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Meta-ethics - Coggle Diagram

- - - - Meta-ethics however is exclusively focused on what goodness is
        
        There are two aspects to what goodness is:
        
        1. Whether goodness exists in reality or not (moral realism vs. moral anti-realism)
        
        Moral realism is the view that 'goodness' is real - exists in reality
        
        Anti-realism is the view that goodness is not real - it does not exist in reality
        
        These first two paragraphs work for a realist vs. anti-realist question or a cognitive vs. non-cognitive question
        
        2. What the meaning of the word 'good' is (cognitivism vs. non-cognitivism)
        
        Cognitivism is the view that ethical language expresses beliefs that can be true or false
        
        Non-cognitivism is the view that ethical language expresses some non-belief, like an emotion, which cannot be true or false
- - - - Pleasure is a natural feature of physical creatures (brain chemicals)
        
        So, goodness is a natural property. Bentham's utilitarianism is a form of meta-ethical naturalism
        
        Goodness is real because pleasure is real (moral realism)
        
        When we say "Hitler was wrong", we are expressing our belief that Hitler's actions failed to maximise pleasure
        
        So, ethical language is cognitive
  - - - P1: It is human nature to find pleasure good
        
        C1: Pleasure is good and we ought to maximise pleasure
  - - - Hume objects that we cannot get an ought from an is
        
        Factual is-statements (statements about facts) do not entail moral ought-statements (statements about values)
        
        Applying this to Bentham - just because it is human nature to find pleasure good, that only means that it is human nature to find pleasure good - it doesn't mean that pleasure is good and that we thus ought to maximise it
        
        Hume's point is that we have no basis for thinking that the ought-statement follows from the is-statement. It's a baseless assumption that Bentham is making
        
        There is a justification gap between factual and moral statements
        
        Bentham's argument for moral realism therefore fails
        
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  - - - E. Anscombe argues that "ought" really functions like the word "need", such as a machine needs oil in order to run well or a plant needs water. Humans also have needs (flourishing -eudaimonia), and this is what we refer to when we talk about right and wrong
        
        Philippa Foot concludes there is "no difficulty" in deriving ought from this. Foot's example: it is a fact that children cannot flourish without help from adults, from which we can derive that adults 'ought' to protect children
        
        So when we call an action good or bad, we refer to its enabling or disabling of flourishing and to whether it is what a virtuous person would do
        
        Hume's insistence that a value cannot be inferred from a fact simply presupposes that values are not a sort of fact
        
        So, for life in general, 'ought' is simply 'the need of flourishing'. Humans need certain things in order to flourish, to live well. This is a fact, from which can be derived oughts
- - - - Open question argument
        
        Naturalism claims that e.g., goodness = pleasure
        
        However, if this was true, then goodness = pleasure would be just like saying pleasure = pleasure. The problem is, saying ‘pleasure = pleasure’ seems to be a tautological uninformative statement, whereas ‘goodness = pleasure’ is meant to be informative
        
        An informative statement cannot = an uninformative statement
        
        So, goodness cannot = pleasure, or any natural property
        
        Moore concludes that goodness is not a natural thing and cannot be defined at all
        
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  - - - So, it looks true that we all have this intuitive sense of what is right/wrong
  - - - Mackie points out that there are vast cross-cultural disagreements
        
        Mackie admits he can’t prove that there’s no mysterious non-natural moral properties
        
        His argument is that we have a much simpler and better explanation, which is social conditioning
        
        We have the moral intuitions we have because of the way we have been raised in our society
        
        This explains why there is moral disagreement cross-culturally
        
        Mackie concludes that there is no right/wrong – anti-realism
        
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- - - - Ethical language is not analytic as it can be denied without contradiction
        
        Ethical language is not verifiable, because we do not experience moral properties
        
        Ayer concluded that anti-realism is true
  - - - Other emotivists like Stevenson are not even verificationists. So that criticism is not decisive against emotivism
  - - - P2. Ethical language involves motivation
        
        C1. So, ethical language expresses desires
        
        Ayer concludes ethical language just expresses emotions. E.g. if someone says ‘stealing is wrong’ that just means ‘boo to stealing’. Saying something is right or wrong is just a way of expressing how we personally feel
- - - - Anti-realism seems to be pushing us in that direction
        
        If Ayer is right that there is no right/wrong – then he can’t say Hitler was objectively wrong
        
        Ayer’s theory was very popular from the 1920s until world war 2. Philosophers like Philippa Foot, after seeing the footage of the holocaust, started to argue that it can’t be valid to argue there is no right wrong and perhaps such thinking even enabled those atrocities
        
        Ayer thinks we can say that we don’t like what Hitler did, but there’s no logical way to say Hitler was actually wrong
        
        It looks like Ayer destroys morality, which could end society, if no one thought there was right/wrong
  - - - Ayer would argue Foot viewed the holocaust and had a negative emotional reaction which she expressed with the word ‘wrong’
        
        So the nihilism objection alone begs the question regarding the truth of moral realism, and might ironically simply illustrate Ayer’s emotivism rather than undermine it
        
        The only way to disprove Ayer – is to prove that morality is actually real. Foot followed up her presentation of the nihilism issue with the point that the ‘separation’ between facts and values was the foundational mistake
        
        So Foot presents the nihilism issue in its strongest form. She isn’t saying the holocaust proves Ayer wrong, just that it is especially illustrative of Ayer and Hume’s foundational mistake of thinking facts and values, or is/oughts were separate
        
        This defeats all of Hume and Ayer’s anti-realist arguments. If values are a sort of fact, then they are verifiable a posteriori. So Hume’s fork and Ayer’s verification principle cannot exclude moral judgements. We can verify that the holocaust was disabling of flourishing. That is what Foot did when viewing the footage, she wasn’t merely having an emotional reaction
        
        So, anti-realism is ultimately false because moral realism is true. Leading to nihilism doesn’t prove anti-realism false, but it is illustrative of why it’s false; its mistaken separation of facts from values
- - - - However, G. E. Moore criticises non-cognitivism, because he noted that ethical language seems to involve features that require more than emotion
        
        E.g. moral reasoning, persuading, disagreeing etc.
        
        Disagreement requires contrasting belief claims about reality. Emotions do not make claims, so they cannot disagree. ‘Boo to stealing’ cannot be said to disagree with ‘hurrah to stealing’
        
        P1. emotions cannot disagree
        
        P2. ethical language involves disagreement
        
        C1. Ethical language cannot reduce to the expression of emotion
        
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  - - - Mackie accepts that we have feelings about ethics, but he argues we also have beliefs about it
        
        He says to consider a scientist doing bioweapons research who is struggling with the morality of their job
        
        Mackie argues that in such cases, people don’t merely want to know how they emotionally feel about the action, nor whether they could rationally universally prescribe it. They want to know whether the action is right or wrong in itself
        
        People thus believe that right and wrong are real, that they exist
        
        E.g. if you ask the average person on the street whether they think it being wrong to kill people is a fact of reality, they’d likely say yes
        
        Human psychology is such that we can be conditioned with social constructions and believe that they are real
        
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  - - - He thought that ethical language expresses more than just emotion
        
        It also expresses prescriptions, which are commands or recommendations
        
        E.g. ‘stealing is wrong’ means ‘don’t steal’
        
        This can’t be true or false as it claims nothing, so it is still non-cognitive
        
        Hare thought that when we use ethical language and say something is right or wrong, we prescribe it universally
        
        We say that everyone in relevant situations should follow this command
        
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