meta ethics

Question 1

whats moral realism

Answer 1

mind-independent moral properties like goodness, badness, and facts like murder is wrong, exist in the same way the mind-independent property ‘blue’ or ‘short’ exist. so when we make moral judgements like ‘murder is wrong’, moral realists argue these statements are true or false the same way grass is green is true or false - murder has the property of wrongness just as grass has property of greeness

Question 2

whats cognitivism

Answer 2

moral judgements express beliefs with truth value, attempting to tell us something that can be true or false. they can motivate us the same way a fact can e.g the effiel tower is in paris, the effiel tower is in berlin

Question 3

whats moral naturalism

Answer 3

moral properties exist and can be reduced to natural properties. ‘murder is wrong’ expresses a belief that murder is wrong where ‘wrong’ is referring to a natural property

Question 4

how is utiliarianism moral naturalism

Answer 4

utilitarians argue that good can be reduced to pleasure and bad to pain - pain and pleasure are natural properties of the world/our mind
e.g mills proof of ‘good’ reduces to happiness, a natural property

Question 5

how is virtue ethics moral naturalism

Answer 5

aristotles ergon/function can be seen as natural facts of humans - it could be said that its a natural fact that the function of a human being is to use reason the same way its a natural fact that the function of a knife is to cut things. so there are natural facts about function and similarly, natural facts about virtues that enable things to perform their function

Question 6

whats moore’s naturalistic fallacy - against naturalism

Answer 6

describes the fallacy of equating goodness to a natural property (mill’s proof)

Question 7

moore’s naturalistic fallacy example

Answer 7

its a fallacy to conclude drinking beer is good from the fact its pleasurable as theyre two different things - good is a moral property and pleasure a natural one. even though they can go handinhand (doing good acts causes pleasure) doesnt mean theyre the same. therefore moral properties e.g good and bad cant be reduced to natural properties or reduced at all

Question 8

whats moores open question argument against naturalism

Answer 8

if pleasure and goodness were the same, it would be a closed question to ask ‘is pleasure good’ as that would be like asking ‘is pleasure pleasure’, yet its an open question to ask is pleasure good

Question 9

whats moral non-naturalism

Answer 9

moral properties exist but are non-natural and cant be reduced to anything simpler - ‘murder is wrong’ expresses a cognitive belief of murder being wrong but wrong refers to a non-natural property

Question 10

how do we aquire knowledge of moral properties - problem for non-naturalism

Answer 10

if moral properties are non-natural properties, how can we aquire knowledge of them? naturalism explains our knowledge of moral properties as they argue theyre natural - theres nothing non-natural about knowing ‘torture causes people pain’ as ‘pain’ is a natural property and so if pain is bad, then it makes sense for us to know torturing people is bad

Question 11

how does aquiring knowledge of moral properties cause a problem for non-naturalism

Answer 11

knowledge of non-natural properties is hard to explain as non-natural moral properties cant be percieved like physical properties ( happiness, pain, greenness, smallness)

Question 12

whats moores intuitionism and how does it account for non-naturalism aquiring knowledge of moral properties

Answer 12

via rational intuition, we can directly reflect on the truth of moral judgements like murder is wrong as the truthness or falseness of these moral judgements is self-evident because of intuition

Question 13

whats moral anti-realism

Answer 13

mind-independent moral properties like wrongness, rightness dont exist and theres no such thing as moral facts such as murder is wrong

Question 14

AR - whats error theory

cognitivist theory

Answer 14

cognitivist theory - when we make moral judgements we’re expressing cognitive beliefs about the external world but because moral properties dont exist, all these beliefs are false. ‘murder is wrong’ is false because the moral property ‘wrongness’ doesnt exist, murder is right is also false because property ‘rightness’ doesnt exist either

Question 15

AR - whats mackies argument for cognitivism

Answer 15

moral discussions are cognitivist - in our ordinary language we may be faced with a moral dilemma of e.g taking a job undertaking research of bacteriological welfare - we wont try to resolve this by asking how we feel about it, instead by asking if an action is right or wrong in itself

Question 16

AR - whats mackie’s argument from relativity

Answer 16

there are wide differences in moral codes between societies and individuals surrounding moral questions e.g In some societies, monogamy is seen as being morally right, however in other societies it is seen as having no moral importance and is not practiced. OR - some remote parts of the world cannibalism was morally acceptable in the past, but now is an extremely ‘unacceptable’ action across the majority of the world and is punishable.

Question 17

AR - how does the argument from relativity cause a problem for moral realism

Answer 17

How can these differences be explained if there are objective moral values? It isn’t plausible to assume that certain societies or individuals have special access to certain moral facts, but others do not, and so Mackie simply makes an inference to the best explanation; that things like monogamy are deep in some people’s traditions and in some it is not, meaning moral values are built from social tradition and convention as if there were objective moral properties and facts, then every culture would discover moral facts the same way we’ve discovered objective facts like 1 + 1 + 2.

Question 18

AR - whats mackies argument from queerness

Answer 18

alleged moral properties are so strange that we should reject them all together. non-natural moral properties are metaphysically and epistemically queer

Question 19

AR - whats metaphysically queer

Answer 19

if mind-independent moral properties exist theyd have to have ‘intrinsic prescriptivity’ - ‘good’ things e.g giving to charity would somehow have a ‘to-be-doneness’ built into them, and bad things a to-not-be-doneness.

Question 20

AR - why are moral properties metaphysically queer

Answer 20

but how is it possible that mind-independent objects can relate to subjective human motivations in this way? we’re motivated by subjective desires and wants, not objective and physical mind-independent objects and so its not plausible that the physical action of e.g stealing in itself could demand how we act

Question 21

AR - whats epistemically queer

natural v moral knowledge

Answer 21

if mind-independent moral properties exist then its a mystery how we aquire knowledge of them as natural knowledge can be explained naturally and moral knowledge instead requires unnatural hypothesis

Question 22

AR - why are moral properties epistemically queer

robbing example

Answer 22

how do moral properties relate to natural properties - how does the natural fact of stealing relate to the moral fact that this was wrong - if we imagine someone robbing a bank then imagine someone robbing a bank and this action has the property of wrongness, theres no difference betwen these two, what does the property of wrongness add to a situation that wasnt already happening?

Question 23

whats non-cognitivism

Answer 23

moral judgements dont express beliefs, instead another kind of mental state and are like desires - able to motivate us but arent true or false e.g ouch, boo, dont do that

Question 24

what is non-cognitivism and why is it anti-realist

Answer 24

if moral judgements dont aim to express true or false statements then theres no need for mind-independent moral properties that make those statements true or false

Question 25

whats emotivism

Answer 25

moral judgements express feelings and emotions of approval and disapproval e.g saying ‘boo’ is clearly neither true nor false it’s an expression of someone’s negative feelings and so ‘boo’ is non-cognitivist

Question 26

how does emotivism apply to moral judgements

Answer 26

when someone says ‘murder is wrong’ what they really mean is ‘boo! murder!’, similarly when someone says giving to charity is good theyre really expressing ‘hooray for giving money to charity’

Question 27

whats ayers verification principle

Answer 27

cognitive/meaningful statements must be either an analytic truth (triangle has 3 sides) or empirically verifiable (water boils at 100dc). ayer argues moral judgements fail this

Question 28

why arent moral statements analytic truths - verification principle

Answer 28

statement like ‘murder is wrong’ isnt analytic as theres no logical contradiction when saying ‘murder isnt wrong’.

Question 29

why arent moral statements empirically verifiable - verification principle

non nat and nat

Answer 29

naturalism - we can empirically verify that murder causes pain, anger, etc but not that its wrong
non-naturalism - even if the act of murder posessed non-natural properties such as wrongness, this cant be empirically verifiable as you cant test for non-natural properties

Question 30

how does hume’s fork apply to moral judgements

Answer 30

anything that isn’t a judgement of reason (matter of fact/relation of ideas) is a non-cognitivist statement.

Question 31

why arent moral judgements relations of ideas

Answer 31

denying relations of ideas leads to contradictions (a triangle doesnt have 3 sides) but theres no contradiction when saying murder isnt wrong so murder is wrong cant be a relation of ideas

Question 32

why arent moral judgements matters of facts

Answer 32

matters of facts are true in virtue of experience, but we have no experience of wrongness in the object itself, only of certain attitudes or feelings within ourselves.

Question 33

whats humes idea that moral judgements motivate action

Answer 33

judgements of reason dont motivate us to act in a certain way. e.g my cognitive belief that today is tuesday itself doesnt motivate me to act in a certain way, instead it’s emotions and desires that motivate us to act e.g my desire to not be late for my lesson on tuesday might motivate me to leave the house and walk to my lesson

Question 34

what does hume say that moral judgements are

Answer 34

moral judgements motivate action e.g my belief ‘murder is wrong’ will motivate me not to murder or my belief that ‘giving to charity is good’ will motivate me to give to charity. therefore moral judgements are non-cognitivist

Question 35

humes is/ought problem - what are claims about what is

Answer 35

factual claims about what is the case e.g this is an act of tortue.

Question 36

humes is/ought problem - what are claims about what ought to be

Answer 36

value judgements about whats good and bad. e.g you ought not to torture

Question 37

humes is/ought problem - why are is/ought statements different

Answer 37

theres a gap between the two claims- you ought not to torture & this is an act of tortue. to say ‘you shouldnt tortue people because it hurts them’ derives a statement about what ought to be from a statement about what is but these are two different things and cant follow eachother

Question 38

how does humes is/ought problem supports non cognitivism

Answer 38

we cant derive ought statements from is statements because ought can be non-cognitivist e.g ‘you shouldnt have done that’ arent capable of being true/false, whereas is statements e.g smith murdered jones’ are cognitivist

Question 39

what does prescriptivism say about moral judgements

Answer 39

they express prescriptive instructions that aim to guide behaviour - in ordinary life a prescriptive statement could be ‘open the door’, which is not true/false simply an instruction. moral judgements are the same: ‘murder is wrong’ is just an instruction not to murder people

Question 40

responses to moral anti-realism - whats nihilism

Answer 40

Nihilism is the rejection of human existence, morality and meaning, causing everything to be questioned as nothing can be known for sure

Question 41

responses to moral anti-realism - how does nihilism go against anti-realism

Answer 41

it rejects the view that there’s objective morality which could collapse into there being no existence of morality at all. If this is the case, then it could be argued theres no point in being moral as it doesn’t exist, so why should people conform to something that isn’t real

Question 42

responses to moral anti-realism - how does moral progress go against anti-realism

Answer 42

moral values have evolved over time e.g homosexuality being illegal in the 1900s. if we accept this as moral progress then we can argue that if antirealism is true, then thered be no moral progress. but there has been, therefore its false