Before you answer issues in applied ethics about matters like abortion and capital punishment, it may be necessary to “back up” and handle some other questions first.

Moral philosophers have broadened the subject to include metaethics and normative ethics. Metaethics (the prefix meta means “beyond”) usually deals with the meaning or origin of ethical concepts.

One metaethical issue is whether ethical issues are relative or objective. Philosophers known as objectivists usually believe that values exist in the external world independently of your comprehension of them. Put another way, values are real and do not depend upon our opinions of them. For instance, an objectivist might say that the statement “Capital punishment is unjust” is objectively true. That is, its truth doesn't depend upon your opinion one way or the other. The position is called objectivism because it is like saying that chairs and rocks and persons and other things exist and are “out there” whether you think they are there or not. Objectivists further argue that these values can be found and known by human perceivers and that they must be used as principles for human judgments and conduct.

Relativism is opposed to objectivism. Philosophers known as relativists say that values are relative. Their truth depends on what society you are from, what time you live in, and what conditions you are brought up in. A relativist might point out that in the “Bible Belt” region of the United States more people disapprove of abortion. By contrast, in the northeast more people approve. Neither region of the country is right or wrong, since rightness and wrongness are relative to one's culture, circumstances, and other factors. Therefore, such values are not universally applicable at all times or in all places and you cannot speak of a person's values as “objectively” correct or incorrect.

Relativists do not reject all moral values. But they deny that values have objective status — as 2 × 2 = 4 is objectively true or that the glass before you exists objectively. Relativists also deny that moral values are immutable divine commands in the mind of God. Moral values, they argue, are strictly human inventions.

Other Metaethical Issues

There are also psychological issues in metathics. This is where you analyze what is the psychological basis of morality and what, if anything, motivates you to be moral. The issue of egoism versus altruism investigates whether individuals are always motivated by selfishness, which is what egoists claim, or whether they are sometimes motivated by the desire to do good or act with benevolence, which is what altruism claims.

Egoism accepts a universal affirmative claim, namely, that all human actions are motivated by selfishness. It is hard to dispute that some actions are motivated by selfishness. After all, you might work hard solely for the reason that you will get a raise. You could also play a game hoping to win and draw the praise of others.

What makes egoism interesting is the claim that all human actions are in the final analysis motivated by selfishness. If you give to a charity, the egoist will assert that you wanted to alleviate guilt feelings, or desire the approval of others, or wished for a tax write-off. So behind even the most generous actions is a selfish motivation. Even heroic or saintly behavior might be seen as being motivated by a desire to please God.

Altruism holds a contrary view. People do act selfishly some or even most of the time, but they are still capable of acting selflessly, according to altruism. Altruism says that people can be motivated by caring for others without a thought for themselves. If parents put a child through college, they are doing it for the child's well-being and not their own. If you give money or time to the victims of a disaster, you are doing it for them because you care for their plight, not because you need to erase guilt feelings that have been with you since childhood.

The altruist may improve his position by distinguishing between selfishness and self-interest. If you go to the doctor to have a colonoscopy you are acting out of self-interest, but are you acting selfishly? It would be hard to see how. For one, in visiting the doctor you are not putting your own well-being above anyone else's. In fact, no one else's interests but yours are involved. How could an egoist say that such an action is selfish? If it isn't selfish, then the egoist's universal affirmative thesis is defeated with a single counter-example.

In the Descent of Man (1871), Charles Darwin provided an evolutionist account of the moral sense that is neither egoistic nor altruistic. Darwin took as “the standard or morality the general good or welfare of the community, rather than the general happiness.” By “general good” he meant “the greatest number of individuals in full vigor and health.” Darwin observed that when a person “risks his life to save that of a fellow-creature, it seems more correct to say that he acts for the general good, rather than for the general happiness.” It would be hard to label such behavior either as selfish or altruistic.