A follower of prescriptivism might argue that because humans are known for breaking and getting confused with laws and rules to do with morality, that they need an easy straight forward guide to aid them to act on instinct and not have to wait to decide what do to. This will allow humans to act in a logical way and fit into society.
On the other hand one might point out the illogical necessity of a moral guide. Creating a moral guide whether it’s simple or not does not ignore the fact that it has been created merely for people to conform to society’s preferences. Prescribing what a person ought to do isn’t what they should do, it’s what they are being told to do to allow society to function adequately which could be argued as not living.
However a prescriptivist may argue that people need to integrate in society better together. Moral education such as knowing how to act will aid people to respect and which enforces one of prescriptivism’s ideas, allowing people to live and remain in harmony.
Yet its counter-productive act to add importance to the integration of society, it’s foolish to make people have constant ethical action when we are all different. Happiness, sadness right and wrong varies from one to another, therefore to universalise an act and then command people that they are obligated to do it because it’s the right or wrong thing to do is meaningless. It’s not taking into account peoples preferences, therefore it isn’t right to generalise society’s preferences to the most desired preference.
One might argue that all ethical statements relate to an objective moral truth. If they didn’t then surely they would be meaningless if they weren’t all deriving from a similar truth that everyone understood. For example ethical naturalism, a Theological naturalist would argue that their objective moral truth has come from God, the goodness has derived from him therefore they would know how to act. On the other hand. If one person’s truth was to harm everyone in sight and the other to help everyone in sight, the actions and statements would be completely different. Therefore it is essential that an objective moral truth is displayed and recognised by society.
On the other hand you could put forward that Moral views and perspectives are down to early child experiences, the way you are brought up moulds your viewpoints and attitudes. For example If the person in the above example who wanted to harm everyone was brought up in a non-safe environment and experienced a bad childhood its needless to say that his viewpoints would be completely different to someone of the opposite childhood. So what I mean is that you cannot assume that everyone’s ethical statements are derived from an objective truth, they can merely be from experience.
by
dannywright14livecouk (student)
