Meta ethics Flashcards
What is a cognitive statement?
Moral language can be shown to be true or false.
What is a non-cognitive statement?
Moral statements cannot be shown to be true or false.
What is a realist?
Argues that moral truths actually exist and are real features in the world.
What is an anti-realist?
Claim that there are no real truths in the world.
What is naturalism?
Moral truths can be observed and discovered empirically.
Realist and cognitive.
What is intuitionism?
Moral truths do exist but cannot be seen in the same way as other truths.
We just know about them through intuition.
Realist and cognitive.
What is emotivism?
Moral truths do not exist.
When we make a moral statement we are simply expressing our opinions and feelings.
Anti-realist and non-cognitive.
What two claims do ethical naturalists make?
Moral judgments can be true and false and make knowledge claims.
Moral facts are identifiable with natural properties in the world.
Which two ethical theories are ethically naturalist and why?
Natural law - the eternal law is seen in nature, concluded through the primary precepts.
Utilitarianism - ‘nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure…’
What does F.H Bradley argue?
Naturalist
We can observe what is good from one’s position in society, analyzing our functions and fulfilling our duties.
Our practical reasoning finds satisfaction in developing a mature self that lives up to these ideals.
‘…our function as an organ in the social organism’
What does Phillipa Foot argue?
Naturalist
There are virtues, characteristics or behaviors that aim at some good.
We can observe these virtues by looking at the way in which someone acts, for example, a person who values honesty will act in an honest way.
Moral evil is ‘a kind of natural defect’.
What is Phillipa Foot’s argument about the oak tree?
An oak tree is good so far as it has the traits to allow it is flourish, this also applies to humans.
Links the natural world to human morality.
Why does J.L Mackie feel that moral truths are not always absolute?
Our society has placed rules upon us.
Society has therefore accepted what is right and wrong - not necessarily because something makes it or that it is intrinsically right or wrong.
It is relative because these notions change overtime.
What is G.E Moore’s objection to naturalism?
Moral terms are simple concepts.
The identification of the moral with the natural fails the open question argument (equating of the property of goodness with some non-moral property).
For example, there is no clear answer as to whether keeping promises is good.
What is the naturalistic fallacy?
The mistake of attempting to reduce the moral property to the natural property.
Quote on F.H Bradley’s view on naturalism?
‘Good, like truth and beauty, is concrete. It is not an abstraction, or a rootless generality’.
Quote for G.E Moore’s rejection of naturalism?
‘Naturalistic ethics is entirely unconvincing and should be given up’.
Quote for Hume’s ‘Is/Ought’ theory?
‘You can’t get an ought from an is’.
Who says that ‘reason is the slave of the passions’?
Hume.
According to Moore, when can we define something?
When it leaves us with no questions.
Definitions are only possible when the notion is something complex.
What did Moore believe that we could not define?
Simple objects.
For example, good, as we intuitively know what it is - it cannot be defined as we would always ask questions.
What does Moore say in Principia Ethics to show we cannot define simple things?
‘everything is what it is and not another thing’
Why did Moore reject utilitarian’s?
Utilitarian’s often argued that good could be defined, measured, quantified and qualified.
What are H.A Pritchard’s beliefs on intuitionalism?
He separates ‘good’ and ‘duty’.
Reason collects the facts whereas intuition determines the course to follow.
Personal introspection accesses a standard sense of moral law and acts on it.
