Meta-ethics

Question 1

What is moral cognitivism?

Answer 1

Moral claims are i) truth-apt ii) descriptive function

Question 2

What is moral naturalism?

Answer 2

Moral facts/properties are nothing over and above natural properties.

Question 3

What is moral reductive naturalism?

Answer 3

Moral properties are identical to natural properties

Question 4

What is non-reductive moral naturalism?

Answer 4

Moral facts/properties are natural but not identical to any property.

Question 5

Explain the ‘is-ought’ gap

Answer 5

• descriptive and normative claims are distinct
• we cannot infer moral claims from other truths, they can’t be truth-apt beliefs
  Moral judgements cannot rely upon facts alone.
• we cannot derive normative claims (ought) from descriptive claims (is/is not)

Question 6

Hume on morality - Hume’s Fork

Answer 6

P1) Only 2 types of judgements of reason - ROI/MOF
P2) Moral judgements aren’t ROI/MOF
C1) Therefore, moral judgements aren’t judgements of reason.
C2) Implication - as moral cognitivism is false, moral realism is also false.

ROI —> any relation within a moral claim can be applied to any physical object. (E.g killing)
Once we add the word ‘wilful’ it seems closer to the truth (e.g ‘wilful’ killing is wrong)
BUT, this is not a priori true it is MOF (experience)

MOF —> empirical investigation does not reveal wrongness, it reveals ; passions, thoughts etc - this is what we attribute the wrongness to but not wrongness itself.

Question 7

Hume’s argument from motivation

Answer 7

Hume’s argument that moral judgements aren’t beliefs since beliefs alone couldn’t motivate us.

P1) moral judgements can motivate action
P2) reason alone cannot motivate action
C 1) therefore moral judgements aren’t judgements of reason.

Humean theory of motivation —> motivation requires a belief and a desire.

Question 8

Moore’s open question argument

Answer 8

• All reductive forms of realism are false because goodness is not reductive to any other property.

Closed question —> only one possible true answer
Open question —> more than one possible true answer
Tautology —> claim that adds no new information

P1) If ‘goodness and happiness’ are identical then ‘goodness is happiness’ is a tautology.
P2) The question ‘is goodness happiness?’ Is not a closed question, it is an open question.
C1) Therefore, goodness and happiness aren’t identical - the steps above apply to any attempt to reduce goodness to another property
C2) Therefore, reductive realist accounts of goodness are false.

Question 9

Describe ‘naturalistic fallacy’

Answer 9

• Error in reasoning where moral properties are said to be identical to natural properties; Moore extends this to other value terms.
  Moore DOESN’T deny that goodness correlates with some natural properties, but that correlation doesn’t imply that goodness and happiness aren’t identical.

Question 10

GE Moore vs reductive theories

Answer 10

All attempts to reduce moral properties to non-moral properties fail —> goodness is NOT identical to happiness.
Moore concludes;

Moral properties are mind-independent
Moral claims are descriptive —> this avoids the is-ought gap.

Question 11

Describe Moore’s non-naturalism

Answer 11

Goodness is i) simple ii)unanalysble

I) goodness isn’t composed of happiness - separate properties
Ii) we can’t analyse ‘good’ by breaking it down into other properties.

Question 12

Describe Moore’s moral intuitionism

Answer 12

Moral properties cannot be known through observation of the natural world

Our grasp of moral truths is a priori
- they are synthetic, not analytic
- Moore describes them as self-evident, therefore we grasp them via intuition. (SYNTHETIC A PRIORI)

Question 13

Moore vs Hume on motivation

Answer 13

Moore doesn’t say that moral judgements motivate our actions alone WHEREAS Hume argues moral judgements do motivate us so they can’t be judgements of reason.
—> Moore accepts that it is rare to see something as good without it affecting our will - but he didn’t say it was universal.

Moore further argues against Hume’s Fork —> there are some MOF which can be known a priori; synthetic a priori jugements through moral intuition.

Question 14

Describe Ayer’s verification principle

Answer 14

A proposition is meaningful iff; i) analytic ii) empirically verifiable

Strong verification -> can actually be verified
Weak verification -> we know the conditions under which it would be verified.

Question 15

Describe verificationism

Answer 15

Claims with factual significance are truth-apt claims about the world —> cognitive claims
Analytic propositions are meaningful but are tautologous, so not factually significant.

Question 16

Define metaphysically queer

Answer 16

Being of a sort that has radically different properties to all other facts we are aware of.

Question 17

Define epistemologically queer

Answer 17

Being of a sort that is known in a way different to all other facts that we are aware of.

Question 18

Describe Mackie’s argument from relativity

Answer 18

Moral codes differ from society to society; Mackie argues that this shows there are no objective moral truths - we should understand the morality of a society as a reflection of its way of life.

Question 19

Describe Mackie’s argument from queerness

Answer 19

If there were moral properties, they would have to be very different from anything else in the world - link between morality and motivation —> moral judgements motivate us e.g good action bad action.

THEREFORE, if there were moral properties, knowing what is good and bad would be enough to motivate us to act in certain ways. Thus, it is reasonable to conclude that there are no moral properties.

Epistemologically queer —> they would need to be known through a special faculty but that has no explanation.

Question 20

Describe Hare’s prescriptivism

Answer 20

Hare argued that moral words aren’t descriptive and emotive in meaning. The function of moral principles is to guide conduct.
—> Hare criticises emotivism for mistaking the ‘force’ of moral statements.
Hare claims there are i) imperatives that tell someone to do something ii) there are value judgements - general value terms are ‘good’/‘bad’.