not an indication that the people want this outcome? If they were against it, they would just stay at home.
Ethical intuitionism might side with either position according to the sort of moral maxims brought forward, and how they are popularly received.
Utilitarianism would be forced to focus on the general happiness. But whose happiness? Will it be the happiness of the county? Will it be the happiness of the state? Will it be the happiness of the country? Will it be the happiness of the world? And once this is determined, then the subsequent question is what is the time frame? Are we talking about 3 years, 30 years, or 300 years? The answer to the utilitarian calculation may be different according to how one parses the population to be examined and how one understands the relevant time frame. Under most of these scenarios (given a time frame of at least 50 years and a scope that covers the wind dispersement of a majority of the pollutants and heavy metal contaminants) the risks will outweigh the benefits (even for the county involved). Therefore, utilitarianism will reject the building of the power plant.
Deontology (since Kant) has been very keen to think of duties in terms of thought experiments that create models that are universal in scope. In the current example, the operative question might be: “What if every county in America were to build a conventional coal-powered energy plant?” Could we do so without logical contradiction? Here we tread in uncharted territory. According to most scientists, if every county in the United States built such a power plant the amount of pollution (both air and heavy metals) would be so great that people would begin dying in high numbers, causing high social and political unrest. High social and political unrest is called anarchy. Anarchy is the breakdown of government. There would be no cohesive society under this description. Therefore, the model is inconsistent. Inconsistent models are illogical. All illogical models are to be rejected. Therefore, deontology would create a prohibition against building the power plant.
Case 3: Student-Originated Case
Step One: Separate the class into small groups of 3−4 students each. Select one group and have them go online to one of the major newspapers in your country and find an article that they feel raises a problem that has environmental impact. Then have a representative from the group summarize the problem and cite the source. Post as a Google doc within the group and allow the group members to communicate using “stick notes” and “jam board” for free and easy communication.
After a few days have the representative from the group post the problem on your class’s internet discussion board for comment.* Allow “threads” in your discussion board. Make your discussion board last for a limited amount of time—say a week. Especially solicit responses from the point of view of one of the principal ethical theories—such as virtue ethics, utilitarianism, or deontology.
Step Two: Have the group go over the responses solicited and sort them by: (a) the kinds of solutions advocated by your classmates and (b) the type of ethical theory chosen to support their solution. Using the data that you have gleaned from (a) and (b) try to draw some general trends from the class and then have a representative from the group create a PowerPoint presentation for the class letting them know the majority and minority opinions evinced. The PowerPoint should be no longer than 10 minutes.
Step Three: Break the class into the aforementioned discussion groups of 3−4 individuals each with task of each group to set out arguments supporting (pro) and going against (con) each of the general trends of the class as set out on the PowerPoint. After about 15 minutes of discussion have a spokesperson for each group make an oral presentation to the entire class summarizing that group’s findings. The group summaries should last 3−4 minutes. Depending upon the number of groups, this exercise should last 30−40 minutes.
Step Four: While the group presentations are still fresh in everyone’s minds allow each student to jot down relevant information for their between-class short essay to be completed at home. This task should last 5−10 minutes.
Step Five: Each student should write a 300-word essay between classes on the solution that seems best to them and turn it in for grading in the next class.
This exercise encourages individual response and group collaboration and forces students to make an action commitment after carefully examining the problem and possible solutions (driven by a selected ethical theory). It is best to utilize this lecture early in the class term. [Note: this is easily adaptable to synchronous online teaching.]
Conclusion
This chapter began by asking the rhetorical question: “What is the point in studying ethics?” The examination of the question took us to various places. First, it took us to prudential decision-making and the possible problems that many decision models face because of unreflective worldviews. Next, some suggestions were made to remedy this problem, including the personal worldview imperative. Finally, the chapter worked through two case studies in which difficult decisions were presented. In this context, the prudential models were supplemented with an overlay of some ethical theories that might offer a more coherent direction in decision-making. The slant of this author was toward the realist ethical theories and the swing theories interpreted realistically. However, each side was presented in order that the reader might make up his or her own mind on how he or she intends to adopt the overlay of ethics into his or her worldview and decision-making model. This is an important, ongoing task. I exhort each reader to take this quest seriously. It may just be the best investment in time that you have ever made!
Notes
1 * If your college or university does not have online discussion boards associated with each class then you can type out your problem on one side of a piece of paper, make copies for all in the class, distribute, and ask your classmates to respond on the back side of the piece of paper.
2 1 Cited in The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975), New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich. At an art exhibition in Stockholm, Sweden Andy Warhol is reported to have said: “In the future everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes.” Since that time, the quotation has morphed into several different formulations.
3 2 This is particularly true of some feminist ethicists. See Rosemarie Tong (2009) “A Feminist Personal Worldview Imperative,” in Morality and Justice: Reading Boylan’s A Just Society (ed. John-Stewart Gordon), Lanham, MD and Oxford: Lexington/Rowman & Littlefield; pp. 29–38.
4 3 Another popular distinction is natural versus non-natural.This is a subcategory of realism. For example, the philosopher G.E. Moore was a realist about the existence of “good,” but he felt that “good” was an non-natural property. Thus, realists can be naturalists and non-naturalists. Anti-realists are neither natural nor unnatural: they do not think that the good (for example) actually exists at all: in or out of nature.
5 4 For the purposes of this book the words “ethics” and “morality” will be taken to be exact synonyms.
2 What is ‘Nature,’ and Why Should We Care?
MICHAEL BOYLAN
Part I: What is Nature?
Aristotle introduces our discussion in Posterior Analytics II.1 “There are four questions we can ask about the [natural] objects we know (epistametha): the fact (hoti); the reasoned fact or cause (dioti); the question about the modal existence of the entity (ei esti); and the question of definition or essence (ti