Meta ethics Flashcards
What is meta ethics
debate surrounding the language of ethics
What is Naturalism
a realist and cognitive theory, claim that moral truths are discovered empirically, “good, bad, right and wrong” are natural properties
What is intuitionism
a realist and cognitive theory “good, bad, right, wrong” ae known by intuition and are self-evident
what is emotivism
Anti-realist and non-cognitive theory, claim “good, bad, right, wrong”, dont actually exist and therefore there is no knowledge in ethical statements
What are 3 different versions of Naturalism
Aquinas- Theological naturalism, states that we discover moral truths through observation of God given natural purpose of the universe, we know it is good, because it fulfils its God-given purpose
Bentham and Mills Hedonistic Naturalism- we discover moral truths through observation on what gives greater pleasure over pain, “good”=pleasure, “bad”=pain
F.H. Bradleys Naturalism- we discover moral truths through observation of ones position in society ( key idea)
What is the nature of the relationship between Naturalism and Absolutism
Whilst many Naturalists are absolutists, there are also naturalists that support relativism, eg. hedonist utilitarians
What is the Naturalistic Fallacy?
A term used by G.E. Moore for the error of assuming that “good” and “bad” are natural qualities/properties, claims that naturalists wrongly equate good with natural and bad with unnatural, e.g the example of human teeth and vegetarianism
What is the Open Question argument?
if hedonist naturalists are right that “good” and “pleasure” are synonymous, then the question “is pleasure really good?” would be a closed question, which it clearly is not
What is Humes Fact/value distinction?
argues that moral statements are motivated by our emotions, distinction between moral and factual distinction, eg from statements such as “ this is causing me pain”, to “this is wrong”, that does not express what it wrong about the pain, always a missing premise, e.g I dont want to be hurt
What are the strengths of Naturalism?
the general consensus in the world over what is right and wrong, suggests it is a factual matter, eg. agreeing that a brick is a solid and not a liquid/gas, rather than a matter of opinion
doesnt reduce moral debates to a matter of preference
are able to know what is good through desires people have (hedonistic naturalists
What are the weaknesses of Naturalism
Naturalism is guilty of the Naturalistic fallacy, that claims if something is natural then it must be good, eg we are given sharp teeth to eat meat with, but this lense of thinking would demote vegetarianism as bad
some forms of naturalism, especially Aquinas’s, make the assumption that there is a telos or purpose and use the existence of God as part of Naturalism, which existentialists such as Satre would disagree with
What is Ayers money analogy used to support Humes views of approval or disapproval?
“The presence of an ethical symbol in a proposition adds nothing to its factual content”, e.g. “you acted wrongly in stealing that money”, is simply stating that the money was stolen and evincing my moral disapproval of it”
What is evince?
used to explain how ethical statements may show an emotional state, we may or may not feel the emotion that the words indicate
How is the weak verification principle used to argue all moral statements are factually meaningless?
statements are only true if they are analytical( true by definition) or synthetic ( verified by the senses)
How does Ayers verification principle show all ethical statements are meaningless?
if one were to say “ you were wrong to lie”, to an emotivist, it would be akin to saying “ you lied” as the use of wrong adds nothing but your own disapproval to the statement
