4.1 Meta ethics

Question 1

What is meta ethics?

Answer 1

Ethics that analyses the reasoning behind ethical language and moral terms like ‘good’ and ‘bad’

Question 2

What is cognitivism?

Answer 2

Moral truths exist independently from our minds. Moral judgements can be true or false; terms like ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ correspond to facts in the world

Question 3

What is non-cognitivism?

Answer 3

There is no such thing as moral truth in the world; what we call moral facts are subjective emotional responses

Question 4

What is a fact?

Answer 4

A fact is a statement that can be true or false, e.g ‘There are two people in the room’

Question 5

What is a value?

Answer 5

A belief, judgement or attitude, e.g ‘Killing is wrong’

Question 6

Who came up with the is-ought gap?

Answer 6

David Hume, Treatise of human nature

Question 7

What is the is-ought gap?

Answer 7

Hume argued that deriving what ought to be done from what is done is an example of flase deduction.
- Non-cognitivists: The fact that a foetus doesn’t feel pain doesn’t dictate whether a woman should or shouldn’t have an abortion, other factors are relevant
- Cognitivists: Attempt to argue that morality is attached to certain facts and ideas that all people share. Try to bridge the gap

Question 8

What type of theory is ethical naturalism?

Answer 8

Cognitivist

Question 9

What is ethical naturalism?

Answer 9

Naturalism is the view that there are moral properties in the world, and can be proved through real world examples. Ethical naturalism is empirical.

Our moral judgements are derived from our experience of the world; a moral term like ‘good’ can be understood in natural terms, meaning we can explain what ‘good’ means referring to immoral things.

Question 10

What was J.S Mill’s interpretation of ethical naturalism?

Answer 10

P1) The aim of our desires is happiness
P2) Things are desirable in the same way sounds are audible
P3) Personal happiness is a good to each person
P4) As society is a sum of individual interests, general happiness is a good for this sum of interests (principle of utility)
Conc) Therefore, the good is happiness

Refers to ‘the good’ as morality as a whole

Question 11

Strengths of ethical naturalism

Answer 11

• Accounts for our moral feelings, and understands the human frustration with injustices, making us unhappy, proving they are morally wrong
• Naturalism accounts for moral disagreements. If we assess the consequences of our actions in terms of whether they produce pleasure or pain, we can decide what is morally right or wrong
• Naturalism is an effective cognivitist theory as it explains how we use moral language. When we make moral judgements, we state them as facts and imply that they represent something about the nature of reality. When I say torture is wrong, I’m not just saying i don’t like it but also that it is a wrong fact about the world.
• Naturalism lines up with people’s understanding of morality. We all value pleasure over pain, so it makes sense to argue the good is pleasure

Question 12

Weaknesses of ethical naturalism

Answer 12

• Naturalism is guilty reductionism in so far as it limits or reduces moral judgements to natural facts about the world. The fact that we seek happiness does not mean that morality should be reduced to seeking pleasure
• Importantly, it doesn’t distinguish between facts and values, and implies that an ‘ought’ can be derived from an ‘is’ e.g the fact that something naturally is the case means we ought to do it

Question 13

What did GE Moore say about ethical naturalism?

Answer 13

CRITICISES
Argues that good cannot be reduced to a natural property of the world, and is critical of the fact that naturalists focus on 2 fundamental assumptions:
1) The good can be defined as a natural property- in Mill’s case happiness or pleasure
2) It is possible to infer what is moral from such premises

Question 14

What is the open question argument?

Answer 14

Moore argues that is good was pleasure as Mill suggests, the answer to the question Is the good pleasure? would be so obvious that it would be yes/no and a closed question- But it is not that simple to define good, meaning it is not yes/no and therefore an open question

Question 15

What are Moore’s premises for the open question argument?

Answer 15

P1) According to naturalism, the Good is pleaure
P2) if P1 is true then the question Is the Good pleasure? is equivalent to saying Is the Good good? which is a closed question
P3) However, when i think about whether the Good is pleasure, I have to reflect on this and my intuition is that it is not a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer
Conc) Therefore, the Good is not pleasure

Question 16

What is the naturalistic fallacy?

Answer 16

The naturalistic fallacy is committed when a non-natural object is given natural properties (could be physical properties like shapes and colours, or responses like pain and pleasure)

When people associate the Good with such natural terms, they reduce this key moral term to natural properties.

For Moore goodness and pleasure are two different things. Goodness is not a natural property like colour, and not something which has the potential to produce pleasure or pain- Self-interest, pleasure, and happiness are not moral terms, and it is a mistake for morality to be defined by them.

Question 17

What type of theory is ethical non-naturalism (intuitionism)?

Answer 17

Cognitive

Question 18

Who theorised ethical non-naturalism?

Answer 18

G.E Moore

Question 19

What is ethical non-naturalism (intuitionism)?

Answer 19

Moore argues that we know what is good through the process of intuition: we intuitively know the Good. Like describing a colour without pointing at the colour it just is.

Question 20

Weaknesses with ethical non-naturalism (intuitionism)?

Not including Mackie’s critique

Answer 20

• Moore accuses Mill of producing a circular argument but commits the same fallacy in his own argument. If the Good is intuition and intuitions are moral, he is saying the Good is moral
• Moore argues that we just know what is good; we can’t explain why, it is self-evident. But what is inuitions conflict? Like a Nazi soldier taking his commands seriously even though he know killing is wrong

Question 21

How does Mackie criticise ethical naturalism?

Answer 21

MORAL VALUES ARE RELATIVE
* There is a difference between kind and cruel intentions, between acts of courage and acts of cowardice
* It is possible to describe such acts and outline their differences, so act of courage or cowardice are ‘part of the fabric of the world’
* However, the values we ascribe to such acts are not in the world: we can describe acts of cruelty but the value that they are wrong is not an objective fact

Moral properties cannot be absolute because they are culturally relative, they vary from cuture to culture

Question 22

Who is A.J Ayer?

Answer 22

British philosopher who wrote ‘Language, truth and Logic’ 1936

Question 23

What does A.J Ayer believe?

Answer 23

ETHICAL LANGUAGE IS SYMBOLIC
* Agrees with Mackie: nothing factual about ethical language, and instead argues that ethical language is symbolic just like religious language
* Ethical symbols represent how human beings interact with the world
* ‘Killing is wrong’ is found out from the emotional repsonse felt afterwards not as a factual truth

Question 24

What type of theory is emotivism?

Answer 24

Non- cognitive

Question 25

What is emotivism?

Answer 25

Hume: Moral judgements are emotional repsonses to the world, values cannot logically derived from fact.

A.J Ayer (modern): Uses the verification principle- States that a proposition is meaningful if, and only if, it is either true by definition or empirically verifiable.
When we make a moral judgement we are merely expressing personal feelings and emotions

Question 26

Weaknesses of Ayer’s emotivism

Answer 26

According to Ayer rightness and wrongness are emotional add ons that do not affect the factual claim, but this mean we can never really morally disagree in the way that we can disagree about facts

Ayer says that if we try to clarify the fact, the moral disagreement is solved. If it is a fact that animals don’t feel pain, then research performed on them would not affect them emotionally so is morally justifiable. For Ayer this is not moral in nature and can be solved empirically- But people who defend animals would argue that most are sentient ad should have rights. The view that moral judgements could or should be detached from facts doesn’t mean that they are meaningless, as Ayer suggests.

Critics call Ayer’s emotivism the ‘boo-hurrah’ ethical theory, as he reduces moral judgements and moral language to feelings of pleasure, or pain. But moral judgements involve more complex emotions, thoughts and feelings than just approval or disapproval.

Question 27

Weaknesses of emotivism?

Answer 27

• Relies heavily on the fact-value distinction, and if the distinction is wrong the theory collapses
• When we make a moral judgement we don’t necessarily try to influence others. Emotivism doesn’t allow for cultural relativism
• Doesn’t clearly distinguish between non-moral and moral judgements. Moral judgements cannot be reduced to subjective feelings and emotions
• emotivism doesn’t accont for the specifity of moral language, moral claims are not like other claims even though they are emotional reactions
• Brand Blanshard: emotivism suggests that if no one is there to witness a rabbit caught in a trap, and therefore cannot emotionally react. According to emotivism the pain the rabbit is in is neither good or bad becuase no one had an emotional reaction.

Question 28

What type of theory is perscriptivism?

Answer 28

Non-cognitive

Question 29

What does Hare say about perscriptivism?

Answer 29

Agrees with emotivists that there is no such thing as moral fact, but disagrees on what moral values are and what they do. Eotivists argue the chief concern of moral judgement is to express pleasure or displeasure and communicate that. But this fails to account the fact that the aim of moral judgements is to guide others.

• Moral judgements are action-guiding: they prescribe what to do
• Moral terms are not descriptive but evaluative: they evaluate experiences and reccomend or disapprove them
• Moral judgements are meaningful when they are universally applicable

Question 30

What does Hare say about ‘Universalisability’ and ‘overridingness’?

Answer 30

When we say we ‘ought’, we are saying that the action is not only right for us but for everyone in similar circumstances. Hare takes into account that not everyone is in the same situation, but if the variables are broadly similar, then the course of action should be the same.

Moral judgements override non-moral judgements. If stealing is wrong I couldn’t steal even if i needed the monetary gain

If something is good I mean that I choose it, and I reccomend others to choose it also. We use certain criteria to allow us to decide whether something is good, but good doesn’t define itself, the Good itself is evaluative, and puts value on the object and decide its goodness- filling the gap between value and fact

Question 31

weaknesses of perscriptivism

Answer 31

• Doesn’t account for a clash in moral principles- someone might believe abortion is wrong because all life should be preserved, but if the pregnant woman’s life is at risk then what? Hare argues that one of the principles must be abandoned, or the two must adapt to co-exist
• Although Hare tries to make his principle of universalisability as specific as possible by allowing for broadly similar circumstances to be considered equivalent, circumstances are never completely the same and each situation is unique
• Hare doesn’t account for rational but ‘bad’ decisions, killing a fly rather than helping it leave the room
• Hare argues that moral considerations override other types od consideration, but how can we make that decision if we cannot differentiate clearly between moral and non-moral uses of the term ‘should’?