Do ethical statements provide information about anything other than human opinions and attitudes?<\/p>\n
The problem for ethical realists is that people follow many different ethical codes and moral beliefs. So if there are real ethical truths out there (wherever!) then human beings don\u2019t seem to be very good at discovering them.<\/p>\n
One form of ethical realism teaches that ethical properties exist independently of human beings, and that ethical statements give knowledge about the objective world.<\/p>\n
To put it another way; the ethical properties of the world and the things in it exist and remain the same, regardless of what people think or feel \u2013 or whether people think or feel about them at all.<\/p>\n
\nOn 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.<\/p>\n
R. M Hare, Essays in Ethical Theory, 1989<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n
\nFour ethical \u2018isms\u2019<\/h2>\n
When a person says \u201cmurder is bad\u201d what are they doing?<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the sort of question that only a philosopher would ask, but it\u2019s actually a very useful way of getting a clear idea of what\u2019s going on when people talk about moral issues.<\/p>\n
The different \u2018isms\u2019 regard the person uttering the statement as doing different things.<\/p>\n
We can show some of the different things I might be doing when I say \u2018murder is bad\u2019 by rewriting that statement to show what I really mean:<\/p>\n
\n
- I might be making a statement about an ethical fact\n
\n
- \u201cIt is wrong to murder\u201d<\/li>\n
- This is moral realism<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
- I might be making a statement about my own feelings\n
\n
- \u201cI disapprove of murder\u201d<\/li>\n
- This is subjectivism<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
- I might be expressing my feelings\n
\n
- \u201cDown with murder\u201d<\/li>\n
- This is emotivism<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
- I might be giving an instruction or a prohibition\n
\n
- \u201cDon\u2019t murder people\u201d<\/li>\n
- This is prescriptivism<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Moral realism<\/h3>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Subjectivism<\/h3>\n
Subjectivism\u00a0teaches that moral judgments are nothing more than statements of a person\u2019s feelings or attitudes, and that ethical statements do not contain factual truths about goodness or badness.<\/p>\n
In more detail: subjectivists say that moral statements arestatements about the feelings, attitudes and emotions<\/em>\u00a0that that particular person or group has about a particular issue.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
So if someone says \u2018murder is wrong\u2019 they are telling us that they disapprove of murder.<\/p>\n
These statements are true if the person does hold the appropriate attitude or have the appropriate feelings. They are false if the person doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Emotivism<\/h3>\n
Emotivism\u00a0is the view that moral claims are no more than expressions of approval or disapproval.<\/p>\n
This sounds like subjectivism, but in emotivism a moral statement doesn\u2019t\u00a0provide information about the speaker\u2019s feelings<\/em>\u00a0about the topic but\u00a0expresses those feelings<\/em>.<\/p>\n
When an emotivist says \u201cmurder is wrong\u201d it\u2019s like saying \u201cdown with murder\u201d or \u201cmurder, yecch!\u201d or just saying \u201cmurder\u201d while pulling a horrified face, or making a thumbs-down gesture at the same time as saying \u201cmurder is wrong\u201d.<\/p>\n
So when someone makes a moral judgement they\u00a0show<\/em>\u00a0their feelings about something. Some theorists also suggest that in expressing a feeling the person\u00a0gives an instruction<\/em>\u00a0to others about how to act towards the subject matter.<\/p>\n
Prescriptivism<\/h3>\n
Prescriptivists think that ethical statements are instructions or recommendations.<\/p>\n
So if I say something is good, I\u2019m recommending you to do it, and if I say something is bad, I\u2019m telling you not to do it.<\/p>\n
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 \u2018ought\u2019 in it. For example: \u201clying is wrong\u201d can be rewritten as \u201cpeople ought not to tell lies\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Are ethical statements objectively true? Do ethical statements provide information about anything other than human opinions and attitudes? Ethical realists think that human beings\u00a0discover\u00a0ethical truths that already have an independent existence. Ethical non-realists think that human beings\u00a0invent\u00a0ethical truths. The problem for ethical realists is that people follow many different ethical codes and moral beliefs. So […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":604,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5,6,7,8,9,12,109],"tags":[116],"class_list":["post-158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-4-july","category-cars","category-coffee-hong-kong","category-conceptual-artist","category-cooking-school","category-economy","category-elecctronics","category-ethics","tag-ethics-and-peole"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/7stylluz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/7stylluz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/7stylluz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/7stylluz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/604"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/7stylluz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/7stylluz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/7stylluz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/7stylluz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/7stylluz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}