Biomedical Ethics: Midterm I Flashcards
What is a valid argument?
The premises and conclusion are related to each other in the right way, therefore, if the premises were true then the conclusion would have to be true as well.
What is soundness?
It is a deductively valid argument with true premises.
An argument is sound if it meets these two criteria:
(1) It is valid.
(2) Its premises are true. In other words, a sound argument has the right form AND it is true
What is a cogent argument?
A cogent argument is one that the truth of its premise makes the conclusion more likely to be true than false.
What is a fallacy?
Common errors in reasoning (or errors in making arguments).
Types of Fallacies
- Naturalistic fallacy: arguing based on what’s natural or what naturally happens (gay marriage shouldn’t be legal)
- Appeal to popularity: arguing that a claim must be true merely because a substantial number of people believe it (This is justified. Everyone supports it)
- Slippery slope: arguing without good reasons that taking a particular step will inevitably lead to a further, undesirable step. (Abortion should be illegal, otherwise, everyone will abort).
- Appeal to disagreement: assuming that because people disagree, there is no fact of the matter.
What is Metaethics?
The branch of ethics that explores the nature of moral thought, talk and practice. It concerns questions about morality, moral judgments and moral facts.
The inquiry into the nature and status of morality.
What is Cultural Relativism?
What is morally right is determined by whatever moral standards a culture endorses.
Therefore, morality is conventional and arbitrary, and disagreements between cultural or religious outlooks are not amenable to rational evaluation and resolution.
What are non-moral facts?
States of affairs that can be wholly or adequately described separately from moral values.
For example: biological, psychological, social, physical facts.
What is subjectivism?
Morality is fundamentally about the expression of feeling or emotion. Moral judgments are expression of human emotion.
Moral Realism
Moral facts exist independently of the evidence for them and about which we can have at least approximate knowledge.
What is Normative Ethics?
The inquiry into the standards that determine how to act morally and lead a moral life.
morality=ethics
Inquiry into what makes right actions right or wrong.
What is applied ethics?
The application of moral theories, principles and ideas to specific moral problems.
Addresses particular moral issues and problems.
What is the difference between consequentialism and deontology?
Consequentialist morality defines rightness as a function of promoting good consequences. Give priority to the right over the good.
Dentological morality claims that rightness is not exclusively, and perhaps not at all a matter of promoting good consequences. Give priority to the good over the right.
What is Ethical Egoism?
Consequentialist theory
Do whatever maximizes one’s own self-interest. It is important to distinguish ethical egoism from psychological egoism.
Objections to Ethical Egoism
- Competing interests objection: either has to deny that people’s long term interests ever come into conflict (seems implausible) or else allow for conflicts but have nothing to say about how to resolve them.
- Objectivity problem: moral reasoning seems to requre that we just do not focus on our own interests and needs but that we adopt a more objective point of view, according to which interests and needs also matter.
