In the course of discussions bearing on -- or even just straying into -- moral matters, you'll often hear people involved in them invoking and using a rather limited range of moral terms and concepts. It can be ordinary everyday conversations between friends, family or co-workers. At the other end of the scale, it might be talking heads corralled into boxes to debate each other with sound-bites on the television screen. It can even be an Ethics class, or some other class straying into that territory
The most commonly used terms and concepts are the
permissible, the
obligatory, or the
prohibited. There's a host of synonyms available for these. You can even describe them through terms like: what's allowed, what's required, and what's not allowed. These are indeed important for moral life, decision-making, and development -- but where, I'd like to argue, a lot of people go wrong in in thinking that these three classifications provide an adequate range for the moral distinctions we need to make.
