Meta Ethics Intro

Question 1

Meta ethics def

Answer 1

‘Beyond ethics’
Looking at lang. we use to express morality and meaning behind it
Issues is discussing whether ethical dilemmas are objective or subjective and cognitive or non cognitive

Question 2

Cognitive

Answer 2

Objective and shown in the world
Subject to cognition
Moral statements are factual

Naturalism and non- naturalism

Question 3

Non- cognitive

Answer 3

Morality is subjective
No moral objective truths as morality cannot be known

Emotivism and prescriptivism

Question 4

Naturalism

Answer 4

COGNITIVE
Morality is defined by facts about nature or human nature
Natural statements become factual (empirical)
E.g. happiness/pleasure is good
Aquinas was a naturalist

Question 5

Statements of ethical validity

Answer 5

A priori - analytic - not dependant on sense experience, true by definition
A posteriori - synthetic - based on empirical evidence of world otherwise uncertain
Ethical- not observable and cannot be validated- subjective

Humes fork: all statements either empirical (matters of fact) - contingent, a posteriori
or analytically true (relations of ideas), necessary, a priori

Ethical statements do not fit in either categories
Moral use of term ‘good’ is circular, subjective and doesn’t tell us what good is, all definite it in diff. Ways

Question 6

Is- ought problem (Hume)

Answer 6

We readily jump from observations of facts to judgement about values
there would never be change in world if we say something ‘is’ so we ‘ought’ to do something e.g. US constitution and right to bear arms

E.g. we used to eat meat (cavemen) so we ought to now (vegetarians and vegans would disagree)
A fallacy when philosophers observe nature and state we ought to do something

‘You cannot derive an ought from an is’