meta-ethics Flashcards
Aristotle on the term ‘good’.
“Things are called good in as many ways as we say they exist. […]. It is clear there cannot be one universal use.”
Normative ethics.
Ethical theories which give guidance on how we should behave.
Fact/value, is/ought problem.
Identified by Hume; finding any logical justifications of ethical judgements from observations of the world - we cannot derive what we ought to do from a statements of a situation.
Naturalism.
Claim the term ‘good’ describes a natural quality.
Plato’s naturalism.
Plato claims ‘good’ exists in a metphysical form and reality greater than the one we are experiencing now.
Hedonism.
Belief pleasure is good and nothing else is the good.
Aristotle’s criticism of hedonism.
What people find pleasureable differs between people and over time. It is also difficult to quantify.
Relativist naturalism.
Cultural relativism; what is a societal norm is ethical even when it differs between communities.
Naturalistic Fallacy.
Moore’s term for the error of assuming that the good is a natural quality.
Open Question Argument.
Moore’s view that we can say something has a natural quality but we can still ask whether that itself is good.
Intuitionism.
Belief the good is real but not a natural fact, instead is grasped y an intuition of the mind.
Who developed intuitionism.
W.D. Ross and H.A. Prichard.
Franz Brentano’s contribution to intuitionism.
Our minds are not neutral observers, they perceive information with a natural bias.
Moore on intuitionism.
Good is not subjective, is is there to be perceived despite the fact our mind cannot then demonstrate its truth.
Strengths of intuitionism.
Avoids issue of definition.
Objections to intuitionism.
- Our mind can recognise natural qualities through experience, but how could it recognise non-physical qualities?
- It offers no way of discussing what is good and what is bad.
Bertrand Russell on apriori knoweldge.
“The most important example of non-logical apriori knowledge is knowledge as to ethical value.”
Ockham’s razor against intuitionism.
A competing theory which does not need a new category of things, non-natural, would be more likely to be correct.
Emotivism.
Theory that ethical sentences simply evince emotions even when they are meaningless.
A.J. Ayer on ethical statements.
Can be verified if it can be shown if the statement does align with the claimers beliefs.
Subjectivism.
Something is right because one has chosen it.
Satre on subjectivism.
The choosing of an option over other ones is what makes it right.
Winston Barne’s term for emotivism.
Killing-boo! theory.
Objections to emotivism.
- Claims that inability to prove a moral judgement then makes any rational justifications meaningless.
- Destroys possibility of rational ethical discourse.
