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| An act or person so profoundly immoral as to give evidence of a lack of moral principles or conscience |
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| The belief that the rightness or wrongness of an action depends on the consequences or the effects of the action. |
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| The belief that what is ethical is defined and determined by the contexts in which the agent chooses and especially by the agent's understanding of his or her own story, or narrative, and the broader story within which his or her life is situated. |
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| An evaluation and assessment of the validity or legitimacy of the moral norms and practices of a person or group. |
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| The belief that the rightness or wrongness of an action depends on the intrinsic quality of the act, and not just (or not at all) upon the consequences of that action. (a) Act-deontology evaluates actions on a case-by-case basis; (b) rule-deontology seeks to establish moral rules as the way in which groups, classes, or categories of acts are evaluated. |
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| Depiction of the moral norms and/or behavior of someone or some group. |
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| Any ethical system, such as in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, in which moral norms are justified through claims to divine authorization or will, as communicated through the divine voice, scripture, or divinely inspired tradition. |
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| A form of consequentialism in which an act is judged right insofar as it maximizes, benefits, or promotes the self-interest of persons other than the moral agent who is performing the act. |
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| A form of consequentialist ethics in which an act is judged right insofar as it maximizes, benefits, or promotes the self-interest of the agent performing the act, as that agent prefers to define his or her own self-interest. |
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| The belief that moral judgments are either true or false but only if they are ultimately understood as reducible to concepts of some natural science, such as psychology. Antonym: non-naturalism. |
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| The belief that ethical judgments are either true or false, because they are bearers of truth value and correspond to a moral reality that actually exists. |
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| The belief that ethical judgments lack truth value because they do not correspond to an “objective” moral reality that actually exists outside of the perspective of the one/s making the judgment. |
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| A species of ethical egoism in which the maximization of pleasure (and sometimes the minimizing of pain) are viewed as the determinants of the value or disvalue of an act. Syn: Epicureanism. |
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| The belief that what is ethical is defined by determined by rules, which are understood to be absolute and universal. |
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| The effort to determine the meaning of ethical terms and the rules of ethical justification. |
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| The capacity and responsibility to make moral choices and to be held accountable for those choices; often implies the expectation that the agent will be treated with the respect suitable to one with such a capacity and responsibility. |
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A spectrum of terms exists that offer various shades of evaluation of the morality of various acts:
c. permissible–not forbidden, not obligatory, but allowed
d. obligatory–required, one’s duty.
e. superogatory–an act that goes beyond what is morally required but is praised if undertaken. |
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| The process of providing warrants, or giving good reasons for, one’s moral judgments. |
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| Standards of right or good behavior, or character, in general, or in relation to particular issues. Syn: moral values, moral convictions. |
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| Those behaviors people actually perform related to matters of moral significance, especially those that are a habitual and customary part of their behavior patterns and are intended to make progress toward morally meaningful goals. |
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| A fundamental, primary, or general moral norm from which more specific rules are generated, or on the basis of which such rules are supported or criticized. |
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| Moral standard that applies not just to one particular case, but to all similar cases, generally providing direct and explicit moral guidance. |
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| (a) sometimes used as an adjective marking the judgment that the issue under discussion has to do with a matter related to ethics, right or wrong, good or bad; (b) an assessment term, used at the ‘critical’ level, offering positive evaluation of a person or act. Syn: ethical. |
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| The belief that moral judgments are neither true nor false, but are merely the verbal manifestations of the feelings of those who utter them. Syn: emotivism. |
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| The attempt to identify norms or standards of right or good behavior. Syn: prescriptive ethics, constructive ethics. |
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| (at first appearance) The concept that warranted moral norms are to be accepted as correct and binding until or unless proven otherwise by further evidence or extenuating circumstances. |
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| The belief that what is ethical is defined and determined by principles, which support rules but also test and limit them. Syn: principialism. |
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| Belief that the right action is decided by the particular situation, because cases are unique, and cannot be categorized or evaluated by rules. Subtypes include: (a) emotive situationism-just do what feels right in the situation; (b) principled situationism-apply some kind of principle as a rule of thumb that can guide but not determine the outcome; (c) love-situationism-do what seems to be the loving thing in the situation; (d) voice of God situationism-listen for God’s voice and act obediently in the midst of your unique situation. |
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| Closely related to consequentialism, the belief that the rightness or wrongness of an action depends on the likelihood of that action achieving the good that is pursued (the goal that is sought). |
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| A form of consequentialism, and to some extent of ethical altruism, in which an act is judged right insofar as it advances the greatest good for the greatest possible number of people. (a) Act-utilitarianism tests the consequences for the greater good of particular acts; (b) Rule-utilitarianism tests the consequences for the greater good of particular rules or classes of acts rather than of individual acts. |
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| Qualities of a person that make that person a bad person in community and hinder the good of the community, or the good for which humans are designed. |
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| Qualities of a person that make that person a good person in community and that contribute to the good of the community, or to the good for which humans are designed. |
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1) What are the rules?
2) What are the goals?
3) What serves the needs of people and relationships?
4) What kind of people should we be?
5) What kind of community should we seek to develop?
6) What behavior is responsible and responsive before god [the gods]? |
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