Meta-Ethics (Logical fallacies, intrinsic goods)

Morality

Ultimately the final say in decision making, either from what we use to decide what to do or how to behave, what we do and how we behave

Normative

How things ought to be

Descriptive

How things are

Arguments

where supported premises lead to a conclusion

Legal Fallacy

just because something is illegal, it doesn’t make it immoral

Is/Ought Gap

just because something is a certain way doesn't mean that it ought to be that way.

Ad hominem

This is a fallacy where you attack the other person rather than that person's arguments

Bandwagon Fallacy

That a majority of people think something is true means nothing about whether of not that thing is true

Slippery Slope

Basically means that one step or action will inevitably lead to others that are far worse. For example, if we legalize pot then it will lead to everyone smoking the stuff and then trying other drugs leading to the collapse of western civilization

Intrinsic Good

a good that cannot be reduced to any other good

Which philosophers believe there are more than a single fundamental value

W.D. Ross, Thomas Nagel, Beauchamp and Childress

What were W.D. Ross’s general ideas?

W. D. Ross was an intuitionist who thought that morality was something you just know given a certain level of intellect. And what you know are there are several moral principles that are just right. These include gratitude, beneficence, non-maleficence, fidelity, justice… No one of these is reducible to another, but there will be times when you have to decide amongst them

What were Thomas Nagel’s general ideas?

posits similarly that there are several values that are irreducible to each other. These values include obligations, rights, utility, perfectionist ends, and private commitments. None of these reduce to an other, and part of what makes them irreducible is that they are values found at different viewpoints or perspectives we are capable of adopting.

Main intrinsic goods (Four-Principles approach)

Autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, justice

Autonomy

the ability to make choices for one’s self

Beneficence

acting to improve someone, help someone

non-maleficence

not harming someone

justice

fairness, equal consideration, proper distribution of benefits and burdens

Meta-ethics

the study of the boundaries of moral inquiry

Ethical/Cultural Relativism

Each culture has their own set of moral rules and codes that are valid only for that culture. Outside groups cannot say whether a given act is moral or immoral for that culture

Problems with Cultural Relativism

1. No Criticism or Praise of other Cultures

   1. Nazis vs Jains

2. What is a culture?

   1. Is it geography, ethnicity, ???

3. Majority Rule

   1. Who decides what morals or values matter in a given culture?

   2. If it’s majority, then Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, etc, are morally wrong

   3. Bandwagon fallacy!

4. Tolerance is Non-relativism

   1. We should adopt an attitude of tolerance toward the practices of other cultures. (OBJECTIVE)

Subjectivism

There are no objectively right or wrong moral judgments, but rather it is up to the individual to decide what is right or wrong. In other words, morality is individual opinion.

Problems with Subjectivism

• Can’t have disagreements

• we can never be wrong, even if we disagree with what we used to think

Emotivism

similar to subjectivism in that it deals with an individual’s moral claims as constituting the boundaries of morality. holds that moral statements are never statements of fact but rather a) expressions of attitude or b) persuasive statements intended to sway the listener.

Problems with Emotivism

no room for reason(s) in morality.

Moral Nihilism

There are no morally right or wrong viewpoints. There is no such thing as morality.

Moral Skepticism

This is like agnosticism for ethicists. The view that there may or may not be any such thing as objective morality but we will never know it.

Logical fallacy argument from ignorance

Just because you don’t know the answer, it doesn’t follow that there isn’t one