The Similarities And Differences Between Ethical Theory And Non-Objectivism

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Recommended: Ethics chapter 6 cultural relativism

Metaethical theory addresses whether or not there are correct answers to ethical issues. Metaethical theory also discusses how these answers apply to the world. There are two major branches of metaethical theory, objectivism and non-objectivism. These theories have advantages as well as disadvantages to using them. I will be discussing these branches and the theories they contain, the advantages and disadvantages, and which branch appeals most to me.
Objectivism states that there are correct answers to ethical issues. Objectivists also believe that these answers apply to everyone at every time. So when someone states that ethics is objective what they really mean is that it applies to everyone, no matter what. For example, If someone threw a newborn baby into a vat of acid just for fun; we would like to say that this action is not permissible no matter …show more content…

However; that is also the issue with this view. The issue with this theory is we cannot say that some action is inherently wrong. We would like to say that certain acts, like throwing an infant into a vat of acid for fun for example, are not permissible no matter where you are. In the case of adopting cultural relativism, we wouldn’t be able to say this because if the person’s culture allowed it and said that it was morally permissible then they would be in the right. Similarly in the case of adopting subjectivism, as long as the person committing the action thought this action was morally permissible then that statement could not be made. If we adopted ethical nihilism, statements like this would not be able to have any truth value. Since ethical nihilism states that there are no correct answers whatsoever we could not state that something was wrong and give it a truth factor. In order to do this there must be some correct alternative but nihilism states there is no such

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