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(Outline notes from AS Level
Conference, 30th Nov 06)
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Ethics itself is
concerned with matters of right and wrong. It asks ‘Is it
right to do X?’
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Meta-ethics, on
the other hand, is a ‘second order language’. In other
words, it stands back and asks ‘What does it mean to say
that something is right or wrong?’
·
It is a way of
looking and the nature and the function of ethical
statements, in order to understand what they are doing, and
therefore how they may be shown to be true of false.
·
Meta-ethics
became a key concern during the middle years of the 20th
century, as a response to the challenge of Logical
Positivism.
·
Logical
Positivism held that, if a statement was neither a matter of
logic, nor demonstrably true or false with reference to
evidence, then it was meaningless.
Logical
Positivism
- Wittgenstein –
hugely influential – In his book Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus, published in 1921, he set out
a narrow view of what could count as a meaningful
proposition. The function of language as being to
picture the world. Every statement needs to correspond
to information about the world.
- Developed during the 1920's by the
Vienna Circle of philosophers and made popular in the UK
by A J Ayer Language Truth and Logic.
- The Verification Principle - the
meaning of a statement is its method of verification.
A statement is thus only meaningful if it can be proved
to be true of false through such evidence.
- Ayer held that a statement can
only be meaningful if it is possible to say what
evidence would count for or against its truth.
- If you can't back it with
evidence, the statement is meaningless.
Metaphysical
ethics
·
‘Metaphysical ethics’, wanted
to show that morality could be related to an overall view of
the world and the place of humankind within it.
·
F H Bradley, in Ethical
Studies (1876) argued that the supreme good for
humankind was self-realisation.
·
Morality is not just about
particular actions, but about the character of the people
that perform them, and the understanding they have of their
part in the wider world.
·
Metaphysical ethics depends on
two abstract ideas: the world as a whole, and
self-realisation. Neither can be reduced to evidence that
the logical positivists were later claimed as necessary.
Thus, they would have seen metaphysical ethics as
meaningless.
Intuitionism
- G E Moore argued in Principia
Ethica (1903) that the primary term ‘good’ could not
be defined.
- Fundamental moral principles
cannot be proved to be true or false, but are recognised
as soon as they are thought about.
- The analogy Moore used was with
colour. We know what ‘yellow’ is, and can recognise
it wherever it is seen, but we cannot actually define
yellow. In the same way, we know what ‘good’ means, but
cannot define it.
- He claimed that most earlier
ethical theories had fallen into the ‘naturalistic
fallacy’ of trying to derive an ‘ought’ from an
‘is’. You may know what ‘good’ is, but you cannot define
it.
- W D Ross (1877-1971) argued that
Moore was right to deny that you could equate goodness
with any natural property, but that he was wrong in
arguing that the only criterion for moral obligation was
to maximise the good.
- He pointed out that one may have a
conflict of duties, and it may not be at all
obvious which is to take priority. My duty is therefore
self-evident (known through intuition) provided that it
does not conflict with another self-evident duty.
- That is why we have moral dilemmas
– if you did not have a conflict of duties, a conflict
in what you see as ‘good’ then everything would be
straightforward. In real life situations, Ross was
right, there are always conflicting duties.
- Notice what is implied by the
intuitionist approach: you cannot use any factual
evidence to show that something is good or that one has
a moral obligation. All basic moral judgements are
self-evident.
Emotivism
- The criticism of moral statements
by the logical positivists was based on the assumption
that such statements were making factual claims. A J
Ayer argued for a theory about the nature of ethical
statements that became known as emotivism.
- An emotivist claims that moral
statements are not factual, but express the feelings of
the person who makes them. If you like something then
you call it ‘good’, if you dislike it, ‘bad’.
Prescriptivism
- To make a moral statement is to
prescribe a particular course of action.
- This approach was taken by R M
Hare (The Language of Morals (1952) and
Freedom and Reason (1963)). He argued that a moral
statement is ‘prescribing’ a course of action,
recommending that something should be done, not just
expressing a feeling.
- Moral statements are more than
commands, for they make a general suggestion about what
action should be taken in similar circumstances.
Overcoming selfishness?
- It is possible to argue that moral
statements are means by which we overcome selfish
perspectives. John Mackie (1917-1981), in Ethics:
Inventing Right and Wrong (1977), argued
that:
- there are no objective moral
values
- therefore all moral claims are
objectively ‘false’
- but we can continue to use moral
language if it helps us to overcome narrow views and
sympathies.
But…
- If we are ‘inventing’ right and
wrong, why are we doing it?
- What does humankind have to gain
from having developed a sense of conscience?
- At some point ethics needs to be
based on something other than itself.
- Morality remains a phenomenon
which needs some explanation.
the changed
perspective
- Much of the discussion of ethics
until about the 1960s was concerned with the attempt to
find some meaning for ethical language. It felt a bit
like a dead end.
- Philosophers did not claim to be
able to say that anything was good or bad, only what it
meant to say that something was good or bad.
- Then, in connection with medicine,
warfare, environment etc, there arose a huge number of
basic issues that needed to be addressed. Philosophers
started to get up and make moral claims again.
© Mel
Thompson 2006
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