In recent discussions, ethicists have contrasted particularity with universality and impartiality and asked how, if morality is necessarily universal and impartial, it can give adequate recognition to particularity. Particularity refers to specific attachments (friendships, loyalties, etc.) and desires (fundamental projects, personal hopes in life) that are usually seen as morally irrelevant to the rational moral self.

. See noumenal. One of two ways of classifying reality, according to Kant.

According to Aristotle, Phronesis is practical wisdom, the ability to make the right decision in difficult circumstances.

The belief that there are multiple perspectives on an issue, each of which contains part of the truth but none of which contain the whole truth. In ethics, moral pluralism is the belief that different moral theories each capture part of truth of the moral life, but none of those theories has the entire answer.

See: Rights

The view that there is no one overarching classification of reality, no single perspective or worldview, but that everything depends on perspective, culture and context. In the postmodern world we mix and match our own moral systems, much as someone might pick and mix Woolworth’s sweets.

A preference utilitarian like Peter Singer argues that the right action maximises people's preferences (their choices). It is easier to say "I prefer a Mars Bar to a Milky Way" than to say, "a Mars Bar is worth ten utils to me" (util being a unit of measurement of pleasure).

The view put forward by R.M. Hare that the 'ought' in the statement 'you ought to do X' has three properties: it prescribes (urges, recommends, encourages) a certain kind of behaviour; it is universalizable, which means moral statements have an intrinsic sense (as in Kantian ethics, goodness has an intrinisic sense); it is overriding because the ought overrides any other form of statement. Hare asks us to compare the following: 'you oughtn't to mix purple and orange in your furniture' and 'you oughtn't to hurt your wife's feelings'. The second moral ought overrides the first (tasteful) ought.

In the original Latin, this phrase means 'at first glance'. In ethics, it usually occurs in discussions of duties. A prima facie duty is one which appears binding but which may, upon closer inspection, turn out to be overridden by other. stronger duties. See the theory of W.D. Ross.

The doctrine that all human motivation is ultimately selfish or egoistic.