1. KEY
    1. = Founding figure
      1. = Adversary or Objection to the view above.
    2. = Requires significant metaphysical justification (ie, this theory presumes a reality that is controversial and thus needs further argument)
      1. Part of course readings
    3. = Major school or theory
  2. ADDITIONAL CATEGORIES USED TO QUALIFY ONE'S ETHICAL THEORY OR MODEL
    1. UNIVERSALISM = X theory holds for all time, all places, all moral agents
      1. PARTICULARISM - pluralists who reject the idea of universal ethical principles in moral reasoning. instead moral reasoning is no different than other kinds of reasoning and each situation calls for its own kind of reasoning. Universal moral theories or principles are at best superfluous crutches and at worst a hindrance and distraction from ascertaining what is right or wrong in a given situation.
    2. MONISM - there is just one single genuine ethical model or theory or standard of value.
      1. PLURALISM - there are two or more incommensurable but genuine scales of value. Prioritizing these is a non-cognitive or subjective process (and thus is based on one's "moral intuition"). No appeal to universal rationality is possible here to adjudicate.
    3. ABSOLUTISM - there is one moral principle or theory which can never be overridden. "Right no matter what."
      1. SUPEREROGATION: act of going "above and beyond" - acting in a morally commendable way beyond what is morally required.
    4. EXTERNALISM: an agent may be fully aware of the moral requirements upon him and yet see no reaosn to fulfil those requreiments. The agent requires something else, something beyond the "moral requirements" to motivate one to act. Humean belief-desire theory: desires give the agent the motivation to act... beliefs give the direction for the action. need both.
      1. INTERNALISM: there is a direct connection between moral views and reasons for action. A moral opinion is of itself sufficient to provide a reason to act.
  3. DESCRIPTIVE ETHICS
  4. APPLIED ETHICS
  5. Meta-Ethics: COGNITIVISM - Ethical statements are indeed true or false.
    1. MORAL RELATIVISM (ANTI-REALISM)
      1. CULTURAL / SOCIAL RELATIVISM - CONVENTIONALISM: Ethics are relative to culture; moral statements are made true or false by reference to a given culture X.
        1. ABRAHAMIC ETHICS
          1. JEWISH ETHICS
          2. CHRISTIAN ETHICS
          3. ISLAMIC ETHICS
        2. EASTERN ETHICS
          1. CLASSICAL CHINESE ETHICS
          2. BUDDHIST ETHICS
          3. INDIAN ETHICS
        3. ANCIENT MEDITERRANEAN ETHICS
        4. Ruth Benedict
        5. David Hume (1/2?)
        6. Gilbert Harman
        7. Herodotus
      2. ETHICAL INDIVIDUAL SUBJECTIVISM: moral statements are made true or false by reference to a given individual X's attitudes or feelings.
        1. NON-UNIVERSAL EGOISM: AGENT-CENTERED / SUBJECTIVE ("Egoism Proper") What makes something "ethical" or "good" is whatever the agent decides is in their own self-interest. No obligation for others to also be egoists.
          1. HEDONISM = Preference or individually valuing X = "The Good" = "My Pleasure". Nothing else in life is good in-itself. Only one's own pleasure as a "Quality" or "States of Affairs" (SOE)
          2. Sensualists: pleasure = the ONLY thing that counts as pleasure is direct physical / pleasurable sensations which are a good in-itself (so the only pleasure that exists, exists at "level 1")
          3. Aristippus/ Cyrenaics (4th C BCE)
          4. Satisfactionists: pleasure = the satisfaction/enjoyment of something and this is not necessarily a "pleasurable sensation" or sensual pleasure. So here, multiple levels are possible.
          5. Epicureanism (4th C BCE)
          6. Epicurus
          7. Lucretius
          8. Friedrich Nietzsche (?) - Will to Power
          9. NON-HEDONISM? - Individual valuing where what the individual values, what is in their own self-interest, is not pleasurable for that individual (it appears that this position is not argued for or defended by egoists). So not much here.
        2. AGENT-CENTERED, SUBJECTIVE, UNIVERSAL - what is subjectively decided by an INDIVIDUAL person ought to be universalized. "If true for me then true for you."
          1. IDEAL OBSERVER THEORY - what is ethical is based on attitudes of a hypothetical IDEAL observer and thus is UNIVERSALIST
          2. ALTRUISM - one ought to "live for others" - to sacrifice self-interest for the benefit of others
          3. ASCETICISM - one ought to abstain from egoistic pleasures in order to achieve a spiritual goal
          4. EGOISM
          5. INDIVIDUAL EGOISM FOR ME BUT NOT YOU - everyone else ought to do what is in my own self-interest.
          6. Very easy to rebut as it clearly violates nearly everyone's moral intuitions. Individual egoism, applied universally, is tantamount to dictatorship or tyranny by one ruler.
          7. Thrasymachus (Plato's Republic)
          8. UNIVERSAL EGOISM: EVERYONE, all people, have a moral obligation to be selfish. You are ethically in the wrong if you are not self-centered.
          9. POL: Right-Libertarianism and Individualist Anarchism
          10. Ayn Rand
          11. CONTRACTUALISM (Social Contract Theory)
          12. Thomas Hobbes
    2. MORAL REALISM - SUBSTANTIVE (OBJECTIVISM) - Ethical claims are made true or false by how they line up against true reality.
      1. REDUCTIVE ETHICAL NATURALISM - moral properties are reducible to non-ethical OBSERVABLE properties such as "facts of nature" evolution, etc.
        1. EVOLUTIONARY ETHICS
          1. SMALL-SCALE SOCIETIES
          2. Ethics in small-scale societies - George Silberbauer
          3. The origin of ethics - Mary Midgley
          4. Coming Home to the Pleistocene - human developmental stages in small-scale societies
          5. SOCIOBIOLOGY
          6. Game Theory --> Evolutionary Fitness Landscape
          7. Steven Pinker (Cog. Psych)
          8. Howard Kahane
          9. Sam Harris
          10. GE Moore's Open Question Argument -
          11. Since one can always ask the question, "is this natural or non-moral "fact" that grounds goodness itself "good"? Is this fact a good thing to have? Since we can ask this question, value claims are not reducible to non-moral facts.
          12. R.M. Hare
        2. VIRTUE ETHICS / Teleological, Non-Consequentialist - (NEO-ARISTOTELIAN NATURALISM - SEP) what sort of character is produced?
          1. Aristotle
          2. Confucius
          3. Rosalind Hursthouse
          4. Martha Nussbaum
          5. Judith Jarvis Thomson
          6. Philippa Foot
          7. Alisdair MacIntyre
          8. G.E.M. Anscombe
          9. Bernard Mayo
          10. William Frankena
        3. MORAL FUNCTIONALISM (Frank Jackson)
        4. Peter Railton
        5. Rejects Fact-Value Distinction
      2. NON-REDUCTIVE ETHICAL NATURALISM - GOODNESS AS A NATURAL THING - CORNELL REALISM - moral facts are natural and yet not reducible to non-moral facts; goodness as a cluster of natural properties?
        1. Richard Boyd
        2. J.L. Mackie's Queerness Argument
        3. Nicholas Sturgeon
      3. ETHICAL NON-NATURALISM - there are IRREDUCIBLE mind-independent moral properties (NOT reducible to anything else, ie to non-ethical properties).
        1. SPIRITUAL OR SACRED MORAL OBJECTS
          1. Virtue objects (forms)
          2. Plato
          3. Vedanta Hinduism? (Brahman/Atman)
          4. Indigenous Belief Systems - "Force", "spiritual energy", etc
        2. MORAL INTUITIONISM
          1. GE Moore
          2. W.D. Ross (?)
      4. DIVINE COMMAND THEORY / DIVINE NATURALISM - the truth of a moral statement is decided by God's subjective views; UNIVERSALIST in that God's commands are "universal" - God's commands apply EVERYWHERE and ALWAYS.
        1. ABRAHAMIC Religions: Christianity, Judaism, Islam
          1. VOLUNTARISM - following the "WILL" of God makes X an ethically right action.
          2. Plato (Euthyphro)
          3. INTELLECTUALISM - understanding God's reasoning (God's MIND) makes X ethically right.
          4. St. Thomas Aquinas (Intellectualism, Natural Law), Stephen Layman
          5. Bertrand Russell, James Rachels, Peter Byrne
          6. John Finnis
    3. MORAL REALISM - PROCEDURAL - Ethical claims are made true or false by virtue of the correct rule, mental process, or emotional process of feeling and imagination.
      1. HUMAN NATURE AS AUTONOMOUS "REASONING CAPACITIES" (Non-Consequentialist) - Human nature as reflective, self-conscious) - ethical statements are made true or false if they have a given internal structure or form; MORAL FACT INTERNALISM - the ethical "process", ie, "reasoning" or "motivations" are all that matter.
        1. EXISTENTIALISM
          1. Jean Paul Sartre
        2. DEONTOLOGY - DUTY / Non-Teleological - only the Internal Features matter
          1. Immanuel Kant
          2. Thomas Nagel
          3. John Rawls
          4. Louis Pojman
          5. Christine Korsgaard
          6. Moral "Reason" = reflective success. "Yes, you're right!" ok!
          7. Reflective structure is a source of self-consciousness because it forces us to have a conception of ourselves, a PRACTICAL IDENTITY - citizen, family member, egoist, wanton. (no metaphysical self here though); not just the strongest desire wins but instead a "something that is you" that chooses - this is our actual inner experience.
          8. Agent Option #1 - one is a citizen in the Kingdom of Ends
          9. Option #2 - member of a family or ethnic group or a nation
          10. Option #3 - steward of her own interests, an egoist
          11. Option #4 - slave of her passions: a wanton
          12. LOWER ANIMALS: its perceptions are its beliefs; its desires are its will. It is not conscious of its activities of mind. It cannot think about its perceptions and desires.
          13. AUTONOMY as source of obligation
          14. the acting self concedes to the thinking self its right to govern (self-voluntarism)
          15. What makes the governing or reasoning "good" is the form it takes -its internal strucutre... a good maxim is an intrinsically normative entitity... the test is whether we can endorse it as having a good form, functional arrangment.
          16. REFLECTIVE ENDORSEMENT - MORALITY IS GROUNDED IN HUMAN NATURE in which we project our moral sentiments and dispositions as obligations and values; Anti-Realism; Human-nature-based; Sentiments (Korsgaard) - are our moral feelings rationally justified?
          17. Robert Nozick
          18. T.M. Scanlon - Contractualism
          19. W.D. Ross (Pluralist too)
        3. Thomas Aquinas: Natural Law
        4. Reflective structure is a source of self-consciousness because it forces us to have a conception of ourselves, a PRACTICAL IDENTITY - citizen, family member, egoist, wanton. (no metaphysical self here though); not just the strongest desire wins but instead a "something that is you" that chooses - this is our actual inner experience.
      2. MORAL SENTIMENTS & MORAL SENSE / MORAL SYMPATHY - DAVID HUME (18th century)
        1. Moral senses are based in human nature but some are also based on convention (nurture)
        2. Hume's response to the "Sensible Knave Problem": if acting "badly"/selfishly won't harm society at all then why not do it? (ie, free rider problem).
          1. Contagion theory: human nature is such that even the knave is affected by the fact that others would disapprove; others' disapproval causes self-dislike within the sensible knave and thus the knave is "internally penalized" for acting badly.
          2. Honest people cherish the richly pleasant feelings of integrity. So in a deep sense, it is "selfish" to be unselfish - to be good and honest because not being selfish brings more pleasure.
        3. REFLEXIVITY TEST OF MORAL SENSE: when moral sense reflects on itself, it finds support and affirmation of itself; of moral sense. But when we try to think or reason or conceptually understand ethics, we cannot find a logical basis or ground for morality. FEELING > REASON
          1. TELEOLOGICAL - to be virtuous is to realize our true nature, to be the best version of what we are.
          2. PRACTICE VIRTUES - It is in our interest to be people who practice virtue for its own sake and to be a certain kind of person (versus trying to perform specific "ethical" actions)
        4. SYMPATHY: When we view others from POV of the other & their relations, not from our POV. So how is our friend experienced by their other friends? We then reflect on this: "we are sympathetically pleased or pained by good or bad effects of her character on those with whom she usually associates... her `narrow circle.'" (Korsgaard, p. 54)
      3. CARE ETHICS
      4. CONSEQUENTIALISM - UTILITARIANISM
        1. Negative-Consequentialism - "do no harm" (Google) - minimize bad consequences but no need to promote good consequences
        2. Agent-Neutral Consequentialism / Teleological - ONLY the consequences matter to the normative value.
          1. CLASSIC UTILITARIANISM (hedonistic, universal, agent-neutral)
          2. Jeremy Bentham (19th C) - Hedonistic Utilitarianism
          3. Qualitative . Eudaimonistic Utilitarianism
          4. J.S. Mill
          5. Preference Utilitarianism
          6. Informed Preference Utilitarianism
          7. Henry Sidgwick (19th C)- "Gov't House"
          8. Rule Utilitarianism
          9. John Hospers
          10. Brad Hooker
          11. Critics
          12. Sterling Harwood
          13. Bernard Williams
          14. Robert Nozick
      5. The mind is self-conscious and thus essentially reflective. The structure of our minds makes thoughtfulness possible.
    4. SKEPTICISMS
      1. FEMINISM
      2. ENIVIRONMENTALISM
      3. POSTMODERNISM
        1. Nietzsche
      4. ANALYTIC TRADITION
        1. ERROR THEORY - all ethical statements are false (thus moral nihilism and skepticism are entailed)
          1. JL Mackie
        2. MORAL NIHILISM - nothing is morally preferable to anything else.
    5. HYBRIDERS
      1. Derek Parfit
        1. Consequentialism+Deontology (Kant)+Contractualism
      2. Bernard Williams
        1. World-Guided?
          1. CONCEPTS SUCH AS "OUGHT," "RIGHT," AND "GOODNESS" ARE THIN
          2. The "ought", the "right", the "good" - are not world-guided by facts and thus context-free (like little "gold sticky stars").
          3. THICK ETHICAL CONCEPTS (brutality, coward, lie, gratitude) - are world-guided and action-guiding at the same time.
          4. PERCEPTUAL KNOWELDGE? Here we enter imaginatively into the world of those who have these values... we don't just apply a set of factual criteria; we have to see the world through their eyes. Convergence on higher order moral truth
        2. The physical and social sciences
          1. A theory of human nature might draw from social and physical sciences and guide our reflections about what makes for human flourishing. MORALITY MUST BE CONGRUENT WITH HUMAN FLOURISHING
        3. Projectivism
          1. ethical value is projected onto the world by our ethical beliefs.
      3. W.D. ROSS - Deontology+Intuitionism; Pluralist
      4. William Frankena - Kantianism+Consequentialism
  6. Meta-Ethics: NON-COGNITIVE THEORIES = ethical statements are neither true nor false because ethical statements are not really statements.
    1. EMOTIVISM - ethical utterances or sentences merely express emotions like "Boo!" or "Aaaah!"
      1. David Hume
      2. AJ Ayer
    2. QUASI-REALISM - ethical statements behave like factual claims and thus can be called "true" or "false" even though ethical statements do NOT refer to ethcial facts or an ethical "reality"
      1. Simon Blackburn
    3. UNIVERSAL PRESCRIPTIONISM - moral statements function as universal COMMANDS and so have objective values but no truth values.
      1. R.M. Hare