Denial of Moral Truth Flashcards
Emotivism
Ayer: Ethical language is meaningless, merely an expression of emotions. Verification principle - ethical statements are meaningless because they’re not analytic and can’t be empirically verified.
Moore: Agrees with verification principle BUT ethical statements are nevertheless true or false, because they are about non-natural properties. We can use our intuition.
Ayer: Our ‘intuitions’ are simply our feelings of approval or disapproval.
Stevenson: Emotivism does not depend on principle of verification. Moral words have emotive meanings, which are neither descriptive nor analytic. The purpose of moral judgements is not to state facts, but to influence how we behave through expressions of approval and disapproval.
Objections: Emotivism oversimplifies ethical discussion. If I say ‘abortion is wrong’ and you say ‘abortion is right’, I am just expressing my disapproval of it and you are expressing your approval. There can be no discussion, no reasoning. Trying to influence people without reasoning is just a form of manipulation.
Prescriptivism
Hare: Moral words are not emotive and descriptive in meaning: they are prescriptive and descriptive. This allows for a greater role for reason in moral discussion.
If I say “Eating meat is wrong”, I am saying “Don’t eat meat”.
We use the idea of right and wrong to command. We use the word ‘good’, says Hare, when we want to commend something to someone. ‘Good action’ commends the action without necessarily commanding it - we are saying it should be praised, but not necessarily that you HAVE to do it to be a good person. ‘Right action’ commands the action. It is a guideline for behaviour that people should follow.
When we use ‘good’ to mean ‘morally good’, we are appealing to a set of standards that apply to someone as a person.
Prescriptive meaning of good relates to the fact that it commends.
Prescriptivism sees the ‘guiding’ aspect of ethics as a matter of prescription, rather than a matter of influencing someone through emotion. This makes ethical discussion much more straightforward and rational.
Value what we like?
Under Emotivism and Prescriptivism, anything could be a moral judgement.
E & P don’t place limits on what we can approve/disapprove of. They identify moral judgements with a particular type of judgement - approval/disapproval, commend/command.
Response: We are all set up, by evolution perhaps, to value actions and people in particular, familiar sorts of ways. This is why we call only particular sets of feelings or principles ‘moral’. A common human nature underlies our feelings and choices. It is these feelings and choices that create morality.
Judging others?
Cog: If there is no objective moral truth, then doesn’t it follow that ‘anything goes’?
Non-cog: Unfair simplification of their theories or maybe a straightforward understanding. We should disapprove of anyone who advocates that morality doesn’t matter.
Tolerance…
Denial or moral truth doesn’t necessarily lead to tolerance.
1) Tolerance is itself a moral value. ‘You ought to tolerate other people’s values, because there are no moral values’ is self-contradictory. We only ought to be tolerant is tolerance is a good or right thing to be.
Moral progress?
If there is no moral reality, then our moral beliefs or feelings cannot become better or worse. Obviously they have changed - people used to believe that slavery was morally acceptable and now they do not.
Response:
1) People come to know things they didn’t know before. In the case of slavery, people believed many things about slaves that were not true. Moral progress here means basing one’s morality on the facts, not mistakes.
2) People become more consistent, more willing to universalise their principles.
3) People become more coherent in their moral judgements. Many of us have moral feelings that come into conflict with each other, e.g. Over abortion. Moral progress here would be a matter of working out the implications of our views, and changing what needed changing to make them coherent with each other.
4) If we disapprove of past moral codes and approve of our own moral code, we will call this moral progress.
Relativism
Descriptive: Moral codes differ from one society to the next. e.g. According to one society, slavery is never permissible, according to another, it can be under some circumstances. Female circumcision right vs. wrong.
Normative: There is no independent objective moral standard from what the culture endorses. So, we cannot say that a moral value/practise of a society is objectively right or wrong.
Conflict with cognitivism: Cognitivists argue that different cultures, with their different ethical values and practices are all trying to get the truth about ethics. Relativists argue that this is implausible and ethical practices are simply part of a culture’s way of living. The idea that 2 cultures which disagree are trying to find the ‘truth’ about ethics doesn’t sit well with an understanding of history of culture and how ethical practices develop.
