Meta ethics

Naturalism

• cognitive

  • can be cognised, express propositions which can be found as true/ false

  • can substitute ‘wrong’ with natural feature

  • cognitively provable to be true from experience

• realist

• reason + evidence

• reducible

  • e.g. q about locations of one’s mind reducible to facts about location of one’s brain

  • moral conc can be deduced from non-moral premises (know from observation)

FH Bradley

Naturalist

• “its truth or falsehood cannot lie in itself. They involve a reference to a something beyond that”

• morality rests on certain facts about ourselves: goals, place in society

• moral = live in accordance with moral tradition of one’s country

• “function as an organ of the social organism”

  • socially stratified

Phillipa Foot

Naturalist

• natural and absolute rules can be observed (moral absolutes)

• ‘Natural Goodness’

• moral evil = natural defect

• know someone moral thru observation e.g. keep promises

• like Aristotle, there are virtues that aim at the good

  • also noticed there are patterns of living things which give them purpose/ telos, could be applied to morality

  • life cycle consists of self-maintenance and reproduction

  • diff depending on needs

  • know norms about natural world thru obsevation

  • apply norms to individual members of species to know if effective/ deffective

• ‘good roots’ = human being having ‘good dispositions of will’

  • oak tree with deep sturdy roots = good

    • to stay upright

• → Peter Kropotkin’s story of Mikluko-Makay (geographer and anthropologist sent from Russia to Malayan archipelago)

  • collecting anthropological materials, tempted to photograph sleeping native but refrained (natives expressed condition of never being photographed)

  • misdemeanor would go unnoticed, but trust still matters in communities

    • natural and absolute rule

• should take special care of children bc unable to take care of themselves

David Hume is-ought gap

• statements must be empirically/ analytically true

• ought/ moral statement = neither so cannot be known, not cognitive

  • of diff kind

• is and ought = unrelated, there is logical barrier

• missing premise

  • move too quickly from descriptive to normative statement

• need to know what is obligatory in ought statement

  • feelings/ desires provide motivation (subjective and unclear)

  • e.g. This causes me pain. This pain is bad. I ought to stop doing this.

• WK Frankena

  • cannot get ought out of is, as cannot get value out of fact

  • conc doesn’t rely on fact alone, based on more basic ethical premise

  • logically invalid like arguing: A is B therefore A is C, without introducing premise connecting B and C

Naturalistic fallacy

GE Moore

• ‘Principia Ethica’

• open question arg

• ‘what is good’ = open q

  • moral goodness = effectively indefinable

• treatng non-natural idea of moral goodness with natural one = fallacy

• e.g. “anything which brings happiness is good” → “is it good that x brings happiness?”

  • x and happiness not identical

• “x is pleasant, but is it good?” (hedonists)

  • good =/= pleasure

• diff from e.g. does square have 4 corners = closed, self-defining

• good = irreducible, indefinable

Intuitionism (ethical non-naturalism) GE Moore

• “goodness” = foundational and unanalysable property

  • yellowness analogy

    • not just physcial characteristics in terms of light-waves

    • qualitative experience

    • can’t be reduced

  • intuitively recognise goodness in same way

• “good is good, and that’s the end of the matter”

• cognitive and realist

• know what is good with certainty even “incapable of proof”

• “in every way it is possible to cognise a true proposition, it is also possible to cognise a false one”

• e.g. abortion is good, or bad

  • either can be understood, but point is know what they mean

HA Prichard intuitionism

• ‘Does philosophy rest on a mistake?’

• 2 diff kinds of thinking

  • reason (general thinking) collects facts

  • intuition (moral thinking) determines which course to follow

• obligation indefiniable

• “apprehension is immediate”

  • equivalent to mathematical insight

• moral intuition innate, but diff for everyone

  • so not infallible

• if conflict between moral obligations, choose greater obligation

• process of deriving moral thinking: intuition + imagination

  • allows us to intuit how to act

  • “lies not in any process of general thinking” but in intuition

🙂 Intuitionism

• recognises good as non-natural, indefinable

• maintain ethical terms as meaningful, even in responding to naturalism

☹ intuitionism

• unsound yellow analogy

• no proof that moral intuition exists

  • CA/ Bertrand Russell

    • perception = a priori

    • BUT a priori knowledge = tautology, but can’t define good

      • so can’t say is true by definition

  • JL Mackie

    • realists committed to strange moral entities and strangeness should make us suspicious

    • strange bc don’t exist (at least honest)

• what is “good”?

  • “Pale Ebeneezer thought it wrong to fight, but roaring Bill, who killed him, thought it right” Belloc

  • if have capacity to intuit good, would not be able to doubt or disagree

  • Alasdair Macintyre: ‘introduction of word “intuition” by a moral philosopher is always a signal that something has gone badly wrong with an argument"

• Ockham’s Razor

  • principle of parsimony: should not multiply entities beyond necessity

Emotivism AJ Ayer

• anti-realist + non-cognitive

• ‘Language Truth and Logic’

• logical positivists

  • all meaningful statements analytical/ synthetic (like hume)

• VP: all synthetic statements verifiable by sense data

  • “know how to verify” “conditions”

• “lying is wrong” cannot be subject to same test as “there is a table in the next room”

• ethical statements = meaningless

  • morality = sentiment = expression of emotion

  • subjective to individual

• “adds nothing to its factual content”

• “i am simply evincing my moral disapproval of it”

Emotivism as killing-boo! theory

• Philosopher Winston Barnes

• if someone shouts “boo!” bc doesn’t like something, is offering nothing to discuss

  • yelp of dislike =/= arg can debate

CL Stevenson and persuasion of ethical statements

• ethical statements made to persuade others of POV

• “has quasi-imperative force”

☹ Emotivism

• ethical debate becomes pointless

  • Vardy: leaves ‘just so much as hot air and nothing else’

  • ethically able to justify reasons why e.g. against incest, torture, child abuse on basis of pain and psychological damage

  • no possibility of ethical discourse

• no universal agreement that some actions are wrong

  • no reason for thinking my views superior/ justifiable

  • James Rachels: removes reason from moral judgements

    • statements e.g. “i like coffee” don’t need reason, but moral judgements do, or else become arbitrary

• Alasdair Macintyre “A short history of ethics”

  • emotivists conflate meaning with use

  • moral language can be emotional and meaningful

  • e.g. “your house is on fire”

    • factual meaning remains constant, but urgency and force as guide to action depends on context

  • fails to account for underlying rational/ belief-based foundations that give moral feelings distinctive behaviour

  • unable to distinguish between trivial dislikes and profound moral condemnations

  • criticises Stevenson for painting pic of unpleasant and cynical world

    • and he doesn’t explain how moral views form

Mackie error theory

• cognitive + anti-realist

• “moral principles are relative to a particular culture”

• can be proven by survey: if majority agrees = good for that society

• no moral facts in world for moral judgements to correspond to

  • think making true statements when are not

• moral properties don’t exist

  • only descriptions of acts e.g. torturing puppies for fun causes them pain

• e.g. belief in fairies

  • any statement about them = false

  • bc there are no fairies

  • but cognitively possible to talk about fairies

• e.g. Eskimo communities

  • mainly Inuit in N Alaska did practice senilicide and infanticide and even invalidicide

  • not widespread practices, adopted under extreme circumstances

  • completely dependent on environment, were occasionally put under extreme stress of famine

  • morally correct