Ethics and Value Judgments Quiz

Study Notes

Ethics involves determining the foundations of values critical to human life.
Value judgments extend beyond ethics and can include aesthetic, technical, and moral valuations.

Aesthetic Valuations: Concern perceptions of beauty and taste, affecting choices like clothing, but do not equate to moral values.
Technical Valuations: Relate to appropriate methods or techniques for performing tasks, not necessarily tied to ethical implications.
Moral Valuations: Concern human actions that significantly impact well-being, encompassing issues like war, poverty, and human rights.

Normative Ethics: Focus on formulating principles and standards to guide human conduct. It includes:
- General Normative Ethics: Explores fundamental moral principles and ethical theories like utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics.
- Applied Ethics: Utilizes principles from general normative ethics to address specific moral issues in fields such as medicine and nursing.
Non-Normative Ethics: Describes and analyzes actions and practices without moral judgment. It divides into:
- Descriptive Ethics: Examines and reports on moral behaviors and beliefs, such as Kohlberg’s stages of moral development.
- Metaethics: Analyzes ethical language and moral reasoning, questioning concepts like 'good', 'bad', or 'ought'.

Clothing choices can reflect cultural values; for instance, strict dress codes enforced in Afghanistan under Taliban rule carry severe penalties but stem from cultural and religious beliefs rather than universal ethical standards.