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Meta-ethics
In metaphilosophy and ethics, meta-ethics is the study of the nature, scope, and meaning of moral judgment. It is one of the three branches of ethics generally studied by philosophers, the others being normative ethics (questions of how one ought to be and act) and applied ethics (practical questions of right behavior in given, usually contentious, situations). While normative ethics addresses such questions as "What should I do?", evaluating specific practices and principles of action, meta-ethics addresses questions such as "What ''is'' goodness?" and "How can we tell what is good from what is bad?", seeking to understand the assumptions underlying normative theories. Another distinction often made is that normative ethics involves first-order or substantive questions; meta-ethics involves second-order or formal questions. Some theorists argue that a metaphysical account of morality is necessary for the proper evaluation of actual moral theories and for making practical moral d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ethics
Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns matters of value; these fields comprise the branch of philosophy called axiology. Ethics seeks to resolve questions of human morality by defining concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime. As a field of intellectual inquiry, moral philosophy is related to the fields of moral psychology, descriptive ethics, and value theory. Three major areas of study within ethics recognized today are: # Meta-ethics, concerning the theoretical meaning and reference of moral propositions, and how their truth values (if any) can be determined; # Normative ethics, concerning the practical means of determining a moral course of action; # Applied ethics, concerning what a person is obligated (or permitted) to do ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Non-cognitivism
Non-cognitivism is the meta-ethical view that ethical sentences do not express propositions (i.e., statements) and thus cannot be true or false (they are not truth-apt). A noncognitivist denies the cognitivist claim that "moral judgments are capable of being objectively true, because they describe some feature of the world". If moral statements cannot be true, and if one cannot know something that is not true, noncognitivism implies that moral knowledge is impossible. Non-cognitivism entails that non-cognitive attitudes underlie moral discourse and this discourse therefore consists of non-declarative speech acts, although accepting that its surface features may consistently and efficiently work as if moral discourse were cognitive. The point of interpreting moral claims as non-declarative speech acts is to explain what moral claims mean if they are neither true nor false (as philosophies such as logical positivism entail). Utterances like "Boo to killing!" and "Don't kill" ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Moral Relativism
Moral relativism or ethical relativism (often reformulated as relativist ethics or relativist morality) is used to describe several philosophical positions concerned with the differences in moral judgments across different peoples and cultures. An advocate of such ideas is often referred to as a relativist for short. ''Descriptive'' moral relativism holds only that people do, in fact, disagree fundamentally about what is moral, with no judgment being expressed on the desirability of this. ''Meta-ethical'' moral relativism holds that in such disagreements, nobody is objectively right or wrong. ''Normative'' moral relativism holds that because nobody is right or wrong, everyone ought to tolerate the behavior of others even when large disagreements about morality exist. Said concepts of the different intellectual movements involve considerable nuance and aren't absolute descriptions. Descriptive relativists do not necessarily adopt meta-ethical relativism. Moreover, not all meta-e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Error Theory
Moral nihilism (also known as ethical nihilism) is the meta-ethical view that nothing is morally right or wrong. Moral nihilism is distinct from moral relativism, which allows for actions to be wrong relative to a particular culture or individual. It is also distinct from expressivism, according to which when we make moral claims, "We are not making an effort to describe the way the world is ... we are venting our emotions, commanding others to act in certain ways, or revealing a plan of action". Moral nihilism today broadly tends to take the form of an Error Theory: The view developed originally by J.L. Mackie in his 1977 book ''Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong''. Error theory and nihilism broadly take the form of a ''negative claim'' about the existence of objective values or properties. Under traditional views there are moral properties or methods which hold objectively in some sense beyond our contingent interests which morally obligate us to act. For Mackie and the Error ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Moral Realism
Moral realism (also ethical realism) is the position that ethical sentences express propositions that refer to objective features of the world (that is, features independent of subjective opinion), some of which may be true to the extent that they report those features accurately. This makes moral realism a non-nihilist form of ethical cognitivism (which accepts that ethical sentences express propositions and can therefore be evaluated as true or false) with an ontological orientation, standing in opposition to all forms of moral anti-realism and moral skepticism, including ethical subjectivism (which denies that moral propositions refer to objective facts), error theory (which denies that any moral propositions are true); and non-cognitivism (which denies that moral sentences express propositions at all). Within moral realism, the two main subdivisions are ethical naturalism and ethical non-naturalism. Many philosophers claim that moral realism may be dated back at least to Plato ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ethical Naturalism
Ethical naturalism (also called moral naturalism or naturalistic cognitivistic definism) is the meta-ethical view which claims that: # Ethical sentences express propositions. # Some such propositions are true. # Those propositions are made true by objective features of the world. # These moral features of the world ''are'' reducible to some set of non-moral features. Overview The versions of ethical naturalism which have received the most sustained philosophical interest, for example, Cornell realism, differ from the position that "the way things are is always the way they ought to be", which few ethical naturalists hold. Ethical naturalism does, however, reject the fact-value distinction: it suggests that inquiry into the natural world can increase our moral knowledge in just the same way it increases our scientific knowledge. Indeed, proponents of ethical naturalism have argued that humanity needs to invest in the science of morality, a broad and loosely defined field that us ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cognitivism (ethics)
Cognitivism is the meta-ethical view that ethical sentences express propositions and can therefore be true or false (they are truth-apt), which noncognitivists deny. Cognitivism is so broad a thesis that it encompasses (among other views) moral realism (which claims that ethical sentences express propositions about mind-independent facts of the world), ethical subjectivism (which claims that ethical sentences express propositions about peoples' attitudes or opinions), and error theory (which claims that ethical sentences express propositions, but that they are all false, whatever their nature). Overview Propositions are what meaningful declarative sentences (but not interrogative or imperative sentences) are supposed to ''express''. Different sentences, in different languages, can express the same proposition: "snow is white" and "Schnee ist weiß" (in German) both express the proposition that snow is white. A common belief among philosophers who use this jargon is that prop ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Value Pluralism
In ethics, value pluralism (also known as ethical pluralism or moral pluralism) is the idea that there are several values which may be equally correct and fundamental, and yet in conflict with each other. In addition, value-pluralism postulates that in many cases, such incompatible values may be incommensurable, in the sense that there is no objective ordering of them in terms of importance. Value pluralism is opposed to ''value monism''. Value-pluralism is a theory in metaethics, rather than a theory of normative ethics, or a set of values in itself. Oxford philosopher and historian of ideas Isaiah Berlin is credited with being the first to popularize a substantial work describing the theory of objective value-pluralism, bringing it to the attention of academia (cf. the Isaiah Berlin Virtual Library). The related idea that fundamental values can and, in some cases, do conflict with each other is prominent in the thought of Max Weber, captured in his notion of "polytheism". Cont ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Moral Universalism
Moral universalism (also called moral objectivism) is the meta-ethical position that some system of ethics, or a universal ethic, applies universally, that is, for "all similarly situated individuals", regardless of culture, race, sex, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other distinguishing feature. Moral universalism is opposed to moral nihilism and moral relativism. However, not all forms of moral universalism are absolutist, nor are they necessarily value monist; many forms of universalism, such as utilitarianism, are non-absolutist, and some forms, such as that of Isaiah Berlin, may be value pluralist. In addition to the theories of moral realism, moral universalism includes other cognitivist moral theories, such as the subjectivist ideal observer theory and divine command theory, and also the non-cognitivist moral theory of universal prescriptivism. Overview According to philosophy professor R. W. Hepburn: "To move towards the objectiv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ethical Subjectivism
Ethical subjectivism or moral non-objectivism is the meta-ethical view which claims that: #Ethical sentences express propositions. #Some such propositions are true. #The truth or falsity of such propositions is ineliminably dependent on the (actual or hypothetical) attitudes of people. This makes ethical subjectivism a form of cognitivism (because ethical statements are the types of things that can be true or false). Ethical subjectivism stands in opposition to moral realism, which claims that moral propositions refer to objective facts, independent of human opinion; to error theory, which denies that any moral propositions are true in any sense; and to non-cognitivism, which denies that moral sentences express propositions at all. Relationship to moral anti-realism Ethical subjectivism is a form of moral anti-realism that denies the "metaphysical thesis" of moral realism, (the claim that moral truths are ordinary facts about the world). Instead ethical subjectivism claims ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anti-realism
In analytic philosophy, anti-realism is a position which encompasses many varieties such as metaphysical, mathematical, semantic, scientific, moral and epistemic. The term was first articulated by British philosopher Michael Dummett in an argument against a form of realism Dummett saw as 'colorless reductionism'. In anti-realism, the truth of a statement rests on its demonstrability through internal logic mechanisms, such as the context principle or intuitionistic logic, in direct opposition to the realist notion that the truth of a statement rests on its correspondence to an external, independent reality. In anti-realism, this external reality is hypothetical and is not assumed. Anti-realism in its most general sense can be understood as being in contrast to a ''generic realism'', which holds that distinctive objects of a subject-matter exist and have properties independent of one's beliefs and conceptual schemes. The ways in which anti-realism rejects these type of claims ca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of consciousness and the relationship between mind and matter, between substance and attribute, and between potentiality and actuality. The word "metaphysics" comes from two Greek words that, together, literally mean "after or behind or among he study ofthe natural". It has been suggested that the term might have been coined by a first century CE editor who assembled various small selections of Aristotle's works into the treatise we now know by the name ''Metaphysics'' (μετὰ τὰ φυσικά, ''meta ta physika'', 'after the ''Physics'' ', another of Aristotle's works). Metaphysics studies questions related to what it is for something to exist and what types of existence there are. Metaphysics seeks to answer, in an abstract and fu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
