Meta-ethics Summary
Normative Ethics deals with what things are right and wrong. They help people to understand what is right and moral and what is wrong and immoral.
Meta-ethical statements deals with what it means to claim that something is right and wrong.
Ethical statements can be verified or falsified by using empirical evidence.
Cognivists believe ethical language can have a true meaning
Non-Cognitivists believe words cannot be meaningful because they are not subject to being true or false.
Vienna Circle developed a theory called Logical Positivism who said ethical statements cannot be verified or falsified as they are neither analytic or synthetic statements
Analytic statements are statements that are true by definition whereas synthetic statements are statements in which the predicate is not a necessary part of the description.
Within Cognitivism Naturalism suggests all things are knowable using empirical evidence.
According to this approach “good” is something that can be defined and has a real existence.
Non-Naturalism is the belief that all things to do with meaning are knowable using intuition
In this approach “good” is something that cannot be defined using any type of natural experience. “Good” is not something that is found in things but instead is used to describe an action or object
Moore rejects ethical Naturalism because it teaches that moral terms and properties can be reduced to the terms of non-moral properties.
Moore’s approach led to the emergence of the theory of Intuitionism.
Intuitionists claim we understand moral principles using a special faculty called intuition. Moore’s idea was that we recognise good when we see it – we just know it is good.
Pritchard said it wasn’t only goodness that was indefinable but also obligation. For Pritchard, intuitionism was the joining of reason and human intuition to help decide what to do based on facts. In a situation where moral obligations clashed he simply said examine the...