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6 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
- 3rd side (hint)
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Descriptive ("is" statements)...
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make claims about the way the world is, was, or will be. E.g., "The earth is flat." "I will arrive at 5:30 sharp." "Temperature is mean kinetic energy."
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These statements give us the raw facts. They describe the way the world actually is (or was, or will be.) That they are "truth functional" means that every one of these kinds of statements are either true or false.
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Normative ("ought" statements)...
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make claims about the way the world ought to be or have been. E.g., "I should get dressed before noon", "You should try to not laugh G.W. Bush speaks", "The state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation" (Trudeau).
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Ethics is concerned primarily with normative statements. It should be noted that descriptive statements are not irrelevant in this matter. The focus of ethics is how we want the world to be, not just how it is.
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Philosophical Ethics is...
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the reasoned attempt to resolve important practical dilemmas. Its conclusions are action guiding. That is, it tells us which actions are permissible.
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A practical dilemma causes you to be put in a situation or position of conflict where you can do either 'x' or 'y' but not both. The importance comes with questions of deep significance to our lives not ones of trivial nature. E.g., "Should we allow euthanasia?" "Under what circumstances are we permitted to lie." "Should we ban genetically modified crops?" etc,.
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A moral agent is...
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anything that can act for moral reasons.
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who can say, "I will do 'x' because it is the right thing to do.")
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A moral patient is...
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an entity toward whom or which we may have duties (if our proposed course of action impinges on them in some way).
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The challenge is in deciding this question: "who or what has moral standing or is a moral patient?" Traditional views that humans were the only moral patients have, in recent years, changed.
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Environmental ethics is...
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the investigation of the scope of our duties to certain non-human entities: non-human animals, plants, species, ecosystems, the biosphere.
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