Ethics and Morality SAC Revision

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering key metaethical theories, Aristotle's virtue ethics, Mackie's error theory, and Arendt's analysis of Kant and the banality of evil.

Prescriptivism

The view in metaethics that moral judgments are prescriptions and therefore have the logical form of imperatives, serving as instructions or recommendations.

Imperative

An action a speaker or writer wants someone else to do, such as 'you must always tell the truth.'

Emotivism

The view that moral judgments do not function as statements of fact but rather as expressions of the speaker's or writer's feelings, often called the boo/hooray theory.

Internalism

The theory that if an individual judges that she ought to do something, she will necessarily and intrinsically be motivated to do it.

Strong Internalism

The position that when a person makes a moral judgment, he or she will be overwhelmingly motivated to act on it.

Externalism

The claim that any connection between a moral judgment and a moral action is contingent, meaning moral judgments are themselves inert and dependent on external motives.

Passions (Hume)

Produced by perceptions of pleasure and pain, these are the source from which all intentional actions arise according to Hume.

Intellectual Excellence (Aristotle)

A kind of excellence that is acquired through instruction and experience.

Moral Excellence (Aristotle)

A kind of excellence that is the result of habit or custom ($ethos$).

Argument from Relativity

Mackie's argument that variations in moral codes between societies reflect specific ways of life rather than inadequate perception of objective truths.

Argument from Queerness (Metaphysical)

Mackie's argument that if objective values existed, they would be entities of a 'very strange sort,' utterly different from anything else in the universe.

Argument from Queerness (Epistemological)

The argument that perceiving objective values would require a 'special faculty of moral perception or intuition' unlike ordinary ways of knowing.

To-be-pursuedness

A concept Mackie finds implausible, suggesting that knowing an objective good would automatically provide an overriding motive for action.

Incontinence ($akrasia$)

A phenomenon where a person acts against their rational judgment due to passion.

Socratic Paradox

The argument that no one acts against what they judge to be best except through ignorance.

Unqualified Incontinence

A state relating to necessary bodily pleasures such as food and sex.

Qualified Incontinence

A state involving honor, gain, or anger rather than necessary bodily pleasures.

Banality of Evil

Arendt's concept describing how ordinary people can commit reprehensible acts due to a lack of moral imagination, original thought, and internal dialogue.

The Kantian Shift

The movement toward regarding actions as divine commands because we have an inward obligation to them, rather than regarding them as obligatory because they are commanded by God.

Legality (Kant)

A morally neutral state concerning obedience to external laws (God, church, or state) to avoid punishment.

Morality (Kant)

Involves obeying one's own reason and acting as a 'legislator of the world' whose actions could become universal law.

Laws of Nature

Laws that carry 'necessity,' such as the biological fact that all humans must die.

Laws of Freedom

Moral laws that carry only an obligation and no physical necessity.

Categorical Imperative

A command to act 'without reference to another end,' transforming rational propositions into obligatory commands for the human will.

Hypothetical Imperative

An imperative that indicates a means to a specific goal, such as 'if I support this body, I stagger under its weight.'

Will (Kant)

The 'executive organ' of reason, described as practical reason which chooses only what reason recognizes as good.