Western Ethics, Social-Political Philosophy and Logic

This chapter is the second of Section XH4.3, "Classical and Modern Western Philosophy", of XH4 Philosophy. It answers the Ethics, Social-Political and Logic parts of the heading: meta-ethics (cognitivism and non-cognitivism, realism and anti-realism, intuitionism) and the concepts of good, right, justice and duty; Kant's categorical imperative and the utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill; care ethics, theories of punishment, and professional, environmental and bioethics (Leopold, Naess, Singer, the four bioethical principles); social and political philosophy from Plato and Aristotle through the social contract (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau), Marx, Rawls, Nozick, feminist theory, multiculturalism and the capability approach; and formal logic — truth and validity, the categorical syllogism and square of opposition, propositional logic and truth tables, quantification, deduction versus induction, and Mill's methods. The logic sections carry worked, numerical questions; the rest reward precise attribution.

1. Meta-ethics and the basic moral concepts

Meta-ethics asks what moral judgments are, not which actions are right. Cognitivism says moral statements express beliefs that are truth-apt (capable of being true or false); non-cognitivism says they express attitudes or feelings and so are not truth-apt — emotivism reads "stealing is wrong" as "boo to stealing". Moral realism holds that there are objective moral facts; anti-realism denies mind-independent moral facts (as in subjectivism, cultural relativism and error theory). Intuitionism holds that basic moral truths are known directly by intuition and that "good" names a simple, indefinable property.

  • Ethical egoism says one ought to act in one's own interest; altruism makes the interest of others the standard; universalism holds moral rules bind everyone alike.
  • Subjectivism makes a moral judgment true relative to the speaker's attitude; cultural relativism makes it relative to a society's code; supernaturalism (divine command theory) grounds morality in the will of God.
  • Normative vocabulary: the good (what is worth pursuing), the right (what we ought to do), justice (giving each their due), duty and obligation (what we are bound to do), the cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude in the Christian-tradition list; Plato's list is wisdom, courage, temperance, justice) and eudaimonism (the view that flourishing, eudaimonia, is the end of life).

2. Kant's deontology and utilitarianism

Kant grounds morality in reason, not consequences. The only thing good without qualification is a good will; an action has moral worth when it is done from duty, not merely in accordance with it. The supreme principle is the categorical imperative, which commands unconditionally, unlike a hypothetical imperative that commands only given some desired end. Its chief formulations are the formula of universal law ("act only on that maxim you can at the same time will to become a universal law") and the formula of humanity ("treat humanity, in yourself and others, never merely as a means but always also as an end"). A maxim is the subjective principle of an action. Kant adds the postulates of morality — freedom, immortality of the soul and the existence of God — as practical presuppositions of the moral life.

Utilitarianism judges actions by consequences: the right act maximises the balance of happiness over suffering — the principle of utility or greatest-happiness principle. Jeremy Bentham is a quantitative hedonist: pleasures differ only in amount, measured by a felicific calculus (intensity, duration, certainty, nearness, fecundity, purity, extent), so "the quantity of pleasure being equal, push-pin is as good as poetry". John Stuart Mill adds a qualitative distinction between higher (intellectual, moral) and lower (bodily) pleasures — "better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied" — and addresses the problem of sanction (why be moral) through the internal sanction of conscience.

  • Care ethics (associated with Gilligan and Noddings) centres morality on relationships, responsiveness and care in context, rather than on abstract impartial rules, and is often linked with feminist ethics.
  • Theories of punishment: the retributive theory justifies punishment by desert (the offender deserves it, backward-looking); the deterrent theory by preventing future crime; the reformative theory by reforming the offender; the preventive by incapacitating them.
⚠️ Bentham measures, Mill ranks
Both are utilitarians, so a question must be scoped. Bentham recognises only quantity of pleasure (his calculus); Mill introduces quality, ranking higher pleasures above lower ones. If the stem says "on Mill's view", the answer must appeal to quality; if "on Bentham's", only to quantity.

3. Applied ethics: professional, environmental and bioethics

Professional ethics governs conduct within a vocation: in business it concerns corporate governance (accountable, transparent control of a company) and corporate social responsibility (duties to stakeholders and society beyond profit). Environmental ethics asks whether nature has value only as a means to human ends (anthropocentrism) or also as an end in itself (ecocentrism).

  • Aldo Leopold's land ethic enlarges the moral community to include soils, waters, plants and animals — "the land": a thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community.
  • Arne Naess's deep ecology contrasts a shallow, human-centred environmentalism with a deep view that affirms the intrinsic worth of all living beings and seeks self-realisation within the wider web of life.
  • Peter Singer argues against speciesism: the interests of all sentient beings deserve equal consideration, so causing animals needless suffering is wrong on the same utilitarian ground as causing human suffering.

Bioethics applies ethics to medicine and the life sciences through four principles: autonomy (respect a competent person's self-determination, grounding informed consent), beneficence (act for the patient's good), non-maleficence (do no harm, primum non nocere) and justice (distribute benefits and burdens fairly). These frame the doctor-patient relationship and debates over euthanasia, where the patient's autonomy and the duty of non-maleficence can pull in opposite directions.

4. Social and political philosophy

Plato defines justice in the Republic as each part doing its own proper work: a just state has three classes — rulers (reason), auxiliaries (spirit) and producers (appetite) — mirroring the three parts of the soul, and justice is their harmony. Aristotle holds political naturalism: the human being is by nature a political animal (zoon politikon), the state (polis) exists by nature for the sake of the good life, and is in a sense prior to the individual.

Social contract theorists compared
ThinkerState of natureResulting authority
HobbesWar of all against all; life solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, shortOne absolute sovereign, to secure peace
LockeGoverned by natural law, with natural rights but inconveniencesLimited government by consent, with a right of revolution
RousseauNatural man free and good, corrupted by societySovereignty of the general will
  • Marx: history is driven by class conflict (historical and dialectical materialism); capitalism extracts surplus value from workers and produces alienation — of the worker from the product, the act of labour, their species-being and others.
  • Rawls derives justice as fairness from an original position behind a veil of ignorance, yielding equal basic liberties and the difference principle (inequalities must most benefit the least advantaged). Nozick's libertarianism replies with an entitlement theory (just acquisition and transfer) and a minimal state, rejecting patterned redistribution.
  • Feminist political theory: Simone de Beauvoir analyses woman as the "Other" ("one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman"); Judith Butler argues gender is performative. Charles Taylor defends multiculturalism as a politics of recognition. The capability approach (Sen and Nussbaum) measures justice by people's real freedoms (capabilities) to achieve valuable functionings.

5. Logic I: truth, validity and the categorical syllogism

Truth is a property of propositions (the content of declarative sentences); validity is a property of arguments. A deductive argument is valid when it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion false; a valid argument with all true premises is sound. Truth and validity are independent: a valid argument can have false premises, and an invalid one can have true premises and a true conclusion. The three laws of thought are identity (A is A), non-contradiction (not both A and not-A) and excluded middle (either A or not-A).

The four standard categorical propositions
TypeFormQuantity / Quality
AAll S is PUniversal affirmative
ENo S is PUniversal negative
ISome S is PParticular affirmative
OSome S is not PParticular negative

On the traditional square of opposition, A and E are contraries (not both true), I and O are subcontraries (not both false), A-O and E-I are contradictories (opposite truth values), and I follows from A, O from E, by subalternation. A categorical syllogism has two premises and a conclusion built from three terms — major, minor and middle — each appearing twice; the position of the middle term fixes the figure (four of them), and the triple of proposition types (A, E, I, O) fixes the mood. Rules of validity include: the middle term must be distributed at least once, no term may be distributed in the conclusion unless distributed in a premise, and no conclusion follows from two negative premises.

6. Logic II: propositional logic, induction and Mill's methods

Propositional logic builds compound statements from simple ones with truth-functional connectives: negation (not), conjunction (and), disjunction (or), the conditional (if-then) and the biconditional (if and only if). A connective is truth-functional because the truth value of the compound is fixed by the truth values of its parts. A truth table lists every combination of truth values of the n distinct variables, so it has 2 to the power n rows. An argument is valid exactly when no row makes all the premises true and the conclusion false. Quantification extends this with the universal quantifier ("for all") and the existential quantifier ("there exists"), governed by the rules of instantiation and generalisation.

Deductive and inductive logic differ in their aim. A deductive argument claims that the conclusion follows necessarily; it is valid or invalid, and adds nothing not already contained in the premises. An inductive argument claims only that the conclusion is probable; it is strong or weak, is ampliative (its conclusion goes beyond the premises), and runs from particular cases toward a generalisation. Scientific inference from samples to laws is inductive.

  • Mill's methods for discovering causes: the Method of Agreement (if two or more instances of the phenomenon share only one circumstance, that is the cause); the Method of Difference (if an instance where it occurs and one where it does not differ in only one circumstance, that is the cause); the Joint Method; the Method of Residues (subtract the known effects of known causes); and the Method of Concomitant Variations (a factor that varies whenever the phenomenon varies is causally connected to it).

Key takeaways

  • Meta-ethics: cognitivism makes moral claims truth-apt, non-cognitivism (emotivism) does not; realism affirms objective moral facts, anti-realism (subjectivism, cultural relativism, error theory) denies them; intuitionism knows basic moral truths directly. Distinguish good, right, justice, duty, the cardinal virtues and eudaimonism.
  • Kant: the only unqualified good is a good will; act from duty on a categorical imperative (universal law; humanity as an end, never merely a means). Utilitarianism: the principle of utility; Bentham measures quantity of pleasure, Mill ranks higher over lower pleasures. Care ethics centres relationships; punishment may be retributive, deterrent, reformative or preventive.
  • Applied ethics: Leopold's land ethic extends morality to the biotic community, Naess's deep ecology affirms intrinsic worth of all life, Singer attacks speciesism with equal consideration of interests; bioethics rests on autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence and justice.
  • Politics: Plato's justice is class harmony, Aristotle's political naturalism makes man a political animal; Hobbes seeks an absolute sovereign, Locke consent and limited government, Rousseau the general will; Marx on alienation and surplus value; Rawls (veil of ignorance, difference principle) versus Nozick (entitlement, minimal state); Taylor on recognition and the capability approach of Sen and Nussbaum.
  • Logic: truth belongs to propositions and validity to arguments, and the two are independent; the laws of thought are identity, non-contradiction and excluded middle. The categorical propositions are A, E, I, O, related on the square of opposition; a truth table for n variables has 2^n rows, and an argument is valid when no row makes the premises true and conclusion false.
  • Deduction is necessary and non-ampliative (valid or invalid); induction is probable and ampliative (strong or weak). Mill's methods for causes are Agreement, Difference, the Joint Method, Residues and Concomitant Variations.

Practice questions (17)

Attempt each one before opening the answer. Every explanation names the tempting wrong option as well as the right one, because that is where marks are lost.

  1. A meta-ethical theory holds that moral statements do not express truth-apt beliefs but instead voice attitudes or emotions, so that "cruelty is wrong" functions like an expression of disapproval. This theory is best classified as which of the following?

    1. Non-cognitivism, because it denies that moral statements are true or false
    2. Cognitivism, because it treats moral statements as expressing genuine beliefs
    3. Moral realism, because it affirms objective moral facts
    4. Intuitionism, because it grounds morality in self-evident intuitions
    Show answer

    Answer: A — Non-cognitivism, because it denies that moral statements are true or false

    Treating moral statements as expressions of attitude rather than truth-apt beliefs is the defining mark of non-cognitivism (here, emotivism). Cognitivism says the opposite; moral realism is a further claim that such statements track objective facts; and intuitionism is a cognitivist, realist view on which moral truths are known by intuition.

  2. On Kant's moral theory, what makes an action have genuine moral worth?

    1. That it produces the greatest balance of happiness over suffering for all affected
    2. That it is done from duty, out of respect for the moral law, not merely in accordance with it
    3. That it flows naturally from a compassionate temperament and kindly feeling
    4. That it accords with the customs and moral code of one's own community
    Show answer

    Answer: B — That it is done from duty, out of respect for the moral law, not merely in accordance with it

    For Kant, moral worth comes from acting from duty, out of respect for the moral law, not from the consequences or from inclination. The happiness-maximising answer is utilitarian; acting merely from kindly feeling is, for Kant, only in accordance with duty; and conforming to community custom is cultural relativism.

  3. John Stuart Mill's utilitarianism differs from Bentham's chiefly on which point?

    1. Mill rejects the principle of utility in favour of duty for its own sake
    2. Mill denies that happiness has anything to do with morality
    3. Mill holds that pleasures differ in quality, so higher pleasures outrank lower ones
    4. Mill measures pleasure only by Bentham's felicific calculus of intensity, duration and certainty
    Show answer

    Answer: C — Mill holds that pleasures differ in quality, so higher pleasures outrank lower ones

    Mill introduces a qualitative distinction between higher and lower pleasures, ranking them by quality as well as quantity, while Bentham recognised quantity alone. Both keep the principle of utility and both tie morality to happiness, so those options are false, and the pure felicific calculus is Bentham's position, not the point of difference for Mill.

  4. In Aldo Leopold's land ethic, what is the decisive change it makes to the scope of ethics?

    1. It restricts moral standing to rational human agents capable of autonomy
    2. It extends equal consideration only to sentient animals that can feel pain
    3. It values the natural world solely as an instrumental resource to be managed for maximising aggregate human welfare
    4. It enlarges the moral community to include soils, waters, plants and animals as the "land"
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    Answer: D — It enlarges the moral community to include soils, waters, plants and animals as the "land"

    Leopold's land ethic widens the boundaries of the moral community to include the biotic whole — soils, waters, plants and animals, collectively the land. Confining ethics to rational humans or to a human-welfare resource is the anthropocentrism he opposes, and limiting moral standing to sentient animals is closer to Singer's criterion than to Leopold's holism.

  5. Which description best fits Thomas Hobbes's account of the state of nature and the authority that should follow from it?

    1. A condition of peace under natural law, requiring only a limited government by consent
    2. A war of all against all, requiring one absolute sovereign to secure peace
    3. A state of innocence corrupted by society, redeemed by the general will
    4. A classless community needing no state once production is collectivised
    Show answer

    Answer: B — A war of all against all, requiring one absolute sovereign to secure peace

    Hobbes describes the state of nature as a war of all against all, with life solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short, from which people escape by instituting one absolute sovereign. Peace under natural law and limited government are Locke's; innocence corrupted and the general will are Rousseau's; the stateless classless community is Marx's.

  6. Rawls argues that principles of justice should be chosen in an "original position" behind a "veil of ignorance". What is the purpose of that veil?

    1. To deprive the choosers of knowledge of their own place, talents and conception of the good, so the principles are impartial
    2. To let each chooser maximise their own known advantages in the resulting society
    3. To ensure the state remains minimal and redistribution is avoided
    4. To measure the justice of a society by each individual person's real capabilities and effective freedoms to achieve valuable functionings
    Show answer

    Answer: A — To deprive the choosers of knowledge of their own place, talents and conception of the good, so the principles are impartial

    The veil of ignorance hides each party's social position, natural talents and conception of the good, so that the principles chosen cannot be rigged to favour anyone and are therefore fair. Maximising known advantages is the very bias the veil blocks; the minimal state and anti-redistribution are Nozick's; the capability metric is Sen and Nussbaum's.

  7. Which pairing correctly matches a political philosopher with a doctrine that is distinctively theirs?

    1. Nozick — the difference principle requiring that social and economic inequalities be arranged to benefit the very least advantaged members
    2. Marx — the entitlement theory of just acquisition and transfer under a minimal state
    3. Marx — alienation of the worker from the product, the labour process, species-being and others
    4. Rawls — the view that the human being is by nature a political animal
    Show answer

    Answer: C — Marx — alienation of the worker from the product, the labour process, species-being and others

    The fourfold alienation of the worker is Marx's. The difference principle is Rawls's, not Nozick's; the entitlement theory and minimal state are Nozick's, not Marx's; and the claim that man is by nature a political animal is Aristotle's, not Rawls's.

  8. Which statement about the relation between truth and validity is correct?

    1. Every argument that counts as valid must, as a matter of logic, also have premises that are actually true
    2. A sound argument may have a false conclusion
    3. Any argument with a true conclusion is thereby valid
    4. An argument can be valid even though all its premises are false
    Show answer

    Answer: D — An argument can be valid even though all its premises are false

    Validity concerns only the form, so an argument is valid when true premises could not yield a false conclusion, which is compatible with the premises actually being false. Validity does not require true premises; a true conclusion does not make an argument valid; and a sound argument, being valid with all true premises, must have a true conclusion.

  9. On the traditional square of opposition, the A proposition ("All S is P") and the E proposition ("No S is P") stand in which relation?

    1. Contraries, so they cannot both be true but can both be false
    2. Contradictories, so exactly one of them is true
    3. Subcontraries, so they cannot both be false but can both be true
    4. Subalterns, so the truth of one guarantees the truth of the other
    Show answer

    Answer: A — Contraries, so they cannot both be true but can both be false

    A and E are contraries: both cannot be true together (not everything can be both wholly P and wholly non-P), but both can be false, as when some S is P and some S is not. Contradictories are the A-O and E-I diagonals; subcontraries are I and O; subalternation runs from a universal down to its particular.

  10. A scientist observes that whenever the independent factor is increased or decreased, the phenomenon increases or decreases correspondingly, and infers that the factor is causally connected to the phenomenon. Which of Mill's methods is being used?

    1. The Method of Agreement
    2. The Method of Difference
    3. The Method of Residues
    4. The Method of Concomitant Variations
    Show answer

    Answer: D — The Method of Concomitant Variations

    Inferring causation from the fact that one factor varies in step with the phenomenon is the Method of Concomitant Variations. The Method of Agreement looks for a single shared circumstance across instances, the Method of Difference compares a case where the effect occurs with one where it does not, and the Method of Residues subtracts the known effects of known causes.

  11. Which statement correctly distinguishes a deductive argument from an inductive one?

    1. A deductive argument is ampliative and merely probable, while an inductive argument is necessary and adds nothing new
    2. A deductive argument claims necessity for its conclusion, while an inductive one claims only probability and goes beyond its premises
    3. Deductive arguments always concern events in the future, while inductive arguments always concern only events in the past
    4. Only inductive arguments can be valid or invalid, while deductive arguments are instead described as strong or weak
    Show answer

    Answer: B — A deductive argument claims necessity for its conclusion, while an inductive one claims only probability and goes beyond its premises

    A deductive argument aims at necessity (valid or invalid) and is non-ampliative, whereas an inductive argument aims only at probability (strong or weak) and is ampliative. The option calling deduction ampliative and merely probable swaps the two labels, the temporal claim is simply false, and it is deductive arguments that are valid or invalid while inductive ones are strong or weak, so the option restricting validity to inductive arguments reverses the vocabulary.

  12. Which of the following are among the four principles of bioethics?

    1. Autonomy — respect for a competent person's self-determination
    2. Non-maleficence — the duty not to inflict harm
    3. Justice — the fair distribution of benefits and burdens
    4. Utility — maximising the net balance of pleasure over pain
    Show answer

    Answer: A — Autonomy — respect for a competent person's self-determination; B — Non-maleficence — the duty not to inflict harm; C — Justice — the fair distribution of benefits and burdens

    The four principles of bioethics are autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence and justice. The principle of utility belongs to utilitarian ethics, not to the standard four-principle bioethical framework, so it is the odd one out here (beneficence, the fourth principle, is simply not listed among the options).

  13. Which of the following are correctly attributed in social and political philosophy?

    1. Rousseau located sovereignty in the general will
    2. Charles Taylor defended multiculturalism as a politics of recognition
    3. Simone de Beauvoir analysed woman as the "Other"
    4. Nozick derived justice from a veil of ignorance and the difference principle
    Show answer

    Answer: A — Rousseau located sovereignty in the general will; B — Charles Taylor defended multiculturalism as a politics of recognition; C — Simone de Beauvoir analysed woman as the "Other"

    The general will (Rousseau), the politics of recognition (Taylor) and woman as the Other (Beauvoir) are correct attributions. The veil of ignorance and the difference principle are Rawls's, and Nozick in fact argues against such patterned distribution from his entitlement theory, so that attribution is false.

  14. Which of the following statements about categorical propositions and syllogisms are correct?

    1. The E proposition "No S is P" is a universal negative
    2. In a valid categorical syllogism the middle term must be distributed at least once
    3. No valid conclusion can be drawn from two negative premises
    4. The I proposition "Some S is P" is a universal affirmative
    Show answer

    Answer: A — The E proposition "No S is P" is a universal negative; B — In a valid categorical syllogism the middle term must be distributed at least once; C — No valid conclusion can be drawn from two negative premises

    E is universal negative, a valid syllogism requires the middle term distributed at least once, and two negative premises yield no valid conclusion. The I proposition "Some S is P" is a particular affirmative, not a universal affirmative (that is A), so the statement calling "Some S is P" a universal affirmative is false.

  15. In a standard-form categorical syllogism the major premise, the minor premise and the conclusion are each exactly one of the four proposition types A, E, I, O. Counting only the mood (the ordered triple of proposition types) and ignoring the figure, how many distinct moods are possible? Give the number only.

    Numerical answer — type the value.

    Show answer

    Answer: 64

    Each of the three propositions can independently be A, E, I or O, so the number of ordered triples is 4 x 4 x 4 = 64. (Multiplying by the four figures would give the 256 possible mood-and-figure forms, but the question asks for moods only.) Validity rules cut this 64 down sharply, but the count of possible moods is simply 4 cubed.

  16. A well-formed formula of propositional logic is built from exactly 5 distinct propositional variables. How many rows does its complete truth table have? Give the number only.

    Numerical answer — type the value.

    Show answer

    Answer: 32

    Each variable takes one of two truth values, so a formula with n distinct variables has 2 to the power n rows. For n = 5 this is 2^5 = 32. The common slip is to answer 10 (that is 2 times 5) or 25 (that is 5 squared) instead of 2 raised to the fifth power.

  17. Consider the propositional formula (P AND Q) OR ((NOT P) AND R), built from the three variables P, Q, R. In how many of the 8 rows of its truth table is the whole formula true? Give the number only.

    Numerical answer — type the value.

    Show answer

    Answer: 4

    The disjunction is true when either disjunct is true. (P AND Q) is true only when P and Q are both true, which covers the two rows P=T, Q=T, R=T and P=T, Q=T, R=F. ((NOT P) AND R) is true only when P is false and R is true, covering P=F, Q=T, R=T and P=F, Q=F, R=T. The two sets are disjoint because P cannot be both true and false, so the total is 2 + 2 = 4 rows.