Academic Integrity: tutoring, explanations, and feedback — we don’t complete graded work or submit on a student’s behalf.

1. A meto-ethical theory, such as Ethical Relativism, gives guidelines for how o

ID: 3451306 • Letter: 1

Question



1. A meto-ethical theory, such as Ethical Relativism, gives guidelines for how one ought to behave. True or False? 2. What are the normative ethical theories we examined? 3. Which of those are teleological and which are deontological? 4. What are the two meta-ethical views we examined? 5. Write a sentence that captures the Euthyphro Dilemma. 6. The Divine Command Theory is an ethically relativist theory. True or False? 7. If you are an Ethical Realist, what do you believe about the status of right and wrong? 8. What is the difference between a teleological ethical theory and a deontological ethical theory? For the Egoist, it is wrong to do anything for anyone else, under any circumstances. True or False? 9.

Explanation / Answer

p1. The given statement is not true for ethical relativism.

2. Normative ethics is a branch of philosophy that seeks to investigate questions about moral actions. Normative ethical theories provide a means to articulate ethical codes about what is moral and immoral behaviour. Normative ethical theories can vary based on a tripartite structure that comprises of: a moral standard or the criteria of characteristics which all moral actions must possess such as utilitarian moral standard that actions which lead to pleasurable consequences are moral; general moral principles that claim that all actions in a certain class are either moral or immoral such as when acts with an intention to harm are deemed as immoral; and particular moral principles and moral judgements which focus on more specific moral actions such as in the statement ‘ Domestic abuse is immoral’.

Thus, based on this structure, we have utilitarianism, categorical imperative, Aristotelian virtue ethics, Stoic virtue ethics and W.D. Ross’s intuitionism as the major normative ethical theories.

3. Of the above, categorical imperative, Aristotelian virtue ethics, W.D. Ross’s intuitionism are deontological theories, that is they focus on the intentions behind actions and prescribe morality in terms of a set of rules and obligations about what is right and wrong. On the other hand, utilitarianism is a teleological theory which focuses on moral values as constituted in ideas of good and bad and determine a moral action in terms of its consequence.

4. We got an exposure to the semantic view and the substantial view as two major theoretical domains in meta-ethics.