Criterion ethical
Criterion ethical
In ethics the main problem is often said to be the finding of a criterion of virtue, or of rightness, or of goodness, depending on which of these concepts is taken as basic; and the quest for a moral standard, or for an ethical first principle, or for a summum bonum may generally be construed as a quest for such a criterion (e.g., Kant’s first form of the categorical imperative may be interpreted as a criterion of rightness). Hence to find a criterion of, say, goodness is to find a characteristic whose presence, absence, or degree may be taken as a mark of the presence, absence, or degree of goodness. Thus hedonists hold pleasantness to be such a characteristic. Often, finding a criterion of a characteristic is taken as equivalent to finding a definition of that characteristic. Strictly, this is not the case, for a characteristic may serve as a criterion of another with which it is not identical. Pleasantness might be a criterion of goodness without being identical with it, if only the above relation held between pleasantness and goodness. However, the discovery of a definition of a characteristic does normally furnish a criterion of that characteristic. Vide the definition of a right act as an act conducive to the greatest happiness.
To some minds the ethical quest results in a failure to find and in a denial of the existence of any single moral criterion — this is the position of such intuitionists as G. E. Moore and W. D. Ross and of some relativists. — W.K.F.