Philosophers have tried to define what our moral language actually means. They discussed whether when we talk about ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, are we using these words in the same way? The reason behind this problem is that we use these words frequently in daily life and therefore you cannot always decipher whether you are using such words in the right context. There are non-moral uses of words (finding the ‘right’ pair of shoes for a party) and moral uses (it is ‘wrong’ to murder someone).
William Morris once said: “Have nothing in your house which you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful”. Whether something is useful is a fact and therefore an objective view. Whether something is beautiful is an opinion and therefore a subjective view. From this we have to decide where we would place goodness? Is goodness a fact as we might know something to be good or is it an opinion as we might believe it to be good?
Another way to approach the issues is by looking at evidence. Ethical naturalists (who have a cognivist view) think you are able to establish moral facts by looking at the evidence. We can therefore conclude whether an action is right or wrong by its outcome. The statement ‘stealing is wrong’ can be proved to be true by looking at the outcome of stealing, for example: A man stole a small child’s bicycle from outside a sweet shop. When the boy realised his bicycle was missing he went home and cried to his mother. His mother was very angry at his son for not taking care of the bicycle which she had to save up for as they were a poor family. The outcome is that the child and mother are both upset. This proves that stealing produces a bad outcome and therefore we can say ‘stealing is wrong’. Ethical naturalists think moral statements are verifiable; they can be tested to confirm if they are true or false. Ethical terms can also be defined using the same ‘natural’ terms that we would use to classify mathematics or science.
However the philosopher G. E. Moore disagrees with ethical naturalism as he believes moral statements cannot be proved solely by looking at empirical evidence. The mistake by which G. E. Moore says ethical naturalists make is called the ‘Naturalistic Fallacy’. Moore argues that it is not easy to define goodness, but it is possible to make moral judgements about what is good. He believed that goodness must have ‘non-natural’ properties which are available to the intuition rather than the empirical evidence. He believed that we use our ‘moral intuition’; we recognise good things intuitively when we see them. We get a ‘gut’ feeling and just know it, it is impossible to analyse. This was called a ‘simple notion’. The problem with Moore’s theory is that he doesn’t demonstrate it convincingly and therefore it seems somewhat difficult to deal with reviewing moral disputes on the conditions on which action generates more of the goods.
An ethical non-cognitivist, A.J. Ayer disagreed with Moore as he did not believe goodness to come from intuition. He believed such moral language came from opinions and feelings. His theory of meta-ethics is called emotivism (ethical non-naturalism). He did not think meta-ethics should be taken in an objective view, because by saying ‘stealing is wrong’ he believes we are expressing our feelings and emotions about the non-propositional statements. We are simply disapproving of murder, not stating any facts. These moral statements we make are believed to be altered by our attitudes, emotions and background. Whether you decide to help someone comes from your feelings, it has nothing to do with having a reason to help the person.
C. L. Stevenson who shared a similar non-cognitivist view like Ayer did, adapted Ayer’s emotivist ideas. Where Ayer thought arguments between people were due to them expressing their emotions, Stevenson believed arguments were a result of disagreement in attitudes. He believed there were two elements in moral judgement, putting across attitude based on fundamental beliefs and persuasion in order to influence others. If I was to say ‘abortion is wrong’ in Stevenson’s theory I would be saying ‘I disapprove of abortion’ because I have an attitude opposed to abortion and want to convince and manipulate others to agree with me, and adopt my view or at least to express the same attitude that I express.
From some of the issues debated in meta-ethics we learn that there are many different views on the way which people use moral language. This means not everyone will agree on one theory and therefore there are on going discussions about meta-ethics.
