Meta-Ethics

Question 1

Meta-Ethics

Answer 1

Focuses on the language of ethics. Concerned with whether fixed statements relate to moral truths (e.g absolutism) or are relative to to emotions or beliefs etc (relativism).
Also concerned with how we come to know morals, through sense and observation? Intuition?

Question 2

Ethical Naturalism

Answer 2

A cognitive theory. An ethical theory that holds that everything arises from natural properties and causes, thus morals are fixed absolutes that can be observed as part of the universe.

Question 3

F.H Bradley and Phillipa Foot

Answer 3

Believe that morals can be perceived in the world in the same way that other features of the world are identified. Empirical facts of the world. Morals are not about ‘your opinion’ but are objectively true.
Bradley claims that morals are observable as part of a concrete world.

Example: Hitler was the leader of the Nazis (non-ethical fact). Hitler was a bad man (ethical- fact using evidence, consequences of actions etc).

Question 4

David Hume critic of ethical naturalism

Answer 4

Moral good and evil cannot be distinguished using reason. We cannot move from an objective factual statement based on observations of the world (facts), to a subjective moral statement.

For example: A man is dead (forensically verifiable) but we cannot find evidence of the wrongness of that murder.