within our soul and expresses something about the ultimate”.
Statements about God, then, are not to be taken literally. For example, ‘God is good’ symbolises many ideas about God – that he is benevolent, morally perfect, the source of goodness etc. ‘God is wise’ symbolises that he is omniscient, always correct, guides us in the right way etc.

|Advantages of symbol |Disadvantages of symbol |
|As the words are not meant literally, it is not limiting God |Problems of misinterpretation |
|Allows people to connect with God – Tillich says a symbol ‘participates in that |JH Randall argues that symbols tell us more about the person interpreting them |
|to which it points’. |than they do about the things that is being symbolised |

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Myth

Bultmann argues that myths are the best way to communicate ideas about God. A myth is a story which does not have to be seen as literally true, but which has a deeper meaning. He claims that as most myths were written in pre-modern times, they refer to events / ideas that we find hard to believe in our modern age (eg the ‘three-storey universe’ – hell, earth, heaven; eg miracle stories). He argues that rather than debating whether or not the stories are true, people should look beyond the surface of the story to work out the deeper spiritual truths it contains. He calls this process demythologising; the deeper truth is the kerygma. Bultmann believes that the essential message of Christianity is found in Jesus’s teaching, not in ‘supernatural stories’; he says miracle stories were added later by Jesus’s followers as a way of making a point about Jesus – they are teaching tools, rather than literal accounts.

Examples ● Adam and Eve story – hard to believe due to theory of evolution. Deeper meaning – man and woman need each other; God always provides for us; we should obey God’s commands. ● Jesus ascending into heaven – hard to believe as seems scientifically impossible. Deeper meaning – Jesus is superior to us; Jesus is watching over us.

|Advantages of myth |Disadvantages of myth |
|Makes religious belief compatible with modern science |Different interpretations – eg Adam and Eve story – are men superior (created |
|Requires believers to think about and engage with Scripture, rather than |first), or and men and women equal (Eve was taken from Adam’s side – they are |
|passively listen to it |side-by-side, partners) |
| |Some religious believers accept scripture as the word of God, and would reject |
| |the idea it might not all be true |

Language Games

Wittgenstein’s original theory of language was that a word corresponds to a particular thing / idea
Eg flower = ( (picture theory of language). He later rejected this, and instead put forward language games. He compares the use of language with playing a game. Just as there are different games with different rules, so there are different ways of using language. For example, essay-writing, text-messaging, mathematical equations – all of these are different ways of using language, each with different rules. Religious language is another ‘game’. It is as valid as any other, and should be judged by its own rules. He gave the example of a Christian saying ‘Jesus is the son of God’ – this is a correct use of language because the statement fits in with the Christian language game; but if a Muslim said ‘Jesus is the son of God’ this would not be correct, because it does not fit in with the rules of the Muslim language game. Language gets its meaning from how it is used – not from whether it is true / false.

|Advantages of language games |Disadvantages of language games |
|Gives religious language same status as any other type of language |Doesn’t give definite understanding of God |
|Religious language still has meaning if though its statements can’t be proved |Suggests that non-religious people have no right to comment on religious beliefs|
| |(as they are not part of the game) |

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Religious Experience

Introduction

This topic looks at the nature of religious experience, and whether we can be sure that they are genuine; if they are genuine, are they good proof for God’s existence? Also considered are different types of revelation, and attitudes towards revelation through scripture.

Types of Religious Experience

Mystical
William James suggests for criteria for an experience being considered a mystical religious experience: ● Noetic – it gives the mystic new knowledge / understanding ● Ineffable – it cannot fully be explained or described ● Passivity – the mystic does not feel in control of the experience – it is something that happens to them ● Transient – the experience itself does not last very long, though its effects will be long-lasting
Examples:
● St Teresa’s visions (‘I saw Christ by my side....’) ● The Annunciation – when the angel Gabriel visited Mary to tell her she would be the mother of Jesus ● The receiving of the Qur’an – the prophet Muhammad had a vision of an angel who gave him message from Allah to recite.
These experiences are difficult to prove, as the mystic sees / hears things that others can’t. However, St Teresa suggested two tests to see if the experience is genuine. Firstly, it should fit in with traditional

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Christian teaching (she was writing from a Christian point of view); secondly, it should leave the mystic feeling at peace / blessed. William James also considered how we could prove a claimed experience was actually true (see below).
Other philosophers argue that there is always an explanation of the so-called mystical experience. The mystic might be hallucinating, due to illness, hunger, or drug-use. The mystic might be mistaken – although he/she thinks it is a mystical experience, there is a rational explanation for what has happened. The mystic might have a psychological condition which explains why he/she hears voices / has hallucinations. Finally, the mystic might simply be lying. Dawkins rejects religious experiences. In ‘The God Delusion’ he recounts a story of a friend who believed he had heard the voice of the devil – this experience had a profound effect on the friend, and was one of the reasons he later became a priest. However, the voice was really the cry of the manx shearwater, nick-named the ‘devil bird’.

Numinous
Otto describes numinous experiences as being: ● Mysterium – mysterious – something that is felt, but cannot be described ● Tremendum – tremendous – inspired awe and fear in the presence of a greater Being ● Fascinans – fascinating – feeling drawn to the Being
Examples:
● Isaiah (prophet) – described his experience of awe at being in the presence of God in the Temple. ● Pascal (philosopher) – described his experience of joy and submission at being in the presence of God.
Otto believes that numinous experiences emphasis the great difference between humans and God. He argues they are the most important type of religious experience, and are to be found in every religion. Because he believes that God is ‘wholly Other’, God cannot be known empirically or rationally – only through a numinous experience in which God chooses to make himself known to people. Having had such an experience, people reflect on it and develop their ideas about God.
Martin Buber also comments on numinous experiences. He emphasises the joy that the experiences can bring, due to the feeling of being connected to God. He describes this as having an I-Thou relationship with God – there is no self-interest, but simply a desire to know God more. This relationship with God can then influence how a person relates to everyone else.
Numinous experiences are difficult to prove as being ‘true’ as they are purely subjective – the evidence for them is how a person feels. There could be psychological explanations for the person’s feelings, which cast doubt on them being prompted by an experience of God (see below).

Conversion
William James argues that one of the ways you can tell if a religious experience is genuine is by the effects that it has on a person’s life. The effect is clearly seen in the case of conversion, where a person changes their religious beliefs.
Example:
● Saul’s conversion. He was Jewish, and did not accept the teaching of Jesus, so he arrested Jesus’s disciples when they tried to spread Jesus’s teaching after Jesus’s death. He was travelling to Damascus when he saw a flash of light which left him blind. He heard Jesus’s voice asking Saul why he was persecuting him. Saul stayed with some disciples, and regained his sight after 3 days. He then became a Christian and also started to preach Jesus’ teachings. He changed his name to Paul, and made several journeys to spread Christianity to new places; he was eventually martyred for his faith.
Edwin Starbuck argues that conversion experiences have a psychological explanation. He claims that since most conversion happen to people age 15-24, it is simple a part of growing up and finding your own identity. People may be rebelling against or rejecting the religion of their parents, or they may be trying to work out a purpose for their life and find this through religion.

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Corporate
The Toronto Blessing is a recent corporate religious experience. This first occurred at Toronto Airport Vineyard Church in early 1994, when Randy Clark was preaching there. The experience is particularly associated with ‘holy laughter’, though other affects of it included crying, dancing, and strange, animal-like noises. This is believed to be a manifestation of the Holy Spirit. Since then, hundreds of thousands of people have visited the church and experienced similar things, which have changed their lives.
The supports of the experience argue that it has its roots in Pentecostal Christianity; a key Biblical text is the story of Pentecost, in which the Holy Spirit came to Jesus’s disciples and gave them the courage to preach his message.
Others argue that God would have no reason to give someone an experience such as the Toronto Blessing. They may attribute it to mass hysteria, or perhaps psychological reasons – people are now visiting the Church with the expectation of having the experience.

The Religious Experience Argument

William James
(see also information on mystical experiences
In ‘The Varieties of Religious Experience’, James had three main conclusions: • Empirical conclusion – there are some empirical facts about the effects of the experience. James argues that if an experience has a dramatic effect on a person and changes their life, then this can be counted as evidence towards the experience being genuine. • Pluralist conclusion – although people from different religions interpret their experiences differently, James concludes that there are similarities in religious experiences across religions. It is possible that the experiences are all genuine, and any apparent difficulties / contradictions are down to how people have interpreted the experience, and the problems of trying to describe / explain an ineffable experience. • Pragmatic conclusion – there is no universal truth. If a person believes there experience to be true, and it has great meaning for them, then we can accept it as being genuine.
James argues that religious experiences indicate it is probable that a higher power (ie God) exists:

Richard Swinburne
Swinburne argues that religious experiences should be evaluated in the same way as any other type of experience. He formulates two principles to help us judge the validity of a religious experience: • The Principle of Credulity – we must accept what appears to be the case, unless we have good reason not to. For example, if there seems to be an angel in front of us, then we should accept this as being true, unless we have reason not to. These reasons include the possible influence of drugs / alcohol, or the effect of illness etc. • The Principle of Testimony – we must accept as true what people tell us, unless they have reason not to. For example, if someone tells you they heard the voice of God, then you should believe them, unless you have a reason not to. These reasons include if you know the person has a psychological problem, or if they have lied to you many times in the past.

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To summarise, the sheer number of reported religious experiences, the significant similarities between them, and the sometimes dramatic effects of the experiences on people’s lives, show that it is likely that some (if not all) religious experiences are genuine, and suggest that God exists as he is the cause of the experiences. However, others would suggest that no-one can know for certain what another person actually experiences. The different religion all claim religious experiences which prove the truth of the religion – but they cannot all be right.

There are four challenges to religious experiences:

|Challenge |Comments on the challenge |
|Psychological explanations |Some psychologists accept religious experiences |
|Freud – desire for an ideal father-figure cause these hallucinations. Similar |James – there may be some psychological part of the experience, but that doesn’t|
|to dreams – a form of wish-fulfilment. |mean it is not true. God could be working through it. |
|Feuerbach – ‘God is man written in large letters’ – the idea of God is caused by|Jung – every culture in every time has a concept of God (he calls this the ‘God |
|humans projecting the qualities they believe are best. |archetype’). |
|Physiological explanations |Effect, not cause |
|Modern knowledge about how the brain works can suggest that religious |It could be argued that the scans of the monks simply show us the effect of the |
|experiences are caused by certain processes / reactions in the brain. Eg the |experience on the brain – not the cause of the experience. All experiences are |
|brain activity of meditating Buddhist monks has been analysed using brain scans.|controlled by the brain, but that doesn’t make us doubt the experiences are |
| |real. |
|Difficulties of interpretation |We interpret everything |
|Religious experiences tend to be described in ways compatible with the person’s |Eg you and a friend might both witness a car crash. You may think the car was |
|prior faith – are they just seeing what they want to / being biased in their |going too fast, your friend might think the speed was OK. This difference |
|interpretation |doesn’t mean that the crash didn’t happen. |
|Logical problems |Omnipotence of God |
|Kant – can our limited finite senses / brains experience an unlimited / infinite|If God is omnipotent he will be able to communicate with us despite our |
|God? |limitations. |

Types of revelation

General revelation........(revelation of God available to all people at all time eg voice of conscience) vs
Special revelation.........(revelation of God to a specific person at a specific time eg Moses and 10 commandments)

Propositional revelation.............(the idea that God reveals various truths about himself, which the believer should accept. Eg that he will judge us on Judgement Day vs

Non-propositional revelation....(the idea that God uses experiences and scripture to develop a relationship with us. We should have faith in and worship him).

10 Scripture

Scripture is considered to be revelation from God. It is often referred to as the word of God. However, there are different understandings of what this actually means.

Fundamentalist / traditional view
Scripture is the actual word of God. It is literally true, and contains no errors. Humans may have made a record of the words, but the words are God’s. There is no need for interpretation / doubt – it can be trusted as absolute truth. If social attitudes / science is in conflict with Scripture, then it is society that needs to change / science that is wrong.
Example – a fundamentalist view of the Biblical creation stories • The Bible gives a historically and scientifically accurate account of creation • Genesis 1 and 2 are like 2 parts of the same story – Genesis 2 gives more detail about the 6th day mentioned in Genesis 1. • Humans are made in the image of God – they are superior to animals. • Evil came about because Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit – sin became part of human nature, and God’s perfect creation was flawed.

|Advantages of fundamentalist view |Disadvantages of fundamentalist view |
|No need for interpretations – everything is literally true |Not compatible with science (eg evolution) or modern attitudes (eg role of women) |
| | |
|Clear moral rules in Scripture – reduces moral dilemmas / disagreement |Why are there contradictions in scripture (eg Luke and Matthew disagree on what |
| |Jesus’s last words were on the cross)? |

Liberal / modern view
Scripture is inspired by God, and contains his message, but it was written by humans. The humans authors may have not quite understood God’s message / made a mistake in how they present it. Therefore, scripture needs to be interpreted, and may actually contain some parts that are not entirely true. Bultmann’s demythologising (see myth, p.6) is a good example of this view.
Example – a liberal view of the Biblical creation stories • The Bible creation stories are non-scientific myths. They contain truth (eg that we depend on God for life) but they are not literally true. • Genesis 1 and 2 are written by two different people, each with their own way of explaining how God created the world. • Human nature must be understood in the light of modern ideas from science, psychology and sociology, which help us interpret what the ‘image of God’ means

|Advantages of liberal view |Disadvantages of liberal view |
|Makes Scripture compatible with science |Possibilities of misinterpretation / confusion |
| | |
|Encourages people to think for themselves about what God’s message is |Leads to disagreements about which is the right interpretation |

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Miracle

Introduction

Definitions of Miracle

Hume’s definition • “a transgression of a natural law by the particular volition of a deity’
This is known as the violation definition, as it is based on the idea that a natural / scientific law has been broken (‘violated’). There are many examples of this kind of miracle in the Bible – the parting of the Red Sea, Jesus healing the blind man, the resurrection of Jesus.
However, scientific understanding of natural laws is always developing and changing. Until we are certain we have definitive understanding of the laws of nature, we cannot be sure when those laws are being broken.

Events with religious significance
These are not necessarily violations of natural law, but they are events which people interpret as being due to the action of God. RF Holland gave the example of a boy playing on the railway track just after a bend. A train is approaching, but the driver will not see the boy until it is too late to stop. However, the train does stop just short of the boy – the driver had fainted and so the automatic cut-off switch stopped the train. A real life example happened in America when all the members of a church choir were 10 minutes late to their rehearsal on the day that a boiler exploded and the roof collapsed. They believed that God had caused them to be late so that they would escape injury.
However, these events could just be co-incidences – the people involved were just very lucky.

Biblical Miracles

Old Testament – God helps the people who are faithful to him. Eg Moses and 10 plagues / parting of Red Sea.
New Testament – Jesus’s miracles can be divided into 3 groups: Healings (eg healing of blind man; healing of paralysed man) Exorcisms (eg casting out of ‘unclean spirits’) Nature miracles (eg walking on water; stopping a storm)
The writers of the New Testament record miracles as proof that Jesus was the Messiah, who brings about a new covenant – a new agreement between God and humans.
Christians believe that God works miracles to: ● Show his love and goodness ● Show his power of nature and over disease ● Show God is actively working in his creation ● Show that Jesus also is God

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Some Christians believe that the Biblical miracles are literally true – if God is omnipotent, of course he could do such things. Others argue that they contain important messages and have symbolic meanings. Again, Bultmann’s demythologising is relevant here. For example, when Jesus stops a storm, he and his disciples are in a boat; the disciples are scared the storm will sink them. Jesus stopping the storm might be symbolic of Jesus / God’s ability to relieve us from our fears, if we go to him for help. It might contain the message that even if it doesn’t seem like it at the time, God is actually always looking after us.

Hume’s case against miracles

Hume

Hume is an empirical, atheist philosopher. He tries to show that, judging by empirical evidence, it does not make sense to believe in miracles.

● Hume considers the balance of evidence. He argues that laws of nature are universal and constant – they are the same everywhere and they never change. For a miracle to have happened, there has to be an example of when the laws of nature are changed. He argues that people who believe in miracles accept the laws of nature remain the same almost all the time, except for a few occasions when they are broken. He claims that this does not make sense. For example, there are millions of situations where a person’s feet dip into water and rest on the sea bed / river bed etc., yet once, Jesus walked on water. It makes more sense to believe that people are mistaken that Jesus walked on water, because there is far more evidence to prove that this is not possible. ● Hume believes that the people who claim to have seen a miracle are not reliable witnesses. He argues that the witnesses do not have ‘unquestioned good sense, education and learning’. He goes so far as to claim that miracles stories usually originate from ‘ignorant and barbarous nations’, by which he means people without an understanding of modern science. ● Hume makes the psychological point that people generally are interested in unusual phenomena, like miracles, or UFOs, or crop circles etc. This makes them more likely to believe stories about these things – they are basically gullible. Religion uses this gullibility to convince people, through miracle stories, that what the religion teaches is true. ● All the religions claim God has worked miracles for them / their followers – yet they contradict each other and cancel each other out.

Hume can be criticised for his generalisations about the types of people who witness miracles. There have been miracles in modern times (eg statue of Ganesh drinking milk). Also, some miracles are investigated by educated people and cannot be explained (eg doctors and scientists have investigated the miracles of healing that took place at Lourdes and could not provide an explanation for them). He also discounts the possibility that what we consider a law of nature might actually not be so – we do not fully understand it (eg it used to be a scientific law that the planets and sun revolve around the earth). Modern quantum physics has found that sub-atomic particles do not obey the usual laws of science.

Responses to Hume

Flew – agrees with Hume. There is no direct evidence of miracles (no-one we can speak to now was there when Moses parted the Red Sea). We only have indirect evidence (the stories) which is less reliable. We should reject miracle stories, as they go against our own personal experience of laws of nature.

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CS Lewis – disagrees with Hume. Naturalists believe that the world is purely material, and it is only governed by physical laws. However, religious people are supernaturalists. They believe in non-physical things, eg God, the soul. It makes sense for them to believe that supernatural events eg miracles can happen. Naturalists are assuming the world is purely physical and not spiritual – it could be both.

Swinburne – disagrees with Hume. He argues that we must distinguish between a law which is usually true, and a law which is universally (always) true. He argues laws of nature are usually true, but there can be exceptions. God may occasionally work miracles. They would have to be only occasionally because if they happened often life would be too confusing. Also, if people rely too much on God to help, they would not try to help themselves; for example, if God always healed cancer, people would not look for cures.

Polkinghorne – disagrees with Hume. Science doesn’t disprove miracles, it just confirms that they are transgressions of the usual laws.

Wiles’s case against miracles

Wiles argues that the creation of the world was a miracle in itself, and having created the world, God should not intervene to break the natural laws which he himself set up. If God were to work miracles, they would have to be very infrequent, or we would not be able to work out what the laws of nature were (as they would be constantly broken), and we would never know whether God was going to intervene or not. If God really does work occasional miracles, this shows him to be arbitrary and partisan:

Wiles believes that God does not really work miracles. The miracle stories are symbolic. The strength of this view is that it does not require religious believes to believe things which are against the laws of science. It also explains why God does not prevent evil – he does not intervene because he is restricted by the laws of nature. However, many religious people would reject the idea that the miracle stories are only symbolic. Also, it seems to reduce God’s omnipotence is we believe he cannot break the laws of nature.

Miracles and the Problem of Evil

If God is omnipotent, he should be able to work miracles. If he is benevolent, he should want to help everyone equally – yet he intervenes for some people and not others. This seems to add to the problem of evil. How can this additional problem be addressed?

|By rejecting miracles |By accepting miracles |
|1 |1 |
|Wiles – it would be unfair of God to help some but not others, so he helps |Bultmann – miracles are symbolic stories. They teach us about God, and inspire|
|none. Suffering helps us develop our souls, and so can be a good thing, which |us to help others. God does not help some and not others – he wants us to help|
|would not happen if God intervened. |each other. |
|But – random miracles might be intended to strengthen faith, not reduce evil |But – if God is omnipotent, why couldn’t the stories by true? |

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|Reasons to reject miracles |Reasons to accept miracles |
|2 |2 |
|God created the laws of nature. If he breaks them, he is suggesting his own |Though there is suffering now, it is all part of God’s plan. We do not know |
|creation was not quite right. |why he works miracles for some but not others. We have to trust that it will |
|But – Augustine argues humans are responsible for evil and suffering (the |all work out in the future. |
|Fall). While God may choose sometimes to help us, he is not morally |But – this view is asking us to take miracles on trust and not ask questions |
|responsible for the suffering – we are. |about them. |

Faith and Reason

Miracles raise the issue of the relationship between faith and reason. Are they in conflict, and if so, which should be prioritise? Or can they work together?

Kierkegaard Anselm
Faith takes priority over reason. Faith and reason are both needed.
A fact can be proved true, a Faith must come first, and so that belief cannot. Religious people God’s gift of reason is used take a ‘leap of faith’. They have correctly. In his Ontological no proof that their beliefs are Argument, he started with faith true, but they choose to have that God exists, and then showed faith. Hume may be right to say how belief could be proved a priori it isn’t reasonable to believe in with reason. miracles, but religious people make a leap of faith and believe in them anyway.

Swinburne Hume
Reason supports faith. Many Reason shows that religious beliefs
Religious beliefs can actually be are not true. It is reasonable only proved or argued for using to accept as true ideas which have reason (eg Aquinas’s proofs of empirical evidence to support God’s existence). Reason them. It is irrational to believe allows us to confirm that miracles something is true despite a lack of are unlikely events which break the evidence. There is no empirical laws of science – but that doesn’t evidence to support miracles, and mean the miracles do not happen. miracle stories are unreliable, so a rational person should reject miracles.

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The Nature of God

Introduction

There are several paradoxes that arise when thinking about the nature of God. A paradox is a situation where two contradictory statements both appear to be true. The nature of God is traditionally thought to be that he is eternal, omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent.

Eternal

There are two main interpretations of what it means to say that God is eternal.

Timeless
This means that God does not experience the passing of time. All events, throughout all time, are present to him. God is always able to see everything that has happened and that will happen. For example, he can see the day you were born, the day you sit your A2 RS exams, and the day that you will die all as if they were happening right now. Time is something that effects the creation, but not the Creator. Augustine says, ‘Thy years neither come nor go’.

GOD

Time 2009
|Advantages |Disadvantages |
|God is not subject to change |Scripture speaks of God as if he were in time (eg God remembers / speaks if his|
|Emphasises the difference between God and his creation |future actions) |
| |How can God be active in world? |

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Everlasting
This means that God experiences time as we do – however, he has always existed and he will always exist. God sees everything that happens as it happens. For example, he knows every single thing that has happened everywhere today. Swinburne argues for this point of view, saying that God is ‘backwardly eternal’ and ‘forwardly eternal.

GOD

TIME

Today

|Advantages |Disadvantages |
|God is able to act in the world and change the course of history |Is God still immutable is he is affected by time? |

Process Theology
This is a controversial idea, influenced by the work of AN Whitehead. God is everlasting and immanent in his creation. The world is always changing, as it is governed by natural laws or processes. God interacts with his creation. This means he is not immutable, as he is constantly changing in response to the things that happen. He is not fully omnipotent, as he has given us free will, and can only try to influence our actions, not control them.

Omnipotent

God can do everything
Descartes argues that if God really is all-powerful he could do absolutely anything. To suggest there is something that God could not do places a limit on his power. However, there are two main problems with this view: • Logic problems – can God do something that is logically impossible? For example, can God make 2+2=5? Can God make a stone so big that he himself could not lift it? CS Lewis believes that such questions are meaningless – the idea of 2+2=5 doesn’t make sense, and that does not change just because we suggest God should be able to do that. Others say that the example of the stone is self-contradictory, and therefore logically impossible even for an omnipotent being. • Theological problems – can God do things which are directly against his nature eg lie, do evil. Some people suggest God could do these things if he wanted to, but he chooses not to. Others argue that because it is in the nature of God to be good, he can’t do anything that is not good.

God can do all logically possible things
Kenny argues that God can do anything that is logically possible and consistent with the nature of God – thus solving the problems with the above idea that God can do anything. Plantinga agrees, suggesting that God sometimes choose to limit his powers, for example, to give us free will. While this seems like a sensible solution, some criticise it as it isn’t really telling us anything – it is simply saying that God’s omnipotence means that he can do the things that he can do.

God is ‘Almighty’
Geach suggests that omnipotence means God is almighty – he has power over everything, rather than the power to do everything.

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Omniscient

What does it mean to say God knows everything? Are there some things he cannot know? For example, he as he does not have a body, he cannot have empirical knowledge – he cannot know what chocolate taste like, as God has never eaten chocolate. However, it could be argued that God has the knowledge of what chocolate tastes like (he could describe it etc), but not the experience of the taste of chocolate.

Middle Knowledge
This idea suggests that God knows all the possible outcomes of ever different scenario in life. For example, God knew that you would be reading this revision booklet right now. Maybe this helps you get a good grade in your exam – God knows about the grade. Maybe that grade gets you into a particular university – God knows about the university. However, if you had decided to chat to friends instead of revising right now, God would have known about that. And if that led to you having a disagreement with a friend and arguing with them, God would have known about the argument. God can see the outcome of all the possible events / choices.

Knowing the future
If God knows everything, he should know about the future, as well as the past and present – this is particularly true if God is also seen as being timeless (see above). Some philosophers argue that it is not logically possible for God to know the future, as it hasn’t happened yet. Discussion of future knowledge raises questions about human free will.

For example, if God knows you are going to have cornflakes for breakfast tomorrow, his knowledge has to be certain and correct. So you have to have cornflakes – you cannot have anything else. This seems to be taking away your free will. Even if you change your mind at last minute and have toast, God would know about this too. So it seems that God cannot be omniscient and humans free at the same time.

Calvin argues that our it seems to us as though we have free will, but really God’s omniscience means that he already knows everything that will happen (this links to his idea of Predestination – that God already knows who will go to heaven and who will go to hell). Our experience is of freedom, but the reality is that we are not free, due to God’s omniscience.

Others argue that God knows our decisions, but does not cause them. Because he knows each of us very, very well, he can predict with absolute certainty what we will do in any situation – we are still free to choose, but God knows what we will choose.

We may also need to clarify what is meant by free will. There are two ideas about this:
Liberty of spontaneity = being able to do what we want.
Liberty of indifference = being able to do something different to what we actually did (see the breakfast example, above). This seems incompatible with God’s omniscience.

Boethius
Boethius argues that God has foreknowledge:

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God is timeless, and so he sees everything in an eternal present. It is not that God sees the future, but that to God it is the present. So God does not know what you will choose to do tomorrow – he sees you making the choice as though tomorrow were today. Boethius identifies two types of necessity. Simple necessity describes things which logically have to be true; conditional necessity describes things which have to be true because of a choice that has been made. Therefore, human actions are a result of conditional necessity – they are things that might not have happened, but because they do happen, God sees them. Boethius uses the analogy of a man on a hill watching another man walking. He doesn’t force the man to walk, but because the man chooses to walk, he sees it happening.

Criticisms of Boethius: • Kenny – the concept of all time being equally present to God is incoherent • How can a God who is outside time know what is happening in time?

Others philosophers argue that God can be considered everlasting as well as omniscient. Geach uses the analogy of playing chess with a grand master. No matter what moves we freely choose to make, the eventually outcome can already be known – the grand master will win. This suggests that we do have free will to make a variety of choices, although God knows what will happen in the long-run. Swinburne re-defines God’s omniscience as meaning he knows the future in so far as it can be predicted by natural laws, but he doesn’t know the outcome of our free choices – this seems to limit God’s omniscience.

Omni-benevolent

God’s goodness is understood to mean that God is perfect, and his actions are always morally correct. It implies God is loving, wise and fair – some philosophers use the analogy of a parent. His goodness is seen in: • Miracles – intervening to help people (but why does he only do this for some, not all?) • Commandments – giving guidance about how to live a good life (but – Euthyphro dilemma) • Justice – judges people fairly and rewards / punishes (but – would a good God really send people to hell?) • Creation – God gave us the world to live in (but – it isn’t perfect eg natural evil)

There are questions raised by the idea of God’s goodness:

Can God do evil?
If God is inherently good, this means he cannot do evil. Does this reduce the value of his goodness if he is not doing good out of choice, but out of necessity? We can use an analogy with humans – Mr X loves his wife and is faithful to her – he is never tempted to commit adultery. In this, he is clearly good. Mr Y is also married, but is attracted to another woman. He struggles with his feelings and although he is tempted, he never acts on them. Does his successful struggle to overcome the temptation of adultery show more goodness than the goodness of the man who was never tempted?

Should a good God reward and punish?
If our free will is limited by God’s omniscience, is it fair for God to judge us when we have no choice? Furthermore, shouldn’t a good God forgive those who have sinned, instead of sending them to hell? Hick argues that because of God’s goodness all people will go to heaven – though this seems unfair that the very evil (eg Hitler) are not punished, and leads to the question of why bother being good if you can get to heaven anyway. Swinburne rejects Hick’s view, arguing that as humans have free will, they have the freedom to damn themselves to hell through their evil actions.

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Life and Death

Body and Soul

Plato

As a dualist, Plato argued that we have a body and a soul. He believed the body is not as important as the soul. This is because the body, as it is made of matter, and change, corrupt and decay. This is one of the reasons why empirical evidence is not reliable. He argues that the body causes us problems in life by needing food, getting ill, having physical desires (eg lust) – this distracts us from using our reason to try to understand the world around us. By contrast, the soul is spiritual and eternal. Before birth, the soul exists in the world of Forms; in life, it is trapped in the prison of the body. After death, it may be reincarnated, or instead return to the world of Forms. He uses an analogy to help us understand the soul:

The horses represent the spirit and the appetite – they often want to go in different directions. The work best together when they are guided by reason, which is represented by the charioteer.

Plato has two main reasons for believing in dualism: • The soul has knowledge of eternal ideas (Forms). People can recognise examples of Beauty, because they have seen true Beauty in the world of Forms. Plato also argues people innately know mathematical truths, because the soul learnt them in prior existence. • The body and soul are opposites – the body is material and will die, the soul is spiritual and will not die. What we call ‘death’ is the event when the soul leaves the body.

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Descartes

Descartes’ dualism is evident from his most famous comment, ‘I think, therefore I am’. Descartes argued you can doubt the existence of your body – he said we could just be a brain in vat, being manipulated to create the simulation of having a body (think of virtual reality!). He realised that it is not logically possible to doubt the existence of the mind – as doubting is a type of thinking, and there must be a mind in order to think. So since the body can be doubted, and the mind cannot, they must be two different things.
Gilbert Rye disagrees with Descartes – he believes the soul is not something additional to the body. He argues Descartes has made a ‘category mistake’ – just as if a visitor saw to a university saw the different buildings, met lecturers and students, but then asked ‘Where is the university?’

Aristotle

Aristotle rejects Plato’s Theory of Forms. He argues that there cannot be concepts existing separate from the objects which illustrate them. For example, he argues there cannot be BEAUTY existing independently – there can only be beautiful things. Plato would say that the Form of Beauty would still exist even if there were no beautiful things, whereas Aristotle says that beauty only exists as a property / characteristic of beautiful things.

Aristotle argues that the soul is the formal cause of the body – it is the characteristic etc that we have. However, it cannot exist independently from the body. He gives several illustrations of the relationship between the body and soul. If the body were an axe, the soul would be its ability to chop; if the body were an eye, the soul would be its ability to see – just like we cannot see without an eye, so the soul cannot exists without the body.

| | |
| |HUMAN – has |
| |rational soul |
| |(the ability to |
| |think) as well |
| |as irrational |
| |soul (the appetite and vegetative parts). |
| | | |
| |ANIMAL – | |
| |irrational soul, | |
| |made up of | |
| |vegetative part and appetite (desires) | |
| | | |
|PLANT – vegetative | | |
|soul (gains nutrition) | | |

Aristotle also argues that it is not just humans that have a soul – every living thing has a soul, but the nature of the soul is different.

Dawkins
Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist; he is a professor at Oxford University. He is infamous for his atheist views, and his open criticism of religion – he is a materialist. He argues that the traditional idea of the soul was made up by people long ago to explain the mysteries of personality and consciousness. They made up the soul to fill the gaps in their understanding of humanity – gaps we could now fill with ideas from science, psychology etc. 21
Dawkins interprets the idea of a soul symbolic way. He refers to Soul One and Soul Two: • Soul One = the traditional idea of a soul, found in Plato / religion. Dawkins rejects this idea. • Soul Two = refers to the ability humans have for thinking and for experiencing deep emotions. Dawkins agrees that humans have this ‘Soul Two’, but emphasises that Soul Two cannot exist without the body – we need a brain to think / feel emotions.
As he believes the soul cannot exist without the body, he rejects the possibility of life after death. He argues that at death we lose our consciousness – and so we are not aware of anything that happens afterwards. In this way, it is similar to the time before we were born – we have not have any experience of it.

Hick

Hick is a modern Christian philosopher who rejects traditional dualism, but argues that there can still be life after death. He argues that the word ‘soul’ is used to symbolise the value of a person. He refers to the traditional distress signal ‘SOS’ (Save Our Souls) – this is not a request to save the spirit, but leave the body to die! Hick accepts traducianism, which was an early way of explaining the soul, which has been rejected by the Church as heresy. This idea suggests that the soul is not something extra that God implants in each person, but it is inherited from the parents. Hick is a materialist, though he does not completely rule out the idea that the mind and body might be separate. From evidence of the phenomena of telepathy and ESP, he accepts ‘mind-brain dualism’ – the idea that the mental and physical aspects of a person are separate but interact with each other. However, the mind cannot exist without the brain.

Hick suggests his Replica Theory as a way of life after death being possible without belief in traditional dualism. He suggests three thought-experiments: 1. Suppose John Smith disappeared in London and then re-appeared in New York. He looks the same, acts the same, has the same memories etc. We could accept that it is the same person. 2. Suppose John Smith dies in London and then is re-created in New York. We would identify John Smith as the one in New York, rather than the dead body in London. 3. Suppose John Smith dies in London, is buried, but God re-creates an exact replica of him in another world.

Hick argues that St Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 15 supports his views:

However, Hick’s views can be challenged: • There is a break in continuity between the original body and the new body – can we be sure it is the same person? • In theory, God could make several replicas of a person – which would be the real person?

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Life After Death

Resurrection

Christian beliefs: • Jesus’s dead body came back to life – it was missing from the tomb, and the disciples saw him. One, Thomas, who didn’t believe it, was told to put his finger in wounds made by the nails of the crucifixion. This makes it clear it was Jesus’s original body, risen from the dead. • The risen body will be slightly different in character from the physical body – St Paul writes of the old physical body and the new spiritual body (see quote, above). At the end of time, all the dead will be raised and will be judged by God. • Roman Catholics believe in purgatory – most souls go to purgatory for purification. Then the souls are re-united with the (resurrected) bodies, and go to either heaven or hell. • Protestant beliefs are varied – some interpret the resurrection as a spiritual event; others believe souls go to be with God immediately after death

Jewish beliefs • The Torah speaks of immortality, and the resurrection of the dead. Reference is also made to Sheol, a place where the dead go. Sometimes this is linked to the idea of hell – it is place for the dead who are in exile from God.

Muslim beliefs • In the Afterlife (Akhira) people will be judged. This life is a test, and people will either be rewarded or punished, depending on how they have lived. • The Qur’an describes heaven as a paradise, like a beautiful garden, where the good will be with God. Hell is described as a place of fire. • Some Muslims believe those in hell will remain their eternally. Others argue this is inconsistent with belief in a benevolent God – after people have served their punishment, they will be released from hell.

Reincarnation

Hindu beliefs • The soul (atman) is eternal. It lives in many different bodies. After death, there is the transmigration of the soul into a new body. This is affected by karma – the idea that a good person may be reborn as someone wealthy / successful, but a bad person may be reborn as someone living in poverty or experiencing extreme suffering. • The aim of the soul is to be released from the cycle of reincarnation and become united with Brahman (God). There is less emphasis on individual identity in life after death. • Some people claim they can remember past incarnations. However, not having memories does not mean you have no past lives – most people cannot remember the first two years of their life, but they have no doubt that they happened.

Buddhist beliefs • Anatta (‘no self’) – there is no eternal soul. The consciousness of one person becomes one of several parts of a new person. The new person is not the same as the old one, but neither is it completely different. • The aim is to escape rebirth and reach nirvana (being free from suffering of life as a physical being).

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|Arguments for life after death |Arguments against life after death |
|Near death experiences (NDE) |NDE could be caused by chemical reactions in the brain as it dies. |
| | |
| |Paranormal activity not proved – some mediums have been revealed as frauds. |
|Paranormal activity eg ESP, mediums, ghosts |Maybe science will one day explain ESP |
| | |
| |But the religions have different ideas – they cancel each other out |
| | |
|Almost all religions /cultures believe in it |Problem of continuation of identity after death |
| | |
| | |
|Memories of past lives |Hume – the mind is fragile – it is more likely to be destroyed by death than to |
| |survive it |
| | |
|Kant’s moral argument (immortality is one of its 3 postulates) | |

Problems of disembodied existence

Disembodied existence means existence without the body. All forms of life after death assume that this is possible. The soul lives on without the body until the body is resurrected, or the soul is eternal and will eventually not be reborn in a physical body. Some philosophers have questioned whether or not the concept of having existence without a body makes sense.

• Questions of identity. If we can exist without a body, our identity must be non-physical. Yet we recognise each other by our physical body. DNA / genetics has some part in shaping our identity. How can we have an identity without a body? • Locke responded to this. Imagine a prince and a pauper (poor person) swapped bodies. They would know who they truly were due to their memories – the prince would not see that he is in the pauper’s body and simply believe himself to be a pauper. This shows it is possible to have a sense of identity independent from the body. • What is non-physical existence like? HH Price argued there is a mental world, formed of thoughts and ideas. This is similar to a dream, except that we would be able to communicate with others who are also in this post-death mental world. • Hick disagrees with Price. Our dreams are influenced by our personalities / desires (reference – Freud). Since we all have different personalities and desires, we would all inhabit different mental world after death – so we would not be able to communicate with others.

The Afterlife and the Problem of Evil

Kant argues that goodness should be rewarded and badness punished (summum bonum) – this does not happen in life, so it should happen in the afterlife.
AUGUSTINE – death is a consequence of the Fall. God chooses to save some people by sending Jesus to die and redeem us from sin. Those who are not saved go to hell. Many people object to the idea of a good God sending people to hell. Also, the idea of predestination seems to make heaven and hell unfair.
IRENAEUS – people’s souls are always developing – suffering allows this to happen. Hick uses this idea to argue for universalism – eventually everyone will be able to be with God in heaven. However, Swinburne argues we have the freedom to reject God and heaven if we choose. Phillips questions whether the amount of evil and suffering that occurs is worth the development gained through it.
REINCARNATION – suggest current suffering is a punishment for bad karma from a past life. But what explains the suffering in the first incarnation?
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Meta-ethics

Meta-ethics and normative ethics

Meta-ethics aims to clarify what we mean when we make ethical statements. Words like ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘right’, ;wrong’ can have several different meanings – which one applies in an ethical statement? Meta-ethics includes theories like naturalism and emotivism.
Normative ethics aims to clarify how we can work out what is good. People disagree about issues such as abortion, war, euthanasia – normative ethics gives us a way of working out whether these actions are right or wrong. It includes theories like Natural Law and Utilitarianism.

Meta-ethics can be divided into two general approaches – cognitive and non-cognitive. Cognitive theories of meta-ethics suggest that we can know for certain what is right and wrong – there are ethical facts. So when people make ethical statements, we can make a definite judgement about whether what they have said is true or false. The two cognitive approaches are naturalism and non-naturalism (intuitionism). Non-cognitive approaches claim that it is not possible to know ethical facts, and so statements about ethics are simply expressions of opinion. Some argue that because ethical statements are not verifiable, they have no meaning.

Normative ethics can also be divided into two approaches – absolutist and relativist. Absolutist approaches argue that what is right or wrong is universal – it never changes. For example, Kant argues one should always do one’s duty – he gave the example of telling the truth, arguing that it is always morally right to tell the truth. Other theories take a relativist approach. For example, in Utilitarianism, the same action could be right or wrong depending on the circumstances (eg right to lie to a Nazi about where a Jewish family are hiding, but wrong to lie to the police and allow a criminal to escape charges).

Using the metaphor of the journey of life, normative ethics are like guide books, showing us the right path to take; meta-ethics are like phrase booklets, explaining what the language means.

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Cognitive approaches

Naturalism

We can know what is good by using our senses. Empirical data can prove that ethical statements are accurate. For example, a naturalist who believes war is wrong could support this by referring to the death and destruction caused by war. Since you can use empirical evidence to verify ethical statement, this means that they are meaningful.

|Strengths |Weaknesses |
|Gives the possibility of establishing ethical facts. |Naturalistic fallacy (GE Moore) |
|Allows for ethical debate by using evidence to support or challenge another |Ethical judgements cannot be based on empirical data. Open question argument |
|person’s ethical statements |– good cannot be defined – it has no ‘natural qualities’. Eg ‘helping people |
| |makes them happy, so it is good’ – this assumes that happiness is a quality of|
| |goodness. This is a false assumption as we could ask ‘Is what makes us happy |
| |good?’ – the answer may well be ‘no’. |

Non-naturalism

Good cannot be defined using experience / senses. GE Moore took this approach, and used the analogy of colour to argue that good cannot be defined, only recognised. For example, we cannot define the colour yellow, but we can recognise yellow things when we see them. Everyone knows what yellow is, and everyone recognises it, but no-one can explain it. This is like goodness – we all know what it means, and we can give examples of good actions, but we cannot actually define ‘good’. Moore says: ‘good is good and that is the end of the matter’. He argues that we know goodness through our moral intuition – so his theory is called intuitionism.

Pritchard develops is, by arguing that we also always recognise our own moral obligations or duties. He believes that we all have moral intuition, but some people’s is more developed than others. Ross agreed, and introduced the idea of prima facie duties – the primary duties that we should do first. We should work out the greater duties, using our moral intuition.

|Strengths |Weaknesses |
|Gives the possibility of establishing moral facts |No explanation given of why we have moral intuition / where is comes from |
|Analogy with colour is persuasive |If two people disagree about a moral issues, how can we tell whose intuition |
| |is correct? |

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Non-cognitive approaches

Emotivism

Ayer argued that ethical statements are opinion, not facts, as they cannot be verified. He claims that they are simply expressions of emotions. So if someone says ‘abortion is wrong’, this is an expression of their negative feelings towards abortion; ‘abortion is right’ is an expression of positive feelings about abortion. It is much the same as cheering and booing. A cheer is an expression of a positive emotion; a boo is an expression of a negative emotion – leading to the alternative name for emotivism, ‘The Boo-Hurrah Theory’. Ayer is arguing that there is no objective truth in moral statements – there is no way of actually proving, for example, that ‘murder is wrong’.

CL Stevenson developed Ayer’s work, arguing that ethical statements are not only expressions of opinion, but that they also influence other people. In saying ‘abortion is wrong’, we are expressing disapproval of that action, and this may influence another person.

|Strengths |Weaknesses |
|Gives validity to all opinions – everyone is allowed their own opinion, and |Surely some things are more than mere opinion eg ‘genocide is wrong’ is fact, |
|all opinions are equal |not just an opinion |
|Recognises that many ethical issues are emotive (eg abortion, euthanasia, etc)|If all ethical judgements are based on emotion they become arbitrary and |
|– humans are not purely logical and rational, they do have emotions which |pointless – people do sometimes have logical reasons to support their |
|might affect their judgement. |judgements |

Prescriptivism

RM Hare agreed that there are no ethical facts, but argued that ethical statements are not just opinions – they are designed to direct other people’s behaviour. In effect, they are commands telling others what we think they should do. We can use the analogy of a headmaster addressing pupils is assembly. He may be concerned about an issue such as bullying, and tell the pupils he thinking bullying is completely unacceptable. In doing this, he is not just expressing an opinion, he is telling pupils that they should not bully – it is an imperative to follow. Hare’s approach implies universalism – that we all should keep to the same moral rules. For a person to be consistent, they should also act on what they express. So if a person says ‘murder is wrong’, they are saying that they will not murder anyone, and neither should anyone else. If an action is correct for one person, it is correct for all – if it is wrong for one person, it is wrong for all.

|Strengths |Weaknesses |
|Establishes universal rules – this is fair, as everyone is expected to keep to|Can lead to arguments about what the universal rules should be. Also implies |
|them, with no exceptions. |you do not have to respect other peoples’ ethical views |
|Recognises that we do often want others to behave in ways that we feel are |Mackie challenges the idea that there can be universal rules – he argues that |
|morally right. |there is cultural and moral relativism |

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Free Will and Determinism

Introduction

The central issue in this topic is the consideration of whether or not human beings make free moral choices. Some philosophers argue that we have free will, and we are responsible for how we choose to act. Others claim that our freedom is limited by a range of factors outside our control:

PSYCHOLOGY FAMILY

GENETICS NATURAL LAWS

SOCIETY RELIGION

Determinism

Hard Determinism

Hard determinism is the view that all our ‘choices’ are determined by other actions of events. Therefore, free will is an illusion – we think we are making free choices, but prior events have led to us making the ‘choice’, so in fact it had already been determined that that is what we would do. The lawyer Clarence Darrow used hard determinism when defending two teenage boys (Leopold and Loeb) who were accused of kidnap and murder. The boys admitted the crime, and could have received the death penalty, but instead were given life imprisonment. Darrow argued that they had not really made a free choice to murder, but were determined by factors such as their upbringing, social conditions, reading crime novels, and misunderstanding the philosophy of Nietzsche. He was not denying that they had committed the crime, but he was saying that they were determined by factors beyond their control, and so they should not be held fully accountable.
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The modern philosopher Ted Honderich argues for hard determinism due to findings of neuroscience. He argues that people have no choice but to act in the way that they do, and so he rejects the concept of moral responsibility. He argues that the brain is our decision-making centre, and it is effected by others things. For example, our brain can be affected by our physical state eg studies show people make poor decisions when under stress, or tired. There are also psychological affects which influence how we think – for example, if a person is afraid, this may influence their behaviour.
Example: suppose a starving person steals food. The thief’s physical experience of hunger has an effect on the workings of his brain. He would also connect hunger with certain other ideas / emotions, based on past experience eg he may have previously been hungry as a child when a parent did not provide the food he wanted – therefore he connects feeling hungry with the idea that someone else is at fault as they should have provided food. The brain then causes his hand to reach out and take the food. It is not really a free decision, but a pre-determined act, based on past experience and the workings of the brain.

Locke also supports Hard Determinism, describing free will as an ‘illusion’ – he uses the story of the man who does not know he has been locked in a room. He considers leaving the room, but chooses to stay, therefore never realising that the room was locked. Although he thinks he chose to stay, he wasn’t able to leave had he wanted to – so he wasn’t really free.

• An advantage of hard determinism is that it is fair – since we do not have free will, we are not held accountable for our actions. • A disadvantage is that it can be used as an excuse for morally wrong actions, and allows people to escape responsibility / punishment

Soft determinism

Also called compatibilism – the argument is that we are determined to some extent, but still have free will. Our actions might be influenced by other factors, but we still have the freedom to ignore these influences. For example, a young adult brought up in a Muslim family may choose not to drink alcohol because of the influence of his parents and religion – but he still could choose to ignore these influences and drink alcohol.
Kant argues for soft determinism. He believes that the idea of cause and effect is imposed on the world by humans - we interpret the world in that way. He claims that because we have reason, we can use it to make our own free choices. So although some aspects of the physical world seem determined, due to our interpretation of cause and effect (eg if I drop a book, it is determined that it will fall to the ground), our mind is not part of the empirical world and so we do have freedom – and moral responsibility.
Hume agrees, arguing that our actions do have a cause, but the cause is our own wishes, so we do have free will. However, our wishes will be influenced by outside factors.

• An advantage of soft determinism is that it recognises both free will and determinism, and reconciles them. • A disadvantage is that it is not clear to what extent we are influenced by genetics, psychology, social conditioning etc.

Predestination (theological determinism)

Calvin argued that because God is omniscient, he already knows how we will act, and so has already decided who will go to heaven and who will go to hell. Due to his foreknowledge, God does not need to wait until Judgement Day to make these decisions. This is based on the teaching of St Paul in the Bible:

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It is not possible for anyone to save themselves – to be good enough to deserve a place in heaven. Instead, God, in his goodness, has chosen some people to be saved, and they will go to heaven.

This raises the question of whether or not we actually have free will. If God knows all our actions before we do them, it can be argued that we do not have a choice but to act in that pre-determined way – if we act any other way, then we will show God to be wrong – he will not be fully omniscient. However, Calvin would argue that we do in fact have free will. God knowing an event will happen does not mean that he has caused it to happen. For example, if God knows you will give some money to charity, his foreknowledge did not cause you to do it – it was your own free choice. However, others argue that free will is just an illusion.

Questions raised by predestination: • If God knows all our actions in advance, do we have free will? If we don’t have free will, is it fair that some people are rewarded, while others are punished, when no-one choice to act in the way that they do. • If no-one deserved heaven, why does God only grant salvation to some people – this would seem to be arbitrary.

Libertarianism

This is the opposite of hard determinism – the argument is that we do have complete freedom, and therefore complete moral responsibility. This is also called incompatibilism, as it is incompatible with hard determinism. Hume defined free will as the ‘power of acting, or not acting, according to the determinations of the will’. He is suggesting that if we could have acted in a different way to the way that we did act, then we had free will. To refute the claims of determinism, we could refer to people who have overcome particular factors which could be argued would limit their freedom. For example, the US writer and lecturer Helen Keller was left deaf and blind following an illness as a baby. Determinists might argue that these factors would determine her future; however, she received an education and become the first deaf-blind person to achieve a degree, and then spent much of her life as a public speaker, author and rights campaigner.

Sartre held a libertarian view. He believed that as conscious beings, we are burden with free will. Our mind constantly presents us with ideas about how things could be; therefore, we are forced to choose how we want to them to be, and act to make our wishes a reality. He argues that it is best to live an ‘authentic’ life, which means accepting that you are responsible for your own actions. Inauthentic people pretend that they are not completely free, and try to avoid responsibility. This may be through being ‘serious-minded’; for example, obeying the rules of a religion. However Sartre says that the person still made a choice to follow that religion. Others act in ‘bad faith’; they assume a ‘role’ and pretend they have to act in accordance with it. For example, a student may say ‘I have to attend this lesson’ – however Sartre points out that the student would still have the free will not to attend.

• An advantage of libertarianism is that it requires people to take moral responsibility for their actions, instead of blaming others. • A disadvantage is that it does not recognise factors beyond our control (eg actions of others).
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Influences on free will and determinism

Social conditioning
Factors within society might influence how we act. Education can be used for social conditioning. For example, the government is concerned about religious / racial tension in society, and so it is

requiring all schools to promote ‘community cohesion’ – if children are educated to accept that everyone is equal and deserves respect, then this will influence how they act towards other people. The idea of social conditioning making people less responsible for their actions is often referred to in the media. For example, when two boys kidnapped and killed the toddler Jamie Bulger, it was noted that they had seen violent horror films, which may have influenced their actions. Advertising companies often try to sell products by attempting to make the consumer associate a positive idea / feeling with the product – therefore, they are more likely to buy the product. In all these cases, people still have free will, but they are being influenced by factors around them in society.

Psychology
Behaviourism is a branch of psychology which suggests that all human behaviour can be predicted. JB Watson conducted an experiment in which he created a phobia of rats in ‘Little Albert’ – he was able to create a fear reaction of crying, based on the child’s past experiences (which Watson had controlled). Watson’s theories support determinism. Other psychologists note how behaviour can be modified through the use of rewards and punishments. If a person is punished for a certain action, he is less likely to choose to do that action again. This can be seen in school, where a pupil might eventually stop being disruptive because he / she does not want to receive certain punishments (eg phone call home) – the pupil still has the choice about how to behave, but is being influenced by the rewards / punishments used in response to the choice. This seems to support soft determinism.

Genetics
Some scientists suggest that our genes can influence our behaviour. They take the ‘nature’ side of the nature vs nurture debate. If this is true, then it is evidence to support determinism. A person would have less / no free will if it could be shown that their actions could be predicted by looking at their genes. This again leads to questions about whether or not a person could be held morally responsible.

Environment
It can be argued that the environment we find ourselves in can influence how we act. A recent example of this is the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. Survivors were accused of ‘looting’ – taking things from abandoned houses / stores. Some people argued that they wouldn’t steal in normal circumstances, but that due to the flooding they were cut off from help, and they needed to take supplies in order to survive.
This shows how their behaviour was partially determined by the environmental factors – they would not have acted in that way if there had not been a hurricane. This is supporting soft determinism.

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Conscience

Introduction – questions about the conscience

A general definition of the conscience is that it is the part of a person which knows right from wrong – it guides us so that we can do what is right. However, this idea raises several questions:

• Where does the conscience come from? • Is the conscience linked to God? • Can the conscience always be trusted? • Is everyone’s conscience the same?

Religious views about the conscience

Early Christian ideas

St Paul argued that the conscience is given by God to all people. The proof he offers for this is that even Gentiles (non-Jews), who do not know God’s laws (as they do not read the Torah) can still instinctively do what is right. He refers to this as the law being ‘written on their hearts’.
St Augustine believed the conscience was the voice of God speaking to us, so that we can understand what is right and wrong. Therefore, we must always listen to what our conscience tells us.

Aquinas

Aquinas defines conscience as ‘reason making right decisions’ – he saw it as our moral reasoning. He argues that everyone knows the principles of morality, and they intend to do what is good. He refers to this as synderesis. What he calls conscienta is the application of the principles, by reason, to the particular situation a person is in. However, sometimes, due to a mistake with the moral reasoning, or due to a lack of self-control, people do what is wrong, thinking that they are doing what is right. He describes this as an apparent good. So it is possible for the conscience to be wrong.

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Some criticisms of Aquinas’s view • Some people are not mistaken when they do something wrong – they do it knowing it is wrong. For example, people that do something, and then try to cover it up afterwards – they would not do this unless they knew it was wrong. • It is possible to argue that moral principles are not innate, but come from parents / society (eg Freud) • There might be valid reasons for two opposing actions eg abortion when pregnant due to rape – on the one hand, allowing an abortion seems reasonable (reduces trauma for woman, she didn’t want to be pregnant etc), but on the other hand it does not seem reasonable to end the life of the foetus when the circumstances of its conception are not its fault.

Butler

Butler argues is a gift from God. He refers to it as ‘our natural guide, the guide assigned to us by the Author of our nature’. Because, of this it has ultimate authority – disobeying your conscience is the same as disobeying God. He argues that humans are motivated y two principles – self-love and benevolence. The role of the conscience is to encourage us to show benevolence, by putting the needs of other people before our own needs. This idea of self-sacrifice is common in Christianity (eg Jesus’s death on cross is seen as a sacrifice).

Some criticisms of Butler’s view: • He doesn’t explain whether the conscience is reason / emotion • It can be dangerous to allow everyone to follow their conscience (eg Yorkshire Ripper – believed God wanted him to kill prostitutes) • The conscience may not be from God (see secular explanations)

Newman

Newman believed the conscience is the voice of God within us. He describes it as God’s messenger. This idea is evident in the story of Joan of Arc, who heard God’s voice guiding her to led the French army to victory against the English, despite only being a teenage girl. Newman’s reasoning is that when people do not follow their conscience, they feel guilty, ashamed and afraid – this is because they know God will judge them. He also gives ultimate authority to the conscience in his memorable quote, ‘I toast the Pope, but I toast conscience first’ – meaning that he gives authority to the Pope, but the conscience is even before the Pope.

Some criticisms of Newman’s view: • Why are there differences in people’s consciences if it is all the voice of God? • It can be dangerous to allow everyone to follow their conscience (eg Yorkshire Ripper – believed God wanted him to kill prostitutes) • The conscience may not be from God (see secular explanations)

Secular views of conscience

Freud

Freud argued that we gain our ideas about right and wrong from our parents. The conscience is not
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innate. It is a part of the mind that develops as the parents bring up the child. The part of the mind that controls behaviour is the superego. This is like the ‘inner parent’, which controls the demands of the id. If the superego is not obeyed, this can lead to feelings of guilt. It can be divided into two parts – the ego-ideal and the conscience. The ego-ideal represents the nurturing parent, who encourages good behaviour through feelings of self-esteem; the conscience is the punishing parent, who tries to limit bad behaviour through feelings of shame and guilt. He argues that our upbringing shapes our conscience – it is not God-given and not infallible. He argues for moral relativism, as society determines what is right and wrong, rather than an absolute moral rules / principles.

Some criticisms of Freud’s view • Freud’s methods – he generalises about all humans from the study of a narrow sample of white, middle class women. • We may reject the idea that social norms determine what is right and wrong (eg apartheid in South Africa).

Piaget

Piaget studied child development. He argued that before the age of 10, a child is incapable of making independent moral reasoning, but instead relies on guidance from others, or only considers the immediate consequences of on action. For example, a child might decide not to hit a sibling not because they can see that it wrong, but because they know from past experience the parents will punish them – this is heteronymous morality. The ability to making independent moral decisions develops along with a child’s reasoning skills, until they are eventually capable of autonomous morality. Piaget consider the conscience to be part of reason; it is not innate, but develops as a child grows up.

Some criticisms of Piaget’s view • Children develop at different rates – surely the age of 10 is too specific and too fixed a boundary for the conscience • Is morality linked to reason – this implies the better a person is at reasoning, the more morally good they will be. • If children under the age of 10 do not have a fully formed conscience, does that mean they are not morally responsible for their actions?

Fromm

Fromm argues that there are two types of conscience. The authoritarian conscience is developed as we internalise the morality of authority figures around us (eg parents, society, religion). We take on their views, and feel guilt if we fall short of what is expected of us. An example of this type of conscience was studied by Milgram in his infamous experiment where the subjects obeyed authority figures telling them to administer severe electric shocks to other people. A more recent example is the defence used by some soldiers accused of abusing Iraqi prisoners – that they were only following orders. Fromm also identified the humanistic conscience, which is when we try to become better human beings. It enables to evaluate our own behaviour, and guides us towards becoming good people.

Some criticisms of Fromm’s view • The idea of the authoritarian conscience allows people to pass moral responsibility onto authority figures, rather than accepting it themselves • How do we know which authority figures we can have confidence in to guide us in the right way?

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Issues raised about the conscience

Is the conscience innate?

YES: NO:
Aquinas – synderesis in ‘natural’ Freud – superego (from parents)
Newman – voice of God Piaget – develops at age 10
Butler – a gift from God Fromm – influence of others

Is the conscience always right?

YES: NO:
Newman – its God’s voice Aquinas – might be ‘apparent good’
Butler – its guide from God Piaget – invalid moral reasoning Fromm – authorities may be wrong

(Freud clearly believes in moral relativism – for him, there is not absolute right / wrong, so this isn’t really an issue. The role of the conscience is to help us fit into society, not to tell us right from wrong)

What is the nature of the conscience?

Newman – it is an inner voice, from God
Butler – it is like moral intuition, from God
Aquinas – the principles are innate (like intuition), but we apply them with moral reasoning
Freud – it is part of the mind
Piaget – it is part of our reasoning skills
Fromm – it can be our internalisation of moral authorities, or our ability to judge ourselves

What about people who don’t seem to have a conscience?

All the philosophers are assuming everyone has / develops a conscience – that they know what’s right and wrong, and they feel guilt when they do what is wrong. Some people argue that there are examples of people who have committed very serious crimes, but seem to show no guilt or remorse. Such people might include: • The Moors Murderers (Ian Brady and Myra Hindley) – responsible for the sexual abuse, torture and murder of at least 4 children in the 1960’s. They committed their crimes on a moor near Manchester, taking photographs and making tape recordings as they did so, then buried the bodies. They both pleaded not guilty (despite the tapes of one of the killings being played during the trial), but were convicted, and received indefinite life sentences. One of the bodies has never been found, and they refuse to say where it is buried.

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Virtue Ethics

Aristotle

Introduction

Aristotle developed Virtue Ethics as a way of trying to achieve happiness in life (eudaimonia). By happiness, he meant pleasure, being a free member of society, and the intellectual happiness of a philosopher. To gain this happiness, a person has to develop a good character. He identified two types of virtues: ● Intellectual virtues (eg being able to play a musical instrument) – these can be developed over time through training and education ● Moral virtues (eg courage) – these can be developed through practice and habit.

He also believed in the importance of true friendship. He identified three types of friendship: ● Friendships of Utility = colleagues / people it is necessary to get along with (eg team-mates) ● Friendships of Pleasure = people we enjoy being with due to shared interests ● Friendships of the Good = people who we fully accept – their good and bad points

If people practice the virtues, they will have a happy and prosperous life. Aristotle argued that there are four ‘cardinal’ (most important) virtues: ● Temperance = moderation – finding the balance between too much and too little. Eg temperance with money – not being mean or denying yourself pleasures, but not spending so much that you have huge debts ● Justice = acting fairly. Eg justice in society – fair trials and appropriate punishments for criminals ● Courage = being brave – trying to overcome your fears. Eg courage to defeat phobias ● Prudence = knowing how to apply principles to practical situations. Eg prudence in business – knowing how to show kindness, honesty, trust, etc in dealings with employees

Agent-centred

Virtue ethics focuses on the moral development of the person, rather than the inherent right-ness / wrong-ness of the action (deontological ethics) or the consequence of the action (teleological ethics). The aim of morality is to become a better person, through the development of the moral virtues. For example, if a person who needs to become more generous gives money to charity, this is good as it helps him to develop the virtue. For Aristotle, doing good deeds shows that we are good people.

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Practising the virtues

Aristotle believed that when it comes to the virtues, practice makes perfect. Just like a sportsman aiming to be a good athlete and win medals must regularly practice and train, so a person trying to be good must regularly practice the virtues. It the virtue is not practiced frequently, it may be weakened or lost. If people do continually practice the virtues, this will have a positive impact not just on the person themselves, but on the whole of society.

Eudaimonia

This is the ultimate aim in life, and the reason for developing the virtues. However, people who achieve the happiness of eudaimonia have shown that they do in fact deserve to be happy, as they have consistently practiced the virtues. For example, Mother Teresa practiced many virtues in her life as a nun, working amongst the poor in India. Her life benefitted society, and allowed her to achieve eudaimonia, which she deserved due to the good work she was doing.

The Doctrine of the Mean

Aristotle argued that a virtue is in the middle of two vices. The vice of deficiency is when not enough of a virtue is shown, and the vice of excess is when too much of a virtue is shown. For example, three talented students are asked to perform in a school concert. One has too much modesty, and believes he is not good enough to perform and so refuses to take part. Another has too little modesty and tries to secure the biggest part in the concert, and then goes around boasting about it. The final student has just the right amount of modesty; he agrees to play in the concert, because he accepts that he is talented, but is humble to recognising that others are talented too.

TOO LITTLE TOO MUCH

VICE VIRTUE VICE

Cowardice………………………………………...Courage……………………………….Rashness
Shamelessness…………………………………..Modesty……………………………….Shyness
Spiritlessness / dullness……………………….Good temper……………………………Irritability
Meanness………………………………..…Liberality / generosity………………………Wastefulness

Role models

Aristotle argued that we can choose a virtuous role model to help us develop the virtues by imitating them. They can be an inspiration and a guide. The role model is not expected to be perfect, but they are someone to look up to. Eg Princess Diana did lots of charity work, but she also committed adultery. The role model doesn’t even have to be a real person eg Harry potter might inspire children to be brave, loyal to their friends etc. This idea is also found within Christianity, with St Paul encouraging Christians to use Jesus as a role model. Jesus showed many virtues eg courage (faced crucifixion), just resentment (eg objected to money-lenders in the temple), friendliness (had many followers) etc.

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Modern Virtue Ethics

MacIntyre

Alasdair MacIntyre argues that there is little understanding of ethics in modern society. He argues that people have lost confidence in traditional sources of morality (eg religion), but don’t have anything to replace them with. He also criticises the use of ‘quandry ethics’ – extreme situations which bear little relationship to real life (eg you’ve travelled back in time to 1930’s Germany and are alone with Hitler – you have a gun, should you kill him?). These situations further undermine our trust in traditional ethical principles (eg do not kill). Looking back through history, it can be seen that different societies valued different virtues – which virtues should we be developing in our own society?

MacIntyre also distinguishes between internal goods (the quality of our character) and external goods (possessions and material objects), but he argues that we need both in order to be happy. Developing Aristotle’s idea of eudaimonia, we do need a certain amount of money and possessions etc to be happy – however, we should acquire them in a virtuous way, and we should not over-value them / strive for too much.

Foot

Philippa Foot argues that people would naturally practice vices, because there is a natural concern with self-interest above concern for others. She claims the virtues should be practised as a way of correcting this. She places more emphasis on the outcome / consequence of an action than Aristotle does. For example, a coward developing courage by robbing a bank has not committed a good act and cannot be seen as virtuous.

Taylor

Richard Taylor uses the principles of Virtue Ethics to criticise traditional religious teaching, which he argues actually discourages people from practicing the virtues. He quotes the Biblical idea that ‘the meek shall inherit the earth’, arguing that it implies you do not need to do anything for your reward – and so what is the point in trying to become a better person? Other religious ideas which could discourage moral development include: ● Forgiveness – God is forgiving, other people are supposed to forgive you, so there is no need to be good ● Equality – everyone should be treated the same, everyone is equal in God’s eyes, whether they are a murderer or a saint – so there is no need to try to be good

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Evaluating Virtue Ethics

|Strengths |Weaknesses |
|Can be used by all |Susan Wolf’s point: |
|Don’t have to be religious. Can choose a virtuous role model who you personally |It would be boring if everyone as good all the time. To appreciate good people, |
|admire. However, it is also compatible with religion eg role models could be |we need bad people to compare them with. |
|Jesus / Buddha / Prophet Muhammad etc | |
| | |
|Agent-centred |Clash of virtues |
|Puts the goodness of the person at the heart of ethics. Shows how people can |Some situations would lead to a clash of virtues. Eg pregnancy due to rape – |
|develop their own virtue and become better people. The more the virtues are |would it show courage to have the baby, or would just resentment allow for an |
|practiced, the easier it gets |abortion? |
| |Which virtue should be prioritised? |
| |This also shows that virtue ethics can be difficult to apply, as there are no |
| |actual rules about what is right and wrong |
|Logical and practical |Incorrect use of virtues |
|It makes sense to argue that good people do good actions. The whole of society |As Foot pointed out, practicing the virtue doesn’t always make you morally good |
|benefits, not just the individual. Avoids the inflexibility of absolutist |eg the courage of a bank robber / or a soldier fighting an unjust war |
|ethics, and the sometimes dubious reasoning of relativist morality | |
| | |
| |Golden Mean – vague |
| |At what point does a virtue become a vice? How do we know? |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| |Sexism? |
| |Some critics have argued that Aristotle’s list of virtues only included the more |
| |‘masculine’ ones, and ignored ‘feminine’ virtues eg kindness, helpfulness etc. |

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Sexual Ethics

Introduction

In the UK, today’s attitudes towards sexual ethics are very different from the attitudes of 60 years ago. In general, society has moved away from the tradition ideal of virginity before marriage, and the expectation of children being raised by parents who are married to each other. There is now more tolerance and acceptance of people who would formerly be considered social outcasts eg single mothers, cohabiting couples, divorcees, homosexuals.

These changing attitudes are reflected in several laws: ● Abortion Act (1967) – abortion became legal, though certain conditions still have to be met. ● Sexual Offences Act (1967) – decriminalised homosexuality for men over age of 21 ● National Health Serve (Family Planning) Act (1967) – family planning advice and contraception made available through the NHS ● Civil Partnership Act (2004) – provided a legal union for homosexual couples, giving the same rights a married couples

Traditional Attitudes

Adam and Eve
The serpent tempts Eve to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge; she does so, and then gives the fruit to Adam, and he chooses to eat it too. After this, they both realised they were naked, and so made clothes out of fig leaves. God questions them about what happened, and then punishes all involved. The serpent is cursed to crawl on its belly; Eve will have pain in child-birth and will be ruled over by Adam; Adam will have to work hard for a living. They both are sent out of the Garden of Eden, and will experience death.
This Biblical story has been used as the basis of sexual ethics. It describes the traditional roles of men and women in society - women bearing / raising children, and being dependent on men, who work to provide for the family. The purpose of sex is to produce children – it is not intrinsically good in itself.

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St Paul
St Paul wrote much teaching about sexual ethics. He believed that Christians should focus on spiritual rather than physical things, and so he recommended that they remain celibate – sex would be a distraction from serving God. He also supported the view that the role of women has to raise children, and that the husband is the head of the household. He taught that women should not speak in church, had no authority in religious matters, and should obey their husbands. This is in conflict with some of his other teaching which suggests there should be equality.

Christian attitudes to sexual ethics

Christian attitudes are influenced by the teachings in the Bible, which includes that of St Paul (see above). Jesus’s own views on these issues are not made clear in the Bible. He rejects adultery, in keeping with the 10 commandments. There are two different interpretations of his teaching on divorce – that it is completely forbidden, or that it is not to be encourage, but can be allowed in some cases. He emphasised the importance of love in all human relationships.

Today, there are different attitudes amongst Christians. They can be summarised into three groups:

|Roman Catholic |Liberal Protestant |Evangelical Protestant |
| | | |
|Influenced by Aquinas and Natural Law. The purpose |A more modern, relaxed approach. Interpret the Bible|Agree with the principle that sex should be within |
|of sex is reproduction. Any sexual act which cannot |in the light of modern culture / society. Often |marriage, and reject pre-marital and extra-marital |
|lead to reproduction is wrong (eg homosexuality – |emphasise the idea of love above traditional moral |sex. The primary purpose of sex is for reproduction,|
|also the use of contraception). |rules. |and it is better for children to be brought up by |
| | |married parents. |
|God intended people to have sex within marriage. |Many argue that if a couple love each other and are | |
|Therefore pre-marital and extra-marital sex is wrong |committed, they do not need to wait for marriage to |Divorce can be allowed as a last resort. It is |
|(extra-marital sex is forbidden in 10 commandments) |have sex. Sex can have more than one purpose – it |wrong, but is sometimes the lesser of two evils eg |
| |can be for pleasure / so the couple feel closer to |divorce due to domestic abuse. |
|Marriage is seen as a sacrament (sign of God’s love).|each other, as well as for reproduction | |
|Once a couple are joined in marriage, they cannot be | |Homosexuality is not accepted, due to Biblical |
|separated – divorce is not allowed. If a Catholic |Most accept divorce as a last resort if the marriage |teaching against it, and due to the idea that sex |
|couple got a divorce, the Church would still consider|is not working. |should be within marriage, which is not possible for |
|them to be married in the eyes of God. Annulment is | |homosexuals. |
|possible, if it can be shown the marriage was invalid|Some also accept homosexuality, arguing that the | |
|(eg one person was forced into it) |parts of the Bible which forbid it were influenced by| |
| |the culture at the time they were written. God loves| |
| |and accepts everyone. | |
| | | |

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Libertarian attitudes to sexual ethics

Secular libertarian attitudes are not based in religious teaching. Therefore, it is not argued that God intended sex for procreation within marriage. Instead, there are three important ideas which influence attitudes to sex and relationships:

● Being autonomous A person has the right to make their own free, informed decisions about sex, and not to be coerced or controlled by others. Therefore acts like rape in which a person has not given consent are seen to be wrong. It is also argued that some people (eg children under age of 16) cannot give consent, and so any sexual act involving them is wrong, even if they say they agree to it.

● Contractarian approach Following on from the idea of autonomy, if all involved in a sexual act freely agree to it, then it is allowed. This principle applies to all equally, and so, for example, could be used to accept homosexuality between consenting adults – it would be seen as no different to heterosexuality.

● Harm Principle This was developed by John Stuart Mill to argue that no harm should be caused by one’s actions. If the act only effects those directly involved in it, and they all agree to it, then society has no right to judge or intervene. However, if harm will be caused to another person, then it is wrong – for example, in situations adultery it can be reasonably assumed that the person being cheated on will be harmed by the affair, so the affair is wrong.

The libertarian approach gives each person the right to make their own moral decisions about sexual ethics, and requires them to take responsibility for their actions. However, a criticism is that it over-simplifies the balance of power in a relationship. A person may be technically free to choose, but may experience limited choice due to the power another had over them. For example, if a 18 year old man tells his 16 year old girlfriend he will leave her if she doesn’t agree to have sex with him, she is free to choose whether to have sex or not, but she may feel she has no choice as she doesn’t want to lose him.

Homosexuality

Traditionally, homosexuality was believed to be wrong. This was partly due to the influence of religion (see above). It was often regarded as ‘unnatural’; this view could be supported by Natural Law, which suggested that reproduction was a primary purpose in life. Until 1967 it was illegal in the UK for men to engage in homosexual acts (there was no similar law for women), and many men were convicted under these laws eg the writer Oscar Wilde was sent to Reading Prison. Others thought it not so much a crime as a psychiatric illness, and offered treatment which involved cutting away part of the brain.

Modern attitudes now accept homosexuality. Some argue it may actually be natural for some people, as there may be a gene that controls sexuality. Others question the link between something being ‘unnatural’ and morally wrong eg if a person with no hands learns to write with their feet, this is unnatural, but is not morally wrong. The Civil Partnerships act gave recognition to the love that may exist in homosexual relationships. The development of ideas about human rights stress that everyone is entitled to be treated equally and fairly, regardless of issues such as race, religion, gender or sexual orientation. This is also stated by the law, which forbids homophobic behaviour.

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Contraception

The Roman Catholic Church still forbids the use of artificial contraception, as it believes the purpose of sex is procreation. This view is particularly criticised by people concerned about the spread of AIDS. Other Christians accept contraception, and argue that sex can be to unite the couple, not just for procreation. An issue for the UK is the high rate of teenage pregnancy (highest in Europe). Doctors can give contraception to underage girls without their parents’ knowledge, which some disagree with, as it is allowing (if not encouraging) illegal underage sex. Women’s rights groups argue that every woman is entitled to contraception, so that she can control when - or if – she will have a child.

Application of Theory

|Theory |Application |Evaluation |
| |Aquinas – good if achieve purpose. Purpose of sex is reproduction. |Strengths – clear cut rules. It is fair – same rules apply to all |
|Natural Law |Reproduction is one of 5 primary precepts. Therefore, homosexuality,|people |
| |and the use of contraception is wrong. Sex should not be just for |Weaknesses – too harsh – contraception should be allowed to reduce |
| |pleasure. |STIs. Can be more than one purpose of sex – eg can be to unite the |
| | |couple. Can lead to homophobia. |
| |JS Mill’s Harm Principle (see above). |Strengths – flexible, and allows circumstances to be considered. |
|Utilitarianism |Principle of Utility supports contractarian view. Nothing is |Gives people moral autonomy and freedom of choice. |
| |intrinsically wrong – depends on the situation. Eg adultery OK if |Weaknesses – could be used to justify acts usually considered immoral|
| |provides the greatest happiness (eg if only 1 person is married, no |eg gang rape. Some acts are absolutely and universally wrong eg |
| |kids). |paedophilia |
| |Universalising rules out many actions eg contraception – cannot be |Strengths – fair –same rules apply to all. Requires respect for |
|Kant’s Categorical |argued that everyone should use contraception, therefore no-one |individual – never OK to use people. |
|Imperative |should. |Weaknesses – too absolutist eg forbids contraception. Kant requires |
| |People cannot be used as a means to an end – wrong to use someone |moral decisions to be based solely on reason, never emotions – this |
| |only for sexual pleasure (eg sex for pleasure is wrong, pornography |is unlikely and unrealistic when it comes to sexual ethics. |
| |is wrong). | |
| |Kant would support the idea of sex within marriage. | |
| |(see above) |Strengths – gives clear guidance / rules. Based on Biblical |
|Christian Ethics |Roman Catholic – sex only for procreation, within marriage. |teaching. |
| |Everything else is wrong. |Weaknesses – some see RC and Liberal Protestant as being too |
| |Liberal protestant – sex as an expression of love. Adultery still |old-fashioned. Irresponsible to forbid contraception in light of |
| |wrong. |AIDS. Bible influenced by culture of the time. Different ideas |
| |Evangelical protestant – sex within marriage, can be for procreation,|within same religion can lead to confusion. |
| |or unity. All else wrong. | |
| |Sexual relationships can develop virtues of love, trust, faithfulness|Strengths – a tolerant approach. Encourages moral autonomy. |
|Virtue Ethics |etc. Possible to accept sex in loving relationship even if not |Weaknesses – can be vague / difficult to work how how virtues apply. |
| |married (eg pre-marital / homosexuality). Some acts are unlikely to | |
| |be virtuous eg adultery (cheating, lying, etc). | |

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Environment and Business Ethics

Environmental Ethics

Conservationism

Also known as ‘shallow ecology’, this approach values the environment only for its usefulness to humans. The environment is a means to an end – the end being the survival and progress of the human race. This is an anthropocentric view – human-centred. Only humans are valuable in themselves (intrinsic value)’ the environment only has instrumental value – it’s worth depends on how it can be used.

This approach is supported by Michael La Bossiere. He uses the idea of survival of the fittest from the theory of evolution. For example, if an animal becomes extinct due to human activity, this is nature taking its course. While we should not deliberately harm the environment, if this happens as a result of our activity, then it is acceptable.

Criticisms of this view • Damage we do know can affect humans in future (eg Global Warming) • Denies any rights to animals • Allows people to be irresponsible in use of environment 44
Deep Ecology

This approach rejects conservationism as being ‘speciesist’. Instead, it suggests that all life – whether human, animal, plant or mineral – has intrinsic value, and it all should be protected. Humans should not see themselves as being master of nature, but as being part of nature, with a responsibility to our fellow creatures, and to the earth as a whole.

This approach is supported by Arne Naess, who developed the idea of ecosophy – that all living things have rights. All aspects of the environment are inter-connected, and inter-dependent – no one species can claim to be dominant over the others. He outlines what we must do to avoid environmental disasters in the future: reduce the population; limit economic growth; conserve species; live in small communities.

Criticisms of this view • Some argue that they are unrealistic – his goals are unachievable • Sometimes it is not possible to protect all parts of the environment, and a choice has to be made • Some religious teachings argue that humans are the highest part of God’s creation (eg because they have a soul / made in image of God etc)

Ecological Extension

The idea behind the ecological extension is that everything is connected – all living things are interdependent. The best-known version of this theory is James Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis.

The Gaia Hypothesis takes its name from the ancient Greek goddess of the earth (Gaia). The hypothesis is that the earth is a single, self-regulating organism – the living entity. It adapts to make sure that some form of life is able to survive – but not necessarily human life. Studying fossils, Lovelock saw that some form od life has always survived extreme events on earth in the past eg ice ages, meteor strikes etc. He believes that this is because there is organisation and intelligence in the way that the planet functions. Lovelock also suggests that unless humans learn to respect and work with the planet, rather than threatening it, our survival as a species will be threatened – the planet may allow the human race to die to ensure that it itself survives.

Criticisms of the Gaia hypothesis • Evolution – suggests that the development of life is completely random, with no intelligence behind it. • Dawkins rejects the Gaia hypothesis, arguing that species survive changed environments because they adapt to it – not because the earth allows them to survive
Lynn Margulis suggests that evolution and the Gaia hypothesis can be reconciled through the idea of symbiosis, which is when two species are dependent on each other in a mutually beneficial relationship. For example, bees pollinate flowers, flowers provide food for bees.

Christianity and the Environment

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There are two interpretations of this quote from Genesis. • Humans have dominion over the earth – God has put humans, his highest creation in charge and given everything else for their use. Only humans have intrinsic value. This is because they are made in the image of God. • Humans have a responsibility towards the earth – all of God’s creation is good, and he asked humans to look after it. This is the stewardship idea. We are taking care of God’s creation for him, and will be judged on how well we have done this (see Parable of the Talents).

St Francis is considered the patron saint of the environment. His ideas were: • God can be encountered in his creation – God’s love for us is expressed through the world he has given us • Humans are the highest of God’s creation • God is present in everyone, no matter who they are, or what their life is like.
He taught that people should have great respect for the natural world. Humans should be humble, acknowledging that they depend on the Creator.

Business Ethics

Business and consumers

Economist Milton Friedman argued that the only responsibility a business has is towards its shareholders, and the responsibility is to make as much money as possible:

He argues that it is possible for everyone to benefit, and that a capitalist society is the best way of ensuring that people can profit as much as possible with at little harm done as possible. More recently, companies have begun to accept responsibility towards their stakeholders as well – eg employees, customers etc.

There are laws to protect consumer rights. Business are required to make sure their products are safe and fit for purpose. Advertising must not make false claims or promises about a product. The laws aim to maintain a relationship of trust and good will between the company and the consumer. It is also in the interests of the company to maintain this relationship. Consumers have power when they act together, for example, by boycotting the products of a certain company. Examples of this include:

• Nestle were criticised for promoting powdered milk in LEDCs where the water was not safe to drink. At first the powered milk was given free, and when the mother’s milk had dried up as it was no longer being used, they started to charge for the powdered milk. Many people boycotted Nestle products, claiming the company put profit ahead of the well-being of children in LEDCs.

• The Body Shop raised awareness of the use of animal testing in cosmetics – none of its products are tested on animals. This lead to pressure from consumers on other producers, requiring them to change their policies on animal testing.

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Employers and employees

Adam Smith argued that employees should be treated fairly by their employers. The employer and employee both need each other – the employer needs labour, the employee needs a wage. By working together they can ensure a win-win situation.

Karl Marx disagreed with this, arguing that class divisions in society lead to inequality in the relationship between employer and employee. He believed that the employer had more power, as he could always find someone else to do the job, but an employee has to accept the demands of the employer or he will lose his job. Capitalist society promotes these inequalities – the only truly equal society would be a communist one, in which there are no class divisions.

Traditionally, the employee is seen as the least important stakeholder of the company. The company is more concerned with pleasing their customers and shareholders then with the well-being of the employee. However, employees have rights guaranteed by law, eg the right to be safe at work; the right to sick leave etc. Some companies do more than the minimum in providing for their employees: • The John Lewis Company – encourages pay reviews, where employees can see what they need to do to progress further up the pay scale. Pays annual bonuses to staff. Offers a generous pension scheme. Provides sports and social clubs for staff. Staff discount of 12-25%.

Employers are able to legally make choices to benefit their business which some may argue are unethical. For example, a recent trend has been to close call centres in the UK and relocated them to India, because the companies does not have to pay employees as much in India as they would in the UK (due to the minimum wage laws). This is unfair towards the Indian workers, who are being paid less than the UK worker used to be for doing the same job; it is also unfair to the UK workers who have lost their job through no fault of their own.

Some unethical practices may be brought to the public’s attention by whistle-blowers – people who have chosen to highlight unethical practices of the company they work for. This is a controversial issue; some would claim the employee owes loyalty towards their employer. Others say loyalty cannot be at the expense of what is right. An example of whistle-blowing: • Jeffrey Wigand is a former employee of a tobacco firm in the US. In 1996, he told the media that the tobacco firm knew smoking was dangerous years before the information was made public. He claimed the firm had chosen not to warn people of the dangers because it could reduce their profits.

Globalisation

This is the idea that different economies, cultures, political ideas etc are all inter-connected. For example, the environment is a global concern; companies like McDonalds are global in that they have franchises in almost every country, the brand is recognised world-wide.

This has benefitted business by making importing and exporting easier; by increasing the labour pool from which to find employees, and by widening the markets which can provide consumers. Large multi-national corporations have much power and influence in the business world.

Some argue that globalisation has a negative effect on LEDCs, have they have little financial or political power, and so are more likely to be exploited. Concerns are that employees in LEDCs who work for large companies may not be paid fairly, or may work in unsafe / unpleasant conditions (eg sweat-shops / use of child labourers). Businesses in LEDCs may face unfair trading laws when trying to trade with more powerful countries. 47
Case Studies – Business and the Environment

Chernobyl
An accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant led to a massive leak of radiation. This caused the death of many employees who were at the plant at the time, and led to many people in the surrounding area developing diseases. The environment was contaminated - wind and rain spread the radiation throughout Europe, leading to diseases and abnormalities in animals, as well as the loss of habitats.

Exxon Valdez
An oil tanker called the Exxon Valdez ran into a reef off the coast of Alaska, and oil began leaking into the sea. This caused huge damage to the coastline and wildlife – about 11 million gallons of oil were spilt. The oil company paid for the oil to be cleaned up, and were also fined £3 billion in damage to victims (eg fishermen who lost their livelihood).

Application of Theory

|Theory |Application |Evaluation |
| |Preservation of Life – leads to conservation ethics approach. All |Strengths – clear cut rules. It is fair – same rules apply to all |
|Natural Law |parts of environment to fulfil their purpose. |people |
| |Live in society – business are part of society – need to be run in |Weaknesses – some may criticise conservationist approach (see above).|
| |ways which benefits whole of society / all stakeholders | |
| |Singer’s preference Utilitarianism – applies to animals. All |Strengths – flexible, and allows circumstances to be considered. |
|Utilitarianism |sentient beings have intrinsic value. Bentham – greatest good for |Gives people moral autonomy and freedom of choice. |
| |greatest number – sacrifices can be made (applies to both environment|Weaknesses – could be used to justify exploitation of a few workers |
| |and business ethics). Mill – consider higher / lower pleasures – |for benefit of many consumers (eg provided cheap goods). No value |
| |physical / material gain isn’t most important |given to non-sentient environment (eg plants) |
| |Universalising – as it is not sensible to allow everyone to damage |Strengths – fair –same rules apply to all. Requires respect for |
|Kant’s Categorical |environment, therefore no one should do it. Animals have no status |individual – never OK to use people. |
|Imperative |as not rational beings. People not to be used (by employers) as a |Weaknesses – too idealisitic – a business can’t put people ahead of |
| |means to an end of profit. Treat others how you want to be treated. |profit if it means running at a loss. Some may argue animals have |
| |Gives dignity to all. |intrinsic value. |
| |Dominion vs stewardship approach to environment (see above). |Strengths – everyone is valuable and should be treated fairly. |
|Christian Ethics |Many Christians support ethical business practices and initiatives |Respect for environment as God’s creation. |
| |such as fair-trade (eg Traidcraft is a Christian fair-trade company).|Weaknesses – some disagree with idea that only humans have intrinsic |
| |All people are equal, all have rights, should not be exploited. |value. |
| |For humans to develop, they need environment – encourages deep | Strengths – can be adapted to any situation / business. Encourages |
|Virtue Ethics |ecology approach. St Francis / Lovelock as role models. Individuals|moral autonomy. |
| |and companies should aim to practices virtues (eg compassion to |Weaknesses – can be vague / difficult to work how how virtues apply. |
| |workers, fair pay / conditions etc) | |

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Main philosophers:

AJ Ayer (1910-89 CE)
Antony Flew (1923 -CE)
Pseudo-Dionysius (5th century)
Aquinas (1224-74)
Paul Tillich (1886-1965)
Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976)
Wittgenstein (1889-1951)

Key words:

Univocal = a word has the same meaning at all times
Equivocal = the same word has two or more meanings
Cognitive = a statement that is either true or false
Non-cognitive = a statement that is neither true not false
Logical Positivism = the idea that philosophers should analyse language
Vienna Circle = group of philosophers who began logical positivism
Verification Principle = the idea that statements are only meaningful if they can be verified by the senses
Tautology = a statement that is true by definition
Falsification Principle = the idea that statements are only meaningful if it is possible for evidence to disprove them
Blik = Hare’s term for a belief that is not changed by evidence
Analogy = when the normal use of language is compared to the religious use

Once upon a time two explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing were growing many flowers and many weeds. One explorer says, "Some gardener must tend this plot." The other disagrees, "There is no gardener." So they pitch their tents and set a watch. No gardener is ever seen.

"But perhaps he is an invisible gardener." So they set up a barbed-wire fence. They electrify it. They patrol with bloodhounds. (For they remember how H. G. Well's The Invisible Man could be both smelt and touched though he could not be seen.) But no shrieks ever suggest that some intruder has received a shock. No movements of the wire ever betray an invisible climber. The bloodhounds never give cry.

Yet still the Believer is not convinced. "But there is a gardener, invisible, intangible, insensible, to electric shocks, a gardener who has no scent and makes no sound, a gardener who comes secretly to look after the garden which he loves." At last the Skeptic despairs, "But what remains of your original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?"

A certain lunatic is convinced that all dons [university professors] want to murder him. His friends introduce him to all the mildest and most respectable dons that they can find, and after each of them has retired, they say, 'You see, he doesn't really want to murder you; he spoke to you in a most cordial [kind] manner; surely you are convinced now?'

But the lunatic replies, 'Yes, but that was only his diabolical cunning; he's really plotting against me the whole time, like the rest of them; I know it I tell you'. However many kindly dons are produced, the reaction is still the same.

In wartime, a resistance fighter meets a stranger who claims to be the secret leader of the resistance. He makes a good impression.

The stranger’s subsequent actions are ambiguous, but on the strength of the original meeting, the resistance fighter continues to trust in him.

God is powerful

God is not weak

God

God

Humans

Animals

Key words:

Mystical = direct contact with God (eg vision / voice)
Numinous = awe and wonder in God’s presence
Corporate = a religious experience happening to a group
Conversion = a change in religious beliefs
Revelation = God revealing knowledge about himself to humans
General revelation = knowledge about God available to all people at all times
Special revelation = knowledge about God given to a specific person at a specific time
Propositional revelation = the idea that God reveals facts or information for the believe to accept as being true
Non-propositional revelation = the idea God makes himself known to a person in a religious experience to strengthen the relationship that person has with him
Scripture = holy books / sacred texts

Main philosophers:

William James (1842-1910 )
Rudolf Otto (1869-1937)
Martin Buber (1878-1965)
St Teresa (1515-82)
Richard Swinburne (1934-)
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

I think that they point with reasonable probability towards the continuity of our consciousness with a wider, spiritual environment from which the ordinary man is shut off.

Key words:

Miracle (see below)
Volition = will / intention
Arbitrary = an action based on random choice
Partisan = a supporter of a certain party / group

Main philosophers:

David Hume (1711-86 )
Maurice Wiles (1923-2005)

“……even so it would seem strange that no miraculous intervention prevented Auschwitz or Hiroshima while the purposes apparently forwarded by some of the miracles in traditional Christian faith seem trivial by comparison.” (Wiles)

Key words:

Transcendent = the idea God is separate from the physical world
Immanent = the idea God is active in the world
Immutable = the idea that god cannot change
Timeless = God is outside time and sees past, present and future all at once
Everlasting = God moves through time but has no beginning / end
Predestination = the belief God has already chosen which people will go to heaven
Foreknowledge = knowing what will happen in the future
Providence = God’s goodness
Universalism = the belief that all people eventually will go to heaven

Main philosophers:

Swinburne (1934-)
AN Whitehead (1861-1947)
Boethius (480-525)
Calvin (1509-1564)

Therefore, this divine foreknowledge does not change the nature and properties of things; it simply sees things present before it, as they will later turn out to be, in what we regard as the future.

Key words:

Dualism = the idea that there are two aspects to human beings – physical and mental
Materialism = the idea that human beings consist of only physical matter
Traducianism = the teaching that souls are passed down from our parents, rather than implanted by God
Replica Theory = Hick’s idea that God creates an exact copy of us in the afterlife
Resurrection = the belief that the afterlife involves embodies existence
Beatific Vision = the immediate sight and vision of God in heaven
Akhira = everlasting life after death
Reincarnation = the belief that after death our soul lives again in another embodied form

Main philosophers:

Plato (428-347 BCE)
Richard Dawkins (1941-)
Aristotle (384-322 BCE)
Descartes (1596-1650)
John Hick(1922-)
Augustine (354-430)
Irenaeus (130-205)

So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. (St Paul)

Key words:

Meta-ethics = the study of the meaning of ethical language
Normative ethics = the study of what is right and wrong, and how we can work out the right thing to do
Cognitive = the idea that language expresses facts that can be proved true / false
Non-cognitive = the idea that language expresses opinions which cannot be proved true / false
Naturalism = the theory that everything can be known through the senses
Intuitionism = the theory that we know goodness intuitively
Emotivism = the theory that ethical language expresses emotions
Prescriptivism = the theory that ethical language is intended to give commands to others
Naturalistic Fallacy = claims that it is a mistake to make ethical judgements on the basis of empirical data

Main philosophers:

GE Moore (1873-1958 )
AJ Ayer (1910-1989)
CL Stevenson ()
RM Hare (1919-2002)

Key words:

Free Will = the ability to make free, unhindered choices
Determinism = the idea that all our actions are governed by laws outside our control
Hard determinism = the idea that there is no free will, as all our actions have a prior cause
Soft determinism = the idea we are partly determined and partly free
Libertarianism = the idea that we do have free will and so we are responsible for our actions
Predestination = the belief that God already knew before time began who will go to heaven (theological determinism)
Behaviourism = a branch of psychology which argued all human behaviour can be predicted

Main philosophers:

Darrow (1857-1938)
Honderich (1933-)
Hume (1711-76)
Locke (1632-1704)
Kant (1724-1804)
Sartre (1905-1980)
Calvin (1509-64)

What can affect our freedom?

For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son....and those he predestined, he also called, those he called, he put right with himself; those he put right with himself, he glorified.

Main philosophers:

Aquinas (1224-74)
Butler (1692-1752)
Newman (1808-1890)
Freud (1856-1939)
Piaget (1896-1980)
Fromm (1900-1980)

Key words:

Synderesis = the innate right reason that gives basic moral principles
Conscienta = the ethical judgement made on the basis of synderesis
Id = unconscious part of mind – inner desires / urges
Ego = the part of the mind that interacts with outside world
Superego = part of the mind that controls the id – learnt from the parents
Heteronymous morality = when the immature conscience bases its actions on consequences
Autonomous morality = when a person is able to make their own moral judgements

Key words:

Virtue = a positive characteristic, that suggests goodness
Eudaimonia = a contented state of being happy, healthy and prosperous
Agent-centred = when the ethical theory focuses on the person, rather than the actions
Doctrine of the Mean = the ideal middle (virtue) between two extremes (vice of excess and vice of deficiency)

Main philosophers:

Aristotle (364-322 BCE)
MacIntyre (1929-)
Foot (1920-)
Taylor (1919-2003)

Key words:

Pre-marital sex = sex before marriage (often called ‘fornication’ in Bible)
Extra-marital sex = adultery
Homosexuality = sexual attraction to members of the same sex
Contraception = methods used to reduce the change of pregnancy
Harm principle = the idea that the aim of the law should be to stop harm coming to others
Contractarian = the idea that something is allowed if all people involved agree to it
Civil Partnership = a legal union between two people of the same sex (has the same role as marriage)

Main philosophers:

(the philosophers who developed their own ethical theories)

Main philosophers:

La Bossiere (1966-)
Naess (1912-)
Lovelock (1919-)
Friedman (1912-2006)
Adam Smith (1723-90)
Marx (1818-83)

Key words:

Conservationism = the theory that the environment’s value is connected to its usefulness for humans
Deep ecology = the belief that all life forms have intrinsic value
Speciesist = discrimination of one species in favour of another (usually humans)
Ecological extension = the belief all living things are inter-dependent
Gaia Hypothesis = the theory that the world’s physical properties all work together in a complex interacting system
Symbiosis = a mutually beneficial relationship between 2 things
Stewardship = the belief God has given humans responsibility for the planet
Creation spirituality = a religious approach which emphasis God can be found in all his creation
Micro-ethics = the smaller details of an ethical approach
Stakeholders = a company’s owners, employees, customers, and the community it is in
Social responsibility = the belief that business have a responsibility towards society as well as their share-holders
Whistle-blowing = revealing to the public wrong-doing in business
Globalisation = the world-wide integration of culture, politics and economies

Then God said, "Let us make people in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."

So the question is, do corporate executives, provided they stay within the law, have responsibilities in their business activities other than to make as much money for their stockholders as possible? And my answer to that is, no they do not.

PHI