Metaethics

Question 1

What is (moral) realism?

Answer 1

The belief that moral terms refer to something real and observable in the world e.g pleasure, happiness, moral law etc.

Question 2

What is (moral) anti-realism?

Answer 2

The belief that moral terms do not refer to anything real but are something else completely

Question 3

What is A.J Ayer’s verification principle?

Answer 3

A sentence is meaningful if (and only if):

• it is Tautology -true by definition
• or it is verifiable through sense experience

Argues that moral judgements fail verification principle - they are not analytic truths or verifiable
so moral judgements are non-cognitive/meaningless

Question 4

What is Mackie’s argument from queerness?

Answer 4

Metaphysical queerness:

• If the universe did contain objective values then they would be a very strange sort, unlike anything else ever encountered
• They would need to have some intrinsic prescriptively e.g ‘good’ would need have built into them ‘to-be-doneness’. This doesn’t seem possible - how could a physical object or action demand we act a certain way

Epistemological queerness:
-If the universe did contain objective moral values and we could become aware of them, and they are not natural, then in order to do this we would need to posses some mental faculty able to perceive this, of a very strange type utterly different from our way of knowing anything else and use spooky hypothesis to explain it.

Question 5

What is objectivity?

Answer 5

On objective claim has the following features:
-it can be something we know
-it can be true or false
-it is independent of what we want or choose
-it is about something mind-independent
-it is about something that is part of the fabric of the world
but these claims are not equivalent

Question 6

What is Moore’s ‘Open question’ argument?

Answer 6

Moore supports his claim that good is an unanalysable with this:

• ‘Is pleasure good?’ is an open question but ‘is pleasure pleasure?’ is a closed question
• Goodness and other moral properties cannot be the same property as any other property

Question 7

What is response to Moore’s open question argument?

Answer 7

‘Is water H2O?’ is a closes question but water and H2O refer to the same thing
Pleasure and good can be an open question but still refer to the same thing.

Question 8

What is Searle’s criticism of the is-ought gap?

Answer 8

Argued that it is possible to derive ought from is:
e.g P- You promised to pay back that £5
C- Therefore you outhitting to pay back that £5
there are some facts about humans that influence how we ought to act e.g Accepted contract of promise keeping

However a promise includes a moral obligation we ought to keep -we just need to include this in the premises
P- you promised to pay back that £5
(p- we should keep our promises)
C- Therefore you ought to pay back that £5

Question 9

What is Mackie’s error theory in a nutshell?

Answer 9

1. Moral judgements are cognitive -true or false
   2However there are no objective moral properties - Anti-realist.
2. Therefore all moral judgements are fake

Question 10

What is the issue of moral progress?

Answer 10

• Our morals have changed over time e.g slavery so if we take this as an example of moral progress then argument:
  1. If moral anti-realism was true there would be no moral progress
  2. There has been moral progress
  3. Therefore anti-realism is false

Question 11

Response to issue of moral progress

Answer 11

• Why should the anti-realist accept there has been moral progress when they wouldn’t accept the existence of objective morality in the first place
• Could also argue that morality has become more consistent or adapted to more knowledge rather than it has progressed.

Question 12

What is cognitivism?

Answer 12

Claims ethical language expresses beliefs about how the world is
since beliefs can be true or false ethical claims can be true or false
claims ethical language aims to describe the world

Beliefs have a mind-to-world direction of fit - we fit our beliefs to the world

Question 13

What is Mackie’s linguistic claim (Error theory)?

Answer 13

Claim 2:

• The mistake is not the result of misunderstanding how moral terms work - our moral judgements make a systematic mistake
• We believe in things that don’t exist (Moral properties of the world)
• We turn social arrangements into moral codes and claim they’re objective
• Moral statements are capable of being true or false but are always false

Question 14

What is Mackie’s ontological claim in his error theory?

Answer 14

Claim 1

• related to the nature of existence
• Mackie claim’s there are no objective moral values

Question 15

What is relation of ideas?

Answer 15

• Concerned with logic and mathematics
• we need sense experience to help form the concepts but our reasoning doesn’t rely on how the world actually is
  e. g we don’t have to analyse every triangle in the world to know they have 3 sides - can understand that from the word itself

Question 16

What is Hume’s fork?

Answer 16

There are two types of human enquiry (judgements of reason):
-relations of ideas
- matters of fact
Moral judgements are not relations of ideas- denying relations of ideas leads to contradiction
Not matters of fact since we don’t experience wrongness in the object/action but within ourselves

Question 17

What are matters of fact?

Answer 17

Can only be derived by experiencing how the world is . We get this knowledge by:
a)observing how the world is
b) generalising from experience
We can never be 100% sure - we just have degrees of confidence/probability
most natural laws are based off observation but could change tomorrow

Question 18

Explain Hume’s argument from motivation

Answer 18

P1 - Moral judgements can motivate actions
P2 - Reason cannot motivate action
C1 - Therefore moral judgements are not judgements of reason
Cognitivism claims moral judgements are true or false
The faculty for judging what is true or false is reason
so Hume is rejecting cognitivism

He says just knowing how the world is don’t motivate us to act - our passions do- the sources of moral judgement are passion. Which doesn’t reflect any truths about the world

Question 19

What is Hume’s is-Ought gap?

Answer 19

Ought is a motivating moral statement which drives action whereas is relates purely to facts and doesn’t motivate us
The ability of moral statements to motivate us is what makes them distinct from purely factual statements or statements about beliefs

Hume argues you cannot derive what ought to be purely from what is
this could be because ‘is’ is cognitive and ‘ought’ is non-cognitive

Question 20

What is Moore’s intuitionism

Answer 20

If-non-naturalism is right how do we find out about moral properties.
Moore claims we have intuitions - we cannot prove them but we know them to be true or false
they must be synthetic priori-true or false depending on what the word is like.

intuitions are self evident - provable with just ourselves
our ability to make these judgements needs to develop first
intuitionism doesn’t claim we have a faculty of intuition that detects goodness

Question 21

Utilitarianism as naturalism

Answer 21

Claims the only good is happiness - can be interpreted as a form of a reductive claim
-Happiness is what goodness is (They are the same property)
because happiness is natural so is goodness
since maximising happiness is right -right is also a natural property

Moore says Mill commits fallacy of equivocation-people desire all weird things
Mill takes what people desire (A natural property) as being desirable(good) - doesn’t say goodness is the same property as being desired

Question 22

What is reductive naturalism?

Answer 22

Natural properties can be identified through sense experience and science

Question 23

what is non-reductive naturalism?

Answer 23

Morality is an expression of the natural capacities of human beings
Not supernatural or non-natural
but moral properties can’t be reduced to anything else

Question 24

What is naturalism

Answer 24

The view that we can explain moral concepts such as good in naturalistic terms

Question 25

What is non-naturalism

Answer 25

The view that moral properties are distinct non-natural properties

Question 26

What is Moore’s naturalistic fallacy

Answer 26

Moral properties are not natural properties

• Moral properties may correlate with natural properties but they are not identical
• Having a size and having a shape are correlated (Everything that has a size has a shape) but they are two distinct properties.

Goodness is a simple unanalysable property - it cannot be defined in terms of anything else
like colours cannot be described to anyone who hasn’t seen it.
Goodness is real but not part of the natural world

Question 27

What is prescriptivism

Answer 27

the view that moral language is used to prescribe actions and urge others to act a certain way

Hare:
Moral language is descriptive and prescriptive
-The function of moral principles is to guide and conduct not to express feeling or to influence you
Two types of prescriptive meaning:
-Imperative (right/wrong) - an instruction
-Value judgements (good/bad) - commend as guidance

Moral judgements are universal

Question 28

Criticisms of prescriptivism

Answer 28

There is no external criteria to measure judgements against - only would you universalise this?
Moral language has many functions other than prescribing - persuasion, confession, complaint

Response: Prescription is central since primary function of morality is to guide conduct

reply ; But expressive language also links judgement ti action and motivation

Question 29

What is non-cognitivism

Answer 29

Claims ethical language expresses some other non-cognitive state
ethical claims cannot be true or false

Question 30

Objections to Moore’s Naturalistic fallacy

Answer 30

How can we prove the identity claim:
- which natural property if any is identical with goodness isn’t obvious
We can’t use empirical reason
-science can show whether e.g someone is happy but can’t show that it’s good
Can’t deduce it: Conceptual analysis of happiness doesn’t establish what is good.

Question 31

What is Moral Nihilism?

Answer 31

If moral anti-realism is true it can be argued that this leads to moral nihilism- the view that no actions are inherently wrong
There is nothing true about moral judgements such as ‘murder is wrong’ this then raises question of why anyone should bother to be moral at all

Question 32

Responses to moral nihilism

Answer 32

Because there is no inherent right/wrong people still have moral attitudes and feelings the realisation that there are no moral values doesn’t stop the feelings

And living as if there are no moral values is in itself an expression of attitude and feeling - non cognitivist anti realist claims it’s self defeating

Question 33

What is emotivism?

Answer 33

A view that claims that moral judgements do not refer to anything real in the world but are expressions of feelings of approval or disapproval

Ayer - Just expressions of feeling/emotion. Doesn’t describe anything

Stevenson - Moral judgements aren’t just expressions of emotion - they are also attempts to influence others

Question 34

Criticisms of emotivism

Answer 34

Much emotive language isn’t about morality
moral language doesn’t always function to influence others
moral language isn’t always emotive - what about when we give advice

response:
The purpose of ethical language is to influence others and this provides it’s core meaning- but this is compatible with some other non-influential and non-emotive uses

Question 35

Response to verification principle

Answer 35

1. Verification principle fails it’s own test
   ==response:Ayer would likely say that the verification principle was never intended to be an empirical hypothesis or typical cognitive statement. it is the definition of what an empirical cognitive statement is.
   —reply : Don’t have to accept this definition, could argue there are meaningful cognitive statements neither analytically true or verifiable
2. Could try to argue moral judgements are either analytically true or empirically verifiable - Mill’s proof of utilitarianism could be argued to be empirical verification of moral judgement that happiness is good

Question 36

Response to Hume’s motivation argument?

Answer 36

Could argue my cognitive belief that murder is wrong doesn’t -by itself- motivate me to act in any particular way
instead I am motivated by my desire to be a good person to not kill people

Motivation to act morally can be explained by cognitive moral judgement that something is bad + non-cognitive desire not to be a bad person

Question 37

What is Mackie’s argument from relativity

Answer 37

Moral codes differ between societies
Mackie takes this to argue that there are no objective truths

Realist could respond that the mere fact they disagree could mean that they are just mistaken about the true moral truths and haven’t discovered it yet

It is far more plausible to say different ways of life developed into different moral systems