Metaethics - Moral Realism (moral philo)

Question 1

Where do moral instincts come from? (3)

Answer 1

1) Reason -> Know what is morally right/wrong deductively using reason. (intuitionism; moore)

2) Emotions/Attitudes -> The view that the moralist comes from our feelings and we judge right or wrong based on our desires. For example emotivism; Ayers thought our emotions guided us in right and wrong.

3) Society -> The view that societies develop our moral codes, and that over time rules are formed which best suit the needs of that particular group of people at a certain time. (Mackie)

Question 2

Cognitivism vs non cognitivism

Answer 2

Cognitivists believe moral statements can be true or false (truth-apt). And aim to describe the world. (Propositional claims)

Non-cognitivists think moral statements do not make claims about reality and so are not beliefs that are true or false (not truth-apt) , so they do not aim to describe the world.

RATHER-> > non-cognitivists claim that you are doing something else with language. For example, expressing emotions (Ayers) and/or giving commands (Hare).
= statements can still be meaningful even though they do not refer to the world, and even though they cannot be shown to be true or false.
E.g
I have a disagreement with my friend about whether a particular movie was any good - I conclude it was, my friend thinks it was rubbish. A non-cognitivist would claim neither of us are wrong or right, rather we are simply expressing our like and dislikes (not making propositional claims).

Question 3

Moral realist belief vs moral anti-realist

Answer 3

realist -> Believe that there are mind-independent moral properties/facts. (ie ‘wrong’ refers to something that is out there in the world)
anti —> believe that there are no mind-independent moral properties/facts (ie ‘wrong’ does not refer to something out there in the world)

Question 4

Moral naturalism vs non naturalism

Answer 4

Naturalism
= Look at the way the world is, and draws conclusions about how humans ought to act
(A type of moral realism so is a cognitivist view)

1) Claims that moral properties (goodness) are reducible to natural properties (pleasure).

2) Moral properties can be investigated/ discovered empirically, (ie through senses/ scientific method). In other words, they are discovered, not decided upon.

Non-naturalism
= Moral properties (eg good) cannot be reduced to natural properties (such as pleasure).
- A type of moral realism(cognitivist)

1) They are known intuitively, we simply know goodness when we see it! (moores intuitionism)
2) However not empirical

Question 5

Why does moral naturalism lead to cognitivist views of moral statements?

Answer 5

If moral properties are empirical and so can be discovered, as part of nature, then to make a claim about morality is to say something that is either true or false about the way the world is.

Question 6

Moral naturalist theories vs moral non naturalist theories

Answer 6

Naturalist:
virtue ethics ->
Natural properties = vice/virtue reducible to moral properties of good/bad

utilitarianism ->
Natural properties = pleasure/pain reducible to moral properties of good/bad
Bentham claims that a good act brings about the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number. Under this view good/ bad is reducible to pleasure/ pain is a psychological natural property.

Non naturalists:
- Intuitionism
- Open Q arg
- Naturalistic Fallacy

Question 7

Descriptive vs Prescriptive (eurovision ex)

Answer 7

D -> ‘is’ (a command to act in a certain way)
P -> ‘ought’ (a recommendation to act in a certain way)
Moral naturalists believe we can derive ‘ought’ from ‘is’

EG D -> Eurovision is the most watched live music event on the planet
P -> You should watch Eurovision
= cannot jump from D -> P

SO… NEED A HYPOTHETICAL IMPERATIVE IN THE MIDDLE
“If you want to watch the most viewed live event “
= IF NO, CAN OPT-OUT

Question 8

Moore’s ‘open question’ argument (for moral non-naturalism)

Answer 8

-Terms are either definable (such as ‘bachelor’) or undefinable.
-To discover if a term is a genuine definition we must ‘double-check’ it, by asking further questions.
- After further questioning, if the term needs further investigation (cannot be answered with yes or no) it is an open question, so is not a genuine definition.
- Therefore, Moore claims moral questions like ‘Is X good’ will always lead to an open question as it is undefinable and leads to further investigation after double checking.
- Thus, good is not reducible to any natural properties, so moral naturalism is false

Question 9

Moore’s Naturalistic Fallacy (as a result of open q argument) (against moral naturalism)

Answer 9

a) Good as a simple concept
=Moore says ‘good’ is a simple concept, that we are able to recognise, and, like yellow, cannot be explained in simpler terms. If asked to describe ‘yellow’ or ‘good’ we would be unable to do so. This can be contrasted to a horse, which we could describe using more simple concepts. (simple vs complex ideas, good = simple so cannot be broken down further).

b) Defining good is a mistake
=People think when explaining properties of good (e.g pleasure is good) they are defining it. Pleasure is an example of good, but it is not the definition of good. -> E.g defining yellow as ‘light vibrations’ will not tell us what it is really like to perceive yellow

THEREFORE… Naturalistic Fallacy= The mistakes claiming that ‘good’ is reducible to another property such as ‘pleasure’ or ‘happiness’. Moore believes the open question argument demonstrates that good is not reducible to any other property.

Question 10

Moral intuitionism (moral non-naturalist theory)

Answer 10

The inability to prove or demonstrate that something is good. We just know goodness when we see it - we intuit it with a moral sense. (Moore says the goodness is ‘incapable of proof’ like colours).

EG -> = Watching the news and seeing a charity worker deliver supplies to a war-torn country, we can just spot when something is good, but cannot prove it with an argument.

Question 11

Key views of an intuitionist

Answer 11

1) They are a moral realist -> moral properties/facts are mind-
independent
2) They are cognitivists -> moral statements are truth-apt (language has a possibility to be true/false as it aims to describe the world )
3) They are a non-naturalist -> moral properties aren’t reducible to other properties
4) Believe in intuition -> good is recognised instinctively, via a moral sense, and attempts to use reason or proof to show what good is, is impossible

Question 12

Evaluation of a Moral Naturalist

Answer 12

= Believe ‘good’ is reducible to natural properties like pleasure
PROS:
- enables us to determine right and wrong
-clear guidance
- avoids nihilism
-accounts for moral disagreement
- scientific (can be investigated)

CONS:
- reductionist = reducing complex moral terms to simple natural ones
- open Q argument
- Naturalistic Fallacy

Question 13

Evaluation of a Moral Non-naturalist

Answer 13

PROS:
- takes into account actions that are immoral but cause pleasure, thus pleasure cannot be goodness
- avoids the naturalistic fallacy, justification for moral properties being irreducible
- open Q argument

CONS:
- too subjective -> how do we know who has the correct intuition? Intuitions can be wrong
- Moore does not explain why/where/how we have moral intuition (not empirical/coherent with science)
- Vague and unspecific
- What exactly is a moral intuition?
- =Mackie rel + queerness

Question 14

Hume’s Fork

Answer 14

= against moral realism

Two prongs:
-> relations of ideas : analytic statements (true by def), known a priori (w out exp) , necessarily (all possible worlds) true. (e.g triangles have 3 sides )
-> matters of fact : synthetic statements (not true by def), known a posteriori (exp), contingently true (not true in all possible worlds) . (e.g the sun will rise tomorrow/
paris is the capital of france)

• Moral Realist claim moral statements are true/false. Here, Humes folktales is the only two possible we could be true/false.
  1) Are they ROI -> Moral judgements aren’t tautologies as they are not certain (can be denied w out contradiction) .
  2) Are they MOF -> Moral judgements cannot ‘see’ that killing is wrong.

THEREFORE = Moral judgements are neither true/false so moral realism is false.

Question 15

Ayer’s verification principle + examples

Answer 15

• A sentence is meaningful iff…

1) It is a tautology (true by def/certain) OR
2) Empirical (ie via evidence/can be tested scientifically)

= All more judgements fail this principle…
‘Stealing is wrong” -> NOT true by definition
-> NOT empirical
Therefore, moral judgements are meaningless (neither true/nor false)

= against cognitivism/ moral realism

Question 16

Weak vs Strong verifications (Ayer’s vp)

Answer 16

strong verifications -> must have empirical evidence to conclusively prove something is true.
weak verification -> enough to have evidence that something is probably true, or that could be in principle verified, even if not possible to do so practically.

Question 17

Criticism of Ayer’s Verification Principle+ Response

Answer 17

Self-defeating
= States that meaningful statements are those that are verifiable empirically and analytically. However, the VP itself is not verifiable analytically or empirically, so by its own definition cannot be factual.

HOWEVER..
We could employ ‘weak’ verification here and say that as it seems to work well in identifying meaningful statements, it is ‘probably’ true?

Question 18

What is a belief (according to Hume)

Answer 18

=A commitment to a view as either true or false.

For example, if I said “I believe Paris is the capital of France”, I am saying I think it is true that there exists a country named France which has a capital city called Paris.

Question 19

Hume’s argument that moral judgements cannot be beliefs(pt 1)

Answer 19

= against moral realism
P1: Moral judgements such as ‘it is good to help others’ motivate us to act. This is known was Internalism.
P2: Beliefs and reasoning do not motivate us to act. This is known as the Humean Theory of motivation.
C: Moral judgments are not reasoned beliefs.

Leads to Humes arg for motivation (pt 2)

Question 20

Hume’s Argument from motivation + examples (pt 2)

Answer 20

= against moral realism
P1: We are never motivated by reasoning alone, there is always an emotional component to out motivation.
P2: We cannot use reason alone to convince anyone that things are beautiful, lovable, good, evil etc.
P3:Reasons on their own are inert (don’t cause anything to happen).
C: Therefore, it is our passions (emotional responses) that causes us to make these judgements)

example:
1) Knowing all the facts about the Grand Canyon won’t help us to feel the associated emotions that will enable us to judge its beautiful existence.

Question 21

Hume’s ‘is-ought gap’ (aka ‘Humes Law’) + issue for cognitivist

Answer 21

judgement of reason -> describes what IS the case
judgement of value ->prescribe what OUGHT to be the case
The two are completely different so there is a gap between the is and the ought!
= Hume claims there is no justification to say that because something IS the case that it OUGHT to be that way. (Cannot derive an is from an ought)

E.G
-People in the 19th Century USA owned slaves (‘is’) -> It was right for the people in the USA at that time to own slaves (‘ought’)

-Everyone I know has a Netflix account (‘is) -> I ought to sign up to Netflix (‘ought’)

Issue for cognitivist:
P1: a cognitivist claims that moral sustainments are true/false
P2: if cognitivist is correct, then it would be possible to infer a moral judgement from descriptive statements (that are both true/false).
P3: but it is not possible to infer moral judgments from descriptive statements
C1: moral judgements are not true or false
C2: cognitivism cannot be correct

Question 22

Are there any exceptions to Hume’s Law?

Answer 22

Searle’s example:
P: You promised to pay me back (‘is)
C: You must pay me back (‘ought’)

= Searle argued that in undertaking a promise you are now obliged to fulfil it, and so one can derive an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’.
HOWEVER …
Some have argued against Searle, saying that there is still a hidden ‘ought’ statement - namely that “one ought to keep promises”, so the is-ought gap is still there.

Question 23

Mackie’s Relativity argument

Answer 23

= against moral realism
= morality is subjective>objective
P1: It is a fact that there are moral disagreements/ variations between cultures
P2: Moral disagreements may occur because….
a) there are objective moral values but our perceptions of them are distorted
b) there are no objective moral values, they are simply reflections if different ways of living
C1: option B is the best explanation for disagreement on moral values in different cultures
C2: Therefore, there are no objective moral values, moral realism is wrong

Question 24

Moral Realist response against Mackie’s Relativity

Answer 24

• More agreement>disagreement between cultures (e.g ‘murder is wrong’ is fairly universal)
• Crop analogy : there is a correct method to look after them but some crops just grow better than others
• Similarly, there are objective moral truths about goodness, but some societies have different ways one can be good/bad.

Question 25

Mackie’s argument from Queerness

Answer 25

= against moral realism

If moral realism is correct then there would be two peculiar features…
1) Metaphysical Queerness
=The idea that there are mind-independent facts motivating us to act.
- Mackie claimed it is ABSURD to think there are bits ‘out there’ motivating us to act

2) Epistemological Queerness
= The idea that we have a mysterious faculty which enables us to detect moral properties (ie Moore’s Intuitionism ‘it is in us’).
- Mackie said this was an INADEQUATE explanation as ut is suggesting we have special moral sense with NO EVIDENCE.

Conclusion-> There are no objective moral values as it makes more sense , so Moral realism fails

Question 26

Evaluation of Mackie’s Queerness argument

Answer 26

PROS:
- intuitive
- simplistic

CONS:
- unlikely does not mean impossible/false (they are inductive arguments)
- Some property being strange does not mean it does not exist (ie quantum physics is strange but exists)

Question 27

Explain how moral realism can account for moral progress (strength of MR)

Answer 27

Moral progress ; we have gotten better at understanding ‘good’ and acting in accordance with it.

Moral realism: there are objective moral facts and so overtime we have gotten better at discovering these objective moral truths which enable objective moral comparisons from one time to another (eg ancestors allowing slavery to now making laws to prevent such atrocities)

Question 28

Explain how moral realism is intuitive and avoids nihilism (strengths of MR)

Answer 28

1) intuitive ; It feels like there are objective moral truths as it can explain the universality of agreements between most cultures eg ‘killing is wrong’

2) avoids nihilism; there are objective moral truths so we have a duty to behave in a certain way as morality is meaningful