Passages
Even if the utilitarian decision procedure arrives at the correct answer, it arrives at that answer in the wrong way
Every acceptable moral theory needs to be able to make sense of the value of integrity
Who is Williams?
Moral claims are true/false relative to a culture.
What is relativism?
Everything that exists is physical.
What is physicalism?
Murder is wrong because it takes away a person’s FLO
We (people) have a future of value (a future where a person has values)
Who is Marquis?
Idea that there’s 1 good type of token.
Idea that there’s more than 1 good type of token.
(MULTIPLE ANSWERS)
What is value monism?
What is value pluralism?
Believes we have a basic moral obligation to provide assistance to victims of famine to the point of marginal utility.
Who is Singer?
Moral claims have a truth value separate from what people believe.
What is objectivism?
The study of existence.
What is metaphysics?
____ believe you can list physical features to describe something’s whole being
If you can’t list physical properties of something, then it doesn’t exist…meaning goodness doesn’t exist
____ says “but what makes those physical properties good?”
Which helps explain his value realism
(MULTIPLE ANSWERS)
Who is Ayer?
Who is Moore?
Theory of right action.
What is utilitarianism?
Every culture must have some normality/abnormality
Thinks the “starting point”-> there is no objective basis, it's a preference for one type of behavior over another type of behavior
good/bad & normal/abnormal - culturally relative distinction with no objective basis of reality
Who is Benedict?
The commitment a person has to their life projects.
What is integrity?
Our evaluation of whether something is right or wrong we should think of an actions’ consequences.
What is consequentialism?
We make a decision and do so by following this procedure:
1. Determine the possible courses of action that are available in the situation (survey options) (figure out what you need to do)
2. Determine what will result from each of those actions in terms of pleasure and pain (looking at consequences and negations of them)
3. Sum up the values of each state of affairs
4. Choose to do the action that will result in the state of affairs with the greatest value
Who is Mill?
The view that what's good is pleasure and prevention of pain and suffering.
What is hedonism?
Claims that in the trolley driver scenario we’re gonna violate negative duties, either 5 or 1 depending on which track we choose. However, in the bystander scenario we actively violate negative duties if we pull the lever, but if we don’t pull it we can only violate positive duties.
Who is Thomson?
No exceptions to moral rules at all.
What is absolutism?
The view that everyone in all that they do is acting selfishly.
What is psychological egoism?
Criticisms of psychological egoism:
We make a decision and do so by following this procedure:
Do actions as a means to an end & obligation
Who is Rachels?
The view that morality is somehow dependent upon God, and that moral obligation consists in obedience to God’s commands.
What is the divine command theory?
A right to be alive does not include a right to be given even the bare minimum of what is needed to remain alive.
There are no obligations we have towards one person in particular in comparison unless you voluntarily take it on (implicit responsibility)
Who is Thomson?
Moral claims don’t have a truth value and moral language expresses states of the speaker.
What is subjectivism?
View that goodness is unnatural property.
What is value realism?
"Is the holy loved by the gods because it is holy? Or is it holy because it is loved by the gods?"
gods love those things because either morality is arbitrary or it has nothing to do with the will of the gods.
Who is Plato?
For synthetic proposition to have semantic content (meaningful claim) it has to be empirically verifiable (linguistic meaning).
What is logical positivism?