Meta Ethics: Moral Anti realism Flashcards
Moral anti realism
Claims moral properties do not exist as mind independent phenomena
-Since moral judgements do not describe the world and are not true/false
There are not any mind independent moral properties that make moral judgements true/false
E.g., “racist is wrong” is not claiming racism has any property, it’s just a disapproval of racism
Mackie’s error theory
The error theory is a cognitivist theory claiming that ethical language is cognitively meaningful and that there are mind independent moral facts
Its also an anti realist theory that claims moral judgements are true/false and there are no such things as mind independent moral facts/properties
Emotivism (For Anti realism)
Moral judgements express feelings and emotions of disproval/approval rather than truth claims
eg. A crowd booing a referee for a decision made is neither true or false, but an expression of the crowds feelings, making it a non cognitive statement
The same is applied for moral judgements
“Murder is wrong” is simply an expression of ones feelings towards murder
Prescriptivism
Non cognitivst and anti realist stance
Hare argues that moral judgement express prescriptive instructions that aim to guide humans, rather than describe the world
Eg. Stating that somebody is a good person assumes a set of moral standards of how people should act, and is simply praising them against those standards
The commendation here is only intended to provide guidance on how to act, not an indication of describing the world/express approval or disapproval
Can Anti realism account for how we use moral language
Problem for non cognitivist theories (Prescript, emotivism)
Questions whether these theories can account for the uses of
Moral reasoning: Emotivism can account for these as moral judgements are just expressiosn of emotions, Pescriptivism can also as moral judgements in discussion can address questions about its conduct, aim for consistency, and identify inconsistencies
Persuading: Emotivism can as the emotional expression of approval/disapproval have the poential to persuade/dissuade people from doing a certain behaviour
Prescriptivism can’t as although moral judgments aim to change behaviours, they aim to do it through prescription and not persuation
Problem of accounting for moral progress
Over time, moral values have changed
Eg. It was once morally acceptable to keep slaves in platos time, now it isn’t
-Societies value diversity nowadays rather than before
How can we account for this moral progress?
P1-Moral anti realists recject MI moral properties and facts as there are no objective standard that we can use to assess an improvement in moral code
p2-This doesn’t make sense as there has been a progression
C-This makes moral anti realism false
Does Anti realism become moral nihilism?
(Problem for all anti realist theories)
Nihilism: The rejection of morality and its values, if there are no objective values, then morality has no foundation and should be abandoned
Aims to show how anti realism leads to moral nihilism
P1-Moral anti realism states that there are no objective mind independent moral facts or properties (Neither true/false)
P2-If there are no objective moral facts, there is nothing that is morally wrong
C-If there is nothing that is morally wrong then we can do anything, nobody should aim to be moral at all
Mackie’s error theory from Relativity
Argues against moral realism, for anti realism, to show that MI moral properties do not exist, which he does through different societies
P1-Some cultures are polygamous, others think its wrong
P2-Some think eating some animals are wrong, others don’t
P3-Some think slave ownership is wrong, some dont
P4-If moral realism is correct, there would be only one objective answer to these issues, but there isn’t
P6-If moral realism were true, we wouldn’t expect to see so many divergent moral beliefs
C-Therefore its false
Mackie’s error theory from Queerness
Attacks idea of non natural moral properties, as they are strange
Argues that if moral realism is true it must contain two peculiar features
Metaphysical Queerness: Moral realists believe that strange objective moral properties in the world exist and these strange properties are able to generate motivation for action. Mackie believes this is reason enough to suggest that MR is wrong as our needs are what motivates us
Epistemological queerness: If mind independent Moral properties exist, its a mystery to how these are aquired
Natural knowledge can be explained natural, but moral knowledge cannot be explained in the same way, and requires intuitionalism to explain it
Ayer: Verification Principle (Emotivist)
Empiricist approach to philosophy that aims to disprove moral realism by pointing out the flaws in moral judgements
Claims that a proposition/truth claim is only meaningful if it’s a tautology (true by definition) or verifiable through experience. If a statement cannot be verified via empirical means or it isn’t a tautology, its meaningless
(Goes on to attack moral judgements, stating that they fail the principle, and aren’t analytic truths, but non cognitive
Murder is wrong isn’t an analytic truth as there isn’t a contradiction in the statement
This statement isn’t empirically verifiable neither
Naturalism would argue that we can prove murder causes pain, but Ayer argues this isn’t the same as proving that murder is wrong
Therefore we can empirically verify murder causes pain but not that murder is wrong
Moral judgements only express feelings of approval/disproval, and do not express anything factual about the real world
Response to moral progress
Moral realists can account for improvement in other ways
Prescriptivist: Argue that a society can improve its consistency in universalising moral judgements
Emotivist: Moral progress just means we feel more approval for our own moral code rather than our ancestors code
