ethics ch 1

Descriptive Judgments

Judgments that assert factual or empirical matters. These can be confirmed through objective means of observation.

Normative Judgments

Judgments that "place a value" on some action, practice, design, or work (such as ethical, aesthetic, or practical claims).

Are ethical and moral claims considered descriptive or normative judgments?

Normative judgments, because they place a value on actions or practices rather than just stating raw facts.

Beyond ethical/moral claims, what are other examples of areas that involve normative judgments?

Aesthetic claims (judgments about beauty, art, or design) and practical claims (judgments about usefulness or whether something is good for its purpose).

Morally Good

Indicates that something should be positively regarded without an explicit recommendation for doing it. Often allows room for degrees (e.g., "Peace is good, and distress is bad").

Morally Permissible

Indicates that an action is morally allowable and sometimes praiseworthy, but that there is no strict moral requirement or obligation to do it (e.g., helping someone in trouble).

Moral Obligation

Indicates that something "ought" or "ought not" to be done, carrying a sense of urgency and meaning there is no other acceptable moral choice.

Moral Realism

The perspective that ethical facts exist and that moral judgments can be objectively true or false, emphasizing objective knowledge of intrinsic value.

Emotivism

The view that ethical judgments are not statements of fact, but rather expressions of subjective feelings, emotions, or attitudes.

Objectivism (in Ethics)

The belief that moral truths and values exist independently of human opinion or subjective feelings; they are objective facts about the world.

Sociobiology (in relation to Ethics)

A perspective that explains morality through natural selection and evolutionary survival advantages, though critics argue that a behavior being natural doesn't automatically make it morally right.

Intuitionism

The view that core moral truths and fundamental values are known directly through a faculty of moral intuition rather than through empirical observation or logical proof.