PHLB09H3 Midterm: PHLB09 Midterm Study Guide
Document Summary
Biomedical ethics - concerned with how we ought to act, but it is focused on the narrow arena of healthcare delivery, medical research, and public health. Descriptive morality - the code of conduct that people, in fact, believe in (or endorse) Tells us what people or society believe they should do. The patterns of behaviour pertaining to morality that we would describe people as having. The moral rules that people actually follow. Normative ethics/morality - what one ought to do. Moral requirements (in the normative sense) are objective. Moral requirements do not change over time, across persons, or places. Cultural relativism - the ethical/moral norms for a given society are determined by that society"s beliefs about morality/ethics. P1: cultures vary in their moral beliefs. P2: variation in belief about x implies relativism about x. If a society has a given belief about a moral obligation, then the members of the society have the obligation.
