meta ethics Flashcards
what is moral realism and moral anti realism
Moral Realism: moral properties (like goodness/badness) exist in reality.
Moral anti-realism: moral properties (like goodness/badness) do not exist in reality.
what is linguistic cognitivism vs non-cognitivism
Cognitivism: ethical language expresses beliefs about reality which can therefore be true or false.
Non-cognitivism: ethical language expresses some non-cognition like an emotion, so does not attempt to describe reality and therefore cannot be true or false.
what are two cognitivist ethical theories
ethical naturalism
intuitionism
3 examples of ethhical naturalism
- natural law is theological naturalism
- utilitarianism
- bradley !
what is ethical naturalism
ethical view that claims ethical statements express propositions and some of these are true by objective features.
-can observe what is good and there is evidence for what is good
this jumper is brown and hitler is evil are both factual statements
moore on ethical naturalism
naturalistic fallacy
moral properties may correlate with natural ones but they are not equal
For example: a moral act such as giving to charity might make me happy, but the morality of the act merely gives way to the happiness, and is not the happiness in itself.
how do ethical naturalists respond to claims that there is different opinions on morals
they are not looking at evidence properly - could be problematic to suggest an entire culture is wrong
what is Bradley’s naturalism
believed that ethical statements expressed propositions
which were provable as true or false
positives of ethical naturalism (3)
- explains cultural relativity
- explains diff in opinions
- establishes base level moral code
negatives of ethical naturalism (3)
- a lot of things arent black/white so are not only good or only bad
- how can majority of the past be ethics blind as well as countries - implies certain countries are morally superior
- how can it be cognitive if not verified analytically/ synthetically
- is-ought gap
what is the is/ought gap
hume
people jump from is statements to ought statements
torture is painful, we ought not to torture
it is just an opinion everyone agrees on and is no longer cognitive
how does phillipa foot respond to evaluations of ethical naturalism
telos of a tree - evidence of goodness from its roots, equally good for a human to be honest as it can better perform its function
- telos for humanity that betters its chances of group survival
what does Moore say about defining good
just like we cannot describe the colour yellow we cannot describe good, only give examples of it. cannot be broken further
“good is good and that is the end of the matter” - who says this
Moore
what is the naturalistic fallacy
replacing natural things with good
eg. benthan replaces pleasure with good. not all things that give pleasure are good - gambling, drugs
who claims we intuitively know what is good
Prichard
what does Prichard say about meta ethics
intuitionism
- morals and logic can be intuited
- intuition decides our duty but reason is what collects the facts of a situation
who talks about prescriptivism
Hare :)
what does Hare say about moral language
it is prescriptive because it tells us what we ought to be doing.
it is like a prescription a doctor gives telling us what is wrong
- universalisability principle
what was prescriptivism an improvement on
Ayer’s emotivism
what was hare influenced by
- Kant - universalised
- serving in ww2 and his treatment by japanese soldiers
what example did hare use to explain why moral language wasn’t based on emotion
ppl defending slavery didn’t think about emotion their morals were based on what they thought should be prescribed universally. they know treatment is bad
what is hares universability principle
a moral claim is saying everyone ought to follow it
- sex before marriage is bad so people ought not to do it
what ethical theory talks about boo/hurrah
emotivism
Vienna Circle
group of philosophers known as logical positivists who rejected claims that moral truth can be verified as objectively true
what is boo/hurrah
ayer - ethical theories are no different to saying boo/hurrah because they are just expressing opinions
how is emotivism based on the verification principle and hume
statements are only meaningful if they are analytic or synthetic
Hume maintained one cannot observe moral facts from situations.
emotivism evaluation: how could there be evidence for something being wrong
may not be able to prove it but it is easy to list off reasons why paedophilia is wrong - abuse, psychological effects
emotivism evaluation - wojtyla
– K. Wojtyla - ethical demands and stances grow out of human encounter –
encountering good, bad etc uncovers sense of morality and the need to be moral
so ethical statements do not require logical or scientific justification, but instead experience of being human and living
kiki is brave - explained
even statements that sound verifiable such as kiki is brave are not actually able to be verified because they are emotive
what does humes fork aim to show
to show that moral judgements cannot be judgements of reason (neither analytic or synthetic).
Hume’s fork claims that there are two types of judgements of reason:
Synthetic judgements, only known a posteriori.
Analytic judgements, only known a priori.
define emotivism
right and wrong are subjective and simply expression of an emotional state
define prescriptivism
ethical language is subjective and expresses how we want people to behave
