Ethical Language: Meta Ethics

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What is meta-ethics?
The study of the meaning and justification of moral ideas. Normative ethics looks at how we should live while meta-ethics focuses analytically on the underlying concepts.
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What is normative ethics?
Theories of ethics that give guidance on how we should behave and/or the character character traits we should develop.
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What is the fact/value, is/ought problem?
The problem, identified by Hume,among others, of finding logical justification of ethical judgments from the facts of the world. We cannot derive what we ought to do from a statement of the facts of the case.
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What is naturalism?
The claim that the term good describes a natural quality, such as pleasure, thus overcoming the gap between nature and the ethical.
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What is hedonism?
The belief that pleasure is the good and nothing else is the good.
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What is absolutism?
The view that there are some things which are always obligatory. Examples of absolutist theories include utilitarianism, Kantianism and situation ethics, each of which assumes some underlying principle, whether utility, duty or love.
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What is naturalistic fallacy?
Moore's term for the alleged error of assuming that the good is some natural quality.
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What is an open question argument?
Moore's view that we can say that something has a natural quality, such as pleasure, yet we can still significantly ask whether that something is good.
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What is intuitionism?
The belief that the good is real but not a natural fact, grasped by an intuition of the mind. An ethical theory supported by Moore, Ross and Prichard, among others.
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What is a priori?
Knowledge which is not dependent on sense experience, such as 'a circle is round', which is true by definition.
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What is emotivism?
The theory, promoted principally by logical positivists, that ethical sentences simply evince emotions, though strictly they are meaningless.
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What is relativism?
The theory that there are no absolutes in ethics and that every judgement is relative, perhaps to culture or other beliefs. This denies any claim to universalism.
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What is the principle of consistency?
Gerwith's term, in Reason and Morality, for the principle that human life necessarily requires treating everyone else as having the same rights and duties as I find necessary for myself.
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Card 2

Front

What is normative ethics?

Back

Theories of ethics that give guidance on how we should behave and/or the character character traits we should develop.

Card 3

Front

What is the fact/value, is/ought problem?

Back

Preview of the front of card 3

Card 4

Front

What is naturalism?

Back

Preview of the front of card 4

Card 5

Front

What is hedonism?

Back

Preview of the front of card 5
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