Meta- ethics !!!!

Meta-ethics AO1

• question of what goodness is.

• 1: Whether goodness exists in reality or not (moral realism vs moral anti-realism)

• 2: What the meaning of the word ‘good’ is (cognitivism vs non-cognitivism)

Naturalism – (realist & cognitivist)

• values can be defined in terms of natural property in the worl and application to absolutism (right and wrong)

• Bentham claims goodness = pleasure.

• Utilitarianism is a form of meta-ethical naturalism

• Goodness is real because pleasure is real (moral realism)

• “Hitler was wrong”, we are expressing our belief that Hitler’s actions failed to maximise pleasure

• ethical language is cognitive

• common sense- synderesis natural law- see what works in the world (pragmatism)

bradley and foot- is naturalistic ethics- society class tells you

strengths and weaknesses and eval of naturalism

strengths

• Bentham/Mill argues:

• P1. It is human nature to find pleasure good

• C1. Pleasure is good and we ought to maximise pleasure.

weaknesses

• Naturalistic fallacy - Hume’s is-ought gap – attacks the realism and cognitivism of Naturalism- MOORE coined 20th century- turned natural into ethics- not in books should be burnt

• Factual is-statements do not entail moral ought-statements

• breastfeeding, euthanise old lady example

• just bc its natural thing to do doesnt mean its the best

• it doesn’t mean that pleasure is good and that we thus ought to maximise it

• open q arg goodness= pleasure, open q with many other q’s - too much pleasure could be bad - is pleasure always good- spoilt children- pain isnt always bad soul making etc

• unanalysable- horses (can be broken down) and yellow (doesnt have characteristics) cant break down the good - moore

• is there a god- natural law

evaluation

human flourishing defends

• Anscombe argues that “Ought” really functions like the word “need”

• Foot concludes there is “no difficulty” in deriving ought from is

• action good or bad, we refer to its enabling or disabling of flourishing

• need certain things in order to flourish, to live well. This is a fact, from which can be derived oughts

• attfield- perhaps we havent find right definition of good- could be naturalistic but unsure

Intuitionism

• instinctively know right from wrong

• moral truths are indefinable but self-evident

• Ross- posits that we have self-evident, "prima facie" duties, which are conditional and can be overridden by other duties, rather than absolute rules, and that moral truths are objective and knowable through intuition

• Pritchard- moral obligations are known directly through intuition, not through reasoning or empirical evidence, and that the concept of "ought" is indefinable and irreducible

• leaves us to use common sense

strength, weakness, evaluation

strength

• cross-cultural moral agreement on a core set of moral codes

• intuitive sense of what is right/wrong

• dont face same issues as naturalism ie naturalistic fallacy- intuition- open q arg- doesnt need a god

weakness

• Mackie’s relativism critique of intuitionism

• argues that our moral judgments are systematically false because they presuppose the existence of objective moral properties, which Mackie claims don't exist

• vast cross-cultural disagreements- social conditioning- no agreement

• Mackie concludes that there is no right/wrong – anti-realism

• leads to relativism

• error theory- no objective moral values

• where do intuition come from

evaluation

• Mackie’s argument is successful

• too risky and leads to issues

Emotivism

• Ayer - verificationist

• vienna circle, humes fork

• the belief that ethical terms evince approval or disapproval and its application to relativism

• boo hurrah theory

• stevenson another emotivist- moral judgments primarily express emotions and aim to influence others' attitudes, rather than stating objective facts

• P1. Only desires are motivating, not beliefs.

• P2. Ethical language involves motivation

• C1. So, ethical language expresses desires

• Ayer concludes ethical language just expresses emotions

question is on realism/anti-realism, use the moral nihilism section- strengths weak

strengths

• makes sense of the way ethical and political disputes are so contentious

• just emotional outbursts

weakness

• Moral nihilism is the view that morality is pointless

• Ayer is right that there is no right/wrong

• he can’t say Hitler was objectively wrong

• Ayer’s theory was very popular from the 1920s  until ww2

• Foot, after seeing the footage of the holocaust, started to argue that it can’t be valid to argue there is no right

• we don’t like what Hitler did- no way hitler was actually wrong

• Ayer destroys morality, which could end society

evaluation

• Hume’s fork and Ayer’s verification principle cannot exclude moral judgements. We can verify that the holocaust was disabling of flourishing

• anti-realism is ultimately false because moral realism is true

• Leading to nihilism doesn’t prove anti-realism false

question is on cognitive vs non-cognitive, use the ‘moral disagreement’ section- strengths weaknesses

strengths

• Moore criticises non-cognitivism, because he noted that ethical language seems to involve features that require more than emotion

• moral reasoning, persuading, disagreeing

• ‘Boo to stealing’ cannot be said to disagree with ‘hurrah to stealing’.

• P1. emotions cannot disagree 

• P2. ethical language involves disagreement

• C1. Ethical language cannot reduce to the expression of emotion.

• Ayer’s non-cognitivism seems to be false

weakness- counter prescriptivism HARE

• we prescribe it universally

• ethics reduces to universal commands

• We can’t reason/disagree/persuade about emotions, but we can with prescription

• So ethical language reducing to prescriptions makes more sense

evaluation

• Mackie’s error theory

• Mackie accepts that we have feelings about ethics, but he argues we also have beliefs about it

• believe that right and wrong are real, that they exist

• ethical language is cognitive

• Children believe santa exists – they express beliefs about santa. There is no santa, but santa-language still expresses beliefs

• conclude that ethical language expresses cognitive beliefs which are all false