meta ethics

Question 1

meta ethics

Answer 1

The philosophical study of what morality is, enquiring into the meaning of moral language, the metaphysics of moral values, the epistemology of moral judgements, and the nature of moral attitudes.

Question 2

cognitivism

Answer 2

A cognitivist account of ethical language argues that moral judgements express beliefs, can be true or false and aim to describe the world. So ‘lying is wrong’ expresses the belief that lying is wrong, and is either true or false.

Question 3

non-cognitivism

Answer 3

• the view that moral/ethical judgements are not factual/descriptive claims
• do not express propositions
• do not say something that is truth-apt
• do not aim to describe the world

Question 4

moral realism

Answer 4

• there is a moral reality which can be discovered
• it holds that moral properties are real & independent of peoples states of mind
• moral claims can be true or false (moral realists are cognitivists)

The theory that claims that moral judgements are made true or false by objective moral properties that exist and are mind-independent (in some sense).

Question 5

moral anti realism

Answer 5

• moral facts do not exist
• moral statements do not describe the world
• moral statements are neither true nor false (most anti realists are non-cognitivists)

1. moral truths do not exist
2. values cannot be derived from facts
3. there are no mind-independent moral properties/facts

Question 6

is ought gap

Answer 6

Hume’s claim that judgements about what ought to be the case are very different from judgements about what is the case, and cannot be deduced from them. The claim is made as an objection to moral cognitivism.

Question 7

moral naturalism

Answer 7

moral judgements are based on our experience of the empirical world and that they describe the world
thus moral judgements can be reduced to non-moral facts about the world

Question 8

moral non-naturalism

Answer 8

argument that moral terms such as ‘goodness’ are not natural properties but still exist as intuitions

• moral properties aren’t natural properties

Question 9

natural/non-natural property

Answer 9

Natural properties are those that we can identify through sense experience and science. Non-natural properties cannot be analysed in terms of or reduced to natural properties.

Question 10

mackies argument from queerness

Answer 10

Mackie’s argument that moral properties, understood as non-natural properties, are (metaphysically and epistemologically) puzzling and improbable, which is a reason to believe they do not exist.

Question 11

why is eva a little bastard

Answer 11

shes annoying

Question 12

open queastion argument

Answer 12

• it supports intuitionism
• moral properties cant be reduced to non-moral properties
• moral properties are of its kind

-oqa canty be decided by the meaning of a concept, but cqa can

p1: for all concepts in the place of x (it is x, but is it morally good?) that is an open question
p2 no other concept has the same meaning as that concept
p3 property of moral goodness is neither identical or reducible to other property

Question 13

intuitionisnm

Answer 13

theory that good isnt definable and that we know the good through our intuition because its self evident