Metaethics Flashcards
Thefact/value,is/oughtproblem
Any philosophical theory is an attempt to answer a question or problem. The problem for meta-ethics was raised by David Hume. The fact/value or is/ought problem is a logic problem. A syllogism:
1. All men are mortal (major premise)
2. Socrates is a man (minor premise)
3. Therefore, Socrates is mortal (conclusion)
It would be illegitimate to put into the conclusion anything not contained by the premises. This is the basis of the is/ought problem. Any factual proposition about the world can be reduced to a proposition involving the verb ‘to be’. Hume’s is-ought gap attempts to show that moral judgments cannot be inferred from facts.
Hume’s is-ought gap criticises naturalism and cognitivism. 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. Put another way, you cannot deduce a value from a fact. You can’t get an ought from an is.
Naturalism
The easiest answer to Hume’s problem would be to say that there is a factual basis to ‘good’. If it was a feature of the world, it would be a natural fact. This is the belief that good is inherent in nature.
Hedonism
This is the most common view based in this world. This view is held by Bentham among others, that pleasure, a natural phenomenon, is the ‘good’. Good and pleasant are synonyms here. This seems sensible: we tend to seek pleasure and avoid pain, so it fits. But we are fickle in our pleasures. We like something one day and not the next, we get bored or things that we like. It is not possible to say that something is good for everyone, everywhere, all the time.
Epicurus
He said that what truly mattered was a peaceful, happy and contented life. If pleasure is the good, then unpleasant is the evil. Aristotle wrote before Epicurus and reminded us that a hedonist is someone who holds pleasure as the good and nothing else. That ‘good’ and ‘pleasure’ are interchangeable. For Aristotle, what we seek is a life of fulfilling activity. These activities are good, and then they are pleasant, but we seek them for their own sake. activities are things that appeal to us, and the pleasure reinforces the activity. But it is hard to quantify. We don’t seek a certain amount of pleasure and find an activity that fits, and we do not do things because other people find it fun.
Naturalism and absolutism
Initially it seems that if we adopt naturalism, that we are pursuing absolutism: the good is fixed and we have a duty to pursue it. If pleasure is good, then it is good for everyone and we should maximise it. Bentham uses this as defence for his hedonic utilitarianism. But there are versions of naturalism that are relativist.
Relativist naturalism is like this: suppose I say that what my society takes to be right is the right thing to do. The good becomes following norms of society – a cannibalistic tribe will continue being cannibals. But in a non-cannibalistic society the norms are different. If the good is what society deems is good, then it is a natural fact of the world around us. Cultural relativism itself is a naturalist theory because it takes the views of one society as a fact. This shows that absolutism is not a result of naturalism but it is often implied.
The naturalistic fallacy
The most famous objection comes from G.E. Moore in ‘Principia Ethica‘. He says there is an error in assuming that good is identical to a natural quality like pleasure. He says the two cannot be interchangeable terms. He makes use of the open question argument. For example, the hedonistic view claims that pleasure is the good and nothing else is, but what if you ask the question ‘X is pleasant, but is it good?’, or replace ‘X’ with ‘bear-baiting’? Many people in history have found pleasure in bear-baiting but the claim of hedonistic naturalism is that good is pleasure and nothing else is, and the two are synonyms.
So we can re-write it, by this principle, to ‘bear-baiting is good, but is it good?’ Which makes no sense. The two cannot possibly identical. This is not a new insight, a ‘bad pleasure’ has been pointed out as a plausible idea by Aristotle and Plato, but a ‘bad good’ is not. The two cannot be synonymous.
Intuitionism
This is the belief that good is real but not natural, grasped only by intuition in the mind. It is rather like yellow: we know something is yellow when we see it is yellow. Yellow is not a thing in itself but a feature of many things. We know yellow when we see yellow. Intuitionism argues that morality is objective and cognitive. Intuitionists argue that we just know what goodness is. This is G.E. Moore’s theory, and he was influenced by Franz Brentano, who developed intentionality: our mind are never neutral observers of the world, and it is natural to perceive the world in terms of love and hate, or preference. this is natural to the mind.
H. A. Pritchard
H. A. Pritchardargued that working out what is right and wrong is ourduty, which we use intuition to work out. the concept of duty here sounds moredeontologicalthan Moore’s teleological perspective. So whose version is right? Pritchard states that when people disagree about morality, someone’s moral thinking simply hasn’t been fully developed. This is a weak assertion because there is no obvious way to develop ones moral thinking, and if someone is wrong, in Pritchard’s view, in moral conflict, isn’t there a conflict of duties?
W. D. Ross accepts that moral duties do conflict. He tries to tackle the issue of conflicting duties by putting forward a series of duties which are most important. He called these‘first sight’ duties, or ‘prima facie duties’, including; keeping promises, gratitude, fairness and benevolence
Emotivism
This is the theory, promoted mainly by logical positivists, that ethical statements simply reveal emotions, although they are meaningless in themselves. It has been criticised by Mel Thompson as the ‘boo-hurrah’ theory. Emotivism is anon-cognitivemeta-ethical theory which states quite simply that ethical language are only used inexpressions of feeling. When we say ‘murder is wrong’, we’re not saying that it is immoral, we’re saying that we don’t like the idea. He says when we use ethical language we are not judging morality or makingnormative truth claims– we are simply expressing emotion.
Charles Stevenson
Charles Stevensondeveloped Ayer’s argument further, arguing that ethical language isreciprocal; when we say to somebody that murder is wrong, for example, we are expecting them to agree.
Richard Brandtattacks Stevenson’s reciprocation view, stating that he assumes that we are persuasive all the time. Brandt is saying that when we express ethical language, we don’t expect people to agree – it seems weird to presume that our language has a ‘magnetic influence on others.
Prescriptivism
Prescriptivism, proposed byR. M. Hare, is also anon-cognitivetheory. Hare argued that when we use ethical language, we areprescribing– or recommending – a course of action. ‘Good’ is anaction statement. He argued that prescribed courses of action must beuniversal. So whenever we say something like ‘stealing is wrong’, we are stating that nobody should steal and universalising that statement.
