Ethics

Ethics

The systematic and reasoned study of morality.

Examples of Moral Prescriptive Claims

-Everyone has the moral duty to obey the law -I should not lie -Always act towards others as you would have them act towards you.

Examples of Moral Value Claims

-Human life is fundamentally valuable. -It is a virtual to remain loyal to one's friends. -Only a bad person would refuse to help someone in trouble.

Moral responsibility

Anyone who qualifies as autonomus has this foe his/her actions.

Autonomy conditions

1. Independence Conditions: A person must be capable of making his/her own free choices without the control of any external constraints or inner compulsions. 2. Competency Conditions: A person must be capable of rationally deliberating about his/her choices. 3. Authenticity Conditions: A person must be capable of discerning, reflecting upon, and personally choosing his own goals and values.

Rationalism

An ethical tradition that maintains that morality derives from the fundamental value of reason.

Moral agent

A person who not only satisfies the conditions of autonomy but also makes actual moral choices

Descriptive Claim

A statement that describes something, but makes no value judgment about it.Expresses an understanding of how something is or could be without offering any evaluation. Ex. That boy has large ears.

Normative Claim

A statement that expresses an evaluation that is often implicit or relative to standard or ideal. Ex. Saying something is good, bad, better than or worse than

Fundamental Value

A value that desirable in itself, that has intrinsic or essential worth. Good that are worth having purely for its own sake. Often described as love and happinessfor example.

Autonomous

Able to make free choices as a self-determining individual.

Moral Deference

Accepting s persons choices amd allowing him to act without out interference.

Moral incompetent

Any individual whose condition or state precludes autonomy on a continuing basis.

Hedonism

Claims that there is just one fundamental good and that is pleasure or happiness.

Legal claims

Normative claims that derive from civil authority

Prudential Claims

Say what would be in our best interest to do. ex. Everyone should brush their teeth daily.

Key Terms Chapter 1

Ethics: the systematic and reasoned study of morality and its claims. • Morality: has to do with what we (simply because we are persons) should be like and how we should act. • Moral claims: serve to guide, regulate, and assess persons and their behavior. Moral claims make assertions about good and bad, right and wrong. • Normative: something is normative if it establishes or refers to some standard or norm by which other things may be evaluated. A normative claim either makes a value claim or prescribes (or prohibits) some action. • Moral value claims: assert what persons or personal character traits are morally good or bad. • Moral prescriptive claims: assert what sorts of acts are right or wrong and what one should or should not do. • Descriptive claims: describe how the world actually is or could be. • Nonmoral normative claims: normative (value or prescriptive) claims that differ in their purposes and origins from moral claims. • Claims of etiquette: normative claims that have to do with what is acceptable social behavior. • Prudential claims: normative claims that say what would be in our interest or prudent to do. • Legal claims: normative claims that derive from civil authority. • Truth claims: make assertions that are either true or false. • Universalizable: can be generalized to hold for others in similar circumstances. • Moral principles: general moral claims that hold for everyone in the same way. • Overriding: moral claims tend to override or take precedence over other kinds of normative claims.

Morality

Has to do with what all rational persons, simply because they are persons, should be like and how they ought to act towards others.

Moral prescriptive claims

Make assertions about what sorts of acts are right or wrong and what one should or should not do. A prescriptive claim prescribes or prohibits some kind of action or behavior. Uses words such as should or ahould not, ought or ought not. Also may be in the form of "everyone has a moral duty to..." Prescriptive claims do not refer to any moral values but state how something is, or ahould be.

Paternalism

Overrulling people's choices and actions for their own good.

Moral Claims

Serve to guide, regulate, and assess persons and their behavior. More simply, moral claims make assertions about good and bad or right and wrong.

Instrumental or Fundamental Value

Something valued as a means to an end because it helps us get something that we do value such as concert tickets, planes, money. Many things have both intrinsic and instrumental value.

Intrinsic Value

Something valued for its own sake such as love, wisdom, pleasure, beauty. Friendship for ex. we value regardless of its results. Many things have both intrinsic and instrumental value.

Moral Standards 3 Views

There are three important views regarding moral standards, (a) Objectivism claims that there is just one universal moral standard, (b) Popular moral relativism claims that each society's own moral standard depends on what that society accepts, (c) Subjectivism claims that each person's own moral standard depends on what that person believes to be right. Only one of these viewpoints can be correct.

Moral claims are normative

They establish or refer to some standard or Norm by which other things are to be evaluated. They usually identify or imply a moral value or it may prescribe how one should or should not act.

Instrumental Value

Things that we value for helping us attain other things that we really do value. Ex. Money, a career.

Moral agency

When a person makes a specific moral choice in a specific situation it is said that they are exercising this.

Key Terms Chapter 3

• Autonomous: able to make free choices as a self-determining individual. PERSONAL AUTONOMY To qualify as genuinely autonomous, a person must satisfy three sets of conditions. ☻Independence conditions: a person must be capable of making her own free choices without the control of any external constraints or inner compulsions. • Independence conditions: require that an autonomous person be capable of making free choices without being controlled by any external constraints or inner compulsions. ☻ Competency conditions: a person must be capable of rationally deliberating about her choices. • Competency conditions: require that an autonomous person be capable of rationally deliberating about her choices. ☻Authenticity conditions: a person must be capable of discerning, reflecting upon, and personally choosing his own goals and values. • Authenticity conditions: require that an autonomous person be capable of personally choosing his own goals and values. _____________________________________ • External constraints: impose their control upon a person from the outside (e.g., hypnosis, threats, or other forced actions). • Inner compulsions: impose their control upon a person from within (e.g., obsessive/compulsive behaviors, addictions, phobias, overwhelming physical or emotional pain, etc.). • Moral incompetent: an individual whose condition or state precludes his autonomy on a continuing basis. • Moral responsibility: being morally accountable to others for one's own choices (deserving praise or blame). • Moral deference: accepting a person's choices and allowing him to act without our interference. • Paternalism: overruling people's choices and actions for their own good. • Moral agent: a person who satisfies the conditions of autonomy and applies these capabilities in making actual moral choices. • Moral agency: exercised by an autonomous person every time he makes a specific moral choice in a specific situation. • Independent choice: the level of moral agency at which a person employs no more than his capability (a) of making a free choice without constraint or compulsion. • Competent choice: the level of moral agency at which a person employs no more than his capabilities (a) of making an independent choice and (b) of engaging in rational deliberation. • Authentic choice: the level of moral agency at which a person employs his capabilities (a) of making an independent choice, (b) of making a competent choice, and (c) of authentically assessing his values. • Value-free autonomy: the view that maximum autonomy requires that we be able to choose our basic values without constraint and that any set of values can serve equally well as the basis for a person's choices. • Value-guided autonomy: the view that maximum autonomy requires that our basic values be consistent with human fulfillment and flourishing and include the fundamental values of morality.

Key Terms Chapter 5

• Moral principle: a general normative claim that holds for everyone in the same way. Principles thus are not limited to particular people or situations. • Moral judgment: a limited moral claim; as such, judgments are about specific persons or specific situations. • Valuative principle: a principle that takes the form of a value claim. • Prescriptive principle: a principle that takes the form of a prescriptive claim. • Fundamental moral principle: a basic moral principle that can serve as the basis for deriving other moral principles, but that cannot itself be derived from any more fundamental moral principle. • Completeness: requires that a theory encompass and support the entire range of meaningful moral claims and concepts, not leaving anything out. • Explanatory power: requires that a theory gives us insight into what makes something moral or immoral. • Practicability: requires that a theory be useful in actual practice, (a) A theory should not be vague, but should generate clear and precise moral claims, (b) It should furnish moral guidance that can be understood and used by ordinary. people, (c) It should not generate irresolvable conflicts. • Moral confirmation: requires that a theory fit with our deepest, clearest, and most widely shared moral intuitions.

Key Terms Chapter 4

• Objectivism: The same moral principles hold universally for every person and every society. In short, there is one universal moral standard. • (Popular) Relativism: The same moral principles hold for all members of a particular society (or social group) but may differ from one society to another. Further, that set of principles depends on what the majority within that society accepts and practices as morally correct. In short, each society's moral standard depends on what that society accepts as right. • Subjectivism: Moral principles hold for particular persons, but may differ from one person to another. Further, each person's principles depend on what that person believes to be morally right. In short, each person's moral standard depends on what that person believes to be right • Moral standard: consists of all moral principles and values that determine good or bad, right or wrong. • Objectivism: maintains that the same moral principles hold universally for every person and every society. • (Popular) relativism: maintains that the same moral principles hold just for the members of a particular society (or social group). These principles are determined by what the majority of that society accepts as morally correct. • Subjectivism: maintains that moral principles holdjust for particular persons. A person's principles are determined by what that person believes to be morally right. • Moral reformers: persons who, on moral grounds, work to change some of their own society's accepted beliefs and practices. • Horrific evils objection: if relativism were true, then any sort of immoral practice could be morally acceptable as long as a society's majority accepts it. • Reformer objection: if relativism were true, then the great moral reformers of history must be considered immoral because they opposed the accepted moral practices of their societies. • Moral progress objection: if relativism were true, then the notion of moral progress makes no sense because there can be no objective standard to progress toward. • Social groups objection: if relativism were true, then most people in modern pluralistic societies have no definite moral standard because most people belong to several social groups at once. • Argument from tolerance: the principle of tolerance requires that we respect the beliefs and practices of other societies. Relativism rules out the possibility of our judging a particular society's moral standard as better or worse than any others; objectivism does not rule this out. Since our respecting another's practices is not compatible with our judging another's practices, we must therefore accept relativism and reject objectivism. • Tolerance: demands that we respect the moral beliefs and practices of other people even when they conflict with our own. • Pluralistic relativism: maintains that different societies may have different but equally true moral standards—reflecting how each differently prioritizes moral values—although all societies still share a common core of fundamental moral values and principles.

Key Terms Chapter 2

• Values: things that we consider important and desirable and that we seek and base our choices upon. • Fundamental values: things that are valuable in themselves, that have intrinsic worth. • Instrumental values: things that are useful for attaining something else of value. If a value is purely instrumental, then it has no genuine worth in itself, but is only useful for what it can attain. • Ethical theories: commonly attempt to explain morality by deriving all moral claims from one or more fundamental values. • Virtues: good character traits that persons can have, such as honesty and loyalty. • Hedonism: an ethical tradition that maintains that there is just one fundamental good: pleasure (or happiness). • Rationalism: an ethical tradition that maintains that morality derives from the fundamental value of reason.