While Ethical Naturalists believe it holds great importance as it can convey facts and help us to understand ethical theories, there are those who strongly disagree with this. For example Intuitionists, such as Moore, believe that our intuition is more useful when wanting to know how to act morally than knowing the definitions of ethical terms. Although Non-Cognitive theories disagree with the factual content of ethical statements, it is clear that they still see some significance in ethical language. However rather than seeing it as facts, they accept that morality is subjective and suggest that the importance of ethical language is provided by the emotions conveyed in the phrases used. Perhaps more so than Emotivists, Prescriptivists see ethical language as fairly meaningful.
Each of these represents a different philosophy which stems from a different understanding of human nature. Retribution and incapacitation are the only ones that are truly forms of punishment. Deterrence is a philosophy based on the threat or fear of punishment, and restoration is a goal of sentencing to help make victims “whole again” (Schmalleger, 2014, p. 343). I will discuss rehabilitation later in this paper. Retribution is defined as “A just deserts perspective that emphasizes taking revenge on a criminal perpetrator or group of offenders” (Schmalleger, 2014, p. 341).
Utilitarianism focuses on the belief that actions can be morally correct if the masses get more of the benefit than any one person. This differs from virtue theory greatly. While virtue theory looks at the history of one individual and those virtues effecting one individuals character, utilitarianism is a focus on the group. It is ones action that gives the group greater good, not an individual. Deontology is the theory that an individual does something because the individual believes it is the right thing to do.
The answer to this question will vary. Some people are moral realists and hold that moral facts are objective facts that are out there in the world, these people believe that things are good or bad independently of us. Moral values such as goodness and badness are real properties of people in the same way that rough and smooth are properties of physical objects. This view is often referred to as cognitive language. Those who oppose cognitivists are called non cognitivists and they believe that when someone makes a moral statement they are not describing the world, but they are merely expressing their feelings and opinions, they believe that moral statements are not objective therefore they cannot be verified as true or false.
Did god determine that it is good to help the poor, give gifts, and preserve life? Or on the other hand did morality come about because of something independent of God. Meaning that the determination of that which is good or that which is bad came from something other than God and the reason that God agrees with certain actions is because the action is already morally right. The former of these two is known as the Divine Command Theory and the latter is the Autonomy Thesis. The clash of these two options is the Euthyphro Dilemma.
Plea bargaining is an essential part of the United States criminal justice system and is practiced extensively in the federal, state, and local municipal criminal systems. Plea bargaining occurs when the District Attorney agrees with the defendant or the defendant’s attorney to lower the charge to or to agree to put the defendant on a special rehabilitative program which usually does not carry an imprisonment as part of the sentence and might or might carry a conviction. The advantages of this practice allows the system to heavily reduce the criminal dockets, and for the prosecuting attorneys to concentrate on prosecuting serious crimes in which a plea bargain is no palatable. A trial costs time, resources, and taxpayer money. Bargaining reduces this burden.
Moore and WD Ross a fellow intuitionist agreed that pleasure, knowledge and virtue are all intrinsically good, and pain, ignorance and vice are intrinsically bad. However, they disagreed about our basic moral duties. Unlike Intuitionism, Emotivism does not purport the existence of objective moral facts, truths or duties. Instead it takes
In the 1970s, the strong emphasis on rehabilitation that had existed since the turn of the century gave way first to a focus on equality and fairness in sentencing, and then to an increased focus on incapacitation, deterrence and restraint strategies of crime prevention. Today, incapacitation is the primary justification for imprisonment in the U.S. criminal justice system. While this analysis of crime prevention focuses on how effective these different strategies are in reducing crime, it is important to remember that each strategy has impacts other than crime reduction. For example, analysis of the costs and benefits is critically important in any examination of policy relevant issues. This has been the focus of much of the incapacitation discussion because of the large impact associated with policies that increase the need for building, operating and maintaining the prisons necessary for incapacitation.
The absolutist's view is that some statements are "objectively true," that is, true independent of whether anybody recognizes their truth. Objectivism is another name for absolutism. The general relativist denies that are any objectively true statements; general relativism is the view that statements are true only from a point of view (individual, community, or culture). As with scepticism and dogmatism, many people are relativists only about some areas. You might be a relativist regarding ethical matters--saying that moral correctness is merely in the mind of the individual, or maybe the dominant group in the society, but remain an absolutist about mathematics, saying that 1+1=2 regardless of whether you or I or anybody else thinks so.
Consequentialism assumes that if human being would weigh the outcome of their taboos and beliefs, then happiness can be achieved and pain reduced. But utilitarianism assumes that people can only value a virtue if it is deemed beneficial in accomplishing human happiness. For example utilitarians believe that truth will make a better society while consequentialists believe that truth will make a better society only if the outcome causes no harm. Basically utilitarianism assumes that the wrongness or rightness of an act depends on the moral good produced as a result of doing that act. This implies that an act is right if it minimizes violation of a certain moral right thus no one should violate moral rights for happiness sake and be justified.