Morality

Morality

 What is morality, or ethics? It is a code of values to guide man’s choices and actions—the choices and actions that determine the purpose and the course of his life. Ethics, as a science, deals with discovering and defining such a code.

 

Moral Relativism - What's It All About?
Moral relativism is the view that ethical standards, morality, and positions of right or wrong are culturally based and therefore subject to a person's individual choice. We can all decide what is right for ourselves. You decide what's right for you, and I'll decide what's right for me. Moral relativism says, "It's true for me, if I believe it

Non cognitivism

Noncognitivism is the view that moral truths are not the kind of truths that can be known. There are a number of types of noncognitivist theory, each of which provides a slightly different analysis of moral statements. What they have in common is that each of their analyses renders moral statements as neither true nor false. In order to be known, though, a statement must be true. If then, as the noncognitivist holds, no moral statements has a truth-value, then moral truths cannot be known.

Cognitivism

Cognitivists hold that moral statements are descriptive, they attribute real moral properties to people or actions. There are two types of cognitivist: naturalists and non-naturalists.

Naturalists hold that moral properties are natural properties. This means that it is possible to give a complete analysis of morality in non-moral terms, to reduce the moral to the non-moral.

Non-naturalists hold that moral properties are not natural properties, but rather are a unique kind of property that cannot be explained in any other terms. Just as Cartesian dualists hold that there are two fundamentally different kinds of entity in the world, physical and mental, and that neither can be explained in terms of the other, so the ethical non-naturalist holds that there are two fundamentally different kinds of property in the world, non-moral and moral, and that morality cannot be reduced to non-moral terms.

Consequentialism

 Is the class of normative ethical theories holding that the consequences of one's conduct are the ultimate basis for any judgment about the rightness of that conduct. Thus, from a consequentialist standpoint, a morally right act (or omission) is one that will produce a good outcome, or consequence

utilitarianism

Definition

An ethical philosophy in which the happiness of the greatest number of people in the society is considered the greatest good. According to this philosophy, an action is morally right if its consequences lead to happiness (absence of pain), and wrong if it ends in unhappiness (pain).

Since the link between actions and their happy or unhappy outcomes depends on the circumstances, no moral principle is absolute or necessary in itself under utilitarianism.