Introductory Lecture 2070: Introduction to Ethics
Welcome, or welcome back
Ethics
Factual, Conceptual, Normative Beliefs / Claims
Three broad areas or branches of ethics:
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Normative Ethics
Theories of right and wrong; good and bad; rights and duties; virtue and vice, etc.
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Practical or Applied Ethics
Applied ethics involves determining how the moral principles we endorse are to be
applied to particular cases.
Related to moral psychology and moral education
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Meta-ethics
Meta-ethics takes normative theories as its subject. Here we are concerned with
determining what makes one moral theory better than another. Meta-ethics also examines
the nature of moral facts, moral beliefs and moral language.
Ways of Assessing Normative Theories
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Formal demands
Factual truth / plausibility
Psychological plausibility
Practical applicability
Reflective equilibrium: principles supported by the theory must conform to our most
settled moral judgments and shared intuitions (not dispositive, since sometimes whole
societies get it wrong)
Must be explanatory
The Importance of Philosophical Analysis of Moral Principles
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Clarification
Drawing general principles from specific judgments and vice versa
Identifying morally important differences
Principles: basic and derived
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The role of non-moral assumptions
Logical requirements
Decision procedures
Use of Counter-examples
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Bring out implicit scope restrictions
Hypothetical counter-examples not useful against derived principles if they change
the factual, non-ethical assumptions (denying the antecedent)
Hypothetical counter-examples are relevant for criticizing basic principles, which are
supposed to hold regardless of the factual conditions; their status as basic depends
upon their support not resting on contingent non-moral facts.
Fundamental Justification
Can our moral principles be justified? Can we give an ultimate justification of our moral
beliefs?
Some philosophers allege that such justification is theoretically or conceptually
impossible. That is where we start: with ethical relativism.
The reading load is very modest. It is expected that students do the readings for each
topic. Tutorial groups will make this part of the participation grade.
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