1.1.3 H/W (add back after notes on slides) (good + ‘is’ to ‘ought’)

Question 1

Explain the context of the word ‘good’

Answer 1

1. the word ‘good’ has many meanings & most of them are not used in a moral context
2. for instance, you may say that your computer is ‘good’ because it fulfils the task that it was purchased to fulfil & because you would then go on to get enormous enjoyment from using it, you would not be ascribing moral status to it, because a computer is not a moral agent

Question 2

Explain the context of the word ‘ought’

Answer 2

1. similar to ‘good’, we use the word ‘ought’ in different contexts: ‘Teachers ought to be kind to their students’ carries quite different implications from ‘You ought to take an umbrella with you’
2. the first statement is prescribing a particular mode of behaviour which is based on our opinion of how teachers ought to behave & so is a moral statement, whilst the second recommends a course of action on the basis of certain objective facts

Question 3

How is the word ‘good’ used?

Answer 3

1. ‘good’ is used in relation to a set of standards & and is hence a descriptive word
2. describing a dress, computer, bottle of wine, or a song as ‘good’ requires a standard against which it is being judged against
3. the word ‘good’ is used entirely descriptively, because in doing so they are not expressing any preference or recommendation, and hence are not using the term prescriptively

Question 4

How is the word ‘good’ used prescriptively?

Answer 4

1. in using the word ‘good’ prescriptively means that we move from a factual statement
2. a factual statement would be something like ‘That wine is good’ (because it conforms to the vintner’s standard of goodness)
3. to use the word ‘prescriptively’ would mean we need to use a value judgement: ‘That wine is good because I like it’
4. to say that “Ilike it” would be because there is a world of difference between the two ways of using the term: the wine which is good because I like it - a bottle of basic table wine, for example - will not be good by the standards applied by a wine expert, but would be considered good by said person’s own standard (i.e. not fully influenced by societal standards)
5. given the choice, it would make sense to choose a bottle of vintage Bordeaux but since said person would rather have any glass of red wine with their dinner than none, both are, to their mind, at least ‘good’

Question 5

How do normative-ethics deal with the word ‘good’?

Answer 5

1. normal ethical theories attempt to offer a definition or description of good
2. for example, a utilitarian would offer a description of ‘good’ as ‘that which maximises the greatest happiness for the greatest number’

Question 6

Scholarly opinions of ‘good’

Answer 6

• S.A. Burns identifies 36 meanings of the word ‘good’ but observes that only one is open to philosophical disagreement: this being that “of moral excellence, upright”; functional definitions of good are tautologous (suitable, sound, etc) & so are easily interchangeable without confusion
• Burns goes further & identifies 24 different meanings of the ‘right’: some are some distinct & belong to a a peculiar, non-moral, context
• again, only one is open to philosophical disagreement: “Conforming with or conformable to morality. That which is just, morally good”.
• furthermore, Burns observes that most definitions can be interpreted as an evaluation of how well the subject of judgement measures up to the standard of fulfilling its purpose
• hence, there are clear functional & moral definitions of good, & only the moral definitions create problems
• therefore, functional definitions are easiest to understand & concrete examples illustrate them such as “A computer is good if it fulfils the appropriate functions of computer”.

Question 7

Why is the word ‘good’ seen as ‘morally circular’?

Answer 7

• a good action is excellent or right, therefore the right thing to do is morally good
• in this sense, employing dictionary definitions of good or right, amounts to nothing more than saying ‘What is good is what I believe is good, morally right, excellent, or upright.’
• by this we see that to say that something is good from a moral perspective does not tell us why it is good, only that the speaker considers it to be good

Question 8

What is the key problem of attempts to reach a definition of morality?

Answer 8

‘the naturalistic fallacy’

Question 9

Naturalistic fallacy from the view of a philosopher

Answer 9

• in Principia Ethica (1903), G.E. Moore states that a naturalistic fallacy is committed whenever a ‘philosopher attempts to prove a claim about ethics through appealing to a definition of the term ‘good’ by using a natural property such as pleasing or desirable’
• effectively, he argued that it is not acceptable to confuse ‘good’ with a natural or metaphysical reality or to hold it to be identical with such a property

Question 10

What are the aims of naturalistic theories of ethics?

Answer 10

• attempts to define good in terms of something which can be identified in the world or in human nature - for example, claiming that what is natural is therefore good or what makes us happy, fit, or healthy: these are non-moral concepts since there is nothing intrinsically good about happiness, fitness, or health; they are only good if we define them as such
• such definitions are therefore open to question, because not everyone will agree that they are good, at least not in every situation
• however, as philosopher S.A. Burns observes, ‘if we offer a description or definition of ‘good’, it leads implicitly or even explicitly’ to the moral prescription that we should do what is defined as ‘good’

Question 11

What is the significance of the naturalistic fallacy for the connotations of the words ‘is’ & ‘ought’?

Answer 11

• by adopting this approach, we effectively move to turn an ‘is’ into an ought’
• in this, we discover the distinction between what is (can be discovered by science, philosophy or reason) & what ought to be (a judgement which can be agreed upon by consensus)
• additionally, the philosopher G.E. Moore argued that it is not acceptable to identify morality with any other belief, such as happiness, because any attempt to do so will not be able to accommodate the full measure of that belief & *so will always be inadequate**
• most importantly, if we say that ‘something IS (in the context of ‘is’ and ‘ought’) the case’, we are making a descriptive statement of how things actually are: it describes facts about the world & items in it, for example, ‘Oranges are a good source of Vitamin C’
• on the contrary, a normative or prescriptive statement suggests that something ought to be desired or done: ‘You ought to eat oranges’

Question 12

How is the idea of ‘good’ viewed in ancient philosophy?

Answer 12

Aristotle identified this way of thinking about good, calming that something was good if it fulfilled its ‘telos’, or ‘purpose’: the moral purpose of humans is to flourish

Question 13

David Hume’s thoughts on is & ought

Answer 13

• philosopher David Hume observed that there is nothing in a descriptive statement that allows us to begin from what people actually do (a factual statement) to making a rule about what people ought to do (a value judgment)
• for example, it would be unfair to move from a statement of fact that women are better parents (if, say, an experiment produced that result) to saying that therefore men ought not be single parents

Question 14

How can ‘Hume’s Fork’ influence is to ought?

Answer 14

• Hume’s Fork is the observation that all statements are either matters of fact (derived from empirical observation) or relations of ideas (analytically true)
• Hume’s Fork supports Hume’s own claim that it is not possible to move from an ‘is’ to an ‘ought’, since ‘ought’ statements do not seem to be known in either of the two ways mentioned: it therefore appears that there can be no moral knowledge