Meta Ethics Key Terms

Meta ethics

Focuses on the meaning + use of the language of ethics and whether these are universal, intuitive, natural, where they come from; grammar of ethics; meaning of moral language (preceeds normative ethics

Cognitivism

Moral claims are a form of knowledge that can be seen to be true or false (are not merely opinions) -> e.g error theorists (all moral statements are wrong -> falsifiable)

Naturalism

Moral facts are identifiable with/reducible to natural properties in the world; observable states are used to define goodness (e.g pleasure); objective moral properties the source of which being the natural world

Naturalistic fallacy

Goodness is an open question (a closed question is one where a feature of a definition is contingent on its meaning e.g bachelor = male); remains open to discussion and debate (to take any natural property and say is it good shows that the two aren't the same + equating goodness with natural properties) e.g Nozick's experience machine (good = maximising the number if pleasure machines available in the world)

Intuitionism

There are moral facts/senses; moral knowledge is intuitively know with the force of an ought/duty to act; intuitions access moral knowledge + gain emotional conviction which leads to moral judgements and actions

Non-cognitivism

Moral truth claims cannot be known or demonstrated to be true or false; emotional expressions that often command others to feel the same (e.g emotivists -> no moral facts only attitudes, feelings and desires)

Hume's fork

Fact-value gap can't be bridged by drawing ethical conclusions from non-ethical premises (e.g can't use science or logic to explain moral norms); we must live with the limits of human knowledge (what we can know + be certain about)

Emotivism

Emotional expressions that often command others to feel the same, no moral facts only attitudes, feelings and desires

Verification principle

Statements only have meaning if they are either analytical or empirically verifiable (statements other than this are meaningless); this is the heart of logical positivism + include maths equations/definitions (are seen to be true by definition)