Meta ethics

Ethical naturalism

• good can be identified with naturally occuring features eg happiness / pleasure / health
• utilitarianism is an example of this
• it identifies goodness with pleasure

Naturalistic fallacy

• goodness cannot be linked to natural concepts
• there is nothing intrinsically good about natural properties eg health / fitness / pleasure
• is it good to use health to rob a bank?
• is it good serial killers gain pleasure from murder?
• concepts which appear in our natural world cannot always be defined as good

We confuse an 'is' with an 'ought'

• David Hume argued that there is a misunderstanding of language
• if we say 'giving to charity is good' this does not mean 'you ought to give to charity'

G E Moore's open question argument

• if x is analytically equivalent to good, asking 'is x good?' is meaningless
• 'is x good?' is not meaningless
• therefore x is not analytically equivalent to good

• is it good that stealing leads to pleasure?
• you can kill an evil dictator 

Interchangeable meanings

• wherever good was used pleasure could be used in its place

• a three sided shape = a triangle = 180°

• good is not interchangeable with pleasure

• what the Nazis did was pleasureable for them but NOT GOOD

• therefore the terms are not interchangeable 

• good is indefinable 

Cognitivist 

• true or false
• describes world
• expresses beliefs 

Moral realist 

• there are objective moral properties which are discovered through intutionism

R M Hare (contrast)

• moral anti-realist
• ethics is subjective
• non-cognitivist argument 

G E Moore's open question argument

• if x is analytically equivalent to good, asking 'is x good?' is meaningless
• 'is x good?' is not meaningless
• therefore x is not analytically equivalent to good

• is it good that stealing leads to pleasure?
• you can kill an evil dictator 

• written in Principia Ethica, 1903

Yellow is indefinable 

• we are unable to define good in the same way we are unable to define yellow
• we can compare it to things with similar properties eg orange, red
• or describe how it comes to be: electromagnetic radiation between 570 and 590 nanometres 

• we cannot define good, only compare to other qualities eg kindness / justice
• they don't define good itself

What is good and bad?

• Moore agrgues that we use our intuition to determine this
• morals are known directly and are self-evident and indefinable 

• eg compassion is seen as good but this is because man reasons it to be so
• goodness resists definition 
• 'good is good and that is the end of the matter'

Non-cognitivist

• neither true or false
• doesn't describe the world
• doesn't express beliefs

R M Hare

• developed at Oxford University in 20^th century
• moral language functions like imperatives
• 'killing is wrong' = 'don't kill'
• 'speeding is wrong' = 'don't speed'

• moral values have no truth value 
• they prescribe attitudes and express opinion of speaker
• it is subjective

(Non-cognitivist)

Booh / hurrah theory

• moral statements are neither true nor false 
• statements reflect our emotions
  • killing is wrong = booh to killing
  • giving to charity is good = hurrah for giving to charity

Logical positivism

• A J Ayer's emotivism - for something to be meaningful it must either be analytic or empirically verifiable 
• killing is wrong = I do not like killing

Pregnant student example

• a pregnant student asks her lecturer for advice 

• the lecturer responds by saying 'abortion is wrong'

• by this, he means 'do not get an abortion'

• the lecturer says 'booh to abortion'

• this is not a factual statement, like 'Paris is in France'

• it expresses his feelings

C L Stevenson 

• moral statements express either approval or disapproval
• there will always be moral disagreement due to different sets of beliefs
• 'stealing is always wrong' vs 'stealing is generally wrong'

1 - intelligent disagreement can occur over moral questions - ethics is not objective

2 - moral terms such as 'good' are magnetic in encouraging actions

3 - the scientific method (empirically verifiable) is unable to verify ethical claims

Alasdair Macintyre

• 'emotivism rests on the claime that every attempt, whether past or present to provide a rational justification for an objective morality has in fact failed'
• eg from a God or a universalisable duty in Kant's deontology

Not all moral claims are magnetic 

• some people already believe a certain thing

Persuasive

• shampoo is also persuasive: 'clean, shiny hair' but is not ethical

Not always emotive

• it is wrong to say 1+1=3 yet this is not emotive - it is objectively wrong