Moral scepticism

By Nelson, Mark T.

Scepticism in general is the view that we can have little or no knowledge; thus moral scepticism is the view that we can have little or no moral ...

International relations, philosophy of

By Beitz, Charles R.

The philosophy of international relations – or more precisely its political philosophy – embraces problems about morality in diplomacy and war, the justice of international practices and ...

Price, Richard (1723–91)

By Darwall, Stephen

Richard Price was a Welsh dissenting minister who contributed widely to philosophy and public life in latter-eighteenth-century Britain. The leading British ethical rationalist of the period, Price did ...

Moral epistemology

By Wedgwood, Ralph

Epistemology is the study of knowledge and justified belief. So moral epistemology is the study of what would be involved in knowing, or being justified in believing, moral ...

Morality and ethics

By Skorupski, John

Morality is a distinct sphere within the domain of normative thinking about action and feeling (see Normativity); the whole domain, however, is the subject of ethics. ...

Epistemology

Epistemology has been traditionally concerned with questions about the nature, value, and scope of knowledge, together with other questions that arise in relation to these. Hence, another name ...

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 realism

By Dancy, Jonathan

Moral realism is the view that there are facts of the matter about which actions are right and which wrong, and about which things are good and which ...

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 ...

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 ...

Religion and morality

By Mouw, Richard J.

The relationship between religion and morality has been of special and long-standing concern to philosophers. Not only is there much overlap between the two areas, but how to ...

Evolution and ethics

By Sober, Elliott

The fact that human beings are a product of biological evolution has been thought to impinge on the study of ethics in two quite different ways. First, evolutionary ...

Ideals

By Rosati, Connie S.

Ideals are models of excellence. They can be moral or nonmoral, and either ‘substantive’ or ‘deliberative’. Substantive ideals present models of excellence against which things in a relevant ...

Moral realism

Moral realism is the view that there are facts of the matter about which actions are right and which wrong, and about which things are good and which ...

Pragmatism in ethics

By Tiles, J.E.

Two components of the pragmatist outlook shape its ethical philosophy. It rejects certainty as a legitimate intellectual goal; this generates a nondogmatic attitude to moral precepts and principles. ...

Virtue ethics

Virtue ethics has its origin in the ancient world, particularly in the writings of Plato and Aristotle. It has been revived following an article by G. E. M. ...

Virtue ethics

By Crisp, Roger

Virtue ethics has its origin in the ancient world, particularly in the writings of Plato and Aristotle. It has been revived following an article by G.E.M. Anscombe critical ...

Toleration

By Horton, John

Toleration emerged as an important idea in the seventeenth century, receiving its fullest defence in John Locke’s A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689). Initially developed in the context of ...

Confucian philosophy, Chinese

By Cua, A.S.

Chinese Confucian philosophy is primarily a set of ethical ideas oriented toward practice. Characteristically, it stresses the traditional boundaries of ethical responsibility and dao, or the ideal ...

Development ethics

By Crocker, David A.

Development ethics is ethical reflection on the ends and means of socioeconomic change in poor countries and regions. It has several sources: criticism of colonialism and post-Second World ...

Theory and practice

By Oneill, John

Questions concerning the relation of ‘theory’ to ‘practice’ include whether there is a role for theory in the practical realm of ethics and politics; if so, how it ...

Normativity

By Darwall, Stephen

Something is said by philosophers to have ‘normativity’ when it entails that some action, attitude or mental state of some other kind is justified, an action one ought ...

Stevenson, Charles Leslie (1908–79)

By Dreier, James

Stevenson’s major contribution to philosophy was his development of emotivism, a theory of ethical language according to which moral judgments do not state any sort of fact, but ...

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 ...

Axiology

By Smith, Barry; Thomas, Alan

Axiology is the branch of practical philosophy which studies the nature of value. Axiologists study value in general rather than moral values in particular and frequently emphasize the ...