Ethical language is meaningless. Discuss.
by
annamarypaul99gmailcom (student)
“Ethical language is meaningless.” Discuss.
Meta-ethics is the term used to describe the analysis of ethical language; it looks at the questions raised about ethical language such as whether we are stating facts or just opinions when using ethical language. Many people believe that ethical language is about facts that are either right or wrong, for example, “abortion is wrong,” but others believe moral facts are based on the beliefs and feelings of a person, for example, “abortion is wrong because it goes against the sanctity of life.” Therefore, ethical statements are not always just about moral facts, but are statements based on our feelings. These statements cannot be made true or false, as they may be expressions of a view that may not be shared by everyone. When talking about ethical language, people use words such as “good” and “bad” which are usually used to express one’s own feelings and so this raises the question of whether ethical language is meaningless since it is an opinion rather than a fact.
There are two different philosophical approaches to this question. The first approach I will look at is the cognitive approach. According to cognitivists, moral statements describe the world and everyone can have moral knowledge. They believe ethical statements are about facts and can be proved true or false. For example, if someone says that murder is wrong, then murder has the property of wrongness so this statement would be objectively true or false. Cognitivists hold a moral realist point of view. This means that they believe that moral facts are objective facts and are good and bad independently of us.
One cognitive theory of ethics is ethical naturalism; a theory that moral values can be derived from sense experience. This theory suggests that all ethical statements are the same as non-ethical statement in that they are factual and can therefore be verified or falsified empirically. They believe that to see if a statement is correct or not, you should look at the evidence to test the veracity of the statement. For example, the statement “Euthanasia is right,” you could argue that it ends the suffering of the individual and therefore it is right. According to ethical naturalism, religious language is meaningful because are ethical statements can be proved to be true or false.
A criticism of ethical naturalism is that the theory claims that moral statements can be verified or falsified using evidence, but to claim this is to commit naturalistic fallacy. Naturalistic fallacy means the good cannot be defined. This relates to the argument put forward by G.E. Moore in his book Principa Ethica: he argued that ethical naturalism is an attempt to identify goodness with a natural quality and claimed that this is a mistake. He based his argument on David Hume, who thinks that it is logically invalid to derive an ‘ought’ from an ‘is,’ or in other words, we can’t infer from a description of how the world is to how the world ought to be. Moore used the ‘open question argument’ to argue against ethical naturalism. For any natural property, it makes sense to ask “is it good?” and the fact that we can even ask this question shows that ‘good’ and ‘bad’ cannot be the names of natural properties in the way that ‘rough’ and ‘smooth’ are. Therefore, if we claim that happiness is a naturally good thing, we could always ask “is happiness good?,” but if happiness is naturally good this question would make no more sense than asking “does happiness make people happy?” However, it does make sense and so goodness cannot be a property of happiness. If we make statements such “Mother Theresa helped the dying” it is still right to ask “were those actions good?” It is still possible for people to have different opinions, so moving from a factual objective statement to an ethical statement does not work because it leaves an open question that cannot be answered. Therefore the ethical statements cannot be proved to be meaningful using ethical naturalism.
Another cognitivist theory is intuitionism; a theory that moral truths are known by intuition. G.E Moore said that good is a simple, unanalysable property, for example, like colours. Similar to utilitarianism, Moore said that there are objective rights that produce the most good but he said that goodness cannot be defined. Moore said that we cannot use our sense to tell whether something is good but we can use our ‘moral intuition’ to say whether a moral statement is true or false. We recognise goodness when we see it – it is something we just know. He called ...
This is a preview of the whole essay
Another cognitivist theory is intuitionism; a theory that moral truths are known by intuition. G.E Moore said that good is a simple, unanalysable property, for example, like colours. Similar to utilitarianism, Moore said that there are objective rights that produce the most good but he said that goodness cannot be defined. Moore said that we cannot use our sense to tell whether something is good but we can use our ‘moral intuition’ to say whether a moral statement is true or false. We recognise goodness when we see it – it is something we just know. He called this a ‘simple notion’ and explained it by saying it is rather like trying to define the colour yellow. We cannot define what the colour yellow is but we can show someone an example.
H.A. Prichard also believes in intuitionism. He says that no definition can be given to the word ‘ought,’ but we all recognise its properties. He thought there were two types of thinking – reason and intuition. Reason looks at the facts of a situation and intuition decides what to do. In any situation, Prichard thought that intuition would show which action was right and where our moral obligation lay. He agreed that there was the problem that people’s morals were different, but said that this was because some people had developed their moral thinking further than others. He says that where there is a conflict of obligations he says we must look at the situation and decide which obligation is greater. However, according to Prichard, intuition would not be something that everyone could use to prove goodness.
Another version of intuition was proposed by W.D. Ross. He was a deontologist who argues that it was obvious that certain types of actions, called prima facie duties, were right. In any particular situation we would come to recognise certain prima facie duties. He listed seven classes of prima facie duties: duties of fidelity, reparation, gratitude, justice, beneficence, self-improvement, non-maleficence. Ross says that when these duties conflict, we must follow the one we think it right in the situation, and sometimes one duty will have to give way to another. The duty a person thinks is right in a situation will depend on a person’s moral maturity. According to intuition, religious language is meaningful because people have certain intuitions about right and wrong.
The problem with intuitionism is that it claims that we know what is good by intuition and not by empirical evidence but this is not proved by Moore – he says you either agree with him or have not thought about it properly. However, it would seem that if the naturalistic fallacy shows that you cannot conclude value judgements from natural facts by means of evidence obtained through the senses, then the idea of ‘non-natural’ facts and a special ‘intuition’ does not make sense. Some philosophers say that out emotions and practical wisdom gave us this intuitive knowledge.
Also, we cannot be sure that intuitions are correct since people may come to different conclusions, whether they use intuition or reason to come to their decisions. There is also the question of how we can decide between our intuitions if sense experience cannot be used. If they contradict each other, both cannot be right, but they will be right for the person whose intuition tells him what to do. We can never know which intuition is true or false; as we do not all recognise goodness intuitively in the same way. Moral intuitions seem to come largely from social condition and differ between cultures, so it is hard to see how such intuitions can be a reliable guide to objective ethical truths. For this reason, intuitionism cannot be used to argue that ethical language is meaningful.
The second approach to the meaningfulness of ethical language is the non-cognitivist approach. This is the idea that when someone males a moral statement they are not describing the world, but expressing their feelings or telling people what to do. They say that moral statements are not descriptive they cannot be described as true or false – they are subjective. There is no ethical knowledge, because statements are not statements that can be proved true or false. Thus to say “Euthanasia is wrong” is not a statement about facts, but some other kind of saying. Non-cognitivists make a distinction between facts and values. This approach is often followed by anti-realists.
One non-cognitive theory of ethics is emotivism. A.J Ayer starts with the premise that there is no ethical knowledge because ethical judgements are not the kinds of statements that can be true or false. Emotivism will not tell you how to live a moral life, but simply helps us understand moral statements: as action guiding and as conveying certain attitudes. This view says that when we talk about “good” and “bad” we are simply expressing emotional states of approval and disapproval. Any other interpretation of ethical statements is meaningless. A.J Ayer said that there are only two kinds of meaningful statements: analytic and synthetic statements. Analytics statements are the idea that the truth or falsity of the statement can be determined simply by understanding the terms that occur I them. Synthetic statements are the idea that the truth or falsity of a statement can be determined by checking to establish the facts either way. Ethical statements are not verifiable – there are no empirical facts which can be checked to see if any ethical statement is true or false – so they are meaningless. The only way they can be understood is as an expression of feelings. Emotivism shows that the ethical statements we make depend on our own attitudes and feelings, and this can lead it to be criticised as just being subjectivism. However, although Ayer does argue that ethical statements have no factual content, he does not believe they have no meaningful function. It simply reduces ethical statements to the level of giving ones opinion and so they are simply meaningless.
C.L. Stevenson also supported emotivism. He discussed the emotive meaning of words; many moral terms such as “honesty” are both descriptive and emotive, expressing also what we feel about them. So when an individual is making a moral judgement he is not only communicating his feelings; he is also trying to influence others’ attitudes. This does mean that ethical statements can be based on emotions; however, these are not merely arbitrary, but rather based on our experience of the world and how we want it to be. As he saw ethical statements as not only expressions of emotion, but also the result of attitudes based on fundamental beliefs, ethical disagreements between people are disagreement about fundamental principles. According to emotivism, religious language is meaningful.
A problem with emotivism is that, although it is an analysis of the nature and content of ethical language, it does not discuss ‘ethical facts.’ However, as Rachels argues, moral judgements appeal to reason; they are not just expressions of feeling. So whereas some statements do not need reason, moral judgements do, else they are arbitrary. Ayer does suggest that ethical statements are more than simply expressions of feeling, but that they have the intention to stimulate others to act in the way they feel is right. This was also developed by Stevenson who questions why someone’s feelings can be better than someone else’s. What emotivism does is draw attention to the reasons why people have different views and then let others decided. But it has been shown in history that getting people to act using emotive speeches may have unfortunate results i.e. in the case of Hitler.
Emotivism also allows everyone complete freedom of action since everyone’s opinion is equally valid but there may be many problems that occur because of this.
Another non-cognitive theory of ethics – proposed by R.M. Hare – is prescriptivism. He tried to show that the role of ethical statements is to say what ought to be done and such prescriptions are moral because they are universal. Hare argues that other theories, such as emotivism try to explain what we are doing when we make ethical judgements. Hare said that although these approaches are useful, universal prescriptivism is superior. It says “you ought to do this” and so everyone should do the same in similar situations. Ethical statements are prescriptive, which means they do not state facts and are not true or false, but they are imperatives that express our will or wishes. The word ‘good’ always has a descriptive meaning. If we use the word ‘good’ in a moral sense, again we are using a set of standards that apply to a person or an action and we commend that person or action. This means that the word ‘good’ also has a good has a prescriptivism meaning, and when we use words with an ethical meaning we use them prescriptively. Prescriptivism suggests that, to achieve consistency in moral judgements, when we say that someone else ought to do something, we ought to do it as well. So according to prescriptivism, ethical language is meaningful.
A problem with prescriptivism is that if moral judgements are founded on prescriptions, this still does not mean that there is a valid reason for following one person’s prescriptions rather than another’s. It also does not necessarily mean that morals are universal, as one person’s preferences may be different from those of another. Prescriptivism says that ‘ought’ judgements are universal imperatives bit this foes against the way people approach ethics in their daily lives – in general people do think it is wrong to kill innocent people, steal etc. Therefore you cannot use this theory to prove the meaningfulness of ethical language.
Depending on whether you follow the cognitivist or the non-cognitivist approach, you may have a different opinion on whether ethical language is meaningful or meaningless. I think that religious language is meaningless because I think that it is simply a matter of opinion rather than facts.