Human Nature | Decision Making

Decision Making

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Much of our confidence in science stems from the fact that there are commonly agreed upon methods for assessing empirical claims. Are there analogous methods in ethics for assessing normative claims?

Here are seven-steps we recommend for making good ethical decisions.

  1. Start with moral intuitions.
  2. Screen them for egoistic bias and self-deception.
  3. State screened intuitions as particular moral judgments.
  4. Identify factual and normative reasons and form into deductive arguments.
  5. Supply missing premises.
  6. Check the argument for validity.
  7. Check the argument for soundness.

The assignment, "A method for making ethical decisions" will be used in-class to explain these various steps.




Author: Gary Comstock
Maintained By: David Edelman
Last Updated: 2007-02-03