Ethics: Weeks 1-3 Vocabulary

• The midterm is in two parts: multiple choice, true/false, matching, short answer, and an essay question (one of five options, ~250 words).
• Must define vocabulary terms and provide relevant examples.
• Mr. Rogers, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr. are examples of moral exemplars.

Weeks 1-3 Vocabulary

• Metaethics: the study of the meaning and logical structure of moral beliefs.
• Normative ethics: the study of ethical action, investigates the set of questions that arise when considering how one ought to act, morally speaking.
• Naturalistic Fallacy: claims that what is natural is inherently good or right.
• Metaethical Relativism: the truth or falsity of moral judgments, or their justification, is relative to the traditions, convictions, or practices of a group of persons.
• Ethical Relativism: morality is relative to the norms of one's culture.
• Ethical theory: systematic effort to understand moral concepts and to justify moral principles and theories.
• Ethical principle: an idea about morality that people accept as true and use as a basis for ethical behavior.
• Ethical Egoism: the view that individuals ought to do what is in their own self-interest.
• Consequentialist Theories/Consequentialism: morality of an action is determined by its consequences.
• Deontological Theories: the view that morality should be focused on duties and adherence to rules rather than consequences.
• Altruism: the principle or practice of unselfish concern for or devotion to the welfare of others.
• Reciprocal Altruism: behavior whereby an organism acts in a manner that temporarily reduces its fitness while increasing another organism's fitness, with the expectation that the other organism will act in a similar manner at a later time.
• Nepotistic Altruism: preferential treatment of relatives in social interactions (ex: inheritance, job opportunities etc).
• Moral Isolationism: the view that we can never understand any culture except our own well enough to make judgments about it.

Weeks 4-6 Vocabulary

• Utilitarianism: maximizes overall happiness and well-being.
• Intrinsic good: something good in itself and not merely as a means to something else.
• Instrumental good: something considered as a means to some other good; i.e., an instrumental value.
• Higher Order Goods: the satisfaction of intellectual and cultural pleasures
• Principle of Utility (Greatest Happiness Principle): actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.
• Universal Rights: rights inherent to all human beings, regardless of any status.
• Autonomous: acting according to one's moral duty rather than to one's inclinations.
• Heteronomous: being under the control or domination of an outside authority or alien will.
• Categorical Imperative #1, #2: unconditional moral obligation which is binding in all circumstances and is not dependent on a person's inclination or purpose.
• Moral Duties: what one is required to do
• The Formula of Universalizability: act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.
• Perfect duties: duties of justice; they have correlative rights.
• Imperfect duties: duties of virtue; they do not create rights.
• The Formula of Humanity: act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means.
• Categorical imperative: a command of reason that applies in all situations, regardless of a person's wants or desires.
• Virtue: behavior showing high moral standards.
• Golden Mean: the desirable middle between two extremes, one of excess and the other of deficiency.
• Eudaimonia: a life well lived; human flourishing.
• Moral exemplars: people who have cultivated virtues to a high degree, so their lives and actions serve as examples.
• Phronesis: practical wisdom, requiring a judgment that incorporates both facts and values.
• Telos: ultimate objective, aim or purpose.
• Ren: the responsibility to treat others with respect, benevolence, and reciprocity.
• Li: ritual norms and rules of social etiquette that people were supposed to follow in daily life.
• Five Cardinal Relationships: ruler and subject, parent and child, husband and wife, elder sibling and younger sibling, and friend and friend.

Week 7 Vocabulary

• Natural Rights: universal rights not contingent on laws, customs, or beliefs.
• Natural Law/Natural Law Theory: a body of unchanging moral principles regarded as a basis for all human conduct.
• Human Law: law promulgated by human authority.

Six Philosophers

• Bentham:
• Mill:
• Aristotle:
• Confucius:
• Kant:
• Aquinas:

Ethical Theories

• Ethical Relativism:
• Metaethical Relativism:
• Ethical Egoism:
• Utilitarianism:
• Virtue theory (Aristotle & Confucius):
• Altruism:
• Kantian Deontology:
• Natural Law Theory:
• Must identify ethical principles, strengths, weaknesses, and the prioritization of intention, consequence, action, or person.
• Essay questions will require knowledge of each theory's view on human nature and its understanding of the relationship between emotions, desires, rationality, and morality.