A philosophical study of morality is very different from a sociological or anthropological study, or a study from the perspective of biology or psychology. One important difference is that in moral philosophy we do not distance ourselves from our own moral views in the way we would if we were engaged in a study of one of these other kinds. We do not take the fact that people, including ourselves, have moral views as merely a datum to be explained. Our goal is not merely to explain data of this kind, whether it be the distribution of moral beliefs and attitudes, or the occurrence of selfish or. | The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory DAVID COPP OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF ETHICAL THEORY OXFORD HANDBOOKS IN PHILOSOPHY PAUL K. MOSER GENERAL EDITOR Series Advisory Board ROBERT AUDI University of Nebraska MARTHA NUSSBAUM University of Chicago ALVIN PLANTINGA University of Notre Dame ERNEST SOSA Brown .
