A2: Meta-Ethics

G582: A2 Religious Ethics

Ethical Topics and Theories: Meta-ethics

Candidates should be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

the use of ethical language – the ways in which different scholars understand how words like ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘right’, ‘wrong’ are used when ethical statements are made;

how meta-ethics differs from normative ethics;

the different approaches: cognitive and noncognitive; ethical naturalism; intuitionism; emotivism and prescriptivism and how these apply to ethical statements.

Candidates should be able to discuss these areas critically and their strengths and weaknesses.

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A2: Meta-Ethics

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A2: Meta-Ethics

Candidates should be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of how meta-ethics differs from normative ethics;

• Normative ethics = the philosophical study of what makes an act right/wrong, or what makes a person good/bad. e.g., Utilitarianism.

• Meta-ethics = The philosophical study of ethical language and judgement.

o ‘what does ‘right’ mean in the sentence, “that is the right thing to do?”’

o ‘what do you mean when you judge an act to be right?’

• At the beginning of the 20th Century, English philosophers started to be interested in the analysis of ethical language and judgement (Wittgenstein’s ‘linguistic turn’).

Candidates should be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the different approaches: cognitive and noncognitive; ethical naturalism; intuitionism; emotivism and prescriptivism and how these apply to ethical statements.

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Do you think ethical sentences can be true and false?

YES NO

Do you think we can know that an ethical statement is true through experience?

YES NO

You are a moral naturalist. Choose from:UtilitarianismNatural Moral LawVirtue Ethics

You are a moral non-naturalist (an intuitionist). Choose from:Consequentialist intuitionism (Moore)Deontological intuitionism (Ross)

Do you think ethical sentences are simply expressions of approval/disapproval?

YES NO

You are an emotivist(Ayer)

You are a prescriptivist(Hare)

You are a cognitivist You are a non-cognitivist

A2: Meta-Ethics

Cognitivism• Ethical statements are meaningful and truth apt – either true or false – and

can be known.• Ethical statements are FACTS

• There are two kinds of moral cognitivism:

o Naturalism: ‘moral goodness’ is a natural property that can be discovered through experience.

o Non-naturalism: ‘moral goodness’ is not a natural property.

Non-cognitivism• Ethical sentences are not truth-apt, and are instead meaningless when taken

as assertions of fact.• So ethical sentences express something other than facts:

o Emotion (Ayer’s Emotivism).o Prescriptions (Hare’s Prescriptivism).

Versions of CognitivismCognitivism (i): Ethical naturalism

• Utilitarianism is a kind of naturalism (pleasure is a natural property).• Ditto for Aristotelian virtue theory (eudaimonia is a natural state of being).• Ditto for Aquinas’ Natural Moral Law (what is natural is good).• We can get an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’. E.g., if eating chocolate causes you

pleasure, then you ought to eat chocolate. (We start with a description of a natural fact and you can get to a moral/value fact.)

• Moral properties are just part of the natural order, discoverable by observation/science.

• Moral properties can be defined in terms of natural properties (F.H. Bradley)Strengths of Ethical Naturalism• There is nothing mysterious of ‘metaphysical about moral properties – they

are just part of the natural world.• Ethical statements can be observed to be true or false (so meaningful

according to the Logical Positivist’s criteria).• We can know moral truths in familiar ways (through experience).• Gives us an objective moral reality.

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Criticisms of Ethical Naturalism

(1) Hume’s Law

• We need to distinguish between matters of fact (descriptions) and matters of value (evaluations).

• It is logically invalid to derive an evaluative conclusion (ought) from premises that are purely descriptive (is)

• His point is NOT that we can never use natural facts to support our conclusion, but only that we cannot derive our conclusion solely from them: We cannot rely on the facts alone.

• This is called Hume’s Law(P) Killing animals causes pain(C) Therefore, you ought to be vegetarian

• **This argument is invalid• But what about the following argument?

(P1) Killing animals causes pain(P2) Causing pain is morally wrong(C) Therefore, you ought to be vegetarian

• This is valid, but already includes an evaluation as a premise, so the argument doesn’t move from mere description to evaluation.o However John Searle argues that in some cases you can derive an ought

from an is: (P) You promised to pay me back my £5 (C) Therefore you ought to pay me back

o Searle argues that the institution of promise keeping is a natural fact about us (society), and there are ‘normative implications’ for this.

But perhaps there is a hidden evaluative premise – ‘you ought to keep promises’ (or the premise just is evaluative anyway).

(2) The Naturalistic Fallacy (G.E. Moore)

• ‘Morally good’ cannot be defined. It is a simple term.• I can teach you what is good by giving examples. (Same point for colours – e.g.,

‘yellow’.)• Moral values are not reducible to natural properties.

(3) Moore’s Open Question Argument

• Let us suppose that I am wondering if it is good to do act A.

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A2: Meta-Ethics

• The Utilitarian replies ‘Yes, because doing A causes more pleasure than pain.’• It is then an open question to ask: ‘But is it good to cause more pleasure than

pain?’• This question is just as intelligible as the first.• So ‘A is good’ does not mean the same thing as ‘A causes more pleasure than

pain’.

Cognitivism (ii): Ethical non-naturalism

• Moral properties are not the same kind of properties as colours, shapes, weights etc. Moral properties are sui generis (a separate kind of property)

• Moral properties cannot be experienced through the senses in the way that colour properties can.

• BUT – moral properties are REAL properties.• People who are ‘good moral judges’ can discern the wrongness in some

actions. (It takes practice.)• We discern morality in a ‘kind-of-perceptual’ way (we have a special ‘moral

truth sensor = moral intuition).• Ross: ‘The moral order ... is just as much part of the fundamental nature of the

universe ... as is the spatial or numerical structure expressed in the axioms of geometry or arithmetic.’

Versions of non-naturalism(1) Moore’s Intuitionism (Principia Ethica (1903))

• He believes ethical terms pick out simple, primitive non-natural properties.• Ethical terms are indefinable.• Ethical facts cannot be reduced to natural facts.• We use moral reasoning (moral intuition) to work out what goods to pursue

(hence the theory is a kind of consequentialism).

(2) Prichard’s Intuitionism

• Common sense obligations are self-evident.• Our moral intuition tells us what our obligations are. (If you understand what

promises are, then you just know you ought to keep them.)

(3) Ross’ Deontological Intuitionism

• There are seven prima facie duties that we should consider when making a moral judgement:

i. fidelityii. reparation

iii. gratitude

iv. non-maleficence v. justice

vi. beneficence

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A2: Meta-Ethics

vii. self-improvement • We use intuition to show us what is morally relevant in the particular situation• We use reason/judgement to work out which prima facie duty makes

demands on us in the particular situation.• E.g., in Sartre’s dilemma, intuition might reveal that JUSTICE outweighs

FIDELITY (and so the young man ought to fight the Nazis).

Strengths of Non-naturalism (intuitionism)

• The theories avoid the Naturalistic Fallacy, and other criticisms of Naturalism.• The fact that scientists haven’t discovered natural moral properties is not

surprising, and not a problem

Criticisms of Non-naturalism (intuitionism)

• How can we justify our own moral judgements?• How do we gain moral knowledge? Intuition sounds a bit mysterious.• Are moral properties real if Science doesn’t find them?

o But not everyone believes in the ‘closure of Science’.

Ethical non-cognitivismBackground

Derived from Logical Positivism

Logical Positivism = if a synthetic sentence cannot be empirically verified, then it is meaningless.

• synthetic/analytic distinction.• empirical verification = observation/scientific test – based on experience.

The influence of British Empiricism

Empiricism = All knowledge comes from experience. John Locke: all human knowledge is a posteriori. The mind is a tabula rasa that

experience colours. David Hume: ideas come from sense experience.

Wittgenstein’s influence

Wittgenstein influenced the Logical Positivists. Picture-theory of meaning: a word gets a meaning by referring to something in

the world. The word ‘chair’ is meaningful only because it represents

a part of reality. Words that fail to refer fail to have a meaning.

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So there are problems with Ethical Naturalism and Non-naturalism.

Versions of Non-cognitivismNon-cognitivism (i): Emotivism

Emotivism is a theory of meta-ethics developed in the Twentieth Century by:1) A.J. Ayer in his Language, Truth and Logic (1936)2) C.L. Stevenson in his Ethics and Language (1944)

Emotivism is ...

o Anti-realist (there are no mind-independent moral properties)o Non-cognitivist (‘killing is wrong’ is not truth-apt)o Subjectivist (there are no external standards)

Argument:o If moral sentences describe the moral properties an act has, then such

sentences are meaningless because they cannot be verified. o If a sentence is meaningless, then it has no use.o But, moral sentences do have uses.o Therefore they are not used to make cognitive claims.

Hence moral sentences are non-cognitive. (They do not express truths or falsehoods.)

When we say: “Cruelty towards children is wrong” we are really expressing a negative attitude (BOO!) towards killing children, and when we say “Being kind to old people is good” we are expressing positive feelings (HOORAH!) towards such acts of kindness.

Hence, morality is subjective: moral sentences are expressions of our emotions = EMOTIVISM.

Strengths of Emotivism

1. Avoids what Mackie calls an ‘Error Theory’. In other words, Emotivism explains how ethical sentences can have a meaning without relying on ‘queer’ properties.

2. Emotivism offers a coherent analysis of moral sentences that we could hold if objective theories fail.

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3. Ayer & Stevenson highlighted the importance of language in the study of Ethics.

Criticisms of Emotivism

Logical Positivism is false, therefore since Emotivism rests on LP, it too must be false.

o Both Ayer and C.L. Stevenson thought that Emotivism would survive even if Logical Positivism was disproved. Look, there just are no moral properties (non-natural or natural).

Subjectivism cannot explain the existence of moral disagreemento Ayer thought that moral disagreements were either:

i. genuine non-moral disagreements about the non-moral facts, orii. simply not genuine moral disagreements.

On this view, disagreement just boils down to a ‘shouting match’. Vardy & Grosch: Emotivism leaves moral debate as ‘just so much hot air and nothing else’.

Subjectivism cannot explain the existence of moral disagreemento C.L. Stevenson’s version of Emotivism can accept genuine moral

disagreements. Stevenson thought that our emotion-response is dependent upon background beliefs and principles (religious, moral, political etc). And so a moral disagreement boils down to a disagreement over fundamental moral principles

When I say ‘killing is wrong’, I am not merely expressing my attitude - I am also saying that you ought not kill.

o Ayer thinks that moral sentences might be used to provoke a certain response, but this is not a main idea in his theory. Stevenson however argues that moral sentences contain both (i) an expression of emotion, and (ii) an intention to influence the feelings of others.

My emotional-responses are not as reliable as using REASON when dealing with ethical situations. (Rachels argues reason should have a central role in moral deliberation).

o Ayer thinks that just as ‘I like coffee’ needs no reason to support it, so moral sentences are just subjective. Stevenson thinks that moral sentences are the result of subjective views, and can be backed up with such reasons.

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Non-cognitivism (ii): Prescriptivism

R.M. Hare’s attempt to improve the Emotivism of Ayer and Stevenson. Unlike Emotivism, Prescriptivism does NOT say that moral sentences are

expressions of approval/disapproval, but that they are recommendations or commands of a course of action that others ought to follow.

“Murder is wrong” means “Do not murder!” Prescriptivism: name commonly given to those with views which hold that

moral judgements are in some special sense ‘action guiding’. Hare thinks that moral prescriptions are universalizable – everyone should

agree – but only in similar circumstances. (Similar in spirit to Kant’s theory). We kind of ask “What if everyone did that?”

Hare believes that calling an action wrong commits the speaker to judging wrong any relevantly similar action done at any time and any place by any person.

So there is a rational side to moral judgements – it is rational to only prescribe universalisable judgements (We ask – “What if everyone did that?”).

It is rational to only act on those judgements that are universalisable.

Strengths of Prescriptivism

• It seems beneficial for morality to have a common set of moral laws (this might be achieved by others agreeing with us – this is an advantage of the universal nature of prescriptions).

• Avoids the conclusion that the moral discourse is fundamentally non-rational (improvement over Ayer’s Emotivism).

• Because Hare thinks morality has to be rational – it explains why in most situations the act of murder is not prescribed – it is irrational and inconsistent.

• Prescriptivism can only be true if all other attempts at an objective theory fail – and they do fail (it could be argued).

• Prescriptivism explains moral disagreements: there can be genuine disagreement over which prescriptions are universal.

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A2: Meta-Ethics

Criticisms of Prescriptivism

• How do I know which judgements are universalisable – does this rely on my subjective ideals? This might just lead to a kind of relativism.

• Are all moral sentences prescriptions? If I am having a moral discussion with a friend who I know will never murder anyone, I might still say to him, “Murder is wrong” even though I am not recommending that he does not commit murder (I know that he has the same view).

• This is a difficult question to answer. Hare thinks that prescriptions are universal – this means that they apply to anyone in the same situation (If I say that you ought not to kill in this situation, this does NOT mean that I would recommend not-killing in all situations). BUT, these prescriptions are not independent of us humans – they are dependent upon rationality. So in this way they are subjective. We could call Hare’s theory a subjective universalism. The universal recommendations are those it would be rational to accept as universals.

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