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AQA Philosophy – Ethics HYPERLINK \l "Utilitarianism" Utilitarianism HYPERLINK \l "UtilitarianismCriticism" Criticisms of Utilitarianism HYPERLINK \l "Kantiandeontologicalethics" Kantian Deontological Ethics HYPERLINK \l "KantianethicsCriticism" Criticisms of Kant HYPERLINK \l "Aristotlevirtueethics" Aristotle’s virtue ethics HYPERLINK \l "VirtueEthicsCriticisms" Criticisms of virtue ethicsStealing HYPERLINK \l "simulatedkilling" Simulated Killing HYPERLINK \l "treatmentofanimals" Eating Animals HYPERLINK \l "deceptionandtellingoflies" Deception and the telling of lies HYPERLINK \l "ethicallanguage" Meta-ethics HYPERLINK \l "ethicalnaturalism" Moral naturalism HYPERLINK \l "intuitionism" Ethical non-naturalism (intuitionism) HYPERLINK \l "errortheory" Error theory HYPERLINK \l "emotivism" Emotivism HYPERLINK \l "prescriptivism" PrescriptivismUtilitarianismJeremy Bentham invented the first form of Utilitarianism – Act utilitarianism. He was one of the first atheist philosophers and wanted to devise a morality that would take into account that new understanding of what it meant to be human. No longer considering ourselves as a special part of creation, just another part of nature. Bentham argued ‘Nature has placed us under the governance of two sovereign masters, pleasure and pain’. So it is the nature of the human animal to seek pleasure and avoid pain, so that’s all there is for morality to be about. Bentham devised the principle of utility:‘An action is good if it leads to the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people’Utilitarianism is consequentialist – it argues what makes something good is the consequences it leads to. Utility is something’s usefulness for a certain end. Utilitarianism assesses moral actions based on their utility (usefulness) for producing the end (goal) of happiness. The more happiness the better and therefore maximizing utility should be the ultimate goal of moral action. Hedonic/utility Calculus.Rule utilitarianism. Mill proposed rule Utilitarianism, which replaces ‘action’ with ‘rule’ in the principle of utility so ‘A rule is good if following it leads to the greatest happiness for the greatest number’. This supposedly solves the problem of Act utilitarianism justifying bad actions because the rule to not harm people unless they harm you, for example, if followed would lead to the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Therefore even though in a particular situation it might give a majority of people involved pleasure to break that rule, the rule is justified and enforced at the level of society rather than individual actions/situations, therefore that particular majority would be overruled.Higher & Lower Pleasures. Mill claimed Bentham’s act utilitarianism was too hedonistic and focused on animalistic pleasures unduly. Mill claimed ‘it’s better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied’. So quantity of pleasure is not better than quality. Mill devised higher & lower pleasures to deal with this. Lower pleasures are pleasures of the body like food, sex and drugs. Higher pleasures are pleasures of the mind like poetry, reading, philosophy, music. Lower pleasures have to be repeated constantly in order to get pleasure from them, but higher pleasures have a lasting effect on the mind capable of appreciating them, making it happier intrinsically, therefore being worth more. Step 1: Mill’s proof of utilitarianism attempted to prove that happiness was the one thing that people wanted for its own sake. He drew an analogy with sight, claiming that the only evidence for something being visible is that it is seen, and so the only evidence for something being desirable is that it is desired. The proof that happiness is desirable is therefore that it is desired. It follows for Mill that because he has proved that happiness is desirable, it therefore ought to be desired and so utilitarian naturalism is true.Step 2: G. E. Moore argued that Mill commits the fallacy of equivocation here, which is when you use a word which has two meanings and fail to make it clear which meaning you intend in a way that damages your argument. ‘Visible’ does just mean ‘can be seen’ but to suggest it is analogous to ‘desirable’ is to equivocate as ‘Desirable’ could mean ‘capable of being desired’ but also ‘should be desired’. Mill has proved that people are capable of desiring happiness but not that happiness should be desired, so he has failed to show that goodness = happiness.Step 3: Mill isn’t claiming absolute proof however. As an empiricist, Mill is looking for evidence. While it’s certainly the case that people can actually desire what they should not desire, nonetheless if there is something that everyone desires i.e. happiness, then that is evidence which makes it reasonable to infer that happiness should be desired. Preference Utilitarianism (non-hedonistic utilitarianism). Invented by Hare, extended by Peter Singer. This argues that the 7th criteria of the hedonic calculus – extent – is the most important. An action is good if it maximises the satisfaction of the preferences of those involved. Singer argued that when thinking ethically we should be an ‘impartial observer’ – where your own interests should not override the interests of anyone else’s just because they are your interests.Nozick’s experience machineNozick came up with a thought experiment he thought showed that pleasure was not the only good, which would show that both Bentham and Mill’s proof of utilitarianism is false.If a machine existed which could simulate a fake reality full of only positive pleasurable experiences, would people choose plug themselves into it? Nozick suggests not everyone would because humans value their connection to reality and having authentic real experiences.Step 2: Some people would use the experience machine if they are deprived, such as disabled people or those living in poverty.Step 3: Those who are deprived arguably have their goals and desires affected by their deprived state. In that case it’s not appropriate to make inferences from their case to the genuine goal/desire of human beings since their goals/desires are influenced by contingent variables.Step 4: Arguably the reason people value connection to reality is because they have emotional connections to family, society and perhaps the future state of the human race. People want to take part in ensuring that humans in reality are as happy as possible. That suggests that their desire to be connected to reality is really founded on a desire for the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people, so utilitarianism is still true.Cruciality: Nozick arguably relies on us being able to know what humans truly desire. That is difficult to know for sure and thus this argument is less crucial than one with a more certain conclusion, whichever way it is resolved. Individual liberty/rightsStep 1: The moral basis of human rights is deontological in that human rights are intrinsically good. This seems incompatible with consequentialist ethics like Utilitarianism, which argue that something is only good not because of anything intrinsic but depending on whether it leads to happiness. So, Utilitarianism could never say ‘X is wrong’ or ‘X is right’. They can only say that ‘X is right/wrong if it leads to/doesn’t lead to – the greatest happiness for the greatest number’.In that case they couldn’t say ‘torture is wrong’. In fact, if 10 people gained happiness from torturing one person, a Utilitarian it seems would have to say that was morally right as it led to the greatest happiness for the greatest number. When a majority of people decide, for their benefit, to gang up on a minority, that is called the tyranny of the majority.Step 2: Rule utilitarianism attempts to solve those kinds of issues. The rule ‘do not torture’ will result in a happier society than one which follows the rule ‘do torture’, therefore Mill can overrule individual cases where torture might result in happiness. Mill does not believe in rights. He thinks that everyone should be free to do whatever they want except harm others. The justification for this freedom from harm is not that people have a ‘right’ to be unharmed, but that it is for the greatest happiness for the greatest number that we live without harming each other. So, while Mill doesn’t believe in intrinsic rights, he proposes rules which sees identical in their ethical outcome.Step 3: Preference utilitarianism would argue that the preference to torture someone is far less than the preference of someone not to be tortured. However, torturing a terrorist might be justified because their preference not to be tortured is outweighed by the preference of their potential victims to liveCruciality: the issue of liberty/rights depends on deontology. If deontology is shown to be false or consequentialism shown to be true, rights fails to be an issue. It’s other aspect, of being against our intuitions, seems solved by Rule or Preference utilitarianism.Problems with calculationStep 1: we can’t know the consequences of an action before we do it. Bentham’s hedonic calculus is far too time consuming to be of practical use and we can’t acquire the information it needs in advance.Step 2: Preference utilitarianism might evade this objection as it’s much easier to know whether a person’s preference has been satisfied. Step 3: We still need to predict in advance and weigh the strengths of people’s preferences to each other however. Therefore the criticism of step 1 is still valid.Step 4: Bentham argues that an action is right regarding ‘the tendency which it appears to have’ to maximise happiness. So, we actually only need to have a reasonable expectation of what the consequences will be. So Bentham responds to the criticism that we can’t predict the future by claiming we don’t need to predict it perfectly.Step 5: Mill thought getting that reasonable expectation for every single action was still too impractical, since happiness is ‘much too complex and indefinite’. Instead Mill proposes using rules since society has, over time, figured out what causes happiness. We should go with those rules except in cases when they come into conflict with each other. Then we should apply the principle of utility to that particular case. In most cases we won’t be required to do such impractical calculating however.Cruciality: practical issues are a problem for ethical theories which need to be implementable in reality. Arguably they don’t make the theory ‘false’, however, especially since some way to fix its lack of practicality might be thought of in the future.Issues around partialityStep 1: Utilitarianism argues that we should do whatever action leads to the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. It does not consider an individual’s particular emotional ties to their family or friends as relevant to that ethical calculation. E.g most parents would save their child’s life over the life of two random people. However, Utilitarianism would not regard that as the most moral action as saving two rather than one would lead to the greatest happiness. Therefore it seems to be against the foundation of familial relationships.There is also the example of the moral status of our relationship to people verses things. If a house was burning down and you could save a child or an expensive painting .. etcStep 2: Mill tried to respond that most people don’t have the opportunity to help a multitude of people so it’s good to just focus on those in our lives. Step 4: However, these days we have charities so that argument seems outdated.Step 5: However, if no one had a family, people would be much less happy therefore perhaps it is worth the unhappiness caused by our relative exclusion of those who are not our family.Step 6: But, if you think about how much parents in the west spend on their children, if half that money were given to charity instead, actually the amount of suffering that reduced might outweigh the happiness the world feels by its having family relationships.Moral integrity and intentionsStep 1: Utilitarianism only views the consequences of actions as good, not the character (integrity) of the person who performs them. This goes against the intuition that a person can be a good person. It also has the bizarre effect that e.g stabbing someone could be good if after being rushed to hospital it was found, coincidentally, they had a brain tumour. Or someone who attempts to do good but bad consequences result which were unforeseeable, such as the priest who saved Hitler’s life when he was a child.Step 2: Mill responds firstly that a person’s character does matter because it will determine their future actions. The stabber should be condemned for his motive because that will prevent them stabbing others in future. The priest should be forgiven because he’s not likely to do anything bad in the future as his character is good. Secondly, Mill argues that having a good character helps you become happy. Motives and character therefore do matter ethically, though not intrinsically but only insofar as they result in good consequences, in line with consequentialism.Kantian Deontological EthicsThe good will, for Kant, is one which has the right attitude morally. We should leave out personal feelings/desires and just do ‘duty for duty’s sake’. E.g if a friend is in hospital, we should go and visit them not out of empathy but because it’s our duty.But how do we determine what is the moral thing to do? For Kant, it was Categorical imperatives. Kant believed morality could rest on rationality. He argued that to be a human is to be in possession of a ‘rational will’. Since all humans have access to this rationality, a kind of equality and uniformity and absolutism can be generated for ethics. All humans rationally accept that 1+1=2. Kant hoped that by embedding morality in reason and rationality rather than something like God, all humans could come to the same moral views if only they could be led by their rationality. This is why Kant argued we should be led by our duty be our only motivation. Acting in accordance with duty is different from acting out of duty. Kant illustrated this with the example of two shopkeepers who both lower their prices, but one out of a sense of fairness to their customers, while the other did it to get more customers. Suppose that lowering prices was their duty because of particular circumstances. The first shopkeeper lowered their prices for that reason and so acted out of duty in that their action came out of a motivation to do one’s duty. The second shopkeeper acted in accordance with duty in that their action was what duty required of them, but they had ulterior motives which meant their action did not originate from a dutiful motivation.Hypothetical vs categorical imperatives - A hypothetical imperative is a moral action that a rational will adopts for reasons other than duty such as personal desire. The first formulation of the categorical imperative – Kant says ‘Act only according to that maxim by which you could at the same time will it become a universal law’. This is the test of universalizability. The maxim of your will is the moral statement of what you want to do. The test if whether you can rationally will that everyone do what you want to do. Contradiction in conception: E.g Lying – Kant thinks lying cannot be universalised because if everyone were to lie, there would be no such thing as truth anymore. However lying depends on truth, therefore by willing everyone to lie, we would be willing the undermining of the concept on which lying depends for its existence in the first place. That is inconsistent and therefore irrational and therefore a maxim involving lying cannot rationally be willed into a universal law.Contradiction in will:Kant thinks this universalisibility test is the final test of whether we have truly removed consequences and personal feelings from consideration. If we have, then all that should be left of an action is the pure action itself in the abstract as done by anyone or everyone. Once we have removed consequences and personal feelings, an action should be universalisible which is why it is a good test of its morality for Kant.Second formulation of the categorical imperative – Kant says ‘Always treat persons, whether others or in yourself, always as an end, never as a means’. This essentially means ‘don’t use people, or abuse yourself’. The idea is that everyone is ultimately equal in that all humans are rational agents in possession of a rational will, so every human rationally adopts their own ends. To treat someone as a means involves treating them as a means to your end however. This is to deny the fact that they have their own ends which is irrational, because they do. It even seems to entail denying that you yourself are an end in itself since there is no difference between you and them.The third formulation of the categorical imperative – kant argues that if everyone followedKant’s ethics we would live in a ‘kingdom of ends’. Clashing dutiesNot all universalisable maxims are distinctly moral; not all non-universalisable maxims are immoralWhether consequences have moral valueStep 1: Utilitarianism is means-end reasoning. It thinks it is rational to do whatever has a good outcome. Step 2: However this makes the goodness of an action conditional on the outcome which makes it hypothetical. For Kant, if morality becomes hypothetical then it becomes like any desire or purpose which we may or may not have. Kant also argues that the consequences are out of our control and therefore cannot be our responsibility. Step 3: Mill argues that happiness is the only desirable endStep 4: Kant argues that happiness is not always good. Kant rejected consequentialism in ethics because the consequences can’t really be what matters for morality, since we cannot really control and therefore be responsible for, consequences.Problems with applicationStep 1: The first formulation it seems could be abused. What if someone decided they wanted to steal, but edited their maxim from ‘I can steal’ to ‘someone with 6 letters in their name can steal’. This maxim could be universalised because if only a minority of people steal, the concept of property on which stealing depends would not be undermined by only a few people stealing.Step 2: Kant responds that this is a misunderstanding of his theory. What must be universalised is the maxim of your will. The will of the person who wants to steal has nothing to do with the number of letters in their name. Therefore the maxim they are attempting to put forward for universalization is not really the maxim of their will, which is simply that they want to steal.Step 3: What if someone for some reason really did think that the number of letters in their name meant that they should be allowed to steal though?Step 4: Kant would suggest they are being irrationalThe value of certain motives, eg love, friendship, kindnessStep 1: For Kant, ‘duty for duty’s sake’ is the only motive that has moral value. The father who helps his child out of duty therefore has less moral value than the father who helps his child out of love. Putting duty above feelings seems inhuman or at least impractical.Step 2: Kant isn’t suggesting we completely eliminate our feelings, just that we not let those feelings be the reason for our moral actions. Step 3: However this seems to miss the point of the objection which is that such feelings actually should be that deciding force. Step 4: Kant would respond that to claim that we should feel empathy towards those to whom we give charity means that our ethical judgement regards the goodness of the action of giving charity as dependent on the presence of empathy in the feelings of the acting agent. This means to disagree with Kant is to claim that those deserving of charity deserve it if the person giving feels empathy. However this sounds absurd, even to most people who think it right to feel empathy. Kant’s point it that the only accurate and appropriate reason someone might deserve charity is because it’s morally right for them to receive it. Our personal feelings have no bearing on that fact and therefore no place in the moral equation as reason for our actions.Furthermore, It’s not like we are doing that great a job in the world relying on our emotions to guide us. Perhaps it’s our evolved moral psychology and emotions that cause us to spend a lot of time thinking and caring about a little girl stuck down a well but not the hundreds of people who died in some country we can’t name. Morality is a system of hypothetical, rather than categorical, imperatives (Philippa Foot)Aristotle’s virtue ethicsEudaimonia. If you ask someone e.g why they study for A levels, their response will be to get good grades. If you then ask them why they want good grades, they might say to get into a good university, and so on, however eventually they will have to say “because I think it will enable me to flourish – to live a good life.” This shows that all humans ultimately aim at Eudaimonia (flourishing), because it is the only thing valued for its own sake.The function argument and virtues.So, Aristotle establishes that the purpose of humans is a Good life, but he hasn’t established what a good life is. Aristotle argues that what makes something good is that it performs its function well. Everything has a function, which is a things distinctive characteristic, which for humans is reason. The function of a knife is to cut. What enables a knife to cut is if its various qualities are good i.e sharpness. Therefore, what will enable humans to fulfil their function of reasoning well is whatever qualities help us have good reasons for our actions. These are the virtues. Human virtues are our qualities which enable us to perform our function, just like the qualities of a knife like sharpness enable it to perform its function.The doctrine of the Golden Mean. Aristotle states that a virtue is ‘the habit of choosing the mean between the extremes’. The idea is that each virtue exists in a sphere of action or feeling and within that sphere there can be an excess, a deficiency or the golden mean. Being virtuous is the habit of choosing the action which best manifests the golden mean in the relevant sphere.Sphere of action or feelingExcessGolden MeanDeficiencyFear and confidenceRecklessnessCourageCowardicePleasure and painSelf-indulgenceTemperanceInsensibilitySelf-expressionBoastfulnessTruthfulnessUnderstatementSocial conductBeing too friendlyFriendlinessUnfriendlinessIndignationEnvyRighteous indignationSpitefulnessProper sense of pridePractical Wisdom (phronesis). This is akin to common sense. It’s not enough to know that you should be courageous, for example, you need to know which courageous action to actually do, or which action would best exemplify the golden mean in the sphere of fear and confidence. Aristotle says we figure this out using our practical wisdom, by which we analyse and understand each moral situation we find ourselves in, and thereby figure out how to connect the virtues to that situation.The relationship between virtues, actions and reasonsLearning from the example of virtuous people. Virtue is acquired through action. One way to learn how to be virtuous is to follow the example of virtuous people. Watching others and imitating them. Examples of moral heroes or excellence could be Jesus, Ghandi, Socrates.The role of education/habituation in developing a moral characterThe skill analogyThe importance of feelingsVoluntary and involuntary actions and moral responsibilityClear guidanceStep 1: Utilitarianism and Kant provide systems which explain how to figure out which action is right. Virtue ethics doesn’t do that. It doesn’t give clear guidance on how to act. For example it tells us to be courageous, but what should we do with our courage? It takes courage to rob a bank. What about ethical dilemmas like whether the USA should have dropped the nuclear bomb on Japan in WW2. If it helped the war end faster, does that justify killing civilians? It’s hard to see how being a virtuous person could give you an answer to that.Step 2: Aristotle never intended his theory to provide clear guidance. He thought it’s perfectly possible to know what the right thing to do is yet fail to do it because they are not good enough as a person. Arguably that’s the source of most immoral action in the world. Therefore, an ethical system should help people become good rather than telling them what’s good as that is the most pressing issue holding humanity back. Aristotle acknowledged that because life is so complicated, and situations so diverse and nuanced, ethics can’t be about applying rules to situations anyway. A good/virtuous person for Aristotle will have practical wisdom which they will then use to figure out the right action for the situation. Step 3: Aristotle could be accused of wishful thinking for supposing a virtuous person will just be able to figure out ethical questions using practical wisdom, without any carefully thought out system of ethics. Furthermore, only virtuous people have practical wisdom, therefore his theory gives no guidance to those who need it most. Step 4: Aristotle argues however that knowledge of the good comes in degrees. Most people will have a good enough degree of knowledge of the good to get along well enough such that they can improve themselves. Those people can ask whether a certain action in a particular situation will manifest the virtuous – will it be courageous, friendly, the proper sense of pride, etc. While people will certainly vary in their ability to judge that, Aristotle is convinced that many will be able to do good enough a job to get it right to increasing degrees. Regardless of that success rate however, fundamentally Aristotle doesn’t see any other way for ethics. Telling someone what’s right isn’t enough to get them to do it. They have to figure it out for themselves.Clashing virtuesCircularity of defining virtuous acts and virtuous people in terms of each otherStep 1: Aristotle seems to argue that an act is virtuous if it would be done by a virtuous person in that situation and that a virtuous person is someone who would do virtuous acts. This definition seems circular, as virtuous people and virtuous acts are both defined with reference to each other.Step 2: Aristotle actually said more however about what makes someone a virtuous person. It is someone who has the states of character and excellences of reason which allow them to achieve Eudaimonia. This refers not just to actions but also what someone finds pleasure in and their passions. Step 3: The issue could still persist however, arguing that while they may not be defined in terms of each other, there is an epistemological problem. We can’t know whether an act is virtuous unless we know that a virtuous person would do it, but equally we can’t know whether someone is virtuous unless we can know that they do virtuous acts.Step 4: There are actually more ways to tell whether someone is virtuous other than what they do; their emotional responses, pleasures and how well someone reasons. Whether a trait must contribute to Eudaimonia in order to be a virtue; the relationship between the good for the individual and moral goodSimilarities & differencesUtilitarianismDeontologyVirtue ethicsConsequentialistYesNoNoDuty basedNoYesNoApplied Ethics.This section involves 4 ethical issues; stealing, simulated killing, eating animals and deception/lies. You need to know a bit about what makes each an ethical issue; what is ethically debated in each of them. You then need to be able to apply the normative ethical theories (utilitarianism, Kant’s deontology and virtue ethics) and meta-ethical theories to those issues.E.g: ‘Is stealing wrong?’ [25 marks]For this question, in an essay you could do one or more of these options:Evaluate one normative theory’s view of whether stealing is wrong. Evaluate more than one normative theory’s view on whether stealing is wrongEvaluate the implication for whether stealing is wrong of meta-ethical theories.For option 1 and 2, the first paragraph should explain the AO1 content of the normative ethical theory you choose. Then you must explain what that theory would say about the issue (stealing, in this case).Then, in separate paragraphs, you go through the criticisms that normative theory has and assess whether the theory can survive. If it can, then you are concluding its judgement on stealing is correct and so your conclusion would be that it is e.g. wrong if you’ve chosen Kant and concluded his theory survives its criticisms, or sometimes wrong if Utilitarianism or Virtue ethics is right. If you decide the theory fails to survive its criticisms then the theory’s answer to the question on the issue fails and so you are free to suggest a different answer is correct.It’s difficult but you should try to make the criticisms you bring up relevant to the ethical issue the question is about. For example, in stealing, and let’s say you chose to apply utilitarianism to it, one of the criticisms of utilitarianism is that it’s difficult to calculate the future consequences of our actions. This could be made relevant to stealing by use of an example that stealing to feed your starving family might end up being bad if your child is Hitler. The example of clashing duties as a criticism of Kant could be framed as a choice between your duty not to steal but also your duty to save a life/help others, such as when stealing medicine.StealingStealing is typically thought wrong because property is thought of as a right. Utilitarians would have an issue there as rights seem to require a deontological basis.Property rights are thought to hold society together. Aristotle (eudaimonia requires stable society) and utilitarians (stable societies are happier) would be against stealing for that reason, though Utiltarians would not accept that there are ‘rights’, only that it is the best consequence not to allow stealing (usually).Stealing is sometimes thought to be acceptable, e.g. stealing food for your starving family or medicine you cannot afford for a dying family member. Kant would be against that however, which could be an issue.Stealing can sometimes be for the purposes of self-indulgence/greed, which Aristotle would be against because it is not the virtuous attitude to have towards pleasure. Though Utilitarians might be in favour of that if the greedy person happened to make the world happier, e.g. by stealing resources from an evil person.If stealing resulted from an improper sense of pride, such as thinking other people do not matter, or anger or lack of friendliness, Aristotle would think it unvirtuous.Simulated KillingPlaying the killer in e.g. a violent video/computer game. Arguably identifying with an avatar of yourself which you control and simulate killing with makes someone more likely to commit actual violence. The research suggests this only occurs with those who already have a pre-disposition to violence, however, though of course it is difficult to know in advance who that is for certain. The research is also quite limited in this area. Video/computer games are thought to be especially problematic for simulated killing because of the identity of the player with the avatar that does the virtual killing.Act utilitarianism would be in favour of simulated killing because it is a pleasurable activity, unless the pain it caused outweighed that pleasure. This might depend on the situation considerably. If someone can play violent video games without it influencing them to cause harm to others then it was a good action. Of course, this relies on being able to predict which are such cases in advance, which suggests the issue with calculation.Also, if someone was influenced to kill by simulated killing but happened to kill another killer, utilitarianism might be in favour of that. That suggests an issue with moral integrity/intentions.It might even be in favour of it if they merely killed an unhappy person, so long as they had no family who might be made unhappy by their death. This suggests an issue with liberty/rights.Rule Utilitarianism would make a general rule in favour of simulated killing if the pleasure of playing the games outweighed the suffering caused by the violence they inspired, though if that pleasure could be gained by a safer mechanism that would be the greater happiness and therefore the more good action. This might solve some of the issues Act had.Kant would be against simulated killing because if you act in a way that damages your rational will or makes you more likely to harm others then you are damaging your will to treat others as an end in themselves. Kant mentions that doctors were not allowed to sit on a Jury in England because they were so desensitized to suffering and death.Kant claims that consequences don’t matter ethically, such as the pleasure gained from the video games, but he could be wrong about consequences not having value.Aristotle would be against simulated killing if it increased anger and decreased friendliness, however he would be able to take a Reading the killer.Watching the killer.Acting the killerEating AnimalsUtilitarianismBentham claimed that what mattered was not whether animals could think but whether they could suffer. Singer built on this and, inspired by the civil rights movement in America, coined the term speciesism, a term meant to be analogous to racism. Just as a racist irrationally discriminates against different races, a speciesist irrationally discriminates against members of different species. Claiming that a member of a difference race should be your slave because it’s convenient to you is predicated on the irrational belief that there is something ethically superior about your race. So too does the claim that it’s acceptable to cause suffering to a different species because you want to eat it rely on the irrational belief that there is something ethically superior about your species. Singer does acknowledge that human beings have differences to animals which give them additional interests such as a conscious rational anticipation of their future life, but animals still have the interest in not suffering. Therefore, it is wrong to cause suffering to animals, though it could be acceptable to eat them if they have not suffered.Utilitarianism relies on the claim that goodness = happiness, which Mill and Bentham provided naturalistic arguments for. Nozick’s experience machine calls that into question, which could then cast doubt on the basis by which utilitarianism gives animals an ethical status.Kant thinks only rational agents have intrinsic value, so animals only have instrumental value because they are not rational agents. Nonetheless, causing suffering to animals might damage your rational will and desensitize you to expression of pain behaviour. This might then make you more likely to treat human beings as merely a means to your end by causing them pain which Kant would regard as wrong. Nonetheless, eating animals without causing them suffering seems acceptable. If Vegans are correct that eating animals is intrinsically linked to violence, however, then it seems Kant should be against it.The consequences of eating meat are pleasure which might outweigh the rarer instances of suffering caused by violence against humans that has been inspired by eating animals. This raises the issue of whether consequences have moral value.AristotleDeception and the telling of liesUtilitarianismKantAristotleMeta-ethicsMeta Ethics is a branch of Philosophy which questions the metaphysical nature of goodness. G. E. Moore recognized the possibility of asking not merely what is good, but what good is. Kant’s ethics, Virtue ethics, Utilitarianism and so on originated before Moore and each make claims about what good is, but meta-ethics deals specifically with that question of what good is, which opens up a domain of philosophical investigation ‘above’ standard ethics (hence ‘meta-ethics’) in which competing meta-ethical theories each provide argument for what they claim good actually is.There are two main aspects to meta-ethics:MetaphysicalWhat is the actual nature of morality in reality? Realism: The view that moral properties exist in reality.Anti-realism: The view that moral properties do not exist in reality.Normative ethics are ethical theories which attempt to devise a system by which we can distinguish right from wrong, e.g Utilitarianism, Kant’s ethics, Natural law, Situation Ethics, etc. LinguisticWhat is the meaning of ethical language? 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 or prescription, does not attempt to describe reality and therefore cannot be true or false.Moral naturalismcognitivist & realistEthical Naturalism – is the view that goodness is something real in the world. Ethical language is meaningful as it describes some real property in the world. So ‘X is good’ is essentially the same type of statement in terms of how it is true as ‘X is made of wood’. It is made true by facts in the world. Utilitarianism claims that goodness = pleasure or happiness. Pleasure and happiness are natural properties (at least if you don’t believe in a non-natural soul). Meta-ethically, Utilitarianism is therefore a form of naturalism, moral realism and cognitivism.The linguistic claims of Utilitarian naturalism are straightforwardly that ethical language is cognitivist 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 an indicative sentence expressing a belief about reality. The ethical language ‘stealing from a bank is good’ is no different for the utilitarian naturalist. It is an indicative sentence and a proposition about reality which will be either true or false depending on whether that particular action of stealing leads to the greatest happiness for the greatest number.Bentham’s Utilitarian naturalism: Step 1: “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.Step 2: Nozick’s experience machineMill’s Utilitarian naturalism: Mill’s proof of utilitarianism.Virtue ethics & naturalism. Goodness for Aristotle meant living a good life; Eudaimonia, which means flourishing. There is a factual difference between a plant that is flourishing and one that is not. So too is it with humans, Aristotle claimed. If Aristotle’s function argument is correct then he has identified what makes humans flourish; using their reason well. In that case, since humans are natural beings and truths about us are factual truths, goodness is a matter of fact.Ethical non-naturalism (intuitionism)cognitivist & realistNaturalism issue #1: Hume’s ForkStep 1: Hume claims that there are two types of knowledge and two corresponding methods by which such knowledge is arrived at. Mathematical and logical truths are ‘relations of ideas’ because their truth is not dependent nor affected by any matter of fact. The facts in the universe could change completely and yet 1+1 would still = 2.Analytic truths are relations of ideas which is arrived at a priori Synthetic truths are matters of fact which are arrived at a posterioriMoral propositions do not seem either analytic nor synthetic.Step 2: If Bentham, Mill or Aristotle’s naturalism is correct, moral propositions seem to be synthetic; true because of the way the world is. E.g. if an instance of stealing causes the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people, Bentham would claim it is a synthetic truth that it is wrong.Naturalism & cognitivism issue #2: Hume’s is-ought gap.Step 1: Hume’s is-ought gap, also called Hume’s law, criticises naturalism. Hume said many philosophers talk about the way things are and then jump with no apparent justification to a claim about the way things ought to be. Hume claimed this was a fallacy as is-statements do not entail ought-statements.?Hume argues that you could be aware of all the facts about a situation yet if you then pass a moral judgement, that clearly cannot have come from ‘the understanding’ nor be ‘the work of judgement’ but instead come from ‘the heart’ and is ‘not a speculative proposition’ but an ‘active feeling or sentiment’. This looks like an argument against realism but also against cognitivism and for non-cognitivism, specifically emotivism.To illustrate, take the example of abortion. Some argue that because a foetus develops brain activity at a certain time, it’s wrong to do abortion past that point. However, that inference has a hidden premise; that it’s wrong to kill something which has brain activity. It’s a fact that the foetus has brain activity, but that it’s wrong to kill something with brain activity does not seem like a fact nor derived from a fact. We might try and justify that further by suggesting that it’s wrong to kill human life or cause pain and so on. However, while it’s factual that there is such a thing as the ending of human life and the causing of pain, is it a fact that doing such things are wrong? We can easily imagine what sort of evidence establishes that ‘pain can be caused’ is a fact, but it’s not easy to see how to do that to establish that ‘it’s wrong to cause pain’ is a fact. Step 2: Mill, Bentham and Aristotle do think that certain is-statements entail ought-statements but they each give an additional argument which they think establish that. They do not simply ‘leap’ from is to ought without justification, so as long as their arguments work they could be considered to solve Hume’s is-ought gap.Hume’s law arguably succeeds in showing that facts cannot be shown to entail values yet may not be crucial for defeating naturalism unless Mill, Bentham or Aristotle’s arguments in support of that fail.Naturalism issue #3: Moore’s naturalistic fallacy was influenced by Hume and went on to argue that goodness can't be equated with any natural property (like happiness) as any attempt to do so commits the naturalistic fallacy. Moore claimed that we can’t define goodness. We can’t say what goodness is. It is like the color yellow - you can't describe or define yellow, you can only point to yellow things. What is yellow? What does it look like? Just yellow... Moore says the same is true for goodness. Therefore, goodness can't be a naturalistic thing as naturalistic things can all be defined.Naturalism issue #4: The open question argument is Moore’s main argument against naturalism.Step 1: If goodness were identical to some natural property like happiness as utilitarians claim, then the statement 'Goodness is happiness' should be equal in meaning to 'happiness is happiness'. If A and B are identical, then they should be interchangeable such that 'A = B' should mean the same as 'B = B'. However, Moore argued that since a naturalist is claiming that goodness is a natural property (like happiness) then 'Goodness = X natural property' must be a synthetic statement about the world, yet 'happiness = happiness' is analytic. A synthetic statement cannot be equivalent in meaning to an analytic one, therefore they do not have the same meaning and therefore cannot be identical.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?'Step 2: Some have argued that Moore’s argument is merely a case of the paradox of analysis. The reason for its failure is clearer when applied to the case of water and H2O. If H2O = water, then ‘H2O = water’ should be equal in meaning to ‘H2O = H2O’. Yet the former is synthetic and the latter analytic. Moore’s logic seems to imply that water cannot be equivalent in meaning to H2O.Step 3: W.D. Ross defended intuitionism from this criticism, arguing that in cases other than ‘goodness’, such as the water and H2O example, proper understanding of the definition of water as H2o will lead one to realise that ‘water = H2O’ is actually analytic. In that case, ‘H2O = water’ is equivalent in meaning to ‘H2O = H2O’, and therefore water does = H2O. However due to Moore’s claim that ‘goodness’ cannot be defined, that cannot be done with goodness. No amount of understanding of the term ‘goodness’ can make you think that ‘goodness = happiness’ is equivalent to ‘happiness = happiness’.Step 4: Arguably Moore can only prove that the linguistic concepts of goodness and happiness are distinct concepts that cannot be identical. Metaphysically, the property of goodness and the property of happiness could still be non-analytically identical. The concepts may be non-identical, but in this universe they might happen to be identical. For example, there is a possible world in which water is not H2O, so the concepts ‘water’ and ‘H2O’ are not analytically identical but do have synthetic identity in this universe. The same might be true of goodness and happiness in this universe. The distinct concepts of ‘goodness’ and ‘happiness’ when instantiated as properties in this universe might happen to refer to the same property. So, Moore’s proof of conceptual distinctness (analytic non-identity) does not rule out synthetic property identity.Although step 4 shows that Moore’s argument is correct, is establishes that it is not crucial as it only refers to the linguistic concept of goodness not the metaphysical nature of it.Moore’s Intuitionism 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. Intuitionism issue #1: Moral disagreement.Step 1: 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?Step 2: Moore firstly argued that people often fail to be as clear as possible in their ethical propositions. Moore secondly argued that the process of figuring out ethical truth required fitting your intuited moral propositions together which must be coherent, thereby requiring you to use reason which you might do incorrectly, thereby providing room for moral disagreement.Cruciality: At this point Moore’s argument seems coherent but this neither proves nor disproves his theory so it’s not very crucial.Realism issue #1: Mackie’s anti-realist argument from relativity Step 1:P1 Descriptive moral relativism (that moral codes/views differ cross-culturally) is trueP2 Though descriptive moral relativism does not entail meta-ethical moral relativism, it offers indirect support.P3 Disagreement over scientific matters does not show that there are no objective scientific truthsP4 The reason for scientific disagreement is variation in speculative inferences or availability/adequacy of evidence.P5 The reason for variation in moral codes seems to reflect adherence to and participation in ‘different ways of life’, however.C1 Variation in moral codes is better explained by their reflecting ways of life than that they express seriously inadequate and badly distorted perceptions of objective values.Step 2: The basis on which objective values are placed is not specific moral codes but general basic principles which are recognized at least implicitly to some extent in all societies. The remaining differences in moral codes are then the result of differing concrete circumstances, social patterns or preferences. Step 3: Mackie responds by claiming that people do not hold their moral judgements due to general moral principles but instead their views are better explained by social conditioning. So Mackie thinks our moral views come from our society, not perceptions of real moral properties.Cruciality: Mackie’s argument is an inference to the best explanation argument and so will be less crucial than those that do not rely on that kind of reasoning. Arguably Mackie also depends on factors we cannot really know for sure like where people intuit their moral views from.Realism issue #2: Mackie’s anti-realist argument from queernessStep 1: 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?Metaphysical queerness. Mackie claims that since moral statements motivate us, for moral realism to be true there must be objective moral properties which motivate us, which requires ‘not-to-be-doneness’ to be somehow present in reality. Mackie said that it’s easy to see what sort of quality would have to exist in order for the proposition ‘the table is brown’ to be true. However, it’s not so obvious what sort of thing would have to exist that could correspond to an ethical proposition such as ‘it’s wrong to steal’ which would make it true. Mackie is arguing that the impossibility of conceiving of what would have to exist in reality to make moral propositions true is grounds for thinking there are no such things as the concept is incoherent.Epistemological queerness. Even if there were objective moral properties, how could we 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.Step 2: 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. Moore clarities he’s not suggesting there is a supersensible reality. By ‘intuitive’ he only meant not inferred from other kinds of knowledge like logical or natural truths.Step 3: Mathematics has other sources of verification however, such as its use in physics and engineering. It’s possible goodness has a similar metaphysical status to maths, but does it actually? Moore is claiming both that there are truths which are neither natural nor logical truths which can be accessed in a non-empirical way. This is unacceptable to empiricists who would question how Moore could possibly know this. Isn’t it more evidence based and simpler to claim instead that intuitions come merely from upbringing and social conditioning, thereby making them subjective, anti-realist and relativistic?Error theorycognitivist & anti-realistAlthough Mackie thought naturalism was false, he did not accept Moore’s linguistic method of argument against it, claiming that “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 gives an analogy with direct realism “about colours might be a correct analysis not only of our pre-scientific colour concepts but also of the conventional meanings of colour words, and even of the meanings with which scientifically sophisticated people use them when they are off their guard, and yet it might not be a correct account of the status of colours”Mackie’s argument for cognitivism and against non-cognitivism.Mackie thinks that ethical language does attempt to describe reality, so he is a cognitivist. Mackie 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 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 and prescriptions 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, or whether the action is one they can happily, sincerely and rationally recommend or prescribe in all relevantly similar cases. 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 uses as further evidence the fact much illustrated in existentialist philosophy that giving up a set of objective values can cause a decline in subjective purpose and concern. Mackie concludes that ‘ordinary moral judgements include a claim to objectivity, an assumption that there are objective values’. Since Mackie’s arguments from relativity and queerness cause him to accept anti-realism, he concludes that although ethical language expresses cognitive beliefs about reality, there is nothing in reality which is described by it. Therefore, ethical language does express propositions so it can be true or false, but they are all false, hence the name error theory. Emotivismnon-cognitivist & anti-realistNon-cognitivism is the view that ethical language expresses some non-cognition, emotivism holds that it is emotion.Cognitivism issue #1: Hume’s argument that moral judgements are not beliefs.Step 1: Hume’s theory of motivation holds that belief alone cannot motivate action as you need a desire for that – beliefs only providing knowledge of how to achieve that desire. This would rule out purely cognitive states as sufficient for motivating moral action and therefore ethical language must contain at least some non-cognitive element.Step 2: Beliefs could cause desires which then motivate action.Step 3: However, this doesn’t explain why some beliefs motivate desires in some people but not others.Step 4: McDowell responds that beliefs cause desires which then motivate action depending on the moral outlook and general understanding of how to live (virtue) of the person in question, which explains why the same belief causes a desire in some, namely their virtue, but not others who lack virtue.Cognitivism issue #2: Step 1: Reason is the slave of the passions, claimed Hume. There are everyday examples which illustrate this. When someone criticises your deeply held personal belief, your mind instantly starts thinking of counter-responses. 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 expressing non-cognitions.Step 2: Jonathan Haidt is a psychologist who argues that Hume was certainly right to think that the emotions influence our reasoned moral judgements, but claims that Hume went too far to call reason a ‘slave’ of the passions. Haidt instead argued that the emotions are like an elephant and reason is like a human riding on top of the elephant. For the most part, the elephant will just go wherever it likes, dragging the rider along with it. However the rider can exert some influence over the elephant, especially by paying careful attention to the sort of things that motivate the elephant. 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. A J 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.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'. Step 1: Naturalism issue #4: Ayer’s verification principle was influenced by Hume’s fork. It holds that statements are either empirically verifiable, logical/analytic or meaningless. Since Ayer regarded ethical language as neither verifiable nor analytic, he concluded it must be meaningless. Step 2: Ayer’s verification principle has the problem that it can't verify itself, so verificationism looks to be incoherent.Step 3: Ayer claimed that his emotivism would survive even if verificationism and logical positivism failed. This is because he argued that ethical language was unverifiable because it was not fact stating.Step 4: If Moore’s open question argument fails, however, then arguably at least the anti-realism of emotivism fails too since Ayer relied on Moore’s argument.Prescriptivismnon-cognitivist & anti-realistR. M. Hare agreed with Hume’s is/ought gap and with Moore’s rejection of naturalism. Although Hare was a non-cognitivist and thought ethical language didn't describe reality and couldn't be true/false, he nonetheless thought it could have meaning as an expression of commands/recommendations/prescriptions. So for Hare, 'X is wrong' means 'don't do X'. That is clearly not a description nor can it be true/false. We have choice and freedom to decide which prescriptions to make, whereas we have less choice over which emotions to feel. They are also more rational as they are the product of informed imaginative and consistent thought. They are still separate from truth however. Prescriptive moral statements prescribe how the world should be rather than describe how it is. Hare thought the word ‘ought’ means both a universal prescription and also reflected the speakers interests.So prescribing something imposes rational constraints on you because you could?prescribe something that contradicts your previous prescription(s). This isn't to say that you 'couldn't', do that, but that you would be irrational if you did. Therefore Hare makes room for rationality and rational considerations to exist within ethics, avoiding the reductionism of emotivism.Anti-realism issue #1: whether anti-realism can account for how we use moral language, including moral reasoning, persuading, disagreeing etc.Step 1: Moore criticised subjectivism as being unable to explain moral disagreement. Ayer states that the impossibility of moral dispute follows from his emotivism too which means Moore’s argument from moral disagreement also applies to his theory. Ayer admits that people do engage in disputes which are ‘ordinarily’ thought of as disputes about value and have what can sound like rational arguments on either side of what seems like a debate. If ethical language were really just an expression of emotion, that should not be possible.Step 2: Cognitivism issue #3. Ayer’s dealing with Moore’s issue of moral disagreement simultaneously serves to defend emotivism from a criticism and provide an argument in its favour against cognitivism. Ayer claims that he can answer Moore’s critique 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 claims that his analysis showing the impossibility of moral disagreement provides support for his claim that ethical language is not fact stating, since disagreement about facts is possible.Step 3: Imagine persuading someone who was selfish to give to charity, however. They might well correctly apprehend all the relevant facts but still prefer to keep their money for themselves. The charity worker might then entreat the selfish person to empathize more with the suffering of others.Step 4: Ayer could regard such entreating as not an argument, however, and therefore not a disagreement. Statements such as ‘think of the children’ are not arguments nor what we properly understand to be a rational position in a dispute about something supposedly objective.Step 5: Hare’s criticism of emotivism: Hare saw the main downside of emotivism as that it stripped ethical language of its rationality. Hare thought this could save ethics from being reduced to mere emotion and leave some room for rationality because he argued that ethical prescriptions must be universally prescribed. 'Don't do X' seems to be a universal prescription.?Hare thought the word ‘ought’ means both a universal prescription and also regarded the speaker’s interests.Mackie’s argument for his cognitivist anti-realism’s ability to account for how we use moral language rather than emotivism, prescriptivism or naturalism.Step 1: R. M. Hare claims that he does not understand what is meant by “the objectivity of values” and that he has not met anyone who does. Hare provides a thought experiment to show this where has asks you to imagine two universes, one with objective values and one without. In each, Hare claims, people would behave and talk in the same way. This shows, Hare thinks, that the meaning of our ethical language is disconnected from anything like objective values, whether they exist or not. Step 2: Mackie responds that although Hare is right that people would behave identically, nonetheless in the universe with objective values the people who happened to hold what would then be the correct moral judgements would have true beliefs. Mackie regarded emotivism and prescriptivism as ‘part of the truth’ as they explain 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 even when full allowance has been made for the logical, formal constraints of full-blooded prescriptivity and universalizability. Ethics, we are inclined to believe, is more a matter of knowledge and less a matter of decision than any non-cognitive analysis allows.” Mackie claims Naturalism satisfies this ‘knowledge’ demand. Linguistically, however, naturalism only seems to allow for a purely descriptive and ‘inert’ ethical statements, which cannot explain their motivating force. So Mackie concludes that to properly account for how we use ethical language both as involving more than mere non-cognitions and yet also being motivating, anti-realism would have to be combined with cognitivism.Step 3: Mackie clearly relies on Hume’s motivation argument so something like McDowell’s view which is realist and cognitive yet explains away Hume’s motivation issue would counter Mackie.Anti-realism issue #2: The problem of accounting for moral progressStep 1: Moral progress is when a society improves its moral views and practices. Human rights and rights for minorities and workers are examples of this. Actual improvement presupposes an objective standard in which progress takes place, however. If anti-realism is true then actual progress is not possible as there is no objective spectrum on which to improve or worsen. Step 2: Ayer would simply claim there is no such thing as actual progress. The fact that women can now vote, for example, Ayer would regard as nothing more than that a sufficient number of people were persuaded to have a certain emotional reaction which was what society happened to require for the law to be changed. Hare would regard moral progress as the increasing rational coherence of our prescriptions. For example, racism is not universalizable because a racist prescription against another race cannot apply to the speaker or the speakers race. There is ultimately no rational reason to prescribe racism nor to think one’s own race superior to another. Hare would explain the history of moral progress as the gradual erosion of irrational prescriptions and their replacement with rational ones.Mackie acknowledges that there have been moral reformers who sought to instigate moral progress but argues that this does not come from their somehow having figured out objective moral facts. He instead suggests that ‘progress’ in fact resulting from thinking through the already held moral doctrines in a new way or recommending some new action because consistency of it with previous doctrines was desired. For example, the American constitution claims that all men have inalienable rights, and this was used by Martin Luther King to argue that black people should also have equal rights. So, King was merely expanding already existing doctrines not discovering objective moral progress. Mackie thus thinks our moral views and the changes they undergo originate from what a society happens to value due to contingencies of history and evolution, not some real objective standard within which their change could count as objective progress.Anti-realism issue #3: Whether anti-realism becomes moral nihilism.Step 1: Nihilism is the view that we should abandon all moral principles, regardless of whether they are objective or subjective, because they can never be justified. Anti-realists claim that there are no objective moral values. 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. Towards Jews, Hitler merely had a particular emotional association, prescription or cognitive belief that is in error. 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.?Step 2: anti-realists could respond that they are not committed to total abandonment of morality. Emotivists hold that we can still morally condemn people, just that those condemnations are non-cognitive expressions of our negative emotional reaction to them. Prescriptivists claim we can condemn irrational things like Nazism and prescribe universalizible things like equality, though those are non-cognitive prescriptions. Hare gave the example of a fanatical Nazi who found out his ancestors were Jewish. He admitted this to other Nazis and was killed. Hare would argue that it is irrational as Nazism as a prescription can’t be universalised, though there is nothing objectively wrong about being irrational, for Hare.Step 3: The Nihilist would counter that our having a different emotional reaction or prescription to someone else is insufficient grounds for moral condemnation, however. If the only difference between me and a Nazi is our emotional or prescriptive mental content, then there is no real way for me to say I am right and they are wrong, so my ‘moral condemnation’ has no more objective basis than their condemnation of me. The truth of anti-realism therefore entails the unjustifiability of moral principles, whether objective or subjective.Step 4: Arguably claiming that anti-realism entails Nihilism presupposes the framework of realism. If anti-realism is true then there is neither justifiable nor unjustifiable moral judgement. There are simply expressions of emotion, prescription or errors. There is indeed no way to say which is right or wrong, but therefore no way to say whether it is right or wrong to claims others are right or wrong either. The claim that we ‘should’ abandon moral principles because they cannot be justified presupposes a framework in which we should or should not do such a thing, but that is also denied by anti-realism. So there is indeed no way to say whether a moral principle is right or wrong, but also no way to claim therefore that it is wrong to adopt a moral principle nonetheless.Cruciality: Some bring up this sort of point as a criticism against either emotivism or prescriptivism, 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, 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. The behavioural consequences of everyone believing something doesn’t not speak against its truth. ................
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