Meta-ethics

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In philosophy, meta-ethics (sometimes called "analytic ethics")[1] is the branch of ethics that seeks to understand the nature of ethical properties, and ethical statements, attitudes, and judgments. Meta-ethics is one of the three branches of ethics generally recognized by philosophers, the others being ethical theory and applied ethics. Ethical theory and applied ethics make up normative ethics. Meta-ethics has received considerable attention from academic philosophers in the last few decades.

While normative ethics addresses such questions as "What should one do?", thus endorsing some ethical evaluations and rejecting others, meta-ethics addresses the question "What is (moral) goodness?", seeking to understand the nature of ethical properties and evaluations.

Some theorists argue that a metaphysical account of morality is necessary for the proper evaluation of actual moral theories and for making practical moral decisions, however others make the (reverse) claim that only by importing ideas of moral intuition on how to act can we arrive at an accurate account of the metaphysics of morals.

Contents

[edit] Meta-ethical questions

According to Richard Garner and Bernard Rosen, there are three kinds of meta-ethical problems, or three general questions:

  1. What is the meaning of moral terms or judgments?
  2. What is the nature of moral judgments?
  3. How may moral judgments be supported or defended?[2]

A question of the first type might be, "What do the words 'good', 'bad', 'right' and 'wrong' mean?" (see value theory). The second category includes the question of whether moral judgments are objective or relative. Questions of the third kind ask, for example, how we can know if something is right or wrong, if at all. Garner and Rosen say that answers to the three basic questions "are not unrelated, and sometimes an answer to one will strongly suggest, or perhaps even entail, an answer to another."[2]

[edit] Meta-ethical theories

A meta-ethical theory, unlike a normative ethical theory, does not attempt to evaluate specific choices as being better, worse, good, bad, or evil; although it may have profound implications as to the validity and meaning of normative ethical claims. An answer to any of the three example questions above would not itself be a normative ethical statement.

The major meta-ethical views are commonly divided into realist and anti-realist views (despite the fact that some labels, such as cognitivism, do not recognize the realist/anti-realist distinction).

[edit] Moral realism

Moral realism holds that there are objective moral values. Some philosophers also hold that moral realism requires the belief that evaluative statements are factual claims, which are either true or false, and that their truth or falsity does not depend on our beliefs, feelings, or other attitudes towards the things that are evaluated. Under this definition, Richard Hare's "universal prescriptivism" would count as a a non-realist, for he does not believe that ordinary moral sentences like "murder is wrong" are statements with truth values; however he does believe that it is objectively irrational to fail to endorse this and many other moral sentences, so he is a moral realist (spefically, a moral rationalist) in the broader sense. Some other philosophers believe that moral realism includes only those views according to which the status of moral claims are independent of the desires, beliefs, etc. of particular beings, including supernatural ones. Under this restriction, the divine command theory is not a form of moral realism, although again it could be counted as a form of objective morality more broadly because the commands of god would be unalterable by any non-divine being.

Moral realism comes in several main variants:

  1. Ethical intuitionism and ethical non-naturalism, which hold that there are objective, irreducible moral properties (such as the property of 'goodness'), and that we sometimes have intuitive or a priori awareness of moral properties or of moral truths. (See G.E. Moore.)
  2. Ethical naturalism, which holds that there are objective moral properties but that these properties are reducible or stand in some metaphysical relation (such as supervenience) to entirely non-ethical properties. Most ethical naturalists hold that we have empirical knowledge of moral truths. (See Alasdair MacIntyre.)
  3. Moral rationalism, also called ethical rationalism, which holds that there are objective moral properties which are reducible to or derived from principles of practical reasoning. Our moral intuitions may sometimes be based on an implicit awareness of such reasoning, which philosophical reflection can make explicit. (See Immanuel Kant.)

[edit] Moral anti-realism

Moral anti-realism holds that there are no objective moral values, or perhaps simply that such values are not robust (mind-independent) or that moral statements, though objective, do not assert true or false statements. There are several versions of such views:

  1. Ethical subjectivism, which holds that moral statements are made true or false by the attitudes and/or conventions of observers. There are several different versions of subjectivism, including:
    • Moral relativism (compare "cultural relativism"): This is the view that for a thing to be morally right is for it to be approved of by society; this leads to the conclusion that different things are right for people in different societies and different periods in history. Though long out of favor among academic philosophers, this view has been popular among anthropologists, such as Ruth Benedict.
    • Individualist subjectivism: Another view is that there are as many distinct scales of good and evil as there are subjects in the world. This view was put forward by Protagoras.
    • Ideal observer theory: Another subjectivist theory holds that what is right is determined by the attitudes that a hypothetical ideal observer would have. An ideal observer is usually characterized as a being who is perfectly rational, imaginative, and informed, among other things.
    • Divine command theory: This form of subjectivism holds that for a thing to be right is for a unique being, God, to approve of it, and that what is right for non-God beings is obedience to the divine will. This view was criticized by Plato in the Euthyphro (see the Euthyphro problem) but retains some modern defenders (Robert Adams, Philip Quinn, and others).
  2. Non-cognitivism, which holds that ethical sentences are neither true nor false because they do not express genuine propositions. Non-cognitivism encompasses:
    • Emotivism, defended by A.J. Ayer and C.L. Stevenson, which holds that ethical sentences serve merely to express emotions. So "Killing is wrong" means something like, "Boo on killing!"
    • Prescriptivism, defended by R.M. Hare, which holds that moral statements function like imperatives. So "Killing is wrong" means something like, "Don't kill!" As noted above, Hare's version of prescriptivism requires that moral prescriptions be universalizable, and hence actually have objective values, in spite of failing to be statements with truth-values.
    • Quasi-realism, defended by Simon Blackburn, which holds that ethical statements behave linguistically like factual claims and can be appropriately called "true" or "false", even though there are no ethical facts for them to correspond to. Projectivism and moral fictionalism are related theories.
  3. Error theory holds that ethical claims are generally false. On an error theory, all ethical statements have a truth value: false. Thus the statement "Murder is bad" is false AND the statement "Murder is good" is false according to an error theory. J. L. Mackie is probably the best-known proponent of this view. (Note that error theory is also sometimes associated with moral skepticism, but they have some slight differences. Error theories are a type of moral skepticism, but there are other types of moral skepticism.)

Subjectivism, non-cognitivism, and error theory are the only forms of anti-realism: If there are no objective values, this must be either because ethical statements are subjective claims (as subjectivists maintain), because they are not genuine claims at all (as non-cognitivists maintain), or because they are mistaken objective claims. The only alternative is for ethical statements to be correct objective claims, which entails moral realism.

Another way of categorizing meta-ethical theories distinguishes between monistic theories (in which there is one true, or at least one highest, good) and pluralistic theories.

Value pluralism contends that there are two or more genuine values, knowable as such, yet incommensurable, so that any prioritization of these values is either non-cognitive or subjective. A value pluralist might, for example, contend that both the life of a nun and that of a mother realize genuine values (in an objective and cognitivist sense), yet there is no purely rational measure of which is preferable. A notable proponent of this view is Isaiah Berlin.

[edit] Centralism and non-centralism

The debate between centralism and non-centralism revolves around the relationship between the so-called "thin" and "thick" concepts of morality. Thin moral concepts are those such as good, bad, right, and wrong; thick moral concepts are those such as courageous, inequitable, just, or dishonest.[3] While both sides agree that the thin concepts are more general and the thick more specific, centralists hold that the thin concepts are antecedent to the thick ones and that the latter are therefore dependent on the former. That is, centralists argue that one must understand words like "right" and "ought" before understanding words like "just" and "unkind." Non-centralism rejects this view, holding that thin and thick concepts are on par with one another and even that the thick concepts are a sufficient starting point for understanding the thin ones.[4][5] Non-centralism has been of particular importance to ethical naturalists in the late 20th and early 21st centuries as part of their argument that normativity is a non-excisable aspect of language and that there is no way of analyzing thick moral concepts into a purely descriptive element attached to a thin moral evaluation, thus undermining any fundamental division between facts and norms. Allan Gibbard, R.M. Hare, and Simon Blackburn have argued in favor of the fact/norm distinction, meanwhile, with Gibbard going so far as to argue that even if conventional English has only mixed normative terms (that is, terms that are neither purely descriptive nor purely normative), we could develop a nominally English metalanguage that still allowed us to maintain the division between factual descriptions and normative evaluations.[6][7]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Cline, Austin "Analytic Ethics (Metaethics)," URL = http://atheism.about.com/library/FAQs/phil/blfaq_phileth_anal.htm."
  2. ^ a b Garner, Richard T.; Bernard Rosen (1967). Moral Philosophy: A Systematic Introduction to Normative Ethics and Meta-ethics. New York: Macmillan, 215. LOC card number 67-18887. 
  3. ^ Jackson, Frank "Critical Notice" Australasian Journal of Philosophy Vol. 70, No. 4; December 1992 (pp. 475-488).
  4. ^ Hurley, S.L. (1989). Natural Reasons: Personality and Polity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  5. ^ Hurley, S.L. (1985). "Objectivity and Disagreement." in Morality and Objectivity, Ted Honderich (ed.). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, pp. 54-97.
  6. ^ Couture, Jocelyne and Kai Nielsen (1995). "Introduction: The Ages of Metaethics," in On the Relevance of Metaethics: New Essays in Metaethics, Jocelyne Couture and Kai Nielsen (eds.). Calgary: University of Calgary Press, pp. 1-30.
  7. ^ Gibbard, Allan (1993). "Reply to Railton," in Naturalism and Normativity, Enrique Villanueva (ed.). Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview, pp. 52-59.

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