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Moral Realism And Normative Ethics

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What “ought” you do? Such a simple question can and most likely would have several answers depending on who you asked. This simple question can be answered using philosophical ethics but more specifically meta and normative-ethics. Meta-ethics is understanding the nature of our moral thought and/or language whereas normative-ethics is evaluating the competing theories about what grounds morality. Here we will use the following normative and meta-ethics to discover how moral realism, moral anti-realism, and cultural relativism can all change what a person or a society believes they “ought” to do to be morally right. When asking what one ought to do moral realism says that there is only one answer. Moral realism tries to identify…show more content…
This view can be favorable in that it is an “each to their own” view and it can be seen in different societies such as having a society where women showing skin is offensive in one society but does not matter in another. Both of these meta-ethical views have positives and negatives but between the two I feel that anti-realism could be more accurate. In today’s society, just about everything falls into the hands of what that individual believes meaning there will always be a battle or argument on whatever topic is being discussed. Abortion, for example, has been a hot topic in the united states for years because different people all have different views on the topic and whether it is right or wrong. Personally, it is difficult to grasp the idea that a higher power could be what determines what a person ought or ought not to do especially since there is no proof of this power. Where both moral realists and moral anti-realists belong to meta-ethics, cultural relativism belongs to normative ethics. According to cultural relativism moral facts are not universal; they are essentially indexed to a culture at a time and each can be determined by the time, place, and circumstance of that culture. In other words, what can be considered moral in one society may be considered immoral in another society, and, since there are no universal standards of morality, no one can judge or punish another society’s customs. As for the time and circumstance, we can
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