5 markers

explain moral naturalism

• naturalism is a cognitivist moral theory, moral statements are truth apt and aim to describe the world

• naturalism is realist, mind independent moral properties exist in reality

• naturalists believe moral properties are identical to OR reducible to naturalistic properties

• e.g. utilitarianism —> good = pleasure, bad = pain which is not a naturalistic property

Explain naturalistic fallacy

• the naturalistic fallacy is the mistake to identify goodness with any naturalistic property

• G.E. Moore argued that moral properties cannot be reduced to natural properties

• correlation between goodness and pleasure e.g. heart and kidneys are not the same

• ‘goodness is a simple unanylysable property’

• e.g. the colour yellow, you have to experience it

Explain Humes fork (5)

• Hume’s fork is a problem for moral realism

• Hume’s fork splits statements into matters of fact and relation of ideas

• moral judgements are not tautologies, they are not certain so cannot be relation of ideas

• moral judgements aren’t matters of fact - you cant ‘see’ that killing is wrong, you can’t empirically verify

• therefore moral judgments are neither true or false therefore moral realism collapses

• Hume sees moral judgements as feelings of approval/ disapproval

Ayers VP

• this is an issue with what is meaningful

• two ways we can reason truths about the world

  • analytic statements ( a priori)

  • statement empirically verifiable ( a post)

• moral judgements are not analytic ( not tautologies)

• moral judgements not empirically verifiable ( cannot empirically test)

• therefore moral judgements are meaningless

Hume’s argument for motivation

• Hume argues against realism therefore cognitivism

• P1: moral judgements can motivate actions

• P2: Beliefs and reason can never motivate us to act

• C: therefore, moral judgements cannot be beliefs/not judgements of reason

Hume’s is -ought gap

P1: Judgements of reason describes what is the case

P2: judgements of value prescribe what ought to be the case

P3: judgements of reason and value are therefore entirely different - there is a gap between ‘is and ought’

C: therefore, you cannot draw conclusions about value ‘ought’ and premises about reason ‘is’

e.g. utilitarianism, you cannot move from psychological hedonism to ethical hedonism