Ethics and People II Part

On the face of it, it [ethical realism] means the view that moral qualities such as wrongness, and likewise moral facts such as the fact that an act was wrong, exist in rerum natura, so that, if one says that a certain act was wrong, one is saying that there existed, somehow, somewhere, this quality of wrongness, and that it had to exist there if that act were to be wrong.

R. M Hare, Essays in Ethical Theory, 1989

Four ethical ‘isms’

When a person says “murder is bad” what are they doing?

That’s the sort of question that only a philosopher would ask, but it’s actually a very useful way of getting a clear idea of what’s going on when people talk about moral issues.

The different ‘isms’ regard the person uttering the statement as doing different things.

We can show some of the different things I might be doing when I say ‘murder is bad’ by rewriting that statement to show what I really mean:

• I might be making a statement about an ethical fact
  • “It is wrong to murder”
  • This is moral realism
• I might be making a statement about my own feelings
  • “I disapprove of murder”
  • This is subjectivism
• I might be expressing my feelings
  • “Down with murder”
  • This is emotivism
• I might be giving an instruction or a prohibition
  • “Don’t murder people”
  • This is prescriptivism

Moral realism

Moral realism is based on the idea that there are real objective moral facts or truths in the universe. Moral statements provide factual information about those truths.

Subjectivism

Subjectivism teaches that moral judgments are nothing more than statements of a person’s feelings or attitudes, and that ethical statements do not contain factual truths about goodness or badness.

In more detail: subjectivists say that moral statements arestatements about the feelings, attitudes and emotions that that particular person or group has about a particular issue.

If a person says something is good or bad they are telling us about the positive or negative feelings that they have about that something.

So if someone says ‘murder is wrong’ they are telling us that they disapprove of murder.

These statements are true if the person does hold the appropriate attitude or have the appropriate feelings. They are false if the person doesn’t.

Emotivism

Emotivism is the view that moral claims are no more than expressions of approval or disapproval.

This sounds like subjectivism, but in emotivism a moral statement doesn’t provide information about the speaker’s feelings about the topic but expresses those feelings.

When an emotivist says “murder is wrong” it’s like saying “down with murder” or “murder, yecch!” or just saying “murder” while pulling a horrified face, or making a thumbs-down gesture at the same time as saying “murder is wrong”.

So when someone makes a moral judgement they show their feelings about something. Some theorists also suggest that in expressing a feeling the person gives an instruction to others about how to act towards the subject matter.

Prescriptivism

Prescriptivists think that ethical statements are instructions or recommendations.

So if I say something is good, I’m recommending you to do it, and if I say something is bad, I’m telling you not to do it.

There is almost always a prescriptive element in any real-world ethical statement: any ethical statement can be reworked (with a bit of effort) into a statement with an ‘ought’ in it. For example: “lying is wrong” can be rewritten as “people ought not to tell lies”.