Metaethics

Question 1

What is normative ethics?

Answer 1

• Normative ethical theories attempt to devise a system for determining which actions are good and which are bad.

Question 2

define moral realism

Answer 2

• the view that moral properties exist in reality
• moral statements are objective and realist.
• good and bad exist independently of us

Question 3

define moral anti-realism

Answer 3

• The view that moral properties (like goodness/badness) do not exist in reality.
• moral starements are subjective and cannot be proved true or false
• subjective and non-cognitive

Question 4

Define:
- cognitivism
- non-cognitivism

Answer 4

• Cognitivism: ethical language expresses beliefs about reality which can therefore be true or false, thorugh verification and falsification
• Non-cognitivism: ethical language expresses some non-cognition like an emotion, does not attempt to describe reality and therefore cannot be true or false.

Question 5

Name the moral realist meta-ethical theories

Answer 5

1. Ethical naturalism
2. Ethical non-naturalism/intuitionism

Question 7

Describe ethical naturalism

Answer 7

• the view that goodness is something real in the natural (physical) world – which can be empirically verified and falsified.
• able to reduce goodness from its objective moral properties to natural properties.
  • It reduces morality to other natural properties which can be observed so that ethical statements become propositions which can be verified or falsified.

Question 8

Describe utilitarian’s foundation in ethical naturalism

Answer 8

• a utilitarian equates goodness to ‘happiness. Therefore, through observation, it is possible to test whether an action leads to happiness or not, which makes it moral or immoral.
- Mill supports (EN) by arguing that the only evidence we have of something being desirable is that people actually desire it. This means that moral concepts like “good” can be grounded in empirical observations of human behavior. As happiness is universally desired, Mill concludes that happiness is, therefore, a natural and fundamental good.
- • This desirability is “all the proof the case admits of” that happiness is a good thing

Question 9

Describe Aristotelian naturalism

Answer 9

. Aristotle claims that goodness = eudaimonia (flourishing). Flourishing is a factual feature of natural organisms. - Philippa Foot defends this view, pointing to the example of plants.
There is a factual, natural difference between a plant that is flourishing and a plant that is not. The same is true for humans.

Question 10

Name the criticisms / weaknesses of ethical naturalism

Answer 10

• naturalistic fallacy: Moore
• Hume’s is/ought gap
• the open question argument

Question 11

Describe Hume’s is/ought gap

Answer 11

• attempts to show that moral judgments cannot be inferred from facts.
• Hume said philosophers talk about the way things are and then jump with no apparent justification to a claim about the way things ought to be.
• you cannot deduce a value from a fact
• Hume proposes that ethical language comes from ‘the heart’, not ‘the understanding’. It expresses an ‘active feeling or sentiment’. This makes the is-ought gap also an argument against cognitivism and for non-cognitivism.

Question 12

Describe how Hume’s argument can be applied to Bentham

Answer 12

• P1. It is human nature to find pleasure good (fact – ‘is-statement’).
• C1. Pleasure is good and we ought to maximise pleasure (value – ‘ought’ statement).
• Hume’s point is that this is not a valid deduction. This conclusion does not follow, is not justified, by that premise.
• This doesn’t mean that pleasure is good and that we ought to maximise pleasure.

Question 13

Evaluate Hume’s is/ought argument

Answer 13

• strong in undermining EN : If moral judgments cannot be validly inferred from observable features of the world, then ethical naturalism fails to provide a sound, objective basis for morality.
• R: Patricia Churchland proposes that Hume’s argument only targets deductive reasoning from is to ought. Could take Bentham and Mill’s arguments for utilitarian naturalism as inductive. Pleasure being our natural end doesn’t deductively entail/mean pleasure is good, but it is inductive evidence for pleasure being good. So, Hume’s critique doesn’t apply.
• John Searle

Question 14

Describe Moore’s naturalistic fallacy

Answer 14

• Moore believes it is fallacy to assume that something being natural means that it is good, and that EN are wrong in using a non-ethical term ( a natural property) to explain an ethical term.
• Moore concluded that we can’t define goodness. We can’t say what goodness is because it is only itself – it is sui generis.

Question 15

Evalauate Moore’s naturalistic fallacy

Answer 15

• Moore’s insistence on the uniqueness of moral properties leads to ethical non-naturalism, making moral knowledge difficult to justify.
• If “good” cannot be analyzed through empirical or natural terms, critics question how we can understand or justify moral claims.
• use any evaluations of ethical non-naturalism

Question 16

Give the open question criticism of EN

- moore

Answer 16

• Moore argued that if naturalism were true, the result would be illogical.
• Moore argues that if “goodness” were equivalent to a natural property like “pleasure,” then the statement “goodness = pleasure” would be a tautology and uninformative, but because it is actually informative and meaningful, moral properties cannot be reduced to natural properties, disproving ethical naturalism.

Question 17

Evaluate the open question argument proposed by Moore

Question 18

Describe intuitionism

Question 19

Evaluate intuitionism

Question 20

What is emotivism

Question 21

Evaluate emotivism