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Naturalism – (realist & cognitivist)

Naturalism claims that moral properties are natural properties, meaning features or aspects of the physical world.
This makes naturalism a form of Moral realism, the view that moral properties (like goodness and badness) exist mind-independently.
Bentham’s utilitarianism is a form of meta-ethical naturalism because he claims that goodness is pleasure and that pleasure is a natural property.
Natural properties are features of the physical world, in this case a property of organisms like humans and animals.
So when we use ethical language to call an action right, wrong, good or bad, we express our belief about whether pleasure was maximised.
This makes Utilitarian naturalism cognitivist, which is the view that ethical language expresses beliefs that could be true or false.
E.g. if someone said ‘that act of stealing was wrong’, it means we think the action failed to maximise pleasure.

Naturalism vs Hume’s is/ought gap

Bentham’s argument for naturalism is that it is human nature to find pleasure good. We cannot help naturally thinking that pleasure is goodness.
Mill makes a similar argument, that happiness is our sole ultimate desire, which he claims is the ‘only proof’ possible that happiness is good.

Counter

Factual statements about what ‘is’, do not entail moral ‘ought’ statements about value.
E.g., Bentham’s factual claim that it is human nature to find pleasure good, just means we like pleasure. It doesn’t mean that pleasure actually is good and that we thus ought to maximise it.
Naturalists are making a completely baseless leap from is to ought.
Our ethical judgements, when we think something is right/wrong, could not have been rationally inferred from or justified by facts. So naturalist realism seems false.
Hume infers that our ethical judgements must instead come from our feelings.
So, ethical language is an expression of non-cognitive emotion. So cognitivism seems false.

Evaluation

Hume may be right that values cannot be inferred from facts. But naturalism could instead claim that values are a type of fact.
Modern virtue ethicists take this approach, returning to an Aristotelian view of moral concepts.
Goodness is flourishing (eudaimonia), which is a natural property of organisms.
Ansecombe argues that ‘ought’ functions like ‘need’. Foot illustrated with a plant needing certain things to flourish and argued humans and their needs are no different.
So, when we call an action good or bad, we refer to its enabling or disabling of flourishing and whether it is what a virtuous person would do.
On this approach Foot concludes there is “no difficulty” in deriving ought from is, illustrating that it is a fact children need adults, so adults ought to protect children.
This approach is stronger than classical utilitarian naturalism as it doesn’t make the mistake of trying to infer ought from is.
As MacIntyre points out, modern society’s focus on abstract law uprooted moral concepts like ‘ought’ from their context in the facts of human communal practice. This left morality without foundation or apparent connection to fact, which motivated the anti-realists to question whether it was even real.
Returning to an Aristotelian view of moral concepts reabsorbes ought back into is.
This is the solution to the nihilistic directionless relativism of the modern world.

Intuitionist non-naturalism (realist & cognitivist)

G. E. Moore rejected Naturalism with his two arguments: the naturalistic fallacy and the open question argument.
The naturalistic fallacy is a development of the is-ought gap which Moore formalised into fallacy format. It claims that it is a fallacy to assume that something being natural means that it is good.
The open question argument claims that trying to state the informative claim that goodness is a natural property such as pleasure, is incoherently equivalent to stating the uninformative claim that pleasure is pleasure. What goodness is, is therefore inevitably an open question.
Moore concludes that goodness cannot be defined through being equated in terms of anything natural.
However, Moore does not agree with Hume that there is no right/wrong. He proposes instead that goodness is a non-natural property. This claims there is more to reality than just the physical world. There is a ‘non-natural’ aspect to reality. Goodness is non-natural. Moore makes an analogy with numbers which are not natural things but are real in some other sense. A non-natural sense.
Another analogy Moore makes is that goodness is like the color yellow. You can’t describe or define yellow, you just know it intuitively when you apprehend it. Similarly, we just know whether an action is good or bad through intuition, i.e., we immediately grasp the truth of moral propositions. We don’t have to calculate or figure them out through a process of reasoning.
Moore concludes our minds have an ability called intuition which can access the non-natural reality and lets us know whether moral propositions are true/false.
Intuitionism is cognitivist because it claims we gain knowledge about whether an ethical proposition is true or false through intuition.
Our statement of the ethical proposition is therefore an expression of a belief which could be true or false.

Intuitionism vs moral disagreement

Evidence for intuitionism is that there is cross-cultural moral agreement on a core set of moral codes.
All cultures have rules about killing and stealing and that education is good etc.
This suggests we share intuition of what is right/wrong.
Intuitionists like Pritchard argue that the intuition we get depends on our understanding of a moral situation, which depends on our general knowledge of the world.
He thinks this explains the moral disagreement which exists.

Counter

Mackie points out descriptive moral relativism, that there are vast cross-cultural moral disagreements.
He accepts this doesn’t prove meta-ethical relativism, that there are no non-natural moral properties.
It does provide an abductive argument against moral realism, however.
Intuitionists claim one side of a moral disagreement may have the correct intuition and be right, whereas the other side is wrong due to some kind of misinterpretation.
Mackie argues it’s simpler to explain disagreeing intuitions as adherence to different forms of life.
Our moral intuitions reflect our social conditioning.
So, we are justified in accepting anti-realism, that there are no objective moral properties.

Evaluation:

We can strengthen Mackie’s argument further by adding that moral agreement could just come from evolutionary drives and the practical requirements for a society to exist.
If a society allowed killing/stealing, it would fall apart.
So we don’t need to think there are some mysterious non-natural moral properties to explain cross-cultural similarities in moral intuitions. We have a much simpler explanation, which is that relativism is true.

Emotivism

Ayer’s verification principle states that a statement is only meaningful if it is either analytic or empirically verifiable.
Ayer broadly agrees with Hume and Moore’s approach to attacking naturalism. The naturalistic fallacy disconnects values from the natural properties we observe.
Nonetheless Ayer rejects Moore’s idea of ‘non-natural’ moral properties as unverifiable.
Ethical language is not analytic as it can be denied without contradiction.
Ethical language is not verifiable, because we do not experience moral properties.
So, Ayer concludes ethical language is meaningless, so it can’t be true or false.
Ayer concludes ethical language just expresses emotions. E.g. if someone says ‘stealing is wrong’ that just means ‘boo to stealing’.
Saying something is right or wrong is just a way of expressing how we personally feel.
Some criticise emotivism by criticising the verification principle, e.g. that it cannot itself be verified.
However, Ayer based emotivism on other arguments too, such as Hume’s motivation argument
P1. Only desires are motivating, not beliefs.
P2. Ethical language involves motivation
C1. So, ethical language expresses non-cognitive desires
Other emotivists like Stevenson are not even verificationists. So that criticism is not decisive against emotivism.

Anti-realism vs Moral nihilism

Moral nihilism claims morality is pointless.
Traditionally, morality has been thought obligatory and binding because it is objectively true.
Anti-realism says there is no objective morality, which destroys that foundation of moral obligation. It suggests morality cannot be legitimated.
The concern is that nihilism might cause people to stop following morality or law. This could end society or justify atrocity.
Ayer’s theory was very popular until world war 2. Philosophers like Foot criticised Ayer’s rejection of right and wrong when the holocaust footage emerged, arguing such thinking may even enable such atrocities.

Counter

However, potentially destroying morality and causing the end of society doesn’t make Ayer’s theory incorrect.
Ayer would argue Foot viewed the holocaust and had a negative emotional reaction which she expressed with the word ‘wrong’.
So the nihilism objection alone begs the question regarding the truth of moral realism, and might ironically simply illustrate Ayer’s emotivism rather than undermine it.

Evaluation

The only way to disprove Ayer is to prove that morality is actually real.
Foot followed up her presentation of the nihilism issue with the point that the ‘separation’ between facts and values was the foundational mistake.
So Foot presents the nihilism issue in its strongest form. She isn’t saying the holocaust proves Ayer wrong, just that it is illustrative of Ayer and Hume’s fundamental mistake of thinking facts and values are separate.
This defeats all of Hume & Ayer’s anti-realist arguments. If values are a sort of fact, then they are verifiable a posteriori. So Hume’s fork and Ayer’s verification principle cannot exclude moral judgements.
We can verify that the holocaust undermined flourishing and claim it was objectively wrong, without merely expressing emotion.
So, anti-realism is false because moral realism is true. Leading to nihilism doesn’t prove anti-realism false, but it is illustrative of why it’s false; its mistaken separation of facts from values.

Weakness of emotivism: The ‘moral nihilism’ critique of anti-realism.

Moral nihilism is the view that morality is pointless. The concern arising from this is that people might stop following general morals or laws if they became nihilists.
Anti-realism seems to be pushing us in that direction.
If Ayer is right that there is no right/wrong – then he can’t say Hitler was objectively wrong.
Ayer’s theory was very popular from the 1920s until world war 2. Philosophers like Philippa Foot, after seeing the footage of the holocaust, started to argue that it can’t be valid to argue there is no right wrong and perhaps such thinking even enabled those atrocities.
Ayer thinks we can say that we don’t like what Hitler did, but there’s no logical way to say Hitler was actually wrong.
It looks like Ayer destroys morality, which could end society, if no one thought there was right/wrong.

Evaluation:

However, potentially destroying morality and causing the end of society doesn’t make Ayer’s theory actually incorrect.
Ayer would argue Foot viewed the holocaust and had a negative emotional reaction which she expressed with the word ‘wrong’.
So the nihilism objection alone begs the question regarding the truth of moral realism, and might ironically simply illustrate Ayer’s emotivism rather than undermine it.
The only way to disprove Ayer – is to prove that morality is actually real. Foot followed up her presentation of the nihilism issue with the point that the ‘separation’ between facts and values was the foundational mistake.
So Foot presents the nihilism issue in its strongest form. She isn’t saying the holocaust proves Ayer wrong, just that it is especially illustrative of Ayer and Hume’s foundational mistake of thinking facts and values, or is/oughts were separate.
This defeats all of Hume & Ayer’s anti-realist arguments. If values are a sort of fact, then they are verifiable a posteriori. So Hume’s fork and Ayer’s verification principle cannot exclude moral judgements. We can verify that the holocaust was disabling of flourishing. That is what Foot did when viewing the footage, she wasn’t merely having an emotional reaction.
So, anti-realism is ultimately false because moral realism is true. Leading to nihilism doesn’t prove anti-realism false, but it is illustrative of why it’s false; its mistaken separation of facts from values.

Non-cognitivism vs Moral disagreement

G E Moore criticises non-cognitivism because ethical language seems to involve cognitive features.
Moral disagreement and debate can feature rational persuasion, involving logical argument and knowledge of facts. People provide logical arguments as reasons for their moral views.
Disagreement requires contrasting belief claims about reality. Emotions do not make claims, so they cannot disagree. ‘Boo to stealing’ cannot be said to disagree with ‘hurrah to stealing’.
P1. emotions cannot disagree
P2. ethical language involves disagreement
C1. Ethical language cannot reduce to the expression of emotion.
Ayer’s non-cognitivism seems to be false

Counter:

R. M. Hare’s version of non-cognitivism is in a stronger position than Ayer to address this issue.
He argued ethical language expresses non-cognitive prescriptions, not just emotions.
E.g. ‘stealing is wrong’ means ‘don’t steal’.
Prescriptions are universal, we mean that everyone in a similar situation should follow this command.
This requires us to reason and debate with ourselves and each other about whether we would follow a prescription in all cases, or whether it clashes with other prescriptions.
So, ethical persuasion, disagreement and reasoning is more plausible as an expression of prescriptive attitudes than merely of emotion.

Evaluation:

However, overall Mackie’s anti-realist cognitivism ‘error theory’ has the strongest position.
Mackie accepts there is some role for emotion and prescription in ethical language, as Hume’s motivation argument showed. But Mackie argues it also expresses beliefs, making it cognitive.
He illustrates: a bioweapons scientist struggling with the morality of their job.
He argues people don’t merely want to know how they emotionally feel about the action, nor whether they could rationally universally prescribe it. People want to know whether an action is actually right or wrong in itself.
Mackie’s argument is convincing because of the power of social conditioning.
Morality is relative to the culture which constructed it, but conditioning is strong enough to make people believe it is real.
Mackie concludes there is no right or wrong, but we talk about ethics as if it existed in reality. So our ethical language expresses beliefs about reality and is thus cognitive, but those beliefs are all false because anti-realism is true.

Question preparation:

Key paragraphs:

Naturalism
Intuitionism
Emotivism
The moral disagreement issue

Question types:

Questions could focus on:

Naturalism
Intuitionism
Emotivism
Whether ethical language is meaningless (Ayer’s emotivism).
Whether ethical language reflects only what is in the mind of the speaker (Ayer’s emotivism)
Whether ‘good’ can be defined

Naturalism: yes – goodness = pleasure.
Intuitionism: no – bc non-natural.
Emotivism: no – bc meaningless.

Do we ‘just know’ within ourselves what is good/bad? (intuitionism)
Does ethical language have an objective factual basis?
(is it cognitive? – naturalism & intuitionism would say yes – emotivism is non-cognitive, so no)

Weirdly worded questions:

Absolutism & relativism questions.

Absolutism:

Absolutism is the view that there are objective ethical principles/rules which apply ‘absolutely’ – i.e., to all situations.
Naturalism believes in objective moral truths which are absolute.
So, Naturalism is a form of absolutism.
Bentham’s utilitarian naturalism claims goodness = pleasure – so an action is good if it maximises pleasure.
This principle of Utility is a meta-ethically absolutist claim. This is because Bentham thinks it applies absolutely – meaning to all situations.
Moore is technically a utilitarian, an ‘ideal utilitarian’, meaning he thinks there are other factors in addition to pleasure – e.g. beauty & friendship – which are also absolute goods – which we don’t calculate but instead intuit. So his theory is still absolutist – but claims there are a plurality of absolute goods, not only one. The intuitions we get, however, only relate to the goodness of a specific action in a specific situation.

Relativism:

A relativist is someone who thinks that moral judgements (e.g. X is wrong’) are only true ‘for’, i.e., relative to, a culture or individual.
Mackie is a relativist – he thinks morality is socially constructed and that ethical language is cognitive.
Ayer is partly a relativist (relativism adjacent) – he agrees there are no objective absolutist moral principles.
Ayer is a relativist about the existence of goodness, but he is not a relativist about ethical language.
Ayer would not say that moral judgements are ‘relative’ ‘to’ a certain culture/individual – he would say they are meaningless expressions of emotion.
It’s not that ethical language is ‘true in the opinion of’ a person/culture – they can’t be true or false, not even in a relative way – since they merely express meaningless emotion.
E.g. ancient people thought sacrificing children was good.
Mackie would say they believed that was good because of their culture.
Ayer, however, would say they merely meaninglessly express emotion – not beliefs.

Relativism = anti-realism + cognitivism

Emotivism = anti-realism + non-cognitivism

So you can still do this structure:

Naturalism (absolutist) vs is-ought gap etc
Intuitionism (absolutist) vs Mackie’s relativist critique
Ayer – not a full relativist – moral-disagreement issue – gets back to Mackie’s relativism being the best approach – not emotivism.

Conclusion:

If you defend naturalism: then, absolutism is correct.

If you don’t defend naturalism – then, relativism is correct.

“what is meant by the word ‘good’ is the defining question in ethics”- Discuss [40]

All 3 theories agree about it being the defining question – but disagree about what we can say about its definition, and disagree about why it is the defining question.
It is – because what we decide the answer is will have radical and foundational consequences for ethics.
If the naturalists like Bentham are right, then goodness being pleasure will determine that utilitarianism is the right moral theory we should follow.
If Ayer is right, then goodness being meaningless will make the whole of ethics meaningless and potentially pointless. So for Ayer it seems like the ‘only’ question in ethics.
Non-naturalism (intuitionism) – goodness cannot be defined – this is the defining question in ethics because it shows that naturalism is false and then explains how we get our knowledge of objective morality through intuition of non-natural moral properties.