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22 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Why, according to Hume, are no preferences ‘contrary to reason’?
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Desire and reason (belief) have different roles, and so they can never conflict. Reason (see Hume's fork) works in two ways and influences desire by giving factual information, but desire, before reason is ever introduced into the equation, has already set the path. Reason guides us to the right path that will fulfill desire.
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What consequences does this have for morality and why? (Hume)
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Morality is practical, so moral truths cannot be discovered by reason. Moral attitudes affect how we behave, and since reason cannot do that, morality must be based on desire or sentiment. Beliefs (reason) are true or false; desire cannot be true or false and do not make claims about how things are. Therefore, moral utterances cannot be true or false.
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What moves us to act? (Hume)
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Desire moves us to act. We desire a certain end, and we employ reason to tell us how to get to that end.
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What is the main difference between beliefs and desires? (Hume)
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Beliefs are based on reason. They make represent the world as being a certain way, and so can be true or false. Desires and feelings make no claims about how things are and cannot be true or false.
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From what point of view do we judge something to be good or bad, virtuous or vicious? (Hume)
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We can't observe the wrongness of an action. When we say it is wrong, we express "a feeling or sentiment of blame from the contemplation of it." The feeling we get from the contemplation of virtue is agreeable; that we get from considering vice is disagreeable. So we judge it from the point of view of the passions/desire rather than from reason.
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What is the difference between natural and artificial virtues? (Hume)
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A natural virtue is something like beneficence or compassion that exists outside of society or any other factors. An artificial virtue is something like justice that cannot exist in the absence of society and property laws. Recall analytic/synthetic distinction.
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What is goodness, according to Moore? Why can't it be defined?
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Goodness is simple and indefinable. Some words, ex. horse, denote complex objects/properties and we can explain the meaning of these to someone by listing their parts and the way they hang together. Goodness, like other simple terms, ex. yellow, denote simple and unanalyzable features. They can only be learned about by their observation. Whenever we define a complex object or property we eventually reach simples: we can go no further.
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What is ethical naturalism, and what fallacy does it commit?
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"Everything is what it is, and not another thing." It would be a mistake to define any simple thing in terms of another simple or complex. "Definist fallacy." Also called "identification mistake." The naturalistic fallacy involves identifying a non-natural property with a natural one. Things and properties can be natural, non, or super; natural = the things and properties studied by natural science. "Good," is non-natural. The Naturalistic Fallacy consists in identifying a non-natural property such as goodness with some natural/supernatural property.
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What is the open question argument? What is it supposed to show?
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Questions like, "x has property y, but is it good?" will always result in an unanswerable. We come to see that every proposed definition of good must fail, because when we think of good we have a distinct object before the mind, which is different from pleasure, etc.
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What is the distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions?
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“all synthetic propositions are empirical hypotheses”. Ayer subscribes to the Verification Principle, which is a form of radical empiricism. Meaningful propositions are of two types. Analytic propositions, e.g. “all bachelors are unmarried” are true because of the meanings of words. Meaningful synthetic propositions have a truth-value because they can be verified or falsified by empirical observation (the method of science), e.g. “there are no parking places left”. All other propositions are strictly meaningless (or not significant, as Ayer puts it).
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What does Ayer say we are doing when making ethical claims?
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We're making claims about how we feel about something. If I say murder is wrong, I really mean "boo for murder."
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What is Ayer’s objection to utilitarianism and subjectivism?
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a) Utilitarianism defines goodness and rightness in terms of happiness or pleasure.
b) Subjectivism says that to state that X is right or X is good is to state that I approve of it. Whether or not I do approve is a matter of fact that can be empirically tested. Both definitions are rejected on the grounds that they can be denied without contradiction. |
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What is Ayer’s objection to the “absolutist” view of ethics?
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It is ethical statements making normative claims that cannot be defined in factual terms. Are we then to say that ethical claims are known by ‘intellectual intuition’ (as perhaps Ross claimed)? No, because this is not a method of verification but mere subjective opinion. (Ayer, confusingly, refers to this intuitionist theory as ‘absolutism’.)
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How is Ayer’s view different from what he calls “orthodox subjectivism”?
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According to subjectivism, ethical statements make a genuine factual claim, which is either true or false, about my current psychological state.
According to emotivism, ethical statements make no claims, and cannot be true or false. They merely express my approval or disapproval. |
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What is Mackie’s view concerning moral values?
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There are no objective values. This is an ontological rather than a conceptual claim. Mackie concedes that our ordinary moral thought and language presupposes that there are objective values. But this is an error. (Contrast Ayer and Hare, who take it that the purpose of moral language is just to express feelings or to guide actions.) Rather misleadingly, Mackie calls this view moral scepticism (misleadingly, because the sceptic does not deny but doubts).
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How can Mackie deny that there are objective values and yet maintain that there is a difference between kind and cruel actions?
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He denies that there are prescriptive properties of things in the world, not that there are properties such as kindness and cruelness.
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How does Mackie’s view differ from Ayer’s view?
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Ayer takes it that the purpose of moral language is just to express feelings. For example, if I say "murder is wrong," I really just mean "boo for murder." Mackie says our ordinary moral thought and language presupposes that there are objective values, which is what he doubts.
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How does Mackie’s view differ from orthodox subjectivism?
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Orthodox subjectivism says that I can make a moral statement, but it's true only in virtue of my feeling that way. Mackie's view says that there cannot be objective values, since those values would be based on hard facts and not desires or sentiments.
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In what sense can value statements be true or false, according to Mackie?
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b
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What is the argument from relativity?
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The actual variations in the moral codes are more readily explained by the hypothesis that they reflect ways of life than by the hypothesis that they express perceptions, most of them seriously inadequate and badly distorted, of objective values (p. 248).
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What is the argument from queerness?
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If there were objective values, then they would be entities for qualities or relations of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe. Correspondingly, if we were aware of them, it would have to be by some special faculty of moral perception or intuition, utterly different from our ordinary ways of knowing everything else (p. 249).
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What are some objections to Mackie's argument?
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x
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