Metaethics

Question 1

Cognitivism
‘Killing is wrong’

Answer 1

Cognitivists argue that sentences like these express beliefs and so are propositions which are ‘truth apt’, they have truth value (true or false).

Question 2

Non-cognitivism
‘Killing is wrong’

Answer 2

Non-cognitivists argue that moral sentences are not propositions, neither true or false, but instead the have a function- like prescriptive commands.

Question 3

About language

Answer 3

Cognitivism
Non-cognitivism

Question 4

About the world

Answer 4

Realism
Anti-realism

Question 5

Moral realism

Answer 5

Realists argue that there are ‘real’ moral properties or ‘real’ moral facts which exist independently of human minds.

Question 6

Moral-anti-realism

Answer 6

Anti-realists argue that no such properties exist and and that moral terms refer to something else, for example the expression of an emotion.

Question 7

Moral naturalism

Answer 7

Naturalism is a type of moral realism, arguing that moral properties/facts are natural properties of the world. Moral naturalism leads to a cognitivists view of moral language, since our ethical judgements are true or false insofar as they correctly or incorrectly refer to those natural properties of the world.

Question 8

Utilitarianism

Answer 8

A common form of moral naturalism. Bentham argued that all humans aim to secure pleasure and to avoid pain- these psychological, hence natural, properties.

Question 9

Virtue ethics

Answer 9

Based on natural facts but it is not a theory that reduces to moral terms to naturalistic properties.
- Aristotle says ‘the good’ is the thing humans most value, and and we can empirically determine this by looking at what people strive for, eudaimonia. This is a natural fact about human behaviour.

Question 10

Moral non-naturalism

Answer 10

It is the claim that there are moral properties/facts in the world but these AREN’T natural properties. A form realism, and it leads to a cognitivist view of moral language, as our ethical judgements refer to these non-natural properties.

Question 11

Intuitionism

Question 12

Moore’s open question argument

Question 13

The naturalistic fallacy

Question 14

Issues- moral realism

Answer 14

• Hume’s fork
• Ayer’s verification principle
• Hume- moral judgements are not beliefs
• Hume’s is-ought gap
• Mackie’s arguments from relativity and from queerness

Question 15

Moral anti-realism

Answer 15

Mackie’s error theory
Ayer’s emotivism
Hare’s prescriptivism

Question 16

Mackie’s error theory

Question 17

Ayer’s emotivism

Question 18

Hare’s prescriptivism

Question 19

Issues with moral anti-realism

Answer 19

• Can moral anti-realism account for how we use moral language?
• Problem of accounting for moral progress
• Does anti-realism because moral nihilism