What is meta-ethics?
The branch of philosophy asking what morality IS — questions about the meaning, truth, objectivity, and epistemology of moral claims. Distinct from normative ethics (what is right/wrong).
Meta-ethics explores the nature of moral judgments and their foundations.
What is the difference between cognitivism and non-cognitivism?
- Cognitivism: moral judgements express BELIEFS — they can be true or false
- Non-cognitivism: moral judgements express non-cognitive states (emotions, prescriptions) — neither true nor false
This distinction is crucial in understanding different philosophical approaches to ethics.
What is the ‘direction of fit’ distinction (Anscombe)?
- Beliefs = mind-to-world (detective’s list: change beliefs to fit reality)
- Desires = world-to-mind (shopper’s list: change reality to fit desires)
Cognitivists say moral judgements are belief-like; non-cognitivists say they are desire-like.
What is moral realism?
The view that there are objective, mind-independent moral properties. Moral judgements can be true or false depending on whether actions/persons actually have those properties.
Moral realism asserts the existence of moral facts independent of human opinion.
What is moral anti-realism?
The denial that there are objective, mind-independent moral properties. Includes error theory (Mackie) and non-cognitivism (emotivism, prescriptivism).
Moral anti-realism challenges the existence of moral truths.
What is the difference between moral realism and moral naturalism?
- Moral realism says moral properties exist objectively
- Moral naturalism is a TYPE of realism saying those properties are NATURAL (discoverable by sense experience and science)
Non-naturalists are also realists but think moral properties are non-natural.
What is reductive moral naturalism?
The view that moral properties are IDENTICAL to natural properties — e.g. goodness = happiness. We can discover moral truths empirically.
This approach links moral truths directly to observable phenomena.
What is non-reductive moral naturalism?
The view that morality is grounded in human nature but CANNOT be reduced to natural facts. Practical wisdom involves understanding reasons, which is more than just knowing psychological facts (Annas on Aristotle).
This perspective emphasizes the complexity of moral reasoning.
How can utilitarianism be read as reductive moral naturalism?
If ‘goodness’ = ‘happiness’, then moral properties are psychological/natural properties. Moral truths are empirically discoverable. Mill’s proof of utility (arguably) identifies goodness with what people desire.
Utilitarianism connects moral value directly to human happiness.
What is Moore’s objection to Mill (fallacy of equivocation)?
Mill equivocates on ‘desirable’: it can mean ‘capable of being desired’ or ‘worthy of being desired’. What people actually desire is not automatically what is good. Mill hasn’t proved the identity.
This objection highlights the ambiguity in moral language.
What does the H₂O analogy show about moral naturalism?
Two distinct concepts (‘water’ / ‘H₂O’; ‘goodness’ / ‘happiness’) can refer to the same property. Moore’s open question argument only shows the CONCEPTS are distinct — not that the PROPERTIES are different. Identity is a metaphysical question, not a conceptual one.
This analogy illustrates the complexity of understanding moral properties.
What does Moore mean by the ‘naturalistic fallacy’?
Any attempt to DEFINE goodness in terms of a natural property. Goodness is simple and unanalysable — it cannot be broken down into constituent parts. Correlation ≠ identity (hearts correlate with kidneys but aren’t the same).
This fallacy warns against conflating moral properties with natural properties.
What is Moore’s ‘open question argument’?
If ‘goodness = pleasure’, then ‘Is pleasure good?’ would be a closed question (like ‘Is pleasure pleasure?’). But it’s clearly OPEN — we can coherently ask it and answer ‘no’. Therefore goodness ≠ pleasure (or any natural property).
This argument challenges the reduction of moral properties to natural properties.
How does the OQA fail? (H₂O objection)
The question ‘Is water H₂O?’ was ‘open’ before the discovery of hydrogen — yet water IS H₂O. Open questions show conceptual distinctness, not property distinctness. Two concepts can pick out one property.
This objection critiques the validity of the open question argument.
What is intuitionism (Moore)?
Moral truths are SYNTHETIC A PRIORI — not analytic and not empirically discovered, but self-evident when carefully reflected upon. We know them by ‘intuition’ — i.e., they are incapable of proof but can be grasped directly. NOT the same as gut reactions.
Intuitionism posits that moral knowledge is immediate and self-evident.
What is Mackie’s epistemological queerness objection to intuitionism?
If non-natural moral properties exist, how do we know about them? Intuitionism just says we have a ‘special faculty’ — but this explains nothing. No ordinary way of knowing (perception, reasoning, analysis) accesses non-natural properties.
This objection questions the validity of intuition as a source of moral knowledge.
What is Hume’s argument from motivation?
P1: Moral judgements motivate action. P2: Reason (beliefs) cannot motivate — only desires/emotions motivate. ∴ Moral judgements are not beliefs/judgements of reason — cognitivism is false.
This argument challenges the cognitive nature of moral judgments.
What is the ‘externalist’ response to Hume’s motivation argument?
P1 is false — moral judgements do NOT motivate by themselves. You also need a DESIRE to be good. A sociopath could believe ‘murder is wrong’ without being motivated. Moral judgements are beliefs; motivation comes from caring about morality separately.
This response defends cognitivism against Hume’s critique.
What is Hume’s is-ought gap?
You cannot validly derive ‘ought’ conclusions from ‘is’ premises. ‘Eating meat causes suffering, therefore you ought not eat meat’ is not a valid inference. The ‘ought’ introduces something new — a value — that no catalogue of facts can generate.
This gap highlights the challenge of deriving moral obligations from factual statements.
What is Hume’s fork?
- All knowledge is either (a) relations of ideas (analytic, a priori) or (b) matters of fact (empirical)
- Moral claims are neither — they are not analytic and cannot be empirically verified. Therefore moral judgements are not knowledge at all.
This fork categorizes knowledge and challenges the status of moral claims.
What is Ayer’s verification principle?
A statement is meaningful only if it is ANALYTIC or EMPIRICALLY VERIFIABLE. Moral judgements fail both tests — they are not tautologies and we cannot observe wrongness. Therefore moral language is not truth-apt.
This principle critiques the meaningfulness of moral statements.
What is the self-refutation objection to the verification principle?
The VP itself is neither analytic nor empirically verifiable — so by its own criterion, it is meaningless and cannot be true. Ayer responds: the VP is a DEFINITION of meaningful language, not an empirical hypothesis.
This objection raises questions about the consistency of the verification principle.
What is Mackie’s error theory?
Moral language IS cognitivist (it claims objective truths). But there are NO objective moral properties. Therefore ALL moral judgements are false. This is the systematic ‘error’ we make in moral discourse.
Error theory asserts that moral claims are fundamentally misguided.
What is the fairy analogy in error theory?
If everyone genuinely believed in fairies, all statements about fairies (‘fairies have wings’) would be false — not because we’re speaking fictionally, but because there are no fairies. Similarly, moral statements are sincere but false because there are no moral properties.
This analogy illustrates the nature of moral claims in error theory.
