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The Moral Cartographer: Four Approaches to Ethics

The Moral Cartographer: Four Approaches to Ethics

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What facts of reality give rise to the concept of morality?

This is a metaethical question. Let's examine one component of the answer by looking more closely at the methods of drawing up morality.

We will survey

deontological ethics
religious ethics
Judeo-Christian ethics
Islamic ethics
Nietzschean master-race ethics
Kantian ethics
consequential ethics
utilitarianism
rule consequentialism
characterological ethics
Stoic ethics
virtue ethics
teleological ethics
praying-mantis ethics
Nicomachean ethics

Each mapping approach to ethics takes some thing or other to be primary. What is it for each?

Do they all yield the same moralities? How are they to be evaluated? A case can be made for a fifth approach to drawing up morality: situation ethics. Why is it rejected? More widely, why isn't there a fifth cartographer? The bonus question to ask, if we finish early, is, can the various ethical systems be classified metaethically on the basis of practicality?

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