Moral dilemmas

By Nair, Shyam

A moral dilemma is a situation where an agent’s obligations conflict. Debate in this area focuses on the question of whether genuine moral dilemmas exist. This question involves ...

Moral pluralism

By Weinstock, Daniel M.

Moral pluralism is the view that moral values, norms, ideals, duties and virtues are irreducibly diverse: morality serves many purposes relating to a wide range of human interests, ...

Deontic modals

By Chrisman, Matthew

Modality, as it is usually understood in contemporary philosophy, has to do with necessities and possibilities. Deontic modality is a kind of modality which has to do with ...

Foot, Philippa (1920–2010)

By Lillehammer, Hallvard

Philippa Foot was a British moral philosopher based primarily at Oxford University, where she was a Fellow of Somerville College from 1950; and at University of California, Los ...

Nussbaum, Martha Craven (1947–)

By van Zyl, Liezl

A characteristic feature of Nussbaum’s work is the way in which she draws upon ancient Greek and Roman philosophy and literature to examine some of the most pressing ...

Examples in ethics

By Louden, Robert B.

Philosophers often employ examples to illustrate how their favoured principles are to be applied to concrete cases, and sometimes even to show that principles are of no help ...

Reproduction and ethics

By Hursthouse, Rosalind

The first reproductive issue debated extensively by philosophers was abortion. Debates about its morality were, and still are, dominated by the issue of the moral status of the ...

Experimental philosophy

By Mallon, Ron; Nichols, Shaun

Experimental philosophy is not a philosophy, it is a method that is supposed to contribute to philosophical inquiry. Characteristically, experimental philosophers use empirical techniques to investigate philosophically significant ...

Experimental philosophy

Experimental philosophy is not a philosophy; it is a method that is supposed to contribute to philosophical inquiry. Characteristically, experimental philosophers use empirical techniques to investigate philosophically significant ...

Legal ethics

By Tur, Richard

Legal ethics can be considered from at least three related viewpoints. First, as ‘professional ethics’, it is a corpus of rules, principles and standards, often embodied in a ...

Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund (1903–69)

Philosopher, musicologist and social theorist, Theodor Adorno was the philosophical architect of the first generation of Critical Theory emanating from the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, Germany. ...

Moral education

By White, John

This entry looks at three contemporary approaches to moral learning and education, all of which have roots in the history of philosophy. The first holds that just as ...

Thought experiments

By Gooding, David C.

Thought experiments are strange: they have the power to present surprising results and can profoundly change the way we view the world, all without requiring us to examine ...

Ethics and action

By King, Matt

Moral theories are theories of right action. Moral principles are meant to guide action. And, if moral rules exist, they apply to all agents. Theories of action and ...

Innocence

By Hoose, Bernard

In its most general sense, innocence refers to the state of being without sin. A more restricted meaning is attributed to the word in the legal sphere, where ...

Applied ethics

Applied ethics is marked out from ethics in general by its special focus on issues of practical concern. It is concerned with ethical issues in various fields of ...

Value judgments in social science

By Beauchamp, Tom L.

Leading theorists in the social sciences have insisted that value judgments should be strictly separated from scientific judgments, which should be value-free. Yet these same thinkers recognize that ...

Medical ethics

By Wikler, Daniel

Medical ethics was once concerned with the professional obligations of physicians, spelled out in codes of conduct such as the ancient Hippocratic oath and elaborated by contemporary professional ...

Common-sense reasoning, theories of

By Horty, John

The task of formalizing common-sense reasoning within a logical framework can be viewed as an extension of the programme of formalizing mathematical and scientific reasoning that has occupied ...

Moral fictionalism

By Nolan, Daniel

Moral fictionalism is the doctrine that the moral claims we accept should be treated as convenient fictions. One standard kind of moral fictionalism maintains that many of the ...

Duty

By Frazier, Robert L.

To have a duty is, above all, to be subject to a binding, normative requirement. This means that unless there are exculpating reasons someone who has a duty ...

Akrasia

By Steward, Helen

The Greek word ‘akrasia’ is usually said to translate literally as ‘lack of self-control’, but it has come to be used as a general term for the phenomenon ...

Epistemology and ethics

By Feldman, Richard

Epistemology and ethics are both concerned with evaluations: ethics with evaluations of conduct, epistemology with evaluations of beliefs and other cognitive acts. Of considerable interest to philosophers are ...

Moral judgement

The term ‘moral judgement’ can refer to an activity, a state, a state-content, a capacity or a virtue. The activity of moral judgement is that of thinking about ...

Moral judgement

By Cullity, Garrett

The term ‘moral judgement’ can refer to an activity, a state, a state-content, a capacity or a virtue. The activity of moral judgement is that of thinking about ...