Meta ethics Flashcards
(17 cards)
What is metaethics?
Metaethics is the branch of ethics that analyses the nature, status, and meaning of moral language, beliefs, and properties.
What is moral realism?
The belief that moral statements describe objective facts about the world and can be true or false.
What is moral anti-realism?
The belief that moral statements do not describe objective moral facts; instead, they reflect subjective or emotional responses.
What is cognitivism in metaethics?
The view that moral statements express beliefs and can be true or false (truth-apt).
What is non-cognitivism in metaethics?
The view that moral statements do not express beliefs and are not truth-apt.
What is naturalism in ethics?
The view that moral properties are natural properties and can be observed or studied like other features of the world.
What is non-naturalism in ethics?
The belief that moral properties exist but are not natural—they cannot be reduced to or explained by natural properties.
What is the naturalistic fallacy?
Coined by G.E. Moore, it is the mistake of defining ‘good’ in terms of natural properties like pleasure or desire-satisfaction.
What is the open question argument?
G.E. Moore’s argument that any attempt to define ‘good’ in natural terms always leaves it an open question whether that definition is truly good.
What is A.J. Ayer’s emotivism?
The view that moral statements express emotional responses and are not truth-apt (e.g., “Murder is wrong” = “Boo to murder!”)
What is prescriptivism (R.M. Hare)?
The non-cognitivist view that moral statements function as universal prescriptions or imperatives (e.g., “Do not lie” means “Do not lie—and you should not”).
What is Mackie’s argument from relativity?
The argument that widespread moral disagreement suggests there are no objective moral truths.
What is Mackie’s argument from queerness?
The claim that objective moral properties would be metaphysically and epistemologically strange (“queer”), so it’s unlikely they exist.
What is moral subjectivism?
The idea that moral truths are dependent on individual attitudes or beliefs.
What is moral relativism?
The belief that moral truths depend on cultural or societal norms and vary across contexts.
How does Hume influence metaethics?
He argued that moral judgments are not derived from reason but from sentiment, famously stating, “You can’t derive an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’.”
What is the is-ought problem?
Hume’s claim that you cannot logically derive prescriptive statements (what ought to be) from descriptive ones (what is).
