Meta-Ethics Flashcards
What is meta-ethics?
- Meta-ethics is the field or study which seeks to answer the question of what goodness is.
- Concerned with the NATURE of ethical propertoes, statements, attitudes and judgements.
There are two aspects to what goodness is:
1: Whether goodness exists in reality or not (moral realism vs moral anti-realism).
2: What the meaning of the word ‘good’ is (cognitivism vs non-cognitivism).
What do cognitivists believe? What theories are cognitivist?
Believe moral statements can be true or false.
For example, ‘murder is wrong’ is just or true as a statement such as ‘it is snowing outside.
Naturalism, Intuitionism
What do non-cognitivists believe? Which theories are non-cognitivist?
- Proposing something is non-cognitive is to suggest that it is merely a judgement, and thus not true or false.
- Non-cognitivists who suggest moral language is non-cognitive are suggesting moral statements are just feelings, preferences and attitudes. They are not subject to truth or falsity. E.g ‘murder is wrong’ is just someone’s opinion.
Emotivism.
What do realists believe? Which theories are realist?
Realists argue that moral truths actually exist and are real features of the world.
Naturalism, Intuitionism.
What do anti-realists believe? Which theories are anti-realist?
Anti-realists claim that there are no moral truths in the world.
Emotivism.
What is naturalism?
Naturalism is the belief that values can be defined based in terms of some natural property of the world.
Morally realist (moral facts exists) and cognitive (can be true or false).
- Naturalists suggest that moral truths can be discovered by observation of the natural world - e.g we can decipher that modern slavery is ‘morally wrong’ by observing that human suffering is increasing.
- Naturalistic theories may be religious - e.g. - Aquinas: we can determine what is morally right by understanding our God given purpose, through observation of the natural world- see Natural Law theory. This leads to absolute morality, we must always do that which fulfils our God-given purpose. But Naturalism would reject Supernaturalism - the idea that morals are revealed by God in scripture.
- Can also be secular: - Utilitarianism: observation of what causes pleasure and pain allows us to determine what actions are good and bad. For Bentham and Mill pleasure=good. More relative morality, what causes the most pleasure (or ‘good’) will vary situationally. But could also be viewed as absolute: must always do that which maximises balance of pleasure over pain.
What is the disagreement within naturalism over WHICH features of life are good?
Bradley rejects the naturalism of Utilitarianism. Instead, Bradley argues that human self-realisation is the source of motivation to be moral, rather than pleasure. - He suggests humans use their reason and observation to move themselves from childish appetites and egoism to the self-realisation is achieved via making the world a better place.
“we have found our function as an organ of the social organism”.
- For Bradley, personal satisfaction is bound up with the creation of an interdependent society, in which individually we contribute a particular role or duty. When we fall short of this, we feel disappointed at the moral gap between the ideal self and actual self.
- In this process of growth, we develop a social self that takes account in interests of others, as they are bound with our own personal self-realisation.
- For Bradley, this realisation is the goal of ethics.
What are the pros and cons of naturalism?
· Hume: Commits naturalistic fallacy, cannot move from a factual statement about the world (e.g reproduction is a priority for most species) to a value judgement (e.g all living things have a duty to reproduce). Just because things ‘are’, doesn’t mean they ‘should be’.
· Moore: cannot analyse moral truths in relation to physical elements of the natural world.
· Plenty of aspects of nature are undesirable e.g when a male lion takes over a pride they will kill any cub not biologically related to them. Doesn’t mean we should promote this. How do we ‘pick’ which aspects of nature to promote? Seemingly arbitrary.
- Appealing to objective ethical measures e.g. pleasure vs pain is seen to be having a positive impact & doing good for ethical causes.
(For example, the Effective Altruism movement is data-driven and is growing and succeeding. In 2022, it had approx $26.6 billion in donations. )
Naturalism seems to be showing those egoists the suffering of others and focusing on one’s self and hoarding wealth is an objective wrong.
· Agreement: ideas of objective moral facts that have truth value is supported by the fact that there is broad agreement on moral issues across almost all societies e.g killing a member of one’s own community is ‘bad’, protecting the innocent is ‘good’.
· Pleasure cannot always=good: sadists take pleasure in hurting others, cannot conclude that it’s ‘good’ as a result. Or that solving a difficult maths problem is ‘bad’ because it might feel mentally painful.
· Doesn’t answer question: saying simply ‘murder causes pain’ doesn’t tell us why causing pain is necessarily ‘wrong’.
· Not empirical: humans assign morality to things, ‘rightness’ and ‘wrongness’ are not empirically verifiable or falsifiable terms so, according to Ayer and Popper, must be meaningless. Cannot be cognitive.
What is intuitionism?
Intuitionism: the belief that basic moral truths are undefinable but intuitive and self-evident.
- Belief that good is a meaningful concept and moral truths exist objectively and can be known through intuition: cognitive but also non-naturalist. (Ethical language expresses a belief about a non-natural reality- like maths).
- Moore argued goodness is something that ‘cannot be defined’ and can only be known through intuition- philosophers have wasted their time trying ‘good is good and that is the end of the matter’. Therefore must have an intuitive sense of right and wrong.
o Like the term ‘yellow’- it’s something we intuit, can’t be explained in terms of something else. It cannot be reduced to empirically testable properties e.g wavelengths.
o Frank Jackson’s thought experiment ‘Mary’s Room’: imagines that Mary spends her whole life studying the properties colour blue, without ever having seen the colour itself. When Mary sees blue for the first time, she learns something new about it: the ‘subjective qualities’ of ‘experiencing’ it- this is called ‘qualia’. The same is true of goodness.
- Prichard: moral obligations are immediately obvious (like maths 1+1=2), we know it without needing further explanation. He also said intuitions involve a sense of obligation, not just a sense of goodness. Disagreement occurs when some people are less morally developed than others.
o W.D Ross agreed: in any situation we have moral obligations that are apparent to us prima facie (at first sight) e.g gratitude, justice
What are the pros and cons of intuitionism?
- Non-naturalist: therefore avoids the naturalistic fallacy
- Offers an account of right and wrong without an appeal to divine command. Secular
- Mackie: IIf Moore was correct, surely we should expect to find more moral agreement than we do. If we all have an ability to know the objective moral truth, why is there so much moral disagreement? Our internal sense of right and wrong is better explained by social conditioning than by some mysterious ability called intuition.
- Differences: Prichard explains that this is due to some having a ‘better’ intuition and being more morally developed.
§ But many morally developed people e.g the Pope and Dalia Lama come to different conclusions on ethics. - Different intuitions: different people/cultures have different ‘intuitions’ about what is ethically good or bad: cultural relativism. Maybe ideas of ‘goodness’ can be defined, as a product of the surrounding culture. Moral similarities across cultures is a result of practical necessity e.g cultures where murder was acceptable wouldn’t last long.
- Ockham’s razor: simplest explanations are best. There are more robust accounts of morality offered by sources with a greater degree of empirical evidence e.g. Freud, Dawkins etc. For example, Ruse suggests that we have no need for a faculty of introspective perception when the origins of morality are evidently products of natural selection.
- BUT Many studies in psychology tell us that intuition is a very real process where the brain makes use of past experiences, along with internal signals and cues from the environment, to help us make a decision.
Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio - “somatic markers” translate unconscious emotions and sensations into felt instinct.
What is emotivism?
Emotivism: the believe that ethical terms evince approval or disapproval
- Morality is a purely emotional response to the world: saying an action is ‘good’ is merely an expression of positive feelings towards that action. Non-cognitive anti-realist.
- Ayer: logical positivist- developed verification principle - language is only meaningful if it can be verified analytically or synthetically. Moral language cannot be verified in this way so it can only express our personal feelings towards certain actions. Thus, ethical langage is meaningless.
o ‘Lying is wrong’ is akin to saying ‘boo to lying’: ethics just amounts to subjective feelings. Called the ‘boo-hurrah theory’.
o ‘In saying a type of action is right or wrong, I am not making a factual statement…I am merely expressing certain moral sentiments’. Uses Hume’s idea that ethics is nothing more than ‘sentiments’.
o Moral statements can arouse feelings with three different strengths of command: implying a duty (strongest), suggesting an ‘ought’ (less strong), saying something is ‘good’ (least strong).
- C.L Stevenson: ethical statements and beliefs are based on underlying convictions e.g what the value of life is etc. These convictions are shaped by prior beliefs.
- Its application to relativism
What are the pros and cons of emotivism?
o Differences: explains how there is such difference in moral opinion across and within societies. There are no moral ‘facts’, just attitudes and feelings.
o Emotion: acknowledges that many beliefs are rooted in deep feelings of emotion, not necessarily logic or observational qualities. See this in evidence for confirmation bias. Goleman and his work on emotional intelligence affirms that the emotional part of our brain reacts before the reasoning part kicks in.
o Reductive: arguably trivialises ethics, equates a distaste with murder with cheese, for example- all just based on arbitrary emotions. When most people say ‘killing is wrong’, they are also saying that people should not kill.
§ If ethics is just personal taste then there can be no objective ideas about morality or have moral progress.
o Judgement: no reason to say that Hitler was ‘wrong’, then, in his persecution of Jewish people- he simply had different ‘emotions’ to most. This is clearly absurd.
o Blanshard: it is absurd to ground feelings of right and wrong in something as fickle as our feelings.
o Prescriptivism: Hare’s theory that if we say something is good we are ‘commending it’. Good is evaluative not just descriptive. For him ‘ought’ implies ‘universability’- it is an issue of a prescription, trying to get someone to do something. ‘Action is the guiding force of morality’.
o Mackie: error theory. Did agree that there are no moral facts, but when we make moral statements we do so cognitively. Part of ethical language is a (false) belief in objective values e.g ‘murder is wrong’ is actually a subjective value but presented as if it is ‘true’. We have to understand ethical language as cognitive: it expresses beliefs which can be true or false, but ultimately these beliefs aren’t ‘real’. Combines cognitivism and anti-realism.
§ He did think emotivism was ‘part of the truth’ of ethical language, showing how such language motivated action.
Why might someone say that ethical terms are meaningless?
Yes. Some suggest that ethical terms entirely depend on the judgment of each person which differs from one person to the next. This is especially true for those who champion relativist theories of ethics. For example, who I perceive to be most agapeic, may differ from another - consider the issues surrounding euthanasia and the most loving outcome.
Yes. Ethical terms are entirely relative to the situation, circumstance and context. For example, Situation Ethics bases its theorising on the principle of relativism - suggesting there is no absolute.
Yes. Ethical terms are defined by normative ethical theories. Too many competing ways to define ethical terms, can they all be right?
Yes. Mackie/Ayer/Hume would suggest that there is nothing available to our senses that would give us the idea of right and wrong, thus these ideas are
human inventions
Why might someone say that ethical terms are not meaningless?
No. Ethical terms have an objective factual basis. For example, Naturalists would argue that that moral agents can look to the world to observe and observe the impact/meaning of ethical terms. For example, hedonic naturalists view goodness/pleasure or happiness outcomes we can observe in the empirical world.
No. Ethical terms can be absolute, thus there is a universal and objective understanding of what they mean. For example, Kant’s formulation of the Categorical Imperative, individuals must follow their duty.
No. There is a general common-sense agreement in all people’s minds about what constitutes good, bad, right and wrong. For example, the world’s great faiths and non-religious worldviews typically share the notion of the ‘Golden Rule’ - do not do to others, what you do not want done to you.
- (but religious figures such as the Dalai Lama and the Pope differ in their views on what constitutes right and wrong e.g vegetarianism and pre-marital sex)
No. If ethical terms lacked meaning, then ultimately nothing would matter e.g. nihilism, this would lead to alarming consequences.
- (just because the consequences are alarming doesn’t mean its not correct)
