|
Consequentialist
In moral philosophy, consequentialism is a class of normative, teleological ethical theories that holds that the consequences of one's conduct are the ultimate basis for judgement about the rightness or wrongness of that conduct. Thus, from a consequentialist standpoint, a morally right act (including omission from acting) is one that will produce a good outcome. Consequentialism, along with eudaimonism, falls under the broader category of teleological ethics, a group of views which claim that the moral value of any act consists in its tendency to produce things of intrinsic value.Teleological Ethics " '' |
Utilitarianism
In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for the affected individuals. In other words, utilitarian ideas encourage actions that lead to the greatest good for the greatest number. Although different varieties of utilitarianism admit different characterizations, the basic idea that underpins them all is, in some sense, to maximize utility, which is often defined in terms of well-being or related concepts. For instance, Jeremy Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism, described ''utility'' as the capacity of actions or objects to produce benefits, such as pleasure, happiness, and good, or to prevent harm, such as pain and unhappiness, to those affected. Utilitarianism is a version of consequentialism, which states that the consequences of any action are the only standard of right and wrong. Unlike other forms of consequentialism, such as egoism and altruism, egalitarian util ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Moral Philosophy
Ethics is the philosophical study of moral phenomena. Also called moral philosophy, it investigates normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right. Its main branches include normative ethics, applied ethics, and metaethics. Normative ethics aims to find general principles that govern how people should act. Applied ethics examines concrete ethical problems in real-life situations, such as abortion, treatment of animals, and business practices. Metaethics explores the underlying assumptions and concepts of ethics. It asks whether there are objective moral facts, how moral knowledge is possible, and how moral judgments motivate people. Influential normative theories are consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics. According to consequentialists, an act is right if it leads to the best consequences. Deontologists focus on acts themselves, saying that they must adhere to duties, like telling the truth and keeping promises. Virtue et ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Modern Moral Philosophy
"Modern Moral Philosophy" is an article on moral philosophy by G. E. M. Anscombe, originally published in the journal ''Philosophy'', vol. 33, no. 124 (January 1958). The article has influenced the emergence of contemporary virtue ethics, especially through the work of Alasdair MacIntyre. Notably, the term " consequentialism" was first coined in this paper, although in a different sense from the one in which it is now used. Theses The beginning of the paper summarizes its main points:I will begin by stating three theses which I present in this paper. The first is that it is not profitable for us at present to do moral philosophy; that should be laid aside at any rate until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology, in which we are conspicuously lacking. The second is that the concepts of obligation, and duty—moral obligation and moral duty, that is to say—and of what is morally right and wrong, and of the moral sense of 'ought', ought to be jettisoned if this is psycholog ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Value Theory
Value theory, also called ''axiology'', studies the nature, sources, and types of Value (ethics and social sciences), values. It is a branch of philosophy and an interdisciplinary field closely associated with social sciences such as economics, sociology, anthropology, and psychology. Value is the worth of something, usually understood as covering both positive and negative degrees corresponding to the terms ''good'' and ''bad''. Values influence many human endeavors related to emotion, decision-making, and Action (philosophy), action. Value theorists distinguish various types of values, like the contrast between Instrumental and intrinsic value, intrinsic and instrumental value. An entity has Intrinsic value (ethics), intrinsic value if it is good in itself, independent of external factors. An entity has instrumental value if it is useful as a means leading to other good things. Other classifications focus on the type of benefit, including economic, moral, political, aesthetic, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Virtue Ethics
Virtue ethics (also aretaic ethics, from Greek []) is a philosophical approach that treats virtue and moral character, character as the primary subjects of ethics, in contrast to other ethical systems that put consequences of voluntary acts, principles or rules of conduct, or obedience to divine authority in the primary role. Virtue ethics is usually contrasted with two other major approaches in ethics, consequentialism and deontology, which make the goodness of outcomes of an action (consequentialism) and the concept of moral duty (deontology) central. While virtue ethics does not necessarily deny the importance to ethics of goodness of states of affairs or of moral duties, it emphasizes virtue, and sometimes other concepts, like , to an extent that other ethics theories do not. Key concepts Virtue and vice In virtue ethics, a virtue is a characteristic disposition to think, feel, and act well in some domain of life. In contrast, a vice is a characteristic disposition to th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Normative Ethics
Normative ethics is the study of ethics, ethical behaviour and is the branch of Philosophy, philosophical ethics that investigates questions regarding how one ought to act, in a Morality, moral sense. Normative ethics is distinct from metaethics in that normative ethics examines standards for the rightness and wrongness of actions, whereas meta-ethics studies the meaning of moral language and the metaphysics of moral facts. Likewise, normative ethics is distinct from applied ethics in that normative ethics is more concerned with "who ought one be" rather than the ethics of a specific issue (e.g. if, or when, abortion is acceptable). Normative ethics is also distinct from descriptive ethics, as descriptive ethics is an Empirical evidence, empirical investigation of people's moral beliefs. In this context normative ethics is sometimes called ''prescriptive'' (as opposed to ''descriptive'') ethics. However, on certain versions of the view of moral realism, moral facts are both descript ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Teleology
Teleology (from , and )Partridge, Eric. 1977''Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English'' London: Routledge, p. 4187. or finalityDubray, Charles. 2020 912Teleology. In ''The Catholic Encyclopedia'' 14. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved 3 May 2020. – via '' New Advent'', transcribed by D. J. Potter is a branch of causality giving the reason or an explanation for something as a function of its end, its purpose, or its goal, as opposed to as a function of its cause. James Wood, in his '' Nuttall Encyclopaedia'', explained the meaning of ''teleology'' as "the doctrine of final causes, particularly the argument for the being and character of God from the being and character of His works; that the end reveals His purpose from the beginning, the end being regarded as the thought of God at the beginning, or the universe viewed as the realisation of Him and His eternal purpose." A purpose that is imposed by human use, such as the purpose of a fork to hold ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Telos
Telos (; ) is a term used by philosopher Aristotle to refer to the final cause of a natural organ or entity, or of human art. ''Telos'' is the root of the modern term teleology, the study of purposiveness or of objects with a view to their aims, purposes, or intentions. Teleology is central in Aristotle's work on plant and animal biology, and human ethics, through his theory of the four causes. Aristotle's notion that everything has a ''telos'' also gave rise to epistemology. In Aristotle ''Telos'' has been consistently used in the writings of Aristotle, in which the term, on several occasions, denotes 'goal'. It is considered synonymous to ''teleute'' ('end'), particularly in Aristotle's discourse about the plot-structure in '' Poetics''. The philosopher went as far as to say that ''telos'' can encompass all forms of human activity. One can say, for instance, that the ''telos'' of warfare is victory, or the ''telos'' of business is the creation of wealth. Within this conceptua ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Contractualism
Contractualism is a term in philosophy which refers either to a family of political theories in the social contract tradition (when used in this sense, the term is an umbrella term for all social contract theories that include contractarianism), or to the ethical theory developed in recent years by T. M. Scanlon, especially in his book ''What We Owe to Each Other'' (published 1998).Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyContractualism/ref> Social contract theorists from the history of political thought include Hugo Grotius (1625), Thomas Hobbes (1651), Samuel Pufendorf (1673), John Locke (1689), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1762), and Immanuel Kant (1797); more recently, John Rawls John Bordley Rawls (; February 21, 1921 – November 24, 2002) was an American moral philosophy, moral, legal philosophy, legal and Political philosophy, political philosopher in the Modern liberalism in the United States, modern liberal tradit ... (1971), David Gauthier (1986) and Philip Pettit (1997). ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Logos
''Logos'' (, ; ) is a term used in Western philosophy, psychology and rhetoric, as well as religion (notably Logos (Christianity), Christianity); among its connotations is that of a rationality, rational form of discourse that relies on inductive reasoning, inductive and deductive reasoning, deductive reasoning. Aristotle first systematized the usage of the word, making it one of the three principles of rhetoric alongside ethos and pathos. This original use identifies the word closely to the structure and content of language or Text (literary theory), text. Both Plato and Aristotle used the term ''logos'' (along with ''rhema'') to refer to Sentence (language), sentences and Proposition (philosophy), propositions. Background is related to which is cognate with . The word derives from a Proto-Indo-European root, *leǵ-, which can have the meanings "I put in order, arrange, gather, choose, count, reckon, discern, say, speak". In modern usage, it typically connotes the verbs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Nozick
Robert Nozick (; November 16, 1938 – January 23, 2002) was an American philosopher. He held the Joseph Pellegrino Harvard University Professor, University Professorship at Harvard University,"Robert Nozick, 1938–2002". ''Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association'', November 2002: 76(2). and was president of the American Philosophical Association. He is best known for his book ''Anarchy, State, and Utopia'' (1974), a libertarianism, libertarian answer to John Rawls' ''A Theory of Justice'' (1971), in which Nozick proposes his minimal state#Philosophy, minimal state as the only justifiable form of government. His later work ''Philosophical Explanations'' (1981) advanced notable epistemological claims, namely his counterfactual theory of knowledge. It won Phi Beta Kappa society's Ralph ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Human Rights
Human rights are universally recognized Morality, moral principles or Social norm, norms that establish standards of human behavior and are often protected by both Municipal law, national and international laws. These rights are considered inherent and inalienable, meaning they belong to every individual simply by virtue of being human, regardless of characteristics like nationality, ethnicity, religion, or socio-economic status. They encompass a broad range of civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights, such as the right to life, freedom of expression, protection against enslavement, and right to education. The modern concept of human rights gained significant prominence after World War II, particularly in response to the atrocities of the Holocaust, leading to the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948. This document outlined a comprehensive framework of rights that countries are encouraged t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
