Individualist ethical subjectivism
- Individualist ethical subjectivism
Individualist ethical subjectivism (sometimes simply ethical subjectivism or moral subjectivism) is the meta-ethical view which claims that:
# Ethical sentences express propositions.
# Those propositions are about the attitudes of people. [Brandt 1959, p. 153: " [Objectivism and subjectivism] have been used more vaguely, confusedly, and in more different senses than the others we are considering. We suggest as a convenient usage, however, that a theory be called subjectivist if and only if, according to it, any ethical assertion implies that somebody does, or somebody of a certain sort under certain conditions would, take "some specified attitude" toward something."]
# The particular person whose attitudes are relevant is the speaker of the ethical sentence.
This view, as put forward by Protagoras, holds that there are as many distinct scales of good and evil as there are subjects in the world. ["moral subjectivism is that species of moral relativism that relativizes moral value to the individual subject". [http://www.iep.utm.edu/r/relativi.htm Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy] ] Such an individualist ethical subjectivist might propose, for example, that what it means for something to be morally right is that it is met with approval by the person(s) of interest. This can lead to the belief that different things are right and wrong according to each idiosyncratic moral outlook, thus making this theory a form of moral relativism.
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