Terms, Use, and Definition
ENGL101, Essay 2—Ethical Argument
Do ethical statements provide information about anything other than human opinions and attitudes?
Ethical realists think that human beings discover ethical truths that already have an independent existence.
Ethical non-realists think that human beings invent ethical truths.
The problem for ethical realists is that people follow many different ethical codes and moral beliefs. So if there are real ethical truths out there (wherever!) then human beings don't seem to be very good at discovering them.
One form of ethical realism teaches that ethical properties exist independently of human beings, and that ethical statements give knowledge about the objective world.
To put it another way; the ethical properties of the world and the things in it exist and remain the same, regardless of what people think or feel - or whether people think or feel about them at all.
On the face of it, it [ethical realism] means the view that moral qualities such as wrongness, and likewise moral facts such as the fact that an act was wrong, exist in rerum natura, so that, if one says that a certain act was wrong, one is saying that there existed, somehow, somewhere, this quality of wrongness, and that it had to exist there if that act were to be wrong.
R. M Hare, Essays in Ethical Theory, 1989
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Ethics are a system of moral principles (not morals, but moral 'principles') and a branch of philosophy which defines what is good for individuals and society [based on a chosen ethical standard: such a Christianity].
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Are Ethical Statements Objectively True?
This page has been archived and is no longer updated. The Ethics Guide, provided by the BBC, can be located online through http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/introduction/intro_1.shtml#h1 and accessed readily. All content from this specific ethics guide is property of the BBC.
Compiled by Jeanette L. H. Dick © 2018
BBC Ethics Guide (part 4)
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