Correct behaviors can differ depending on people's natures {agent-relative morality}.
Ethics can be about value {axiological ethics} {axiology}, as opposed to morals or justice.
Morals are not truths {descriptivism}.
Ethics {ethical standards} can be moral absolutism, deontologicalism, consequentialism, or agent-relative morality.
People have no essence or property that defines their lives or constrains their freedom {existentialism}. The first truth of which humans are aware is that they exist. People must choose actions based on this knowledge.
Women can have equality and justice {feminism}. Women have not been in public life, partly because they have greater roles in private life. Private life can have value and merge with public life, so women can have justice, equality, care, and concern. Societies have typically subordinated or oppressed women. Perhaps, social structures depend on oppression or exclusion of women {radical feminism}.
Morals are what impartial observers, such as God, say or do in situations {ideal observer theory}.
People can act morally only if they have souls that survive death {life after death, ethics}, because people do get rewards in life from acting morally.
Ethics can depend on nature, or ethical properties are natural properties {naturalism, ethics} {ethical naturalism}. However, perhaps, oughts should come only from oughts.
Morality is about approval and disapproval {emotive theory, ethics}.
Ethics is about feelings, attitudes, and emotions {emotivism, ethics}.
People ought to do only what is in their self-interest {ethical egoism}.
Will is basis of morals {ethical voluntarism}.
Pleasure is the only rational good, all actions can be pursuits of pleasure, or pleasure is the only goal that people desire {hedonism}. However, people pursue many goals and drives. Pleasure cannot describe all good things, such as freedom.
Personal value can be the greatest good {heroicism}.
Good actions are positive reinforcers, and bad actions are negative reinforcers {operant conditioning, ethics}. Operant conditioning can teach ethical behavior.
Ethics {Eudaemonism} {perfectionism} can depend on individual personal growth, as they use all their abilities, powers, and ideas, keep well-being and confidence, and find their true selves through experience and action. People can be morally excellent, powerful, or achieving, rather than doing wasteful or useless activities.
Self-interest is the motivation for human actions {psychological egoism}. Desire wills voluntary actions, which are for self even if they are altruistic, emotional, or rational. However, self-interest is too general, and interest is actually about direct interests. Many motives are not about self, such as reasons and emotions for donating money. Self-interest is about present and future interests, so people must know both.
Communities are the basis of values {communitarianism}, because social customs and institutions develop individual activities, including social relations. Values develop from community, not by imposition from outside sources, such as ideologies. Completely individualistic societies are impossible. Communitarianism {value communitarianism} can emphasize shared values, such as trust, group feeling, give-and-take, and intimacy, and public goods, such as air, markets, and government.
People achieve happiness by their decisions as agents motivated by values {distributism}, so people must have private ownership and personal liberty. Distributism is communitarianism against capitalism and socialism.
Ethics {absolute ethics} can depend on moral duties and religious laws. Relative ethics depends on situations.
People can have duties, responsibilities, or obligations {deontology}. Perhaps, certain actions are themselves right or wrong {deontological ethics} {deontologicalism}. Circumstances and results do not matter. People can know what people can do or not do in all situations, including action timing. In deontological ethics, actions are intrinsically right or wrong and people must or must not do them, no matter what the consequences.
God commands some behaviors and forbids some acts {divine command ethics} {command ethics}.
Ethics can have laws and absolute ethical standards {ethical formalism} {formalism, ethics}, rather than have judgments. Kant had formal ethics, from which he deduced everything.
Certain actions are always right or wrong, and people must always do them or not do them {moral absolutism}. Circumstances and results do not matter.
Morals are commands to do or not do something {prescriptivism}.
Actions can be right or wrong depending on consequences {consequentialism}. Actions can be right or wrong depending on result rightness or wrongness {act-consequentialism} {direct consequentialism}. Consequences can be personal or social, can be effects or states, can involve optima or only improvements, can lead to equitable distributions, or can surpass minimum thresholds. Utilitarianism is consequentialist. Actions can be right or wrong depending on consequences of choosing certain rules {indirect consequentialism} {rule-consequentialism}. However, people cannot know, pay attention to, or weigh all consequences. Perhaps, people cannot affect others much.
People value actions, goals, and people that contribute to survival {evolutionary ethics}.
Things can have value {instrumental value} because they help reach goals.
Ethics {pleasure theory} can depend on the most net happiness or pleasure, which can include the most equal sharing of happiness and pleasure, as in Mill's utilitarianism.
Right actions lead to good consequences, and wrong or bad leads to bad consequences {pragmatism, ethics}.
Ethics can include the most equal sharing of happiness and pleasure {utilitarianism}, as in Mill.
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Date Modified: 2022.0225