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Moral Philosophy - Meta Ethics - Coggle Diagram
Moral Philosophy - Meta Ethics
The Nature of Morals
Moral Realism vs Moral Antirealism
Moral Realism - There are moral facts (there are mind-independent properties of our world that correspond to moral truths).
When we make statements such as 'murder is wrong' a moral realist would say there is some independent property of our reality that makes it so.
Moral Antirealism
There are no moral facts (moral statements are mind-dependant concepts that are human conventions).
There are no moral facts, no independent properties of reality that make a moral statement true or false. Moral facts are made up concepts in the human mind.
Cognitivism vs Non-cognitivism
Cognitivism - Moral language is truth-apt (ethical statements can be verified to be true or false).
E.g. 'The moon is over there.' - can be verified to be true or false.
Non-cognitivism - Moral language is not truth-apt (ethical statements do not express verifiable/falseifiable propositions).
E.g. 'Ouch!' or 'Don't do that!' - not truth apt, they are expressions.
Moral Naturalism
Utilitarianism: moral properties are found in pain / pleasure.
Virtue Ethics: moral properties are found in character traits - how well we achieve our function.
We all seem to seek pleasure and avoid pain - a natural property of us as living things.
Moral facts and properties are real, objective parts of the natural world that can be investigated through empirical science.
Moore's Objection - Naturalistic Fallacy
Hume's 'is-ought gap'
You cannot move from the way things are to the way they ought to be.
Jump from we are things that desire pleasure to we ought to maximise pleasure.
Issue: Hume's Fork / Verification principle - Ayer
The only things that we can observe to be true are things that are either matters of fact or relations of ideas / analytic truths or synthetic truths.
Moral Non-Naturalism
G.E. Moore's Intuitionism: moral properties are not proven in natural properties. Morals are understood as intuitions.
Moore's open question argument: Three options are: 1. Good is indefinable, 2. Good is definable, 3. Good is empty. - By a process of elimination he rules out that good cannot be empty as it is not meaningless (therefore cognitivist), then rules out definable as it poses the question -is that thing good?- leading to an infinite regress.
Issue: So what is Good? If anyone's definition works it could end up meaningless.
No proof - like you cannot prove consciousness but we all have it in the nature of being human.
Mackie's Error Theory (Moral Antirealist)
Moral statements are cognitive, but always false.
Argument from Relativity: Morals change from culture to culture. Either we wrong about moral facts or there are no moral facts. The only sensible conclusion is there are no moral facts - shown by the change across cultures.
Argument from Strangeness / Queerness: Ontological strangeness - what are moral properties like? Epistemological strangeness - how do we verify moral properties - can't use visual senses etc.
But our knowledge-base has a variety of strange posits - even things such as numbers could be considered stange - abstract concept.
Issue: Some morals stand the test of time and are in fact universal.
E.g. Murder is wrong.
So argument may be too extreme.
Emotivism
Ayer / Hume: Moral principles are individual approbations / disapprobations
Hume's is/ought gap - No amount of descriptive propositions (facts) can prove moral judgements (motivations). What is the case does not equate to what ought to be be.
Reply: If I promise to pay you £5 next tuesday that is a fact and if I then sign a document etc I ought to pay you £5 next tuesday - jumping the is ought gap.
Reply: Hidden premise that you ought to keep promises.
"Boo-Hurray theory"
Logical positivism
Logical positivists (like A. J. Ayer) argued that a statement is only meaningful if it is either an analytic tautology (true by definition, like "all bachelors are unmarried") or empirically verifiable through observation.
Prescriptivism - Hare
Moral principles are prescribed codes of behaviour - commands.
What is good is whatever I say.
We use morals as a tool to help regulate behaviour.
Issue 1: This is not how we use moral language - we're not aiming to tell people what they should do, we're doing it because we're truth seeking.
Issue 2: How do we account for moral progress? - the only way to account for progress in time (e.g. abolishment of slavery) is by expressing the fact that there are natural properties of the world which makes moral statements true or false which makes it so that we have have had moral progress.
Moral nihilism - leads to the idea there is no such thing as morals.