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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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Meta-ethics
In metaphilosophy and ethics, metaethics is the study of the nature, scope, ground, and meaning of moral judgment, ethical belief, or values. 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, metaethics addresses questions about the nature of goodness, how one can discriminate good from evil, and what the proper account of moral knowledge is. Similar to accounts of knowledge generally, the threat of skepticism about the possibility of moral knowledge and cognitively meaningful moral propositions often motivates positive accounts in metaethics. Another distinction is often made between the nature of questions related to each: first-order (substantive ... [...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 ... [...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 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). Moral realism's two main subdivisions are ethical naturalism and ethical non-naturalism. Most philosophers claim that moral realism dates at least to Plato as a philosophical doctrine ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quasi-realism
Quasi-realism is the meta-ethical view which claims that: # Ethical sentences do not express propositions. # Instead, ethical sentences project emotional attitudes as though they were real properties. This makes quasi-realism a form of non-cognitivism or expressivism. Quasi-realism stands in opposition to other forms of non-cognitivism (such as emotivism and universal prescriptivism), as well as to all forms of cognitivism (including both moral realism and ethical subjectivism). Overview Simon Blackburn derived quasi-realism from a Humean account of the origin of our moral opinions, adapting Hume's genealogical account in the light of evolutionary game theory. To support his case, Blackburn has issued a challenge, ''Blackburn's Challenge'', to anyone who can explain how two situations can demand different ethical responses without referring to a difference in the situations themselves. Because this challenge is effectively unmeetable, Blackburn argues that there must be a rea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Emotivism
Emotivism is a meta-ethics, meta-ethical view that claims that ethical Sentence (linguistics), sentences do not express propositions but emotional attitudes. Hence, it is colloquially known as the hurrah/boo theory. Influenced by the growth of analytic philosophy and logical positivism in the 20th century, the theory was stated vividly by A. J. Ayer in his 1936 book ''Language, Truth and Logic'', but its development owes more to C. L. Stevenson. Emotivism can be considered a form of non-cognitivism or expressivism. It stands in opposition to other forms of non-cognitivism (such as quasi-realism and universal prescriptivism), as well as to all forms of Cognitivism (ethics), cognitivism (including both moral realism and ethical subjectivism). In the 1950s, emotivism appeared in a modified form in the universal prescriptivism of R. M. Hare. History Emotivism reached prominence in the early 20th century, but it was born centuries earlier. In 1710, George Berkeley wrote that language ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Allan Gibbard
Allan Fletcher Gibbard (born 1942) is an American philosopher who is the Richard B. Brandt Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Gibbard has made major contributions to contemporary ethical theory, in particular metaethics, where he has developed a contemporary version of non-cognitivism. He has also published articles in the philosophy of language, metaphysics, and social choice theory: in social choice, he first proved the result known today as Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem, which had been previously conjectured by Michael Dummett and Robin Farquharson. Life and career Allan Fletcher Gibbard was born on April 7, 1942, in Providence, Rhode Island. He received his B.A. in mathematics from Swarthmore College in 1963 with minors in physics and philosophy. After teaching mathematics and physics in Ghana with the Peace Corps (1963–1965), Gibbard studied philosophy at Harvard University, participating in the seminar on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Golden Rule
The Golden Rule is the principle of treating others as one would want to be treated by them. It is sometimes called an ethics of reciprocity, meaning that one should reciprocate to others how one would like them to treat the person (not necessarily how they actually treat them). Various expressions of this rule can be found in the tenets of most religions and creeds through the ages. The Maxim (philosophy), maxim may appear as a Affirmation and negation, positive or negative injunction governing conduct: * Treat others as one would like others to treat them (positive or directive form) * Do ''not'' treat others in ways that one would ''not'' like to be treated (negative or prohibitive form) * What one wishes upon others, they wish upon themselves (empathetic or responsive form) Etymology The Terminology, term "Golden Rule", or "Golden law", began to be used widely in the early 17th century in Britain by Anglicanism, Anglican theologians and preachers; the earliest known usage ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Categorical Imperative
The categorical imperative () is the central philosophical concept in the deontological Kantian ethics, moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Introduced in Kant's 1785 ''Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals'', it is a way of evaluating motivations for action. It is best known in its original formulation: "Act only according to that maxim (philosophy), maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."It is standard to also reference the ''Akademie Ausgabe'' of Kant's works. The ''Groundwork'' occurs in the fourth volume. Citations throughout this article follow the format 4:x. For example, the above citation is taken from 4:421. According to Kant, rational being (Kantian ethics), rational beings occupy a special place in creation, and morality can be summed up in an imperative, or ultimate commandment of reason, from which all duties and obligations derive. He defines an ''imperative'' as any proposition declaring a certain action (or inaction) t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amoralism
Moral nihilism (also called ethical nihilism) is the metaethical view that nothing is morally right or morally wrong and that morality does not exist. 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'', although prefigured by Axel Hägerström in 1911. 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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tautology (logic)
In mathematical logic, a tautology (from ) is a formula that is true regardless of the interpretation of its component terms, with only the logical constants having a fixed meaning. For example, a formula that states, "the ball is green or the ball is not green," is always true, regardless of what a ball is and regardless of its colour. Tautology is usually, though not always, used to refer to valid formulas of propositional logic. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein first applied the term to redundancies of propositional logic in 1921, borrowing from rhetoric, where a tautology is a repetitive statement. In logic, a formula is satisfiable if it is true under at least one interpretation, and thus a tautology is a formula whose negation is unsatisfiable. In other words, it cannot be false. Unsatisfiable statements, both through negation and affirmation, are known formally as contradictions. A formula that is neither a tautology nor a contradiction is said to be logically c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Correspondence Theory Of Truth
In metaphysics and philosophy of language, the correspondence theory of truth states that the truth or falsity of a statement is determined only by how it relates to the world and whether it accurately describes (i.e., corresponds with) that world.Hanna and Harrison (2004), ch. 1, p. 21, quotation: "The assessment of truth and falsity is made possible by the existence of semantically mediated correlations between the members of some class of linguistic entities possessing assertoric force (in some versions of the Correspondence Theory propositions, in others sentences, or bodies of sentences), and the members of some class of extralinguistic entities: “states of affairs,” or “facts,” or bodies of truth-conditions, or of assertion-warranting circumstances." Correspondence theories claim that true beliefs and true statements correspond to the actual state of affairs. This type of theory attempts to posit a relationship between thoughts or statements on one hand, and thing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Direction Of Fit
The term "direction of fit" is used in the philosophy of intentionality to distinguish between types of representations. It is commonly applied in two related senses: first, to distinguish the mental states of belief and desire; and second, to distinguish between types of linguistic utterances, such as indicative and imperative sentences. First, philosophers of mind distinguish between mind-to-world (i.e., mind-to-fit-world) and world-to-mind (i.e., world-to-fit-mind) directions of fit. In the former, mental states such as beliefs are subject to updates in order to fit evidence provided by the world (the mind changes to fit the world, thus beliefs have a mind-to-world direction of fit). In the latter, mental states such as desires motivate the agent to change the world in order to fit the desired state in the mind (the world changes to fit the mind, thus desires have a world-to-mind direction of fit). Similarly, philosophers of language, in particular advocates of speech act th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
