Meta ethics Flashcards
What is meta ethics?
It analyses the reasoning behind ethical language and moral terms such as ‘good’ and ‘right.’
What are the two main forms of meta ethics?
- Cognitivism- moral truths exist independently of the mind, they can be true/false and terms such as ‘right’ correspond to things in the world. 2. Non cognitivism- there is no such thing as a moral truths, moral facts are subjective emotional responses.
Explain the fact value distinction
A fact is a statement of value that can be true/false ‘there are two people in the room.’ A value is a belief, judgement or attitude ‘killing is wrong.’
What is the difference between realism and anti realism
- Cognitivists are moral realists, certain actions are right/wrong and moral judgements can be objective moral facts. 2 Non cognitivists are moral anti-realists, moral facts don’t exist and are subjective.
What is Hume’s is/ought gap
Deriving what ought to be done from what is the case is an example of false deduction.
What do non cognitivists think of the is/ought gap?
You can’t reason from a statement of fact to a statement of value, values aren’t in the world, they are emotional responses to the world.
What do cognitivists think of the is ought gap?
Morality is attached to certain facts all people share. We can discover it though reason and experience. This idea justifies moral progress and moral truth.
What is naturalism?
Cognitivist and realist, there are moral principles in the world and terms such as ‘good’ can be understood in natural terms.
What do naturalists think about the Good?
It is a natural property of the world and we can infer from this property what the good actually is.
What is Mill’s argument that the utilitarian understanding of human nature is the origin of human morality?
P1. The aim of our desires is happiness. P2. Things are desirable as people desire them insofar as sounds are audible as people hear them. P3. Personal happiness is a good to each person. P4. As society is a sum of individual interests, general happiness is a good for this sum of interests. C. The good is happiness.
How does Mill see the good?
When he refers to it, he is referring to morality as a whole, the good is not transcendent but is derived from our very nature as animals.
Give two strengths of ethical naturalism
- Accounts for moral feelings- when we feel outraged, we feel pain, this makes us unhappy and leads to the fact that it is morally wrong. 2. It accounts for moral disagreements, if we think of the consequences of our actions in terms of pleasure/pain we can work out what is morally right.
Give two more strengths of ethical naturalism
- Explains how we use moral language, when we make moral judgments, we state them as facts and imply that they represent something about the nature of reality. 4. We all value pleasure over pain, so it makes sense that the Good is pleasure.
What is the problem with ethical naturalism?
Commits reductionism- reduces moral judgments to natural facts about the world. Fails to distinguish between facts and values and implies that an ought can be derived from an is.
How does G.E.Moore criticize naturalism?
Takes a cognitivist position, but argues that morality can’t be reduced to a natural property of the world. Naturalism defines the good as a natural property and holds that you can infer what is moral from such premises.
What is Moore’s open question argument?
If the good was pleasure then the answer to ‘is the good pleasure’ would be so obvious that it would simply require a yes, it would be a closed question. This is not the case, so the good is not pleasure.
What is the difference between an open and a closed question?
Open question- can have any number of answers. Closed question- can be answered with a yes/no or from a limited number of answers.
What is Moore’s naturalistic fallacy?
Attempts to define goodness lead to a naturalistic fallacy wherein a non natural object is given natural properties.