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Metaethics%20and%20ethical%20language

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Metaethics and ethical language Michael Lacewing enquiries_at_alevelphilosophy.co.uk Normative and metaethics Normative ethics: theories about what is right and what is ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Metaethics%20and%20ethical%20language


1
Metaethics and ethical language
  • Michael Lacewing
  • enquiries_at_alevelphilosophy.co.uk

2
Normative and metaethics
  • Normative ethics theories about what is right
    and what is good which we can use in practical
    cases
  • Metaethics theories about the concepts of right
    and wrong, whether moral judgments can be
    objectively true
  • Our interest today is in how moral language works

3
Moores intuitionism
  • The open question argument no other fact, e.g.
    greatest happiness, is the same as good
    goodness is irreducible to any other (natural)
    property
  • We may meaningfully ask Is doing what makes
    people happy good?
  • But Is doing what makes people happy doing what
    makes people happy? is not a genuine question.

4
Objection
  • They could be two different ways of thinking of
    the same thing.
  • Water is H2O - is water H2O? v. is water
    water?
  • Moore confuses concepts and properties - good
    is a distinct concept, but this doesnt mean it
    is a distinct property

5
Moral intuition
  • How do we know about good and right?
    Intuition - this is not a type of sensory mode,
    but a use of reason
  • Self-evident judgment
  • No other evidence or proof than its own
    plausibility
  • Controversial, but difficult to do without, e.g
    when giving reasons
  • Alternative coherence between judgments

6
Facts and values
  • Intuitionism claims there are facts about
    values
  • But when we disagree about facts, we know how to
    resolve the disagreement disagreements about
    values seem very different
  • There is a gap between claims about what is and
    claims about what ought to be (Hume)
  • Claims about values motivate us, claims about
    facts do not

7
Ayers Verification Principle
  • Ayer in order to be literally meaningful, a
    statement must either be
  • analytic (true or false in virtue of the
    definition of the words) or
  • empirically verifiable (shown be experience to be
    true).
  • Because statements about values are neither
    analytic nor empirically verifiable, they are not
    literally meaningful
  • If I say to someone, You acted wrongly in
    stealing that moneyI am simply evincing my
    moral disapproval of it. It is as if I had said,
    You stole that money, in a peculiar tone of
    horror

8
Developing emotivism
  • The big objection by its own standard, VP is not
    meaningful.
  • Stevenson the point about ethics stands - moral
    use of words expresses emotion or tries to arouse
    it in others, it doesnt state a fact
  • Objection there can be no rational moral
    argument on this view
  • There can be argument about the facts
  • There can be a disagreement in attitude, i.e.
    about how to live

9
Hares prescriptivism
  • Moral words are not emotive, but prescriptive
  • Right commands, good commends
  • Good is always relative to a set of standards -
    good teacher, good chocolate
  • The standard provides a descriptive meaning (not
    any chocolate can count as good)
  • You can agree the example meets the standard
    without caring about the standard, i.e. you dont
    have to prescribe it

10
Universalization
  • You can prescribe whatever you choose, but you
    are rationally constrained by consistency - if x
    is good but y is not, there must be some relevant
    difference between them
  • If I think your stealing from me is wrong, but my
    stealing from you is not, I must say what the
    difference is
  • Universalization allows greater rationality - we
    can argue about relevance and consistency

11
Two objections
  • Emotivism and prescriptivism make values
    subjective - so couldnt we value anything we
    chose to? But this makes no sense - morality is
    not about just anything
  • There is no logical constraint on what we can
    value, but because of the type of creatures we
    are, there is a factual constraint

12
Two objections
  • Is morality no more than taste? We think it has
    greater importance and authority
  • Our moral feelings matter more than others
  • We shouldnt say that there are no moral values -
    this is itself an expression of
    feeling/prescription, and one we disapprove of
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