Meta Ethics

-Meta ethics is a branch of ethics that questions the nature of ethical statements, i.e what is right and what is wrong

-It is not normative ethics, like natural moral law and virtue ethics which simply question what you should do and how to do right and wrong

-issues raised are if there is an objective standard of goodness, i.e a factual basis in which we can say something is 'good' or is it simply matter of opinion (subjective)

-Another issue is wether ethical statements are cognitive (can be proven true or false, like a fact) or non-cognitive cannot be proven true or false

-Argues that God is the origin of goodness, what God commands is good and what God forbids is bad. Therefore holding an objective standard, making it a realist theory 

-So saying something is good is equal to saying that God commands it & visa-versa, meaning moral statements are cognitive as we can check if they're true or false by checking God's commands

-John Calvin states that God's will is the 'highest rule of righteousnes' and that because of sin humans are completely unable to choose what is right and wrong ourselves.

-Karl Barth said that ethics is the 'Doctrine of God's commands' and that 'Theology (study of God) is ethics' and that mans respnsibility in response to encountering God's word/command should be obedience.

-The Euthyphro dilemma; 'Socrates' asked 'Is good loved by the Gods because it is good or is it good because it is loved by the Gods?'

Leads us to think that-

Good is only good because God said it is, therefore anything even murder, could be good if God said so

Or

God is 'good' because he conforms to a higher ultimate standard of goodness, which is not him.

-Relies heavily on the existence of God

-Different religions and interpretations of what God commands etc

-Old testament shows God committing things which are morally indefensibl, like killing all life in the flood apart from those on Noah's ark, killing the first born children of the egyptians in order to force the Pharaoh to let the Israelites leave.

-Provides an objective basis

-Kant says without God there is no morals, therefore in order to get to the afterlife we are prompted to make good moral decisions

-Euthyphro dilemma solutions;

Robert Adams said that God can't simply command bad things to be good, as it would contradict the traditional belief of God being omnibenevolant

William of Ockham suggested that we must 'Bite the bullet' and if God commands us to do 'evil' actions, that it would just make them moral. It would be immoral to ignore his commands.

Clark and Poortenga said that God's commands must correspond to Natural Moral Law, therefore he is unable to command 'evil' actions. He remains the supreme level of goodness.

-Naturalism is a reductive theory, meaning it reduces moral facts to natural facts

-Naturalism and non-naturalism are both realist theories and are cognitist meaning they believe. oral statements can be proven true or false

Utilitarianism;

-An example of naturalism created by Jeremy Bentham is Utilitarianism, which understands 'good' to be pleasure and 'bad' to be pain- as those are the two 'sovern masters'.

-He devised the 'Hedonic Calculus' which considered 7 factors like: duration, intensity, extent, purity etc.

-It is quantative meaning he is only interested in the quantity of pleasure produced, not the quality.

-Provides a scientific and objective basis by which we can judge what is good and bad

-Naturalism is available to all people as it does not rely on the existence of God and is less ambiguous (open to interpretatio) than DCT

-Its basic principles are widely accepted, i.e happiness and pleasure are sought by all people regardless of background and culture

-Gottlob Frege distinguished between sense (what a word means) and reference (what a word refers to), meaning it is possible for two different words to have the same reference yet have a different sense/meaning. Therefore happiness/pleasure can mean different things but both relate to the same moral value, goodness.

-G.E. Moore states that moral values cannot simply be reduces to natural facts as it would be 'Naturalistic Fallacy', they are too different

-Moore also puts forward the 'open question argument'. Which states that despite saying an action is pleasurable, is it good? This can be asked for every single scenario, i.e Adultary is pleasurable, but is it good? Morally no, therefore it is identified that no moral value can be simplified in terms of natural facts

-Fact-value distinction, i.e agreeing on facts, Euthanasia reduces pain, but disagreeing on wether it is right or wrong as it is just a judgement, not a fact.

-'Natural properties' usually refer to something that can be empirically observed or scientifically tested. This does not apply to moral values so equating them to natural properties is wrong.

-Non naturalism is cognitivst and realist, it claims these facts are. to natural facts and therefore knowledge of these moral facts must be gained in a different and unique way.

Intuitionism;

-An example of non-naturalism, G.E. Moore refers to moral judgements as intuitions, they're 'incapable or any kind of proof', we just know what's right.

-Moore says we know moral judgements are true or false by considering the claim itself, we look at the plausibility of morals to come to a fact. 

-We can then use this intuitive understanding of 'goodness' in order to work out what is right in any particular situation. 

-Provides an objective basis without reducing moral values

-Distinguishes between facts and values unlike naturalism

-The 'Naturalistic fallacy' and 'Open question' arguments from G.E. Moore support non-naturalism

-We all appear to recognise that there is something deeply profound and even mysterious about moral values that we cannot describe. Non-naturalism recognises this

-Lacks explanatory power, it does not even attempt to fully explain what moral values are despite insisting they they exist objectively.

-Mysterious basis for ethics, claims it's not a natural fact so it just a non-natural fact..?

-Some say (moral relitivisits/anti-realists) is wrong as there simply is no objective basis at all, it is just opinionated and cultural, (cultural relativism). So moral claims are not true or false they just express attitudes or recommended courses of action.