Week 10 · Chapter

Chapter 10 — Ethics I: Relativism, God, and Self-Interest

Introduction to Philosophy Free sample edition

The module's primary reading · ~45–55 minutes · Objective 6 (explain and apply the major ethical theories — utilitarianism, Kantian deontology, virtue ethics, and social contract theory — and the challenges of relativism and egoism, to moral cases), with Objective 1 (explain what philosophy is, name its main branches, and describe the Socratic practice of examining beliefs through questioning and argument) and Objective 2 (identify arguments, put them in standard form, judge whether they are valid, sound, or inductively strong, and test claims with counterexamples and thought experiments) carried forward · Read it first this week; the lecture, the slide deck, the tutorial, the quiz, and the Philosophy Workshop all build on it.

In plain language

This week asks where right and wrong come from. One answer, cultural relativism (the view that morality depends on culture), says right is whatever your culture believes is right. A second answer, divine command theory (the view that morality comes from God's commands), says an act is right because God commands it. A third family of views, egoism (the view that self-interest is at the bottom of it all), says people always act for themselves, or that they ought to. You test each answer with its strongest objection, and your goal is to state each side fairly, not to pick a winner.

Why you already care about this

You are at a café, and you find a wallet under your table. It holds cash and a library card. No one saw you pick it up, and the café has no cameras. Would you hand it in? Most people say yes. Now ask the harder question: why? Because your community expects it? Because it is commanded? Because honesty pays off in the long run? Or for some other reason?

Here is a second puzzle. At one family's dinner table, a guest who finishes every dish is showing that the meal was wonderful. At another family's table, a guest who leaves a little food is showing that the host gave plenty. Each guest thinks the other is being rude. Who is right? Maybe neither. Maybe "rude" only means "rude around here".

People have argued about these questions for a very long time. In Plato's Republic, a character named Glaucon tells a story about a ring that makes its wearer invisible, and asks whether anyone would stay honest wearing it. In 1739 and 1740, the philosopher David Hume published a book that pointed out a gap between what is and what ought to be. This chapter puts those old ideas to work on your wallet and your dinner table.

By the end of this chapter you will be able to:

tell a descriptive question from a normative one, and state the is-ought problem;
tell descriptive cultural relativism from normative cultural relativism, and show why the first does not establish the second;
put Dataset B's argument 10 in standard form and key it for validity;
state the reformer objection and give the relativist's reply;
state divine command theory in its strongest form, put the Euthyphro dilemma in standard form, and give the reply from God's good nature;
tell psychological egoism from ethical egoism, and find the premise critics reject in the argument for psychological egoism;
say whose story the ring of Gyges is, state its question, and reconstruct the challenge it raises.

Carry this sentence with you: a show of hands is not a proof; ask what grounds it.

Where we are

Already covered: Week 1, What Philosophy Is: Socrates and the Examined Life, gave you the Socratic method: ask for a definition, then test it with a counterexample. Week 2, Arguments and Thought Experiments, gave you standard form, validity, and the valid forms. Week 3, Plato: Reality and the Forms, introduced Glaucon's story of the ring of Gyges and set it aside. Weeks 4 to 7 asked what you can know and what a mind and a self are. Week 8, Midterm Review & Exam, reviewed that first half and added Pascal's wager. Week 9, Philosophy of Religion, weighed the classic arguments about God.
This week: descriptive and normative questions; Hume's is-ought problem; cultural relativism in two forms; the reformer objection; divine command theory and the Euthyphro dilemma; psychological and ethical egoism; and the ring of Gyges.
How they connect: This week begins a new unit on ethics. Weeks 1 to 9 asked what is real, what you can know, and whether God exists. Now the question turns to how you ought to live, and the first job is to test three popular answers about where morality comes from.
Where we're going next: Week 11, Ethics II: Utilitarianism, takes up the first of the major ethical theories, which judges an act by its consequences.

Two tools from earlier weeks do the heavy lifting. From Week 2, you need standard form: premises numbered P1 and P2, the conclusion last, marked C and introduced by "So", and any premise the reconstruction adds marked "(added)". You need valid (the conclusion cannot be false if the premises are true) and invalid (the conclusion could be false even if the premises are true). You also need three valid forms. Modus ponens: if P then Q; P; so Q. Disjunctive syllogism: P or Q; not P; so Q. The categorical syllogism: every A is B; every C is A; so every C is B. From Week 1, you need the Socratic habit of testing a definition with one well-chosen case.

1. Ask two kinds of question: what is, and what ought to be

Go back to the dinner tables. Here are two sentences about them.

"At this table, guests finish every dish."
"Guests ought to finish every dish."

The first sentence reports a fact. You could check it by watching a few dinners. The second sentence tells guests what to do. Watching dinners, by itself, would not settle it.

That difference has a name.

Descriptive question — a question about how things are, including what people do and believe, which observation and report can settle.
Normative question — a question about how things ought to be, such as what is right, what is wrong, or what a person should do.

Worked example — sorting the two sentences. Sort each dinner sentence.

"At this table, guests finish every dish" is descriptive, because it reports what people do and believe.
"Guests ought to finish every dish" is normative, because it says what ought to be done.

Notice a trap. "Most guests at this table believe they ought to finish every dish" is descriptive, even though it contains the word "ought". It reports a belief. It does not say the belief is right.

Now the gap between the two kinds of question. David Hume, in A Treatise of Human Nature (Books 1 and 2 in 1739, Book 3 in 1740), observes that writers move from statements about what is to statements about what ought to be without explaining how. Book 3 appeared 1740 − 1739 = 1 year after Books 1 and 2. The gap he noticed is called the is-ought problem.

Is-ought problem — the problem David Hume raised in A Treatise of Human Nature that writers move from statements about what is to statements about what ought to be without explaining how that step is made.

Here is how the course uses the problem. In Week 2's terms, an argument whose premises only say what is, and whose conclusion says what ought to be, is missing a link. To make it valid, you have to add a premise that connects the two, and that added premise is itself a normative claim. The is-ought problem asks where that premise comes from and why you should accept it.

Misconception check — "ought" in a sentence does not make it normative. Students often think any sentence with "ought" or "should" in it is a normative claim. It is tempting because the word jumps out. The cure is to ask what the sentence asserts. "My neighbor thinks I should mow more often" reports what someone believes, so it is descriptive. "I should mow more often" asserts what ought to be, so it is normative.

2. Describe cultural relativism in its two forms

Travel even a short distance, and customs change. The two dinner tables are a small case. People also differ about how to greet an elder, how to settle a debt, and how much to share with neighbors. These differences are real, and they can run deep.

Cultural relativism comes in two forms, and the whole debate turns on keeping them apart.

Descriptive cultural relativism — the observation that moral beliefs differ from culture to culture; it reports what people believe and makes no claim about which beliefs are right.
Normative cultural relativism — the claim that what is right is whatever a culture believes is right, so that no culture's moral beliefs can be more correct than another's.

The first form is descriptive. The dinner tables show it is true at least sometimes. The second form is normative. It is a claim about what makes an act right.

Here is normative cultural relativism in its strongest form, the way its best defenders would put it. People have often mistaken their own customs for universal law. Travelers have called other peoples' ways wrong when the ways were only unfamiliar. Moral beliefs also seem to be learned, the way a language is learned, from the people around you. So the relativist asks for humility. Before you call another community's practice wrong, ask whether you are judging it by nothing more than your own upbringing. That call for humility and tolerance is the view's real strength.

Misconception check — relativism is not the same as tolerance. Students often think that being a cultural relativist means being tolerant, and that rejecting relativism means being intolerant. It is tempting because the relativist's best argument is a call for tolerance. The cure is to notice that tolerance is itself a moral claim: "you ought to respect other ways of life". A person can hold that tolerance is right for everyone, everywhere, which is exactly what normative relativism denies.

3. Test the move from "beliefs differ" to "right is relative"

Many people go straight from the first form to the second. "Cultures disagree about morality, so morality is relative." Let us test that move the Week 2 way.

Worked example — the course's reconstruction of the move (illustrative). Lay the argument out line by line. Its premise was written for teaching, and the course does not endorse it.

P1: Moral beliefs differ from culture to culture.

C: So what is right is whatever each culture believes is right.

Key it: invalid as it stands, because it moves from what people believe to what is right. P1 is descriptive and C is normative, which is the is-ought gap in action.

Here is a counterexample with the same shape. "Beliefs about what causes illness differ from culture to culture. So what causes illness is whatever each culture believes causes it." The premise is true. The conclusion is false: an illness has its causes whatever anyone believes. A form that allows a true premise and a false conclusion is invalid.

Now repair the argument. Add a premise and mark it.

P1: Moral beliefs differ from culture to culture.

P2 (added): If moral beliefs differ from culture to culture, then what is right is whatever each culture believes is right.

C: So what is right is whatever each culture believes is right.

Now the argument is valid, by modus ponens. But P2 carries the whole weight, and it is the premise the is-ought problem asks about. Why should a difference in belief show that there is no fact about who is right?

The same move can happen inside one town. This argument is from Dataset B, the argument set (illustrative).

Worked example — Dataset B, argument 10, in standard form. Lay it out, then key it.

P1: Most people in this town favor the law.

C: So the law is just.

Key it: invalid, because it moves from what people believe to what is right (compare normative relativism). Picture a town where most people favor a law that closes the only park to anyone who moved there in the last year. The premise is true. Many people would doubt that the conclusion is. Since the premise can be true while the conclusion is open to doubt, a vote alone does not settle whether a law is just.

In one plain sentence: the fact that moral beliefs differ does not, by itself, show that right is whatever each culture believes, because that step needs an added premise that does all the work.

Misconception check — cultural differences are not proof that morality is relative. Students often think that because cultures disagree about right and wrong, there must be no right answer. It is tempting because the disagreements are real and often deep. The cure is the illness case. Cultures have disagreed about many questions that have answers. Disagreement shows that people believe different things. It does not, by itself, show that no belief is more correct.

4. Test relativism with the reformer objection

Picture a community whose custom is to punish a whole family when one member cannot pay a debt. One member of that community, a reformer, stands up and says the custom is unfair. Each person, she says, should answer only for what that person did.

Is the reformer right? Normative relativism gives a strange verdict.

Reformer objection — the objection to normative cultural relativism that a reformer who says her own culture's custom is wrong would be wrong by definition, so that a culture could change but never improve.

Worked example — the reformer, step by step. Follow the view's own logic.

What normative relativism says: right is whatever a culture believes is right.
What this culture believes: punishing the whole family is right.
What follows: the reformer, who says it is wrong, is mistaken by definition, because her own culture is the measure.
The further cost: if the custom changes, the community has not improved. It has only changed, because there was no better or worse to move toward.

Here is the reply, from the relativist side. A reformer rarely stands outside her culture. She appeals to its own deeper values, such as fairness to each person, which the debt custom fails to live up to. On this reply, moral progress means living up to a culture's own deepest values better. The dinner tables point the same way. Both tables honor the host. They differ in practice, not in the value underneath.

The objector has an answer too: if two cultures share deep values, that sharing is a reason to doubt that morality is relative all the way down. The debate goes on from there.

Here is an honesty note. The reformer objection is the strongest objection to normative relativism, but defenders of relativism have refined their view in reply, and the course keys no verdict on whether morality is relative.

Misconception check — the reformer objection is not a claim that every custom is wrong. Students often think the objection says other cultures' customs are bad. It is tempting because its example is a harsh custom. The cure is to notice what the objection targets. It says only that relativism cannot make sense of a reformer being right. It says nothing about whether any given custom is good or bad.

5. Explain divine command theory fairly

Picture a person who says, "Cruelty is wrong, and it would be wrong even if everyone in the world came to approve of it." Where could that kind of rightness come from, if not from any culture? One old and serious answer is that it comes from God.

Divine command theory — the view that an act is morally right because God commands it and morally wrong because God forbids it.

Here is the view in its strongest form. It explains three features that morality seems to have. Morality seems objective: it is not a matter of opinion. It seems universal: the same for every culture. And it seems binding: it holds you even when no one is watching. If right and wrong come from the commands of a perfectly good God, each feature has a source. That is a real answer to the relativist, because it roots morality in something beyond any one culture.

The course states the view as a philosophical theory about what makes acts right. It does not ask whether God exists, which was Week 9's question, and it does not ask which religion is true.

Misconception check — divine command theory is not the claim that only religious people can be good. Students often think the theory says nonbelievers cannot act morally. It is tempting because the theory ties morality to God. The cure is to read the definition. It is a claim about what makes an act right. A person who has never heard of the theory can still do what is right, as a person can obey a law without knowing who wrote it.

6. Answer the Euthyphro dilemma: right because commanded, or commanded because right?

Picture a coach who tells a team, "A play is a good play because I call it." A player might ask back: "Do you call it because it is a good play, or is it good only because you called it?" That is a very old question in new clothes.

In Plato's dialogue Euthyphro, Socrates asks whether the pious is loved by the gods because it is pious, or pious because it is loved by the gods. Pious here means holy, or rightly devoted to the gods. It is the kind of question Week 1's Socratic method asks: it takes a proposed account and puts it to a test.

That question, put in modern form, is aimed at divine command theory: is an act right because God commands it, or does God command it because it is right?

Euthyphro dilemma — the question, from Socrates in Plato's Euthyphro, of whether the pious is loved by the gods because it is pious or pious because it is loved by the gods; in its modern form, whether an act is right because God commands it or God commands it because it is right.
Horn — one of the two options a dilemma offers, each of which leads somewhere its defender may not want to go.

Each horn has a cost.

The first horn: acts are right because God commands them. Then rightness looks arbitrary. Had God commanded cruelty, cruelty would be right.
The second horn: God commands acts because they are right. Then rightness is independent of God's commands. God sees what is right and commands it, the way a good teacher points out a true answer without making it true.

Worked example — the Euthyphro dilemma in standard form (illustrative). This is the course's reconstruction, written to teach the step.

P1: Either acts are right because God commands them, or God commands acts because they are right.

P2: Acts are not right merely because God commands them.

C: So God commands acts because they are right.

Name the form. Let P be "acts are right because God commands them" and Q be "God commands acts because they are right". The pattern is P or Q; not P; so Q. That is disjunctive syllogism. Key it: valid. If P1 and P2 are both true, C cannot be false, and then rightness does not depend on God's commands.

Now the reply, from the divine command side. A defender can reject P1 as a false dilemma. On this reply, God's commands flow from God's unchanging good nature. They are not arbitrary, because a good nature could not command cruelty. They are not answerable to a standard outside God, because the standard is God's own nature. Critics press back: is that nature good by some standard, or good only because it is God's? If the first, the standard seems independent again. If the second, the worry about arbitrariness returns. The debate goes on from there.

In one plain sentence: the Euthyphro dilemma asks whether God's commands make acts right or track what is already right, and divine command theorists answer that God's good nature is a third option between the horns.

Misconception check — the Euthyphro dilemma is not an attack on religion. Students often think the dilemma is an argument that God does not exist, or that believers are confused. It is tempting because it is aimed at a theory that mentions God. The cure is to read the question. It asks about the relation between goodness and commands, and it says nothing about whether God exists. A believer can accept the second horn and hold that God commands what is right because God knows and loves the good.

7. Test psychological egoism at a food bank

Picture a volunteer who spends every weekend sorting cans at a food bank. A friend teases her: "You only do it because it makes you feel good." She laughs, but the comment stays with her. Is the friend right? Does anyone ever act for someone else's sake?

Psychological egoism — the descriptive claim that people always act from self-interest, so that every action, however generous it looks, aims at the agent's own good.

Here is the view in its strongest form. Even the volunteer gains something: a warm feeling, praise from others, or relief from guilt. People often hide their real motives, even from themselves. So whenever an act looks generous, look harder, and you can usually find a payoff for the person who did it.

Worked example — the egoist's argument in standard form (illustrative). This is the course's reconstruction, and the second premise is one it adds.

P1: Every action a person performs is caused by one of that person's own desires.

P2 (added): Every action caused by one of a person's own desires is done from self-interest.

C: So every action a person performs is done from self-interest.

Name the form. Let C stand for "actions a person performs", A for "actions caused by one of the person's own desires", and B for "actions done from self-interest". P1 says every C is A. P2 says every A is B. The conclusion says every C is B. That is the categorical syllogism, and it is valid.

So the critics must reject a premise, and they reject P2. It confuses whose desire moves you with what the desire is for. The volunteer's desire is her own, but it is a desire that hungry families eat. A desire for someone else's good is still your desire, but acting on it is not acting for yourself. And the warm feeling she gets comes because she already cared about those families. If she did not care, sorting cans would leave her cold.

The reply, from the egoist side: people deceive themselves about their motives, so the volunteer's report that she acts for others is weak evidence. A critic answers that a theory which explains away every possible counterexample has stopped telling you anything about the world.

In one plain sentence: the argument for psychological egoism is valid, but its critics reject its added premise, which they say confuses whose desire moves you with what the desire is for, so that a generous act could come from your own desire without being selfish.

Misconception check — psychological egoism is not a claim about what you ought to do. Students often think psychological egoism tells people to be selfish. It is tempting because it talks about self-interest. The cure is the descriptive and normative split from Section 1. Psychological egoism claims to describe how people do act. It gives no advice at all. The view that tells people how they ought to act is a different one, ethical egoism, which comes next.

8. Ethical egoism: what the theory advises, and where it is pressed

Now picture a group project. Four students share the work, and one of them wonders whether to do a fair share or let the others carry the load. Ethical egoism gives a clear piece of advice: do whatever is best for you.

Ethical egoism — the normative claim that people ought to act from self-interest, so that the right act for each person is the one that best serves that person's own good.
Enlightened self-interest — the form of ethical egoism that counts a person's long-run good over a whole life, so that honesty, keeping promises, and helping others are usually recommended because they usually pay.

Here is the view in its strongest form, enlightened self-interest. Ethical egoism does not tell you to be a cheat. Over a whole life, honesty, keeping promises, and helping others usually serve you. A student who slacks off on a group project loses trust, and trust is worth more than a free afternoon. Each person is also best placed to look after their own life, since you know your own needs better than anyone else does.

Worked example — the strongest objection and a reply. Take the objection in two parts.

The objection, part one: ethical egoism favors one person, yourself, without any relevant difference between you and everyone else. Your pain matters to you, but so does every other person's pain to them. What makes yours count for more?
The objection, part two: when two people's interests conflict, ethical egoism tells each of them to win. Two students want the last open slot in a class. The theory tells each one to get it, so it cannot say which of them is in the right.
The reply, from the egoist side: in a real conflict, the bargain both sides gain from is in each person's interest. Enlightened egoists settle on fair terms, such as taking turns or splitting a prize, because a fight costs both of them more.

There is one more link to Section 1. Someone might argue, "Everyone acts from self-interest, so everyone ought to." That argument moves from psychological egoism, a claim about what is, to ethical egoism, a claim about what ought to be. It crosses the is-ought gap without a bridge. So even if psychological egoism were true, it would not prove ethical egoism.

Misconception check — ethical egoism is not the advice to be cruel. Students often think ethical egoism tells you to lie, steal, and ignore others whenever you like. It is tempting because "act for yourself" sounds selfish. The cure is enlightened self-interest. A careful ethical egoist says that cruelty and dishonesty usually hurt the person who practices them. The real question is what the theory says in the rare case where wrongdoing would pay, which is exactly the case the next section imagines.

9. Put on the ring of Gyges: why be moral?

Now the week's thought experiment, the Week 10 case on the course's thought-experiment roster.

In Book II of Plato's Republic, Glaucon tells the story of Gyges, a shepherd who finds a ring that makes him invisible, to ask whether anyone would act justly if they could never be caught. You met the story in Week 3, and you set it aside. Here it is again, ready for its ethics.

The roster gives the case a question: Would you be just if you could never be caught? It tests why be moral, and egoism. Notice whose story it is. It is Glaucon's story, not Socrates' own argument. Glaucon tells it to press a challenge.

Worked example — the course's reconstruction of the challenge in standard form (illustrative). Its premises were written for teaching, and the course does not endorse them.

P1: If people act justly only because they fear being caught, then anyone who could never be caught would act unjustly.

P2: People act justly only because they fear being caught.

C: So anyone who could never be caught would act unjustly.

Name the form. Let P be "people act justly only because they fear being caught" and Q be "anyone who could never be caught would act unjustly". The pattern is if P then Q; P; so Q. That is modus ponens. Key it: valid.

Soundness is not keyed. P2 is the open question, and it is a claim of the same kind psychological egoism makes: that under the surface, people are moved only by what they gain or fear to lose.

Now return to the café as a variation, a case written for this course on the shape of the ring of Gyges. The café has no cameras, and no one saw you pick up the wallet. You are, for this one moment, invisible. If you would still hand the wallet in, what is your reason? Here are three answers people give.

An ethical egoist's answer: keep it, unless honesty is part of the kind of life that serves you best, as enlightened self-interest says it usually is.
A critic's answer: some reasons to be moral are not about you at all. The wallet's owner needs her card, and that is a reason by itself.
A third answer: being an honest person is part of your own good, so the question "what do I gain?" is already answered by the kind of person you become.

The course keys none of them. The case asks you to find out which answer you hold, and whether it survives the strongest objection.

Misconception check — the ring of Gyges is not Socrates' argument. Students often think the ring story is Socrates' own argument for being bad when you can get away with it. It is tempting because Socrates is the main speaker of the Republic. The cure is the source. Glaucon tells the story, in Book II, to ask whether anyone would act justly if they could never be caught. It is a question put to the reader, not a conclusion Socrates draws.

10. Compare the three challenges side by side

You now have all three challenges in hand. The fair way to compare them is the course's way: each view in its strongest form, its strongest objection, and a reply from its own side.

Cultural relativism, divine command theory, and egoism compared: central claim, strongest objection, and a reply from each side
Challenge	Central claim	Strongest objection	Reply from its side
Normative cultural relativism	What is right is whatever a culture believes is right.	The reformer objection: a reformer would be wrong by definition, and no culture could improve.	Reformers appeal to their culture's own deeper values, and progress means living up to them.
Divine command theory	An act is right because God commands it.	The Euthyphro dilemma: either rightness is arbitrary or it does not depend on God's commands.	God's commands flow from God's unchanging good nature, a third option between the horns.
Psychological egoism	People always act from self-interest.	It confuses whose desire moves you with what the desire is for.	People deceive themselves about their motives, so reports of selfless motives are weak evidence.
Ethical egoism	People ought to act from self-interest.	It favors one person without a relevant difference, and it cannot settle a conflict of interests.	Enlightened egoists settle conflicts on fair terms, because fair bargains serve each side.

Worked example — counting the claims to tell apart. Count the week's claims.

Cultural relativism: 2 forms (descriptive, normative).
The Euthyphro dilemma: 2 horns (right because commanded; commanded because right).
Egoism: 2 forms (psychological, ethical).
In all: 2 + 2 + 2 = 6 claims to tell apart.

Now sort the 4 relativism and egoism forms by kind. 2 are descriptive: descriptive cultural relativism and psychological egoism. 2 are normative: normative cultural relativism and ethical egoism. So 2 + 2 = 4. In words: each of the two families has one descriptive member and one normative member, and Section 1's split tells them apart.

One last count, from Dataset B. The set holds 10 arguments, 6 valid, so 10 − 6 = 4 are invalid, and argument 10 is one of the 4.

Where do the three challenges disagree, in one plain sentence? They disagree about what grounds morality, a culture's beliefs, God's commands, or self-interest, and each answer faces an objection that presses it.

A limitation to keep in view: this week tests only three challenges, and the course keys no verdict on which, if any, is right. The full ethical theories, starting with utilitarianism, come in the next weeks.

Pause and think, choosing one of these two options:

(a) Pick the objection in the table you find strongest, and write two sentences on how its target view's reply could be made stronger.
(b) Pick the reply in the table you find weakest, and write two sentences on what its critics would say back.

Misconception check — rejecting all three is not the same as rejecting morality. Students often think that if relativism, divine command theory, and egoism all face strong objections, then morality has no ground at all. It is tempting because each challenge offered a source and each was pressed hard. The cure is to notice that these are three answers among many. The objections test the answers, not the existence of right and wrong.

Key terms

Descriptive question — A question about how things are, including what people do and believe, which observation and report can settle. (first used: 1. Ask two kinds of question: what is, and what ought to be)
Normative question — A question about how things ought to be, such as what is right, what is wrong, or what a person should do. (first used: 1. Ask two kinds of question: what is, and what ought to be)
Is-ought problem — The problem David Hume raised in A Treatise of Human Nature that writers move from statements about what is to statements about what ought to be without explaining how that step is made. (first used: 1. Ask two kinds of question: what is, and what ought to be)
Descriptive cultural relativism — The observation that moral beliefs differ from culture to culture; it reports what people believe and makes no claim about which beliefs are right. (first used: 2. Describe cultural relativism in its two forms)
Normative cultural relativism — The claim that what is right is whatever a culture believes is right, so that no culture's moral beliefs can be more correct than another's. (first used: 2. Describe cultural relativism in its two forms)
Reformer objection — The objection to normative cultural relativism that a reformer who says her own culture's custom is wrong would be wrong by definition, so that a culture could change but never improve. (first used: 4. Test relativism with the reformer objection)
Divine command theory — The view that an act is morally right because God commands it and morally wrong because God forbids it. (first used: 5. Explain divine command theory fairly)
Euthyphro dilemma — The question, from Socrates in Plato's Euthyphro, of whether the pious is loved by the gods because it is pious or pious because it is loved by the gods; in its modern form, whether an act is right because God commands it or God commands it because it is right. (first used: 6. Answer the Euthyphro dilemma: right because commanded, or commanded because right?)
Horn — One of the two options a dilemma offers, each of which leads somewhere its defender may not want to go. (first used: 6. Answer the Euthyphro dilemma: right because commanded, or commanded because right?)
Psychological egoism — The descriptive claim that people always act from self-interest, so that every action, however generous it looks, aims at the agent's own good. (first used: 7. Test psychological egoism at a food bank)
Ethical egoism — The normative claim that people ought to act from self-interest, so that the right act for each person is the one that best serves that person's own good. (first used: 8. Ethical egoism: what the theory advises, and where it is pressed)
Enlightened self-interest — The form of ethical egoism that counts a person's long-run good over a whole life, so that honesty, keeping promises, and helping others are usually recommended because they usually pay. (first used: 8. Ethical egoism: what the theory advises, and where it is pressed)

Summary

A descriptive question asks how things are; a normative question asks how things ought to be.
Hume's is-ought problem: writers move from what is to what ought to be without explaining how.
Descriptive cultural relativism reports that moral beliefs differ; normative cultural relativism claims right is whatever a culture believes.
The first form does not establish the second without an added premise that does all the work.
Dataset B's argument 10 is invalid, because it moves from what people believe to what is right.
The reformer objection says relativism makes every reformer wrong; the reply appeals to a culture's deeper values.
Divine command theory: an act is right because God commands it.
The Euthyphro dilemma asks about goodness and commands, not about whether God exists; the reply appeals to God's good nature.
Psychological egoism describes; ethical egoism prescribes.
Critics say the argument for psychological egoism confuses whose desire moves you with what the desire is for.
The ring of Gyges is Glaucon's story, asking whether you would be just if you could never be caught.
No challenge is keyed as correct; each gets its strongest form, its strongest objection, and a reply.

Check your understanding

Work these before looking at the answers — they are ungraded, and the answers (with reasoning) are at the bottom of the page.

Sort each sentence as descriptive or normative: (a) "In many offices, people eat lunch at their desks." (b) "People ought to take a real lunch break away from their desks." (c) "Most of my coworkers think long lunch breaks are lazy."
A soccer player says, "Most players on my team think arguing with the referee is fine. So arguing with the referee is fine." Put the argument in standard form, say what move it makes, and key it for validity.
A classmate writes, "The Euthyphro dilemma proves that religious people cannot be moral." Explain what is wrong with that sentence, and rewrite it so it states the dilemma fairly.
A roommate says, "Everybody is selfish deep down, so you should look out for yourself too." Name the two claims in that sentence, and explain why the first does not prove the second.

Answers (worked reasoning — read after attempting)

(a) Descriptive: it reports what people do. (b) Normative: it says what people ought to do. (c) Descriptive: it reports what people believe. The word "lazy" is a judgment, but the sentence only says that coworkers hold that judgment; it does not assert that they are right.
P1: Most players on my team think arguing with the referee is fine. C: So arguing with the referee is fine. The premise is about what people believe, and the conclusion is about what is right, so the argument moves from belief to right, the same move as normative relativism. It is invalid: the premise could be true while the conclusion is false, and adding a premise to make it valid would put all the weight on a bridge from belief to right.
The dilemma does not say anything about whether religious people can be moral, and it does not ask whether God exists. It asks what makes an act right. A fair version: "The Euthyphro dilemma asks whether acts are right because God commands them, or whether God commands them because they are right, and each answer has a cost for divine command theory."
The first claim, "everybody is selfish deep down", is psychological egoism, a descriptive claim about how people act. The second, "you should look out for yourself", is ethical egoism, a normative claim about how people ought to act. Moving from the first to the second crosses the is-ought gap, so the first would need an added normative premise before it could support the second, and the first is itself open to the objection that it confuses whose desire moves you with what the desire is for.

Next up in this module: the Readings & Resources page, the lecture tutorial, the practice set, the quiz, the discussion, and the assignment. Next week, utilitarianism offers a full ethical theory, with one rule that judges every act by its consequences for everyone's happiness.

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