meta-ethics

origin of moral principles

• belief that morals are derived from reason - this belief also contends that morality based in reason is the reason for clashes between me and everyone else, and we calculate that it is in our best interests to be moral sort of like agent-centred ethics

  • Hobbes social contract theory - without government or social organisation, we pursue what benefits us and you cannot expect others to do anything but maximise self-interest -> this is bad for all people in Hobbes’ opinion, and  he deems it rational to choose the way to escape it which is to cooperate under a binding social contract by giving up some power and freedom in order to avoid being harmed by self-interests of others (moral principles as a compromise)

• some believe that the origins of moral principles are in emotion and attitudes

  • Hume (empiricist) thinks foundations of morality are grounded in human nature and psychology - morality comes from our feelings towards others e.g. sympathy -> we develop virtues and habitual actions that help others and ourselves as a result of our subjective approval of certain behaviours

• some believe origins of moral principles reside in society

  • relativists reason that each society has its own values and social structures and systems, and this must prove morality is subjective to our society -> Marx adds to this by arguing that moral systems are an ideology or a set of normative beliefs constructed by those in power - for morality, these rules may vary over time and place but ensure in all societies that the powerful maintain their power

moral realism vs anti realism

• Moral realists believe that moral properties exist independently of us within the world 

• Anti-realists believe that moral properties do not exist within the world and that moral language instead refers to something else such as a property within our mind (emotivism)

• MORAL REALISM BELIEVES MORAL PROPERTIES EXIST MIND INDEPENDENTLY WHEREAS ANTIREALISTS BELIEVE MORAL PROPERTIES EXIST MIND DEPENDENTLY

cognitivists vs non-cognitivists

• moral cognitivists believe that moral propositions have a truth value (true or false)

• moral non-cognitivists believe that ethical language does not consist of statements that have truth value / are truth apt despite them still being meaningful

naturalism vs non-naturalism

• moral naturalists believe that moral properties can be understood and defined in non-ethical terms by natural, objective features of the world  (also accessed by senses? syllabus definition)

• moral non-naturalists believe that moral properties cannot be defined in non-ethical or natural terms and cannot be accessed by the senses, yet in moral realism non-naturalists still believe moral properties exist; for example intuitionism holds

intuitionism and fundamental arg

• cognitive, consequentialist, realist view that moral properties do exist within the world, though they are non-natural properties; they cannot be sensed and we cannot evidence them - Moore says we access moral truths through self-evident intuitions

• fundamental arg

  • issue with naturalism is that philosophers are wrong to try to define ‘good’ and reduce it -> Moore says good is indefinable

  • p1 - good is either indefinable, definable or means nothing at all; p2 - it cannot be meaningless as it would be tantamount to saying ‘there is no such subject as ethics’ (we discuss ethics - it must exist); p3 - it cannot be definable due to the open question arg; c - therefore good is indefinable

open question argument

• naturalists try to say ‘good’ means x, but as a tautology Moore says we must also ask the question is x really ‘good’?

• P1 - if we understand the terms involved (or X and Y are synonymous terms), there should never be a reason to ask ‘F is X, but is it Y?’ (it would not be reasonable to ask); P2 - when y is ‘good’, there is no candidate for x that closes this question as it is always reasonable to ask the question; c- there is nothing synonymous with good (it is indefinable)

  • If x and y are synonymous, it is a closed question

  • If they are not, it is an open question

• asking ‘is happiness really good’ the same as saying ‘is good really good?’ No

• Moore supports open question argument by explaining the error that moral naturalists make - naturalistic fallacy of trying to define the undefinable

  • reply - Mill does not define good but simply informs us people already consider happiness to be good (and desirable) - empirical rather than Mill’s opinion (Warnock)

3 issues with intuitionism

• Moore argues that good must be indefinable as it is not meaningless (We talk about ethics) or definable (open question arg) -> a utilitarian could criticise his lack of any proof that it is indefinable and instead point toward their own proof -> Moore can say they commit the naturalistic fallacy of attempting to define the indefinable -> Moore proves it is indefinable by returning to the beginning of arg

  • intuitionism is ultimately circular

• Moore says moral principles can be revealed via our intuition, yet objective moral properties can’t be just revealed via intuition? this makes them subjective -> his theory begs the question as it relies on his intuition, and its subjective nature cannot universalise the theory e.g. what about the Nazi’s moral intuitions

• Moore describes some things that are good such as the love of friendship and beauty -> very little to back this and also is not functionally useful?

issue with realism - Hume’s Fork and VP

• Hume’s fork tells us there are only two ways in which knowledge can be classed: relations of ideas and matters of fact. In order for moral judgements to be given a truth value (Which is key for moral realists - they are all cognitivists), they must be one of these two categories - statements are RoI if they are tautologies and they are MoF if they are empirically observable fact -> since moral statements are neither, moral realism collapses and instead moral statements seem to be our own reactions of approval / disapproval to virtuous / vicious actions

• Ayer’s VP also shows a similar prospect - his verification principle says a sentence is only meaningful iff it is a tautology or verifiable through sense experience -> since ‘stealing is wrong’ is neither of these, it cannot be meaningful at all and thus ayer says they are just feelings of approval or disapproval - moral properties are neither true nor false and so cannot be truth apt, so cognitivism is false and thus moral properties cannot refer to anything mind-independent so moral realism is wrong

  • issue: vp is self-defeating

issue with moral realism - moral judgements are not beliefs because beliefs alone cannot motivate us

• p1 - moral judgements (e.g. it is good to help others) motivate us to act; p2 - beliefs and reason can never motivate us to act; c1 - therefore moral judgements cannot be beliefs; c2 - therefore moral judgements cannot be true or false and cognitivism is defeated

• Hume believes p2 as relations of ideas are simply logical (cannot motivate us therefore) and matters of fact do not make us take action themselves -> what is needed is desire on top of this which Hume calls affections or passions

  • this means that moral judgements cannot be true or false as they are not beliefs -> moral realism is specifically cognitivist, so defeating cognitivism therefore defeats moral realism

issue with moral realism - Hume is-ought gap

• Hume’s law: p1 - judgements of reason describe what is the case; p2 - judgements of value prescribe what ought to be the case; p3 - judgements of reason and judgements of value are therefore entirely different from one another -  there is a gap between ‘is’ and ‘ought’; c - therefore you cannot draw conclusions about value (ought) based on premises about reason (is) e.g. you cannot derive an ought from an is

• no matter how much factual information you have, you cannot legitimately conclude on factual grounds alone what ought to be the case because ought ‘expresses some new relation or affirmation’ -> cognitivists claim moral judgements are true or false yet it would be possible to infer a moral judgement (true or false) from descriptive statements (True or false) if this was true; but this is not possible as per Hume’s law, so moral judgements cannot be true or false and thus moral realism is incorrect -> MORAL REALISTS CANT JUMP FROM DESCRIPTIVE TO PRESCRIPTIVE

  • response - Searle says there are exceptions where you can derive ought from is e.g. you promised to pay me back £5 (is) so you should pay me (ought) - promise implies you ought to keep it which bridges the gap 

    • Hume responds there is a hidden premise ‘we ought to keep our promises’

issue with moral realism - mackie arg from relativity

• p1 - there are differences in moral codes from society to society (moral judgements are relative to each society); p2 - accompanying these radical differences are disagreements between people about moral codes; p3 - disagreements may occur either because a) there is an objective truth about the matter, yet people have incorrect perceptions of it OR b) there is no objective truth about the matter at all; p4 - similarly, moral disagreements occur either because there is objective moral truth yet people have incorrect perceptions of it OR there are no objective moral values; c - the best explanation of moral disagreements is that there are no objective moral values

• the different moral codes between societies are best explained by viewing those codes as the products of a particular society in a particular context - if this relativistic view is correct then there are no objective moral values and moral realism is incorrect

response - perhaps there are, in fact, common ethical principles present in all societies (don’t kill, steal or lie, and look after your kin) - this may be evidence that the moral realist is correct in saying that these fundamental principles are objective and not relative

issue with moral realism - mackie arg from queerness

• Mackie arg. from queerness - if moral realism is queerness is correct, the world must contain two peculiar features: 1) metaphysical queerness - the existence of strange moral properties in the world that are somehow able to generate a motivation for action (this is absurd) and 2) epistemological queerness - belief that we have a mysterious faculty allowing us to access and have knowledge of these peculiar properties (e.g. intuition which Mackie calls ‘lame)

  • ABDUCTIVE ARGUMENT

error theory

• cognitive anti-realist view that moral properties always have a false truth value

  • ontological claim - something is objective if it is either true or false / about the world ‘out there’ / describes mind-independent thing 

    • he concludes that moral properties do not exist due to his arguments from relativity and queerness, and that this means there are no objective moral properties

  • semantic claim - all moral judgements include a claim to objectivity which is incorrect - it is not a linguistic error of misusing language in moral statements, but an error in the belief that objective, mind-independent moral properties exist

    • this error comes from how we are brought up in society which leads to a complex moral theory we project onto the world - we project the social arrangements we have learnt (do this, don’t do that) onto our moral codes which gives societies’ rules of behaviour an authority which they would normally lack

criticisms of error theory - reasons why not cognitive, also criticise his queerness and relativity args

emotivism

• non-cognitivist, anti-realist view that moral propositions are simply ‘emoting’

  • Ayer uses Verification Principle to show moral judgements have no meaning and therefore no truth value (not true by definition and cannot be verified empirically as they cannot be found in the world) 

  • Ayer believes moral claims stem from our emotions and are expressions of emotions or instances of us ‘emoting’ -> describes bad as saying ‘boo’ at something we do not like or, for good, saying ‘hooray’ at something we like

    • judgements become descriptive and do not point to facts, instead influencing behaviour through strong feelings of approval or disapproval

      • issue - moral debates cannot be explained as it would believe they are just shouting boo / hooray?

issue - if moral properties are just subjective emotes, is there no way for us to justify the holocaust as wrong?

emotivism 2

• emotivism 2.0 (Stevenson) - tries to mitigate the issue of moral discourse? instead of us just emoting, we are expressing a belief that others should feel as we do -> argues that moral propositions are manipulative and influences others to feel as you do 

issue - this does not solve problem of moral debates - we are actively persuading people to do the ‘right’ thing, not just manipulating people to feel they ought to feel the same as us

prescriptivism

• non-cognitive anti-realist view that moral judgements are prescriptive (not descriptive), universalisable and rational

  • moral judgements not descriptive - Hare agrees that good cannot be defined in naturalistic terms as it lacks something in its definition, yet moral terms are not describing any moral property at all but are instead prescribing what we ought to do 

  • prescriptive statements - ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are used to recommend and guide action, and these prescriptions are universalizable so that they must be constantly applied to everyone in the same situation e.g. lying to the mad axe murderer is wrong

    • moral statements are importantly rational - though prescriptions are built upon the foundation of a non-cognitive foundational premise (e.g. happiness is good), prescriptions are logically derived from these and so we can assign a truth value to how the prescription has been derived from the original premise

    • we can ask and answer questions about moral conduct, we can look for facts supporting our judgements, we can aim for consistency in our moral judgements, we can highlight logical contradictions in the moral judgements of others

  • issue - fanatical prescriptions such as ‘balding men can be harmed for no good reason’ must be universalised for prescriptivists -> for consistency, the prescriptivist must maintain these prescriptions are as moral as ‘stealing is wrong’ - flawed reasoning

issue with anti-realism - cannot account for moral progress

• moral realists argue that we have had real moral progress and have become better at embracing moral properties that are accessible -> this explains us widening moral patients to include all people and even animals, developing better laws and legal codes (e.g. suffrage, abolition of slavery and child labour); but how can anti-realists account for this

  • prescriptivist can say society is more consistent in universalising its moral judgements

  • societies have greater knowledge of the world which yield new facts to be considered in judgements (e.g. animals can feel pain)

  • emotivists say we feel more approval for current codes than past ones

issue with anti-realism - leads to moral nihilism

• nihilists agree that no moral properties exist but go so far as to say we should live life free of all moral codes and ethical practices since moral properties do not exist -> we can do anything we like if nothing is morally wrong, and we cannot be ought to do anything since moral properties does not exist

  • response - emotivist says that it is highly unlikely that people do not disapprove of anything so we cannot say nothing is morally wrong as morally wrong means ‘boo’ in emotivism

  • for prescriptivism, though nihilism is again logically consistent, it would never happen as it requires us to never universalise any prescriptions and yet we do want to do these as it is often in our interests to do so (e.g. to deter them from harming us) so p2 is false

issue with anti-realism - doesn’t account for how we use moral language

• moral anti-realism has to provide a real pragmatic, useful alternative for moral realism in the real world as an account for how moral judgements are used -> however, moral anti-realism cannot account for all four of moral reasoning, commanding, disagreeing and persuading

  • realists can account for these because they draw on real moral facts to make these assertions

  • EMOTIVISM - partly explains moral reasoning - disagreements can be over facts relevant to morals but judgements are overall still expressions; does NOT explain commanding as emotes are not commands; can persuade as hoorays and boos can persuade to act in a certain way; cannot disagree or agree as boos and hoorays have no evaluative quality or ability to reason - just noise

  • PRESCRIPTIVISM - can morally reason as discussion is rational allowing us to question moral conduct and find facts to support our judgements; we can command as expressions are prescriptive and universalizable; they can somewhat persuade though only through prescription (so no real way to influence or convince); and they do not disagree or agree as an argument cannot advance from fundamental differences (e.g. eating meat is wrong vs eating meat is permissible statements)