Ethics and Moral Philosophy

108 flashcards by MentisLibrary

What makes an action right? Consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics laid out with their strongest objections, plus the trolley problem, the veil of ignorance, and the thinkers behind them.

Normative ethics

The branch of moral philosophy that asks which actions are right or wrong and why, and tries to state general principles.

Metaethics

The branch that asks what moral claims mean, whether they can be true, and how we could know them, rather than what to do.

Applied ethics

The branch that brings moral theory to bear on specific practical questions such as medicine, war, business, or the environment.

Descriptive ethics

The empirical study of what people actually believe is right, as opposed to what is right.

Consequentialism

The view that the moral rightness of an action depends only on its outcomes.

Utilitarianism

The consequentialist view that the right action maximizes overall well being or happiness, counting everyone equally.

Act utilitarianism

The view that we should assess each individual act by whether it produces the most good.

Rule utilitarianism

The view that we should follow the set of rules whose general acceptance would produce the most good.

Bentham's hedonic calculus

A proposed method for measuring pleasure and pain by intensity, duration, certainty, propinquity, fecundity, purity, and extent.

Mill's higher and lower pleasures

Mill's claim that intellectual and moral pleasures are qualitatively better than bodily ones, so it is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.

Preference utilitarianism

The view that what should be maximized is the satisfaction of preferences rather than felt pleasure.

Negative utilitarianism

The view that reducing suffering matters more than promoting happiness.

Deontology

The view that some acts are right or wrong in themselves, independent of consequences, because of duties, rules, or rights.

Kant's categorical imperative

A command of reason binding unconditionally, not dependent on any desire or goal you happen to have.

The universal law formulation

Act only on a maxim you could at the same time will to become a universal law.

The humanity formulation

Treat humanity, in yourself and in others, always as an end and never merely as a means.

The kingdom of ends formulation

Act as though you were through your maxim a lawmaking member in a kingdom of ends where all rational beings legislate together.

Hypothetical versus categorical imperative

A hypothetical imperative tells you what to do if you want some end; a categorical imperative binds regardless of what you want.

Kant on the inquiring murderer

Kant argued you may not lie even to a murderer asking where your friend is, because lying cannot be universalized.

Ross's prima facie duties

Duties such as fidelity, reparation, gratitude, justice, beneficence, self improvement, and non maleficence, each binding unless outweighed by another.

The doctrine of double effect

The principle that causing a serious harm as a foreseen side effect of pursuing a good end can be permissible when causing it as a means would not be.

Acts and omissions doctrine

The claim that doing harm is morally worse than allowing an equivalent harm to occur.

Virtue ethics

The view that ethics is primarily about what kind of person to be, focusing on stable traits of character rather than on rules or outcomes.

Eudaimonia

Aristotle's term for human flourishing, the activity of living well over a complete life, not a passing feeling of happiness.

Arete

Excellence or virtue: the quality that lets a thing perform its characteristic function well.

The doctrine of the mean

Aristotle's view that each virtue lies between an excess and a deficiency, courage between recklessness and cowardice.

Phronesis

Practical wisdom: the acquired capacity to perceive what a situation requires and to act well in it.

Aristotle's function argument

The argument that the human good is activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, because reason is the characteristic human function.

Anscombe's Modern Moral Philosophy

A 1958 paper arguing that moral obligation talk is a leftover of a religious framework we have abandoned, and urging a return to virtue and psychology.

Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue

An argument that modern moral debate is interminable because we inherit fragments of incompatible traditions, and that virtue needs a practice and a narrative to make sense.