Metaethics Flashcards
(12 cards)
explain the objection to moral anti-realism regarding its inability to account for moral progress (5m)
- Moral progress refers to the improvement of moral beliefs and practices over time
- fro teh idea of porgress to make sense there must be a standard gants which belifs and practices can be measured at diffrent times to see which is better.
-Anti-realism denies any single objective standard as there are no mind-independant objvetive truths–> lefts with only prescriptivism - the idea of moral porgress then does not seem to make sense in an anti-realism context there is no progress only change.
-this is highly counter intuitive ( eg we would like to think we have porgressed from slavery)
Explain the objection to moral anti-realism regarding moral nihilism
-Moral nihilims is the rejection of all moral values and principles.
- If as a moral anti-realist cliams, there are no mind-indepenadnt moral properties and so no objective moral truths, it might be siad that teher are effctively no real moral values only persoanl and social attitudes, so left with nihilism
- if non-cognitivists are right moral jugement merely experss feelings or an instructuion
-this we ahve no obligation to be moral, because we have no obligation to have certain emotions or adopt particularsubjective standards. If moral properties are not objective, if moral judgemnst are not objectively true then why accept morality at all. This is very counter intuitive clashing with our strong sense of high importance of morality
Explain how humes frok presents an objection to moral realist views
hume argues that there are only two types of judgemenst of reason: matters of fact and relations of ideas. MOral judegmnst are not relatiosn of ideas as tehy cant be established purely aprioriand tehre is no logical contradiction in denying them. Moral judgements are not matters of fact becau sethey cant be established empirically. Therefore moral judegmnts are not judegmnts of reason. This menas that moral cognitivims and thus moral realism, is false
How does Humes is ought gap present an objection to anti-realism
-Hume argues that whne people move from talking about facts to making moral cliams they make a fundamental mistake because these claims are fundamnetally diffrent kinds
-there is a logical gap between what is and what oght to be, so we acnnot infer one from teh oethr without making a logical jump
- Humes arguemnt can be taken as an arguemnt against cognitivism
- If cognitivism were true and moral cliams were truth cliams,we coudl infer them from truth cliams but we cant.
This is a reason to think that moral judegmnts dont make truth cliams and cognitivism is false
explain the difference between reductive and non-reductive moral naturalism (3m)
moral naturalism claims that moral properties are natural properties. Two forms of naturalism reductive ( utilitarian –> properties like goodness are identical or reducible to certain psychological properties, can be discovered through the sciences ) and non-reductive ( eg. virtue ethics –> morality is an expression of our natural capacities of human beings and cant be reduced to some other kind of property which is discoverable through the sciences)
explain the difference between moral naturalism and non-naturalism(3m)
moral naturalism claims that moral properties are natural properties. it has two forms: reductive and non-reductive . whereas moral non-naturalism is primarily argued for by Moore and claism that moral properties aee not natural properties which cannot be discovered trhough sense expiene of science.
explain moores intuitionism
cognitivist, non-natural realist view of morality which claims that there are mind-independent objective moral properties but that these are non-natural though they may be correlated to certain natural properties but are not identical and so cannot be discovered through the sciences. More claims you can discover the truth of a moral statement through rational intuition in that it is self evident if an act is morally right or wrong though cannot be proved therefore moral properties are synthetic a priori—> goodness is a simple unanalysable property.
what is the naturalistic fallacy
the mistake of identifying moral good with an particular natural property. Pleasure is good but one must recognise there are two different concepts here which are related but not identical. Mill supports his view with the open question argument
explain the open question argument as an objection to naturalism
Moore’s open question argument is used to support the naturalistic fallacy which objects to naturalism because it claims that goodness is a simple unanalysable property which cannot be reduced to a natural property as naturalism argues. An open question is one which can e logically answered by both yes and no. the question “ is pleasure good “ is an open question because you can answer both yes and no, however “ is pleasure pleasure” is a closed question because you can only logically answer yes. because asking is “X good” will always be an open question it shows that goodness cannot be reduced to any other property. This shows that it is impossible to define good
what is the naturalist reply to the open question argument
the naturalist can reply that we do sometimes think of two different concepts with the same property as differently. For example “ is water H2O” is an open question but “is water water” must be answered with yes and so is a closed question. But water and H2O are the same thing. “ water is H2O” is not an analytic truth despite them being the same property because they are different concepts. This shows that we can have two ways of thinking about the same thing such that it would result in an open question despite the fact the are the same property
explain Humes fork objection to cognitivism
we can only have knowledge of judgments of reason. there are two types of judgments of reason: relations of ideas and matters of fact.
Moral judgements are not relation f ideas( do not cause a logical contradiction when rejected)
Moral judgements are not matters of facts( because cannot be empirically investigated in the way any matter of fact is –> sense-experience, the only way in which you see the wrongness is the passion and feelings)
therefore moral properties are not judgments of reason and so we cannot have knowledge of them. This means cognitivism is false and so moral properties cannot be true or false
explain Mackie’s error theory
Mackie’s error theory is a cognitive moral anti-realist view. This means moral statements express beliefs and aim to describe the world however Mackie claims that there are no objective moral properties because all moral judgments are false. Suppose everyone believed in fairies, the talk of the fairies are cognitive but all cliams made about the fairies will be false because faires do not exits in reality
