Meta ethics

Question 1

What does Calvin say about DCT?

Answer 1

• John Calvin uses DCT to support his view of predestination
• He argues that God cannot be caused to do anything, for that would imply that there was a force external to God
• Also, to challenge or question God’s will is to suggest that there is something greater (which Anselm has already argued is impossible)
• For Calvin, DCT is a natural result of the absolute power of God

Question 2

What does Barth say about DCT?

Answer 2

• He argues that man’s obedience to God is the answer to all questions about ethics
• The commands of God set Christian ethics apart from discussions of wrong and right and override fallible human debate on all moral issues

Question 3

What are the strengths of DCT?

Answer 3

• DCT grounds moral behaviour in the teachings of a ‘factually existing’ God. If God is omnipotent and omnibenevolent then his commands must be right
• Rules are universal, this avoids the problem of trying to sort out different moral ideas in different circumstances
• System is clear and straightforward: God says is good is good and vice versa
• DCT provides an end goal to morality
  God doesn’t have the weakness of human judges

Question 4

What are the weaknesses of DCT?

Answer 4

• Even if the moral commands in the Bible come from God, we cannot tell if they are as God gave them
• The Bible contains immoral commands eg. Slavery
• The Euthyphro dilemma

Question 5

What is the Euthyphro dilemma?

Answer 5

Is conduct right because the gods command it, or do the gods command it because it is right?

Question 6

What are the strengths of utilitarianism?

Answer 6

• Gives a factual basis for morality
• Has rules and guidelines
• Gives us a way of measuring moral worth of people
• Practical system, UK politics is broadly utilitarian
• Gives people what they want: happiness

Question 7

What are the weaknesses of utilitarianism?

Answer 7

• Happiness can’t be universally defined (some people take pleasure from inflicting harm on others)
• Requires us to guess the future
• Giving the majority what they want isn’t always the right thing to do. Often the minority is right and this principle ignored the right of the minority
• Commits the naturalistic fallacy

Question 8

What is the naturalistic fallacy?

Answer 8

Developed by Moore
* Trying to define the concept ‘good’ in terms of a natural property, eg happiness
* Not possible to derive an ought from and is as Bentham does: pleasure is good so we ought to seek pleasure
* Old lady help or euthanise example

Question 9

What are Moore’s beliefs about naturalism?

Answer 9

• Moore believes that ‘good’ is non-natural, so it is simple and unanalysable
• It is a quality that can be possessed but it couldn’t be defined
• Similarly to the colour yellow or the smell of coffee
• Moore says that good is good and that’s all there is to say about it

Question 10

What is intuitionism?

Answer 10

• Our knowledge of right and wrong come from our fundamental moral intuitions
• Intuitions are stand alone beliefs so moral judgements are self evident to those who hold them
• Eg, to torture and kill an innocent person is just wrong, we sense that to be the case, even if we can produce many reasons why it may be advantageous to do so
• We can use the trolley problem

Question 11

What are strengths of intuitionism?

Answer 11

• Everyone has intuitions, whether they are recognised or not
• Overcomes central problem of naturalist ethics that there is no agreement as to what the moral facts are
• Realistic as it admits that moral intuition isn’t perfect as we still have disagreements in our moral intuitions

Question 12

What are the weaknesses of intuitionism?

Answer 12

• Doesn’t give a satisfactory answer to why or how we have intuitions
• Makes ethical discussion difficult as there are no fundamental, reasoned basis on which to argue
• Easy to be unconsciously influenced by social norms
• Caused many to turn to ethical non-cognitivism, which is not believed to be beneficial for society
• Some ethicists dismiss the naturalistic fallacy and therefore perhaps Moore was wrong for dismissing ethical naturalism as a whole