Descriptive, Moral, and Normative Statements

We’ve been talking about domains that call upon our critical thinking skills in distinctive ways. In the previous two weeks, we talked about science and law. This week, we turn to morality. We said at the outset that we aim to give you the skills to ensure that you adopted true beliefs and rejected false ones. Obviously, some of the most important decisions we make about which beliefs to adopt, to reject, or to revise concern moral beliefs. Now, we are not going to try to convince you which moral beliefs you should adopt. Our aim here, as elsewhere, is to give you the tools to make those assessments for yourself. So, this week, we aim to help you to:

• Identify the uniqueness of moral reasoning.
• Become aware of the Is-Ought problem.
• Explain Relativism – Subjectivism, Reflective Equilibrium and the Naturalist Fallacy.