Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
In metaphilosophy and ethics, metaethics is the study of the nature, scope, ground, and meaning of moral judgment, ethical belief, or values.It is one of the three branches of ethics generally studied by philosophers, the others being normative ethics (questions of how one ought to be and act) and applied ethics (practical questions of right behavior in given, usually contentious, situations).
Metaethical constructivism holds that correctness of moral judgments, principles and values is determined by being the result of a suitable constructivist procedure. In other words, normative values are a construction of human practical reason .
Moral skepticism (or moral scepticism in British English) is a class of meta-ethical theories all members of which entail that no one has any moral knowledge. Many moral skeptics also make the stronger, modal claim that moral knowledge is impossible.
In meta-ethics, expressivism is a theory about the meaning of moral language.According to expressivism [citation needed], sentences that employ moral terms – for example, "It is wrong to torture an innocent human being" – are not descriptive or fact-stating; moral terms such as "wrong", "good", or "just" do not refer to real, in-the-world properties.
Ethical naturalism has been criticized most prominently [according to whom?] by ethical non-naturalist G. E. Moore, who formulated the open-question argument.Garner and Rosen say that a common definition of "natural property" is one "which can be discovered by sense observation or experience, experiment, or through any of the available means of science."
Ideal observer theory is the meta-ethical view which claims that ethical sentences express truth-apt propositions about the attitudes of a hypothetical ideal observer. In other words, ideal observer theory states that ethical judgments should be interpreted as statements about the reactions that a neutral and fully informed observer would have ...
theory. For example, David M. Cutler and colleagues (2003) investigate whether or not the increase in caloric intake over time could be seen as simply a rational response to the lowered prices of food, in particular packaged snack foods, which are tempting to consume because they are convenient and require little time to prepare.
Although divine command theory is considered by some to be a form of ethical subjectivism, [27] defenders of the perspective that divine command theory is not a form of ethical subjectivism say this is based on a misunderstanding: that divine command proponents claim that moral propositions are about what attitudes God holds, but this ...