Ethics and Morality

• We will look at the nature of ethical reasoning and how to use ethical knowledge to help us solve practical problems.
• The group presentation will be on this topic.

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• Critical reasoning covers all areas of inquiry. What you have learnt in the previous lectures still applies.
• So, how come we devote a section on ethical reasoning?

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• The simple answer is that ethical issues deal with values and are governed by “ought”.
• On the other hand, other problems of reasoning may only deal with facts, governed by “is”.

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• A simple example to illustrate the difference:

1. Donald Trump is a man.

2. All men are mortal.

Therefore, Donald Trump is mortal.

• In this argument, the two premises are propositions that are either true (if they are facts) or false (if they are not facts). Once we have obtained the answer, we can then reason definitively whether the conclusion obtains or not.

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1. Abortion is terminating the life of a fetus.

2. Terminating the life of a fetus is killing the fetus.

Therefore, abortion is bad.

• Note that ordinary people may find this argument obviously okay. However, one should find the conclusion to be non-fact stating. In other words, the conclusion is about values not facts.
• Hence, one may well agree with the two premises and yet not agree with the conclusion. (Does this involve the problem of inductive reasoning, which we have learnt earlier?)

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• Problems of reasoning like this abound in the realm of ethics: whenever you try to say that something is good or bad, right or wrong.
• That’s why we need to devote a section to knowing how to perform ethical reasoning. If we fail to do so, we are not only liable to become immoral or amoral people, we are also unable to organize our careers and personal lives.
• One just can’t say that whatever she finds okay is okay.

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• The whole problem can be summarized by the view of David Hume, a famous Scottish philosopher: there is no proper deductive reasoning from is to ought.

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Basic Ethical Terms

Good, just, right

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Bad, unjust, wrong

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• Ethics is a study of human conduct: what ought one to do in this or that situation?
• “Ought I to shoot at a demonstrator?”
• “Should I help the poor?”
• It is also considered a normative discipline.
• There is, arguably, no ‘ought-problem’ in science such as “Ought the boiling point of water be 100 degree Celsius?”

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• There are usually two components of ethics:
1. Meta-ethics: study of the concepts
2. Normative ethics: study of the use of ethical judgment in actual situations

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HKU’s Motto

• Do you think that the ultimate purpose of ethics is to teach you to become a good person (明德)?

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• Here is HKU’s explanation of our motto:
• The first phrase, mingde 明德 (‘to manifest virtue’), occurs in the opening sentence: ‘The Great Learning teaches the display of illustrious virtue, the renewal of the people, and repose in the highest good.’ (大學之道，在明明德，在親民，在止於至善。) In a gloss on this sentence, the Song Dynasty philosopher Zhu Xi (朱熹) explained that these were the three great duties of a ruler. Scholars of the Confucian school have traditionally believed that “virtue” is the perfect nature that man is born with. This nature becomes perverted by the various temptations of life, and the great task of education is to restore it to its original purity. The display of the characters mingde on the University’s shield therefore alludes to the noble function of education in ‘manifesting virtue.’

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Prudential vs Ethical Reasons

• In the previous lectures on critical reasoning, we see how a good argument requires premises to support the conclusion.
• Now, you can regard the conclusion of an argument to be a decision or an action to be done by you.
• So, the problem becomes: what ought I to do in this situation, given the reasons I have?

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• In most situations, we can easily come up with our own decision such as deciding to go to Japan instead of Korea, given that I am more familiar with the Japanese culture.
• Or, I decide to accept the offer of HKU instead of City U, given that the ranking of HKU is much higher.
• In all these mundane situations, we exercise our prudential reasons to arrive at a decision that is most conducive to our own wants and preferences.

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• In such practical reasoning, we may not need to consider ethics.
• It certainly sounds crazy to ask: is it ethical for me to study in HKU rather than City U?
• So, when should we take heed of ethical reasons?

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• It is, at first sight, extremely pedantic to look for ethical reasons behind every decision we have made.
• And, it is also unrealistic to ask how, in doing this rather than that, I can become a better person.

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• We often confuse between a good person and a nice person.
• In the West, it is standardly assumed that a (morally) good person has certain character traits such as temperance, bravery, being just, and being wise.
• In Chinese, we have the five cardinal virtues : Benevolence (rén 仁), righteousness (yì 義), propriety (lǐ 禮), wisdom (zhì 智) and fidelity (xìn 信).

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• The question about why a person has to be good was in fact asked by some discussants in the Platonic dialogues.
• In the Mencius 孟子, King Xuan also asked Mengzi what is the benefit of being good.
• It seems that if a person cannot intuitively grasp the intrinsic goodness of the moral good, there is no point to continue with the persuasion.

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• Of course, it is easier to defer the authority of goodness to God so that opting for a good life is non-negotiable.
• But is there an easier way to make sense of the demandingness of goodness?

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• Another reason why ethics baffles contemporary people is that there is in fact no expert in ethics. In other words, no one can claim to be experts in doing things ethically like scientists in conducting experiments.
• So what do the professors do when they teach ethics?

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• For this course, I only teach you the basic method to perform ethical reasoning on your own. That is to say, there is a non-ethical core of ethical reasoning that can be learnt like English grammar. Once you have grasped this core, your task is to perform ethical reasoning each time afresh in different situations. There cannot be a preset model answer.
• This situation is again like learning English. Your minimal requirement to write or speak good English is competence in grammar and vocabulary. However, good grammar and vocabulary cannot guarantee that you can write an A grade (very good) essay. You may say that each ethical reasoning and each piece of English writing are new endeavors.

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• For the contemporary people, the following understanding seems commonsensical because we are familiar with certain principles on which society operates.

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1. Benefit-based Understanding

• Now, it is assumed that everyone knows what she prefers.
• Sociologists label those things each of us prefers utilities.
• If we allow ourselves to be a bit crude, we can say that the essence of personal utilities is pleasure.

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• Once such a framework is in place, we can shift the thorny problem of becoming good individually to the coordination problem of maximizing individual pleasure in a society.
• In the West, this view took shape with the writings of Jeremy Bentham, Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill.
• Surprisingly, such a view was already developed two thousand years ago by a Chinese philosopher called Mozi (墨子).

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Utilitarianism

• In thinking about social policies, utilitarian ethics seems to work well.
• Famously, Bentham declares that the aim of ethics is to promote the greatest happiness for the greatest number:
• “By the principle of utility is meant that principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever, according to the tendency which it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question: or, what is the same thing in other words, to promote or to oppose that happiness.”

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• Why utilitarians connect ethics with such a practical principle is that it is the consequence of an action that matters, not how a person means good or whether the person has moral integrity.
• Therefore, ethics becomes a way to calculate aggregate happiness.

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• In the more distant past, such a manner of thinking was deemed remote from ethics: it is called a form of hedonism.
• Now, if there is no objection to a subjective understanding of individual happiness, ethics is reduced to a methodological promotion of certain consequences of actions. Hence, utilitarianism is often understood as a form of consequentialism.

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• To connect utilitarianism with our previous discussion on thought experiments: how to distribute resources so as to promote the maximization of happiness.
• Of course, the problem of maximization becomes the problem of statistics: for example, is average happiness or total happiness more important?

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• And, how can we calibrate different kinds of happiness?
• Mill asked whether the pleasure of reading poetry is the same as that of playing pushpins.

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2. Rule-based Ethics

• Usually, but not always, rule-based ethics is related to the concept of duty.
• We can describe the theory as concerning the duty of a moral agent: what she ought to do in a particular situation with regard to her sense of duty.

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• For example, even if you feel no pleasure in tending your old grandmother and that the rest of the world will not be improved a bit by your act, it is still morally obligatory for you to do so.
• We may say that the obligatoriness of the act springs from within you as a person.

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• In ancient China, the obligation of acting piously to one’s parents was regarded as intuitively unchallengeable. Benevolence (rén 仁) and righteousness (yì 義) were regarded as inborn capacities of a person.

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• In the West, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant is the paradigm of a duty-based moral philosopher.
• Almost every student in the humanities needs to know a bit about Kant. Maybe you have already learnt something about his ethical thoughts.

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Categorical Imperative

• This is to be contrasted with hypothetical imperative: doing something in order that something else comes about.
• For example, you act hypothetically when you buy the Mark Six ticket: in order that you may win the first prize.
• On the other hand, all moral actions are based on the categorical imperative. To put simply, you do it just and only for the sake of it.

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First Formulation

• The First Formulation of the Imperative
• “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law without contradiction.” – Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of Metaphysic of Morals

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Second Formulation

• The Second Formulation of the Imperative
• “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end but always at the same time as an end.” – Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of Metaphysic of Morals

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Third Formulation

• The Third Formulation of the Imperative
• “Therefore, every rational being must so act as if he were through his maxim always a legislating member in the universal kingdom of ends.” – Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of Metaphysic of Morals

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• A famous example to illustrate Kant’s idea is that lying must be an immoral act. So even if you think that there are white lies that may bring a lot of benefits to others, the very nature of lying forbids a moral agent to do it.

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Ethical Dilemma

• Ethics involves deciding what to do.
• Sometimes, we are aware of two conflicting options: one seems to be the good thing to do, another seems to be the desirable thing to do for me.
• In most common situations, choices don’t really matter that much: are the choices to study in HKU and Harvard really a dilemma?

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Trolley Problem

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• A runaway trolley is heading down the tracks toward five workers who will all be killed if the trolley proceeds on its present course. Adam is standing next to a large switch that can divert the trolley onto a different track. The only way to save the lives of the five workers is to divert the trolley onto another track that only has one worker on it. If Adam diverts the trolley onto the other track, this one worker will die, but the other five workers will be saved.

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• Watch the video on a detailed description of the trolley problem:
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yywd3bXfYAg

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• We shall devote more time in the tutorials to deal with this famous dilemma.
• Put simply for now, is it ethical for me to switch the train to run over 1 person instead of the original 5?
• On the basic utilitarian calculation, it is a sure-win choice.

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• On the other hand, it is also obvious that it is immoral to choose who to live and who to die. Since without your intervention, the single one is meant to live, how can you intervene?
• But think carefully about our intuitions.

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• Watch this video for an even more imaginative situation to help you to judge carefully in a dilemma:
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Br59pD583Io

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AI ethics

• The emergence of ChatGPT in recent years has sparked a discussion about the proper use of AI.
• Let’s examine some basic facts about AI.

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1. AI is just a range of technological methods or tools to do things for humans.
2. Any tool can be put to good or bad uses.
3. The purpose of scientific progress is to help human to live a better living through the reduction of unnecessary labor.

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• Given the previous assumptions, why are some people nowadays deeply disturbed by AI, especially the use of Large Language Model (LLM)?
• Geoffrey Hinton, Nobel prize winner and father of the deep learning, surprisingly resigned from Google in 2023 and started talking about the risk of AGI.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7nrAOmUtRs

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• Professor Fei-fei Li, the creator of the ImageNet, however, disagrees: “It’s our responsibility at every single level to create and use technology in the most responsible way. And at no moment, not a single human should be asked or should choose to let go of our dignity …Just because a tool is powerful, as a mother, as an educator and as an inventor, I really believe this is the core of how AI should be centered.”

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• Let’s hear what Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI, said about the threats of AI and superintelligence:
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MWT_doo68k

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• The lot of people explain the problem as the opening of the pandora box, in the same way Einstein lamented his discovery leading to the making of the atom bomb.
• Let’s focus on LLM-related software.
• As a student, can you think of anything bad about ChatGPT helping you to do homework?

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• Undoubtedly, ChatGPT makes your learning a lot easier.
• So, why do some teachers disallow you to use AI to generate or polish your writing, or programming?

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Three laws of robotics

• A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
• A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
• A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

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• 80 years ago, science fiction writer Isaac Asimov already discussed about implementing restrictions on a robot to prevent it from doing unethical things.
• By the same token, how should we implement similar rules on ChatGPT?

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Superintelligence

• If you want a thorough philosophical discussion of such ethical issues, please read Nick Bostrom’s book Superintelligence: Perils, Dangers, Strategies.

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