Module Directory

This is a module in ethical theory rather than applied ethics – that is, it takes up theoretical questions about the status and justification of morality rather than addressing directly practical moral problems. The exact focus will vary from year-to-year.

In this year’s version of the module, we will explore some of the things that worry people about morality. These are matters that may be thought of as challenges to morality and that seem either to make morality impossible or to undermine our commitment to it. For instance, if morality is just a matter of what we happen to like or dislike, or is only relative to the standards of one's culture, is the idea that we can ask and give moral reasons undermined, or significantly limited? Similarly, the fact that moral discussions (unlike arguments about matters of fact) often end up in irresolvable disagreements seems to threaten the rationality of moral arguments. The role that matters of luck play in our moral evaluations also seems to involve holding people responsible for things that are not really under their control, thus compromising the idea that we can really assess the moral value of their actions. We will look at these and other challenges to morality, and explore some of the metaethical questions that these challenges raise: can we say that our moral judgements are capable of being true or false? If they are, does their truth depend on certain moral facts?

The aims of this module are:

• To introduce students to main problems of contemporary metaethics.


• To analyse the differences and connections between metaethics, normative ethics and other registers of moral thinking.


• To familiarise students with the main theories of metaethics, and to analyse their strenghts and weaknesses.


• To introduce students to the work of contemporary moral philosophers.


• To evaluate the prospects and limits of metaethics as a mode of moral thinking.


• To assess the extent to which metaethics can account for certain crucial aspects of moral experience.

By the end of this module, students will be expected to be able to:

1. Explain some of the major preoccupations and approaches of ethical theory.


2. Analyse critically the debates surrounding them.

By the end of the module students should also have acquired a set of transferable skills, and in particular be able to:

1. Define the task in which they are engaged and exclude what is irrelevant.


2. Find and understand the most relevant discussions and sources of information; process a large volume of diverse and sometimes conflicting arguments by re-framing them in the student’s own terms.


3. Compare and evaluate different arguments and assess the limitations of their own position or procedure.


4. Write a succinct and precise account of positions, arguments, and their presuppositions and implications.


5. Be sensitive to the positions of others and communicate their own views in ways that are accessible to them.


6. Think ‘laterally’ and creatively – see interesting connections and possibilities and present these clearly rather than as vague hunches.


7. Maintain intellectual flexibility and revise their own position if shown wrong.


8. Think and write critically and constructively on the spot in workshop conditions.

Incoming Study Abroad students must have already taken an introductory module in Philosophy at their home institution.

This module frontloads lectures in the first half of the term, with the second half focusing on student research and writing.

There will be no distinction in the timetable between lecture and discussion: each two hour class meeting will involve both lecture and discussion elements in which all students will participate.