Transcript Is morality objective? The state of the debate

Metaethics: an overview
Michael Lacewing
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© Michael Lacewing
Cognitivism
• There is moral knowledge.
• Moral judgments are expressions of
belief, and can be true or false.
• Moral realism: there are moral
properties, and moral judgments can
‘fit the facts’.
• But what kinds of truth are moral
truths, and how do we discover them?
Naturalistic fallacy
• G E Moore’s ‘naturalistic fallacy’: moral
properties are not natural properties, e.g.
goodness is not happiness.
• Open question argument:
– ‘Is happiness goodness?’ is open; ‘Is happiness
happiness?’ is not. Goodness is a distinct
property.
• Objection: This only shows that the concept
‘goodness’ is not the concept ‘happiness’.
– Cp. ‘Is water H2O (in liquid form)?’ is open: ‘Is
water water?’ is not.
– Two concepts can both refer to one property.
Is-ought gap
• Moore: you cannot deduce a moral
value from a natural fact.
• Hume: a gap between describing and
prescribing
– ‘this ought…expresses some new relation
[of which it] seems altogether
inconceivable, how this new relation can
be a deduction from others, which are
entirely different from it’
Fact-value distinction
• According to Moore, there are facts about moral
values. But what kinds of ‘facts’ can these be?
Aren’t values dependent on valuing?
• A J Ayer: when two people disagree over a fact,
the matter can be resolved (or at least, we
know what would resolve it); when two people
disagree over a value judgment, either they
disagree over a (natural) fact, or there is no
further way to resolve the disagreement.
Cognitivism developed
• But moral reasoning is not silly. Natural facts
can be reasons for us to act. Reasons are
relational properties.
• Reasons are readily understandable, e.g.
reasons for holding scientific beliefs.
– Facts about reasons are normative facts.
• Cognitivism: There are facts about whether
some natural fact is a moral reason.
Moral reasoning
• The judgment ‘X is wrong’ = ‘The moral
reasons against doing X outweigh any reasons
for doing X.’
• It is difficult to establish whether some fact
is a moral reason, and how strong it is.
• When two people disagree morally, they
either disagree about natural facts or about
normative facts.
– At least one is making a mistake.
Moral reasoning
• Moral reasoning is a matter of weighing
up what reasons we have to act in
particular ways. Moral judgments can’t
be deduced from natural facts, but
they can be rationally supported by
them.
• Reasons bridge the is-ought gap.
Non-cognitivist response
• Blackburn: our judgments about what reasons
we have are a reflection of our attitudes, not a
description of independent normative facts.
• Blackburn and Williams: what is it to judge
moral reasons ‘correctly’?
– Has someone who judges they have no reason to
be moral made a mistake?
• But then, how is moral reasoning possible?
Non-cognitivism developed
• Charles Stevenson and Simon Blackburn: there is
a disagreement in attitude, and attitudes are
not held one-by-one.
– My attitude of disapproval relates to beliefs about the
action (my reasons for disapproving), desires towards
it, and to other attitudes of approval and disapproval
(similar feelings about similar actions).
– Many attitudes can be involved in a single practical
ethical issue, e.g. abortion.
• Blackburn: very few systems of moral attitudes
are internally coherent and psychologically
possible.
Hume’s analogy
• All human beings have ‘sympathy’. But
agreement ≠ truth.
– ‘when you pronounce any action or character
to be vicious, you mean nothing, but that…
you have a feeling… of blame from the
contemplation of it. Vice and virtue,
therefore, may be compar’d to sounds,
colours, heat and cold, which… are not
qualities in objects, but perceptions in the
mind’
McDowell’s response
• There are truths about ‘secondary
qualities’
– The colour of an object is the colour it appears to
normal perceivers in normal light.
– This is no less objective than its size or shape.
• Values are similarly objective – what is of
value merits being valued. It provides an
objective reason for us to respond in a
particular way.
Relativism
• But there is no universal human set of
response. Moral values are relative to
cultures.
• Descriptive v. normative? Is there any
objective standard independent of
what a culture says is right or wrong?
• Disagreement is not enough for
relativism – some cultures may be
wrong.
Objections
• Cultures share many basic values,
which stem from human nature.
– Differences reflect different conditions of
life.
– Aristotle’s list of virtues: attempts to deal
with common problems
• Response: there is no one ‘best’ way of
living
Objections
• Relativism undermines the authority of
morality.
– Why obey what is only social convention?
• Tolerance has its limits.
– Relativism does not entail tolerance. If
there are no universal moral values, how
can we say an intolerant culture is morally
wrong?