IB Philosophy 4. Ethics Key Definitions

Biomedical ethics is the branch of applied ethics that examines moral questions arising from advances in medicine and the biological sciences, including issues of life, death, patient autonomy, and the responsible use of biotechnology.

Biotechnology involves the application of scientific techniques to modify living organisms, biological systems, or their products, including genetic engineering, cloning, and stem cell research.

Business ethics is the branch of applied ethics that examines the moral norms and values governing commercial activity, including questions of fair trade, corporate responsibility, labour practices, and the relationship between profit and moral obligation.

Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative is the supreme principle of morality, commanding unconditionally. Its first formulation requires acting only on maxims that could be willed as universal laws, and its second formulation requires treating persons always as ends in themselves, never merely as means.

Climate change refers to long-term shifts in global temperature, precipitation, and weather patterns driven primarily by the accumulation of greenhouse gases from human activity, particularly the burning of fossil fuels. The phenomenon raises urgent philosophical questions about intergenerational justice, the moral weight of future persons, and how responsibility should be distributed among nations with vastly different historical contributions to emissions.

Cognitivism holds that moral judgements express beliefs that are truth-apt (capable of being true or false), while non-cognitivism holds that moral judgements express attitudes, emotions, or prescriptions rather than truth-apt propositions.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is the principle that businesses have obligations to society beyond legal compliance and profit maximization, encompassing environmental stewardship, fair labour practices, community engagement, and ethical governance.

Deontological theories hold that the morality of an action depends on whether it conforms to binding rules or duties rather than on the consequences it produces, so that some acts are intrinsically right or wrong regardless of their outcomes. The most influential version, Kant's categorical imperative, demands that we act only on principles we could consistently will to be universal laws.

Deontological ethics judges actions by conformity to moral duties or rules, holding that some actions are intrinsically right or wrong. Teleological ethics judges actions by their consequences or outcomes, holding that the right action is whichever produces the most good.

Dharma (ethical context): in Buddhism, the teachings of the Buddha and the natural moral law guiding right action. Buddhist dharma integrates duty, consequences, and character cultivation, resisting neat classification as either deontological or teleological.

Distributive justice is the branch of ethics concerned with the fair allocation of resources, opportunities, and burdens across members of a society, addressing who gets what and on what basis.

Emotivism is the meta-ethical theory that moral statements do not express propositions but rather express the speaker's attitudes and attempt to influence others. Saying "stealing is wrong" is not stating a fact but expressing disapproval, sometimes called the "Boo/Hurrah" theory.

Ethical language refers to the words and statements used to make moral claims (such as “good,” “right,” “wrong,” and “ought”). Meta-ethics asks whether ethical language describes moral facts, expresses attitudes, issues prescriptions, or performs some other linguistic function.

Euthanasia is the deliberate ending of a person's life to relieve suffering. Active euthanasia involves a direct act (such as administering a lethal dose), while passive euthanasia involves withdrawing life-sustaining treatment.

Foundations for moral judgements are the sources of justification proposed for moral claims, including rationality, emotion, natural law, and environment. The foundation accepted determines whether moral judgements are universal or culturally relative, objective or subjective.

Human nature refers to the set of characteristics, capacities, and dispositions thought to be shared by all human beings, independent of culture, upbringing, or historical context, and that define what it fundamentally means to be human.

Intuitionism in moral philosophy holds that basic moral truths are self-evident and can be apprehended directly through a faculty of moral intuition, without the need for empirical evidence or deductive proof. Developed by W.D. Ross and G.E. Moore, the view grounds ethics in irreducible moral perceptions but faces the challenge of explaining persistent moral disagreement if such truths are supposedly obvious.

Moral agency is the capacity of a being to understand moral principles, distinguish right from wrong, and be held accountable for its choices and actions.

Moral principle: a fundamental standard of right and wrong conduct that guides moral reasoning and action. Moral principles may be grounded in duty, consequences, virtue, divine command, or other foundations, and may be held to be universal or culturally relative.

Moral sense is a theory originating with Francis Hutcheson and developed by Hume and Smith, holding that human beings possess an innate faculty for perceiving moral qualities through sentiment, analogous to the physical senses.

Moral status is the property of being an entity whose interests or wellbeing deserve moral consideration. Debated criteria include sentience, rationality, being the subject of a life, or membership in a biotic community.

Moral values: standards or principles concerning what is right, wrong, good, or bad that carry a sense of obligation or authority; meta-ethics asks whether moral values are natural or cultural, universal or relative, subjective or objective.

Naturalism in meta-ethics holds that moral properties are identical to or reducible to natural properties discoverable through empirical inquiry, such as what promotes pleasure, satisfies desires, or contributes to human flourishing. The view promises to place ethics on a scientific footing but must answer Moore's open-question argument, which contends that no natural description can fully capture the meaning of moral goodness.

The naturalistic fallacy is G.E. Moore's term for the error of defining the property of goodness in terms of any natural property such as pleasure, evolutionary fitness, or social approval. Moore argued that for any proposed natural equivalent of "good" one can always meaningfully ask whether that property really is good, suggesting that moral goodness is a simple, unanalysable quality irreducible to empirical description.