ethics. investigation into the foundations of moral claims

EXPANDING OUR MENTAL MAP OF PHILSOSOPHY

Ethics

META- ETHICSInvestigation into the foundations

of moral claims

A taxonomy

Meta-Ethics

Non-cognitivism

Emotivism Prescriptivism

Cognitivism

Subjectivism Inter-subjectivism Objectivism

Cognitive Vs.

Non-cognitiveOught a moral claim be considered an ordinary statement capable of having a truth value and truth conditions?

Moral Non-cognitiveists, e.g., Ayer say NO.

EmotivismMoral claims are nothing over and above

expressions of emotion.

Statements only look as if they could have truth values.

On this theory the sentence “Birth Control is bad.” is not literally false, nor could it possibly be true.

Instead such sentences should be re-written something like as follows: Birth control, Whoo Hooo!!!! Or, Birth control, Barf!!!!Depending on your emotional response.

Prescriptivism

Prescriptivists claim that it is possible to make a recommendation about behaviors without implying that there is any particular ontological significant ground for that prescription.

One can provide a list of, for instance, 10 commandments without thereby implying that the commandments of behaviors comports with ‘goodness’.

ExpressivismCan be seen as a type of prescriptivism tied to community standard.

Moral claims are expressions of allegiance to governing norms of conduct such as a constitution or laws.

Consider the Cognitivists Response.

What does it take for a moral claim to have a truth value?

What is the reference of sentences with the word Good in them?

What does Good refer to ?

Moral Subjectivism

The truth of every moral claim is determined by Me!

Truthmaker: It is my attitude, a cognitive state, which makes those sentences true or false.

Intersubjectivism

The truth of a moral claim is determined by a collective, namely the community in which I reside.

Difficulty: what constitutes a community? How do you compare communities with different values?

ObjectivismTruth values of moral claims are determined by reference to moral properties of persons or states of affairs or possible states of affairs.

Problem: Do moral properties exist? Is their existence independent of individual or group preferences?

Moral realism says yes.

Moral anti-realism says, if such properties do not exist, then it’s like talking about the present king of the United States….and so false or neither true nor false depending on your semantic theory.

Ethics

In the previous section we looked at how to think about Moral theories. Now, we want to look at some of the historically important theories on offer.