Lecture: Ethics I: Relativism, God, and Self-Interest
Lecture script · about 15–20 minutes spoken · Week 10
Opening
Picture yourself at a café. You find a wallet under your table, with cash and a library card inside. No one saw you pick it up, and there are no cameras. Would you hand it in? Most people say yes. The harder question is why.
That question isn't only for cafés. A nursing student who works with patients from many communities meets it. So does a business major asking what a company owes its customers when no one is checking. So does anyone on a group project who wonders why people do their fair share.
In Week 1 you learned to test a definition with a counterexample. In Week 2 you learned standard form and the valid forms. Week 3 introduced Glaucon's story of a ring of invisibility and set it aside. Week 9 weighed the classic arguments about God. In this lecture we start a new unit, on ethics. I'll test three popular answers about where right and wrong come from: your culture, God's commands, and self-interest. Then, in Week 11, we meet the first full ethical theory, utilitarianism.
1. Two kinds of question
Think about two families at dinner. At one table, a guest who finishes every dish is saying the meal was wonderful. At the other, a guest who leaves a little food is saying the host gave plenty.
Now compare two sentences. "At this table, guests finish every dish." You could check that by watching a few dinners. "Guests ought to finish every dish." Watching dinners won't settle that one.
So here are the terms. A descriptive question is a question about how things are, including what people do and believe, which observation and report can settle. A normative question is a question about how things ought to be, such as what is right, what is wrong, or what a person should do.
There's a famous gap between them. David Hume, in A Treatise of Human Nature, published in 1739 and 1740, observed that writers slide from what is to what ought to be without explaining how. That's the is-ought problem. In Week 2's terms, an argument with only "is" premises and an "ought" conclusion is missing a link.
Pause and try this. "Most of my neighbors think I should mow more often." Is that sentence descriptive or normative?
Look past the word "should" for a second.
Here's the answer. It's descriptive. It reports what the neighbors believe; it doesn't claim they're right.
2. Cultural relativism in two forms
Those dinner tables show something real: customs differ. People also differ about how to greet an elder or how to settle a debt. Cultural relativism takes that seriously, and it comes in two forms.
Descriptive cultural relativism is 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 is 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.
Let me give the normative view its strongest form. People have often mistaken their own customs for universal law. Travelers have called other ways of life wrong when they were only unfamiliar. Moral beliefs seem learned, the way a language is learned. So the relativist asks for humility: before you call a practice wrong, ask whether you're judging it by your upbringing alone.
Pause and try this. Is the relativist's call for tolerance itself a descriptive claim or a normative one?
Ask whether it reports a belief, or says what you ought to do.
Here's the answer. It's normative. "You ought to respect other ways of life" says what ought to be, which is why tolerance and relativism aren't the same thing.
3. From "beliefs differ" to "right is relative"
Many people move straight from the first form to the second. Let's test that move the Week 2 way.
The course's reconstruction is short. Its premise: moral beliefs differ from culture to culture. Its conclusion: so what is right is whatever each culture believes is right. As it stands, it's invalid, because it moves from what people believe to what is right.
Here's a counterexample with the same shape. Beliefs about what causes illness differ from culture to culture. Does it follow that what causes illness is whatever each culture believes? No. An illness has its causes whatever anyone thinks.
You can repair the argument by adding a premise: if moral beliefs differ, then right is whatever each culture believes. Now it's valid, by modus ponens. But that added premise carries the whole weight, and it's exactly the step the is-ought problem asks about.
The same move can happen inside one town. Dataset B's argument 10 says most people in this town favor the law, and concludes that the law has justice on its side. That's my paraphrase of its conclusion. Its key is invalid, for the same reason.
Pause and try this. Why does argument 10 fail, in one sentence?
Think about what kind of claim each line makes.
Here's the answer. It moves from what people believe to what is right, and a popular law could still be an unfair one.
4. The reformer objection
Picture a community whose custom is to punish a whole family when one member can't pay a debt. A reformer stands up and says that's unfair. Each person, she says, should answer only for what that person did.
Normative relativism gives a strange verdict here. That's the 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.
The relativist has a reply, and it's a good one. A reformer rarely stands outside her culture. She appeals to its own deeper values, like fairness to each person. Moral progress, on this reply, means living up to those deeper values better. Notice that the two dinner tables point the same way: both honor the host. They differ in practice, not in the value underneath.
Pause and try this. Does the reformer objection claim that the debt custom is bad?
Look at what the objection is aimed at.
Here's the answer. No. It claims only that relativism can't make sense of a reformer being right, whatever the custom is.
5. Divine command theory
Now a very different answer. Someone says, "Cruelty is wrong, and it would stay wrong even if the whole world approved of it." Where could rightness like that come from, if not from a culture?
One old and serious answer is God. Divine command theory is the view that an act is morally right because God commands it and morally wrong because God forbids it.
In its strongest form, the theory explains three features morality seems to have. It seems objective, not a matter of opinion. It seems universal, the same for every culture. And it seems binding, even when no one's watching. If right and wrong come from a perfectly good God's commands, each feature has a source. I'm stating it as a theory about what makes acts right. It doesn't ask whether God exists, which was Week 9's question, or which religion is true.
Pause and try this. Does divine command theory say that only religious people can be good?
Read the definition again, slowly.
Here's the answer. No. It's a claim about what makes an act right, and someone can do what's right without knowing the theory.
6. The Euthyphro dilemma
Think of a coach who tells the team, "A play is good because I call it." A sharp player might ask: do you call it because it's good, or is it good only because you called it?
In Plato's dialogue Euthyphro, Socrates asks a question with that shape: is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or pious because it is loved by the gods? In its modern form, that's the Euthyphro dilemma: is an act right because God commands it, or does God command it because it is right? Each option is a horn, one of the two options a dilemma offers, each of which leads somewhere its defender may not want to go.
Take the first horn, and rightness looks arbitrary: had God commanded cruelty, it would be right. Take the second, and rightness doesn't depend on God's commands at all. The course reconstructs this as a disjunctive syllogism. Either acts are right because God commands them, or God commands them because they're right. They aren't right merely because God commands them. So God commands them because they're right. That's valid.
The divine command reply is to reject the first premise as a false dilemma. God's commands flow from God's unchanging good nature. So they aren't arbitrary, and they don't answer to a standard outside God. Critics then ask whether that nature is good by some standard, and the debate goes on.
Pause and try this. Is the Euthyphro dilemma an argument that God doesn't exist?
Ask what the question is about: goodness, or existence?
Here's the answer. No. It asks how goodness and commands are related; a believer can even accept the second horn.
7. Psychological egoism
Picture a volunteer who sorts cans at a food bank every weekend. A friend teases her: "You only do it because it makes you feel good." Is the friend right?
Psychological egoism is 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. Its strongest form says even the volunteer gains a warm feeling, praise, or relief from guilt, and people often hide their real motives, even from themselves.
The course puts its best argument as a categorical syllogism. Every action a person performs is caused by one of that person's own desires. Every action caused by one of a person's own desires is done from self-interest; that's a premise the reconstruction adds. So every action is done from self-interest. It's valid.
So critics reject the added premise. It confuses whose desire moves you with what the desire is for. The volunteer's desire is her own, but it's a desire that hungry families eat. And the warm feeling comes because she already cared. The egoist replies that people fool themselves about their motives. Critics answer that a view which explains away every case has stopped telling us anything.
Pause and try this. Does psychological egoism tell you that you ought to be selfish?
Think back to the first section of this lecture.
Here's the answer. No. It's descriptive: it claims to say how people do act, and it gives no advice.
8. Ethical egoism
The view that does give advice is 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.
Its strongest form is 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. On a group project, the student who slacks off loses trust, and trust is worth more than a free afternoon.
Here's the strongest objection, in two parts. First, it favors one person, you, without any relevant difference between you and everyone else. Second, when two people want the last open slot in a class, it tells each of them to win, so it can't say who's in the right. The egoist replies that a fair bargain is in each person's interest, so enlightened egoists settle on fair terms.
One more link. "Everyone acts selfishly, so everyone ought to" moves from psychological egoism to ethical egoism. It crosses the is-ought gap without a bridge.
Pause and try this. If psychological egoism were true, would that prove ethical egoism?
Remember Hume's gap between what is and what ought to be.
Here's the answer. No. The first is a claim about what is; the second needs an added normative premise.
9. The ring of Gyges
Now the week's thought experiment, the Week 10 case on the course's 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. It's Glaucon's story, not Socrates' own argument.
The roster's question, in my words, asks whether you would act justly if you could never be caught. It tests why be moral, and egoism.
The course reconstructs the challenge with modus ponens. If people act justly only because they fear being caught, then anyone who could never be caught would act unjustly. People act justly only because they fear being caught. So anyone who could never be caught would act unjustly. It's valid. But the second premise is the open question, and it's the same kind of claim psychological egoism makes.
Go back to the café, as a variation on the ring. You're invisible for one moment. If you'd still hand in the wallet, why? An egoist says honesty is part of the life that serves you best. A critic says the owner needs her card, and that's a reason by itself. A third answer says being honest is part of your own good. The course keys none of them.
Pause and try this. Whose story is the ring of Gyges, and in which book of the Republic?
Glaucon or Socrates? Then think of the book number.
Here's the answer. It's Glaucon's story, told in Book II, and it's a question put to the reader.
10. The three challenges side by side
Let's line them up. Normative relativism says right is whatever a culture believes; the reformer objection presses it, and the reply appeals to a culture's deeper values. Divine command theory says an act is right because God commands it; the Euthyphro dilemma presses it, and the reply appeals to God's good nature. Psychological egoism says people always act from self-interest; the confusion about whose desire it is presses it. Ethical egoism says people ought to; the objection from fairness presses it, and the reply appeals to fair bargains.
Count the claims you need to tell apart. Relativism has 2 forms, the dilemma has 2 horns, and egoism has 2 forms, so 6 claims in all. Of the 4 relativism and egoism forms, 2 are descriptive and 2 are normative.
Pause and try this. Which two of those forms are descriptive?
One comes from relativism, and one comes from egoism.
Here's the answer. Descriptive cultural relativism and psychological egoism, because each reports what people believe or do.
Closing
Let me pull it together. A descriptive question asks how things are, and a normative one asks how things ought to be; Hume's is-ought problem marks the gap. Descriptive relativism is true at least sometimes, but it doesn't establish normative relativism without a premise that does all the work. The reformer objection presses normative relativism, and the reply appeals to deeper values.
Divine command theory roots morality in God's commands, and the Euthyphro dilemma asks whether commands make acts right or track what's already right. Psychological egoism describes, ethical egoism prescribes, and the ring of Gyges asks why be moral at all. The course keys no verdict on any of them.
Next in this module come the slide deck, the Readings and Resources page, the lecture tutorial, the practice set, the quiz, the discussion, and the assignment. Then, in Week 11, Ethics II: Utilitarianism, we meet a theory that judges every act by its consequences.
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