The Fact-Value Problem

1. The Fact-Value Problem PHI 251 Introduction to Ethics

2. Rain is wet. • Cars are expensive. • The miners are safe. • Capital punishment is wrong. • Abortion is legal. • Abortion should be legal. • Gold is expensive. • Baroque music is beautiful. • Wisconsin has 9 letters. • Fat calories are unhealthy. • Too much tv isn’t good for you. • Saving whales is noble.

3. The Fact-Value Problem How to determine • whether values are essentially different from facts • whether moral assessments are derived from facts • whether moral statements can be true or false like factual statements. Meta-ethical concerns: The status of moral judgments & their relation to factual statements. How we justify our moral beliefs

4. David Hume Observed that moral objectivism, egoism, social contract theory, natural law theory, and religious morality began by observing specific facts about the world and then concluded from those statements something about moral obligation. Hume’s issue was with the transition from is to ought

5. Through any type of rational or factual inference we cannot derive ought from is. Hume’s Solution: moral assessments are not rational inferences at all. Moral assessments are feelings or emotional reactions.

6. The world consists of many people with many different perspectives on religion. Therefore it is wrong to judge any view. • A priest’s job is to educate and care for his congregation. Therefore, it is wrong for a priest to molest a child. • Doctors pledge to do no harm, therefore it is immoral to practice physician-assisted suicide. • Government is financially supported through taxes paid by its citizens. Therefore government should not misuse its financial resources.

7. George Edward Moore As a matter of the structure and foundation of ethics (meta-ethics), we need to understand the meaning of “good.” Ethics is ______________ without this understanding.

8. “Good” Utilitarians – Pleasure Deontology (Kant) – Rational Will Evolutionary Ethicists – being more evolved DCT/Essence – God’s Commands

9. Naturalistic Fallacy It is a fallacy to identify “good” with any specific natural property such as “pleasure” or “being more evolved.” “Good” is indefinable because it is a simple property like yellow. We intuitively recognize moral goodness when we see it, but it completely defies definition.

10. Alfred Jules Ayer 1.The fact-value problem arises because moral statements cannot pass a critical test of meaning called the verification principle. 2. Moral utterances are only expressions of feelings (emotivism). Emotivism - value judgments describe human attitudes.

11. Logical Positivism Logical Positivists believed that the meaning of a sentence is found in its method of verification. All meaningful sentences must be either • Tautologies – statements that are true by definition; a statement that is unconditionally true by virtue of its form alone; “Triangles have 3 sides.” • Empirically verifiable – statements regarding observation about the world, such as “The book is red.”

12. The “value” statement “charity is good” neither qualifies as a tautology nor is it an empirically verifiable statement. Ayer’s argument: • A sentence is meaningful if and only if it can be verified. • Moral sentences cannot be verified. • Therefore, moral sentences are not meaningful.

13. Ayer’s solution to the fact-value problem is to note that moral utterances function in a special nonfactual way. Moral utterances function in a nonfactual way. Moral utterances don’t report our feelings, they express feelings. (Emotivism) • Reported feeling: positive assessment • Expressed feeling: like an interjection

14. Criticisms of Emotivism: Is morality just attitude? 1. Is the verification principle itself either tautological or empirically verifiable? No, it is self-referentially incoherent. 2. There can be a distinction between having reasons for changing views and having causes that change our views. Having reasons is legitimate, but emotivism believes that only causes change views. 3. Moral judgments are universalizable. Emotivism reduces morality to emotive expressions or attitudes that do not apply universally.

15. Richard Mervyn Hare (1919-2002) According the Hare, there are four important features about moral judgments: • They are prescriptive • They exhibit logical relations • They are universalizable • They involve principles. Yet Hare agrees with Ayer that we cannot ascribe truth or falsity to moral statements and that moral statements are attitudinal.

16. Moral judgements have both a descriptive (fact) and prescriptive (value) element. • For Hare, although moral judgments do not have truth value, they do have a logical form. • Universalizability is the most important feature of Hare’s moral theory because it gives the theory formal structure. • Hare’s method is similar to Kant’s categorical imperative: “Act in such a way as to be able to will that the principle of your action could be a universal law.”

17. Francis Schaeffer Values (individual choice) ______________________ Facts (binding on everyone)

18. A two-realm theory of truth Upper story (Nonrational, noncognitive) __________________________ Lower Story (Rational, Verifiable)

19. Today’s Two-Story Truth Postmodernism (Subjective, Relative to Particular Groups) __________________________ Modernism (Objective, Universally Valid)

20. Moral Realism & the Challenge of Skepticism PHI 251 Introduction to Ethics

21. Moral Realism Moral facts exist and are part of the fabric of the universe; they exist independently of our thoughts about them. 3 Main Elements: • Objectivist Element • Cognitivist Element • Metaphysical Element

22. Moral Objectivist Element Moral principles have objective validity and do not depend on social approval. What theory says moral principles depend upon social approval?

23. Cognitivist Element Moral judgments can be evaluated as true or false.

24. Metaphysical Element Moral facts exist in reality. Metaphysics is concerned with explaining the features of reality that exist beyond the physical world and our immediate senses. Metaphysics, therefore, uses logic based on the meaning of human terms, rather than on a logic tied to human sense perception of the objective world.

25. Types of Moral Realists • Theistic Moral Realists • Naturalistic Moral Realists • Nonnaturalistic Moral Realists

26. Theistic Moral Realists Moral values exist within • Religion • Obedience • God • None of the above

27. Naturalistic Moral Realists Moral values exist within the natural world and are connected with specific properties such as pleasure or satisfaction. Pleasure and satisfaction are objective facts within the world

28. Nonnaturalistic Moral Realists They ground moral values in nonnatural facts about the world—facts that can’t be detected through scientific means. Plato – universal forms that exist in a higher realm.

29. Platonic Dualism Form – more real (Eternal Reason) ______________________ Matter – realm of error and illusion (Material World)

30. Plato’s Cave

31. J.L. Mackie Moral Skepticism – there are no objective moral facts. He says we have no good reason to believe that objective moral facts exist. Error theory – it is a mistake to claim that there are objective moral facts.

32. Mackie’s Three Arguments Argument from Relativity Argument from Queerness Argument from Projection

33. Argument from Relativity No universal moral code that all people everywhere adhere to, which seems to indicate that morality is culturally dependent.

34. Argument from Queerness This aims at showing the implausibility of supposing that such things as values have no independent existence. If there were objective, then they would have to be “of a very strange sort.” That everything — including any particular events, facts, properties, and so on — is part of the natural physical world that science investigates

35. Argument from Projection The belief in objective value is the result of psychological tendencies to project subjective beliefs to the outside world. Hume – we impose the notion of immorality from within our own feelings. Mackie – the “pathetic fallacy,” our tendency to read our feelings into their objects.

36. Inventing Morality The Greek philosopher Xenophon said that religion is an invention, the making of God in the image of one’s own group. Mackie – “We need morality to regulate interpersonal relations, to control some of the ways in which people behave towards one another, often in opposition to contrary inclinations. We therefore want our moral judgments to be authoritative for other agents as well as for ourselves: objective validity would give them the authority required.”

37. Moral Nihilism The doctrine that there are no moral facts, no moral truths, and no moral knowledge. Morality is simply an illusion: nothing is ever right or wrong, ust or unjust, good or bad. Some extreme nihilists have even suggested that morality is merely a superstitious remnant of religion.

38. Harman’s Moral Nihilism Gilbert Harman’s central position against moral realism is the disanalogy thesis. Moral principles cannot be tested by observation in the same way the scientific theories can. Because moral facts do not exist in the same way that scientific facts do, Harman concludes that moral nihilism is true.

39. In Defense of Moral Realism 1. Pojman suggests arguments that promote happiness and reduce suffering. 2. Not all truths or facts about the universe are empirically accounted for. The law of identity: p is p at the same time and in the same respect.

40. Supervenient Properties Color is not in the object itself, but there is a causal relationship between the light rays and our perceptions. Similarly, moral properties may supervene, or emerge out of natural ones. For example, badness is a supervenient property of the natural property of pain.