Essay Questions

Is moral realism a convincing approach to ethics

Argument: no its not as it fails to explain what kind of properties moral properties are if they do exist, it cannot

Issues:

• Hume’s Is-Ought Gap (most crucial)

• Argument from queerness

• Hume’s fork against cognitivism

• Argument from motivation (least crucial)

Argument from Motivation:

R - Moral realism claims all moral judgements are judgements of reason, but judgements of reason do not motivate us in any way. For example, the belief that ‘grass is green’ does not motivate us to act in any way; it is just a fact. Contrastingly, a desire to do something like drink beer does motivate certain actions, but moral realism (as a cognitivist theory) is claiming that moral judgements are beliefs and not desires

I - moral judgements don’t motivate us, it it our desire to be morally good which motivates us. Moral judgement + desire to be good. e.g. the fact that ‘there is free cake in the hall’ doesn’t motivate me to go to the hall, it is my desire to have free cake that makes me go to the hall

C - whilst cognitivism - and as an extension realism - can respond to the issues from motivation, there are then more crucial issues cognitivism faces. Hume’s fork distinguishes between matters of fact and relations of ideas, and moral judgements are neither. Moral judgements are not matters of fact, as the wrongfulness of an action isn’t about an act itself but our feelings towards that action. For instance, ‘murder is wrong’; its not the observation of the murder which is what is wrong, but our volitions and feelings towards the action that make it right or wrong. With regards to relation of ideas, to deny a relation of ideas is a contradiction (e.g. to deny ‘2+2=4’ is wrong). Morals tend to be synthetic a priori, which is a contradiction as it crosses the prongs of Hume’s fork. Therefore cannot be true or false - moral judgements are not cognitivist and therefore not realist.

I - can just object to empiricism as a whole; this issue is not a problem if you are an rationalist. But firstly, this would require us to defend rationalism. Not the most crucial issue

R - Moral realism claims there are objective moral properties, but if there are how come different societies have different moral standards and disagree over them e.g. inuit society example. Different social contexts and views lead to different morals

I - chilli pepper example; can be relative objective truths. Also seem to share similar fundamental values, even if they are practiced in different ways

C - even if they can explain relativity, faces more crucial issue of queerness, in specific, metaphysical queerness. moral judgements motivate us, but how can mere statements of fact be motivating? Moral properties must be metaphysically unlike anything else. They have an inbuilt ‘to-be-pursuedness’. If they were metaphysically objective, they would have a ‘to be pursuedness’ but they do not