Applied ethics

Applying the theories: the method#

FoundationAQA 7172 3.2 Moral philosophy — Applied ethicsDfE GCE Philosophy subject content

Three lenses on an issue

Fig. 1Each theory brings its own question to bear on an applied issue, yielding verdicts that can be compared.

Applied ethics is not a fourth theory but the application of the three normative theories — utilitarianism, Kantian deontology and Aristotelian virtue ethics — and, where relevant, of meta-ethical positions, to specific moral issues. The AQA specification prescribes exactly four issues: stealing, simulated killing (killing within a fiction, such as in a computer game, play or film), eating animals, and telling lies. The examinable skill is to take each theory's machinery — the principle of utility, the categorical imperative, the doctrine of the mean and the virtues — and derive from it a verdict on the issue, then to evaluate the verdicts against each other and against our considered intuitions.

For each issue the same method applies. A utilitarian analysis identifies all those affected, estimates the pleasures and pains (or satisfied and frustrated preferences) that the action and its alternatives would produce, and judges right the option that maximises overall welfare; act and rule versions may diverge, and the analysis is sensitive to empirical facts about consequences. A Kantian analysis formulates the maxim of the action, tests it by the Formula of Universal Law (is it self-undermining when universalised?) and by the Formula of Humanity (does it treat anyone merely as a means?), and derives a duty independent of consequences. A virtue-ethical analysis asks what a fully virtuous person, exercising practical wisdom, would characteristically feel and do in the situation — which virtues (honesty, compassion, justice, temperance) and vices are engaged, and what response hits the mean.

Meta-ethics bears on applied ethics in two ways worth flagging. First, whether a moral verdict on (say) eating animals is TRUE or merely expresses an attitude depends on the meta-ethical debate between cognitivism and non-cognitivism; a non-cognitivist reads 'eating animals is wrong' as an expression of disapproval rather than a factual claim, which changes what an 'argument' about the issue can achieve. Second, disagreement between the theories can be used as evidence in the meta-ethical debate — the persistence of reasoned moral disagreement is cited by anti-realists (Mackie's argument from relativity) and explained differently by realists. So applied ethics is a two-way street: the theories illuminate the issues, and the issues test the theories.

The evaluative pay-off is that hard cases function as test data for the theories. When a theory delivers a verdict that clashes sharply with confident moral intuition — utilitarianism seeming to permit theft or lying whenever it maximises welfare, Kant seeming to forbid a life-saving lie — the clash is evidence about the theory, to be weighed either against the intuition (perhaps the intuition is mistaken) or against the theory (perhaps the theory is). A strong answer therefore does not merely report three verdicts; it uses the divergence to assess which theory best fits the full pattern of our judgements about the issue, and reaches a reasoned overall conclusion. The four issues are chosen precisely because they pull the theories apart in instructive ways.

Worked example

Setting up an applied analysis

Show the three-step method by outlining how each theory would begin analysing whether to break a minor promise to help a stranger in greater need.

Utilitarian step
Compare the welfare produced by keeping the promise versus helping the stranger; act utilitarianism likely favours the greater need.
Kantian step
Test the maxim 'break a promise when someone else needs help more'; assess universalisability and whether promisee or stranger is treated merely as a means.
Virtue step
Ask what a person with the virtues of fidelity and compassion, exercising phronesis, would do — how to honour both without vice.
Compare
Note where the verdicts diverge (utilitarianism flexible, Kant strict on promises) and prepare to evaluate against intuition.

Result: The method yields three structured verdicts to be weighed; the divergence between utilitarian flexibility and Kantian fidelity is exactly the kind of test data the four prescribed issues are designed to generate.

Typical mistakes

Treating applied ethics as a separate theory to be learned; it is the application of the three normative theories to the four prescribed issues.
Reporting verdicts without evaluation; the AO2 skill is to weigh the verdicts and judge which theory best fits the case.

Active revision

Explain how utilitarianism, Kantian ethics and virtue ethics would each approach a moral issue of your choice from the specification. (12-mark AO1 response)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for philosophy (Department for Education)

Stealing#

StandardAQA 7172 3.2 Moral philosophy — Applied ethicsDfE GCE Philosophy subject content

Three verdicts on stealing

Fig. 2The theories divide over whether the prohibition on stealing is absolute or admits exceptions.

Stealing — taking what belongs to another without consent — divides the theories sharply, which is why it is a good test case. Act utilitarianism judges each theft by its consequences: usually theft reduces overall welfare (it causes loss and fear, undermines the security of property, and deters productive activity), so it is usually wrong; but in cases where it clearly maximises welfare — stealing a loaf to feed a starving family, or from a heartless miser to give to the destitute — act utilitarianism will permit or even require it. This flexibility is a strength (it accommodates the intuition that stealing to prevent starvation can be justified) and a weakness (it seems to make the wrongness of theft contingent and to offer property no principled protection).

Rule utilitarianism assesses stealing by whether a rule permitting it would maximise welfare if generally adopted. A rule 'do not steal' plausibly maximises utility, because a society in which property is secure is far more prosperous and less fearful than one in which theft is permitted whenever it seems locally beneficial; the general insecurity that a permissive rule would create outweighs the gains of particular thefts. So rule utilitarianism can defend a general prohibition on stealing, capturing the intuition that theft is wrong as a rule, while still allowing carefully specified exceptions (e.g. taking food in a genuine emergency) if a rule permitting THEM would itself maximise utility.

Kantian ethics condemns stealing more absolutely. The maxim 'I will take others' property whenever I want it' fails the Formula of Universal Law: if universalised, the very institution of property (which depends on the recognition of ownership) would collapse, so there could be nothing to steal — a contradiction in conception, marking a perfect duty not to steal. Stealing also violates the Formula of Humanity: the thief treats the owner merely as a means (a source of goods) without respecting them as a rational agent whose consent is required, disposing of what is theirs against their will. So for Kant the duty not to steal is exceptionless, which secures property rights firmly but faces the objection that it cannot accommodate the starving-family case — telling the destitute they have an absolute duty not to steal food strikes many as harsh.

Virtue ethics reframes the question as one of character. Stealing typically expresses vices — injustice (taking more than one's due), greed or intemperance (excessive desire for goods), dishonesty — and a person with the virtue of justice would not take what is not theirs. But virtue ethics can be more contextually sensitive than Kant: what the virtuous person does depends on the situation read by practical wisdom, so taking food to save a child from starvation might be what a just and compassionate person, weighing the competing claims, would do — not from greed but from a proper response to grave need. The evaluation, then, tends to line up act utilitarianism and (sometimes) virtue ethics as flexible, against Kant and rule utilitarianism as protective of property; a judgement should say whether the intuition that theft is normally wrong but sometimes excusable is better captured by rule utilitarianism, by a nuanced virtue ethics, or by neither, and what this reveals about absolutism versus consequentialism.

Worked example

The starving family, three ways

A parent steals bread to feed a starving child. Assess the act on each theory.

Act utilitarianism
If the child's survival outweighs the baker's loss, the theft maximises welfare and is right — flexible but property-insecure.
Rule utilitarianism
A general rule against theft maximises utility, but a carefully limited emergency-exception rule might too; the answer depends on the rule chosen.
Kant
The maxim fails universalisation and treats the baker merely as a means, so the theft violates a perfect duty — absolute, but harsh in this case.
Virtue ethics
A just and compassionate person, reading grave need with phronesis, might take the bread as the least bad response — not from greed but from proper concern.

Result: The case pits Kant's absolutism against the flexibility of act utilitarianism and a nuanced virtue ethics; a defensible judgement is that the intuition 'wrong as a rule, excusable in extremity' favours rule utilitarianism or virtue ethics over Kant's exceptionless prohibition.

Typical mistakes

Saying Kant forbids stealing 'because of the bad consequences'; Kant forbids it because the maxim fails universalisation and treats the owner merely as a means — consequences are not his ground.
Assuming virtue ethics simply forbids or permits stealing; the answer depends on the virtues engaged and what phronesis judges the situation to require.

Active revision

'Stealing is always wrong.' Is this claim true? Defend your answer, using at least two normative theories. (25-mark essay)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for philosophy (Department for Education)

Simulated killing#

StandardAQA 7172 3.2 Moral philosophy — Applied ethicsDfE GCE Philosophy subject content

Where is the wrong in simulated killing?

Fig. 3With no real victim, utilitarianism looks to effects, Kant to self-corruption, virtue ethics to character.

Simulated killing is killing WITHIN a fiction — shooting characters in a violent video game, enacting a murder in a play or film, describing a killing in a novel. The philosophical interest is that no one is actually harmed, so any wrongness cannot lie in the killing itself; the question is whether engaging in or enjoying simulated killing is nonetheless morally problematic, and if so, why. The issue tests each theory's ability to explain (or explain away) an intuition many share — that some simulated killing is troubling — without the usual anchor of real harm.

For act utilitarianism the wrongness of simulated killing depends entirely on its actual consequences, since no victim is harmed in the fiction. The key empirical question is whether simulated violence causes real harm — for instance, whether violent games desensitise players or increase real aggression — a matter on which the evidence is contested. If simulated killing has no bad effects, or has good effects (catharsis, enjoyment, skill, social connection), utilitarianism finds it permissible or even positively good; if it causes real harm, it is wrong to that extent. So utilitarianism makes the morality of simulated killing hostage to disputed social-science data, and cannot ground any intrinsic objection to it.

Kantian ethics finds simulated killing harder to condemn directly, because the categorical imperative concerns treating actual rational agents as ends, and fictional characters are not rational agents with dignity to violate. There is no real person being used merely as a means. Kant might, however, object indirectly: he held (regarding cruelty to animals) that treating even non-persons brutally tends to corrupt our humanity and make us more disposed to treat real persons badly, so cultivating pleasure in simulated killing might be criticised as damaging to the moral self-respect and rational agency we owe ourselves. But this is an indirect, consequence-flavoured argument that sits awkwardly with Kant's official focus on maxims and persons, and some argue Kant has little to say about victimless fictional acts.

Virtue ethics arguably handles the issue most naturally, because it asks about character rather than about acts with victims. The question becomes: what does taking pleasure in simulated killing express about, and do to, one's character? A virtue ethicist can distinguish cases: enjoying a well-crafted tragedy that depicts killing, or a strategy game, may engage the virtues (understanding, skill, appreciation) and be perfectly compatible with a good character; but relishing gratuitous, degrading simulated cruelty for its own sake may express or cultivate vices — callousness, a coarsening of compassion, a taste for domination — even though no one is harmed, because the virtues concern our emotional responses and dispositions, not just our outward acts. Aristotle's point that we become what we repeatedly do supports the worry that habituating oneself to enjoy cruelty, even simulated, may erode the sensibilities of a compassionate person. A strong evaluation notes that simulated killing exposes a real difference between the theories: utilitarianism and Kant struggle to locate any wrong absent a victim, whereas virtue ethics, by focusing on character and emotion, can explain the intuition that WHAT WE ENJOY matters morally — which some count a decisive advantage for virtue ethics here, and others a sign that it moralises harmless pleasures.

Worked example

Two kinds of simulated killing

Contrast a tragic play depicting a murder with a game rewarding gratuitous cruelty, using virtue ethics.

The tragedy
Depicting killing serves understanding and catharsis; engaging with it can exercise the virtues (insight, compassion for the victim), so it need not corrupt character.
The gratuitous game
Relishing degrading cruelty for its own sake may express and habituate callousness — a coarsening of the compassionate sensibility, even absent a victim.
The virtue verdict
Virtue ethics distinguishes the cases by what the enjoyment expresses and cultivates, not by whether anyone is harmed.
Contrast the rivals
Utilitarianism must find real-world harm to condemn either; Kant has no fictional victim, so must appeal indirectly to self-corruption.

Result: Virtue ethics gives the most discriminating verdict — permitting the tragedy, questioning the gratuitous game — which is a genuine advantage on this issue, though critics may charge it with moralising harmless pleasures.

Typical mistakes

Treating simulated killing as if it were real killing; the whole point is that no one is harmed, so the analysis must turn on consequences, indirect effects, or character.
Claiming Kant straightforwardly condemns it; his direct machinery (persons as ends) has no fictional victim to protect, so any Kantian objection is indirect (self-corruption).

Active revision

'There is nothing morally wrong with simulated killing.' Assess this claim. (25-mark essay)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for philosophy (Department for Education)

Eating animals#

AdvancedAQA 7172 3.2 Moral philosophy — Applied ethicsDfE GCE Philosophy subject content

The moral status of animals

Fig. 4Utilitarianism grounds status in sentience; Kant restricts direct duties to rational agents; virtue ethics looks to character.

The ethics of eating animals turns on the moral status of non-human animals — whether, and how much, their interests count. Utilitarianism, through Bentham and Peter Singer, gives animals strong standing. Bentham's crucial move was to make the capacity to SUFFER, not the capacity to reason or speak, the ground of moral consideration: 'the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?'. Since most animals we eat are sentient and can suffer, their pains count in the utilitarian calculus. Singer builds on this with the principle of equal consideration of interests: like interests count equally whoever has them, so discounting an animal's suffering merely because it is not human is 'speciesism', an arbitrary prejudice analogous to racism. Given the immense suffering of intensive factory farming and the availability of alternatives, Singer argues that most meat-eating is unjustified — the pleasure of eating meat does not outweigh the suffering inflicted.

Utilitarianism does not, however, entail strict vegetarianism as a matter of principle: what it condemns is suffering and the frustration of interests, not killing and eating as such. So a utilitarian may permit eating animals reared and killed painlessly (if that were possible), or animals with little capacity for suffering, and must weigh the human interests served (nutrition, livelihood, pleasure) against animal suffering. Singer, a preference utilitarian in later work, distinguishes 'persons' (self-conscious beings with a preference to go on living, whose killing frustrates that preference) from merely sentient beings; this complicates the verdict, making the killing of self-conscious animals (great apes, perhaps pigs) worse than the killing of less cognitively sophisticated ones.

Kantian ethics traditionally gives animals a much weaker status, and this is often held against it. For Kant, only rational agents are ends in themselves with dignity; animals, lacking rational autonomy, are not persons and so are not owed direct duties — we cannot, strictly, wrong them. Kant does, however, argue for INDIRECT duties: we should not be cruel to animals, because cruelty to animals tends to harden us and make us cruel to human beings ('he who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men'). This yields the awkward result that the wrongness of torturing an animal lies in its effect on US, not in the animal's suffering — a verdict most find counterintuitive, since the animal's pain seems to matter in its own right. Some contemporary Kantians (Christine Korsgaard) have tried to extend direct moral standing to animals as beings for whom things can be good or bad, but this revises Kant's own view.

Virtue ethics approaches the issue through the virtues and vices a person's treatment of animals expresses. Cruelty, indifference to suffering, and gluttony are vices; compassion, temperance and a proper sensitivity to the vulnerability of sentient creatures are virtues. A virtuous person would not be callous towards animal suffering, would not eat meat produced by cruelty if compassion forbade it, and would exercise temperance rather than gluttony in diet. Virtue ethics is less likely to yield a single rule ('never eat meat') than a sensitivity to how one's food choices reflect and shape character, and it can accommodate cultural and situational variation (a subsistence hunter and a modern consumer face different questions). Evaluation typically finds utilitarianism the most demanding and principled critic of factory farming (its focus on suffering directly engages the central fact), Kant the weakest (its indirect-duty view misplaces the wrong), and virtue ethics the most nuanced but least determinate. A judgement should weigh whether the directness of the utilitarian focus on suffering, or the character-focus of virtue ethics, better captures why cruelty to animals is wrong — and whether Kant's difficulty here is a decisive mark against his exclusion of non-rational beings from direct moral concern.

Worked example

Singer's argument against factory farming

Reconstruct Singer's utilitarian argument that eating factory-farmed meat is wrong, and give one objection.

P1
Like interests deserve equal consideration; the interest in not suffering is shared by all sentient beings (anti-speciesism).
P2
Factory farming inflicts immense suffering on sentient animals.
P3
The human interests it serves (cheap meat, pleasure) do not outweigh that suffering, given available alternatives.
C
So eating factory-farmed meat is wrong; equal consideration requires giving up the practice.
Objection
A critic may deny equal consideration (humans have morally relevant capacities animals lack) or argue humane farming avoids the suffering premise — but Singer replies that neither justifies the actual system.

Result: Singer's argument is valid and its premises well-supported for the actual factory-farming system; the debate turns on equal consideration (P1), which is the utilitarian's principled challenge to speciesism and the point a Kantian or virtue ethicist must engage.

Typical mistakes

Saying utilitarianism forbids all meat-eating on principle; it condemns suffering and frustrated interests, so painless rearing or low-sentience animals complicate the verdict.
Presenting Kant as simply indifferent to animals; he defends indirect duties against cruelty — the point is that he locates the wrong in the effect on humans, which is the real objection.

Active revision

'It is morally wrong to eat animals.' Discuss, drawing on at least two normative theories. (25-mark essay)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for philosophy (Department for Education)

Telling lies#

AdvancedAQA 7172 3.2 Moral philosophy — Applied ethicsDfE GCE Philosophy subject content

Lying to the inquiring murderer

Fig. 5Kant forbids the lie (perfect duty); utilitarianism and virtue ethics permit or require it to save the innocent.

Lying — asserting what one believes false with intent to deceive — is the issue on which Kant is most famously and controversially strict, so it is an ideal test of deontology against its rivals. For Kant, the maxim 'I will lie whenever it suits my purposes' fails the Formula of Universal Law by a contradiction in conception: if everyone lied whenever convenient, assertion would lose its point (no one would believe anyone), so lying itself would become impossible — hence there is a perfect, exceptionless duty not to lie. Lying also violates the Formula of Humanity: the liar treats the deceived person merely as a means, manipulating their rational agency by feeding them false information to which they could not consent. Kant drew the notorious conclusion, in 'On a Supposed Right to Lie from Philanthropy', that one must not even lie to a murderer who asks where one's friend is hiding.

The inquiring-murderer case is the standard objection to Kant's absolutism. Intuitively, lying to save an innocent life is not merely permissible but required; a morality that forbids it seems to fetishise a rule at the expense of the very persons it claims to respect. Kant's own reply — that one is not responsible for the consequences of telling the truth, and that lying is always a wrong that could rebound unpredictably — strikes most readers as a reductio of strict deontology. Defenders try to rescue Kant in two ways: by reformulating the maxim more specifically ('lie to a would-be murderer to save an innocent life', which arguably CAN be universalised without contradiction), or by arguing that the murderer, by his wrongful purpose, forfeits the truthfulness normally owed and that one may refuse to answer or mislead without strictly lying. Whether these succeed, or whether they smuggle consequences back into a theory that officially excludes them, is a central evaluative question.

Utilitarianism treats lying as neither right nor wrong in itself: a lie is right if and only if it produces more overall welfare than the truth would. Usually honesty maximises utility (lies erode trust, which is enormously valuable), so there is a strong general presumption against lying; but where a lie clearly maximises welfare — the life-saving lie to the murderer, a white lie that spares needless pain — utilitarianism permits or requires it. This gives the intuitively right verdict on the murderer case (lie to save the life), which is a real advantage over Kant; but it faces the mirror-image worry that it makes honesty merely instrumental and offers no principled protection of trust, seeming to permit any lie whose benefits are calculated to outweigh its costs — which many feel misdescribes the special wrong of deception.

Virtue ethics locates the issue in the virtue of honesty (truthfulness) and its relation to other virtues. The honest person is disposed to tell the truth and is pained by deception, but honesty is not the only virtue, and practical wisdom must weigh it against compassion, justice and loyalty when they conflict. A virtue ethicist can therefore say that the virtuous person would lie to the murderer — not because a calculation favours it, but because compassion and justice, rightly weighed by phronesis, require protecting the innocent, and the murderer has no claim to the truth. Equally, the virtuous person tells hard truths when honesty and courage require, and avoids the self-serving 'white lies' that express cowardice or manipulation. Evaluation tends to find that utilitarianism and virtue ethics give the intuitively correct verdict on the murderer case where Kant does not, but that utilitarianism risks making honesty merely instrumental, whereas virtue ethics can honour the deep value of truthfulness while still allowing that other virtues can override it in extremity. A judgement should assess whether the wrong of lying is best captured by an exceptionless rule (Kant), by its typical consequences (utilitarianism), or by the character of the truthful person exercising judgement (virtue ethics) — and use the murderer case to decide.

Worked example

Model 25-mark plan: is lying always wrong?

Plan an essay defending a judgement on whether lying is always wrong, using the inquiring-murderer case.

Thesis
Lying is a serious wrong with a strong presumption against it, but not exceptionless; the life-saving lie is right, so Kant's absolutism fails.
AO1
Kant's perfect duty (both formulae) and inquiring murderer; the utilitarian and virtue verdicts.
Against Kant
The murderer case shows absolutism sacrifices persons to a rule; Kant's reply is a reductio, and the reformulated-maxim defence readmits consequences.
Against pure utilitarianism
It gets the murderer case right but makes honesty merely instrumental, offering no principled account of the special wrong of deception.
Judgement
Favour virtue ethics (or a rule-utilitarian/Rossian view): truthfulness is a deep value that other virtues can override in extremity — capturing both the presumption and the exception.

Result: A defensible judgement: lying is not always wrong (the murderer case defeats Kant), but the wrong of deception is best captured not by calculation alone but by the virtue of truthfulness weighed against compassion by practical wisdom.

Typical mistakes

Presenting Kant's absolutism without his own reply and the defenders' reformulations; a fair evaluation engages the attempts to rescue him before judging.
Treating the utilitarian verdict as obviously correct; note the objection that it makes honesty merely instrumental and offers no principled protection of trust.

Active revision

'One should never tell a lie.' Is this claim true? Defend your answer. (25-mark essay)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for philosophy (Department for Education)

Key points

Setting up an applied analysis

Key points

The starving family, three ways

Key points

Two kinds of simulated killing

Key points

Singer's argument against factory farming

Key points

Model 25-mark plan: is lying always wrong?

Sources

Applied ethics

Key points

Setting up an applied analysis

Key points

The starving family, three ways

Key points

Two kinds of simulated killing

Key points

Singer's argument against factory farming

Key points

Model 25-mark plan: is lying always wrong?

Sources