4.1 Meta Ethics Flashcards
What is meta ethics?
- the application of language to ethics
- a meta-ethical statement is about what it means to claim that something is right or wrong, and grounds by which it does so
What is meant by ethical naturalism?
Goodness exists and can be described in terms of some feature of the world or of human life
What is meant by ethical non-naturalism?
- good cannot be defined in terms of natural phenomena
- good acts as a predicate, describing the thing/action BUT not inherent to it
What is cognitivism?
- moral truths exist independently of our mind
- moral judgements can be true or false; terms such as ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ correspond to the facts in the world
What is non-cognitivist?
There is no such thing as a moral truths in the world; what we call moral facts are subjective emotional repossess
Who tends to be realists?
Cognitivists
Who tends to be anti-realist?
Moral facts don’t exist, there is no moral reality
Who coined the ‘is ought gap’?
David Hume
What does David Hume argue?
- deriving what ought to be done from what is the case is an example of FALSE DEDUCTION
- philosophers talk about the way things are and then jump with no apparent justification to a claim about the way things ought to be -> YOU CANT GET AN OUGHT FROM AN IS
Give an example of the is ought gap?
The fact that a foetus feels pain doesn’t dictate that women should/should not have an abortion; there are other relevant factors
What is ethical naturalism?
- our moral judgements are derived from our experience of the world
- a moral term, such as ‘good’, can be understood in natural terms - the good is a natural property of the world
What is an example of ethical naturalism in ethics?
- utilitarianism = argues for psychological problems
- mill argues the utilitarian understanding of human nature and human motivation is the origin of morality
What are some strengths of ethical naturalism?
- accounts for our moral feelings
- accounts for moral disagreements
What are some weaknesses of ethical naturalism?
- guilty of reductionism
- doesn’t distinguish between facts and values
What is ethical non-naturalism?
Argues that any attempt to define goodness leads to the naturalistic fallacy - goodness isn’t a property
What is meant by G E Moores open question argument?
Moore argued that for any proposed naturalistic definition for “good”, it always remains an open question whether that definition truly captures what “good” mean. In other words, even if someone says, ‘good means pleasure’ it is still meaningful to ask ‘but is pleasure truly good?’
This suggests that ‘good’ cannot simply be reduced to any natural property
Name a non-cognitive and a cognitive theory
Non-cognitive = emotivism and prescriptivism
Cognitive = utilitarianism, virtue ethics, natural moral law, kantian ethics
Is intuitionism non-cognitive or cognitive?
Cognitive
What is ethical naturalism? Give three examples.
It is the belief that decision about what is right and wrong can be arrived at through discovery of the natural world and human nature e.g. utilitarianism, virtue ethics, nml, kantian ethics
What is the ‘is-ought’ controversy? Which philosopher is associated with it?
Associated with Hume, he argued that it is wrong to derive an ‘ought’ (a prescriptive statement) from an ‘is’ (a descriptive statement). This critiqued ethical naturalism because it argued that from statements derived from observations of the natural world, it was impossible to make any ethical judgements
Which ethical theory considers ethical language to be meaningless? Why?
Emotivism - because ethical language is not verifiable so such statements are just expressions of emotion
Do intuitionism, emotivism, and prescriptivist agree or disagree with ethical naturalism?
Disagree with ethical naturalism
Give a difference between prescriptivism and emotivism?
Emotivism holds religious language to be meaningless and just expressions of emotion. Prescriptivism shares the view that it cannot be verified but holds that it does serve a particular function - to prescribe certain actions.
Give a difference between intuitionism and emotivism
Intuitionism is naturalist, whereas emotivism is not
Name a philosopher associated with intuition, emotivism and prescriptivism in turn
- intuitionism: G E Moore, Pritchard, Ross
- Emotivism: Ayer
- prescriptivism: Hare
