CAS PH 251 Study Guide - Comprehensive Final Exam Guide - Informed Consent, Liberty, Immanuel Kant

• School: Boston University
• Department: Philosophy
• Course: CAS PH 251
• Professor: Russell Powell

Document Summary

Ethics: what should we do: metaethics, normative ethics, applied ethics. Moral philosophy (no crucial experiments or data in moral philosophy) So what then distinguishes good philosophical reasoning from poor philosophical reasoning: the rigor of argumentation (e. g. logical form, conceptual clarity, defensibility of assumptions, reliable empirical evidence etc. ) This is a valid argument, but not a sound argument: soundness: an argument is sound only if it"s valid and the premises are true, yes the premises are true. This is a sound argument: but not all valid deductive arguments are sound. Consider this argument: premise 1: all birds can fly, premise 1: this animal is a bird, conclusion: this animal can fly. This is a valid argument, but not a sound argument. Consider this inductive, statistical argument: premise 1: nearly all birds can fly, premise 2: this animal is a bird, conclusion: this animal probably can fly.