Meta-Ethics Flashcards
What is meta-ethics?
The area of ethics that seeks to explore and discover the meaning of words used in ethical systems
What are cognitive statements?
Factual assertations that can be proved true or false
What are the two categories of meta-ethical theories?
Cognitive and non-cognitive
What are the two categories of cognitive theories?
Naturalism and non-naturalism
What theory is ethical naturalist?
Utilitarianism
Which theories are non-naturalist?
Intuitionism and Divine Command theory
Which theories are non-cognitive?
Emotivism and prescriptivism
Who were the Vienna Circle?
A group of scholars from the University of Vienna in the 1920s-30s who discussed language from a scientific perspective
What is the verification principle?
The idea that a statement is meaningful only if it is either empirically verifiable or a truth of logic
Who are the key scholars of Divine Command Theory?
John Calvin and Karl Barth
What does DCT argue about the meaning of ‘good’ and ‘bad’?
That whatever God commands is good and whatever God forbids is bad
What is an example of God’s commands?
God detailing some of the commandments in Exodus 20
What is the name of the dilemma that contradicts DCT
The Euthyphron Dilemma - “Is what is good, good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is good?”
Who is the key scholar of utilitarianism?
Jeremy Bentham
What is Naturalism?
The belief that moral truths are facts and can be demonstrated using the methods of natural science. (All ethical statements can be translated into non-ethical ones)
What is non-naturalism
The belief that morality is cognitive/factual but cannot be defined
What does utilitarianism argue about the meanings of ‘good’ and ‘bad’
It argues that ‘pleasure = good’ and ‘pain = bad’
What issue occurs in act utilitarianism?
The naturalistic fallacy - if ‘pleasure = good’ then hurting someone could be ‘good’
What issue occurs in rule utilitarianism?
Higher and Lower pleasures are subjective, returns to intuitionism
What quote best summaries the utilitarianist view of ethical language?
“It is for them alone [pain and pleasure] to point out what we ought to do as well as determine what we shall do. On the one hand, the statement of right and wrong, on the other, the chain of cause and effect, are fastened to their throne”
Who are the key scholars of intuitionism?
G.E.Moore and Ross
What is the name of G.E.Moore’s text?
Principia Ethica (1903)
What did G.E.Moore famously argue about the meaning of ‘good’?
That ‘good’ can be defined no more successfully than ‘yellow’
What did Ross introduce to Moore’s thesis?
Prima facie duties
