1. Contemporary Moral Issue

2. Instructor: George Belic
Meetings: MTWRF period 7 (5-6:15pm)
Office: Griffin Floyd, Room 100
Office Hrs: W, F 4-5pm or by appointment 
Website:

3. What is Philosophy?
Subject matter of philosophy: the most general and most fundamental knowledge about the world
Examples of Philosophical Claims
There are things in the world
Humans have free will
We know something about the world
Abortion is wrong
Pleasure and pain constitute moral properties

4. Areas of Western Philosophy
Metaphysics: What is the world made of? What kinds of things are there in our world?
Freewill: do we have freewill?
Philosophy of Religion: does God exists?
Epistemology: What justifies our knowledge about the world?
Political Philosophy: What is the justification of government? What is the best form of government? What is social justice?
Ethics: How should we act and live? What moral standards should we live by?
Is abortion morally justified? Euthanasia? Capital Punishment? Killing of Animals?

5. Ethics / Moral Philosophy
Ethics is best defined by a list of concepts investigated (its subject matter) and the way it is studied
Concepts:
Good, bad, evil
Virtuous, non-virtuous
Malicious, Well-intentioned,
Obligatory, Prohibited, Permitted
Moral, Immoral
Should, Shouldn’t / Ought, Ought not.

6. Descriptive vs. Normative
Science is descriptive – it investigates and describes facts as they actually are
What is the relationship between mass and acceleration? How does the human mind react to water-boarding?
Ethics is normative – study of principles, rules and theories that guide our actions
not about how we actually behave but about how we ought to behave)
Is water boarding morally permitted? If so, in what situations?
Descriptive ethics – a descriptive study of moral believes and practices (anthropology, sociology, psychology)

7. Levels of Ethical Theorizing
Applied Ethics
Is abortion morally justified? Is capital punishment wrong?
Theories of Ethics
What is morality in general? What is it to be moral?
What makes goodness good?
Utilitarianism, Virtue Ethics, Deontological Ethics
Meta-Ethics
What kind of thing is goodness? Is it spatio-temporal? What makes goodness normative?
Study of relationship between morality and the rest of the world