4.1 meta ethics Flashcards
1
Q
What is meta ethics?
A
- 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
2
Q
What is meant by ethical naturalism?
A
- goodness exists and can be described in terms of some feature of the world or of human life
3
Q
What is meant by ethical non-naturalism?
A
- good cannot be defined in terms of natural phenomena
- good acts as a predicate, describing the thing/action BUT not inherent to it
4
Q
What is cognitivism?
A
- 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
5
Q
What is non-cognitivism?
A
- there is no such thing as moral truth in the world; what we call moral facts are subjective emotional responses
6
Q
Who tends to be realists?
A
- cognitivists
7
Q
Who tends to be anti-realist?
A
- moral facts don’t exist, there is no moral reality
8
Q
Who coined the ‘is ought gap’?
A
David Hume
9
Q
What does David Hume argue?
A
- 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 can’t get an ought from an is
10
Q
Give an example of the is ought gap:
A
- the fact that a foetus feels pain doesn’t dictate that women should/should not have an abortion; there are other relevant factors
