meta ethics Flashcards
whats moral realism
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
whats cognitivism
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
whats moral naturalism
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
how is utiliarianism moral naturalism
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
how is virtue ethics moral naturalism
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
whats moore’s naturalistic fallacy - against naturalism
describes the fallacy of equating goodness to a natural property (mill’s proof)
moore’s naturalistic fallacy example
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
whats moores open question argument against naturalism
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
whats moral non-naturalism
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
how do we aquire knowledge of moral properties - problem for non-naturalism
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
how does aquiring knowledge of moral properties cause a problem for non-naturalism
knowledge of non-natural properties is hard to explain as non-natural moral properties cant be percieved like physical properties ( happiness, pain, greenness, smallness)
whats moores intuitionism and how does it account for non-naturalism aquiring knowledge of moral properties
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
whats moral anti-realism
mind-independent moral properties like wrongness, rightness dont exist and theres no such thing as moral facts such as murder is wrong
AR - whats error theory
cognitivist theory
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
AR - whats mackies argument for cognitivism
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
AR - whats mackie’s argument from relativity
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.
AR - how does the argument from relativity cause a problem for moral realism
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.
AR - whats mackies argument from queerness
alleged moral properties are so strange that we should reject them all together. non-natural moral properties are metaphysically and epistemically queer
AR - whats metaphysically queer
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.
AR - why are moral properties metaphysically queer
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
AR - whats epistemically queer
natural v moral knowledge
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
AR - why are moral properties epistemically queer
robbing example
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?
whats non-cognitivism
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
what is non-cognitivism and why is it anti-realist
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
whats emotivism
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
how does emotivism apply to moral judgements
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’
whats ayers verification principle
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
why arent moral statements analytic truths - verification principle
statement like ‘murder is wrong’ isnt analytic as theres no logical contradiction when saying ‘murder isnt wrong’.
why arent moral statements empirically verifiable - verification principle
non nat and nat
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
how does hume’s fork apply to moral judgements
anything that isn’t a judgement of reason (matter of fact/relation of ideas) is a non-cognitivist statement.
why arent moral judgements relations of ideas
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
why arent moral judgements matters of facts
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.
whats humes idea that moral judgements motivate action
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
what does hume say that moral judgements are
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
humes is/ought problem - what are claims about what is
factual claims about what is the case e.g this is an act of tortue.
humes is/ought problem - what are claims about what ought to be
value judgements about whats good and bad. e.g you ought not to torture
humes is/ought problem - why are is/ought statements different
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
how does humes is/ought problem supports non cognitivism
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
what does prescriptivism say about moral judgements
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
responses to moral anti-realism - whats nihilism
Nihilism is the rejection of human existence, morality and meaning, causing everything to be questioned as nothing can be known for sure
responses to moral anti-realism - how does nihilism go against anti-realism
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
responses to moral anti-realism - how does moral progress go against anti-realism
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
