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Intro to Meta Ethics
Meta-ethics is the field in philosophy which attempts to answer the question of what goodness is.
This opens up a domain of philosophical investigation ‘above’ normative ethics (hence ‘meta-ethics’) in which competing meta-ethical theories argue for what they claim goodness actually is.
Normative ethics are ethical theories which attempt to devise a system which enables us to determine which actions are good and which are bad. Natural Law, Situation ethics, Utilitarianism and Kanian ethics are all normative theories.
Normative ethical theories all have a Meta-ethical core. For example, some forms of utilitarianism claim that goodness = pleasure/happiness. That is a meta-ethical view about what goodness is and forms Utilitarianism’s meta-ethical core. Once that is established, Utilitarianism can go on to formulate the details of a system that enables us determine which actions are good and which bad. For example, in the case of Act Utilitarianism, that would include the hedonic calculus.
Normative theories typically require that goodness at least exists, though they argue over what it actually is. However, some meta-ethical theories (anti-realist theories) claim that goodness does not actually exist.
There are two main aspects to answering the question of what goodness is: metaphysical and linguistic.
Metaphysical: What is the nature of goodness? There are two opposing views on this:
Moral Realism: The view that moral properties (like goodness/badness) exist in reality.
Moral anti-realism: The view that moral properties (like goodness/badness) do not exist in reality.
Linguistic: What is the meaning of ethical language? There are two opposing views on this:
Cognitivism – ethical language expresses beliefs about reality which can therefore be true or false.
Non-cognitivism – ethical language expresses some non-cognition like an emotion, does not attempt to describe reality and therefore cannot be true or false.
The outcome of meta-ethical debate has the utmost importance for normative ethics. If anti-realism is true and there is no such thing as objective goodness/badness, then it seems difficult to construct a normative theory. If moral-realism is true and goodness does exist in reality, then what exactly goodness is will limit the normative theories which are valid to those based on that correct view of goodness.
Ethical Naturalism
This is the view that goodness is something real in the natural world – typically a natural property. The natural world is the physical world. A natural property is a trait or feature that a natural thing has. For example, temperature would be a natural property.
Bentham’s Utilitarian naturalism
Bentham’s Utilitarianism claims that goodness = pleasure. Pleasure is a natural property (at least if you don’t believe in a non-natural soul) of natural creatures. Meta-ethically, Utilitarianism is therefore a form of naturalism, moral realism and cognitivism.
“Nature has placed us under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do … a man may pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while”.
Bentham’s argument is that it is our human nature to seek pleasure and avoid pain, so that’s all there is for morality to be about. We just are the kind of thing which cannot help but find pleasure good and pain bad. Bentham claims we could try to pretend otherwise but cannot escape this nature. As this is a fact of our nature, it is therefore a fact that goodness = pleasure.
The linguistic claims of naturalism are straightforwardly that ethical language is cognitive as it functions no differently to expression of any other type of belief about reality. To describe the color of the table, I say ‘the table is brown’. This is a sentence expressing a belief about reality. The ethical language ‘stealing from that bank is good’ is no different for the naturalist. It is a sentence and a proposition about reality which will be either true or false depending on the sense in which that particular action of stealing involves whatever natural property the naturalist claims to be good.
Absolutism is the view that there is an objective standard of right and wrong that applies to all situations. Bentham would therefore be an absolutist, as he applies the principle of utility to all situations – an action is good if it maximises pleasure.
Hume’s is-ought gap
Hume’s is-ought gap (also called Hume’s law) criticises naturalism. Hume said philosophers talk about the way things are and then jump with no apparent justification to a claim about the way things ought to be. Put another way, an evaluative conclusion cannot follow from factual premises. An evaluative conclusion or evaluative premise is one which contains a value judgement.
The problem is, how we can possibly reach evaluative conclusions from purely factual premises? It looks like we simply have to baselessly assume that a particular fact entails a particular value.
P1. Killing people causes suffering.
C1. Killing people is wrong.
The inference from P1 to C1 is only valid if we assume the following hidden evaluative premise:
P2. Causing suffering is wrong.
Any attempt to reason from facts to values will simply presuppose a hidden evaluative premise which cannot itself be derived from facts. So, we cannot get an ought (evaluative conclusion) from an is (factual premise). Here’s another example:
P1. Allowing stealing will cause society to fall apart.
C1. Stealing is wrong.
This assumes the hidden evaluative premise:
P2. Causing society to fall apart is wrong.
Regarding Bentham & Mill, they point out that our nature finds pleasure good. Yet, Hume would point out that this only shows that our nature finds pleasure good, not that pleasure is good and that we therefore ought to maximise pleasure.
Another way of appreciating Hume’s argument is seeing that, for any moral proposition, you cannot give a factual justification for its truth. Take the example of “it is wrong to kill people” and try to figure out what the factual justification is for it. Why is it factually wrong to kill people?
You could try to point out facts about killing people, such as that it hurts or harms people or violates their preferences. It is indeed a fact killing people can involve such things. However, why is it a fact that it’s wrong to harm people? Why is it a fact that it’s wrong to violate people’s preferences?
Whatever answer someone presents as a fact (is-statement) from which they have inferred their value judgement (ought-statements), it seems you can always question what their reason is for that inference.
Any move from a factual is-statement such as “killing people causes suffering” to: “therefore, killing people is wrong” simply assumes that causing suffering is wrong. It looks like we cannot infer values from facts.
The is-ought gap as a criticism of cognitivism
If the is-ought gap is correct, then any moral view or statement a person expresses cannot have been inferred from facts. This means if someone says stealing is wrong, that could not have been inferred from factual beliefs. This leads Hume to conclude that our moral views are the result of our personal feelings instead.
Hume points out that that you could be aware of all the facts about a situation, yet if you then pass a moral judgement, that cannot have come from ‘the understanding’ nor be ‘the work of judgement’ but instead comes from ‘the heart’ and is ‘not a speculative proposition’ but is an ‘active feeling or sentiment’. This makes the is-ought gap also an argument against cognitivism and for non-cognitivism. Hume is arguably a kind of proto-emotivist.
Moore’s naturalistic fallacy
A fallacy is a logical error resulting from an assumption or a mistake in reasoning. There are different fallacies covering the different types of logical errors. Moore was influenced Hume’s is-ought gap argument and developed it into the form of a fallacy called the naturalistic fallacy. Applied to naturalism, it takes this form:
It is a fallacy to assume that something being natural means that it is good.
Naturalists seem to make that assumption. For example, Bentham argues that because it is human nature to for pleasure to be our ultimate desire, then pleasure is good. Yet, this commits the naturalistic fallacy. One can’t simply assume that something being natural means that it is good. The fact that it is natural for us to find pleasure good only shows that it’s natural for us to find pleasure good. It doesn’t mean pleasure is good.
Many philosophers have noted that the naturalistic fallacy is poorly named, since Moore also intended his naturalistic fallacy to attack other forms of non-naturalism. This includes many forms of religious Meta-ethics. For example, divine command theory claims that goodness = being commanded by God. Attempting to reduce goodness to God or Gods commands forms a non-naturalist theory since God and God’s commands are not natural things or properties. What makes God’s commands good? It’s difficult for a divine command theorist to answer that except through merely assuming that it is.
Moore’s real target is the attempt to reduce or define goodness in terms of anything else – even in terms of something non-natural. Whichever way goodness is proposed to be defined through reduction to something else, whether natural things like pleasure or non-natural things like the command of a God, it seems impossible to actually have a reason for doing so. All reductive accounts of goodness therefore rest on baseless assumption and so commit the naturalistic fallacy.
Response to Hume and Moore: arguments for Naturalism are inductive
Hume’s is-ought gap and Moore’s naturalistic fallacy can both be responded to by taking arguments for Naturalism as inductive rather than deductive.
Patricia Churchland argued for interpreting Hume as only targeting deductive reasoning from is to ought, such that that factual statements cannot entail moral statements. However, Hume doesn’t seem to say it’s impossible to reason from is to ought, just that philosophers have failed to do so thus far. Churchland proposes that Hume’s argument leaves it open for inductive reasoning to do that job. This approach can respond to Moore’s naturalistic fallacy too.
We could take Bentham and Mill’s arguments for utilitarian naturalism as inductive. Their claim is not that our nature finding pleasure good proves that pleasure is good, but that our nature finding pleasure good is evidence for pleasure being good. Natural premises do not entail evaluative conclusions, but they could support evaluative conclusions.
Hume and Moore’s issue is, how do we get from is (fact) to ought (value).
How do we get from:
P1. Pleasure is what we naturally desire. (is/fact)
To:
C1. Pleasure is good and so we ought to maximise pleasure (ought/value
The difficulty is that P1 is simply a different statement to C1. There doesn’t seem to be any reason to think that P1 proves C1. All we have is baseless assumption that something being natural could prove that it is good. So, this argument cannot work as a deductive proof. There is no reason to think that P1 being true means that C1 must be true. However, if we take Bentham & Mill’s arguments as inductive, then P1 is only evidence which supports C1.
The fact that all beings which can experience pleasure adopt it as their final end arguably is evidence that pleasure is good. The idea behind this proposal seems to be that it is unlikely to be a coincidence that all the diverse forms of action and behaviour ultimately reduce to the same goal of gaining happiness and avoiding suffering. It looks like the fact of psychological hedonism gives us reason to think that goodness = happiness.
Mill especially seems to accept that he is making an inductive argument when he admits that his proof of Utilitarianism is the ‘only proof’ possible, suggesting he accepts that it is not absolute deductive proof but only inductive evidence.
This approach could be used to respond to Moore’s naturalistic fallacy too, since it gives us an inductive reason to think that something being natural means that it is good in that in the case of pleasure, it being our sole and ultimate desire is evidence that it is good.
The claim that goodness = pleasure is not based on mere baseless assumption, then. It is based on evidence.
However, consider that we have strong evidence that human nature finding pleasure good is the result of evolution, in order to guide animals to evolutionary goals. So, we are not justified in regarding our nature finding pleasure good as evidence for pleasure actually being good since we have stronger evidence for it being the result of something else (evolution).
The open question argument
Moore argued that if naturalism were true, the result would be illogical. Take any naturalist claim about what goodness is, such as that goodness = pleasure.
IF: goodness = pleasure
THEN: (goodness = pleasure) = (pleasure = pleasure)
BUT: goodness = pleasure is informative, telling us about the world
YET: pleasure = pleasure is not informative (tautology), telling us nothing.
An informative statement cannot be equal in meaning to an uninformative tautological statement. So, goodness cannot = pleasure, or any other natural property. Therefore, naturalism is false.
A question is closed if it shows ignorance of the meanings of the terms involved to ask. A question is open if it does not display ignorance of those meanings to ask it. Since ‘Goodness = X natural property’ for a naturalist would be synthetic, one could be acquainted with the subject (goodness) but not the predicate (X natural property) and therefore would not necessarily be displaying ignorance of the terms involved to ask the question. Therefore, it will always be an open question whether goodness really is X natural property as we can always meaningfully and intelligibly ask the question ‘is goodness really X natural property?’
Mackie’s response to the open question argument: arguably Moore can at most prove that our linguistic concepts of goodness and pleasure are distinct concepts that cannot be identical. That doesn’t tell us anything about the actual metaphysical status of goodness in reality. Mackie made this kind of argument, claiming that in Moore’s time philosophers were too optimistic in thinking that linguistic analysis could tell us metaphysical truths.
“There are questions of factual rather than conceptual analysis: the problem of what goodness is cannot be settled conclusively or exhaustively by finding out what the word ‘good’ means, or what it is conventionally used to say or to do. Recent philosophy, biased as it has been towards various kinds of linguistic inquiry, has tended to doubt this.” – Mackie.
Moore’s Intuitionism
The open question argument showed that goodness cannot be identical to any natural property. We cannot say that goodness is equivalent to any natural thing. This means goodness cannot be defined. We can define water as being equal to H2O but cannot say what goodness equals. The naturalistic fallacy shows that goodness cannot be identical to anything at all, natural or non-natural.
Moore concluded that we can’t define goodness. We can’t say what goodness is because it is only itself – it is sui generis (unique). It is like the color yellow – you can’t describe or define yellow, you just experience it and can only point to yellow things. Moore argues the same is true for goodness. Therefore, goodness can’t be a naturalistic thing as naturalistic things can all be defined. So, we experience goodness, which Moore clams is due to a faculty of intuition.
Moore holds that when we observe or reflect on a moral situation, such as someone stealing, our intuition gives us the proposition ‘stealing is wrong’, depending on the consequences. This isn’t reducing morality to some subjective feeling however. Just as all humans have no choice but to perceive the color yellow when looking at a yellow thing, Moore thinks humans have no choice but to apprehend the truth or falsity of a moral proposition when observing or reflecting on the relevant moral situation. He thinks this occurs because we apprehend ‘non-natural properties’. Intuitionism is cognitivist as Moore thinks that ethical language expresses a belief about the non-natural reality, which is based on an intuition.
Moore is criticised for having an indulgent metaphysics of non-natural properties existing in a supersensible realm being somehow apprehended by a mysterious faculty of intuition. How could he possibly prove any of this?
Moore responds by making an analogy between his non-natural notion of ‘goodness’ and numbers, saying that neither ‘exist’ but do have ‘being’ in some way. The idea here is that numbers do not seem to be natural objects like trees or atoms. However, numbers do seem to have something to do with reality. Therefore, there must be a non-natural aspect or level to reality where numbers are and Moore says that’s where goodness is also. Moore says there is no supersensible reality. By ‘intuitive’ he only meant not inferred from other kinds of knowledge like logical or natural truths.
Moral disagreement. Not everyone has the same intuition about what is ethically good or bad. How can Moore explain moral disagreement if everyone has intuitive access to objectively true moral propositions?
Moore firstly argued that people often fail to be as clear as possible in their ethical propositions, which he thinks explains much of the moral disagreement.
Moore secondly argued that intuitions can be made at different levels of abstraction and furthermore Moore was a consequentialist, which means that there could be different intuitions about the same action in different situations. So the process of figuring out ethical truth required fitting your intuited moral propositions together into a coherent whole. If we could come together and discuss the situations our different intuitions apply to, he thinks we would agree.
Pritchard, an intuitionist, responds that moral disagreement occurs because some are less morally developed than others.
But consider The Pope, the Dali lama, and Peter singer. All are very morally developed people, yet all differ radically in their conception of ethics.
Mackie has the view that people’s intuitions about ethics do express cognitive truth claims, but that their ethical views are only true or false relative to an individual or culture, so true ‘for them’. Mackie argues that relativism is a better explanation of moral disagreement between different cultures than Intuitionism. People have moral intuitions, but they come from their culture or individual mind, they are not perceptions of a non-natural reality. Freud’s views on the conscience would also support this, since he thought our moral views were conditioned into our super-ego by our society.
There are a set of core moral principles similar in all societies however, such as prohibitions on stealing and murder. This could suggest there is some absolutist moral truth that humans are somehow apprehending.
Arguably societies have similar views on murder and stealing because a society which allowed such actions would fall apart and cease to exist. So societies have that core similarity because of practical necessity, not because of absolutist objective moral truths.
Emotivism
Ayer agreed with G.E Moore’s naturalistic fallacy argument, that ‘goodness’ could not be identical with any natural property. However, Ayer disregarded Moore’s ‘non-natural’ properties solution as unverifiable. Ayer thinks we are therefore left with the position that there are neither natural nor non-natural moral properties in reality, so anti-realism is true. Ayer’s anti-realism relies on the success of Moore’s arguments against naturalism therefore, however, as his own theory only specifically targets intuitionism.
Ayer accepted the fact-value distinction that Hume’s is-ought gap implied. Ayer also thought the connection between moral judgement and motivation and the connection between motivation and feeling, made it most plausible that emotions were the best candidate for explaining the psychological function of ethical language and its unverifiability. Unlike subjectivism which claims we are describing or reporting our feelings, Ayer thinks we are expressing them when using ethical language.
Boo/hurrah theory. Ayer concluded ethical language was meaningless according to his verificationist theory of meaning, since it can’t be empirically verified nor is it analytically true. Ayer proposed that rather than attempting to describe reality, ethical language really expresses emotion. Saying ‘X is good’ is really akin to hitting ur toe on a chair and saying ‘oww’. The meaning of ‘oww’ is that it expresses – it connects to – the part of your mind that feels pain. That feeling of pain is not a cognitive belief that could be true or false. It’s the same with ethical language says Ayer – it connects to and expresses non-cognitive emotions, not cognitive beliefs. So ‘X is wrong’ is really ‘boo to X’, or ‘X is good’ is really ‘hurrah to X’.
Ayer’s claim is that there is nothing more to ethics than expressing emotion. It follows that there is no objective truth nor falsity in ethics. Different people are not good or bad, they just have different emotional associations. Hitler had a particular emotional association towards Jews. There’s nothing more that can be said, no way to say Hitler was ‘really wrong’, just that one might have a different emotional reaction than him.
Some bring up this sort of point as a criticism against emotivism since if this was believed by everyone then the world might descend into anarchy and chaos if there are no objective ethical principles. This criticism in a way misses the point of meta-ethics however. Meta-ethics is just trying to determine what rightness and wrongness are. We may not like the result of a particular meta-ethical theory, it may indeed lead to the destruction of the world. But that doesn’t mean it’s incorrect. The science behind nuclear bombs may well end up destroying the world, but that doesn’t mean it’s incorrect. If ethics really is mere expression of emotion, then we can’t disprove that merely by pointing out what would be the consequence of everyone believing that as an argument against its truth.
The issue of non-cognitivism explaining moral disagreement
Ethical language involves moral disagreement – when people debate or disagree over moral issues e.g. abortion or euthanasia, they appear to disagree. However, a disagreement requires contrasting mental representations of reality, i.e. beliefs. Emotions cannot disagree – they merely differ and conflict. So, ethical langauge cannot at least completely reduce to expression of emotion. There must be some cognitive element to ethical language.
P1 – Ethical language involves moral disagreement.
P2 – Emotions cannot disagree.
C1 – So, ethical language cannot reduce to expression of emotion.
Ayer claims by claiming that “one really never does dispute about questions of value”. Ayer claims that moral disagreements are either genuine disagreements about non-moral facts or not genuine disagreements. Ayer points out that when we disagree with someone morally, we ‘admittedly resort to argument’ to win them over to ‘our way of thinking’, but our arguments do not attempt to show that they have the ‘wrong’ ethical feeling towards a situation which they have ‘correctly apprehended’.
Ayer’s point could be further defended by building on Hume’s is-ought gap. It may appear that ethical language includes moral disagreement involving logic and argument that cannot reduce to mere expression of emotion. However, arguably that is a confusion. This appearance could be explained by people being unconscious of the arbitrary emotional associations they have with certain facts. We disagree about facts and then don’t realise that we have emotional associations with those facts, so we confuse the factual disagreement for a moral disagreement. We can feel strongly that a fact has an ethical implication. We might even be unconsciously tempted to fudge or obfuscate in order to deny a fact, because of the ethical implications we associate with it. As Hume said, reason is a slave of the passions.
Hume’s is-ought gap tells us that since we can’t derrive a value from a fact, our fact-value associations are arbitrary and thus nothing more than how we personally feel. We express our feelings as moral claims which can appear to disagree, but ultimately they only express emotions which cannot disagree but only conflict. The appearance of disagreement only arises if we fail to understand that our statements about ‘right/wrong’ or even moral ‘truth’, really reduce to expressions of emotional approval or disaproval. A lack of awareness of the emotional associations we have with facts could be causing people to confuse what is an emotional conflict for a factual disagreement.
Mackie’s argument against non-cognitivism. Mackie agrees with Ayer that there are no mind-independent moral properties or truths. There is no objective right or wrong in reality. However, Mackie criticises the non-cognitive view of ethical language. He claims that objectivism about values has ‘a firm basis’ in ordinary thought and the meaning of ethical language. While he thought that metaphysically Moore was wrong to think ethical terms intuited some non-natural reality, nonetheless in moral contexts ethical terms ‘are used as if it were the name of a supposed non-natural quality’ (my emphasis).
Mackie regarded emotivism as ‘part of the truth’ as it explains why ethical language is motivating of action, but claims it’s a “very natural reaction” to non-cognitivism to “protest that there is more to ethics than this, something more external to the maker of moral judgements, more authoritative over both him and those of or to whom he speaks, and this reaction is likely to persist. Ethics, we are inclined to believe, is more a matter of knowledge and less a matter of decision than any non-cognitive analysis allows.” Naturalism satisfies this demand. Linguistically, however, naturalism only seems to allow for a purely descriptive and ‘inert’ ethical statements, which Mackie thinks ethical language clearly involves more than, e.g. motivation.
Mackie illustrates his view with the case of a scientist doing research on bacteriological warfare who is in a state of moral perplexity, wondering whether it would be wrong of them to do such research. Mackie claims such a person would ultimately want to:
“arrive at some judgement about this concrete case. While his emotions … will be part of the subject of the judgement, no such relation between the scientist and their proposed action will be part of the predicate. What they want to decide is not whether they really want to do the work, whether it will satisfy their emotions, whether they will have a positive attitude towards it in the long run … What they ultimately want to know is whether this action is ‘wrong in itself”.
Mackie thinks this is how ethical language is really “commonly used.” Mackie concludes that “ordinary moral judgements include a claim to objectivity, an assumption that there are objective values”. Ethical language therefore expresses beliefs which are cognitive and can be true or false. However, Mackie thinks that anti-realism is true and thus concludes that all ethical language is false. If someone says stealing is good, that’s false; just as if someone says stealing is bad, that’s also false. There is no right nor wrong in reality, yet we talk as if there were. So we have to understand ethical language as cognitive – as expression of belief about reality – yet since there is no goodness/badness in reality, those beliefs are all false. This is called error theory; the combination of anti-realism and cognitivism.
Extra credit:
Hume vs Kant on non/cognitivism
Hume’s meta-ethics was greatly disliked by Kant and motivated Kant to create his own ethical theory. Kant thinks ethics can be based on reason and that we can and should remove emotion as a motivation for moral decision making. However, Hume claims that moral judgements being motivating means they must involve desire, which is an emotion or sentiment. It’s not enough merely to reason that we should do something because why would we care that we should do what we should do unless we had a desire to do what we should do? Hume claims that we just are the sort of being which cannot help but require desire in order to be motivated to do actions, which means Kant’s ideal of the good will is an impossible ideal.
Rational agents can put their emotion aside. The idea that reason and emotion are in conflict goes back to Plato, who saw human reason as aimed higher than the world at intellectual abstract ideas, in conflict with the body which anchored reason in the mere physical world with animalistic feelings. Kant too clearly thinks something like this and suggests that, as rational agents, we can and should try to separate our reason from emotional influence when making moral decisions.
However, Hume claimed that “reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions”. There are everyday examples which illustrate this. When someone criticises your deeply held personal belief, your mind instantly starts thinking of defences. If it cannot think of anything, it starts getting angry and projecting negative psychological motivations into the critic. This looks like your mind has pre-conceived feelings and the role of reason and rationality is merely to provide ad hoc rationalisations to serve our prejudices. Our mind is more like a lawyer than a scientist. This suggests emotivism is true because the cognitive part of the mind is a slave of the non-cognitive part which means that our ethical language is fundamentally rooted in and expressing non-cognitions. Kant is overly optimistic in claiming that the rational cognitive part of our mind could operate independently of our non-cognitive side when making moral decisions.
Possible exam questions for Meta-ethics
Easy
Assess whether ethical terms such as good and bad have an objective factual basis that makes them true or false in describing something.
Do ‘good’ and ‘bad’ reflect only what is in the mind of the speaker?
Is the word ‘good’ meaningless?
‘Ethical naturalism is true’ – Discuss.
Assess intuitionism
Assess emotivism
Medium
Does common sense suggest that people just know within themselves what is good and bad?
“Values can be defined in terms of some natural property in the world” – Discuss.
“Basic moral truths are self-evident” – Discuss.
Can the word “good” be defined?
“Ethical terms evince approval or disapproval” – Discuss.
Hard
Critically compare relativism with absolutism
“What is meant by the word ‘good’ is the defining question in the study of ethics” – Discuss.
Quick links
Year 12 ethics topics:
Natural Law. Situation ethics. Kantian ethics. Utilitarianism.
Euthanasia. Business ethics.
Year 13 ethics topics:
Meta-ethics. Conscience. Sexual ethics.
OCR Philosophy
OCR Christianity
OCR essay structure
OCR list of possible exam questions