Meta-ethics

Question 1

Moral realism

Answer 1

There are mind-independent moral properties and facts

Question 2

Moral anti-realism

Answer 2

There is no such thing as mind-independent moral properties or facts

Question 3

Cognitivism

Answer 3

Moral judgements express non-cognitive mental state

Question 4

Non-cognitivism

Answer 4

Moral judgements express non-cognitive mental states which are not capable of being true or false

Question 5

Naturalism (Cognitivism)

Answer 5

• moral judgements are beliefs that are intended to be true or false and that moral properties exist and are natural properties

Question 6

Utilitarianism as naturalism

Answer 6

• example of a naturalist theory
• its says good can be reduced to pleasure and bad can be reduced to pain
• pain and pleasure are natural properties of the mind/brain
• bentham

Question 7

Mills ‘proof’ of utilitarianism

Answer 7

• argues happiness is the only good
• the only proof that something is desirable is that people desire it
• no proof can be given why the ‘general happiness is desirable’, other than each person desires their own happiness
• this is all the proof that happiness is a good thing
• other values just constitute to happiness

Question 8

Virtue ethics as naturalism

Answer 8

• Artistotle discussion of ergon (function) can be interpreted as a discussion of natural facts about human beings
• argue that it is a natural fact that the function of human beings is to use reason (in the same way a knife is to cut things)
• then good reduces to a set of natural facts about performing that function

Question 9

Arguments in favour of naturalism

Answer 9

• as science has improved so have our morals, surely science can uncover the truth of the world
• how else can we account for moral progress

Question 10

Arguments against naturalism

Answer 10

• the naturalistic fallacy
• the open question argument
• the ‘is ought’ gap

Question 11

What are the implications if naturalism is true

Answer 11

• if there are moral absolutes, disagreements about morality are caused by poor observation

Question 12

The open question argument - G.E. Moore

Answer 12

• a closed question is a question that makes no sense to ask (is 2+2=4?)
• a question about obvious facts (a priori) is absurd, predetermined
• if two things really are the same, you can flip them round and create a question from a statement, and if you do that the question is absurd
• we know naturalism is wrong because “is pleasure good?” Is not a closed question

Question 13

The naturalistic fallacy - G.E. Moore (for innatism and against naturalism )

Answer 13

• co-incidence doesn’t = identical substance
• two things in the same place, doesnt mean they’re the same thing
• (a liver is found near a kidney but a kidney isn’t a liver)
• pleasure and goodness are closely correlated, but this doesn’t mean they’re the same thing
• argues that you can’t logically jump from natural to moral

Question 14

Intuitionism (non-naturalism)

Answer 14

• the theory that some moral judgments are self-evident, moral intuitions are a type of synthetic a priori knowledge

Question 15

Naturalistic fallacy - in favour of intuitionism

Answer 15

• can’t logically jump from natural to moral, drinking beer being good vs pleasurable are two different kinds of pleasure, one is moral and one is natural

Question 16

Issue with intuitionism (1)

Answer 16

• assumes theres a universal way of knowing self-evident claims, this is more difficult to prove than the theory puts itself out to be

Question 17

The verification principle

Answer 17

• a statement only has meaning if its an analytic truth or empirically verifiable
• a statement that doesn’t fit these is meaningless, ‘murder is wrong’ is neither empirical or analytical, murder causes pain but can’t empirically verify it’s wrong
• we can’t use empirical experience to discover what is right and wrong

Question 18

Issue 2 with intuitionism

Answer 18

• difficult to define and measure intuition
• doesn’t account for moral disagreement because it assumes that there is a single correct answer to every moral problem
• difficult to determine who’s intuition is correct because intuitions can vary depending on their personal experiences, beliefs, or cultures

Question 19

Implications if intuitionism is true

Answer 19

• moral truths aren’t always fixed and change over time
• people moral judgements are based on both reason and intution

Question 20

Intuitionism on moral disagreement and moral progress

Answer 20

• acknowledges people have different moral intuitions due to their experiences and background
• peoples morals change over time, same as background and culture, not the same as moral intuitions, people just use their own to make moral judgments

Question 21

Humes fork

Answer 21

• we can have knowledge about relations of ideas or matters of fact
  p1. there are only two types of judgements of reason, relations of ideas and matters of fact
  p2. moral judgments are not relations of ideas
  p3. moral judgements are not matters of fact
  c1. therefore, moral judgements are not judgements of reason
  -> raises an issue for cognitivism, if moral judgments are not judgements of reason, then according to Hume’s Fork, we cannot have any knowledge of them
• this is because Hume goes on to argue moral judgements are neither true or false, but function in some other way

Question 22

Emotivism

Answer 22

• a meta-ethical position (non-cognitive, anti-realist) that says moral commands are just emotional beliefs
• some people say emotivism leads to moral nihilism

Question 23

Nihilism

Answer 23

• everyone believing in nothing and a cultural breakdown, the view that there are no moral values

Question 24

2 things that defenders of emotivism would say

Answer 24

1. Emotions are reliable forms of moral self-governance, they are usually good guidelines, just don’t pretend they’re anything other than emotions
2. Just because you don’t like philosophical positions doesn’t mean they’re not true

Question 25

C.L. Stevenson

Answer 25

• “capital punishment is wrong”
• i have an attitude which is shaped by my other a priori beliefs
• disagreements aren’t just different emotions, but also issues in different underlying conditions

Question 26

C.L Stevenson - improving Ayer

Answer 26

• asks where do emotions come from?, are they linked to a very complex set of beliefs about value?
• to call them emotions doesn’t do them justice, it’s much bigger than that -> it’s a final representation of a much deeper set of values

Question 27

Arguments in favour of emotivism

Answer 27

• everyone is able to have different views and doesn’t assume that everyone thinks in the same way (values humans as different individuals
• Ayer -> lacks the problem of speculative and metaphysical ideas - based off observation of behaviour, rather than God or timeless forms

Question 28

Arguments against emotivism

Answer 28

• people who have negative emotions will go through with acts such as killing, removes though and reason process -> removing ethics is a risky procedure
• in case of terrible crimes, its inadequate to say that condemnation of those is ‘just emotion’, surely genocide is intrinsically wrong?
• Ayers ‘ethical non-theory’ only discusses emotion, doesn’t deal with the ideal of being ethical

Question 29

Prescriptivism - R.M. Hare

Answer 29

• moral statements are just instructions reccomendations or commands, they are not objective truth-claims, and moral facts do not exist
• not ‘I don’t like killing’ more ‘I want to live in a world where no one kills’ -> how you want the world to be

Question 30

Hare’s strawberry example

Answer 30

• a ‘good’ strawberry
• an analysis of a good strawberry might reduce to it being a ‘sweet and juicy strawberry’
• but the description isn’t the only thing that is mean when saying ‘good strawberry’
• ‘good strawberry’ descirbes and also commends the strawberry
• but in order to commend something we must assume a certain set of standards
• ‘sweet and juicy’ isn’t objective, there are no facts that can determine one set of standards as correct or incorrect
• same with ‘she is a good person’

Question 31

Problems with non-cognitivism

Answer 31

• the problem for non-cognitivism is that people regularly embed moral judgments in statements such as ‘murder is wrong’
• but if non-cognitvism is correct, then its hard to make sense of why people do this
• it’s incapable of being true or false, so why do it?

Question 32

Problems for anti realism (error theory, emotivism, prescriptivism)

Answer 32

• argued that it leads to moral nihilism, the view that no actions are inherently wrong, raises a question of why anyone should bother to be moral at all
  -> NONE COGNITIVIST response; just because there’s no inherent right or wrong, people can still has moral values; it’s somewhat defeating to be a moral nihilist

Question 33

Error theory - J.L. Mackie

Answer 33

• error theory says that moral judgments are beliefs that are intended to be true or false, however also says that moral properties don’t exist and so these moral judgments are all false
• cognitivist and anti-realist

Question 34

More on error theory

Answer 34

• ‘murder is wrong’, expresses a cognitive belief that murder is wrong -> but wrong refers to a non-existent property and so the statement is false
• since moral properties don’t exist according to error theory, it claims that all moral propositions are false

Question 35

Arguments from queerness

Answer 35

• if real moral facts do exist then they are spectacularly strange in at least 3 different ways;
  1. Metaphysically strange
  2. Epistemologically strange
  3. Motivationally strange
• moral judgements motivate us > if there were moral properties, moral judgements would describe which actions have which moral properties
• if there were moral properties, simply knowing facts about what is good or bad, right or wrong, would be enough to motivate us > a fact able to motivate us directly would be metaphysically peculiar
• it is reasonable to conclude that there are no moral properties

Question 36

Argument from relativity

Answer 36

• mackie points out that there are variations of moral beliefs in cultures
• if moral realism is correct, there would only be one objectively correct answer to all these issues, why is there so much disagreement?
• explanation: each culture has different conditions and a different way of life, and has developed their own moral beliefs in response to that, if moral realism were true; you wouldn’t expect to see such divergent moral beliefs

Question 37

Hume’s argument from motivation

Answer 37

p1. moral judgements can motivate actions
p2. reason cannot motivate actions
c1. therefore, moral judgements are not judgements of reason
- cognitivism claims that moral judgements express beliefs, which can be true or false, and the faculty of judging is what is true or false is reason, hence, Hume’s conclusion is a rejection of cognitivism

Question 38

the origins of moral principles

Answer 38

reason, emotions or society

Question 39

distinction between cognitivism and non-cognitivism about ethical language

Answer 39

non-cognitivists claim that ethical language does not express beliefs, but some other non-cognitive mental state
cognitivists claim that ethical language expresses beliefs, that can be true or false so therefore ethical claims can be true or false

Question 40

Hume’s is-ought gap

Answer 40

• draws a distinction between sentences that talk about what is the case and moral judgements which talk about what ought to be the case
• this ought expresses some new relation or affirmation, it needs to be pointed out and explained; and a reason should be given for how this new relation can be a deduction from others that are entirely different from it
• the premise tells me how the world is, yet the conclusion states the truth, which is inferred from the premise, so how is this rational?
• there is a gap between what is and what ought to be so that we can’t reason from one to the other

Question 41

issue: whether anti-realism can account for how we use moral language, including moral reasoning, persuading and disagreeing

Answer 41

• being emotive and influencing peoples attitudes is something that lots of non-moral language doe well, so we will need to say more to distinguish morality from advertising
• we may express our moral attitudes to others who already agree with them or that we know how to be indifferent to our views, so influencing their attitudes is not the purpose

Question 42

issue: the problem of accounting for moral progress

Answer 42

• if there is no moral reality then our moral views cannot become better or worse, how can we say anything is moral progress is there is no objective moral truth