Read: two classic first chapters on what moral argument is and how it works — before we ask what we should do.
- Jonathan Glover, Causing Death and Saving Lives (Penguin, 1977/1990) — Chapter 1, “The Problems” and Chapter 2, “The Scope and Limits of Moral Argument” (pp. 13–43). Also available in the 2006 Penguin edition.
- Peter Singer, Practical Ethics, 3rd ed. (Cambridge University Press, 2011) — Chapter 1, “About Ethics” and Chapter 2, “Equality and Its Implications” (pp. 1–47). Chapter 1 can also be previewed free on Google Books; the 2nd edition (1993) has the same two chapters.
Both books are on the Internet Archive’s lending library: click Borrow, sign in with a free account, and the book opens in the browser for an hour at a time (renewable). Read Glover’s Chapter 2 §§3–8 with particular care — the “interplay between responses and general beliefs”, and his defence of imaginary cases, are the method we use for the rest of the unit.
Questions to bring to class
- Glover says moral argument works by an interplay between our responses to particular cases and our general beliefs. Give one example where a response should change a belief, and one where a belief should overrule a response.
- Singer claims ethics is not a matter of taste, yet is not derived from religion or from “the rules of society”. What, on his account, makes an ethical judgment defensible?
- Singer’s principle of equal consideration of interests: what does it rule out, and what does it leave open?