Why do we go about theorizing at all?

Well, there are features of the world that we find interesting or perplexing are puzzling.

And, uh, we want to understand that you want to be able to explain them to ourselves and to others.

And maybe one way to get a handle of this is to think about theorizing in the sciences or in the natural world.

So we may we may recognize that certain objects follow food.

Let him go.

Newton saw the apple fall from the tree, and you might be perplexed about why objects fall to the ground.

Well, then you have all these data.

You know that apples fall and pens fall and cups of coffee fall and everything, you know, faulty.

Feel it.

Go.

Well, why is that?

You might want to construct a theory about this.

So Newton had a theory.

And he has this story about gravitation, and he constructed laws where he developed laws that supposed to explain the facts that he was observing.

So these are natural phenomenon.

There are other phenomena there phenomena we describe his moral phenomena.

So, for example, uh, if Joe was at the mall and Joe, uh, sees a pair of shoes he really wants and he looks in his wallet and he realizes he forgot his wallet at home, right?

So now he's thinking, What am I to do?

I want these shoes, I don't have money.

And then he notices, You know, an elderly man at a T M, and he notices that the elderly man puts his wild on this side and he realizes he can grab the wallet.

Suppose he goes ahead and grab it while and buys his shoes.

And it's also a scene that Joe is actually wealthy and this elderly man is not.

I think many of us will intuitively think that what Joe was doing is terribly wrong.

And so here's Here's something wrong that Joe is done Well, why that's wrong.

In much the same way that we ask, Why does the Apple fall?

You might wanna know what?

Why's Joe's action of stealing the old man's wallet?

Why's that wrong?

And we want a theory that would explain this to us.

So there are many differences, of course, between theorizing about the natural world and theorizing about morality.

So one feature that we find in in in investigations and physics and when people theorize about the natural world, they do experiments right, and they measure stuff in ethics.

Materials are quite different, so we can engage in thought experiments.

We can think about various actions, and we can try to determine whether these actions were right or wrong.

And then we want a theory that will explain our judgments about the situation So we may use thought experiments more so than we use actually, actual experiments and measurements.

So we can you know, I just made up this story about Jo.

We can make up other stories, and this is actually a tool.

That moral frost freezes quite a lot of thought experiments.

So interestingly, moral philosophers have not been quite a successful as a cz Newton or other scientists.

So one feature of Newton's theories that he managed to identify a law a law of nature I love nature is a statement that presumably has no exceptions.

Newton is actually an interesting case because contemporary physics tells us that Newton was actually wrong, so actually, his laws are not right.

They're false.

But for the sake of example, let's use them as if they're right.

Or we can talk about Einstein's, uh, theory if we prefer.

One feature of laws of nature is that if we find an instance where they don't apply or things behave not in accordance with formulated laws, that's a serious problem.

Either We have to give up the laws that we have to give up our observations.

Something went wrong.

If I drop in apple and stays hanging in the air, that's a problem in ethics.

Well, again, we don't have experiments and measurements in this way, but we have theories, or we try to construct theories on these theories sometime.

Tell us something about various cases, and sometimes the series give verdicts that seem wrong.

Tow us are unacceptable to us.

So, for example, if we talked about Joe and the shoes just awhile, just a minute to go.

If the theory would give us the result that Joe's action is okay, morally permissible, that's fine.

It's a virtuous action That would be a problem.

Way would think that's a mistake.

This theory is incorrect and moral philosophers for awhile of thought, either explicitly or implicitly, that it would be nice if we could formulate something like laws of ethics.

It would be nice if we can have a statement.

Uh, that has no exceptions.

That tells us the verdict about rightness and wrongness of actions, with no exception in much the same way that Newton's laws are supposed to hold without exceptions.

So again, if we have this apple floating in the air, that's a problem for nuisance theory.

So the thought is, let's formulate the laws of ethics, if you will.

Most moral theories that have been proposed in the past 200 years and even probably going for their back have been of this kind.

So, for example, consequential is theories are of the form, you know in action is morally right if and only if it brings about the best consequences.

Well, this tells you something about all and only morally right actions.

They all of this future that they bring about the best consequences.

And if you find an exception, that's a problem For this principle.

The principle either has to go.

Our judgment has to go in much the same way that you find a floating apple.

Either This, you know, maybe maybe it's a helium apple.

It's not really an apple.

Or maybe it's Ah, maybe that loss are mistaken.

Maybe it's not a law of nature that objects massive objects attract each other right?

So consequential.

His theories have been around for a while now on there, several notorious spotting for these views.

Now, this is not to say that there aren't smart people who think these air correct theories.

There are very smart people who think that we got it more or less right.

But if you look at the philosophical community that was engaged in moral theorizing, many people are off the view that these theories are incorrect.

We can give examples of actions that either bring about the best consequences and seem pretty clearly morally wrong, or actions that don't bring about the best consequences and seem to be right right to suppose you have.

You have a child and your child is in desperate need of some medical treatment, unfortunately, and you just have enough money to pay for this treatment so you can save your child.

Just as you enter the hospital, you find out that there are two other Children who need certain treatments, and they would die unless they get these treatments.

And it turns out their treatment is a bit less expensive than your own child's treatment.

And you have a choice between paying for your child's treatment or paying for these two Children that you don't know.

So you have a choice between saving the lives of two people are saving the life of your child.

It may seem as though saving the lives of two people would bring about better consequences to saving the life of one child.

Nevertheless, many of us think that under these conditions, it's morally right to pay for your child's treatment.

In fact, it would be morally wrong not to do so.

But what we find in the literature and ethics over the past 200 years or so is that people propose and immoral law, right, a principle of rightness.

And then some other smart people find problems for these principles, something like the floating apple we've been imagining.

So they find cases like they want to describe.

So here's a principle, and here's a case where it seems to get it wrong.

Now if your view is that much like in the case of the laws of nature, if we find an instance where the law doesn't apply, that's a problem for the law.

Then if we find the case where the principal doesn't apply, that's a problem for the principal, then these theories are either false or this very problematic.

So one thing we can do as more philosophers weaken, continue doing the same thing.

We can try and tweak with those principles until we managed to get them to a point where they get the results and reach a consensus and we've solved them.

Or problem, if you will.

In a way, that's what scientists do, right?

So we found problems.

We scientists found problems for Newton's laws, and so a new theory came about.

And now we have Einstein's theory and then their promise for that.

And scientists are looking for a new theory or a theory that would unify quantum mechanics and zero relativity, or what?

Not in a way we can keep on doing the same thing in ethics, and we can hope that eventually will have her Einstein, who would solve all the more problems for us by way of formulating.

An exception is principal, and that's that's fine.

I mean, I'm perfectly open to the possibility that someone much smarter than you know all the great minds that have been engaged in ethics so far will come along and solve them or problem.

But there is a possibility, and it it's a possibility.

I'm not claiming that it's a fact of the matter.

But it's possible that ethics is different from science in some important ways.

And it's possible that the best way to approach more theorizing is not by trying to find those laws of ethics.

Those exceptions principles.

But maybe there's some other way to engage in moral theorizing.

And what I've been interested in is to try to come up with a way of engaging in moral theorizing that is explaining those facts about rightness and wrongness like Jos, the wrongness of Joe's action, right?

Why is it wrong for Joe to steal the wallet from the old man to buy the shoes he really wants?

Uh, not by identifying a love ethics, some principle that tells us that every action it has a certain future is wrong, and then Joe's action has this feature and so it's wrong, but somebody some other way.

So how might we do that as Faras engaging with the philosophical community first?

The first step, I think, is to get people or my colleagues to appreciate the fact that we can do so without finding in formulating what we've been calling more laws or moral principles.

There are very interesting debates in moral theorizing about whether there are actions that are right and wrong.

Maybe this is something that we project onto the world.

Maybe there are no such facts in the world.

Maybe there's something radically different about morality, say, from We've been talking about physics.

So there is a factor.

Is an apple here and I let it go.

It falls.

That's a fact.

That Joe's action is wrong some people think, is not a fact.

Maybe it's something that I project onto Joe's action.

Maybe it's something that our community disapproves of.

So there are debates about whether there are more facts in the first place.

The debate over the nature of Maura theorizing is mostly interesting to those of us who think that there are more effects.

So it is a fact we may assume for the sake of discussion that Joe's act of stealing the wallet two bys cover to choose is morally wrong if its effect.

What explains this fact?

Why?

Why spend time philosophizing?

It's a very tricky question, specifically about ethics.

We may have some practical incentive to do so.

So we talked about Joe's Joe's case.

Right?

Joe sees this wallet.

He wants to shoot.

He steals the wall and gets the shoes.

It's obvious to us that this action is wrong for most of us.

There is no doubt about this, at least in some mindsets, right?

Unless we walk into Farsi classroom starting considering various other options, it seems to us pretty clear that this is wrong.

But there are many difficult situations, ones that were not so sure about.

So, um, there are many controversial issues.

Say, for example, euthanasia.

Well, we may have opinions, but I think our confidence in our judgment about this case is going to be quite different from our confidence in the Joe case.

Now.

These are difficult cases, and we might hope that having a theory about rightness and wrongness may help us reach more defensible or justifiable judgments about difficult cases The project I'm interested in is, in fact, one that says we don't need to find this golden rule out there.

We don't need to find a lot of ethics to explain this.

And then once we understand how we go about explaining this, maybe we'll be in a better position.

Maybe this is very tentative.

Maybe we'll be in a better position to make correct moral judgments in a new situation and difficult situations.