Explain what is meant by meta-ethics (33)b) "Words such as 'right' are meaningless". Discuss. (17)

For naturalists "good" doesn't exist on its own, it can be reduced to pleasure, happiness or God's will.

The naturalist F.H Bradley believed that a moral perspective was determined from self-realisation and from observing your own position in society. He did not agree with hedonism because he believed pleasure provided no final self-understanding. He concluded that the best approach was to pursue self-realisation within the community.

The philosopher G.E Moore criticised naturalism in his book Principia Ethica, in it he asserted that moral judgements are based on an infallible intuitive knowledge of good things and when we make moral decisions we simply choose the action that brings about more of these good things.

In his book he also said that the word "good" cannot be defined. It is a simple idea that cannot be broken down or simplified, unlike horse, which is a complex idea that can be reduced and made further.

Moore came up with the "naturalistic fallacy". He said that to define and ethical judgement as a factual one is an error, that to define goodness as the greatest pleasure or the most happiness is to propagate a fallacy. He believed that moral judgements could never be proved empirically (to verify by sense perceptions).

The philosopher H.A Prichard furthered this theory. Prichard thought there were two different types of thinking - intuition and reasoning. The difference between the two being reasoning collects the facts and intuition determines which course to follow. For example in deciding whether or not to have an abortion our reason collects all the facts involved and our intuition uses these facts to decide which course of action to follow. He argued that to justify moral obligation by reducing it to an interest or something else was a mistake. Prichard said that intuition would identify which obligation was the greater but didn't believe in linking moral obligations to intrinsic goodness of any action.

In the 1920's a group of philosophers who were known as the Vienna Circle developed the theory of logical positivism (emotivism), which sought to give an account of ethical language that was scientific rather than intuitive or naturalistic. They used a process of verifying knowledge that excluded the possibility of moral facts. This process showed the influence of a Scottish philosopher called David Hume who believed that sentiment was the source of right and wrong.

However the leading British backer of this theory was A.J Ayer who argued that meaningful statements had to be verified either synthetically or analytically. Synthetic statements are those that can be identified through sense perceptions ("The book is under the bed") and analytic statements are those that are true by definition ("1+1=2").

Any other facts such as a religious belief are therefore counted as meaningless, as they cannot be proved either analytically or synthetically.

Another philosopher called C.L Stevenson developed Ayers ideas, he maintained that moral judgements contain two elements, an expression of attitude based on belief and a persuasive element which seeks to influence others.

Stevenson came up with the "hurrah boo" theory to explain this. For example if I am for abortion, I say "HURRAH TO ABORTION" but if I were against it I would say "BOO TO ABORTION".

Stevenson's development of the theory gave it more meaning to moral disagreements, which in Ayers view were just noisy shouting matches.

b) Words such as right are meaningless because it is a simple idea. Right cannot be broken down into different categories, such as good. Also it cannot be proved analytically or synthetically, making it meaningless.