Comprehensive Ethics and Moral Philosophy

A set of vocabulary flashcards covering the key terms, doctrines, and figures in normative ethics, meta-ethics, virtue theory, consequentialism, and Kantian deontology from the lecture series.

Stupidity

A failure of judgment or critical reasoning that is distinct from merely being dumb (lacking raw cognitive ability) or uneducated (lacking learned information).

Ethics vs. Morality

The distinction between systematic, formal codes and theoretical frameworks governing conduct (ethics) and personal, cultural, or internalized beliefs about right and wrong (morality).

Substance vs. Process in Ethics

The distinction between teaching specific normative content or moral rules (substance) versus cultivating the cognitive methods, reasoning, and procedures used to resolve moral questions (process).

Moral Progress

The advancement of moral understanding and behavior at either an individual character level or a collective civilizational scale (evaluated by thinkers such as Plutarch, Pigliucci, Singer, Pinker, and Flynn).

Plutarch's Signs of Moral Progress

Specific personal indicators and behavioral milestones identified by Plutarch to assess whether an individual is making genuine progress toward moral virtue.

Morality Pill

The theoretical use of pharmacological or biochemical interventions designed to improve human moral behavior and moral reasoning through chemistry.

Libertarianism (Metaphysics)

The view that free will exists, that determinism is false, and that agents have the capacity to make genuinely unforced choices.

Determinism

The philosophical position that all events, including every human choice and action, are completely determined by preceding causes and laws of nature.

Compatibilism

The position that determinism and human free will are mutually compatible and can both be true at the same time.

Morality Machine

An artificial intelligence or technological system designed to formalize moral reasoning and make ethical decision-making objective and computational.

Paradox of Liberalism

The fundamental dilemma of whether a liberal society dedicated to broad tolerance and freedom must tolerate intolerance, which could ultimately lead to the destruction of tolerance itself.

Moral Objectivism

The view that moral truths exist independently of human opinions, perceptions, beliefs, or cultural conventions.

Cultural Relativism

The view that moral standards, rights, and wrongs are determined by and strictly relative to specific cultural traditions and societal norms.

Situation Relativism

The view that what is right or wrong depends entirely on the concrete context and circumstances of a case, which can be viewed as an objective assessment of unique situational facts.

Moral Scepticism

The meta-ethical stance that doubts or denies the existence of objective moral truth or the possibility of acquiring moral knowledge.

Generalizing at the Lowest Possible Level

The method of ethical reasoning that makes moral judgments and rules as concrete, context-sensitive, and close to the specific facts as possible, rather than invoking sweeping, high-level abstractions.

Character vs. Codes Approaches

The contrast between an ethics grounded in the virtues, dispositions, and overall character of the moral agent versus an ethics grounded in rule-based duties, prohibitions, and moral laws.

Virtue Ethics

An approach to normative ethics that emphasizes cultivating moral character and practical wisdom rather than adhering to rigid duties or maximizing outcomes.

Virtues and Vices (Aristotle)

According to Aristotle, virtues are stable, excellent traits of character that enable human flourishing, whereas vices are character flaws or defects.

Doctrine of the Mean

Aristotle's principle that every moral virtue is an intermediate state between two vicious extremes: an excess and a deficiency.

Stoic and Christian Dualistic Ethics

An influential moral framework that departed from Aristotle's continuous scale of character by establishing a strict, dualistic either/or division between virtue and sin or vice.

Cardinal Virtues and Vices

The principal virtues and vices upon which all other moral qualities hinge, historically personified and allegorized in art and philosophy.

Problem of Evil

The philosophical problem of reconciling the presence of evil and suffering with the existence of a God possessing divine perfections such as omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence.

Intellectualism vs. Voluntarism (Euthyphro Problem)

The theological and moral debate over whether God commands things because they are inherently good (intellectualism) or whether things are good solely because God wills and commands them (voluntarism).

Natural Rights

Inherent entitlements that individuals possess by virtue of human nature itself, distinguished from state-granted civil rights and positive legal enactments.

Lockean vs. Jeffersonian Rights

The transition from John Locke's formulation of natural rights as life, liberty, and estate (property) to Thomas Jefferson's formulation in the Declaration of Independence as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Negative Rights vs. Positive Rights

The distinction between rights of non-interference requiring others to refrain from action (negative rights) and rights to the provision of goods, services, or assistance (positive rights).

Consequentialism

The normative ethical family holding that the moral rightness or wrongness of an action is determined solely by the value of its outcomes, contrasting with intrinsicalism or essentialism.

Intrinsicalism / Essentialism

The ethical position holding that certain actions possess inherent moral qualities that make them right or wrong in themselves, regardless of the consequences they produce.

Utilitarianism

A consequentialist theory asserting that an action is morally right to the extent that it produces the greatest net utility, pleasure, or happiness for all affected beings.

Utility

In consequentialism, the fundamental metric of value, commonly identified with net pleasure, happiness, well-being, or preference satisfaction over pain.

Felicific Calculus

Jeremy Bentham's proposed quantitative algorithm for measuring and balancing the amount of pleasure and pain an action will produce across various variables.

Quantity vs. Quality of Pleasure

John Stuart Mill's modification of Bentham's utilitarianism, arguing that pleasures differ qualitatively (higher intellectual/moral pleasures vs. lower bodily pleasures) and not merely quantitatively.

The Integrity Objection

An objection to utilitarianism arguing that demanding agents maximize aggregate utility forces them to abandon their deepest personal projects, values, and moral commitments.

The Special Relations Objection

A critique arguing that utilitarianism cannot accommodate the special moral obligations owed to specific individuals, such as family members, friends, or promisees.

Demandingness Objection

The challenge that utilitarianism is excessively difficult and demanding because it requires individuals to calculate consequences constantly and make extreme personal sacrifices to maximize utility.

Golden Rule and Silver Rule

Broad moral heuristics dictating to treat others as one wishes to be treated (Golden) or not to do to others what one would not want done to oneself (Silver), which require further specification to resolve complex dilemmas.

Deontology

An approach to ethics rooted in duty, obligation, and conformity to moral rules, holding that actions are right or wrong independently of their consequences.

Good Will (Kant)

For Immanuel Kant, the only thing that is good without qualification: a will that acts purely out of duty and reverence for the moral law rather than from desire, inclination, or outcome.

Acting 'In Accordance With' vs. 'For the Sake Of' Morality

Kant's distinction between doing an action that merely conforms outwardly with duty due to personal inclination or self-interest versus doing it purely out of moral obligation.

Hypothetical Imperative

A practical command of reason that is conditional upon wanting a specific end or outcome, taking the form: 'If you want X, you must do Y.'

Categorical Imperative (CI)

Kant's supreme, purely formal, and unconditional moral command that obligates all rational agents regardless of their personal desires or ends.

Universalizability Formulation

The formulation of the Categorical Imperative directing an agent to act only on that maxim through which they can at the same time will that it become a universal law.

Persons-as-Ends Formulation (Formula of Humanity)

The formulation of the Categorical Imperative commanding that one treat humanity, whether in oneself or another, always as an end in itself and never merely as a means to an end.

Kingdom of Ends Formulation

The formulation of the Categorical Imperative envisioning a systematic union of different rational beings joined through common, objective moral laws where all members are both authors and subjects of the laws.

Maxim (Kant)

The subjective principle of volition or the personal rule of action upon which an agent decides to act, evaluated by reason to see if it can become an objective moral law.

Dignity (Kant)

The intrinsic, unconditional, and incomparable worth possessed by rational beings, which is above all price and can never be exchanged for an equivalent.

Autonomy (Kant)

The capacity of a rational agent to be self-legislating, giving moral laws to oneself through reason rather than being governed by external heteronomous forces or desires.

Moral Absolutism

The ethical position that certain moral commands and prohibitions are absolute and binding across all contexts, containing no exceptions regardless of the circumstances.

Personhood (Kant)

The moral status defined by the possession of rationality and autonomy, which confers inherent dignity and obligates others to treat the bearer as an end in themselves.