wedge Quick Notes
wedge Defeating Relativism
* If relativism is true, philosophers are out of work. ^_^
* Test is being moved up to February 15th!
wedge Subjectivism & Emotivism
wedge Subjectivism
* Subjectivism tries to frame ethics in terms of approval and disapproval rather than absolute, objective right and wrong.
* Approval and disapproval is much closer to "taste" than objective right or wrong.
* Tells not whether something is right or wrong, but whether or not you approve of it.
wedge Has two problems
wedge It cannot account for us making mistakes - it makes us infallible.
* AGAINST: If simple subjectivism is true, then we are infallible. We are not infallible, therefore subjectivism is not true.
wedge It cannot account for disagreement.
* AGAINST: If simple subjectivism is true, then there can be no disagreement. There is disagreement, therefore subjectivism is not true.
wedge Emotivism
* Rather than saying whether or not you approve of something, you are expressing your feelings on the subject.
wedge Supposed to solve subjectivism's two problems.
* Infallibility: because we're only expressing our attitudes, we're not making statements, therefore can't be mistaken.
* Disagreement: because we're only expressing our attitudes, when we disagre, we're not disagreeing about facts, our disagreement is only with regards to attitude.
* FAILURE! Disagreement is regarding facts, not attitudes.
wedge Do moral facts exist?
* There are either moral facts, or what we say about morality is unfounded/arbitrary.
* Ethics is concerned with what should be.
* Facts, with regards to ethics and morality, are actually those things for which we have the best reasons to believe.
* If we can give reasons and explanations for what we believe and why the reasons are significant but not an equally compelling case for any other belief (particularly the opposite belief), then morality cannot be merely opinion. We can give such reasons for some systems and not others, so morality is not merely opinion.
* Sometimes we use an inappropriate standard to judge the objectivity of ethics. We want the answers to have numerical answers like science, but ethics is about values, not always quantitative, measurable things.
* Sometimes we only look at the difficult cases, don't know what to do, and say that they imply that there is no objective answer. This is not true.
* Distinguish: proving an opinion vs. persuading someone that something is true. You can't always make someone believe something is true, but that doesn't mean you can't prove it (vis. ethics).