Template talk:Ethics

Can we establish an objective criteria for inclusion? Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy or Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy entries? It's difficult to ascertain whether ethics of care deserves similar standing to the three dominant normative ethical theories for example, or which philosophers belong in the list of ethicists by reading the individual articles alone. Any proposals?Skomorokh 18:12, 7 May 2007 (UTC) [reply ]

it does. i learned it in ethical theory and have taught it. it's as good as virtue theory in its modern construction. if you want standards.... just use citation count on philosopher's index perhaps over 1000. --Buridan 00:22, 8 May 2007 (UTC) [reply ]

It was rhetorical. What do you mean by "citation count on philosopher's index" exactly?Skomorokh 00:50, 8 May 2007 (UTC) [reply ]

The philosopher's index is a citation index for philosophy. it will tell you how many times a work has been cited in the philosophy literature, journals and books. if something is never cited or rarely cited, like say ayn rand novels, then it is not really philosophy, but if it has over 1000 citation, then it is. if you want to know if something is important or central to the field, or subfield in philosophy, you look at how many times it is cited and who cites it. --Buridan 09:49, 8 May 2007 (UTC) [reply ]

I don`t have a citation counter here but am quite sure Gilligan cannot possibly be a key thinker on a par with Aristotle or Kant, or even Macintyre --Isolani 09:02, 19 June 2007 (UTC) [reply ]

The links for these two ethical concepts are woefully lacking. Right currently refers to legal rights, as in a right to due process, with no reference to the opposite to wrong. Wrong, while going to a page that describes it ethically ("the opposite of right"), still has little substance. Can someone please improve this wrong.—Red Baron 15:51, 16 May 2007 (UTC) [reply ]

I suggest using Right and wrong, which currently redirects to Ethics, as the page to describe the ethical meanings of these words.—Red Baron 15:57, 16 May 2007 (UTC) [reply ]

Currently this links to a disambiguation page. For this Template perhaps the article Trust (social sciences) was intended. Since this template is on many pages is there a simple way to update all the pages with this template or does it have to be done on an individual basis? Lmielke359 03:07, 9 June 2007 (UTC) [reply ]

I am surprised that responsibility (in particular: "Moral responsibility") isn't listed as a core issue of ethics. - Atfyfe 23:47, 14 September 2007 (UTC) [reply ]

I included Socrates but it was removed saying "Socrates not recognized in contemporary literature as a pre-eminient ethical theorist." But It is always recognized as a moral philosopher (even cited on top of Ethics) and still very influential to some that don't accept any kind of contingency.--Pediboi (talk) 00:17, 7 July 2008 (UTC) [reply ]

Responsibility is a disambiguation page. What type of responsibility is intended here? (There is already a separate link to Moral responsibility.) --R'n'B (call me Russ) 13:32, 11 June 2009 (UTC) [reply ]

Whether worship should or should not be a "topic within ethics" is frankly irrelevant. What cannot be argued is that worship is a central part of religious ethics, for right or wrong. It is basic Wikipedia policy that what placed in this encyclopedia does not have to be the truth but only a reporting of the (right or wrong) opinion of others. 192.12.13.7 (talk) 17:32, 11 April 2013 (UTC) [reply ]

The template is for topics within Ethics. So yes, it is relevant. No one working in the field of ethics in any serious, scholarly or credible way is working on "worship" as subject matter. If you want to place worshhip in an ethics template, then that opens the door to any random ritual by any religion. There is nothing inherently moral or immoral about worship any more than any other rituals. Hare Chrishna. Hare Chrishna to you, anonymous person. Greg Bard (talk) 18:01, 11 April 2013 (UTC) [reply ]

Those studying religious ethics work on worship as a subject matter, whether they should be or not. But you avoid the point and I repeat myself. Do you know if it is possible to get outside opinions to settle this, and then I'll stop. 192.12.13.1 (talk) 20:00, 12 April 2013 (UTC) [reply ]

Take this to one of the religion templates. It's not philosophy. Do not replace this. Greg Bard (talk) 21:47, 12 April 2013 (UTC) [reply ]

I agree with Gregbard. Frietjes (talk) 21:52, 12 April 2013 (UTC) [reply ]

I have asked the opinion of User:Tesseract2, a frequent philosophy editor and looks genuine about editing Wikipedia. I still think you are not addressing the point but if s/he agrees with you, I'll drop this issue. 192.12.13.7 (talk) 17:41, 13 April 2013 (UTC) [reply ]

Sorry to see an edit war. Happy to see a discussion. IP wants my opinion so, sure, I'll offer some thoughts.

Here's why I don't think "Worship" needs to be here. We should ask ourselves: Can worship be an important part of life? Yes. Do religious ethical thinkers have a lot to say about worship? Absolutely yes! On the other hand, those thinkers also have a lot to say about caring for your children, gathering for mass, and many more activities. The question is whether worship is directly related to the "study" of what is "right and wrong". Worship is not direct study.

So no, I don't think we should change the template. Worship is still very easy to find on wikipedia. IP, just to make sure you don't think worship is being ignored completely, I made an edit to the "see also" list over at Ethics in religion. (Worship is now listed here.)

Good luck everyone.

-Tesseract² (talk) 08:18, 14 April 2013 (UTC) [reply ]

Hmm, I thought I had one straightforward case. Oh well then. Thank you Tesseract2 for taking the time. 192.12.13.7 (talk) 17:32, 14 April 2013 (UTC) [reply ]

It is an interesting phenomenon. Everyone thinks they are an expert in philosophy, even if they have absolutely no formal education or experience in the subject matter. The fact is that if you are doing religion, you aren't doing philosophy.Greg Bard (talk) 18:19, 14 April 2013 (UTC) [reply ]

Would it make sense to include Template:Good and evil within the Concepts section of the Ethics template and remove any topics within the Concepts section to avoid duplication? This would be a template within a template. 66.180.23.144 (talk) 16:22, 30 August 2024 (UTC) [reply ]

Allow me to provide several quotations from the article's page as a reason for why I decided to add it to the template.

"According to the causal impact view, something is important if it has a big causal impact on the world. This view is rejected by various theorists, who insist that an additional aspect is required: that the impact in question makes a value difference. This is often understood in terms of how the important thing affects the well-being of people."

"In the realm of ethics, the importance of something often determines how one should act towards this thing, for example, by paying attention to it or by protecting it. In this regard, importance is a normative property, meaning that importance claims constitute reasons for actions, emotions, and other attitudes."

"Importance plays various roles in ethics, for example, concerning what reasons we have for an action, how we should act, and what merits attention. Questions of importance play a direct role in morality. According to utilitarians, for example, only the consequences of an action in terms of well-being are important for its moral value."

The above quotations were the reasoning for me to add importance to the template. Since the addition was rejected on the basis of being "too general" by @WeyerStudentOfAgrippa, could it be that importance would fit more with metaphysics than ethics, because it is a property of an entity? However, simply being a property of entity is not enough, for something to be important it also must be valuable in some way, and therefore, making it related to ethics. Avery127 (talk) 17:54, 6 March 2025 (UTC) [reply ]

This might be an edge case, and I welcome input from other editors. Importance is important in ethics, but also in business, politics, science, and many other domains. I don't see how it adds enough ethics content to be worth diluting the more clearly relevant links. WeyerStudentOfAgrippa (talk) 13:35, 7 March 2025 (UTC) [reply ]

I guess I should have initially linked the "Ethics, morality, and normativity" section of the Importance article, as you did, instead of simply linking the entire article. Some confusion could have been avoided that way. As for relevance to the subject of Ethics, I think the concept of Importance is closely related to the concept of Values, which is a concept that Ethics studies. Discussing the concept of Values would also require to discuss the concept of Importance, and that is why I thought it would be worth adding to the template, since it would help us to expand our understanding of the concept of Values. Avery127 (talk) 15:53, 7 March 2025 (UTC) [reply ]

• Template-Class Philosophy pages
• NA-importance Philosophy pages
• Template-Class ethics pages
• NA-importance ethics pages
• Ethics task force articles