MCD BIO 60 Lecture Notes - Lecture 99: Categorical Imperative, Blood Transfusion, Female Genital Mutilation
1 Sep 2016
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Philosophy: science of what can"t be observed through the senses; method of getting to truths beyond sense data: metaphysics, epistemology: how do you know something, ethics: how we should treat ourselves and others; used interchangeably w/ morality. Normative ethics: theory of what makes something right or wrong. Applied ethics: specific to a moral problem. The truth/falsehood of moral claims is dependent on/relative to one"s culture. There is no universal moral standard: objections: Viking objection: allowing obviously morally incorrect actions to be morally required (example of vikings being required to conquer those around them when those others are weak) Moral disagreement problem: cultures cannot disagree because all cultures are morally right. Moral progress objection: when cultural norms change, we cannot gauge whether they changed for better or for worse because there is no standard to compare the change to (we cannot compare within one culture) Cultural boundary problem: people belong to many different cultures, but different cultures may have contradicting views.
