Meta ethics

• Metaethics


  Focuses upon the language of ethics
• Metaethics


  • Concerned with whether moral statements refer to fixed truths or relative emotions
  • Takes an absolutist view - morals are fixed, unchanging truths that everyone should always know
  • Morals are not opinions, they are objectively true
• Cognitive


  Words such as good, bad, right and wrong can be meaningful, they can be true or false, and moral truths exist and ethical statements can be verified empirically
• Non-cognitive


  Words such as good, bad, right and wrong are meaningless, they cannot be true or false, and moral truths are a matter of personal choice and don't exist independent of human experience
• Ethical Naturalism


  • Naturalism is an ethical theory that holds that everything arises from natural properties and causes
  • Morals are fixed absolutes that can be observed as part of the universe
  • Moral evil and goodness are absolute facts of the natural world, they are fixed things and do not change according to the situation
  • Moral statements are verifiable, they are objectively true and aren't opinions
  • Naturalism advocates the belief that a statement could only be factual and have meaning if it can be verified empirically
  • Ethical conclusions can be drawn from non-ethical statements
• F H Bradley: 'Our duty is universal and concrete, morals can be perceived in the world the same way that other features of the world can be identified, morals are observable as part of the concrete world, the social order and position in that society decides our moral duties, the position you hold in a community is not an incidental thing, it is a structure of reality'
• Bradleys fixed moral order is questionable as within the 20th century there has been radical changes to roles in society ie. the role of men and women
• However, social orders fixed to absolute ideas about right and wrong seem to remain a feature of much of the rest of the world
• Hume


  • Argued that moral good and evil cannot be distinguished using reason, but rather from sentiment, rejected the idea that moral good or evil can be distinguished using reason, when we see something we think is wrong, the wrongness comes from our sentiment, not from observations, cannot move from an objective factual statement based on observation of the world to a subjective opinionated moral statement, observed that writers on morality often move from an 'is' statement to an 'ought' statement, 'is does not imply ought'
• Phillipa Foot


  • Challenges Hume, suggests that moral evil is 'a kind of natural defect', argues that there are virtues, characteristics or behaviours that aim to be good, claims there was no difference between saying a living tree has 'good roots' and saying a human being has 'good dispositions of will', when we call a person a 'just man' or an 'honest woman' we are referring to a person who recognises certain considerations
• Bentham


  • Argued that the term 'good' could be identifies with a natural quality, utilitarianism says that goodness is to be identified with the amount of happiness that occurs in a particular situation, happiness is a natural quality of the world
• Evolution


  • What is good, is to be identified as whatever gives survival advantage, what gives survival advantage is a set of natural properties like having good eyesight, being fit, healthy body and working together in society
• G E Moore


  • Criticises ethical naturalism for its tendency to associate goodness with varying and often contradictory properties.
  • Defining goodness in terms of natural facts is mistaken.
  • Attempts to define good in terms of something that can be verified or falsified commit the naturalistic fallacy.
  • A valuable statement cannot be derived from a fact, no matter how we define 'good'.
  • The question 'but is that good?' remains open and is not resolved.
  • 'Good resists definition'.
  • cannot infer from a description of how the world 'is' to how the world 'ought' to be
• Intuitionism


  • Goodness is a non-natural property of a situation, you either recognise it or do not recognise it.
  • We can decide whether a statement is true or false by use of moral intuition instead of powers of observation, moral truths are indefinable but self-evident through intuition.
  • You are either morally sighted and can see/intuit goodness or you are morally blind and don't see it.
  • Good is a simple notion, just as yellow is a simple notion, you know it when you see it
• H A Prichard


  • Goodness is unrecognisable, and so are our obligations.
  • We will always know when we ought to act in a certain way.
  • Intuitionism helps people decide how to act.
  • Everyone had a different moral intuition, some more developed that others.
  • When moral intuition is conflicted with moral obligation, we examine the situation and choose the greater obligation.
  • Duty and good are separate things, duty is something beyond the good thing to do.
  • Reason collects the facts and intuition determines which course to follow.
  • Intuition identifies which obligation is greater
• W D Ross


  • Goodness cannot be defined in natural terms.
  • What is right is always unique depending on what is 'morally suitable' for the situation.
  • You never know all the facts about a situation, you base your judgements about what is right and wrong in your intuition.
  • Identified several foundational prima facie duties that are clearly moral.
  • These include promise keeping, reparation for harm done, gratitude, justice, beneficence, self-improvement and non-maleficence.
  • When these duties conflict, follow 'first sight' duties (intuition).
  • Morality is difficult to navigate and hard to find certainty
• Emotivism


  Claims ethical language is not factual, ethical claims are not capable of being true or false and are non-cognitive, instead, emotivism expresses an emotion attitude towards some kind of action
• Ayer


  • All meaningful statements had to be verified either analytically or synthetically, ethical and religious statements cannot be verified, so they are meaningless, ethical terms are calculated to arouse feeling, when we talk about 'good, bad, right and wrong' we are simply expressing emotion states of approval and disapproval, moral judgements are not observable, and they are not verified by definition, therefore, these tell us about the person, not the external world, the presence of an ethical symbol in a proposition adds nothing to its factual content, moral arguments are expressions of feelings