meta ethics Flashcards
(19 cards)
what is meta ethics
debate around the language of ethics. concerned with weather moral utterances refer to fixed truths or are relative to something like emotions
what is naturalism
are absolutists
hold that moral goodness and evil are absolute facts of the natural world
morals are not your opinion but are objectively true
what is FH Bradleys view
naturalist
our duty is universal and concrete
it is objective
‘what he has to do depends on what his place is, what his function is and that all comes from his station in the organism’ - ethical studies 1876
‘in my station my particular duties are prescribed to me and I have them weather I wish to or not ‘
Bradley claimed our moral duty was founded on the need to develop our ideal “good self” in opposition to our “bad self”.
Bradley claims that morals are observable as part of the concrete world
links to aquinas’ natural law and his argument that we can look to the world and perceive morals from the purposes of life that we see in the wolfd
Aquinas stated that reason reveals particular natural laws that are good for humans such as self-preservation, marriage and family, and the desire to know God.
empiricist challenges to naturalism
hume - argued that moral claims are not derived from reason but rather from sentiment
in ‘a treatise of human nature’ 1738 he rejected the idea that moral good or evil can be distinguished using reason
challenges aquinas in this respect - argues that when we see something we think is wrong the ‘wrongness’ comes from our sentiment, not from our observations
Humes law - you cannot go from an ‘is’ to an ‘ought’ he observed that writers on morality often move from ‘is’ statements to ‘ought/ought not’ eg a person tells a lie and philosophers say ‘you ought not lie’. Hume argues that this creates an entirely unjustified new relationship between the words
Charles R Pigden suggests ‘naturalists in short, resort to all sorts of supposed facts - sociological, psychological, scientific even metaphysical or supernatural’
however Hume can be challenged. the British naturalist philosopher Phillips foot suggested that moral evil is ‘a kind of natural defect’
she argued that when we call a person a ‘just man’ or an ‘honest woman’ we are referring to something , to a person who recognises certain considerations (like keeping promises). a moral person has qualities which for them are the reasons they carry out certain actions and this can be observed. we know if someone cannot be trusted to keep promises. therefore there are some moral absolutes after all
she argues that there are charateristics that aim at some good an idea she takes from Aristotle. for her she thinks virtues can be observed by watching how a person acts in consideration of those virtue.
She writes: “What is morally wrong is what we naturally would avoid”
JL Mackie on naturalism
found difficulty with claims about absolute or natural approaches to morality
in his book ‘ethics: inventing right and wrong’
Mackie argued against the existence of objective moral facts or properties, taking a stance known as “error theory”
“error theory” in which he claimed that when people make moral judgments, they are making a mistake because there are no objective moral facts for their judgments to correspond to.
In Mackie’s view, moral statements are “cognitively meaningless” because they lack a basis in the natural world.
strengths of naturalism
If verified, they are objective truths that apply to everyone.
morality is universal. This gives morality importance rather than just being a matter of personal opinion.
Naturalism gives morality a set of absolutes, e.g. murder is wrong, rape is wrong etc. This matches a moral agent’s common sense view of ethics.
empirical approach is favoured by modern society. By investigating the impact of an action and the impact it has on others, we have conclusive proof that something is good or bad
–> claims to be tested in a scientific way. This gives morality a strong foundation and therefore again gives it importance
Hedonic naturalists can define something good as something pleasurable. This is convincing as from our experience we know that we pursue things that are pleasurable. It is in keeping with Mill’s idea of universalisability - that we ought to pursue things that are pleasurable for ourselves and for our wider society
weaknesses of naturalism
GE Moore( published principa ethica 1903) naturalistic fallacy - thought that attempts to define good in terms of something else is the naturalistic fallacy
this is because good is a simple notion just as yellow is a simple notion - you know it when you see it. - therefore naturalisim is this as it is the idea that something is good or right just because it is natural or found in nature. However, just because something is natural doesn’t necessarily mean it’s morally or ethically correct.
- he wrote ‘everything is what it is and not another thing’
is ought problem/humes law
open question argument - The NF also is supported by the open-question argument. This states that if we define something as good, we should have a closed question. For example, ‘is a mug used to drink liquids?’ we answer with yes. However, we cannot respond to the question ‘is pleasure good?’ with a closed answer because it is multifaceted
what is intuitionism
– the belief that the good is real but not a natural fact instead it is grasped by intuition of the mind. An ethical theory supposed by Moore, Ross and Prichard
cognitivist theory
what Is H.A Pritchards view
british moral philosopher in 1920s and 30s
in his article ‘does moral philosophy rest on mistake?’ he argues that it is a hopeless quest to try and find arguments to determine what our moral obligations are.
argued that moral obligation presents itself directly to our intuition
Reason collects together the facts concerned and intuition determines which course to follow
Prichard thought that we know by intuition which of our moral obligations are more important than others
Prichards main weakness is that he doesn’t adequately explain how we discriminate between the conclusions when our intuitions differ
Pritchard argues that people’s morals differ because not everyone can clearly intuit moral truths on the same level.
wd ross views
was Pritchards student and built on both Moore and Pritchard in the books ‘the right and the good 1930’ and ‘foundations of ethics 1939’
ross like Moore thought goodness cannot be defined in natural terms
principles can sometimes conflict eg to keep a promise I may have to tell a lie therefore ross argues that principles should not be taken as absolute
he developed intuition with prima facie duties (at first appearance)- in a moral dilemma, the various duties or obligations that we have are apparent
he gave 7 of these
however thought ‘there is nothing arbitrary about these prima facie duties. each rests on definite circumstances’
our intuition identifies our prima facie duties
provides solution to the Kantian problem of telling a murderer where your best friend is
strengths of intuitionism
Although Prichard’s theory fails to establish moral guidelines to help us with moral choices; Ross’s concept of ‘Prima Facie’ succeeds in clearing this up.
Many different societies share moral values such as “murder is wrong”. - shows our intuition may have come to this
Pritchard argues that people’s morals differ because not everyone can clearly intuit moral truths on the same level. - relativist
weaknesses of intuitionism
A recent academic study in the UK demonstrated that the legal belief in a jury having a broadly similar understanding of the moral concept of honesty might be far from true; among those questioned, less than half thought it dishonest for a carer to persuade an old person to change their will in the carer’s favour. Therefore, we may not have an innate moral sense.
Intuitionists fail to explain why intuition is universally applicable to ethics. It is argued that there is no intrinsic reason why human intuition should be taken as the basis of moral judgements. People have intuitions that it will rain tomorrow, but the forecast is not based on these intuitions.
wo people faced with the same moral dilemma might have different intuitions about what to do, so how is it decided which intuition is correct?
Richard Norman criticises Moore because Moore defines an intuition as a belief which someone knows to be true, but for which they have no reasons. We may agree with him that there are some truths for which no further reasons can be given, but one must be able to say at least something about how you know them.
what is emotivism
non cognitivist theory
many emotivists were apart of the vienna circle which is a group of philosophers known as logical positives who rejected claims that moral truth can be verified as objectively true
moral utterances do not have a truth value but express the feelings of the speaker , so that murder is wrong is equivalent to down with murder
aj ayer on emotivism
his book language, truth and logic
he thought there were 3 kinds of judgements - logical (analytical) judgements, factual (synthetic) judgments and moral judgements.
believes morals are relative only to our feelings or emotions
ayers thinking is therefore relativist in that there are no fixed moral truths
to make moral judgement is to express an emotion
‘for in saying that a certain type of action is right or wrong, I am not making any factual statement’
also called boo hurrah theory - moral statements are expressions of feelings
Charles Stevenson on emotivism
american philosopher who developed ayers thinking in his book ‘ethics and language 1944’
ayer classified moral statements as emotional expressions but Stevenson linked them too attitudes
- expresses attitude relative to a fundamental belief that people persuade on to others
this is often known as prescriptivism as you want to prescribe these beliefs to people n
strengths of emotivism
Overcomes the challenges of verifiability that intuitionism faces - is based on personal beliefs, and so doesn’t need an abstract concept like intuition to be proved to be meaningful
The importance of each individual’s moral feelings is stressed. The subjective nature of emotivism ensures that all opinions are equally valid — it is egalitarian.
weaknesses of emotivism
Emotivism challenges the idea that there is any such thing as good and bad beyond our personal preferances and tastes. This seems counterintuitive to many when faced with terrible crimes eg genocide
If emotivism is accepted, then there is no compelling reason to act morally
ardy says that if we accept it as offering a good analysis of moral language, all debate becomes “so much hot air” and nothing else; talking about moral issues might help release our feelings or persuade others into our points of view, but we would be saying things which had no significant meaning. Vardy says that this is “just plainly improbable”, because “all morality cannot be reduced simply to how we feel about something”.
As Warnock points out, to claim “murder is wrong” is not simply about convincing the hearer and making them approve; it is to make a factual statement which can be discussed and debated.
Alasdair maclntyre - In his book ‘a short history of ethics’ he criticises its rejection of moral objectivity meaning people can be used as a means to an end
does the definition of the word good define the study of ethics
