Meta-ethical approach - Naturalism

Introduction to naturalism/what does it teach?

• Naturalism teaches that there is nothing outside of our senses that can be studied to help us understand ethical language.

• Therefore, there is no God to guide humanity on the meaning of ethical language terms like ‘good, bad’ etc.

• Naturalism finds the meaning of ethical words in concrete empirical evidence, we should be able to find sensory evidence for the meaning of ethical language in the world around us.

What is the meta-ethical approach to Naturalism?

• Ethical naturalists believe that ethical language terms, like ‘good’ and ‘bad’, are ethical facts.

• e.g. when I state ‘stealing is bad’, what I mean is that ‘stealing is bad’ because I can prove it with empirical evidence.

• Therefore, according to an ethical naturalist an ethical statement is expressing factual knowledge, in the same way as a scientific fact does.

1. Scientific fact - ‘Water is made up of two-parts hydrogen and one part oxygen’

2. Ethical fact - ‘Hitler was a bad person’

• According to naturalism both of the above statements are facts - known as cognitive statements - because both can be supported with empirical evidence.

How does naturalism argue we can know whether something is good or bad - and what does this mean for moral laws?

What are objective moral laws not derived from?

• Objective moral laws exist independently of human beings

• Naturalism argues we can know whether something is good or bad, right or wrong, by direct reference to the physical world around us (realism/empirical evidence) - hence objective moral laws/facts exist.

• Objective moral laws are not derived from any form of a priori knowledge, intuition, or metaphysical source - but derived from the natural world.

What is the world considered, and what does this mean it can be used for?

• Objective moral laws exist independently of human beings

• The world is objective and real (realism) and so can be used to establish knowledge and truth.

• The world is not part of our imagination and any moral laws we make are also real because they relate directly to objective facts of existence.

Where is all of our knowledge derived from, and how are we born?

• Objective moral laws exist independently of human beings

• All knowledge (ethical and non-ethical) is derived from our senses (see, hear, feel, etc).

• We are born with ‘a clean slate’ (absence of preconceptions of ethics) and everything we learn has its origins in the world of sense around us.

• e.g. putting your finger in a socket - you find out it electrocutes you.