The Right Thing to Do, Basic Readings in Moral Philosophy

353 Pages·2012·2.427 MB·English

by  James Rachels, Stuart Rachels (eds.)

Authors James Rachels and Stuart Rachels bring you Te Right Ting to Do: R
Basic Readings in Moral Philosophy, the engaging companion reader to a
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their best-selling text, Te Elements of Moral Philosophy (0-07-803824-3). h
It offers readable, well-argued essays on compelling issues that students e
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understand and are familiar with. Tis collection can stand on its own as s

the text for a course in moral philosophy, or it can be used to supplement
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other introductory texts.
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New in the Sixth Edition: a
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Seven new essays have been added that address such topics as human h
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cloning, the selling of organs, physician-assisted suicide, euthanasia, same-
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sex marriage, and the cruelty of long-term solitary confinement. Tese s

new essays are:
• Hellhole, Atul Gawande T
• A Few Words about Gay Marriage, Andrew Sullivan h
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• Same-Sex Marriage and the Argument from Public Disagreement, David
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Boonin i
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• Te Wrongfulness of Euthanasia, J. Gay-Williams h
• Human Cloning and the Challenge of Regulation, John A. Robertson t
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• Selling Organs for Transplantation, Lewis Burrows
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• A Free Market Wo•uld Redu•ce Donat•ions and Would Commodify the in
Human Body, James F. Childress g
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On the Cover:
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Sixth Edition by Y
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T he Right Thing
to Do
Basic Readings in Moral Philosophy
SIXTH EDITION
Edited by
James Rachels
and
Stuart Rachels
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THE RIGHT THING TO DO, SIXTH EDITION
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Cover painting: Aleksandr Rodchenko (Russian, 1891–1956). Non-Objective Painting no. 80
(Black on Black). 1918. Oil on canvas, 32 1/4 x 31 1/4" (81.9 x 79.4 cm). Gift of the artist,
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All credits appearing on page or at the end of the book are considered to be an extension of the
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The right thing to do: basic readings in moral philosophy.—6th ed./
edited by James Rachels and Stuart Rachels.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-07-803823-5 (alk. paper)
1. Ethics—Textbooks. I. Rachels, James, 1941–2003. II. Rachels, Stuart, 1969–
BJ1012.R5 2012
170—dc23
2011042360
www.mhhe.com
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Contents
Preface v
About the Authors vi
INTRODUCTION
1. A Short Introduction to Moral Philosophy James Rachels 1
2. Some Basic Points about Arguments James Rachels 19
UTILITARIANISM
3. Utilitarianism John Stuart Mill 28
4. Utilitarianism and Integrity Bernard Williams 39
5. The Experience Machine Robert Nozick 44
OTHER THEORETICAL ESSAYS
6. The Subjectivity of Values J. L. Mackie 47
7. The Categorical Imperative Immanuel Kant 59
8. The Virtues Aristotle 63
9. Master Morality and Slave Morality Friedrich Nietzsche 70
10. Caring Relations and Principles of Justice Virginia Held 74
ABORTION
11. Why Abortion Is Immoral Don Marquis 81
12. A Defense of Abortion Judith Jarvis Thomson 88
13. On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion and Postscript on
Infanticide Mary Anne Warren 105
ANIMALS
14. All Animals Are Equal Peter Singer 116
15. Torturing Puppies and Eating Meat: It’s All in Good Taste Alastair
Norcross 126
16. Do Animals Have Rights? Tibor R. Machan 134
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iv CONTENTS
STARVATION
17. The Singer Solution to World Poverty Peter Singer 147
THE DEATH PENALTY
18. A Defense of the Death Penalty Louis P. Pojman 154
19. Why the United States Will Join the Rest of the World in
Abandoning Capital Punishment Stephen B. Bright 162
WAR, TERRORISM, AND TORTURE
20. Hellhole Atul Gawande 174
21. The Ethics of War and Peace Douglas P. Lackey 192
22. Fifty Years after Hiroshima John Rawls 201
23. What Is Wrong with Terrorism? Thomas Nagel 209
24. Liberalism, Torture, and the Ticking Bomb David Luban 212
SEX AND DRUGS
25. America’s Unjust Drug War Michael Huemer 226
26. Our Sexual Ethics Bertrand Russell 240
27. Monogamy: A Critique John McMurtry 247
28. A Few Words about Gay Marriage Andrew Sullivan 254
29. Same-Sex Marriage and the Argument from Public Disagreement
David Boonin 256
30. Alcohol and Rape Nicholas Dixon 267
RACE
31. Letter from the Birmingham City Jail Martin Luther King Jr. 278
32. Is Racial Discrimination Arbitrary? Peter Singer 286
33. In Defense of Quotas James Rachels 297
BIOETHICS
34. The Morality of Euthanasia James Rachels 312
35. The Wrongfulness of Euthanasia J. Gay-Williams 317
36. The New Eugenics Matt Ridley 322
37. Human Cloning and the Challenge of Regulation
John A. Robertson 329
38. Selling Organs for Transplantation Lewis Burrows 336
39. A Free Market Would Reduce Donations and Would Commodify
the Human Body James F. Childress 342
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Preface
Moral philosophy is the study of how one should live. This anthology is
an introduction to that great subject. The readings cover the main moral
theories and present a wealth of ideas about various practical matters.
This book is a companion to The Elements of Moral Philosophy, which
was also written by James Rachels and revised by Stuart Rachels. These
two books complement each other and may be read together. However,
nothing in either book presupposes knowledge of the other.
In selecting the pieces for this volume, I was looking for articles
on serious moral topics that are deftly argued; that are pleasant to read;
that lend themselves to lively discussion; and that the average college stu-
dent can grasp. I believe that the selections chosen are not merely good
articles on suitable topics; they are first-rate essays on compelling issues.
Students who read this book will want to read more, unless the subject is
simply not for them.
This edition contains seven new essays, replacing four that were
eliminated. There is now more material to choose from. I expanded
the section on bioethics, adding an essay in defense of human cloning;
two opposing essays on the selling of organs were added; and I replaced
Richard Doerflinger’s rejection of physician-assisted suicide with J. Gay-
Williams’s rejection of euthanasia. I replaced Burton Leiser’s 1986 article
on homosexuality with two more topical pieces on same-sex marriage.
I added Atul Gawande’s excellent essay on the cruelty of longterm soli-
tary confinement—a topic that philosophers should know more about.
Two essays that were rooted in the Bush era (by Mylan Engel and David
Luban) were eliminated. Finally, I removed some abstract material in the
pieces by Bernard Williams and Immanuel Kant. I did not think students
would understand that material. I know I didn’t.
I thank Joel Dittmer, Heather Elliott, Carol Enns, Daniel
Hollingshead, Carol Rachels, Julie Wilson, and the anonymous reviewers
commissioned by McGraw-Hill Publishers for their help.
To learn more about James Rachels, visit www.jamesrachels.org.
If you have suggestions for the next edition, please let me know:
[email protected].
—Stuart Rachels
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About the Authors
James Rachels (1941–2003) wrote The End of Life: Euthanasia
and Morality (1986), Created from Animals: The Moral Implications of
Darwinism (1990), Can Ethics Provide Answers? And Other Essays in Moral
Philosophy (1997), Problems from Philosophy (first edition, 2005), and
The Legacy of Socrates: Essays in Moral Philosophy (2007). His website is
www.jamesrachels.org.
Stuart Rachels is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University
of Alabama. He has revised several of James Rachels’ books, including
The Elements of Moral Philosophy (seventh edition, 2012) and Problems
from Philosophy (third edition, 2012). Stuart won the United States
Chess Championship in 1989, at the age of 20; today he is a Bronze Life
Master at bridge. His website is www.jamesrachels.org/stuart.
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1
CHAPTER
A Short Introduction to
Moral Philosophy
James Rachels
An ancient legend tells the story of Gyges, a poor shepherd who found
a magic ring in a fissure opened by an earthquake. The ring would
make its wearer invisible, so he could go anywhere and do anything
undetected. Gyges was an unscrupulous fellow, and he quickly real-
ized that the ring could be put to good advantage. We are told that he
used its power to gain entry to the royal palace where he seduced the
queen, murdered the king, and seized the throne. (It is not explained
how invisibility helped him to seduce the queen—but let that pass.)
In no time at all, he went from being a poor shepherd to being king
of all the land.
This story is recounted in Book II of Plato’s Republic. Like all of
Plato’s works, The Republic is written in the form of a dialogue between
Socrates and his companions. Glaucon, who is having an argument
with Socrates, uses the story of Gyges’s ring to make a point.
Glaucon asks us to imagine that there are two such rings, one
given to a man of virtue and the other given to a rogue. How might we
expect them to behave? The rogue, of course, will do anything neces-
sary to increase his own wealth and power. Since the cloak of invisibility
will protect him from discovery, he can do anything he pleases without
fear of being caught. Therefore, he will recognize no moral constraints
on his conduct, and there will be no end to the mischief he will do.
But how will the so-called virtuous man behave? Glaucon
suggests that he will do no better than the rogue:
No one, it is commonly believed, would have such iron strength
of mind as to stand fast in doing right or keep his hands off
other men’s goods, when he could go to the market-place and
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2 THE RIGHT THING TO DO
fearlessly help himself to anything he wanted, enter houses and
sleep with any woman he chose, set prisoners free and kill men at
his pleasure, and in a word go about among men with the powers
of a god. He would behave no better than the other; both would
take the same course.
Moreover, Glaucon asks, why shouldn’t he? Once he is freed from the
fear of reprisal, why shouldn’t a person simply do what he pleases, or what
he thinks is best for himself? Why should he care at all about “morality”?
The Republic, written over 2300 years ago, was one of the first
great works of moral philosophy in Western history. Since then, phi-
losophers have formulated theories to explain what morality is, why it
is important, and why it has the peculiar hold on us that it does. What,
if anything, justifies our belief that we morally ought to act in one way
rather than another?
Relativism
Perhaps the oldest philosophical theory about morality is that right and
wrong are relative to the customs of one’s society—on this view, there
is nothing behind the demands of morality except social convention.
Herodotus, the first of the great Greek historians, lived at about the
time of Socrates. His History is full of wonderful anecdotes that illustrate
his belief that “right” and “wrong” are little more than names for social
conventions. Of the Massagetae, a tribe in Central Asia, he writes:
The following are some of their customs—Each man has but one
wife, yet all the wives are held in common. . . . Human life does
not come to its natural close with these people; but when a man
grows very old, all his kinsfolk collect together and offer him up
in sacrifice; offering at the same time some cattle also. After the
sacrifice they boil the flesh and feast on it; and those who thus
end their days are reckoned the happiest. If a man dies of disease
they do not eat him, but bury him in the ground, bewailing his
ill-fortune that he did not come to be sacrificed. They sow no
grain, but live on their herds, and on fish, of which there is great
plenty in the Araxes. Milk is what they chiefly drink. The only
god they worship is the sun, and to him they offer the horse in
sacrifice, under the notion of giving the swiftest of the gods the
swiftest of all mortal creatures.
Herodotus did not think the Massagetae were to be criticized for such
practices. Their customs were neither better nor worse than those of
other peoples; they were merely different. The Greeks, who c onsidered
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A SHORT INTRODUCTION TO MORAL PHILOSOPHY 3
themselves more “civilized,” may have thought that their customs were
superior, but, Herodotus says, that is only because everyone believes
the customs of his own society to be the best. The “truth” depends on
one’s point of view—that is, on the society in which one happens to
have been raised.
Relativists think that Herodotus was obviously on to something
and that those who believe in “objective” right and wrong are merely
naïve. Critics, however, object to the theory on a number of grounds.
First, it is exceedingly conservative, in that the theory endorses what-
ever moral views happen to be current in a society. Consider our own
society. Many people believe that our society’s moral code is mis-
taken, at least on some points—for example, they may disagree with
the dominant social view regarding capital punishment or homosexu-
ality or the treatment of nonhuman animals. Must we conclude that
these would-be reformers are wrong, merely because they oppose the
majority view? Why must the majority always be right?
But there is a deeper problem with Relativism, emphasized
by Socrates. Some social customs are, indeed, merely arbitrary, and
when these customs are at issue it is fruitless to insist that one soci-
ety’s practices are better than another’s. Funerary practices are a
good example. The Greeks burned their dead, while the Callatians
ate their dead, but neither practice is better than the other. However,
it does not follow from this that all social practices are arbitrary in the
same way. Some are, and some are not. The Greeks and the Callatians
were free to accept whatever funerary practices they liked because
no objective reason could be given why one practice was superior to
the other. In the case of other practices, however, there may be good
reasons why some are superior. It is not hard, for example, to explain
why honesty and respect for human life are socially desirable, and
similarly it is not hard to explain why slavery and racism are unde-
sirable. Because we can support our judgments about these matters
with rational arguments, we do not have to regard those judgments as
“merely” the expression of our particular society’s moral code.
Divine Commands
A second ancient idea, also familiar to Socrates, was that moral living
consists in obedience to divine commands. If this were true, then we
could easily answer the challenge of Gyges’s ring—even if we had the
power of invisibility, we would still be subject to divine retribution, so
ultimately we could not “get away with” doing whatever we wanted.
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