Dimensions Of Ethics
• Metaethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics are the three main areas of ethics.
1. META-ETHICS
introduction:
• Metaethics literally means "beyond ethics," as "meta" is a Greek word that means "beyond." The status, foundations, and scope of moral values, properties, and words are explored in metaethics, a branch of analytic philosophy.
• Applied ethics and normative theory are concerned with what is moral, whereas metaethics is concerned with what morality is. Meta ethics is defined as the study of ethical concepts' origins and meanings.
• Metaethical positions can be classified based on how they respond to questions like these:
1. What exactly do people mean when they say things like "good" and "right"?
2. What is a moral value, exactly?
3. Where do moral values originate, and what is their foundation?
4. Does morality vary from person to person, context to context, or culture to culture, or does it vary from person to person, context to context, or culture to culture?
HISTORY AND EVOLUTION
• Although the term "metaethics" was coined in the early twentieth century, the fundamental philosophical concern about the status and foundations of moral language, properties, and judgments can be traced all the way back to the beginnings of philosophy.
• Several characters in Plato's dialogues, for example, could be said to represent metaethical positions that philosophers today are familiar with: Thrasymachus in Plato's Republic advocates a type of metaethical nihilism (most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism, which contends that life has no objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic meaning).
• In Plato's Euthyphro, Socrates defends the separation of divine commands from moral values, which is a forerunner of modern metaethical debates about the secular foundation of moral values.
• From the perspective of contemporary metaethics, Aristotle's grounding of virtue and happiness in the biological and political nature of humans has also been examined.
• Many Medieval morality accounts that base values on religious texts, commands, or emulation can be interpreted as defending metaethical positions. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus, for example, reflected on the apparent challenge to cultural superiority posed by the fact that different cultures have seemingly divergent moral practices in response to the cross-cultural contact engendered by the Greco-Persian Wars.
• In Western Europe, a similar interest in metaethics dominated moral discourse in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as theorists struggled to respond to the destabilization of traditional symbols of authority—for example, scientific revolutions, religious fragmentation, and civil wars as well as the grim portraits of human egoism painted by thinkers such as John Mandeville and Thomas Hobbes.
• Most notably, the eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher David Hume can be seen as a forerunner of contemporary metaethics when he questioned whether moral judgments are ultimately based on human passions rather than reason, and whether certain virtues are natural or artificial.
• In its modern form, however, analytic metaethics is widely acknowledged to have begun with G.E. Moore's moral writings. Moore argued that there is a difference between merely theorizing about moral goods and theorizing about the concept of "good" itself.
• Then, in the 1970s, analytic moral philosophy began to refocus on questions of applied ethics and normative theories, largely inspired by the work of philosophers such as John Rawls and Peter Singer.
• Metaethics is still a thriving branch of moral philosophy today.
DIVINE COMMAND THEORY
• Philosophers in the past and present have attempted to defend ethical theories based on a theistic framework.
• The view that morality is somehow dependent on God, and that moral obligation consists in obedience to God's commands, is known as Divine Command Theory.
• The claim that morality is ultimately based on God's commands or character, and that the morally right action is the one that God commands or requires is known as Divine Command Theory.
• The content of these divine commands varies depending on the religion and the views of the individual divine command theorist, but all versions of the theory share the claim that morality and moral obligations are ultimately determined by God.
• The Divine Command Theory has been, and continues to be, a contentious topic. Several philosophers, including Plato, Kai Nielsen, and J. L. Mackie, have criticized it.
• Moral philosophers and religious philosophers alike are interested in the possible connections between religion and ethics, but it also leads us to consider the role of religion in society and the nature of moral deliberation. As a result, the arguments for and against Divine Command Theory are theoretically and practically significant.
META-ETHICS: COGNITIVISM VS NON-COGNITIVISM
• Cognitivism and Non-Cognitivism are the two most common classifications for metaethics.
1. Cognitivism: When someone believes that ethics is cognitive, they believe that it is cognizable and that it exists in the real world.
• Cognitivism holds that ethical sentences are expressions of propositions that can be true or false (i.e. they are truth-apt or sentences that are capable of being true or false).
• As a result, moral judgments can be objectively true because they describe some aspect of the world. Moral statements become factual statements; they are either objectively true or false, and it is possible to determine what is "morally right" or "morally wrong."
• The meta-ethical position of non-cognitivism is that ethical sentences do not express propositions (i.e., statements) and thus cannot be true or false (they are not truth-apt).
• The cognitivist claim that "moral judgments are capable of being objectively true, because they describe some feature of the world" is refuted by a non-cognitivist.
2. Non-Cognitivism: It is the polar opposite of Cognitivism, arguing that moral statements aren't factual statements that can't be tested for truth or falsity.
• As a result, morality becomes purely subjective; there are no objective moral truths, and morality cannot be known.
• Non-Cognitivists simply assert that moral knowledge is impossible if moral statements cannot be true or false.
COGNITIVISM: NATURALISM AND NON-NATURALISM
• Naturalism and Non-naturalism are the two categories in which cognitive ethics can be classified.
• Moral statements can be reduced to natural statements, according to naturalist cognitive ethics, and thus become factual statements.
• We mean something that exists in our natural world when we say "natural statements." Something observable, knowable, and empirically verifiable.
• The moral statement good is frequently reduced to natural statement pleasure, and the moral statement bad is frequently reduced to natural statement pain.
1. Morally Good = Pleasure
2. Morally wrong =Pain
• As a result, Cognitive naturalists define something as good (morally good) if it promotes people's pleasure, and something as bad if it promotes people's pain (morally bad). This is a strong foundation for utilitarianism ethics.
• As a result, we can use our senses to verify moral statements using a cognitive naturalist approach.
• It's almost like taking an ethical approach from a scientific standpoint.
G.E. Moore’s Non-Naturalism (Open question argument and intuitionism)
• Moral statements cannot be reduced to natural statements, according to non-naturalist cognitive ethics.
• Natural properties cannot contain moral truths, according to Cognitive non-naturalism.
• G.E. Moore was a strong supporter of non-naturalism.
• Moore argued that we cannot equate moral terms with natural terms, and that attempting to do so is a Naturalistic Fallacy.
• Moore justified this by referring to David Hume's "is-ought" problem.
DAVID HUME
• Many writers make claims about what ought to be based on statements about what is, according to him ought is problem, as articulated by Scottish philosopher and historian David Hume (1711–76).
• Our understanding of morality is the source of this problem.
• By assuming knowledge of what is, how can we know what ought to be? We cannot derive our moral values from non-moral natural facts, according to Hume. Simply put, we cannot make moral value judgments based solely on facts.
• How can we infer how we should act based on what exists? There is a gap in our reasoning when we make "oughts" or moral claims based on "is" or natural facts (or facts about the world).
• We mistakenly believe that we can derive moral knowledge from natural facts, but the two are in no way related. Hume discovered that there appears to be a significant difference between descriptive statements (about what is) and prescriptive or normative statements (about what should be), and that moving from descriptive to prescriptive statements is not obvious.
• Hume's law, Hume's guillotine, or the fact–value gap are all names for the "is–ought" problem.
• G. E. Moore's open-question argument, intended to refute any identification of moral properties with natural properties, defends a similar viewpoint. This so-called naturalistic fallacy runs counter to ethical naturalists' viewpoints.
OPEN QUESTION ARGUMENT AND INTUTIONISM
• What produces pleasure is good, and what produces pain is bad, according to a moral naturalist. Using the open question argument, G.E. Moore demonstrated how reducing a moral property to a natural property is a mistake (naturalistic fallacy). The following is the argument:
• Good (Moral Property) = Pleasure (Natural Proper¬ty)
• If ‘X’ brings pleasure, then ‘X’ is good. As a result, if 'X' is 'eating fast food,' and 'eating fast food,' then 'eating fast food,' is good.
• To ask if ‘X' is good, consider the following statements. It would be a pointless inquiry. Is Good? It would be a similar question. This would result in a conceptual muddle.
• According to G.E. Moore, asking if "X" is good is not a meaningless question that causes no conceptual confusion, but rather an open question. As a result, it's not pointless to inquire about the quality of fast food.
• As a result, ‘X' is not synonymous with ‘Good,' and vice versa.
• There is no way that a Moral Property (Good) can be equated to a Natural Property (like Pleasure)
SO NATURALIST MORAL REALISM IS FALSE
• Moore used the logic outlined above to assert that moral properties cannot be reduced to natural properties. If the moral property good is analytically equivalent to a natural property, it seems impolite to question whether the natural property is truly good.
• When we try to define a moral property, however, we find that it is never a simple task. If we say well, we're referring to what I want. Is what I always desire good? Is it always an open question for one to ask? And there is no conceptual ambiguity in asking this question.
• This is where Moore asserts that moral terms such as good cannot be defined. Good, for example, is a simple and unassailable property. It is impossible to define it in any other way. They can't be dismantled any further.
• Moore compares it to any color, such as blue. We're at a loss for words to describe Blue in any other way. Simply put, blue is blue. Blue is the only color we recognize. As a result, good is simply good; we cannot define it in any other way, and we can only recognize it when we encounter or see it.
• Blue is a simple property that no one can explain; to understand what blue is, you must see it for yourself. Goodness, on the other hand, is a non-natural property, unlike colors.
• It is not a part of the natural or scientific worlds, but it is a part of reality. Because these aren't natural facts, we learn about them in an unusual way, through a faculty known as 'intuition.' Intuition is a natural ability that allows us to recognize good and bad when we see it, despite the fact that we cannot define good and bad in any other way. So, while we may not be able to define morality, we can recognize it.
• According to Moore's logic, why do we have disagreements on moral issues such as euthanasia and abortion, if moral properties are true and objective but not similar to natural properties, and if everyone is endowed with the faculty of intuition?
• If morality is objective, then everyone should be aware of it. Why don't we see it in the same light? Moore used the color Blue as an amorphous term similar to Good.
• However, German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzs criticized this analogy, claiming that one person may see something as good while another does not. Something along the lines of ethical color blindness.
• Finally, there is no empirical evidence for intuition. We have no evidence that something like this exists. This appears to be a metaphysical claim, and it does not appear to be appropriate to base objective moral truths on metaphysical claims.