Metaethics
The area of ethics that seeks to explore and discover the meaning of words used in ethical statements.
Mind-independent moral properties
The central question of moral philosophy is whether moral facts exist in some natural even supernatural way or are they someelse.
Moral Realism
There are mind-independent, external moral properties and facts – e.g. “murder is wrong” is a moral fact because the act of murder has the moral property of wrongnesse.
Moral Anti-Realism
Mind-independent moral properties and facts do not exist.
Normative Ethics
The area that attempts to discuss whether something is right or wrong, good or bad.
Empirical Evidence
Information that is gained using sensory data (i.e. what we see, smell, hear, taste and touch).
Cognitive
A statement that is subject to being true or false. E.g 'the cat is asleep on the chair'. Moral judgements express cognitive mental states – i.e. beliefs, aim to describe reality, and can be true or false E.g. “Murder is wrong”
Non-cognitive
A statement that is not subject to truth or falsity e.g 'hurray' or 'ouch'. Moral judgements express non-cognitive mental states, do not aim to describe reality, and are not capable of being true or false E.g. “Boo! Murder!” or “Don’t torture animals!”
Analytic Statements
Statements that are true by definition e.g. 1+1=2
Synthetic statements
Statements which the predicate is not a necessary part of the description, e.g. 'The mermaid has a large comb'.
Naturalism
The belief that suggests that all things are knowable (provable) using empirical evidence.
Non-naturalism
The belief that all things to do with meaning are knowable using intuition rather than empirical evidence. Ethical non-naturalism says that moral judgements are beliefs that are intended to be true or false (cognitivism) and that moral properties exist (realism) but are non-natural properties.
Intuitionism
A theory that ethical and moral truths are known and understood by our intuition.
Prima Facie Duties
This translates as 'at first appearance'. It means these duties are the primary ones.
Emotivism
The idea that the meaning of ethical language is not knowable as it's use is only an expression of emotion.
Boo-Hurrah Theory
(A.J. Ayer) another name for emotivism.
Prescriptivism
The idea that the meaning of ethical language is not knowable as it is a manner of prescribing a subjective belief or course of action.
Naturalistic fallacy
It claims that good cannot be defined and that attempting to provide ethical conclusions from natural facts is wrong.
Prescriptivism
Says that moral judgements express (non-cognitive) instructions that aim to guide behaviour. So, according to prescriptivism, when someone says “murder is wrong!”, what they really mean is something like “don’t murder people!” When you instruct someone to do something – e.g. “shut the door” – you are not expressing a belief that is capable of being true or false. Hence, emotivism is a non-cognitivist theory.
Moral nihilism
The view that no actions are inherently wrong. There’s nothing true about moral judgements such as “murder is wrong”. This then raises the question of why anyone should bother to be moral at all.
Ethical Egoism
Normative ethic that claims moral agents should do what is in their own self-interest. Therefore, an
action is morally right if it maximises one’s self-interest.
Ethical naturalism
Moral properties are natural properties. Ethical naturalism says that moral judgements are beliefs that are intended to be true or false (cognitivism) and that moral properties exist (realism) and are natural properties. So, according to ethical naturalism, “murder is wrong” expresses a cognitive belief that murder is wrong – where ‘wrong’ refers to a natural property. Utilitarianism is perhaps the obvious example of a naturalist ethical theory. It says ‘good’ can be reduced to pleasure, and ‘bad’ can be reduced to pain. Pain and pleasure are natural properties of the mind/brain and so utilitarianism is a naturalist theory.
The naturalistic fallacy
Moore’s book begins with criticisms of ethical naturalism (specifically utilitarian naturalism). He invents the term ‘naturalistic fallacy’ to describe the fallacy (i.e. bad reasoning) of equating goodness with some natural property (such as pleasure or pain). For example, Moore would say it is a fallacy to conclude that drinking beer is good from the fact that drinking beer is pleasurable because they are two completely different kinds of properties – one moral, one natural. Even if pleasure and goodness are closely correlated, it doesn’t and could not follow that they are the same thing. So, Moore would argue that Mill’s proof of utilitarianism is invalid: To conclude that happiness (a natural property) is good (a moral property) commits the naturalistic fallacy.
The is-ought problem
Hume argues that moral ought statements are a completely different kind of thing to factual is statements ‘Is’ statements- Factual claims about what is the case E.g. “That is an act of torture” or “Smith murdered Jones” ‘Ought’ statements -Value judgements about what should be the case E.g. “You ought not torture people” or “Smith shouldn’t have murdered Jones”. Hume argues that there is a gap between the two kinds of claim: You cannot logically derive ought statements like ‘you ought not torture’ from statements about what is, such as ‘that is an act of torture’. We can argue that this is evidence for non-cognitivism: the reason we cannot derive ‘ought’ statements from ‘is’ statements is because the former type of statement is non-cognitive while the latter is cognitive. Hume would say ‘is’ statements like “Smith murdered Jones” are capable of being true or false, whereas ‘ought’ statements like “Smith shouldn’t have done that” are expressions of emotion that are not capable of being true or false: Morality, therefore, is more properly felt than judg’d of
The open question argument
Moore further argues that it is an open question whether ‘pleasure’ and ‘good’ are the same thing: Closed question: “Is good good?” or “is pleasure pleasure?” Open question: “Is pleasure good? But Moore argues that if goodness and pleasure really were the same thing (as naturalism claims), it would be a closed question to ask “is pleasure good?”. In other words, Moore is arguing that if naturalism was true and ‘good’ meant the same thing as ‘pleasure’, it wouldn’t make sense to ask “is pleasure good?” because it would be like asking “is pleasure pleasure?”.
Moral Progress
Our moral values have changed over time. For example, it was considered morally acceptable to keep slaves back in the time of Plato but it’s not today. If we accept that such changes are examples of moral progress, then we can make an argument along these lines: If moral anti-realism is true, then there would be no moral progress, But there has been moral progress, Therefore moral anti-realism is false