Supernaturalism

Supernaturalism

• X is good because God commands it

• Are actions right or wrong because of Gods command or does it follow the inherent good or badness of the thing?

  • Focus question

    • If God told us to murder someone, would it be good?

• Do we do things for the goodness of it, or do we do it because God wants us to do it

• Divine command theory is when God says something is OK, that means it is ok

• God commands that we recognize goodness

• Things can be good in themselves

• God does not command US to be truthful, therefore we must figure out what is good and what is bad

• Commandments are not necessary for those where people cannot see good things

Natural law theory

• Goodness can be found my reason because of the nature of things

• There is rational and natural law

• There is value and purpose in everything

• Laws of nature describe how things are but also what they ought to be

• When God says something is good, it is good forever, it doesn't change

PErspectivism

• Norms can be perscribed

• Miranda and the soggy pie

• Whether or not a given act meets a standard

• Ethical theories need to

  • allow us freedom to make out own moral judgements

    • we can know and apply the standard ourselves

  • show us how to make moral judgements in a rational way

    • not making arbitary decisions but basing them on objective statements of differences in the things

      • “realitive worjt” is valuable to know

• Moral judgements are a kind of prescription

• They are an “imperative”

• Indictaive: the door is open, describes a state of affairs

• Imperative close te door- requires and action to be undertaken

• making similer evaluations about similar cases- we look for continuity

• keeping our moral beliefs in harmony with how we live and how we want others to live

• similar actions ought to be done

  • a pie must not have a soggy bottom

• Moral reasoning asks us to be informed, imaginative, and consistent

• If you hit someone then you deserve to be hit for moral consistency

• Prescriptivism does not agree that moral judgements are “true” or “known to be true”

• There are no moral truths

• There is something good about havng pre-defines pulic standards

• They aloow us to discus the relative merits of standard

• Methods of evaluating things on basis of a standard

• Allow us to build consensus as to the relative godness

• Alow us to understanddiferences and disagrements a to the merits of aspects of standards

• standards can be changed

• elp us to be consistent, impartial, and fair