Metaethics: Cognitivism Metaethics: What is morality, or “right”? Normative (prescriptive) ethics: How should people act? Descriptive ethics: What do people think is right? Applied ethics: Putting moral ideas into practice Thin moral concepts Thick moral concepts more general: good, bad, right, and wrong more specic: courageous, inequitable, just, or dishonest

Centralism- thin concepts are antecedent to the thick ones Non-centralism- thick concepts are a sucient starting point for understanding thin ones because thin and thick concepts are equal. Normativity is a non-excisable aspect of language and there is no way of analyzing thick moral concepts into a purely descriptive element attached to a thin moral evaluation, thus undermining any fundamental division between facts and norms.

Cognitivism

ethical propositions are truth-apt (can be true or false), unlike questions or commands

Ethical subjectivism/moral anti-realism Ethical realism/moral realism

True ethical propositions are a function of subjective features Ethical propositions that refer to objective features may be true if they are free of subjectivism

Moral relativism Moral universalism/ Robust and Minimal Robust moral objectivism/ nobody is objectively right or wrong universal morality 1. Semantic thesis: moral predicates 3. Metaphysical thesis: the facts in regards to diagreements about are to refer to moral properties so and properties of #1 are robust-- moral questions a system of ethics, or a universal ethic, moral statements represent moral their metaphysical status is not applies universally to "all" facts, and express propositions that relevantly di erent from ordinary are true or false non-moral facts and properties Cultural relativism not all forms of moral universalism 2. Alethic thesis: Some moral are absolutist, nor are they propositions are true norms should be understood necessarily value monist, in terms of culture and may be value pluralist

can include non-cognitivist Ethical non-naturalism Ethical naturalism universal prescriptivism (non-denism) moral naturalism (denism) Ethical propositions are not reducible to any set of Ethical propositions are natural properties, or reducible to some set of non-moral features natural properties, or non-moral features Ethical intuitionism via empiricism

intuitive awareness inquiry into the natural world and knowledge of can increase moral knowledge value and evaluative the same way it increases facts (known without scientic knowledge logical inference or systematic rejects the fact-value distinction thought) of is/positivism and ought/norms

Sentimentalism (Moral sense theory in epistemology)

the nature of moral Value monism Divine command theory Ideal observer theory Value pluralism beliefs is discovered by emotional all goods are commensurable moral good is equivalent Some ethical propositions there are two or more responses on a single value scale to whether it is are true, and are the attitudes of scales of value, so any to experience commanded by a god a hypothetical ideal (neutral prioritization of values and fully informed) observer is either non-cognitive or subjective

Creative Commons 4.0 Erik Mickelson, trailism Metaethics: Moral Skepticism

Moral skepticism

a) moral knowledge is impossible b) we are justied in doubting moral claims are true

Pyrrhonian moral skepticism- doubt is justied because moral claims are unkowable and thus irrational, so the truth of error theory (i) is unknown, and (ii) is denied

Dogmatic moral skepticism- arms (ii) and cites (ii)'s truth as a reason for doubt

Non-cognitivism Moral nihilism/ethical nihilism

moral knowledge is impossiblebecause nothing is intrinsically moral or immoral ethical sentences are not truth-apt (true or false) morality is a complex set of rules and moral claims are imperatives, recommendations that may give expressions of emotion, psychological, social, or economical or expressions of "pro-attitudes" advantages, but is otherwise without universal or even relative truth

Emotivism Expressivism

ethical sentences do not propositions that employ moral terms express propositions are not descriptive or fact-stating but emotional attitudes (hurrah/boo) they do not refer to real world properties or have any truth value

Quasi-realism Universal prescriptivism/prescriptivism moral sentences do not to assert facts, they express an evaluative attitudes toward Ethical sentences do not non-cognitivist form of moral universalism an object of evaluation express propositions rather than expressing propositions, avoids the error theory ethical sentences project ethical sentences function similarly to emotional attitudes as imperatives which are universalizable though they were real properties Moral error theory a moral judge is committed Blackburn's Challenge: to the same judgment in any situation (i) all moral claims are false, nothing is right or wrong given the same relevant facts (ii) we have reason to believe that all moral claims are false, and How can two situations not so, (iii) we are justied in doubting any claim we have demand di erent ethical responses reason to deny without referring to a di erence in the situations themselves? combines the cognitivist thesis that moral language The challenge is unmeetable, consists of truth-apt statements with the so there must be a realist component nihilist thesis that there are no moral facts in our notions of ethics, but ehics cannot be entirely realist either, as ethical positions have Presupposition failure/ctionalism changed over time. Global falsity

moral beliefs and assertions are false moral beliefs and assertions are not in that they claim that certain moral facts true because they are neither true nor false that do not exist in fact do exist not a form of non-cognitivism, for moral assertions are only true if there are moral assertions are still thought to be truth-apt moral properties that are intrinsically motivating, but there is good reason to believe this form claims that moral beliefs and that there are no such intrinsically assertions presuppose so they su er from motivating properties "presupposition failure" because moral facts do not exist

Creative Commons 4.0 Erik Mickelson, trailism Normative Ethics Metaethics: What is morality, or “right”? Normative (prescriptive) ethics: How should people act? Descriptive ethics: What do people think is right? Applied ethics: Putting moral ideas into practice

Pragmatic ethics Deontological ethics Role ethics Consequentialism/Teleology Virtue ethics/ Care ethics/EoC aretaic ethics societies can judges the morality of morality is derived the consequences of conduct contextualizing to progress or an action based on from a person's are the basis for the judgment evaluate ethical meet the needs or evolve morally the action's adherence relationship of the rightness of conduct behavior based interests of so future to a rule with their on the virtue dependence generations community a right act will produce a and character and interdependence, can rene, "duty-" or "obligation-" or family good outcome of the actor and the importance improve, or or "rule-" based of response/outcome, and replace ethics, because rules if a goal is morally vulnerability accepted "bind you to a duty" important any method hypotheses, of achieving it is acceptable deontological and norms, action is more consequentialist ethics principles, important than tend to view persons and moral the consequences as having independent criteria interests and interactions through inquiry ethical altruism Utilitarianism moral agents have an obligation to help others moral action should maximize utility Intellectualism

the best action fosters and Act utilitarianism Rule utilitarianism Preference utilitarianism develops the intellect

moral acts are an action is right if it promotes actions that right if and only if it conforms to a rule that fulll the immediate Welfarism produces at least as leads to the greatest good preferences of much happiness as the beings involved measure goodness in any other act that the correctness of a rule terms of subjective the person could is determined by the utility and perform at that time amount of good it brings consequence impact about if followed

Situational ethics

Two-level utilitarianism the context/situation of an act is judged on love, rather than moral decisions should judging it on absolute moral be based on a set of standards 'intuitive' moral rules, except in certain Mohist consequentialism rare situations where state consequentialism it is more appropriate to engage in a 'critical' the moral worth of an action is based level of moral reasoning on how it contributes to the basic goods of a state through social a synthesis of act order, material wealth, and utilitarianism population growth and rule utilitarianism

Ethical egoism

moral agents ought to do what is in their own self-interest

psychological egoism claims that people can only act in self-interest

rational egoism holds that it is rational to act in self-interest

Creative Commons 4.0 Erik Mickelson, trailism