Ethics Debate Guide
From PhiloWiki
Contents |
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Foundations of ethics and morality
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics
- What are the conditions for moral agency?
- What concepts are required for us to assign praise or blame to an action or to a person?
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Traditional philosophical perspectives on morality
Ethics (from the Ancient Greek "ethikos", meaning "arising from habit"; also Morality), a major branch of philosophy, is the study of value, or morals and morality. It covers the analysis and employment of concepts such as right, wrong, good, evil, and responsibility. It is divided into three primary areas: meta-ethics (the study of the concept of ethics), normative ethics (the study of how to determine ethical values), and applied ethics (the study of the use of ethical values).
- Do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one?
- Methinks "no". But it is a heroic act when an individual volunteers to put the needs of the many before his own needs.
- What are the implications of the Golden Rule?
- Antonio Rossin, MD and Educator, has discussed the difficulties attaching to the Golden Rule.
- What are the implications of Kant's categorical imperative? (deontological ethics)
- What are the implications of [utilitarian] ethics, i.e. maximization of utility with the results justifying the means?
- Can we quantify ethical positions?
- Is it really necessary/useful/possible to quantify value-relevant positions? Or is it just confusing philosphy with pseudo science?
- What are the strengths and problems of pragmatic approaches to ehtics and morality?
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Meta-ethics: absolutism / relativism
- Are ethical claims capable of being true or false? What do they express? Emotions?...
- How do we know who is truly right and who is truly wrong?
- Is there absolute good and evil?
- What is the source of morality?
- Without absolute good and evil or without recourse to 'objective' or 'universal' standards of right and wrong, are we left with moral relativism? Or is there something else?
- Is it possible to build a successful political system based upon moral relativism? Or is such a nation-state doomed to failure?
- How do we decide between two systems which both insist that they have moral authority?
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Normative ethics
- questions of right / wrong, duties, obligations, social conventions...
- Are certain actions, values, ways of life intrinsically 'good'?
- What sorts of things are 'good'?
- What is it to lead a 'good' life?
- Is pleasure an ethical goal?
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Virtue ethics
- In what ways is the development of moral character important?
- What is virtue?
- How is the moral character cultivated?
- Can virtue be the basis of an institutional, societal, political framework?
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Social contract theory
Rousseau believes each person should 'put in common his person and his whole power under the supreme direction of the general will'.
- Hobbes argues that 'reason and fear' compel men to give rights to a central authority outside of the social contract.
- Locke argues that the government serves at the will of the people.
- What are the implications of John Rawls' 'veil of ignorance'.
- If the world were secular, would there be nothing more than the law of the jungle - might makes right?
- Why has a certain tradition(s) of political philosophy posited a state of nature?
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Origin of ethics
- Is there a genetic basis for ethics?
- Do ethics improve over the course of history?
- Does Neumann's game theory prove the inevitable rise of ethics systems?
- What are the implications of the Prisoners Dilemma (each go to jail for one year if quiet, if one confesses and the other doesn't then it is zero years and three years respectively, and if both confess then each gets two years).
- Is the Cold War justified by game theory?
- What does Bertrand Russell's game of chicken reveal about human nature?
