Meta Ethics

• definition

  the study of ethical values and moral statements
• normative ethics

  decides which things are good and bad, give us guidelines on how we should live
• 2 parts

  cognitive and non-cognitive theories
• Cognitivism

  • ethical values exist independently
  • naturalism
  • intuitionism
  • linked to absolutism
  • objective, either true or false
  • based on fact
• Non-cognitivism

  • moral statements are subjective
  • emotivism
  • linked to relativism
  • ethical statements are merely opinions and can’t be proven, they have nothing to do with the reality of the world so cannot be true or false
  • it is impossible to verify an ethical statement using facts, not propositional
  • it is not possible to define good
• Naturalism

  morals that can be observed
• Vienna Circle

  a group of philosophers, known as logical positivists
• Emotivism

  moral statements are not facts but beliefs or emotions
• Hume‘s Law

  you cannot go from an ‘is’ (a fact) to an ‘ought’ (moral laws) - “ought does not mean can”
• Empiricists

  morals arise from human feelings, not things that are observed
• A.J Ayer

  • moral language has some kind of absolute meaning
  • rejected claims that objective moral truth can be verified as true
  • ethical non-naturalist
  • rejected claims that ethics can be seen in the natural world
  • emotivist, believed moral statements are an emotional outburst
  • morals are relative to emotion and have no fixed meaning
• C.L Stevenson

  • developed Ayer’s ideas
  • moral judgements are linked to our beliefs about morals rather than simply emotional outbursts
  • emotivism is an example of relativism
• Ethical Naturalism

  • ethical statements are facts, can be verified or falsified
  • if we find supporting evidence, we can conclude the statement
• F.H Bradley

  • naturalist
  • it is possible to understand our moral duties by observing our position or station in life
  • outdated as has a hint of Victorian class divisions
  • certain roles have certain duties or moral values attached to them, eg. mother
  • your place in society is dependent on your class and origin, this determines your duty
  • ‘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‘
• Naturalistic Fallacy

  • G.E Moore
  • it is a mistake to define moral terms with reference to other properties (it is a mistake to break Hume’s Law)
• G.E Moore

  • objected to naturalism
  • intuitionism
  • cognitivism, believed it is possible to rationalise ‘goodness’
  • rejected the idea that goodness could be defined as a natural property like happiness or what gives survival advantage
  • goodness could not be defined at all since goodness is totally indefinable
  • intuitionism is a non-natural property of a situation that you either recognise or do not recognise (intuition)
• morally sighted VS morally blind

  if someone cannot see good, you cannot convince them

  • morally sighted - can see/intuit the goodness
  • morally blind - do not see it
• Moore‘s analogy of the colour yellow

  you can’t define the colour yellow because you are morally sighted or morally blind, you can’t convince others
• Dylann Roof

  • 2015
  • shot dead 9 black people in an American church
  • he cannot see how his actions are wrong, he thought he was doing good
  • ethical naturalists argue that he can’t see the world normally, he is morally blind
• H.A. Prichard

  • developed G.E. Moore’s ideas
  • it wasn’t only goodness that was indefinable, but also the idea of obligation
  • goodness is unrecognisable, so are our obligations
  • intuitionism helps people decide how to act
  • everyone has a different moral intuition
  • conflict between our moral obligations examine the situation and choose the greater obligation
• W.D. Ross

  • built on ideas of Moore and Prichard
  • he agreed that ‘right’ and ‘obligatory’ are as indefinable as ‘good’
  • deontologist, focus on action
  • it was obvious that certain types of actions (prima facie duties) were right
• Ross’ Prima Facie Duties

  1. fidelity - promise keeping
  2. reparation - when we have done something wrong
  3. gratitude
  4. justice
  5. benefice - helping others
  6. self improvement
  7. non maleficence - not harming others

  tells us to obey the greater prima facie duties, but he doesn’t expand this to explain which duties are the greater ones
• Pros of intuitionism

  • takes Hume’s ‘is-ought’ challenge seriously
  • there is widespread agreement on moral intuitions
  • defends the existence of moral facts
• Cons of intuitionism

  • people can have different intuitions on a topic, it is not clear what ‘intuition’ is
  • idea of an extra ability that is not able to be analysed by the senses seems far-fetched
• A.J Ayer - Emotivism

  • anti-realist theory, there are no moral facts
  • there are no moral truths, moral statements are based on feelings of approval or disapproval
  • non-cognitivist theory, statements made about right and wrong are not subject to truth or falsity
  • ethical statements are meaningless
  • ethical language is not factual
  • ‘Boo-Hurrah‘ Theory
• Logical positivism

  an idea developed by members of the vienna circle which considered philosophical analysis to be the way to determine whether an idea is meaningful
• G.E Moore - Intuitionism

  • moral knowledge is learnt through experience
  • naturalistic fallacy
  • the yellow analogy
  • ethical theories that knowledge is received in a different way from science and logic
• F.H. Bradley

  ethics is something that can be explained by the concrete reality we live in and observe, we can observe good and evil when we see it
• J.L. Mackie

  • it is possible to describe an institution from the outside, eg. promise keeping
  • moral rules can be observed but are based on tradition rather than absolute constructs
• Philippa Foot

  • when we call someone an ‘honest man’ we recognise them, through their actions, something that we consider to be good
  • if someone was ‘dishonest’ we can recognise this through our observations of their actions
• David Hume

  • argued against the naturalist claim that morals are absolute facts
  • argued that moral understandings of good or evil are based on feelings - not the use of reason, eg. wrongness comes from our feelings (guilt) not our use of reason
  • to derive an ‘is’ (a fact) from an ‘ought’ (a moral judgement) was logically invalid
• ‘Boo-Hurrah‘ Theory - A.J. Ayer

  We use ethical words to express our feelings or attitudes and to evoke similar feelings or attitudes in other people, eg. ’stealing is wrong‘ (Boo) or ‘love is good’ (Hurrah)
• The colour yellow analogy - G.E. Moore

  Yellow can’t be defined, neither can the term ‘good’
• R.M. Hare - emotivism

  Prescriptivism, it is wrong to persuade/prescribe ideas to someone