Examine the different ways in which good is used in meta-ethics Anything people approve of must be good Discuss.

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Examine the different ways in which ‘good’ is used in meta-ethics

“Anything people approve of must be good” Discuss.

Meta-ethics is the part of ethics which investigates the true nature of ethical statements and its other properties. It questions what it is to be morally right or wrong.

Meta-ethics goes into two categories; these being cognitivism and non-cognitivism.

        Cognitivists or Natrualists say that moral statements describe the world. If I were to say that murder is wrong, then the cognitivist would say that I have recognised an asset of wrongness to the act of murder. Whether or not murder has an asset of wrongness is objective, therefore this statement is either objectively true or false. However Ethical Naturalism states that ‘good’ can be defined, therefore an action is able to be found ‘good’ or bad by studying the empirical evidence and weighing up all the facts, hence moral statements can be verified and falsified. They also base their views on that on that good is found in fulfilling the purpose of the object, this is based on the Aristotelian views. So if we were to analyse euthanasia to see whether it is ‘good’ we would have to gather the evidence and weigh out the good points and the bad points, and how it relates to everybody involved happiness. This is much like the hedonic calculus in utilitarianism where everybody is considered in the decision making process. The word ‘good’ is used by Ethical Natrualists to describe a certain act that has been proven by the empirical evidence to give the highest amount of happiness and is found to have no or a minor bad effect.

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        Intuitionists or non-naturalists believe that you cannot analyse ‘good’ as a property, so therefore cannot believe in anything that people recognise as ‘good’. They also believe that if it is contradicted a duty you ought to know, as in the Prima Facie Duty. Intuitionists approve of actions as they believe it is your intuition that is telling you to make a decision, in a sense you know always what to do in moral or ethical dilemmas, we have a priori sense of moral truths. R Therefore if your moral intuition is telling them what there doing, or about to do ...

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