ethics

This note last modified October 23, 2022

Ethics (more specifically, normative ethics) is the study of whether punching someone is good or bad. Value theory is the study of what it means to live a good life. Metaethics is the study of what “good” even means.

Why study ethics?

Extremely broadly speaking, ethics is split into two categories: “There are certain actions you should never take, like murder” (deontology) vs “Anything is ok as long as it leads to good outcomes” (consequentialism)

Often, ethics means different things to different people

Some other notes:

Most of my notes on ethics come from PHIL 306 (the ethics course I took at Rice) and The Fundamentals of Ethics, by Russ Shafer Landau

#moral decisions vs ethical reflection
- Churchill discusses a separation between “morals”, a decision made using intuitionism, vs “#ethics”, a system used to reflect on those beliefs.
#ethics education
- #ethics #education

we aren't done with ethical progress
- Tag: #ethics
we are all immoral
- Tag: #ethics, nihilism
philosophy - books
- For someone with large swaths of his website dedicated to philosophy, I haven’t read too many books on it. For #ethics I’m currently reading the fantastic book “The Fundamentals of Ethics” by Russ Shafer Landau. I also highly recommend The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt.
philosophy
- #ethics
morality vs ethics
- morality, #ethics,
expressivism
- An #ethical theory that claims that counters moral nihilism by claiming that moral claims are not attempting to be true, but rather they are expressing feelings about the way the world should work, giving orders and commands, and expressing our commitments.
ethics of practice
- “What ought we do” is a central question of #ethics, but what about the related question, “what do we do?”
ethical thinking
- Schrier claims that ethical thinking is the thought process of determining how to live a good ethical life, as opposed to #ethics which is codified.
ethical dynamics
- The intersection of hard social problems and #ethics
definitions of ethics
- multidefinitions, #ethics
deconstruction
- What is the #ethical framework by which one should live? Well it seems obvious that there are some things that are simply morally wrong such as murder… But on further examination that is flawed. Surely murder is ok if it saves a thousand people! What if we abstract a bit and go with this: do the most good for as many humans as possible. It’s better, it allows us to murder one to save a thousand, but it still leaves questions. What is good? Why humans? Looking deeper we find that “good” is such an ill defined term and humans may not necessarily be more deserving. (bioethics) If you keep thinking about what the proper ethical framework is, you’ll find that ethics as a concept breaks down, nothing makes sense, and nothing you do is ever moral. (Yes that escalated quickly, but I’m trying to keep this short)
Copenhagen Ethics
- Tag: #ethics