Study guide: Moral Preferences and Career Choices

📋 Course Outline

1. Ethical Theories and Moral Criteria
2. Consequentialism and Its Variants
3. Deontology and Duties
4. Virtue Ethics and Character
5. Meta-Ethics and Moral Uncertainty
6. Moral Intuitions and Empirical Psychology
7. Evolutionary Contractualism and Disagreement
8. Job Investigation Presentation
9. Interview Preparation and Questions
10. Group Project Logistics and Assessment

📖 1. Ethical Theories and Moral Criteria

📝 Essential Points

• The three main ethical theories are:
  • consequentialism
  • deontology
  • virtue ethics

📖 2. Consequentialism and Its Variants

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Consequentialism: Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter, Consequentialism, Winter 2023 Edition - The view that something, such as an action, is good if it has positive consequences.
• Utilitarianism: Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation - The view that something, such as an action, is good if it increases well-being.
• Act consequentialism: Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter, Winter 2023 Edition - Act consequentialism assesses actions by their consequences.

📝 Essential Points

• The listed limitations of act consequentialism are (Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter, Winter 2023 Edition): difficulty of calculation, tyranny of the majority, neglect of special relationships such as family and friends, neglect of intentions, the experience machine objection

📌 Strong rule consequentialism risks rule worship, while weak rule consequentialism is no different from act consequentialism. - Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter, Winter 2023 Edition

• Preference consequentialism is presented as answering the experience-machine objection, but it raises the problem of satisfying evil preferences. - Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter, Winter 2023 Edition

💡 Memory Hook

Act consequentialism judges individual actions; rule consequentialism judges rules.

📖 3. Deontology and Duties

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Deontology: Alexander, Larry and Michael Moore, Deontological Ethics, Winter 2024 Edition - The view that something, such as an action, is good if it conforms to a moral duty or norm.

📝 Essential Points

• The stated limitations of Kantian deontology are that non-universal maxims are wrong, duties can conflict, and consequences may be ignored, including when lying could save someone. - Alexander, Larry and Michael Moore, Deontological Ethics, Winter 2024 Edition

💡 Memory Hook

Consequentialism weighs outcomes; deontology asks whether an action conforms to duty.

📖 4. Virtue Ethics and Character

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Virtue ethics: Hursthouse, Rosalind and Glen Pettigrove, Virtue Ethics, Fall 2023 Edition - The view that an action is good if it comes from a virtuous character.

📝 Essential Points

• A common criticism of virtue ethics is that it is circular and does not specify which actions are right. - Hursthouse, Rosalind and Glen Pettigrove, Fall 2023 Edition

📖 5. Meta-Ethics and Moral Uncertainty

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Meta-ethics: The field that examines what morality is and whether moral claims can be true or false.
• Quasi-realism: Blackburn, S., Essays in quasi-realism, 1993 - Quasi-realism is presented as holding that morality must be real rather than relativist, while ethical positions are subjective and develop over time and across cultures.

💡 Memory Hook

Quasi-realism holds morality both real and subjective, rather than simply relativist.

📖 6. Moral Intuitions and Empirical Psychology

📝 Essential Points

• Moral preferences concern judgments about what is just or unjust, right or wrong, and fair or unfair.

• The course uses the Julie-and-Mark scenario to illustrate that people may intuitively judge an action wrong even when they can identify no obvious reason why it is bad. - Haidt, J., The emotional dog and its rational tail: a social intuitionist approach to moral judgment, 2001

📖 7. Evolutionary Contractualism and Disagreement

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Contractualism: The view that the morally right choice is the arrangement giving everyone involved the fairest possible benefit, considering what each person could otherwise obtain.

📝 Essential Points

• The course proposes that humans have evolved intuitive moral preferences and share a moral algorithm whose outputs differ according to contextual inputs.

📌 The course gives differences in information as one explanation for moral disagreement and differences in social trust as another explanation when people have similar information. - Aarøe, L., & Petersen, M. B., Crowding out culture: Scandinavians and Americans agree on social welfare in the face of deservingness cues, 2014

💡 Memory Hook

Different information or social trust can produce different moral judgments from shared intuitions.

📖 8. Job Investigation Presentation

📝 Essential Points

• The job-investigation presentation groups should each focus on a specific job, field, or cause.

• Each group must interview at least two professionals and may supplement interviews with information from personal research.

• The investigation aims to: understand what a day on the job looks like, compare at least two roles or environments in a similar professional domain while balancing costs and benefits, answer main uncertainties about the professional domain

📖 9. Interview Preparation and Questions

📝 Essential Points

• Before Course 8 on 06/11/2025, students must upload confidential proof to Moodle that at least two interviews are scheduled, such as copies of emails or LinkedIn messages.

• Before an interview, students should prepare questions, ask permission to record, introduce themselves and the interview goals, respect the planned time, and manage remaining questions if the professional speaks at length.

• Suggested interview questions cover: job title, organization, education, and prior jobs, favorite aspects of the job and why, frustrating aspects of the job and why, the sequence of tasks in a workday and the knowledge needed to do the job, annual earnings and variation by responsibility or organization, specific questions about key uncertainties, final remarks

💡 Memory Hook

Prepare questions, conduct the interview, then document a workday and its costs and benefits.

📖 10. Group Project Logistics and Assessment

📝 Essential Points

• The presentation lasts 10 minutes followed by five minutes of questions, and slides must be sent as a PDF by 20/11/2025, the day before Course 10.

• The four grading categories are:

  • account of a day on the job
  • costs and benefits
  • answers to uncertainties
  • presentation quality