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All 8 Flashcards — Where do moral values come from?
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Question
Meta-ethics?
Answer
The study of what moral values ARE and where they come from — not which acts are right or wrong.
Question
'Discovered vs invented' morality?
Answer
Are moral values out there to be found (like facts), or made by us (like money and manners)?
Question
The four candidate sources of morality?
Answer
Reason, emotion, nature and culture — each a possible root of right and wrong.
Question
Hume on the source of morality?
Answer
It comes from feeling, not pure reason — we feel wrongness (sympathy, disgust) before we reason it.
Question
'Reason is the slave of the passions'?
Answer
Reason serves our feelings: it works out how to get what we care about, but feeling sets what we care about.
Question
The fact–value gap (Hume)?
Answer
List every fact of a cruel act and 'wrong' isn't among them — so wrongness comes from our response, not a fact in the act.
Question
Reason as a source of morality?
Answer
Right and wrong are worked out by thinking clearly — being inconsistent, or willing a rule you'd hate applied to you, is a moral failing.
Question
Culture as a source of morality?
Answer
Values are handed down by the group you grow up in — its traditions, rules and shared way of life.
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Meta-ethics
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