A Moral Map (hopefully soon to be revised.)

I’ve been wanting to generate a map of moral positions for some time. Previously I had tried to make a different map using Xmind, but I didn’t find it particularly easy to use. I found it to be a bit frustrating. However, when I was looking at other moral maps on Google images, I discovered Cmap Tools. And it is much easier to use.

This is version 1.0. I will update this map with new discoveries as time goes on.

The Legend:

• Axiology: The study of values of all types.
  • • Factual: Values judgments are in some sense objective (true or false).
      • Axilogical Objectivism: Values, norms, ideals (etc.) are constituents of or reside in objects or in objective reality.
      • Axilogical Subjectivism: Value judgments are reduced to statements about mental attitudes toward and object/situation.
      • Axilogical Relationism: Value is a relation holding between variables or a product of variables in interaction
  • Not Factual: Value judgments are expressions of emotion or attempts to persuade (not true or false).
    • Axiological Nominalism (emotivism): Values are indefinable and emotive, i.e., factually meaningless.
• Ethics: The discipline concerned with what is morally good and bad, right and wrong. (Morality)
  • Nonnormative: Does not seek to prescribe what ought or ought not to be done.
    • Descriptive Ethics: The factual study of moral attitudes, behaviors, rules, motives in individuals and cultures (Sociological/anthropological/historical/psychological).
    • Metaethics: Where do our ethical principles come from, and what do they mean? (Conceptual analysis)Noncognitivist: Deny that moral statements make truth claims: NOT indicative statements. (not factual)
      Emotive: Expresses attitudes primarily.
      Imperative: Moral discourse influence attitudes primarily (C. L. Stevenson)
      Prescriptive: Moral discourse guides behavior primarily (R. M. Hare)
      Good Reasons Theory: Has to do with facts that are necessarily relevant to moral evaluationCognitivist: Moral statements that make truth claims: Indicative statements (factual)
      Subjectivist: Relates to the speaker.
      Objectivist: Relates to the act/duty or object/value.
  • Normative: Seeks to offer guides for determining right or wrong actions, attitudes or motives.
    • Applied Ethics: Examines specific controversial issues: Abortion, infanticide, etc. (brings N.A. to bear)
    • Normative Ethics: Moral standards that regulate right and wrong conduct.Teleological: Concerned primarily with ends or good rather than moral obligation. (maximize utility)
      Utilitarianism: The rightness or wrongness of an act or moral rule is a matter of the nonmoral good produced in the consequences of that act or rule.
      Ethical Egoism: Each person has a moral duty to follow those rules that will be in the agent’s self- interest long term.Deontological: Concerned primarily with moral obligations, the right, rather than ends/consequences.
      Deontological Ethics: Focuses on right and wrong moral actions and moral laws (right and wrong irrespective of the consequences by doing those acts or following those laws).
      Virtue Ethics: Focuses on the nature and formation of a good person and on the sort character traits that constitute a good person.