Meta-Ethics question June 2011

Below is an answer written on the day by one of my students.  It gained 35/35.  The examiner’s report is appended below for this question (page 2 of the drop down menu).  The mark scheme is not yet available.

Exam Question: “Ethical statements are no more than expressions of emotion”. Discuss

Ethical Statements are not commonly held as the same as other statements that can simply be proved ‘true’ or ‘false’. The philosopher A.J. Ayer once said that “when I say ‘you acted wrongly in stealing that money’ I am doing no more then saying ‘you stole that money’.” He believed ethics was simply emotions, and there is no factual content in our ethical statements. I would disagree, arguing that Hare’s theory of prescriptivism captures what we are doing’ prescribing a course of action.

Ayer believed ethics to simply be emotions being expressed. His emotivism, sometimes informally called ‘Boo-Hurrah’ theory, suggests that when I say ‘murder is wrong’ I am saying ‘ I don’t like murder.’ He goes on, however, to say that ethical statements ‘don’t serve only to express feeling, but to arouse feeling and so to stimulate action’. This is a hint of Hare’s prescriptivism – we are trying to encourage others to agree with us.

The biggest weakness of this theory is that it renders moral discourse meaningless. We can are ‘murder is wrong’ – to which a reply may be ‘ I disagree’, and this is as far as emotivists can rationally go. I would agree that there is rational basis to morality, and that therefore we are not simply expressing emotions. C.L. Stevenson developed emotivism, I believe in the right direction, by adding that with ethical statements… ” the major use is to create an influence.” When I say “theft is wrong” I am saying ” I strongly dislike theft and so should you too.” He argues for three criteria to be fulfilled by the word ‘good’ – it must not be solely verifiable by science, we must be able to disagree over it, and it must have magnetism – it must make us want to do the good thing. Stevenson believed emotivism fulfilled this criteria. The import distinction for Stevenson from Ayer, was that unlike the idea that there is no factual content in the world good, we can resolve moral disagreements if we first decide what we mean by the words ‘cruel’ and ‘kind’ and other moral words, and then use reason to work out what would achieve goodness. So for Stevenson, though ethics is still expression of emotion – these are not meaningless. This is a great strength as it gives us grounds to have rational moral discourse again. I believe this is almost precursory to R.M. Hare’s argument for Prescriptivism.

Another non-Cognitive theorist, Hare recognized that there was no natural feature of an action that determined its goodness or badness. However, for Hare, there were logical principles to morality which enabled us to see ethical statements as more than expressions of emotion. Hare argued that ethical statements were commitments to actions, and that they were prescriptive. When I say ‘murder is wrong’, for Hare what I am saying is ” I believe murder is wrong, so should you and I urge you not to do it.’ There were to principles to moral language – universalisability and prescriptivity. In order to achieve consistency with our moral prescriptions, we must be able to universalise what we are prescribing. We can see here a link to Hare’s normative preference utilitarianism, in that his thinking seems to be ‘ I value my own preferences, therefore moral consistency requires I value others’ preferences as well.’

These two theories of meta-ethics have maintained that there is no natural feature of ‘goodness,’ and that ethics is non-cognitive. Ethical naturalism maintains that there is no difference between and ethical statement and a factual statement. Saying ‘murder is wrong’ is like saying ‘murder has the property of wrongness;’ good is an observable and natural feature of the world. This has been attacked by philosophers like G.E. Moore who believe the Naturalistic fallacy to be valid. The naturalistic fallacy states that to move from an ‘is’ to an ‘ought’ was logically invalid. This means that there is no natural feature that is ‘goodness’ and therefore we cannot move from a fact – ‘it is x’ to a value – ‘I ought to do y’ without making, as Hume said, “explicit our hidden premises that refer to some moral standard.”

G.E. Moore accepted this and argued that you can always ask ‘but is it good’ after, for example, a utilitarian act which produced happiness. He argued that goodness was therefore not a natural feature of the world, but that we do know goodness. He argued for intuitionism, that we know good as a simple, unanalysable property, “Good is good… it denotes a simple and undefinable property,” much like a primary colour cannot be reduced further or explained. The major criticism I have of this is that peoples intuitions are evidently different, otherwise there would be no disagreement, in the first place. This seems to undermine Moore’s idea of Humans ability to simply ‘recognize’ goodness.

W.D. Ross argued, as a deontologist, that some things were just right. He was an intuitionist for whom ethics was more then emotional expressions. He introduced Prima Facie duties, arguing that when faced with a problem, we all recognize what Prima Facie duties to apply and in doing so we discover our actual duty. For Ross the seven duty classes were Fidelity, Gratitude, Justice, Reparation, Self-improvement, Benevolence and Non -maleficence’. He argued when these duties conflict we can use reason to work out what to do. This approach is appealing, but again we can see that there are people who don’t appear to be acting on any of these duties, and this leads me to ask whether Ross has simply compiled a list of desirable attributes and labelled them as ‘Prima facie’ duties.

It is these weaknesses in cognitive theories that make me think that Hare has the most to offer any ethicist. We can even see a way out of Hume’s fork – (all statements with meaning are either analytic or synthetic, therefore ethical statements are meaningless) – by declaring it a False Dichotomy. Ethical statements aren’t analytic or Synthetic but Prescriptive, there is a third type of rational statement.

Some philosophers have criticised Hare, arguing that we can simply ‘change our mind’ and prescribe different principles, and indeed ask why we should follow any one prescription over another? I would believe these philosophers to have missed to point to an extent; Prescriptivism does not purport to be an ethical theory – it just evaluates the nature and content of ethical statements. As it gives us moral rationality, and from it we can deduce “classes of acts” rather then ‘individual acts’ – I would conclude that prescriptivism provides a strong case for arguing that ethical statements are more than just expressions of emotion.

Here is the examiner’s report on this question, which provides important clues as to how to achieve an A grade.

Some candidates showed a most impressive range of knowledge and understanding. Such candidates were able to present and assess Ayer’s emotivism, giving its background in the Vienna Circle, and the challenges it presented to naturalism. They were also able to counter this approach by highlighting the strengths of intuitionism and prescriptivism. It was pleasing to see how many candidates provided insightful comment on the views of Stevenson and Pritchard and also the debt owed by Ayer to Hume for his basic approach. Ayer believed that ethical statements do hold a type of meaning: it was felt that “no more than expressions of feeling” meant meaningless.

Weaker responses often just listed the different approaches, providing implicit evaluation only. Some even answered the question as if it was “ethical statements have no meaning” and few seemed to appreciate that Ayer believed that ethical statements do hold a type of meaning: it was felt that “no more than expressions of feeling” meant meaningless.
Some candidates seemed a little less sure of the approach taken by naturalism and references to the likes of Bradley were not common. Also, some responses seemed to suggest confusion as to the distinction between cognitivism and non-cognitivism.
Some candidates introduced the conscience, but usually failed to relate it to the question. Occasionally, candidates made some interesting links between ethical statements and the origin of conscience, usually using this to argue against the statement.

The question demanded clarity of knowledge and expression, and although it was challenging, on the whole candidates tackled it well.

by TG