Meta- ethics Flashcards
What are the two main aspects of what goodness is?
Metaphysical (what is the nature of goodness?) and linguistic (what is the meaning of ethical language?)
Moral realism
The view that moral properties (like goodness/badness) exist in reality.
Moral anti-realism
The view that moral properties (like goodness/badness) do not exist in reality.
Cognitivsm
ethical language expresses beliefs about reality which can therefore be true or false.
Non-cognitivism
ethical language expresses some non-cognition like an emotion, does not attempt to describe reality and therefore cannot be true or false.
What stance is Ethical naturalism?
Cognitivist realist
Ethical naturalism is
the view that goodness is something real in the physical world – typically a natural property
Ethical language expresses beliefs related to the natural property of goodness.
What is a natural property?
a trait or feature of natural things.
Aristotelian naturalism
Aristotle claims that goodness = eudaimonia (flourishing). Flourishing is a factual feature of natural organisms.
Philippa Foot defends this view, pointing to the example of plants. There is a factual, natural difference between a plant that is flourishing and a plant that is not. The same is true for humans.
Utilitarian naturalism
Bentham claims that goodness = pleasure. Pleasure is a natural property of natural creatures If you don’t believe in a non-natural soul
Weakness of Naturalism - Hume’s is-ought gap
moral judgments cannot be inferred from facts.
philosophers talk about the way things are and then jump with no apparent justification to a claim about the way things ought to be. Put another way, you cannot deduce a value from a fact. You can’t get an ought from an is.
the is-ought gap also an argument against cognitivism and for non-cognitivism
Moral judgements can’t be deduced from facts, they are instead caused by non-cognitive personal feelings.
Hume’s is-ought gap applied to Utilitarianism
P1. It is human nature to find pleasure good (fact – ‘is-statement’).
C1. Pleasure is good and we ought to maximise pleasure (value – ‘ought’ statement)
this is not a valid deduction. This conclusion does not follow, is not justified, by that premise. The fact that it is human nature to find pleasure good, only means that it is human nature to find pleasure good. It doesn’t mean that pleasure is good and that we ought to maximise pleasure.
What stance is non-naturalism?
Cognitivist realist
Moor’s non-naturalist intuitionism
developed Hume’s criticisms of naturalism. However, once he thought he had shown naturalism to be false, he did not abandon objective morality like Hume did. Moore thought there was another way for goodness to be real than as a natural property.
Numbers are real in some way, but they are clearly not natural physical objects. So, there must be more to reality than just the natural. Goodness is real in a similar non-natural form. So, the failure of naturalism is not the end of moral realism.
Open question argument (non-naturalism)
if naturalism were true, the result would be illogical. Take any naturalist claim about what goodness is, such as that goodness = pleasure.
IF: goodness = pleasure
THEN: (goodness = pleasure) = (pleasure = pleasure).
BUT: goodness = pleasure is informative, telling us about the world.
YET: pleasure = pleasure is not informative (tautology).
An informative statement cannot be equal in meaning to a uninformative tautological statement. So, goodness cannot = pleasure, or any other natural property. Therefore, naturalism is false.
Moor’s naturalistic fallacy
developed Hume’s is-ought gap into the naturalistic fallacy: It is a fallacy to assume that something being natural means that it is good.
Moore intended the naturalistic fallacy to attack other forms of non-naturalism too. E.g. divine command theory claims that goodness = being commanded by God. But if God commands something, that only means that God commands something. It doesn’t mean that it is Good. What makes God’s commands good?
Whatever way goodness is proposed to be defined it seems impossible to actually have a reason for doing so. All definitions of goodness therefore rest on baseless assumption and so commit the naturalistic fallacy.
Goodness is like the color yellow. You can’t describe or define yellow, you just know it intuitively when you apprehend it. Similarly, we just know whether an action is good or bad through intuition, i.e., we know it without figuring it out through a process of reasoning.
Strengths of intuitionism
A strength of intuitionist cognitivism is that it fits with human psychology. Moore argues that when we observe or reflect on a moral action and its consequences, we intuitively know whether it was right or wrong.
cross-cultural moral agreement:
There are a set of core moral principles similar in all societies such as prohibitions on stealing and murder
While there is also moral disagreement, Moore argues this is due to people not articulating their moral views clearly
Weakness of Moor’s non-naturalism: Mackie’s argument from relativity
Mackie attacks moral realism with an abductive argument. He notes that there is cross-cultural moral disagreement. This does not prove that there are no objective moral properties, no more than people disagreeing about the shape of the earth proves there is no objective shape of the earth.
However, consider the reasons for moral disagreement verses scientific disagreement. The reason for scientific disagreements is access to evidence and ability to make intelligent hypotheses. Mackie argues the reason for moral disagreement is best explained by adherence to different forms of life
he can’t prove that there isn’t some mysterious non-natural moral property influences our moral views. However, his point is we have no reason to think there is, especially when we have the better explanation for our moral views of social conditioning
Hume’s non-cognitive moral psychology (theory of motivation) criticism of naturalism and non-naturalism
supporting non-cognitivism against cognitivism
It aims to show that moral judgements cannot be caused by reason.
Moral judgements involve motivation to action. Motivation must involve desire
joined with emotional approval or disapproval. We have positive or negative emotion towards an action and then judge it good or bad.
Reason does not have control over emotions, so it cannot create moral judgements.
We have particular emotional associations and feelings due to our socially conditioned preferences and biases. Reason then provides ad hoc rationalisations for our prejudices
desire is the foundational motivator of moral judgements, not reason. Ethical language thus expresses non-cognitive desires.
Theory of motivation standard form (Hume’s support for non-cognitivism)
P1. Moral judgements are motivating.
P2. Reason & belief are not motivating.
C1. Reason cannot create moral judgements.
C2. Moral judgements express non-cognitive states.
Weakness of non-cognitivism & strength of cognitivism: Aristotelian virtue ethics (Haidit)
Haidt creates an illustration to show how Hume went too far calling reason a ‘slave’. Emotions are like an elephant and reason is like its rider. The elephant will often just go wherever it likes, dragging the rider along with it. Nonetheless, over the long-term, the rider can control the general direction of the elephant. Similarly, a human’s reason can control their general behaviour despite their emotions, e.g. getting themselves to revise by planning rewards and rest breaks.
Haidt’s point resonates with the insights of Aristotelian virtue ethics. Hume was right that our emotions affect reason and our moral judgements. Aristotle also accepted that our emotions are not under the direct control of reason. Reason does have indirect control, however. Over the long-term we can cultivate habits which control our emotions.
When a person says “X is wrong”, they are partly expressing how they feel, and they feel that way partly due to social conditioning. However, Hume was wrong to leave his analysis there. People also have a degree of rational autonomy. We can rationally control and cultivate our emotional reactions and habits towards flourishing. Then, our moral judgements also expresses cognitions regarding flourishing or what a virtuous person would do.
Ayer’s emotivism
moral judgements are not judgements of reason. The origin of our moral judgements is our feelings. When we call something good or bad, we are expressing how we personally feel about it. We express non-cognitions, like emotional approval or disapproval.
Ayer rejects ‘goodness’ as unverifiable and thus meaningless.
we are therefore left with anti-realism. We cannot assert that there are either natural nor non-natural moral properties. So, anti-realism is true. Ethical language expresses emotion, so non-cognitivism is true.
The boo/hurrah theory. Saying ‘X is wrong’ is just saying ‘boo to X’, or just saying X with a really disgusted tone of voice. When we call things good or bad, right or wrong, we are just having an emotional outburst. Saying ‘X is good’ is just saying ‘hurrah to X’.
This fits with the reality of human psychology. When people engage in moral debates, it does seem that they are merely having an emotional conflict. That’s why moral debates are often described as ‘heated’.
What stance is emotivism?
Non-cognitivist anti-realist
How does Hume’s fork fit in with Ayer’s emotivism?
Hume’s fork aims 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.
Ayer’s verification principle expanded this to become the criteria of meaningful cognitive language. A statement is only meaningful if it is either analytic or empirically verifiable through experience.
ethical statements are not analytic. Analytic statements are true by definition and cannot be denied without contradiction
Ethical statements can be denied without contradiction
ethical statements are not synthetic nor empirically verifiable. Moral properties like ‘goodness’ and ‘badness’ do not seem to exist in experience. They are not observable. In a supposedly ‘moral’ action, we could list the physical facts about it which we can experience. The so-called ‘good/badness’ of the action cannot be found amongst them.
So, moral judgements are neither analytic nor synthetic (Hume), nor empirically verifiable (Ayer).
