AQA Philosophy
Moral Philosophy

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Summary notes for Meta-ethics

Moral realism

Moral realism is the view that moral properties like goodness and badness exist mind-independently.
All moral realists ultimately claim that moral properties exist objectively, i.e., as part of reality in some way.
There are differences in the ways goodness is claimed to exist, however.
Moral naturalism claims that moral properties are natural properties. This means goodness is a feature of the physical world, e.g., pleasure.
Moral non-naturalism claims moral properties are non-natural properties. This means goodness is an aspect of the non-natural reality.
Moral realists are cognitivists, which is the view that ethical language expresses beliefs which can be true or false.
If one thinks that goodness is real, then one would think that ethical language involving statements about what is good, express belief about reality which could be true or false.

Bentham’s moral naturalism (inc. reason as the origin of moral principles)

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. That means a feature of the physical world, in this case a property of organisms like humans and animals.
Bentham’s argument for naturalism is that it is human nature to find pleasure good. We cannot help naturally thinking that pleasure is goodness.
So when we call something good or bad, we express our belief about whether pleasure was maximised.
This makes Bentham’s naturalism cognitivist, which is the view that ethical language expresses beliefs that could be true or false.
E.g. if someone said ‘Hitler was wrong’, Bentham would understand that as meaning we had calculated that Hitler’s actions failed to maximise pleasure.
So, when we say something is right or wrong, we are expressing our beliefs about whether the action maximised pleasure or not. So, ethical language is cognitive for a naturalist.

Virtue ethics as a form of moral naturalism

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.
Some forms of Virtue ethics are forms of moral naturalism.
Virtue ethics claims that the goal of morality is eudaimonia, which means flourishing. Flourishing is a natural property of biological organisms.
Virtue ethicist Philippa Foot illustrates this with the clear difference between a plant that is flourishing and one which isn’t.
This difference involves facts about its biology and whether it is getting what it needs in order to flourish. Foot argues that humans are no different from other organisms in this respect. We are also capable of flourishing or not, which describes natural properties related to whether we have what we need to achieve our good end..
So, virtue ethics can be a form of meta-ethical naturalism.
Virtue ethics is also cognitivist, the view that ethical language expresses beliefs that could be true or false. Virtue ethics holds that an action is good if it is what a virtuous person would do in that situation. So, when we call an action good or bad, we are expressing our belief about whether it is what a virtuous person would do.

Moore’s Intuitionism (non-naturalism) (inc. reason as the origin of moral principles)

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.

Moore’s ‘open question argument’

This is an argument against Naturalism, which claims that goodness is natural property, for example that goodness = pleasure.
If goodness was pleasure, that would just be like saying pleasure = pleasure. Yet that’s an uninformative tautology, whereas the former is meant to be informative.
So, goodness cannot = pleasure, or any natural property.
Moore concludes that goodness is not a natural thing.
A closed question is about something with a clear definition, like ‘does a triangle have three sides’.
An open question is about something which does not have a clear definition.
Moore seems to have shown that goodness cannot be defined, and therefore it will always be an open question as to what goodness really is.
So, all attempts to define goodness, like naturalism, fail.

Moore’s Naturalistic Fallacy

The naturalistic fallacy is a development of Hume’s 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.
Naturalists seem to make that assumption. Bentham assumes that it being natural to ultimately desire pleasure means pleasure is good. This commits the naturalistic fallacy.
Moore intended the naturalistic fallacy to attack other forms of non-naturalism too. E.g. divine command theory claims that goodness = being commanded by God. But if God commands something, that only means that God commands something. It doesn’t mean that it is good.
Whatever way goodness is proposed to be defined, whether natural things like pleasure or non-natural things, it seems impossible to actually have a reason for doing so. All definitions of goodness therefore rest on baseless assumption and so commit the naturalistic fallacy.
Moore concludes that goodness must be a non-natural thing which cannot be defined. We can’t say what goodness is because it is only itself, it is sui generis (unique). This explains why goodness cannot be equated in terms of anything else, as shown by the naturalistic fallacy and open question arguments.
All we can say is that goodness is goodness, similar to how yellow is just yellow.

Hume’s fork

Hume’s fork claims that there are two types of reasoning, each of which exclusively yields one of two types of truth.
A priori reasoning can only tell us relations of ideas (analytic) which are true by definition and cannot be denied without contradiction.
E.g. a batchelor is an unmarried man.
A posteriori reasoning can only tell us matters of fact (synthetic) which are true because of the way the world is.
E.g. ‘the sun will rise tomorrow’
Hume’s fork is used as a criticism of moral realism and cognitivism.
To be judgements of reason, moral statements like ‘stealing is wrong’ must be either analytic or synthetic.
They can’t be analytic, since there is no apparent logical contradiction in denying moral statements, i.e., by saying ‘stealing is not wrong’.
Nor could they be synthetic, because we do not experience moral properties, so they can’t be inferred a posteriori from experience.
So, moral judgements cannot be judgements of reason at all. They must instead express non-cognitive mental states like emotion.

Ayer’s verification principle

Ayer attacks moral realism and cognitivism.
The verification principle states that a statement is only meaningful if it is either analytic or empirically verifiable.
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.
He argues this is because it expresses non-cognitive mental states of emotion. So cognitivism is false.
The idea that moral properties are real is meaningless, making moral realism meaningless.

Hume’s motivation argument that moral judgements are not beliefs

Hume argues beliefs are inert, meaning they do not cause action. That requires desire.
E.g. A belief that it is raining outside might seem obviously motivating of the behaviour of carrying an umbrella. However, if a person lacks a desire to not get wet, that belief would not be motivating.
Believes can only be relevant to motivation if there is a relevant desire.
So beliefs are only indirectly connected to motivation.
Only Desires are intrinsically motivating.
P1. Only desires are motivating, not beliefs.
P2. Ethical language is motivating.
C1. So, ethical language expresses desires, not beliefs, making it non-cognitive.
Moral realist theories are typically cognitive. If properties exist mind-independently, then it seems ethical language would involve expression of belief about those real moral properties.
So, this argument attacks the cognitivism of moral realism.

Hume’s is-ought gap

Hume’s is-ought gap attacks the realism and cognitivism of Naturalism.
Hume argues that factual is-statements (statements about facts) do not entail moral ought-statements (statements about values).
Applying this to Bentham, just because it is human nature to find pleasure good, that only means that it is human nature to find pleasure good- it doesn’t mean that pleasure is good and that we thus ought to maximise it.
Hume’s point is that we have no basis for thinking that the ought-statement follows from the is-statement. Naturalists like Bentham are making baseless assumptions.
There is a justification gap between factual and moral statements.
This means that our ethical judgements, when we think something is right/wrong, could not have been inferred from facts.
There can be no factual justification for our moral views, so naturalism is false.
Hume also thinks it shows our ethical judgements must instead come from our feelings. Ethical language is an expression of non-cognitive emotion. So cognitivism is false.

Mackie’s argument from relativity

Mackie’s relativity critique of intuitionism
Mackie points out that there are cross-cultural moral disagreements.
Mackie accepts he can’t prove there are no non-natural moral properties.
His argument is that social conditioning is a simpler explanation of this moral disagreement.
This makes his argument abductive.
Intuitionism would claim that during moral disagreement, one side may be right due to having access to the correct intuition. Whereas the other side would be wrong due to something like misinterpretation of their intuitions.
Mackie argues it’s simpler for disagreeing intuitions to be explained as adherence to different forms of life.
We have the moral views we have because of the way we are raised by our society, not intuition of non-natural properties.
So, we are justified in accepting anti-realism.

Mackie’s arguments from queerness

Metaphysical queerness.
As Hume pointed out, there is a connection between moral judgments and motivation. If moral realism were true and moral judgements were somehow reflective of reality, there would have to be objective moral properties which motivate us.
Mackie sums this up as that ‘not-to-be-doneness’ would be somehow present in reality. It’s impossible to conceive of what that would involve.
So, objective moral properties are queer to the point of being inconceivable.
Epistemological queerness.
Even if there were objective moral properties, it’s not clear how we could know them.
Moore’s answer that we just have a mysterious faculty of intuition is arguably not an answer because it doesn’t explain how that faculty works.
So we lack a basis for trusting that apprehension of an objective property is really what’s going on in moral intuition.
So, Mackie thinks these are reasons to doubt the intelligibility of moral realism.

Moral anti-realism

Moral anti-realism is the view that mind-independent moral properties like goodness do not exist.
This position is usually based on the difficulty of explaining how goodness could exist.
The world we experience doesn’t seem to contain moral properties.
Natural properties cannot be moral properties because there is no basis for thinking they are.
Non-natural properties cannot be moral properties.
Moral anti-realists are often non-cognitivist. If there are no objective moral properties, that makes it plausible that ethical language functions as expression of subjective desires.
Some versions of anti-realism are cognitivist though, like Error theory. This claims that people are confused into believing that moral properties are real, and therefore actually intend to express beliefs about reality when using ethical language. Since there are no moral properties, all moral beliefs describe reality incorrectly and are therefore false.

Error theory (inc. society as the source of moral principles)

Error theory is anti-realist, it denies that there are objective moral properties.
Mackie argues for this with his relativity argument, which claims the simplest explanation of moral disagreement is that our moral intuitions result from social conditioning.
His queerness argument claims that the idea of an objective moral property is so metaphysically strange that we cannot really even conceive of it. The means by which we would gain knowledge of it is also strange epistemologically.
Mackie combines his anti-realism with cognitivism.
He accepts that we have feelings about ethics, but he argues we also have beliefs about it.
He says to consider a scientist doing bioweapons research who is struggling with the morality of their job.
Mackie argues that in such cases, people don’t merely want to know how they emotionally feel about the action, nor whether they could rationally universally prescribe it. They want to know whether the action is right or wrong in itself.
People thus believe that right and wrong are real, that they exist.
E.g. if you ask the average person on the street whether they think it being wrong to kill people is a fact of reality, they’d likely say yes.
Human psychology is such that we can be conditioned with social constructions and believe that they are real.
So, ethical language expresses beliefs about reality and thus is cognitive.

Emotivism (inc. emotions as the source of moral principles)

Emotivism is Ayer’s theory. Ayer agreed with Hume and Moore that Naturalism failed.
Ayer was a verificationist. The verification principle states that a statement is only meaningful if it is either analytic or empirically verifiable.
Ethical language is not analytic as it can be denied without contradiction.
Ethical language is not verifiable, because we do not experience moral properties.
Ayer concluded that anti-realism is true.
Hume’s motivation argument persuaded Ayer to conclude that ethical language expresses emotions. This argument said:
P1. Only desires are motivating, not beliefs.
P2. Ethical language involves motivation
C1. So, ethical language expresses desires
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.

Prescriptivism (inc. attitudes as the source of moral principles)

R. M. Hare invented prescriptivism. He intended it to be an improvement on emotivism. Hare agreed with Ayer that Hume had successfully shown that anti-realism was true. Hare also agreed that non-cognitivism was true. However, Hare was not satisfied with Ayer’s reduction of ethical language completely to emotion. Hare thought that ethical language did indeed express emotion – but also and primarily expressed prescriptions. Prescriptions are like commands or recommendation. For Hare, if someone says ‘stealing is wrong’ that just means ‘don’t steal’. This is still non-cognitive because the statement can’t be true or false.
Hare was influenced by Kant. Kant thought that actions are only morally good if they are universalizable – i.e., if everyone can do them. Hare doesn’t think there is such a thing as good or bad – but he did think Kant was partially right about how ethical language functions. When we say ‘stealing is wrong’ we are intending to universally prescribe that action to everyone. When I say ‘stealing is wrong’, that means ‘don’t steal’ and it means that I’m prescribing that no one should steal.
Hare’s solution to moral disagreement. Hare thought his approach helped to explain the role of reason, logic and disagreement in ethical language, which seem irreducible to emotion. When we make a prescription, however, we do need to use reason and logic to think about whether we would really accept it universally in all cases. Prescriptions can conflict with each other, causing what appears to be moral disagreement.
Hare illustrated with the example of Nazis who thought killing Jews should be universally prescribed. Imagine a Nazi found out they were Jewish. Most would not want to be killed. But then, they do not really accept their own universal prescription. So, Nazis are irrational. This doesn’t mean they are objectively wrong, but it does explain the role of reason, logic and disagreement in ethical language better than Ayer did.

Whether anti-realism can account for how we use moral language (reasoning, disagreeing, etc)

Moral language is often used in a way which is suggestive of the existence of moral realism, or at least cognitivism.
Ethical language involves features like reasoning, persuading and disagreeing.

Emotivism claims that ethical language merely expresses emotion.
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
Prescriptivism
Hare intends his theory to improve on Ayer’s non-cognitivism. Hare thinks ethical language expresses prescriptions which we prescribe universally. This means we have to rationally consider whether we would follow them in all cases. So Hare finds a way for reason to have a role in ethics. This seems to capture more of the complexity of ethical language than merely reducing it to emotion.
But the issue is not obviously solved by Hare’s prescriptivism. Prescriptions may explain some of the role of reason, but they do not express cognitive beliefs. Only beliefs can disagree. So, it seems Hare still cannot explain moral disagreement.
Error theory
Mackie seems to have the least issue explaining ethical language compared to other anti-realist theories. This is because he is a cognitivist. He thinks ethical language expresses beliefs, but that all those beliefs are false since there are no moral properties they could accurately be referring to.
However, it still needs explaining that reasoning could be so intimately connected with something that has completely no relationship to reality. Analogous things like belief in faeries or Santa are not like that.

The problem of accounting for moral progress

Moral progress appears to occur. E.g., society used to accept slavery. We now look back on that as morally wrong.
This progress also appears not random. It involves what Singer calls the ‘expanding circle’. The increasing inclusion of beings within the circle of those deserving of moral consideration.
Moral-realism would explain this through the existence of mind-independent moral properties. Progress is made through our increasing reliance on reason.
Anti-realism is challenged with explaining our intuition that moral progress occurs. And, in explaining the pattern of the historical developments which constitute this progress.
P1. The concept of ‘progress’ relies on an objective standard towards which increasing gains can be made.
C1. If moral progress exists, then objective moral values exist.
P2. Moral progress exists,
C2. So, objective values exist.

Whether anti-realism becomes moral nihilism

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.

Meta-ethics model essay plan

Note that this model essay plan is merely one possible way to write an essay on this topic.

Points highlighted in light blue are integration points
Points highlighted in green are weighting points

Meta-ethics

This topic is quite complicated and I haven’t managed to think of a way to simply put it into 3 paragraphs. Below are 4 paragraphs but in the exam you’d only need to use three of them.

Cognitive language expresses beliefs which can be true or false

Non-cognitive language expresses non-beliefs (emotions, attitudes, etc) which cannot be true or false.

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.
Open question argument. Naturalist claims, like that goodness is pleasure imply suct informative statements are equivalent to an uninformative statement like ‘pleasure is pleasure’, which is absurd.
So, goodness cannot = pleasure, or any natural property.
A closed question is about something with a clear definition, like ‘does a triangle have three sides’.
An open question is about something which does not have a clear definition.
Moore seems to have shown that goodness cannot be defined and therefore it will always be an open question as to what goodness really is.
So, all attempts to define goodness as some natural property fail.
However, Moore does not agree with Hume that there is no right/wrong. He proposes instead that goodness is a non-natural property.
Moore says goodness is like the colour yellow – you can’t define or describe yellow – you only know it when you see it.
Moore thought the same is true of goodness/badness – we simply know within ourselves – intuitively – whether something is right/wrong (same with knowing 1+1=2).
Moore claims this is because 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 vs moral disagreement

A strength of intuitionism is the evidence of 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.
However, Mackie is still a cognitivist. He thinks social conditioning is so strong people believe moral properties are real. So ethical language expresses beliefs about moral properties which don’t exist.
So Mackie would say Moore is a cognitivist for the wrong reasons. Ethical language doesn’t express beliefs gained from intuitions of non-natural properties.

Evaluation:

Mackie’s argument is successful – and we can add to it – the moral agreement could just come from evolutionary drives or 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. Again, we have a much simpler explanation, which is that relativism is true.
Mackie’s approach is the strongest because he recognises the difficulty of proving moral properties true or false, which justifies his turning to abductive reasoning.

Emotivism

Emotivism is Ayer’s theory. Ayer agreed with Hume and Moore that Naturalism failed.
Ayer was a verificationist. The verification principle states that a statement is only meaningful if it is either analytic or empirically verifiable.
Ethical language is not analytic as it can be denied without contradiction.
Ethical language is not verifiable, because we do not experience moral properties.
Ayer concluded that anti-realism is true.
Hume’s motivation argument persuaded Ayer to conclude that ethical language expresses emotions. This argument said:
P1. Only desires are motivating, not beliefs.
P2. Ethical language involves motivation
C1. So, ethical language expresses desires
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.

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 standard nihilism objection by itself seems weak, as it 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 makes the nihilism issue a stronger criticism that isn’t question-begging. 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 like flourishing, 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.

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: Prescriptivism

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, Mackie’s ‘error theory’ is the most convincing form of anti-realism.
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.
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.
Social conditioning is strong enough to make people believe morality is real.
Mackie thinks those beliefs are all false as he argues anti-realism is true.
Regardless, we talk about ethics as if it existed in reality. So our ethical language expresses beliefs about reality and is thus cognitive.