Meta-ethics Flashcards
Synthetic statements
are based on our sensory data and experience
e.g. Children wear hats
Analytic statements
Statements that are true by definition
e.g. bachelors are unmarried men
Naturalism
(cognitive)
~cognitive and objective
~there are rights and wrongs, morals are not about different points of view, but are about facts of the natural world
~ethical naturalism holds that we can tell what is right and wrong by looking at the world around us and using our reason
~morality is a feature of the universe that we can perceive
Aquinas (an ethical naturalist)
~he thought that we could use our reason and our powers of observation to access the facts about what is moral and immoral
~ he was a theological naturalist because he thought that goodness comes from the will of God
Philippa Foot (ethical naturalist)
~she defended naturalism by saying that we can observe morality when we see people’s behaviour
~we call someone a ‘good person’ or an ‘honest person’ because of our observations
~virtues can be recognised
Criticisms of naturalism
(Hume)
~Hume argued that we can see what there is but not what we ought to do
~He argued that there is no justification for moving from what is to what ought to be
~This is often called ‘Hume’s law’- “you cannot derive an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’”
Other criticisms of naturalism
~empiricists argue that right and wrong cannot be experienced with the senses e.g. we can see that hitting someone makes them unhappy, but we cannot see that making someone unhappy is wrong
Intuitionism
(G.E Moore)
(cognitive)
~good is a simple unanalysable property, but we know intuitively what it means
~he adapted a version of utilitarianism in that he said that right acts are those that produce the most good, but he said that goodness can’t be identified with some natural property such as pleasure
~we can’t use our senses to tell us if something is good but we can use our ‘moral intuition’ so we can still say if a moral statement is true or false
~we recognise goodness when we see it, we just know if something is good, Moore called this a ‘simple notion’
G.E. Moore quotes
~ ‘If I am asked ‘What is good?’ my answer is that good is good, and that is the end of the matter. Or if I am asked ‘How is good to be defined?’ my answer is that it cannot be defined , and that is all I have to say about it.’ (Moore, Principia Ethica)
~’We know what ‘yellow’ is and can recognise it whenever it is seen, but we cannot actually define yellow. In the same way, we know what good is but we cannot actually define it.’ (Moore, Principia Ethica)
Intuitionism
(H.A. Pritchard)
~he thought that there were 2 types of thinking, reason and intuition (reason looks at the facts of a situation and intuition decides what to do
~ he thought that intuitionism would show what particular action was right and where our moral obligation lay
~he did recognise that people’s morals were different, but said this was because some people had developed their moral thinking further than others
Intuitionism
(W.D. Ross)
~argued that prima facie duties are intuitively right
~judgement must be used to decide what to do in any situation
~one duty can be rejected in favour of another
Prima facie duties
- fidelity
- reparation (when we have done something wrong)
- gratitude
- justice
- beneficence (helping others)
- self- improvement
- non-maleficence (not harming others)
Strengths of intuitionism
~non- naturalistic, morality is not dependant on the material world, ethical principles are independent of actual events, this theory is not guilty of naturalistic fallacy
~it explains why different societies share moral values such as ‘murder is wrong’
~it does justice to the fact that humans have an innate moral sense
~it doesn’t require a God as a source of morality
Criticisms of intuitionism
~this idea of knowing what is good by intuition and not by empirical evidence is not proved conclusively by Moore- he says you either agree with him or you haven’t thought about it properly
~virtue ethicists argue it’s our emotions and practical wisdom that give us this intuitive knowledge
~how can we be sure that our intuitions are correct as different people come to different conclusions
~moral intuitions seem to come from social conditioning and differ between cultures, so it is hard to see how such intuitions can be a reliable guide to objective ethical truths
Emotivism or Boo/Hurrah theory
~a theory which says that moral statements are just expressions of feelings…murder is wrong…boo to murder!