Common-sense ethics

By Brown, Charlotte R.

‘Common-sense ethics’ refers to the pre-theoretical moral judgments of ordinary people. Moral philosophers have taken different attitudes towards the pre-theoretical judgments of ordinary people. For some they are ...

Sidgwick, Henry (1838–1900)

By Schultz, Bart

Henry Sidgwick was a Cambridge philosopher, psychic researcher and educational reformer, whose works in practical philosophy, especially The Methods of Ethics (1874), brought classical utilitarianism to its peak ...

Life and death

By Harris, John

Problems concerning life and death are among the most dramatic and intractable in philosophy and they feature in all fundamental areas of philosophical inquiry, especially ethics. Most basic ...

Intuitionism in ethics

By Frazier, Robert L.

To intuit something is to apprehend it directly, without recourse to reasoning processes such as deduction or induction. Intuitionism in ethics proposes that we have a capacity for ...

American philosophy in the 18th and 19th centuries

By Goodman, Russell B.

Jonathan Edwards, the first great American philosopher, interpreted Calvinist theology within the newer framework of Newtonian physics and Lockean empiricism in his Freedom of the Will (1754). However, ...

Ethics

By Crisp, Roger

What is ethics? First, the systems of value and custom instantiated in the lives of particular groups of human beings are described as the ethics of these groups. ...

Utilitarianism

By Chappell, Tim; Crisp, Roger

Utilitarianism is a theory about rightness, according to which the only good thing is welfare (wellbeing or ‘utility’). Welfare should, in some way, be maximized, and agents are ...

Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is a theory about rightness, according to which the only good thing is welfare (well-being or ‘utility’). Welfare should, in some way, be maximized, and agents are ...

Ethics

What is ethics? First, the systems of value and custom instantiated in the lives of particular groups of human beings are described as the ethics of these groups. ...

Conscience

By Dent, Nicholas

To have a conscience involves being conscious of the moral quality of what one has done, or intends to do. There are several elements under the idea of ...

Moral knowledge

By Sayre-McCord, Geoffrey

One possesses moral knowledge when, but only when, one’s moral opinions are true and held justifiably. Whether anyone actually has moral knowledge is open to serious doubt, both ...

Moral sense theories

By Taylor, Jacqueline

In Leviathan (1651), Thomas Hobbes argued that since good and evil are naturally relative to each individual’s private appetites, and man’s nature is predominantly selfish, then morality must ...

Reid, Thomas (1710–1796)

By Rysiew, Patrick

Thomas Reid (1710–96) was a contemporary of both Hume and Kant. He was born in Strachan, near Aberdeen, and was a founder and central figure in the Scottish ...