Ethics

Metaethics: Deals with the foundation and nature of moral values, properties, and words.
Normative Ethics: Deals with systems of morality and questions how one ought to be and act
morally.
Applied Ethics: Deals with what a person is obligated (or permitted) to do in specific situations.
Metaethics: What is the meaning of moral terms and judgments? (Moral Semantics)
What is the nature of moral judgments? (Moral Ontology)
How might moral judgments be supported or defended? (Moral Epistemology)
Cognitivism: Ethical statements are propositions and can be either true or false.
- Moral Realism: There are objective good and bad features to the world which
propositions are about. May also believe morality and objective moral rules are handed to
us by a deity.
- Ethical Naturalism: Ethical claims can be expressed as natural properties without
the use of ethical terms. For instance, something “bad” can be reduced to some
natural property. Bad - Pain, Good - Well-Being. The problem with this POV is
mainly the issue of deriving ‘ought’ from ‘is’. David Hume states that people take
how things are or empirical facts about the world, and use them to derive moral
conclusions illogically. Hume believes people move too readily from observations
of facts to moral judgments.
- Ethical Non-Naturalism: Holds that there are objective and irreducible moral
properties (such as the property of ‘goodness’). For example, G.E. Moore detailed
how we just know the color blue by intuition, we know things like ‘good’ and
‘bad’ just by seeing them.
- Moral Subjectivism: A type of moral anti-realism where moral statements are
made true or false by only individuals or groups of individuals like specific
cultures.
- Individual Subjectivism: Only individuals themselves determine what is
moral.
- Cultural Subjectivism: Only groups or individuals determine what is
moral. These societies will treat those morals as the correct ones.
- Error Theory: Although ethical claims do express propositions, all such
propositions are false. There’s no such thing as moral truth so all moral
statements are all wrong, hence the error.
Non-Cognitivism: Ethical statements are not propositions and thus have no truth status.
- Emotivism: Ethical sentences merely express emotions.
- Prescriptivism: Moral statements function like universalized imperative sentences.
Simply put, moral statements are just giving a command.
- Moral Epistemology: Deals with how moral knowledge is possible and derived. To make
a moral claim about reality, one must have evidence to support the premises.
- Rational Knowledge: Morality can be known by reason including ‘a priori’ facts
like Immanuel Kant and Plato argued for.
- Empirical Knowledge: Moral knowledge may include evidence by observation
including scientific study.
Normative Ethics: Studies systems of morality and standards of right and wrong actions.
- Deontology: The theory that the morality of an action should be determined by whether
the action itself is right or wrong under a series of rules. Kantian ethics argues that the
only good thing is the will or motive of a person and how they act.
- Categorical Imperative: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at
the same time will that it should become a universal law”
- Consequentialism: The theory that the consequences of one’s conduct are the
ultimate basis for any judgment about the rightness and wrongness of that
conduct.
- Utilitarianism: An ethical theory that states that the most moral action is
one that maximizes happiness and well-being for the affected individuals.
- Virtue Ethics: The normative theory that emphasizes the moral
character of an individual. Cardinal virtues include wisdom,
courage, temperance, and justice. Aristotle argues there are two
extremes.
Applied Ethics: Consists of the analysis of specific, controversial moral issues. The issue needs
to be controversial in there is nowhere near a consensus on a correct moral answer. Secondly, it
needs to be a direct moral issue.

Ethics

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Metaethics: Deals with the foundation and nature of moral values, properties, and words.

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