Meta Ethics - Ethical Naturalism Flashcards
What is ethical naturalism derived from
Cognitivism > moral realism> ethical naturalism
Cognitivism = ethical statements do convey meaning and are true or false statements
Moral realism = these true or false statements really do exist
Ethical naturalism = ethical facts are rooted in natural facts which are properties such as pleasure or pain.
Cognitivism
= ethical statements do convey meaning and are true or false statements
Moral realism
= these true or false statements really do exist
Ethical naturalism
= ethical facts are rooted in natural facts which are properties such as pleasure or pain.
The only problem is we dont know what ethical facts to prioritise
Give a theory thats an example of ethical naturalism
Utilitarianism:
Utilitarianism is SECULAR: moral values are seen in human experience
It is COGNITIVE
It is committed to MORAL REALISM
It is committed to ETHICAL NATURALISM
It takes an EMPIRICIST approach to moral epistemology,
Aligns with epistemology: epistemology is about knowledge. About knowing what is good or bad within natural facts.
What are the two different utilitarianisms
John Stuart Mill: Rule Utilitarianism
He extends Bentham’s utilitarianism
“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied” (JSM)
This is an empirical separation of pain and pleasure because we can see the different characteristics of happiness and unhappiness.
John Mackies argument from queerness
- Non naturalism is: realist (so it believes ethical facts DO EXIST), but, these are intangible and unidentifiable by natural facts.
Mackie disagrees with this and rejects it because then we dont know what is an ethical fact.
Mackie says this is ‘queer’ because we dont really know what we are talking about if things cannot be seen anywhere or identified within concepts we understand or scientifically comprehended like naturalism. Therefore naturalism is better cause it can provide measurable guidelines to follow.
Three strengths of ethical naturalism
- John Mackies argument from queerness
- Ethical naturalism makes ethics objective
- Provides fact based guidelines for ethics
Why is ethical naturalism making ethics objective a strength
If ethics are natural facts, they are discoverable and approachable.e though empirical methods. We can measure/produce/test them
Being objective means it might make ethics a quasi science that can have a meaningful progress and also means there is no difficult discussion.
Why is ethical naturalism providing fact based guidelines a strength
Things like DCT are unsubstantiated injunctions (a claim that has no evidence)
and are vague and not fully understood, especially intuitionism
Therefore practical fact based guidelines are more appreciated and are also reflected in human government operating on utilitarian principles
Three weaknesses of ethical naturalism
- The Is-Ought problem
- Moore: the open question argument
- It ignores justice and equality
How is Humes ‘Is Ought Problem’ a weakness of ethical naturalism
David Hume is differentiating between ‘is’ sentences and ‘ought to’ sentences:
___ is ___ : these sentences are observable in the world, they are factual statements. These statements are not emotive or subjective or create a reaction. They are simply factual statements.
Carpet is blue
The sky is raining
grass is green
___ ought to ___
Humans ought to not murder
Humans ought to eat fruit
Humans ought to be nice
Hume differentiates between these two because he said we cannot derive what we OUGHT to do from what IS, and observations of facts.
There is a gap in subjective value and objective fact. Stating something as a fact is not about what we should do:
If we say “murder IS wrong” it doesnt work. Because this is a value statement and not a fact, it is emotive not observable in the world.
David Hume basically disregards ethical naturalism because there is no way we can derive ethical facts from natural facts.
How is Moores ‘Open Question argument’ (The Naturalistic Fallacy) a weakness of ethical naturalism
- Firstly he makes a distinction between open and closed questions
Open - are open to debate and discuss meaningfully:
Eg:
“Is it true that McDonald’s is healthy”
“Is it true that abortion is wrong.”
Closed - debate is not possible and the discussion is meaningless.
Eg:
“Is it true that ‘all bachelors are unmarried’”
“Is it true that ‘all triangles have three sides’.”
There is no meaning to having discussions about these things because they are true within themselves, factually.
Premise one: if X is (analytically equivalent to) good, then the question “is it true that X is good” is meaningless.
Utilitarians believe ‘happiness is the only good’
So if you ask a utilitarian ‘is it true that happiness is good’, then to them, that is a closed question. When you make that claim, you are making an identity statement, that it is factual and known.
Moore argues that goodness cannot possibly be identified with any natural propoerties in the natural world (pleasure/pain)
He calls this meaningless because once you make an identity statement, ‘happiness IS good’, then it makes it a closed question, a meaningless point that has no discussion or debate surrounding it.
He says it shouldn’t be a closed question, and these qualities are debatable and therefore ethical naturalism is doing a ‘naturalistic fallacy’. Making an identification of a meaningful feature with something in the world is a fallacy.
Goodness cannot be equated with something in the world.
Moore: “my answer is that good is good and that is the end of the matter”
Moore argues that there are two types of ideas: simple and complex.
- Complex are ‘horse’ because it consists of many other parts which one must understand to comprehend a horse. You must understand legs and hair and a tail etc. you have to break this concept down to explain it.
- Simple ideas are like ‘yellow’ which cannot be further analysed or broken down. He proposes that goodness is simple like yellow. It is in itself its own thing. Goodness is unanalysable. Utilitarianism is failing by breaking it down into parts of goodness and hedonism etc.
How is ethical naturalism ignoring justice and equality a weakness
- Promotes happiness of majority of minority
- ## Total happiness is all that matters rather than the equal distribution of happiness to people
