Lesson video

Oh, I'm sorry.

Were you waiting for me? Oh, well, didn't you know that patience was a virtue? Come to think of it, what does the word virtue actually mean? Maybe, if you watch my lesson on virtue ethics, you might find out.

When you're ready, go and find yourself a comfortable spot.

Get your correct stationary.

Turn off your mobile phone unless you're using it to watch the lesson and then be prepared to learn.

In this lesson, we will identify the keywords used in virtue ethics.

Explain the history of virtue ethics.

Apply virtue ethics to some thought experiments and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of modern virtue theory.

Now, there is a slight disclaimer on the lesson.

There will be some sensitive content in the lesson because when we're dealing with ethics, we might be discussing life or death decisions.

Please do ask a trusted adult to join if you need to.

So in order to take part in today's lesson, you will need two different coloured pens or pencils and some paper.

Now, we're going to try and get our heads around understanding some of the key words for this lesson.

So what I'd like you to do is copy out the words, intentionalist, consequentialist and virtue and then match it to the correct definition.

You may wish to write this in pencil first, in case you need to make corrections when we go through the correct answers from the next slide.

if you've been in one of my previous lessons also, or you've watched one of my previous lessons, then you will know what some of these words mean already.

So, the correct answers are consequentialist is something that is deemed as moral based on the consequence or a Consequentialist is a person that is deemed as moral based on the consequence.

An intentionist is someone that deems things as moral based on the intention.

And a virtue is behaviour that shows high moral standards.

And we're going to unpack this a little bit more, later on in the lesson.

Let's go through some very quick, true or false questions.

Consequentialism is morality based on the intention, that is wrong.

Consequentialism is morality based on the consequence not the intention of an action.

Intentionalist ethics is based on strict rules.

Well, this was a little bit of a trick question.

Often intentionalist ethics does have strict rules, but it's really about the intention of your actions.

Often when we're talking about strict rules, we're talking about absolutism and it often is also the same as intentionalism, but they aren't by known definition the same thing.

You can get some intentionalism that is relativist.

Virtue means that something is conditional.

Okay, no, virtue doesn't mean that something is conditional.

If you remember from when we looked at first, virtues are about the highest of moral behaviours.

Now we're going to have a go at our first thought experiment.

If you have watched any of my previous lessons, then you will know that a thought experiment is a way of playing out a scenario and playing it out until its end just to work out what the consequence would be.

This is usually, when there is no way of being able to decide a correct answer.

It's often using theoretical physics.

We also use it a lot in ethics and philosophy.

So, the trolley problem was first presented by a philosopher called Philippa Foot.

We will find out more about her personally later on, or not her personally, but we're about her theory later on.

It goes like this.

There was a trolley cart.

We might call it a tram.

It's going pretty fast along a track.

And it's heading towards a group of five people.

You are the person that is standing with the lever.

You need to decide whether you would pull a lever and move the trolley cart or tram to go into the one person.

Or do you decide to go in to the group of people.

So you don't pull the lever, but you allow the trolley cart or tram to go straight into the group of people.

What I'd like you to do is pause the video, write down what you do and why, and then be ready to move onto the next thought experiment.

So, you will have made this decision.

You either were going to pull the lever or you are going to not pull the lever and allow it to kill a group of five people.

Now, let me tell you that most people, not everybody, but the majority of people in this situation usually decide they're going to pull the lever because it's better, even though you're having to actively do something.

It is better that five people survive and one person dies rather than five people die and one person survives.

Doesn't mean it is right or wrong, but that's what the majority of people decide to do.

In the next part of this problem, however, you're no longer the person standing with the lever.

You're on a bridge, above what is happening.

There is no one at the lever so nobody can change the course that it's going.

It is going to go into the group of five people.

You are standing at the top of the bridge next to a very obese person.

This obese person is standing there, smoking, eating a whole lot of junk food and drinking a lot of alcohol.

They don't look very well.

So this person isn't very well looking after themselves.

What you could do, is push this person off onto the tracks which will stop the train.

It will then stop the train going into the five people or the one person.

What do you do? Pause the video, write down your answer and explain why.

And then we'll come back in a minute.

Now, in the previous scenario, believe it or not, most people would not push the person over the bridge because they'd say that they were very much actively killing another person.

So in that situation they'd allow the five to die because essentially, none of it would be their fault, but they would feel like it would be their fault if they push the person over the top of the bridge.

Now I'm going to present another scenario to you.

The Surgeon.

In one room, there's a perfectly healthy person.

He's popped in for coronavirus test.

They didn't get the memo about not going to hospital if you think you've got coronavirus.

But they did a test on him while he was there anyway, and found out that he was negative.

He had nothing wrong with him.

In five other rooms, there are some seriously ill people, who've just been in a trolley car accident.

One needs a kidney transplant, one needs a heart, another needs lungs, somebody else needs a liver, and somebody else needs new eyes.

The surgeon feels that they have a dilemma.

The one very healthy person, he was just a bit silly and came in for the coronavirus test, has got a healthy kidney, heart lungs, liver and eyes.

Does the surgeon kill that one person to help save the other five.

What do you think? Pause the video, write down your answers and we'll come back to it later.

Hopefully, so these scenarios have shown you the problems, which emerge from the trolley problem.

Number one, it highlights issues with both the absolutist and consequentialist arguments.

If you decided in every single one that your intention is most important and you must stick to the absolute rule of never killing, then in the first scenario, you would do nothing and therefore five people would die.

In the second scenario, you would do nothing and five people would die.

And in the third scenario you would do nothing and five people would die.

However, either way someone is going to die.

And actually, it seems kind of wrong, particularly in the first incidents that, both theories played out, either promote bad moral decisions or lead to unhappy consequences.

So could there be another way to make moral decisions? Pause the video, to complete your task.

Answer the following questions in full sentences.

What is the trolley dilemma? Why does it show problems with traditional ethical theories? Resume the video once you're finished.

Now, let's go into a little history of virtue ethics.

Virtue theory began with a philosopher called Aristotle where he talked about the world of forms. He said that there was a perfect form of everything, including virtues.

virtues are the highest of moral standards.

Patience, justice, courage and compassion, and modesty are all examples of virtues.

They're not every single virtue that there is, but they're examples of virtues that we probably would think about all the time.

In the same way, rashness callousness, shamelessness, pettiness are all deficiencies of character.

They are not the highest moral standards.

They are things that we see as being negative.

Philippa Foot is responsible for the modern day virtue ethics.

She created the trolley dilemma to show the weaknesses in intentionalism and consequentialism.

Here form of virtue theory mixes the two with Aristotle's virtue ethics.

When you finish listening to me, pause the video, try and write down five points about virtue ethics that I've talked about.

We'll go through the answers shortly.

So virtue theory originated with Aristotle.

He claimed that there was a perfect form of everything including virtues.

Patience, justice, courage, friendliness and modesty are all examples of virtues.

Philippa Foot improved on this to create modern day virtue ethics.

And modern day virtue ethics mixes consequentialism and intentionalism.

And make sure you use a different colour pen to make any alterations or add anything to your points.

So, modern virtue theory.

The first question that a modern person, so a person today following virtue theory would do, is question is the intention of the action good? So if we look at the trolley carts dilemma, the person standing next to the lever would decide, is it a good intention that I'm going to move the lever so that it doesn't kill this group of people.

That's quite difficult.

Ultimately your intention might be that somebody, well, the consequence is going to be that somebody else dies, but your intention is good.

The intention is to save five people's lives.

So yes, it gets a tick.

Will the consequence benefit others? Definitely, it's going to impact five people or benefit five people.

Does it promote a virtue? Well, it shows compassion.

You're showing care and love for somebody else.

So it would make sense that actually, yes, it does promote a virtue.

So in this scenario, virtue theory would allow you to move the lever so that only the one person dies.

How about the ethical surgeon then? Is the intention good? Is the intention to kill one person a good thing? Well, no, actually.

Will the consequences benefit others? Yes it will.

Does it promote a virtue? Not really, no.

So in this scenario, virtue ethics would say, no, even though in the previous scenario you'd be saving five people, you wouldn't be actively having the intention to kill someone whereas the intention in this one would be to kill.

Now, in a moment, we're going to go through some true or false questions to do with virtue ethics.

You must select whether the following are true or false and write down either true or false on your sheet of paper.

Categorical means always or unconditionally.

Three, two, one.

That's true.

Philippa Foot was the first to talk about virtues.

Three, two, one.

False.

The theory is based on three principles.

Three, two, one.

True.

And a virtue is a behaviour that shows a high moral standard, that should say.

Three two, one.

True.

Patience is a virtue.

Three, two, one.

True.

Envy is a virtue.

Three, two, one.

False.

Envy is a deficiency.

It's a negative characteristic.

Justice is a virtue.

Three, two, one.

That is true.

And vanity is a virtue.

Three, two, one.

That is in fact, false.

Once again, it's a deficiency or something negative about someone's character.

The opposite of vanity would be modesty, which is a virtue.

Now, I would like you to pause the video, to complete your task.

Copy out a definition and then copy and complete sections two and three.

Resume when you are finished.

So how did you do? Get a different coloured pen and we're going to read through my answers.

So modern virtue theory is made up of three parts.

Is the intention good, is the consequence good and is the decision made in the most virtuous way? To develop this answer, an example of how to explain this is the ethical surgeon.

A surgeon has to decide whether or not to kill a patient in order to save five others.

So more following virtue ethics would not support this because, although the consequence would be good for the majority, killing is not a virtuous action and the intention would not be a good one.

Let's have a go at applying the virtue theory to some practise, thought experiments then.

The last one we're going to look up is Jim and the Indians.

Now, if you've done any of my other ethics lessons, then you will have come across this thought experiment before.

So Jim is walking through a Wood and he finds a group of Indians and some soldiers.

The soldiers, they're rounding up the Indians and they are about to shoot them.

Jim steps in and tries to stop this happening.

One of the soldiers, places a gun in Jim's hands and says, if you want to save them, you must kill one of them.

Choose which one you will kill or let them all die.

What would you do? What do you think Philippe Foot would do? Pause the video and write down your answer.

Now, I'd like you to copy out the following table.

Of each thought experiment, please write down a summary of what it's about as we go through them.

We're about to go through my model answer for Jim and the Indians.

Resume when you finish copying this down.

So with Jim and the Indians, Foot would save the bigger group of Indians by killing the one.

This is because the consequence would be to save the people.

The intention would not be to kill anyone, but in this situation the virtue needed would be courage and compassion.

So, now we go onto the train dilemma, which is very similar to the trolley cart dilemma.

So there is a train driver.

She is driving along the tracks, on her journey.

She gets to a fork in the tracks where she notices that along one side that looks like she's supposed to carry on, there were five people that have been tied to the tracks.

On the other side, there is one person who has been tied to the tracks.

If she carries on the way that she's going, she's going to kill the five people.

She needs to decide whether she changes route and kills only the one person.

Now bearing in mind what we said Foot would do in the trolley cart dilemma it would be the same.

So, write down in that box, a brief summary, what Foot would do, and then pause the video to explain why.

And then the final dilemma.

This is the Nazi at the door.

So imagine you were in Nazi Germany and a member of the Gestapo, the secret police comes and knocks on your door.

They were asking about the Jewish family that used to live next door, which seemed to have fled.

Now, you know, full well that you are hiding them up in your attic.

However, you have to decide whether or not you tell the Nazi who is at your door, who will then go upstairs, arrest them, and more than likely send them to an extermination camp.

What do you think Foot would do? And what would you do? Write your answers in the table and explain them.

Now, what I'd like you to do is read through my answers and make sure you make any alterations in different coloured pen.

When you're ready resume the video.

And once again, read through my answer, pause the video, make any alterations in a different coloured pen and then resume.

Now I'd like you to pause the video and complete the task.

Copy the table and complete it by writing in the strengths and weaknesses of modern virtue theory.

So one strength of the virtue theory is that it is practical.

It attempts to follow always through with the most morally good deed.

And it's relativistic, the action taken does depend on the situation.

Sometimes, it might be deemed to make a certain decision in one situation and other times a different decision would be taken because the circumstances change.

Some of the weaknesses of the theory however, that the decisions to be taken aren't always clear.

Who decides on what makes something virtuous behaviour? We could talk about the idea of what we'd all see as being the highest moral standards, but actually with somebody from a different upbringing find that a high moral standard.

Could give the example of queuing in England or Britain.

Were well known all across the rest of the world for being, ever so polite of what we would describe as being polite and queuing.

Many other people from different countries don't queue and they don't think it's impolite because that's part of the etiquette of their country.

So while somebody might say that it's a high standard to cue, somebody from another country, wouldn't necessarily agree with it.

So how do we decide what is virtuous behaviour and what isn't? What I'd like you to do now is pause the video to complete the final task.

Use the sentence starters to help you.

When you're ready, resume the video.

Have a read through my answer and decide whether your answer was good, or whether it needs improving.

Remember, it doesn't matter what you've written as long as you've explained your answers and try to include some of the key words that we have used today.

And that's pretty much it for me today.

It's now time for you to complete the quiz.

So please don't forget to show all the wonderful stuff that you've learned.

I hope you've enjoyed my lessons on ethics.

If you've looked at the previous ones, it's not the easiest of subjects but it's definitely interesting.

And it's definitely, something that we will all come across at some point in our lives.

The thought experiments might be a bit extreme, but we all have to make moral decisions for our lives all the time.

And it's good to kind of practise thinking about what it actually means to be a good person and a moral person.

So thanks for taking the time to do this work today.

I'm sure you've done absolutely fantastic.

And I hope that you come and see some more of my lessons.