Check Your Understanding Essay

Custom Student Mr. Teacher ENG 1001-04 13 November 2016

Check Your Understanding

Meta-ethics is the overall attempt to be able to understand the wide range of thoughts and beliefs that pertain to moral thought, talk, and practice. The idea of meta-ethics is an abstract thought. It is the process of being able to look at ethical situations and determine what the ethical or moral route for these situations is. The basics are that meta-ethics look at ethics as a way to discuss or determine how one looks at different situations. Meta-ethics also looks at things in terms of two different issues, the issues being (1) metaphysical issues and (2) psychological issues.

Meta-ethics involves a number of other issues and components and attempts to be a way to answer whether something is right or wrong in a moral or “ethical” sense. In What Way Does Meta-Ethics Differ from Normative Ethics? Meta-ethics and normative ethics differ in some ways. The main difference is that with normative ethics one is looking at the ordinary and how things are sometimes considered to be better or more moral than others. These are kind of like the big ethical delimmas like whether or not murdering a child is wrong. No one will argue that it is right to murder a child.

However when someone murders a child molester or someone who has murdered a child there are those who do not feel that this is morally or ethically wrong. This is an example of meta-ethics. There are many different ways that one could look at these things and these issues and how one could be able to do things. So therefore the ethical issues that must be thought about or discussed fully in able to determine whether they are right or wrong is an example of the how meta-ethics are used. Frankena’s Definist Theory of Good and Right

The overall idea of the definist theory is that ethical and value judgments are a different types of facts that are being disguised. The definist theory of good and right is essentially that there are good and right values that are a part of man kind and have connotations related back to religion or a belief that God has deemed certain things to be moral and good. These theories and belief actually are known to have some type of scientific claim or model behind them that are a part of what is being discussed. This theory also looks at the idea of societal expectations.

Basically the theory is saying that if we should or if society expects us to do something then there is some type of moral right in behaving in that manner. The theory looks at the ideas of what society upholds and particularly important for values and what type of values are upheld in these different societal aspects. There a re a lot of other issues that are involved in this theory but the main idea is that if the whole of society believes for something to be right or good then it is typically something that can morally or ethically be considered right or good.

Frankena gives general definitions that he believes to answer the questions of what good and right mean. Essentially good means that something is an interest of favor or desire or something that can be looked at as wanting it to be done. The essential meaning of right for Frankena is that it is something that conducts happiness in a harmonious manner, meaning that happiness is encouraged and thought about for it to be right. Some other things that Frankena looks at are the ideas of how people use the terms good and right and how many times there are a lot of other meanings and indications attached to these terms.

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  • University/College: University of Chicago

  • Type of paper: Thesis/Dissertation Chapter

  • Date: 13 November 2016

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