AQA Philosophy A2 Level
Moral Philosophy
How do people justify their actions? How do we understand truth and the application to morality? If truth is external to the individual how do we respond to it? If truth is internal from the individual how we know what is really true? How should we apply these to moral situation?
This part of the course will look at the concept that moral concepts can be understood as being objective. These moral concepts are external to the individual. We need to take account of how the individual is to then respond to these moral truths.
What types of moral truths are there?
5. How is knowledge of moral truth possible? 
Key themes
- Non-cognitivst challenge
- Emotivism and Prescriptivism – I.e. we cannot gain knowledge of an external truth as there is none. The concepts we ‘discover’ through our intuition are merely our own thoughts and desires
- Nietzsche- the facts we ‘discover’ are themselves historical & ‘most of a philosopher’s conscious thinking is secretly guided and channelled into particular tracks by his instincts… [and] the physiological demands for the preservation for a particular kind of life’