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Axiology is the philosophical study of value. It includes questions about the nature and classification of values and about what kinds of things have value. It is intimately connected with various other philosophical fields that crucially depend on the notion of value, like ethics, aesthetics or philosophy of religion. It is also closely related to value theory and meta-ethics. The term was first used by Eduard von Hartmann in 1887 and by Paul Lapie in 1902.
In metaphilosophy and ethics, metaethics is the study of the nature, scope, and meaning of moral judgment. It is one of the three branches of ethics generally studied by philosophers, the others being normative ethics and applied ethics.
Non-cognitivism is the meta-ethical view that ethical sentences do not express propositions and thus cannot be true or false. A noncognitivist denies the cognitivist claim that "moral judgments are capable of being objectively true, because they describe some feature of the world". If moral statements cannot be true, and if one cannot know something that is not true, noncognitivism implies that moral knowledge is impossible.
In philosophical ethics, the naturalistic fallacy is the claim that it is possible to define good in terms of natural entities, or properties such as pleasant or desirable. The term was introduced by British philosopher G. E. Moore in his 1903 book Principia Ethica.
Moral relativism or ethical relativism is used to describe several philosophical positions concerned with the differences in moral judgments across different peoples and cultures. An advocate of such ideas is often referred to as a relativist.
Rationality is the quality of being guided by or based on reason. In this regard, a person acts rationally if they have a good reason for what they do, or a belief is rational if it is based on strong evidence. This quality can apply to an ability, as in a rational animal, to a psychological process, like reasoning, to mental states, such as beliefs and intentions, or to persons who possess these other forms of rationality. A thing that lacks rationality is either arational, if it is outside the domain of rational evaluation, or irrational, if it belongs to this domain but does not fulfill its standards.
Moral realism is the position that ethical sentences express propositions that refer to objective features of the world, some of which may be true to the extent that they report those features accurately. This makes moral realism a non-nihilist form of ethical cognitivism with an ontological orientation, standing in opposition to all forms of moral anti-realism and moral skepticism, including ethical subjectivism, error theory, and non-cognitivism. Moral realism's two main subdivisions are ethical naturalism and ethical non-naturalism.
Positive is a property of positivity and may refer to:
Emotivism is a meta-ethical view that claims that ethical sentences do not express propositions but emotional attitudes. Hence, it is colloquially known as the hurrah/boo theory. Influenced by the growth of analytic philosophy and logical positivism in the 20th century, the theory was stated vividly by A. J. Ayer in his 1936 book Language, Truth and Logic, but its development owes more to C. L. Stevenson.
The is–ought problem, as articulated by the Scottish philosopher and historian David Hume, arises when one makes claims about what ought to be that are based solely on statements about what is. Hume found that there seems to be a significant difference between positive statements and prescriptive or normative statements, and that it is not obvious how one can coherently transition from descriptive statements to prescriptive ones. Hume's law or Hume's guillotine is the thesis that an ethical or judgmental conclusion cannot be inferred from purely descriptive factual statements.
Normative generally means relating to an evaluative standard. Normativity is the phenomenon in human societies of designating some actions or outcomes as good, desirable, or permissible, and others as bad, undesirable, or impermissible. A norm in this sense means a standard for evaluating or making judgments about behavior or outcomes. "Normative" is sometimes also used, somewhat confusingly, to mean relating to a descriptive standard: doing what is normally done or what most others are expected to do in practice. In this sense a norm is not evaluative, a basis for judging behavior or outcomes; it is simply a fact or observation about behavior or outcomes, without judgment. Many researchers in science, law, and philosophy try to restrict the use of the term "normative" to the evaluative sense and refer to the description of behavior and outcomes as positive, descriptive, predictive, or empirical.
Positive economics is the part of economics that deals with positive statements. Positive economics, was originated from positivism and got introduced to economics by John Stuart Mill in his book Auguste Comte and Positivism in 1860's, reflecting upon Comte's positivism. Then, it was developed by John Neville Keynes in the 1890's and it became popular economical thought by elaborations of Lionel Robbins in the 1930s. In essence, positive economics studies what is rather than what ought to be. While economics can be filled with subjective statements such as value and allocation, it is vital to distinguish that what be is not objectively permanent or desirable.
Normative economics is the part of economics that deals with normative statements. It focuses on the idea of fairness and what the outcome of the economy or goals of public policy ought to be.
Norms are concepts (sentences) of practical import, oriented to affecting an action, rather than conceptual abstractions that describe, explain, and express. Normative sentences imply "ought-to" types of statements and assertions, in distinction to sentences that provide "is" types of statements and assertions. Common normative sentences include commands, permissions, and prohibitions; common normative abstract concepts include sincerity, justification, and honesty. A popular account of norms describes them as reasons to take action, to believe, and to feel.
Naturalized epistemology is a collection of philosophic views about the theory of knowledge that emphasize the role of natural scientific methods. This shared emphasis on scientific methods of studying knowledge shifts the focus of epistemology away from many traditional philosophical questions, and towards the empirical processes of knowledge acquisition. There are noteworthy distinctions within naturalized epistemology. Replacement naturalism maintains that we should abandon traditional epistemology and replace it with the methodologies of the natural sciences. The general thesis of cooperative naturalism is that traditional epistemology can benefit in its inquiry by using the knowledge we have gained from cognitive sciences. Substantive naturalism focuses on an asserted equality of facts of knowledge and natural facts.
The fact–value distinction is a fundamental epistemological distinction described between:
- Statements of fact, based upon reason and physical observation, and which are examined via the empirical method.
- Statements of value, which encompass ethics and aesthetics, and are studied via axiology.
In the social sciences and philosophy, a positive or descriptive statement concerns what "is", "was", or "will be", excluding statements of what is, was, or will be moral. Positive statements are thus the opposite of normative statements. Positive statements are based on empirical evidence. For example, "an increase in taxation will result in less consumption" and "a fall in supply of petrol will lead to an increase in its price". However, positive statements can be factually incorrect: "The moon is made of green cheese" is empirically false, but is still a positive statement, as it is a statement about what is, not what should be.
Milton Friedman's book Essays in Positive Economics (1953) is a collection of earlier articles by the author with as its lead an original essay "The Methodology of Positive Economics." This essay posits Friedman's famous, but controversial, principle that assumptions need not be "realistic" to serve as scientific hypotheses; they merely need to make significant predictions.
In the most general terms, a reason is a consideration which justifies or explains an action, a belief, an attitude, or a fact.
Normative in academic disciplines means relating to an ideal standard or model, and in particular a normative statement is a statement that affirms how things should or ought to be, that is how to value them.
References
- ↑ "Normative Economics". Business Dictionary. Archived from the original on 23 December 2007. Retrieved 9 October 2014.
- 1 2 Lipsey, Richard G. (1975). An Introduction to Positive Economics (4th ed.). Weidenfeld & Nicolson. pp. 4–6. ISBN 978-0-297-76899-9.
