Meta-Ethics Flashcards
Meta Ethics
Interested in the philosophical status of moral judgements generally by asking questions such as ‘Can moral statements be true or false?’
Where do moral principles come from?
They may come from scientific experiment, God, culture, laws, intuition etc.
Cognitivism
Moral language makes claims which are capable of being shown to be either true or false. 1) they purport to state facts, so are propositional and 2) express a speaker’s belief.
Non-Cognitivism
Moral language does not make claims that can be shown true or false. It is merely attitudes or opinions.
Moral Realism
There are moral truths which can be discovered through reason.
Moral Anti-Realism
Moral principles originate in and express emotions or attitudes.
Moral Naturalism
A form of COGNITIVISM and MORAL REALISM. Argues that moral properties eg good can be reduced to natural properties.
EG War causes SUFFERING, therefore war is WRONG. Suffering is the natural property and wrong is the moral property.
Bentham’s Psychological Hedonism as a form of Moral Naturalism
Mankind is under the governance of two soverign masters: pleasure and pain. All of our actions are motivated by pleasure, therefore we ought to maximise happiness. Pleasure is the natural property and happiness is the moral property.
PLEASURE(natural)= GOOD(moral) and PAIN(natural)=BAD(moral).
The Open Question Argument (moral non naturalism) (G E Moore) (against moral naturalism)
Open questions do not have fixed answers. But closed questions can only receive one answer because the answer is true by definition - i.e. analytically true.
If naturalism was true, ‘Is pleasure the good?’ would be a closed question because good is defined as pleasure.
But it’s an open question.
So the moral good is indefinable (i.e. not analytic).
Therefore utilitarianism fails and naturalism is false.
Moral terms are indefinable (naturalistic fallacy) (moral non naturalism) (G E Moore) (against moral naturalism)
‘Horse’ can be reduced and defined, whereas ‘yellow’ is indefinable. ‘Horse’ is a complex property, whereas ‘yellow’ is a simple property and cannot be reduced any further. Moral terms are SIMPLE PROPERTIES.
Hume’s Fork (against moral realism) (against moral naturalism)
Using the example of the moral statement ‘killing is wrong’. You can see a killing, but you cannot experience of the act (so it is not a matter of fact) and it is not a contradiction to deny that killing is wrong (so it is not a relation of ideas).
Ayer’s Verification Principle (against moral realism) (against moral naturalism)
‘A statement is meaningful if and only if it is analytic or can be verified empirically.’ Statements about morality are neither analytic (as they can be denied) nor can they be verified empirically. Therefore, moral statements are meaningless.
Moral judgements are not beliefs (against moral realism+cognitivism) (against moral naturalism)
Beliefs alone do not motivate us, we are also motivated by desires. For example, just believing you have crisps in the cupboard is not enough to make you get up and eat them, you also need the desire to eat them.
Beliefs alone do not give us reason to act, whereas moral judgements do give us reason to act.
THEREFORE, moral judgements are not beliefs (against cognitivism). They are just an expression of an emotion.
RESPONSE: We just need to accept that moral judgements are not intrinsically motivating. Moral Judgements only motivate people who have a desire to be moral. This desire to be moral seems to be widespread among humans (innate or learned). So, even though beliefs do not motivate us alone, they align with our moral judgements and moral judgements may be truths.
Hume’s Is-Ought Gap (against moral realism) (against moral naturalism)
Naturalism claims we can derive moral judgements from facts about the world (natural properties). But, Naturalism jumps from an ‘Is’ to an ‘Ought’. It is too far to jump from a fact to a moral judgement.
Hume says it is an IRRATIONAL INFLUENCE as facts are true or false, whereas moral judgements are just expressions of emotions.
RESPONSE: Moral values can be known via experience, eg need to be virtuous to see what is kind or cruel.
Emotivism (overview) (Hume)
ANTI REALIST AND NON COGNITIVIST
Hume’s 3 challenges to Moral Realism (Fork, beliefs aren’t motivating and Is-Ought Gap) are arguments for emotivism.
Moral Judgements are an expression of emotion, not beliefs.
EG ‘lying is wrong’ is like saying you don’t like tomatoes, ‘boo to tomatoes’. No more than an emotional reaction.
Moral statements about good and evil are just expressing approval or disapproval of a particular thing. They are not expressing a proposition that can be true or false.
Ayer’s Emotivism
‘It is as if I had said “You stole that money”, in a peculiar tone of horror’. But their form (e.g. stealing is wrong) makes them seem as if they are propositional, i.e. stating truths. Moral language expresses our feelings and arouses feelings in others to influence their action (if I make you feel disgust at torture too, then you are not likely to torture anyone).
Stevenson’s Emotivism
Central moral terms (good, bad, right, wrong) are only emotive (e.g. good=express approval)
Others, e.g. ‘lie’, ‘respect’, ‘courageous’ have both meanings. E.g. ‘Lie’ describes telling a falsehood with the intention to deceive and the emotive meaning of ‘lie’ is to express disapproval of telling such falsehoods.
Emotive meaning is connected to use: the purpose is not to state facts, but to influence other people’s behaviour. Saying ‘Lying is wrong’ means ‘I disapprove of lying, now do so as well’ and as result you also disapprove of lies.
Emotivism cannot account for moral progress (criticism of emotivism)
If there were no moral truths, then there would be no moral progress. Things wouldn’t improve as it would just be attitude’s changing. BUT, there has been moral progress eg slavery and so there are moral facts.
Can emotivism make sense of how we use moral language? (criticism of emotivism)
Surely speakers intend to make truth claims. When you say ‘killing is wrong’, you don’t think you are jut expressing a feeling, you genuinely believe that killing is wrong.
Can emotivism make sense of moral disagreement? (criticism of emotivism)
If all attempts at moral argument are simply disguised emotion then: 1) Emotivism seems to leave no place for reasoning in moral disputes and 2) What counts as a successful argument for the emotivist is simply one that is effective, not one that is rationally compelling.
Prescriptivism (overview) (R M Hare)
ANTI REALIST and NON COGNITIVIST.
Moral Language makes recommendations about how to act. EG giving to charity is good, so we ought to give to charity. Ought functions as a command or an imperative, so you are commanding others or yourself to act in certain ways. Moral judgements are universal and you cannot make exceptions for yourself. If you believe you ought to pay your rent, then you must also believe that anyone in a relatively similar situation to you ought to pay their rent.
How does Prescriptivism avoid the problems faced by Emotivism?
Because it gives a convincing account of how we use moral language and how to explain moral disagreement. Reasoning over moral disagreements is about working out what is consistent or not with prescriptions. Moral judgements are prescriptions which guide you to act.
Mackie’s Error Theory (overview)
ANTI REALIST and COGNITIVIST.
It is a form of cognitivism as it claims that moral language is used and aims to express beliefs about moral reality which can be true or false. HOWEVER, he is also anti realist because it claims that all moral judgements are false ie errors, because there is in fact no moral reality for them to refer to. Moral judgements do not actually exist in reality. Mackie’s error theory holds that moral judgments are cognitive and express beliefs about objective moral facts, but since such facts do not exist, all moral judgments are systematically false.
Mackie’s Argument from Relativity (against realism)
1) Moral judgements differ widely eg on homosexuality which is illegal in the UAE and there is many varied opinions on it in the UK,
2) This diversity is best explained as a result of different cultures,
3) So there is no one moral reality, rather a competing set of different moral views,
4) Therefore, moral values are not objective but rather socially constructed and mind-dependent.
Mackie’s Argument from Queerness (against realism)
1) Facts are not motivating, eg ‘Paris is the capital of France’ does not make us act,
2) Moral judgements are motivating eg ‘killing is wrong’ motivates us not to kill,
3) So, if there are moral facts, then moral judgements are queer (strange) because they are the only facts that motivate us,
4) Surely, it is just simpler to say that moral judgements are not facts and do not exist in reality,
5) Thus, moral realism is false.
Error theory cannot account for how we use moral language (against ET)
Error theorists claim that all moral judgments are false but ordinary people think that some of their moral judgments are true. So error theory makes out that we are making a huge mistake about our moral language.
Error theory cannot account for moral progress (against ET)
How can ET say we have made moral progress if there is no moral reality to judge moral values against.
Anti- Realism descends into nihilism (against Anti Realism; ET, P, E)
Moral anti realism claims there are moral values, but these moral values are not part of reality. Nihilism claims there are no values at all. Surely if you claim there are moral values, as anti realists do, then these moral values need to exist in reality.
