meta-ethics scholars

Question 1

david hume

Question 2

wittgenstein

Question 3

bradley for naturalism

Answer 3

there is such thing as objective moral truths, meaning ethics can be analysed, examined and judged

Question 4

philippa foot

Question 5

g.e. moore on naturalism

Answer 5

those who attempt to define intrinsic goodness commit the naturalistic fallacy- defining the term ‘goodness’ in terms of some natural property, such as pleasure.
open question argument- when trying to determine what quality of the highest good, you ask questions like ‘is pleasure good’, showing that pleasure and goodness are different. no proposed natural property can pass the test of the open question argument. what matters is if you can simply recognise the goodness of a particular action.
trying to define goodness potentially opens it up to psychological examination/scientific analysis, therefore only intuition is a valid way of judging moral decisions.
simple vs complex- goodness is simple, cannot be broken down any further. it is a foundational and unanalysable property

Question 6

ethical naturalists

Answer 6

bentham
mill
kant
aristotle
because they all argued that value statements can be defines in terms of factual statements

Question 7

w.d. ross on intuitionism

Answer 7

argued that moral propositions and obligations to others were self-evidently true

Question 8

h.a. prichard

Answer 8

euclidean geometry- just as the mind could directly apprehend euclidean geometrical axioms as universal truths, so could it intuit moral obligations.

Question 9

a.j. ayer and c.l. stevenson on emotivism

Answer 9

moral statements are expressions of feeling.
ayer- an ethical symbol (good, bad) has no real factual value in a statement- nothing objective about it, just a concept for our emotions, it is just the same as saying something in a disapproving tone of voice
stevenson- we are also (as well as being disapproving) trying to persuade others to have the same emotional response. language has two uses- descriptive and dynamic

Question 10

r.m. hare on emotivism

Answer 10

we are too complex to reduce morality to emotivism- it is too simplistic an analysis of language. morality involves the use of reason.

Question 11

peter vardy on emotivism

Answer 11

it is a moral ‘non-theory’ because it is not a ethical theory in the classical sense

Question 12

macintyre on emotivism

Answer 12

a misconceived theory of ethics, stops us from seeing the importance of human qualities, this doctrine has obscured modern life which is characterised by social emotivism in which all judgements are expressions of opinion

Question 13

james rachels on emotivism

Answer 13

it is wrong to remove reason from moral judgments. without reason moral statements become something arbitrary