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A level religious studies > Meta-ethics > Flashcards

Flashcards in Meta-ethics Deck (24)
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1
Q

What is meta ethics?

A

Meta-ethics doesn’t attempt to tell us what makes something is right or wrong or how to act; that is the focus of normative ethics. Meta-ethics analyses the reasoning behind ethical language and moral terms such as good and right.

2
Q

What are the two main views?

A

Cognitivism: moral truths exist independently of our mind. Moral judgements can be true and false; terms such as right and wrong correspond to facts in the world.

Non-cognitivism: there is no such thing as moral truths in the world; what we call moral facts are subjective emotional responses.

3
Q

What is the fact-value distinction?

A

One of the main concerns of meta-ethics is to understand the relationship between facts and values.

  • A fact is a statement that can be true or false.
  • A value is a belief, judgement or attitude.
4
Q

What is the issue?

A

The issue is whether a value judgement can be considered a fact.

  • Most cognivists are moral realists.
  • Non-cognitivists are anti-realists.
5
Q

What is the is-ought gap?

A

Hume argued that deriving what ought to be done from what is the case of an example of false deduction. Non-cognitivists argue that we cannot reason from statements to statements of value.

6
Q

What do cognitivists argue?

A

Cognitivists attempt to bridge the gap between is and ought and argue that morality is attached to certain facts and ideas that all people share.

7
Q

What is naturalism?

A

Naturalism is the view that there are moral properties in the world. It is a cognitivist and realist argument.

8
Q

What is Good for naturalists?

A

The Good is a natural property of the

world. A natural property can be a physical or a psychological feature.
- We can infer from those properties what the Good actually is.

9
Q

What are the 4 rules of naturalism?

A

P1: The end of our desires is happiness.
P2: Things are desirable in so far as people desire them in the same way as sounds are audible in so far as people hear them.
P3: Personal happiness is a good to each person.
P4: As society is a sum of individual interests, general happiness is a good for this sum of interests.
C: Therefore, the Good is happiness.

10
Q

What does P3 bridge?

A

P3 bridges the fact-value distinction.

11
Q

What are the strengths of ethical naturalism?

A
  • Ethical naturalism accounts for our moral feelings when we feel outraged by a clear injustice.
  • Naturalism accounts for moral disagreements.
  • An effective cognitivist theory.
  • In line with how most people see morality.
12
Q

What are the problems with ethical naturalism?

A
  • Naturalism is guilty of reductionism in so far as it limits or reduces moral judgements to natural facts about the world.
  • The main problem, however, is that it doesn’t distinguish between moral facts and values and implies that a ought can be derived from an is i.e. that the fact that something naturally is the case means we ought to do it.
13
Q

What is Moore’s criticism of naturalism?

A

G.E. Moore takes a cognitivist position but argues that the Good cannot be reduced to a natural property of the world.

14
Q

What is the open question argument?

A

P1: According to naturalism, good is pleasure.
P2: If P1 is true, then the question is the good pleasure? is equivalent to saying is the good good? which is a closed question.
P3: I have to reflect on this and my intuition is that it is not a simple yes or no answer.
C: Therefore, the good is pleasure.

15
Q

What is the naturalistic fallacy?

A

The naturalistic fallacy is committed when a non-natural object is given natural properties.

16
Q

Why is Moore’s theory cognitivist?

A

Moore’s theory is cognitivist because for him moral properties exist and are real even though they are not natural properties.

17
Q

What are the problems with Moore’s argument?

A

More accuses Mill of producing a circular argument but commits the same fallacy in his own argument.
Moore argues that we just know what is good.

18
Q

What did J.L Mackie say?

A

Mackie makes the following points:

  • There is a difference between kind and cruel actions.
  • It is possible to describe such acts and outline their differences.
  • He argues that moral properties cannot be absolute because they are culturally relative.
19
Q

What does Ayer argue?

A

Ayer argues that ethical assertions may be symbolic in that they express moral judgements, but In no way are facts.

- Supported emotivism on the logical Positivist ground (verification principle)
- Moral statements cant satisfy strong or weak verification
- Strong verification - ie There are 20 rooms in the room
- Weak verification - Henry VIII had 6 wives. 
- Moral statements cant satisfy either and are therefore meaningless
- Saying something like 'stealing money is wrong' adds no factual value. 
- Logical positivists have an analytic approach to language.  - Argues the boo-hurrah theory.
20
Q

What does David Hume say?

A

For Hume, moral judgements are responses to the external world. Values cannot be logically derived from fact.

21
Q

What are the problems with Ayer’s emotivism?

A
  • We can never really morally disagree in the way that we can disagree about facts.
22
Q

What are the problems with emotivism?

A
  • Relies heavily on the fact-value distinction. If the distinction is wrong, the theory collapses.
  • When we make a moral judgement, we don’t necessarily try to influence others.
  • Emotivism doesn’t distinguish clearly between non-moral and moral judgements.
23
Q

What does Hare say?

A
  • Moral judgements are action-guiding: they prescribe what to do.
  • Moral terms are descriptive but evaluative
  • Moral judgements are meaningful when they can apply to everyone in a similar situation.
  • Prescriptivism places more emphasis on reason than does emotivism.
24
Q

What are the problems with prescriptivism?

A
  • Prescriptivism doesn’t account for a clash of moral principles.