Cognitivism Flashcards
Meta ethics
-Looks at the meaning of moral language, what it describes and if it describes something cognitive or non cognitive
Cognitivism
-The view moral truths are discovered and objectively exist, moral judgements are true or false as there is an existing moral law-e.g, Natural moral law, Kants theory
-Moral realists-Believe that actions can be factually wrong-Good and bad are objective properties which exist and we can discover which actions are good and bad,
-Argue that facts are value judgements are based on facts
Is ought gap
-Hume, we cannot derive moral conclusions from factual statements, just because something is good this doesn’t mean we ought to do it, the idea we ought to do something/something is moral is a value statement which is subjective and cannot be true
-Oughts are not value statements but objective facts discovered through reason
Ethical Naturalism
-There is an objective morality we can discover which are based on empirical experience of the world, moral judgements refer to natural facts about the world-moral judgements are cognitive and come from investigation of moral facts
-Goodness is an objective property which we can understand and explain the meaning of
One form of ethical naturalism is utilitarianism which suggests it is a natural fact that pleasure is good and pain is bad and that doing actions which maximise pleasure are moral.
Strengths of ethical naturalism
+Accounts for our sense of intrinsic right and wrong and why we feel that some actions, like the holocaust are factually immoral
+Makes morality objective and meaningful and factual
Limitations of ethical naturalism: Naturalistic fallacy
Good is a non natural object, pleasure, pain etc are natural properties, attempts to define good commit the naturalistic fallacy, they try to ascribe natural objects like pleasure to a non natural object of good which is a naturalistic fallacy, we cannot say pleasure is good as this is a naturalistic fallacy
-we cannot describe the good, to ask what is the good is an open question thus good cannot be a natural property-good exists but is not a natural property.
Ethical Non Naturalism:Intuitionism
Intuitionism-The good exists and is a property of the world but it is unique, non natural and unable to be defined however we can know it through intuition, we intuitively know what is good and moral but cannot describe it, in the same way we cannot describe the colour yellow but it still exists, we are describing something that actually exists and we intuitively just know like other facts.
Problems with Moores argument/intuitionism
-Ayer-cannot be empirically verified thus is meaningless and emotive
-Mackie-Moral values cannot be absolute as they vary from culture to culture, we don’t all inherently know an ultimate moral rule-it is an error to assume moral values are objective at all.
Emotivism
-Moral language is non cognitive, it doesn’t refer to an objective moral fact but a subjective emotion-morality is invented and not a fact but an expression of subjective emotion.
