Explain why there maybe problems about the meaning of ethical language

Also, there is the problem of the is-ought debate, also known as the naturalistic fallacy. The majority of philosophers believe that it is incorrect to assume that a moral theorist could jump from describing what actually happens to what should happen. For example, if a woman desperately wanted children but this was impossible except through fertility treatment, many would say that she ought to be offered fertility treatment. In this case the ‘is’ statement is; a marries woman wants a child, and the ‘ought’ statement is; she should be offered IVF. G E Moore would argue that the ‘ought’ statement does not logically follow from the ‘is’ statement, but there has to be an intermediate statement, however this would also be an ‘ought; statement. JR Searle, argues that you can move from an ‘is’ to an ‘ought’, his argument is as follows; Jones says, ‘I promise to pay you $5 Smith, Jones has, therefore, offered to pay Smith $5, Jones has voluntarily put himself under obligation to pay Smith the money, Jones is, therefore, under obligation to pay, Jones ought to pay Smith $5. In this argument the first four statements are all ‘is’ statements, and the last is an ‘ought’ statement. This led to Searle to believe that it is possible to move form an ‘is’ to an ‘ought’. However Mackie refutes this by saying that statement five is only valid if there has been the prevailing assumption throughout that Jones sees holding promises as morally good. The ‘is-ought’ debate proves to be a problem for ethical language because many philosophers have moved form an ‘is’ to an ought within their arguments, and if it is not possible to do so then it weakens their arguments.

A further problem that has arisen about the meaning of ethical language has come from the logical positivists. Logical positivists hold moral statement to be meaningless, unless they are what they termed; analytic or synthetic statements. Basically, an analytic statement is one which is correct by definition, for example the statement; all parents have produced children is an analytic statement because to be a parent you must have produced a child or children. On the other hand, synthetic statements can or have to be verified by reference to experience. For example; water freezes at zero degrees Celsius, to prove this one has to carry out an experiment. Also, Logical Positivists claim that some statements are ‘meaningless’, these are the statements that are neither analytic nor synthetic. Therefore, ‘It is bad to steal or lie’ is a ‘meaningless’ statement from the Logical Positivists point of view. Therefore, according to Logical Positivists the majority of ethical statements are ‘meaningless’ because of the ethical language used in them.

Overall it is possible to say that the problems about the meaning of ethical language are that the words used in ethical language are also used in everyday language, therefore people may misinterpret the meaning implied. Moreover, there is the Naturalistic Fallacy, which is the is-ought debate; whether it is possible to move from an ‘is’ statement to an ‘ought’ statement. Furthermore, according to some people some ethical statements are ‘meaningless’, it could be argued that this is because of the ethical language used. The only possible solution to there being room for misinterpretation of words because they have many different meanings, is to create new words which have there own specific definition which is agreed on by all. Or just to have agreed on definitions of all words used in ethical language such as ‘good’, however this is not likely to work. The problem of the naturalistic Fallacy for ethical language cannot be readily solved, the only possibility is, in my opinion, for it to be accepted by all moral philosophers that you cannot move form an ‘is’ to an ‘ought’. The same applies for the ‘meaningless’ statements, I agree with the logical positivists and see statements which cannot be verified in any way as ‘meaningless’.