meta ethics updated

based on cognitivism and non-cognitivism power points so includes anti realism and realism

meta-ethics

The philosophical study of what morality is, enquiring into the meaning of moral language, the metaphysics of moral values, the epistemology of moral judgements, and the nature of moral attitudes.

morality

• rules, ideals and expectations governing fundamental aspects of human conduct

• concerns right and wrong (human action and character)

cognitivism

• moral judgements are propositions which are ‘truth-apt’

• 'lying is wrong' expresses the belief that lying is wrong, and is either true or false.​

non-cognitivism

• ethical sentences do not express propositions that are ‘truth-apt’

• Instead we might say they express approval or emotional reactions towards something.

moral realism

• moral terms refer to something real eg pleasure, happiness or duty

• moral laws are discovered.

moral anti-realism

• moral terms do not refer to anything real, but are something else entirely

• eg expressions of feelings (emotivism) or prescriptions to other people (prescriptivism)

naturalism

• moral properties are just natural properties and can be examined as such

• relate to something we can examine through sense experience and science.

non-naturalism

• moral properties are a distinct kind of property

• definitely part of the world (moral realism) but we cannot easily examine them through experience and science

a naturalist view of morality

Moral properties are the same as natural properties e.g. goodness = happiness

reductive morality

The view that moral properties are identical with purely descriptive natural properties.​

reductive naturalistic theory

utilitarianism

• moral judgements are simply judgements about how much happiness an action will produce

• happiness, as a psychological phenomenon is a natural fact of the world. ​

strengths of Mill’s naturalism argument

•No puzzle about what kind of thing goodness is.​

•We can discover what is good empirically (through experience).​

•We can measure right and wrong through experience.

Mill’s fallacy of equivocation

• In premise 1, Mill equivocates “desired” with “desirable”.

• Just because something is desired, doesn’t mean it is desirable.

Mill’s fallacy of composition

Mill jumps from “the good for me is my own happiness” to “the general good is general happiness”.​

i.e. if property common to each individual in a group, that property must also apply to the group as a whole.​

Hume’s is/ ought gap

• It is invalid to derive an evaluative conclusion (ought) from premises that are purely descriptive (is)​

• ethics is separate from matters of fact​.

• Mill violates Hume’s law: psychological hedonism (people do desire happiness) to ethical hedonism (people ought to desire happiness).​

non-reductive naturalism

• Morality is an expression of the natural capacities of human beings​

• Not ‘supernatural’, not some strange ‘non-natural’.​

• But moral properties can’t be reduced, they are not the same or identical as other properties.

non-reductive naturalistic theory

Virtue Ethics
cannot be reduced to natural properties

empiricism

all knowledge comes from only sense experience and observations

rationalism

practice or principle of basing opinions and actions on reason and logic

Moore’s naturalistic fallacy

Mill attempts to define 'good' (a fallacy because 'good' is indefinable), and tries to do so in naturalistic terms (a fallacy because 'good' is non- natural)

Moore’s intuitionism

• we can’t reduce moral terms to natural ones

• Moral judgements are known intuitively (attack on reductive naturalism)

• realist, cognitivist position (moral truths to be known and moral judgements are truth-apt)

Moore’s open question argument

For Moore, we can always meaningfully pose the question 'But is X really good?' for every definition of good, including all naturalistic ones. So, it always remains an open question whether or not the definition given really is good. So, good is not definable.

criticism of Moore’s open question argument

‘Goodness’ and ‘pleasure’ are different concepts – but they may refer to the same property of the universe.​

E.g.: It makes sense to ask ‘Is water H2O?’ ​

So ‘goodness’ and ‘pleasure’ refer to the same property, but mean something slightly different

Mary Warnock on Moore

Moore fails as Mill is not defining what good is, or even what desirable is.​ He is empirically describing which things are, as a matter of fact, considered good by most people (i.e. fulfilling desires).​

analytic

true or false by definition

synthetic

true or false based on experience

a priori

does not need experience to be true

a posteriori

depends on sense experience to be true or false

Mackie’s error theory

• sceptical about morality

• people are systematically in error when they make moral judgments

• no objective moral values or properties for your judgment to latch onto.

example of Mackie’s error theory

saying “murder is wrong” assumes an objective truth, but no such truth exists

Mackie’s argument from relativity

• Moral values vary depending on society, place and time.

• no objective moral values so objective claims are automatically false.

Mackie’s argument from epistemological queerness

Realists (particularly intuitionists): special moral entities, known through special faculty unlike the rest of our senses. (e.g. wrongness particles)

This is an odd thing to claim!

no adequate answer

no objective moral properties (don’t know categorically that things are wrong or right)

Mackie’s argument from metaphysical queerness

• We are used to desires, wants and needs (non-moral properties) motivating us to act.

• NOT objective facts about the world

• eg “That is a red tomato” no intrinsic/universal motivation

• objective morals would be unlike anything else in the universe - HOW?

criticism of error theory

Moral properties are Mental NOT Physical States

Moral properties are not ‘part of the fabric of the world’ in a physical sense

But they might still exist in a psychological sense

AND some moral statements feel objectively true

rebuild of error theory

just because people strongly believe something does not make it objectively true

eg past belief in witchcraft

emotivism

Moral statements express feelings, and are therefore non-factual and can’t be true or false

“Murder is wrong” just means “Boo murder!” and there is nothing true or false about this.

Ayer’s explanation of emotivism

He shows how ethical statements are expressions of emotions by comparing wrong to ‘Boo’ and right to ‘Yay’.

2 strengths of emotivism

1. explains how ethical sentences can have a meaning without relying on ‘queer’ properties like Mackie.

2. Ayer & Stevenson highlighted the importance of language in the study of Ethics.

verification principle (emotivism)

if a statement is not analytically or empirically verifiable then it is meaningless.

ethical statements cant be verified so are meaningless (Non-cognitivist and Anti-realist)

2 weaknesses of emotivism

1. The Verification Principle is unverifiable, therefore since Emotivism rests on it, it too must be false.

2. My emotional-responses are not as reliable as using REASON when dealing with ethical situations.

subjectivism

Moral statements report feelings or opinions, and are therefore factual and can be true or false. My statement of “Murder is wrong” is true to me because that’s what I think.

prescriptivism

• moral judgments are a type of prescription, or imperative.

• Moral judgments, like the simple imperative "Close the door," don't state facts and aren't true or false.

• Instead, they express our will, or our desires.

Hare on what makes a person good

• someone who is the way we think we ought to be as people

• they have achieved a standard that we consider to be important (not absolute)

2 strengths of prescriptivism

•avoids the problem of explaining mysterious non-natural facts, or the relationship of natural facts to evaluative judgements.

•enables us to avoid the conclusion that moral discourse is fundamentally non-rational.

2 weaknesses of prescriptivism

•the purpose of moral talk is not to express moral truths or moral facts.

•the difference between speaking and writing is vast, don’t conflate the two in order to make an argument about the inferiority of regionalisms.

descartes intuition and deduction thesis

gain new knowledge through reason alone
about methods

rationalism: undeniable, foundational truths
deduction to produce further truths
reason + a priori > indubitable

intuition: certain truths = necessity
ability to reason, recognise self-evident truth

deduction: work out other truths based on this
foundationalism: foundational truth, reason