The Denial of Moral Truth
- Created by: kateandrews
- Created on: 28-04-15 12:11
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- The Denial of Moral Truths
- Relativism
- Normative
- Different moral outlooks are appropriate in their own time and place
- Moral values ought to be considered as cultural preferences, and behavior must be judged relative to the culture from which it arose
- Morality is just an expression of culture, not moral truth
- It would be difficult to criticise the standards of any culture or to make comparisons as there would be no suchthing as moral progress
- Moral values should be judged according to their origin rather than according to moral and civilised standards of justice and decency
- Genetic Fallacy
- It is a mistake to accept or reject an idea because of where or who it came from, rather than its own merits
- Genetic Fallacy
- It assumes that all cultures are homogeneous
- Descriptive
- Moral codes and accepted moral practices differ from one society to the next
- Normative relativism does not follow on from descriptive relativism
- Descriptive relativism establishes that there are widely differing moral codes, but it doesn't acknowledge that there are also many similar moral codes across cultures
- If disagreement supports the view that there is no moral truth, then agreement supports the view that there is
- Descriptive relativism establishes that there are widely differing moral codes, but it doesn't acknowledge that there are also many similar moral codes across cultures
- If there is no objective moral truth, then anything goes
- If morality is simply a set of conventions relative to my society, then morality has no authority and it provides no grounds for judging pople
- A rejection of moral truth does not necessarily entail tolerance
- Tolerance is a moral virtue and so it is a contradiction
- Diversity: if there was objective moral truth, there would not be such diversity of moral opinion over the world
- Conflict: if there was objective moral law, there would not be moral conflict
- Normative
- Emotivism
- A. J. Ayer
- The Verification Principle
- Only that which has the ability to be analytically or empirically verified has meaning
- Moral statements are meaningless because they cannot be analytically or empirically verified
- The Verification Principle itself cannot be verified
- Only that which has the ability to be analytically or empirically verified has meaning
- Ethical statements express judgement
- Any statement condemning or appraising a moral practice is an expression of our opinions and feelings towards it
- It simplifies morality: there can be no moral reasoning or discussion
- Perscriptivism
- R. M. Hare
- All moral statements work as commanding imperatives
- Moral statements are prescriptions and recommendations about choice of behavior according to our personal values
- If there is no moral truth, then no one is right / wrong
- In such a case, there is no point of us attempting to prescibe our morality to people without knowing if its correct or not
- Relativism
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