PHIL 111 Lecture Notes - Formal Specification, Divine Command Theory, Applied Ethics
Document Summary
We will study three ethical theories and the answers they give to an important question. What comes to mind when you hear ethics : morality, virtue, codes of conduct, human rights. Involves the application of ethical principles to moral problems: theoretical ethics. Involves the study of the principles themselves: we will be engaged in theoretical ethics; our reflections will be distantly related to ordinary moral thought and practice. That is, suppose something is morally good- say, an action or a person. The three moral theories we will be studying give very different and incompatible answers to those questions. The idea expressed by ivan in the brothers karamazov: if you have no god, what crime is there to speak of, jean-paul sartre"s paraphrase of this passage. If god does not exist, then everything is permissible. The major claim of the first moral theory we will be studying. Many people think that ethics depends on god.