Meta - ethics Flashcards
What is meta-ethics
A branch of philosophy, which asks the question of what goodness is
Cognitivism
ethical language expresses beliefs about reality which can be true/false
Non-Cognitivism
moral statements not describing the world but rather own personal opinion
Realism
The view that moral properties exist in reality
Anti-realism
The view that moral properties do not exist in reality
Ethical Naturalism
View that goodness is something real in the natural world – typically a natural property and can be seen and proven empirically
Ethical Naturalism example
Linguistic claims of naturalism are cognitive as it functions no different from anything else observed empirically i.e ‘the table is brown’ either true/false
This is same for ‘stealing from a bank is right’ can be true/false depending on whatever natural property the naturalist claims to be good
FH Bradley - ethical naturalism
Society and the community is the medium of ethics as it conveys to us what we already know about morality
- Individual becomes fulfilled by identifying with and conforming to societal values, individual become morally
Hume criticized ethical naturalism - ‘is-ought’ theory
Philosophers talk about the way things are and then jump with no apparent justification to claim about the way things ought to be
-Just because something is a certain way, that doesn’t tell us anything about how it ought to be
- means for any moral proposition you cannot give a factual justification for believing it i.e., ‘it is wrong to kill people’ and ask what the factual justification for this is, why is it wrong?
Critique of Hume
Various factual consequences for killing people i.e. harmful and violates their preferences
Why is it harmful? Why does it violate peoples preferences
Whenever someone presents a fact from which they have inferred their values, can always question their reasons for that inference. We cannot infer values from facts
Hume argues that you could be aware of all the facts about a situation, yet if you then pass a moral judgement, that cannot have come from ‘the understanding’ nor be ‘the work of judgement’ but instead comes from ‘the heart’ and is ‘not a speculative proposition’ but is an ‘active feeling or sentiment’.
looks like an argument against realism but also against cognitivism and for non-cognitivism, specifically emotivism.
Patricia Churchland criticism of Hume
Patricia Churchland – Hume doesn’t seem to say its impossible to reason from is to ought just that philosophers have failed to do so presently. Argues that Hume’s argument leaves it open for inductive reasoning to do that job
Utilitarian naturalism could be taken as inductive. Claim would then be not that our nature finding happiness good makes it good, but that our nature finding happiness good is evidence for happiness being good
However, consider that we have strong evidence that human nature finding pleasure good is the result of evolution, in order to guide animals to evolutionary goals. So, we are not justified in regarding our nature finding pleasure good as evidence for pleasure actually being good since we have stronger evidence for it being the result of something else (evolution).
Moore’s open-question argument against naturalism
“are bachelors unmarried” - analytic (closed question)
- the predicate is equivalent to the statement = meaningless
“Are bachelors happy?” - both predicate and statement can co-exist without being meaningless
if good = pleasure giving, not analytical as meaningless same as ‘good is good’ but can co-exist synthetically
- proves that goodness is a unique property
Criticism of the open question argument
Moore can prove that our linguistic concepts of goodness and pleasure are distinct concepts that cannot be identical. That doesn’t tell us anything about the actual metaphysical status of goodness in reality. Mackie = too optimistic in thinking linguistic analysis could tell us metaphysical truths
Naturalistic fallacy - Moore critique of ethical naturalism
Goodness cannot be equated with any natural property (like happiness) as any attempt to do so commits the naturalistic fallacy
- We cannot define goodness. We can only say what it is, for example the colour yellow cannot be defined, the same is true for goodness
- Goodness can therefore not be a naturalistic thing as naturalistic things can be defined. We experience goodness – Intuition
What are the two types of ideas
Complex ideas that can be broken down into smaller ideas, i.e. a horse
Simple ideas: smaller ideas that cannot be broken down i.e. yellow
Moore’s Intuitionism
When we reflect/observe a moral situation, i.e. stealing our intuition gives us the proposition stealing is wrong, depending on the consequences
However not to do with emotion, just as no choice but to perceive yellow when looking at a yellow thing. = no other choice but to apprehend the truth/falsity of a moral proposition when observing/ reflecting on the relevant moral situation
Occurs as we apprehend ‘non-naturalistic properties’
-If you break down good into any other terms you fall into the naturalistic fallacy
-Objective moral truths - things that are true in themselves, can’t define but know by intuition
Critique of Intuitionism
Criticized for having an indulgent metaphysics of non-natural properties existing in a supersensible realm being somehow apprehended by a mysterious faculty of intuition. How could he possibly prove any of this?
- Responds by making an analogy between non-natural goodness and numbers, neither ‘exist’ but do have a ‘being’ in some way. Numbers = not natural objects yet do have something to do with reality. Therefore must be a non-natural level to reality where numbers are and where goodness is from also.
Moral disagreement critique of intuitionism
Moral disagreement not everyone has the same intuition about what is ethically good/bad – how can Moore explain moral disagreement if everyone has intuitive access to objectively true propositions?
Moore firstly argued that people often fail to be as clear as possible in their ethical propositions, which he thinks explains much of the moral disagreement.
Secondly, intuition can be made at different levels of abstraction
Moore was a consequentialist = different intuitions about the same action in the same situation. Process of figuring out ethical truth reacquires fitting intuited moral propositions together into a coherent whole. If w could come together and discuss the situations our different intuitions apply too, we would agree
