Those who oppose cognitivists are called non cognitivists and they believe that when someone makes a moral statement they are not describing the world, but they are merely expressing their feelings and opinions, they believe that moral statements are not objective therefore they cannot be verified as true or false. In this essay I will be discussing the multiple branches of cognitive theories and non cognitive theories in order to answer the Janus-like question whether or not moral statements truly hold objective meaning. Ethical naturalism is just one branch of a cognitive theory in which naturalists believe that ethical statements are the same as non-ethical ones, meaning they are all factual and can
AJ Ayer in his book “language, truth and Logic” outlines what is commonly called the “emotivist” approach to ethical language. This approach supports the idea that ethical language is subjective. Ayer suggests that unless propositions and use of language is analytic or synthetic, such propositions carry no cognitive meaning. This approach to philosophical and ethical language (the concern of Analytic philosophy) was called the “verification principle” and was a development of David Hume’s work, “Hume’s fork”. Ethical statements, Ayer said, cannot be verified analytically or synthetically so the truth of such phrases is unknowable and the language used is non-cognitive.
G.E Moore argued against Ethical Naturalism as he believed that defining concepts such as ‘good’ are impossible and any attempt to define ‘good’ is to commit The Naturalistic Fallacy. The Naturalistic Fallacy is one of the main criticisms of Ethical Naturalism and would therefore suggest that ethical language is not very meaningful as it cannot be correctly defined. Moore believed there are moral properties, so ethical language is not completely devoid of meaning but it is limited as ‘good’ is a non-natural property which cannot be defined. Moore disagreed that ethical language could prove whether something is moral or
While as per Thoreau, policies of the State should never be put above the individual's needs. It is true that one is accountable to obey just laws; similarly, one has the moral responsibility to speak against unjust laws. However, it would be an extreme statement that one should disobey unjust laws. Anyways, laws are based on majority vote and cannot always suit everyone in different situations. Unjust laws do exist, but there is a proper way to reform them.
Since every ethical system should evaluate itself as the best and only moral system, and every other system is flawed and immoral, it is assumed that moral judgements about ethical systems are meaningless. Moral Relativism rests on the belief that values are subjective. It is holds the belief that there is no objective morality, that there is no such thing as right or wrong, good or evil. Only that, moral systems are just made up and supported by the circumstances of the action. Moral Relativism cannot and does not accept the idea that an objective moral system exists.
Some people believe that culture is a way that morality can be established, but morality differs from culture to culture. In Doing Ethics, Lewis Vaughn talks about cultural relativism and lays out an argument for it. In the second premise it states “If people’s judgments about right and wrong differ from culture to culture, then right and wrong are relative to culture, and there are no objective moral principles” (Vaughn 26). He makes it clear that he does not support this premise and explains his points as to why this is false. Cultural relativism is the idea that the moral principles someone has are solely determined by the culture one lives in.
Dissoi Logoi contains opposing arguments that can be argued either way. Its relevance to Rhetoric is that it allows us as readers to see that no argument can be made both bad and good, just and unjust, seemly and shameless. In our own minds we know right versus wrong, but not everyone has the same vision of what is right and what is wrong. What is wrong to one can be right to another and vice versa which appeals to the logos aspect of rhetoric. These notion of contradiction within this writing are rhetoric.
Each situation and each person must be assessed on their own merits (Thiroux, 2004, p. 42). Since we cannot look at each client individually to determine whether or not Dr. Smith’s confidentiality policy is morally justifiable (it may be for one client, but not for another), we cannot properly answer this question using act-based utilitarianism. Rule-based utilitarianism, on the other hand, changes the basic utilitarianism’s principle from “everyone should always act to bring about the greatest good (i.e., “happiness”) for all
As a further definition, Mackie posits that an objective moral value has the quality of ‘ought-to-be-pursued-ness’, it is something one should or ought do because it contains an inherently normative aspect. If Mackie’s argument is to succeed, it must prove that this supposed normative aspect has no existence within any act in itself, but has its origin in the agent of said act, and as such, all moral claims are false. Mackie’s exposition of moral relativism comes in the form of two main arguments, the first being his ‘argument from relativity’, the second, his ‘argument from queerness’. It is with the argument from relativity that I shall be here concerned. The argument from relativity is based around the purely ‘descriptive’ idea that it is an empirically observable fact that there seems to be
This essay aims to prove ethical objectivism by using the form of moderate objectivism. I will first prove the truth of the various premises of this argument and then consider the strongest objection against moderate objectivism that is the queerness argument. The queerness argument put forth by Mackie is in favour of error theory. Firstly, there is a need to establish that there is a common human nature; there is a common set of interests that is independent of cultural influences. A common human nature is an ambiguous term to use and it is impossible to establish that everyone have the same interests.