Meta-ethical theories
- Created by: AroojTahir
- Created on: 24-04-19 18:04
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- Meta-Ethical Theories
- Ethical Naturalism
- What is ethical naturalism?
- The belief that moral truths can be observed through observing the world- right and wrong.
- Moralist realist theory and cognitivist. Naturalists believe ethical terms are meaningful.
- Meta ethics: From Greek meta meaning above and beyond. Study of the meaning of ethical concepts.
- Normative ethics: theories of ethics that give advice on how we ought to behave.
- Naturalism: idea that moral values can be correctly defined by observing the natural world.
- Moral realism: belief that right and wrong exist.
- Cognitivism: belief that moral statements are subject to being true/false.
- Versions of ethical naturalism
- Empirically.
- Aquinas- theological naturalism. God given order guilt into the world. Moral values understood through God given purpose and observe natural order.
- Bradley- understand moral duties by observing position in life. Duties+moras attached.
- "What he as to do depends on what his place is, what his function is, and that all comes from his station in the organism" Bradley.
- Bentham+Mill= discover right and wrong by discovering which action leads to pleasure or pain.
- Naturalism and absolutism
- Ethical naturalism links to absolutism.
- Arguing for ethical naturalism is using Natural law: moral values we discover when considering purpose creating absolute rules.
- Utilitarian naturalism. However, if thinker believes right and wrong linked to pleasure+pain, more relative truths.
- An objection to naturalism
- Hume fact value distinction or 'is-ought' problem.
- Consider action such as murder we describe facts empirically-'is' the move to moral claims involving 'ought/ought not'.
- Hume- no matter how much we examine a situation as we won't empirically see/hear 'wrongness' of an action.
- What is ethical naturalism?
- Institutions
- What is intuitionism?
- Moral truths can't be discovered by observing the world. Right+wrong=self evident.
- Moral realist theory (naturalism), believing moral facts exist, cognitive- statements of right and wrong subject to being true and false.
- Believe ethical terms are meaningful, differ as to how they are known.
- Moore's institutionism
- Identifies naturalistic fallacy as an error that naturalism makes.
- Don't recognise goodness through empirical facts. Good self evident to intuition.
- Using analogy of colour yellow. Only answer ;what is yellow' through pointing to a yellow object- able to recognise. can't be defined.
- Moore's difference between simple ideas such as yellow can't be. Complex ideas which a horse broken down into legs.
- "If I am a sued 'what is good? my answer is that good is good...Or if I am asked "how is good to be defined?' my answer is that it cannot be defined" Moore
- Assessing intuitionism
- Takes Hume's 'is-ought' challenge seriously.
- Widespread agreement on moral institutions.
- Defends the existence of moral facts.
- People can have different institutions.
- Not clear as to what institution actually is.
- Idea of ability isn't able to be analysed by senes and affected.
- What is intuitionism?
- Emotivism
- What is emotivism?
- Believers there's no moral truths; moral statements are based on feelings of approval.
- Non-Cognitivist (moral statements arent subject to truth) argue ethical statements are meaningless.
- The Vienna Cricle and the Verification Principle
- Logical positivism: developed by members of Vienna Circle which considered philosophical-analysis to be way to determine whether an idea is meaningful.
- Analytic statements: true by definition. Synthetic statements: verified by senses.
- Hume: moral judgements feelings rather than factual judgements.
- Observes facts of situation we aren't able to see rightness and wrongness.
- "The vice entirely escapes you, as long as you consider the object" Hume
- Ayer's emotivism
- Ayer agreed with logical positivists on verification principle.
- View statements as meaningful if we can say how we verify them.
- Moral statements arent logical provable by senses= factually meaningless.
- Ayer argues its important to look at what ethical statements are rather than look for 'meaning'.
- Means we need to look at how speaker use 'right' and 'wrong'.
- Ethical statements show emotional states of feelings about issues. Words right and wrong approve and disprove.
- Evince
- Ayer uses 'envince' to explain how ethical statements show emotional state.
- Doesn't mean same as expressing emotional state, Ayer points out what we may/may not feel emotion.
- What is emotivism?
- Ethical terms as objective and meaningful
- Arguments for and against moral facts (moral realism)
- Shared moral values: people who support moral realism point agreement on moral values. Everyone who argue that torture or rarpe is wrong. Agreement suggests morality can't be a matter of personal opinion. However, its possible to suggest that grass is half empty rather than half full.
- Moral progress: progress in our attitude, ethical language describes real things. No things as right/wrong our attitudes are different, not better.
- The need for a standard: no objective right and wrong means there's no standards we believe in but they could change due to hatred. Logical consequenceif values are based on opinion.
- Difficulties for naturalism
- Rely on purpose built into the universe. Challenged by evolutionists who reject the idea of purpose.
- Hume finds the difference between factual 'is' judgements and value judgments of ought. Moral judgements like emotion, nothing factual observed-ideas of right and wrong
- Moore- naturalistic fallacy if we say pleasure is good.
- Arguing for and against naturalism
- Advantage over naturalism, avoids ought and naturalistic fallacy, morality objective.
- Disadvantagedue to differing. Pritchard- some people have better intuition than others.
- Arguments for and against moral facts (moral realism)
- Ethical terms as subjective or meaningless
- Arguing for and against morality as subjective and meaningless (moral anti-realism)
- Lack of shared moral values: supporter of emotivism looks at differences in moral value, not similarities.
- Moral progress: difficult for those who don't believe in moral values to explain moral progress.
- Need for standard: emotivists etc, lack of standards is a problem. Attempt to answer through subjective agreement on what's good moral standards.
- Trivisation: emotivism argues ethics is meaningless/subjective. Morality personal preference than hold the same value.
- Morality subjective: not based on facts. Difficulties of naturalistic fallacy and is ought gap avoided.
- Going further: Prescriptivism and error theory
- Prescriptivism: Hare argues moral statement describe and prescribe our feeling 'killing is wrong'-'I do not approve of killing and you should not either'.
- Error theory: Mackie argues that there's no moral facts just subjective values when we make moral statements- we speak as if they're actually true/false. Error Belief in objective values built through moral language, belief is rare.
- Arguing for and against morality as subjective and meaningless (moral anti-realism)
- What is good?
- Meta Ethics: above and beyond, studying ethical concerns. What does good mean? Does it actually exist
- Normative Ethics: considers ethical theories that give us advice on how to behave.
- Applied Ethics: Discusses specific problems of evil
- Descriptive Ethics: Explores different empirical views.
- Normative Ethics: considers ethical theories that give us advice on how to behave.
- What is good? is the key question
- Unclear on what goodness is, difficult to build normative theories on how we should act.
- Good-different meanings.
- Addressing what goodness is effect moral motivations. if I believe that the universe has fixed God-given standards then I will be more inclined to do good.
- What is good? or key question
- Remote+complex. Little agreement on what it might be.
- Not excluded from practicalities to make ethical choices.
- Meta Ethics: above and beyond, studying ethical concerns. What does good mean? Does it actually exist
- Ethical Naturalism
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