NORMATIVE ETHICS: Introduction to Normative Ethics

This video is the first in a series of philosophy videos on normative ethics. The normative level of moral inquiry seeks to ground our moral motivation, reasoning, and justification in the context of principles of for guiding our actions. We will start with principles which are taken to be necessary for successful moral theorizing, including the (1)the source of morality in our reasoning faculties, (2) the universal perspective for moral judgments, and (3)the impartiality of moral judgments. While not all ethical theories accept these above as normative requirements, it is noteworthy that most of the normative moral theories which are still with us today (which have stood the test of time) have been those which attach great weight to following the above normative requirements. In both the history of ethics as well as in our political and market institutions, the dominant two reason-based normative ethical approaches which have had the most widespread attention have been deontological Kantianism and utilitarian consequentialism. One need not be either a Kantian or a utilitarian in order to observe the pull which they have had on philosophers and laypeople alike. Any ethical theory which takes the three normative requirements seriously and gives a prominent place in an account of morality will be an ethical theory worth paying attention to because it captures powerful and long-standing intuitions we have for those three normative requirements. We need to see models of more or less time-tested ethical theories even in order to construct our own (if we want our ethical systems to actually have the normative force we take them to have.)

We will explore so many other approaches to normative ethics in the coming videos!

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For those who wish to investigate this very rich topic in moral theory, a great place to start is the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy! It is a vast resource which will give a far more complete and adequate treatment than I could ever hope to provide here.

For a thorough account of moral reasoning

For Kantian deontology

For consequentialist utilitarianism

For a detailed introduction to the normative moral theory, see Lewis Vaugh's Beginning Ethics: An Introduction to Moral Philosophy. 1st Edition, (Norton Books, 2015.)

[crankylass]

What's up with the camera angles? It was very distracting....good content however.

[djice]

You are a member of a gang and you have been arrested with another member of your gang. Both of you are locked in separate rooms and have no way of communicating with each other. The police does not have enough evidence to convict both of you with major charges and instead offer you and the other member a bargain. You have two choices: You can remain silent OR betray the other member and testify that he has committed the crime. if i confess what ethic theory is that ? kindly reply

[adriandoan]

OMG, fire your camera man. It's so distracting and giving me a headache.

[coopm]

The video is super distracting. I can’t even look at this but listen. Just stay on the guy and don’t move. We don’t need ‘art’ here.

[babyst]

What a shame beside wht's up wz the voice