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Are there objective truths in ethics?
Is ethics objective?
What is objectivity in ethics?
Do ethical statements have objective truth conditions?
Aug 29, 2023 · Objective truth refers to information or statements that correspond to reality independent of individual perspectives, emotions, or biases. It remains constant regardless of who observes or interprets it. The concept finds its roots in logic and empirical evidence, emphasizing the necessity of verifiable and repeatable facts.
A. Ethical statements could have truth conditions which are objective a priori. Ethics could be objective in the sense that moral problems can be solved by rational methods. Moral judgments are rationally justified. In this sense, ethics is objective in much the same way that mathematics is objective.
There are many versions of ethical objectivism, including various religious views of morality, Platonistic intuitionism, Kantianism, utilitarianism, and certain forms of ethical egoism and contractualism. Platonists define ethical objectivism in an even more narrow way, so that it requires the existence of intrinsic value.
Jul 30, 2021 · What connects ethics with truth are ethical theories: utilitarianism, kantianism, aristotelianism, etc. For example, utilitarianism states that the choice that provides good to most people is the right one.
- The controversial issue isn't whether there are some objective truths in ethics, but whether statements about ethics are the kinds of statements th...
- Ill-formed question: ethics does not define any truth . To start, ethics is a system of rules, that is, a coherent set of statements that rule beh...
- One such truth, if the question is to be considered valid: reason and logic are essential. In other words, if you want objectivity, you'll need th...
- Terminology
- Epistemological Issues
- Metaphysical Issues
- Objectivity in Ethics
- Major Historical Philosophical Theories of Objective Reality
- References and Further Reading
Many philosophers would use the term “objective reality” to refer to anything that exists as it is independent of any conscious awareness of it (via perception, thought, etc.). Common mid-sized physical objects presumably apply, as do persons having subjective states. Subjective reality would then include anything depending upon some (broadly const...
a. Can We Know Objective Reality?
The subjective is characterized primarily by perceiving mind. The objective is characterized primarily by physical extension in space and time. The simplest sort of discrepancy between subjective judgment and objective reality is well illustrated by John Locke’s example of holding one hand in ice water and the other hand in hot water for a few moments. When one places both hands into a bucket of tepid water, one experiences competing subjective experiences of one and the same objective realit...
b. Does Agreement Among Subjects Indicate Objective Knowledge?
Measurement is allegedly a means to reach objective judgments, judgments having at least a high probability of expressing truth regarding objective reality. An objective judgment regarding the weather, in contrast to the competing subjective descriptions, would describe it as, say, 20°C (68°F). This judgment results from use of a measuring device. It is unlikely that the two perceiving subjects, using functioning thermometers, would have differing judgments about the outside air. The example...
c. Primary and Secondary Qualities: Can We Know Primary Qualities?
According to Locke’s distinction between primary and secondary qualities, some of our subjective impressions do not correspond to any objective reality in the thing perceived. Our perception of sound, for example, is nothing like the actual physical vibrations that we know are the real cause of our subjective experience. Our perception of color is nothing like the complex combinations of various frequencies of electromagnetic radiation that we know cause our perception of color. Locke asserts...
In metaphysics, i.e., the philosophical study of the nature of reality, the topic of objectivity brings up philosophical puzzles regarding the nature of the self, for a perceiving subject is also, according to most metaphysical theories, a potential object of someone else’s perceptions. Further, one can perceive oneself as an object, in addition to...
a. Persons in Contrast to Objects
First, the dual nature of persons as both subjects (having subjective experience) and objects within objective reality relates to one of the paramount theories of ethics in the history of philosophy. Immanuel Kant’s ethics gives a place of central importance to respect for persons. One formulation of his highly influential Categorical Imperative relates to the dual nature of persons. This version demands that one “treat humanity, in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply...
b. Objectivism, Subjectivism and Non-Cognitivism
Philosophical theories about the nature of morality generally divide into assertions that moral truths express subjective states and assertions that moral truths express objective facts, analogous to the fact, for example, that the sun is more massive than the earth. So-called subjectivist theories regard moral statements as declaring that certain facts hold, but the facts expressed are facts about a person’s subjective states. For example, the statement “It is wrong to ignore a person in dis...
c. Objectivist Theories
Among objectivist theories of morality, the most straightforward version declares that is it an objective fact, for example, that it is wrong to ignore a person in distress if you are able to offer aid. This sort of theory asserts that the wrongness of such behavior is part of objective reality in the same way that the sun’s being more massive than the earth is part of objective reality. Both facts would obtain regardless of whether any conscious being ever came to know either of them. Other...
Any serious study of the nature of objectivity and objective knowledge should examine the central metaphysical and epistemological positions of history’s leading philosophers, as well as contemporary contributions. The following very brief survey should give readers some idea of where to get started. Plato is famous for a distinctive view of object...
Alston, William P. “Yes, Virginia, There is a Real World.” Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association52 (1979): 779-808.Descartes, Rene. Meditations (1641). In The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, eds. J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff and D. Murdoch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975).Kant, Immanuel. Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics(1783). Trans. James W. Ellington (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1977).Locke, John. Essay Concerning Human Understanding(1689). Ed. Peter Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975).Objectivism is the belief there is knowledge, truth, or concepts that we strive to make sense of, and they guide us in our knowledge attainment. In ethical terminology, objectivism is best equated with the term absolutism.
OBJECTIVITY IN ETHICS. What objectivity in ethics is depends, in part, on what ethics is. On the narrowest understanding, ethics consists in judgments about moral constraints, which govern a person's treatment of other people, as such.
