Moral objectivism (or moderate moral realism) is the meta-ethical view which claims that:
- Ethical sentences express propositions.
- Those propositions are about objective moral facts, independent of human opinion.
This makes moral objectivism a form of cognitivism. Moral objectivism stands in opposition to ethical subjectivism, which denies that moral propositions refer to objective facts, and non-cognitivism, which denies that moral sentences express propositions at all. Most forms of moral objectivism are also forms of moral realism, which claims that there are true objective moral propositions; however, error theory is a form of moral objectivism which claims that, while ethical sentences do express propositions about objective moral facts, all such propositions are false.
According to R. W Hepburn, to adopt objectivism is
to argue that moral judgements can be rationally defensible, true or false, that there are rational procedural tests for identifying morally impermissible actions, or that moral values exist independently of the feeling-states of individuals at particular times.
Moral objectivism is a major form of moral universalism, the position that there is one correct system of morality or ethics which applies to everyone. However, there are non-objectivist forms of universalism as well, including the subjectivist positions of ideal observer theory and divine command theory, and the non-cognitivist position of universal prescriptivism.
See also
- Ethics
- Moral naturalism
- Moral non-naturalism
- Moral realism
- Moral relativism
- Morality
- Moral universalism
References
- Zigliara, "Sum. phil." (3 vols., Paris, 1889), ccx, xi, II, M. 23, 24, 25)
Notes
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Last updated on Thursday October 02, 2008 at 20:38:01 PDT (GMT -0700)
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