Fundamentals Of Ethics By Russ Shafer-Landeau: Chapter Analysis

Mackie’s Arguments Against Ethical Objectivism According to the book The Fundamentals of Ethics, it is stated that ethical objectivism “is the view that moral standards are objectively correct and that some moral claims are objectively true” (Shafer-Landau, p. 294). It is the belief that each individual or person has their own set of moral principles. J.L Mackie explains two arguments against ethical objectivism, which include the argument from relativity and the argument from queerness. In addition he explains and defends his error theory.

There are various forms of moral realism that maintain different things, all agreeing and disagreeing upon different things. However, one generally agreed feature is that moral claims assert facts, if these facts are true, then the moral claim is also true, in other words there are mind-independent facts about right and wrong. In light of brevity, this is the feature I will be referring to when speaking of moral realism. Throughout my essay I shall explain the negative implications of Streets argument on Moral realist theory and shall outline why it may be the case that realists are not necessarily committed to accepting the critiques. I aim to reach the conclusion that Streets criticism of moral realism does not stand and so despite the proposed Darwinian Dilemma Moral realism is still plausible, but one would be required to explore various other criticisms to reach a definite conclusion regarding the plausibility of Moral Realism.

Indeed, Mackie recognizes that moral judgments exist as a phenomenon even if their truth value is false. In rejecting the objectification of morals, instead he argues that our understanding of morality would be "simpler and more comprehensible[...] if we could replace the moral quality with some sort of subjective response" (Mackie, 556). In place of ascribing non-natural attributes to actions and things in our lives, such as the fungus ascribed to be foul previously mentioned, we can instead recognize our desire to ascribe foulness is an expression of our attitudes. In the same way, instead of ascribing wrongness or rightness to a situation, our moral values indicate to us our attitudes, rather than an objective truth. Mackie posits that "our central and basic moral judgements represent social demands" in addition to socialized rules from the communities we grow up within (Mackie, 557).

Mackie believes that there are no objective moral values, and to support his stand, he famously puts forth two arguments. The first argument is the Argument from Relativity or Disagreement, and the second is the Argument from Queerness. The focus of this essay will be on Mackie’s argument from queerness, and I seek to prove that his argument does not succeed in showing that there are no objective values. I will first be summarizing Mackie’s argument from queerness. Subsequently, I will proceed to form an argument on the first part of Mackie’s argument from queerness, the metaphysical component.

Thus this moral theory is a bit difficult to implement in South Africa with its diversity and history. I propose that the theory is to be revised to incorporate other aspects that are relevant in the post- South African

What makes right actions right? There are many theories out there, exploring what moral principle we should live by. For a while, the idea was that our one principle of moral rightness must be two things: absolute, in that the moral status it attributes to an action is conclusive, un-revisable; and fundamental, in that its justification does not depend on any more general or more basic moral principle. But in David Ross’s revolutionary new view, Ethical Pluralism, he contends that there are at least two, and likely more, principles of rightness by which we should live our lives. One might think that this is absurd, that having multiple moral principles could surely never work, as they would often conflict with each other and create frequent

= == Is one of these moral perspectives more correct than another? World history shows endless room for debate. If I have to provide an answer in, perhaps, an absolutist fashion, I would say that moral relativism is more correct in its views of morality: for it doesn’t treat morals as absolute, given, ‘natural’ principles of right and wrong, beyond subject to change.

In Section 1, I sketch the moral regress argument for moral skepticism. In Sections 2-3, I present the views of how we come to possess our moral knowledge which are relevant for my discussion. I motivate and describe both McGrath’s perceptual account and the compelling inferentialist view which McGrath targets with her dilemma: moral bridge inferentialism. In Section 4, I give McGrath’s dilemma against moral bridge inferentialism and respond to both horns of the dilemma. Finally, I conclude my discussion with considering the status of McGrath’s dilemma in light of this paper.

Human beings come from all types of societies throughout the World. With experiencing a different upbringing, people across cultures and nations tend to have contrasting views when it comes to morality. James Rachel’s is a philosopher who wrote an article on Ethical relativism and defined the term as, “The doctrine that there are no absolute truths in ethics and that what is morally right or wrong varies from person to person or from society to society” (Rachels, 2). Ethical relativism deals with three main concerns when evaluating a certain situation, the individual, the society in which they live in, and the historical time period. However, shouldn’t the whole general idea about ethics be a critical attempt towards finding reasonable, similar

Dreier, in his article “Moral Relativism and Moral Nihilism,” examines a similar argument to the one provided by Shafer-Landau, and additionally rests on the internalist premise. Shafer-Landau’s objection to this premise utilizes the amoralist, an individual who makes sincere moral judgments, but is unmoved by them (336-337). He admits that the amoralist is an unusual individual, but still plausible. Dreier is able to evade this counter argument altogether through subscribing to a weaker form of internalism. He proposes the example of an isolated culture of English-speaking individuals with an entirely different vocabulary of moral language (257).

In this paper, I will evaluate and summarize the different major moral theories including my own approach to my moral beliefs. The words moral and ethics are sometimes substituted for each other, and both do relate to good or bad, right or wrong. However, ethics refers to a set of rules that is provided to an individual by an outside source, and further, ethics is the philosophical study of morality. Whereas, morals are the beliefs that an individual holds regarding good or bad, right or wrong.

Moral relativism is an umbrella term that carries both subjectivism and conventionalism. Subjectivism is the ability to kill a man and it be accepted because of individual moral beliefs that it is okay to do so, as to conventionalism, you would be incarcerated for most or all of your life due to the fact that society sees murder as wrong. Conventionalism takes the individuals spread beliefs onto a society level through media, networking, or culture. It creates a safety net for knowing right from wrong.

Ethical Theory of Objectivism When attempting to be objective towards a situation one must be as impartial as possible, and not allow one’s own thoughts or feelings to influence his/her conclusions that he/she may draw from facts. Another possible way to phrase this would be that to be objective one must exercise rationality in his/her decision-making process. This idea is the ground work upon which Rand laid her ethical theory of Objectivism. Objectivism is closely tied to modern American economics and politics.

Today, we live in a world that has never been historically so internationally connected and profoundly directed toward the steadfast belief that a better future for all nations is intrinsically related to a better awareness of the other. Being internationally connected is, by will or by force, an aspect that has profoundly changed the societies at a degree that is obviously different from a country to another. Yet, we can talk to more people than all our ancestors reunited did thanks to tools like social networks or telecommunication technology. We have the ability to know each other better by communicating, talking and delivering our thoughts without having an iron wall separating us from the so called strangers or foreigners we could not

Two dominant schools of thought exist in ethical objectivism. One sides with deontological theories, this is the Kant spectrum, where we see that what determines the right or wrongness of an act is the act itself. The second school basis itself on consequential theories, claiming that the determinate on whether an act is right or wrong are its consequences. These ideas seem as pleasing as relativism’s toleration, whereby every act is either right or wrong, and it is determinable by the standard it supposes. However, resembling relativism, flaws abound.