key vocab

• normative ethics: focuses on what is moral

• empirical evidence: evidence obtained through sense observation

• cognitive: propositions believed to be objectively true or false

• non-cognitive: propositions that can’t be proven true or false » subjective

• analytic statements: a statement whose truth is a matter of the meaning of the terms contained in the statement, and not a matter of facts in the world

• synthetic statements: statement where the predicate is not necessarily contained in or proven true by its subject

• ethics: rules n principles of behaviour, such as a code of conduct that may exist in a particular culture or organisation

• morality: your personal principles n habits of behaviour that you yourself believe to be right

absolutism: the view that morals are fixed, unchanging truths that everyone should always follow

relativism: the view that moral truths are not fixed n are not absolute. what is right changes according to the individual, the situation, the culture, the time and the place

naturalism: ethical theories that hold that morals are part of the natural world and can be recognised/observed in some way

intuitionism: ethical theories that hold that moral knowledge is received in a diff way from science n logic

Vienna Circle: a group of philosophers known as logical positivists who rejected claims that moral truth can be verified as objectively true

emotivism: ethical theories that hold that moral statements are not statements of fact but are either beliefs or emotions

Hume’s Law: you cannot go from an ‘is’ (a statement of fact) to an ‘ought’ (a moral)

naturalistic fallacy: GE Moore’s argument that it is a mistake to define moral terms with reference to other properties (a mistake to break Hume’s law)