Week 3: Ethical Theory and Thinking Flashcards
The Twitter Six
- Conformation Bias
- Genetic Fallacy
- Ad hominem
- Bifurcation
- Appeal to Authority
- Questionable Cause
Confirmation Bias
-Not a logical fallacy, but a “cognitive bias”
-Looking for confirmation of your existing beliefs and not looking for a more objectively supported answer
-Arguments vs. Facts/Evidence
Genetic Fallacy
Dismissing arguments strictly because of their source with no other reasons
Ad hominem
Responding to, or posing an argument, based on criticisms of a person or group representing an opposing viewpoint
What’s the argument?
Bifurcation
Suggesting that complex situations must always be dissected into binary positions on an issue
Appeal to Authority
When someone bases his/her argument on his/her own knowledge or experience, and not on evidence that can be examined
Questionable Cause
This fallacy occurs when an arguer gives insufficient evidence for a claim that one thing is the cause of another
What are the subtypes of questionable cause
-Post hoc fallacy
-Mere correlation fallacy
-Oversimplified cause fallacy
Post hoc fallacy
This fallacy occurs when an arguer assumes, without adequate reason, that because one event precedes another, that the first event was the cause of the second.
Mere correlation fallacy
This fallacy occurs when an arguer assumes, without sufficient evidence, that a single condition or event is the sole cause of some effect, when there are in fact other contributing causes
Oversimplified cause fallacy
The possible causes of something are assumed to be A and B and C but not A and B and C or A and C
Definition of Ethics
“Ethics deals with questions of right or wrong conduct, and with what we ought to do and what we ought to refrain from doing. It considers issues of rights and obligations and how these are related to the social setting”
How is ethics different from the law?
-they don’t cover the same things all the time
-you can apply ethics to law
What are the Meta-Ethical Approaches
- Ethical Objectivism
- Ethical Relativism
- Ethical Non-Cognitivism
Ethical Objectivism
Right and wrong are “objective phenomena”
There are “moral facts”
Ethics is “objective in nature”
What can we do with objective moral facts
- know them
- speak meaningfully about them
- reason about them
- Resolve disagreements by appeal to them
Tenets of Objectivism
- Cognitivist
- Rationalist
- Absolutist
Cognitivist
There is an ethical reality we can know and speak about meaningfully
Rationalist
Ethical disputes can be rationally resolved by logic and reasoning
Absolutist
there is an objective right or wrong answer for every ethical question
Ethical Naturalism
Moral facts are natural facts just like any other, they are observable, measurable features of the natural world
Non-naturalism
there are moral facts but they are not observable features of the natural world
Ethical Relativism
-Ethical statements are not objectively true or false in virtue of their correspondence with objective moral facts
Three scopes of ethical relativism
- Person
- Culture or society
- Historical or situational context
Non-cognitivism
Ethical utterances are not really statements that can be validated, they do not assert anything objectively true or false, they assert your opinion on the issue
What is ethical theory
brings perspective to an experience