Meta ethics

Question 1

What is a cognitivist ?

Answer 1

Moral sentences are propositions which can be true or false

Question 2

What is a non cognitivist ?

Answer 2

Non cognitivism is the veiw that moral judgements are neither true nor false. Moral judements are not propositions.

Question 3

What is moral realism

Answer 3

There are mind independant moral properties/ facts.

Question 4

What is moral naturalism ?

Answer 4

Type of moral realism- there are mind independant moral properties/facts.
Cognitivist
Expresses the veiw that moral properties/facts are natural properties of the world (not supernatural or divine properties).

Question 5

How can utilitarianism be described as a form of moral naturalism ?

Answer 5

Utilitarianism- all humans aim to aviod pain and seek pleasure.
These are psycologcial and hence natural.
Following the descriptive fact he draws a prescriptive conclusion ‘humans ought to avoid pain and seek pleasure’

Question 6

How can virtue ethics be assosivated with moral naturalism ?

Answer 6

Based on natural facts but is not a theory that reduces mral properties to naturalistic properties:

For Aristotle ‘the good’ is the things that humans most value and we empircally determine this by looking at what people strive for, namely eudaimonia= natural fact.

Also our function is a natural fact about us.

Question 7

What is moral non naturalism ?

Answer 7

Form of moral realism.
Cognitivist
Says there are mind independant moral properties/facts but these are not natural properties. They are special non natural properties.

Question 8

Outline intuitionism

Answer 8

Morla truth, such as killing is wrong are self evident intuitions.
Ethical judgements are unique and cannot be analysed in non-moral or natural terms

Question 9

Outline Moores open question argument.

Answer 9

An open question is one which has more than one logical possible answer.

If goodness is happiness say, it wouldnt make sense to ask is happiness good? This would be like asking is happiness happiness and would be nonsensical or closed.

The second question isnt open because the answer has to be yes. It cannot logically be no.

The same will be true for any natural property substituted with goodness. Therefore good cannot be identified with any natural property.

Question 10

Outline an objection to Moores open question argument.

Answer 10

Moores argument confuses concepts and properties.
Two different concepts - water and h20 can pick out th same property but have different concepts.
Before the discovery of hydrogen and oxygen, people knew about water.
‘water is H20 ‘ is not a conceptual truth, but refer to same thing.

Likewise the concept goodness can be different to the concept happiness but but prehaps the two refer to exactly the same properties in the world so that goodness is happiness.

Question 11

Outline the naturalistic fallacy

Answer 11

A term that is indefinable cannot be defined

Any attempt the define the indefinable is fallicious.

Good is indefinable (it is simple and unanalysable It cannot be defined in terms of anything else, wee can only say how people use the term ‘good’ and what has the property of goodness)

Utilitarians (and other morl naturalists) attempt to define the good in natural terms.

Hence utilitarianism is guilty of commiting to the naturalistic fallacy.

Question 12

How does Humes fork repsond to moral realism ?

Answer 12

1.Relations of ideas
2. Matters of fact

1. Moral judgement are not tautologies.
2. Not matters of fact - cannot ‘see’ killing is wrong.

Question 13

How doe the verification principle respond to moral realism?

Answer 13

P1.Only statements that meet the verificartion principle have meaning.
P2. moral judgements do not meet this principle.
C. Therefore moral judgements are meaningless.

V principle: Two types of claims that are meanigful .
1. analytic
2. emprically verifiable.
we can show that murder causes greif or pain but not empirically that it is wrong.

Moral judgements are neither so we cannot have moral knowledge and should reject cognitivism.

Question 14

How do naturalists respond to Humes fork ?

Answer 14

Moral judgements are (natural) matters of fact. But it takes phulisophical reasoning to show which matters of fact they are. Eg have to defend Mills utilitarianism proof.

Question 15

Apart from Ayers V principle outline another criticism from Ayer to intuitionism ?

Answer 15

If two intuitions conflict, there is no test to establish which is correct.

Question 16

Outline Humes argument from motivation

Answer 16

Purpose: Attack cognitivism (shows moral judgements are not propositions)

P1. Moral judgements sucvh as ‘it is good to help others’ motivate us to act.
P2. Beliefs and reason never motivate us to act. (matters of fact and relations of ideas are not motivating)
C Therefore moral judgements cannot be beliefs.

Knowing facts about the world may show us how to achieve what we want but are not motivating in themself.

Question 17

What is Humes is-ought gap ? (P & C)

Answer 17

P1. Judgements of reason describe what is the case.
P2 Judgements of value prescribe what ought to be the case.
P3 Judgements of reason and judgements of value are therefore entirley different from one and other- there is a gap between is and ought.
C Therefore you cannot draw conclusions about value (ought) from an ‘is’ and there is a logical gap.