Introduction Flashcards
Normative Ethics
Principles about how we should live/what we ought to do.
Applied Ethics
Focuses on specific moral issues that people experience within their everyday lives.
Moral Realism
Moral facts exist outside our opinions and judgements.
Moral Relativism
Morality is constructed and relevant to culture. There are no superior forms of ethics.
Moral/Ethical meaning:
What is good or right.
Immoral/Unethical meaning:
What is bad or wrong.
Amoral meaning:
To be without a moral sense, or being indifferent to morality.
Nonmoral meaning:
Something that is outside the realm of morality altogether.
Metaethics
Studies the nature and methodology of moral judgements.
Applied Ethics
Studies specific moral issues people face in their everyday lives.
Descriptive Relativism
Morals and ethical codes are observably different across culture.
Metaethical Relativism
“Culture is King”. Moral truths are viewed as only true relative to specific groups of people. That is, moral belief is relative to the positioning of the culture (or the person in that culture) who has this belief.
Normative Relativism
No culture should be judged for its moral codes, and that no other culture should intervene in that culture carrying out its moral practices.
Critiques of Relativism
1) Relative to whom?
2) Some things just seem wrong.
3) Relativism and tolerance: why should we think that tolerance is a value that all humans subscribe to.
4) No room for social reform and progress.
