Talk:Ethics

Changes to the article

I was thinking about implementing changes to this article with the hope of moving it in the direction of GA status. There is still a lot to do. Major parts lack references, there are many "citation needed" tags and one "Synthesis" tag.

At some points, the article has too much information: this type of overview article should mostly focus on general patterns and leave the details to more specific articles (see WP:SUMMARYSTYLE). For example, the section "Normative ethics" has 12 subsections, many of which have themselves several subsubsections. A similar problem applies to the 12 subsubsection of the subsection "Particular fields of application". One way to address this issue would be to only include subsections for the most important topics and summarize the remaining subsections maybe to one paragraph each without a separate subsection. For example, the subsection "State consequentialism" could be included in the section "Consequentialism" rather than having a separate subsection. And the subsection "Intuitive ethics" talks about ethical intuitionism, which belongs to metaethics rather than normative ethics. Many of the subsubsections of "Particular fields of application" only have one or two sentences and it shouldn't be a problem to merge them into another section.

An important part that is missing in the current version is the history of ethics. I think it deserves its own section without going too much into detail, maybe one or two paragraphs per main period (ancient, medieval,...). Various smaller adjustments would be needed for the different topics discussed in the article but they can be addressed later. I was hoping to get some feedback on these ideas and possibly other suggestions. I still have to do some research to work out the details. After that, I would start implementing them one at a time but it will probably take a while to address all the points. Phlsph7 (talk) 08:43, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

Your progress looks great so far!

I think the history section could use one or two more sentences which go further into the 20th and 21st century. My suggestion would be an mentioning the introduction of Personal identity via Parfit and something perhaps something from Rawls—two huge figures who seem to be missing.

Considering that consequentialism, deontology and virtue ethics are the chief normative ethical approaches, it might be good to single them out, like how certain traditions were singled out in the Philosophy article's history section.

Also, it seems a bit jarring to me that the first section of the article would be on metaethics, considering it is the youngest tradition of the three branches and definitely not the first thing people think of when they think of ethics (presumably that's normative ethics). Aza24 (talk) 09:44, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

Hello Aza24 and thanks for the feedback! I think it's a good proposal to focus on consequentialism, deontology and virtue ethics in the section on normative ethics. My idea was to have one subsection for each together with one additional subsection called "Others" to discuss alternative theories.

I was thinking about mentioning Parfit but I'm not sure how to best include him in the history section. His discussions of personal identity were groundbreaking and have various implications for moral philosophy but they are not directly part of it. Maybe something about his rationalist moral realism stating that ethics is about responding to reasons and his attempt to reconcile consequentialism and deontology. Rawls is a heavy-weight in political philosophy so the article should mention him somewhere. I'm not sure if it's best to discuss Parfit and Rawls in the history section or in another part of the article.

You are right that in terms of the age of the branches and the reader's expectations, metaethics shouldn't come first. The main motivation for having it first is probably to go from abstract to concrete. Some sources follow this idea. Another approach would be to discuss metaethics after normative and applied ethics. Phlsph7 (talk) 13:14, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

The "Others" division makes sense to me—that's what I was getting at when I mentioned modeling this after your work on the philosophy article's history section.

For Rawls, history section might make sense, given that so huge subsequent literature responding to him, the direct legal impact and the revitalization of political philosophy that his work had. For Parfit, I think both of your suggestions would work well, or perhaps something about his inauguration of population ethics. Contrasting Parfit with Bernard Williams on their opposing adherence to moral realism could be a natural way to include Williams as well (although I see he's in the definition section already, albeit in a rather general way, not particularly revealing of his contributions).

Your abstract to concrete idea makes sense, but the newness of metaethics + the oldness of normative makes it difficult to reconcilce that decision. But, per usual, I defer to your expertise. Aza24 (talk) 23:33, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

I found a way to mention Parfit and Rawls in the history section. I haven't fully made up my mind about the section order and I would be interested to hear what others think. I'll keep my eyes open on how reliable sources deal with this issue as I do the research for the other sections. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:16, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

Images

Hi. I have created this image on ethics. Do you think it would be good to put it in the introduction, and to move the image that is currently in the introduction into "Normative ethics"? Then, the image caption would replace the sentence "It is usually divided into three major fields: normative ethics, applied ethics, and metaethics."

However, I realize that descriptive ethics is less popular than the 3 other subfields of ethics. Do you think "Descriptive ethics" should be removed from the image? Alenoach (talk) 23:07, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

It's maybe not as informative as the current image, and it shows the subfields of ethics but without directly providing links. So, I'm actually not sure whether it would be an improvement or not. Alenoach (talk) 00:36, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Well to reflect the article, descriptive ethics would indeed make sense removing.

Although I don't know if the image itself really adds much information. It conveys a rather base level of information, which is already easily readable in the text (and perhaps more comprehensible there). Aza24 (talk) 02:22, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Actually, I tend agree with you. No problem. Alenoach (talk) 02:29, 26 March 2024 (UTC)