 | Goodness and value theory: Encyclopedia II - Goodness and value theory - Meta-ethical foundations
Goodness and value theory - Meta-ethical foundations
Goodness and value theory - Moral Cognitivism
Moral cognitivists assert that statements of value stand for beliefs that can be categorized as true or false.
Consider the statement, "Athens, Greece is an older city than Athens, Georgia." Although one might quibble about continuity, the identity of a city over time, most people would probably say that this statement is meaningful and true. It is not, though, a statement of value, because there is no necessary connection between age and goodness, beauty, etc.
Consider the statement, "Committing a murder is worse than telling a lie."
One could quarrel, again, with the terms, asserting that either of the two terms being compared is ambiguous. Still, most people outside of a philosophy class would probably agree that, all things being equal, this statement is meaningful and true. They would agree, in essence, with moral cognitivism.
Notice also that moral cognitivism doesn't imply (although it would be consistent with) moral absolutism, which is the view that there is always and only one valid framework for moral judgment.
Goodness and value theory - Non-cognitivism
Non-cognitivism is the meta-ethic that asserts that values and the good are merely attitudes, not beliefs which can be logically analyzed in terms of truth and falsity.
Some philosophers considered goodness as a special property that is not empirically verifiable, like "redness". For example, G.E. Moore blamed the sense that morality was a verifiable thing on what he called the "naturalistic fallacy". He believed that people had a nonphysical intuition that could sense goodness, which was then falsely projected onto things and fallaciously treated as a natural property.
One variety of non-cognitivism is called Emotivism. According to this theory, the expressions of "good" and "bad" are simply expressions of attitudes, akin to booing and cheering. It was thought by emotivists that to call something "wrong", or "good", was either to express disapproval or approval.
Goodness and value theory - Quasi-Absolutism
Gilbert Harman, writing in the tradition of use theory of language, gives an account of the meaning of moral statements that is neither absolutist nor non-cognitive. He offers the notion that moral statements about right, wrong, good, and bad have to do with the hypothetical projection of personal evaluations on the world, yet pretend to be absolute for rhetorical purposes. He calls this account a form of quasi-absolutism. In this manner, these statements can be treated as true or false in the abstract, but are not actual properties of the world. On such grounds, moral deliberation and argument can be pursued fruitfully.
Goodness and value theory - Moral Nihilism
It may, finally, be argued that not only are there no moral absolutes, but that there is no point in discussing morality at all. This perspective is called moral nihilism.
Other related archives1224, 1274, 1724, 1770, 1804, 1831, 1859, 1952, A Theory of Justice, A Treatise of Human Nature, Adam Smith, Albert Einstein, Aristotle, Athens, Georgia, Athens, Greece, Categorical Imperative, Common good, Conceptual metaphor, Confucianism, David Hume, David Ricardo, Descriptive ethics, Emotivism, Enlightenment, Epicurus, G.E. Moore, Gilbert Harman, God, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, Hedonism, Hegel, Immanuel Kant, Inductive reasoning, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jeremy Bentham, John David Garcia, John Dewey, John Rawls, John Stuart Mill, Judaism, Karl Marx, Marxism, Meta-ethics, Plato, Rawls, Robert S. Hartman, Science of Value, Supreme good, Taoism, Thomas Aquinas, Utilitarianism, W.D. Ross, abstraction, addiction, all life on Earth, animal rights, bad, cigarettes, consequentialism, creativity, creator, deontological ethics, descriptive, economic growth, ethical relationship, eudaimonia, everyone's life, evolutionary ethic, exchange-value, existentialism, fact-value distinction, factors of production, hedonists, how they think, intrinsic, justice, labour market, labour power, law of value, lung cancer, marginal utility, moral absolutism, moral philosophy, murder, naturalistic fallacy, nihilism, normative, objective, ontology, opportunity costs, original position, peace movement, philosophical movements, philosophy, political economy, price, prima facie, religions, societies, state of affairs, strike action, summum bonum, theory, tobacco, use theory of language, use-value, utility, value, value theory, wealth, well-being
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