We've been discussing the status of morality, the status of moral judgements. And I've introduced three broad-brush approaches to answering questions about the status of morality. The first approach is objectivism, so the idea that our moral judgements are about objective matters of fact. So as a comparison think about our empirical judgements about the observable world around us, or the world as it's discovered by science. So those are, those seem to be the empirical judgements seem to be objective. The objectivism about morality says that moral judgements are also objective in a similar way. The second view is relativism. So the relativist idea is that our moral judgments are true or false but only relative to something like our culture, our feelings. So as a rough analogy, think again about our statements of law, like our traffic laws. One must drive on the left, is true, relative to one country. False relative to another country. So the moral relatives think something, something similar to the case for moral judgments. They're true relative to one culture or one person's feelings. But possibly false relative to another culture or another person's feelings. The final view that I introduced was emotivism. So this was the idea that our moral judgements aren't the expression of beliefs about how objective or relative facts, but rather the expression of our moral emotions. The expression of our approval or disapproval about something. Which of these views is right? Which one do you think is right? This is a really large question. One we're not going to settle today. It's the foundational question of an area of moral philosophy called meta-ethics. The area of philosophy that I work most on. And in the contemporary discussion we see all sorts of different theories that pick up on one or another strand from these three basic approaches. So today we're not going to settle the huge question of which one's the right one, and maybe these three, none of them the right one. But we need some refined, more nuance view that overlaps one or more of these views, one or more of these basic approaches. But what we can do today is think about one main objection to each theory. And by thinking about one main objection to each theory, we can refine our views towards these theories. Are they a good starting point to work out further? Or are they the beginning of a dead end that is going to go nowhere? So its good philosophical methodology to think about your preferred view about something and then whatever you take to be the best objection, is it possible to overcome that objection. So what I'm going to do in the rest of this lecture is to introduce one main objection to each of these theories and think a little bit about would that objection undermines the theory? Okay, so here's an objection to objectivism. Remember the object, objectivist thinks that our moral judgments are the sorts of things that can be true or false, and, and their, when they're true, they're objectively true like the empirical judgements made in science are objectively true. But you might think, well, there's an important disanalogy between our moral judgements and our empirical judgements. When somebody disagrees with us about some empirical matter, there's a method that was could use to go out and verify the right opinion. We can observe reality and determine whether it was indeed sunny in Edinburgh today, for example. Or whether the Earth does indeed rotate around the Sun. These sorts of judgements look like they admit of, empirical verification through some sort of observational method. The same doesn't seem to be true in the case of morality. With a moral judgement, like, genocide is morally abhorrent, or polygamy is morally dubious, if somebody disagrees with you, it seems difficult to know what method we would use to settle the issue. How do we figure out who's right about the issue? It doesn't look like we can observe the world and find the moral facts in the same way that we can with the empirical facts. So this basic disanalogy is the the challenge to objectivism. Can the objectivists explain this basic disanalogy The second objection I want to talk about is an objection to relativism. Remember the, that the relativist thinks that our moral judgments are true or false but they're only true or false relative to somebody's culture or someone's individual subjective moral feelings. But if that's right, it seems like it's hard to make sense of moral progress. So we think that morality humanity gets better at being moral in certain ways. So for example in the past people thought that slavery was perfectly fine. But now we think slavery is morally abhorrent. That seems like a piece of moral progress. We've gone from a bad view to a good view. But if the relativist's view is right, somebody in the past said slavery is morally okay. That could be true, relative to that culture. Where as somebody now, he says slavery's, slavery's morally wrong. That could be true relative to our culture and there's no, there's sort of difference in opinion. But there's no progress in opinion. So the basic challenge here for the relativist is to explain the possibility of moral progress. The final objection I want to discuss is an objection to emotivism. Remember that emotivism is the idea that our moral judgements aren't beliefs about matters of fact, either objective or relative, they're expression of our emotions, our emotive reactions to things. They're like saying boo for polygamy or hooray for charity. The challenge this view faces is that it looks we sometimes reason our ways to our moral views, our moral opinions. But if emotivism is right, then our moral opinions are just emotive reactions. They not reasoned responses to questions about morality. So, think about that example of Oedipus is sleeping with his mother, Jocasta was morally bad. You might have initially thought, that's right. But then reasoning oh well Oedipus didn't know it was his mother and so it wasn't culpable what he did. Come to think well it wasn't morally bad. So that kind of transition, changing your mind through reason is really hard for the emotivist to explain. Because the emotivist thinks that the ultimate judgements that you make when you make moral judgements, they're emotive reactions, not, reasoned responses to beliefs about the way things are with morality. So, the basic challenge of emotivism is to explain how we can reason to our moral views. I've discussed challenges for each of the three views that we've discussed. So the challenge to emotivism was to explain the difference in our methodology in determining whether something's right or wrong. And determining whether some empirical judgement is true or false. There seems to be an important difference there. The objection to relativism was to make sense of the possibility of moral progress. And the objection to emotivism was to explain how it's possible that we reason to our moral opinion sometimes. Can these objections be met? Of course. This is where philosophy debates various objections and responses and tries to develop new theories. For example, the objectivists could argue that sometimes we do use empirical observation to determine what's right and wrong. For example, many objectivists think that what's right and wrong is determined by what maximizes overall happiness. And we can go out and measure different policies as to whether they promote or don't promote overall happiness. That's something that you can observe. alternatively, the objectivist could say, look, in the case of mathematics, we think there's an objectively true or false answer to many questions. But we don't think you can observe that answer, not like with your eyes and your ears, but we have powers of rational reflection or intuition that we can come to figure out the objective right answer. So these are a couple of the types of responses the objectivist might give to that objection. The relativist the problem with the relativist was of course that they can't make sense of moral progress. That was the claim. But relativists argue that that different cultures overlap and so as long as we can see for example, the slavery in America in the 18th century as part of our cultural heritage now. You could see that culture is overlapping with our culture and so there is moral disagreement there because there's cultural overlap. It's not two radically different cultures. So that's a possible response by the relativists to the objection for moral progress. Finally, the emotivists can say, remember that the objection was that the emotivists can't make sense of the way we reason to our moral opinions. But the emotivist could say: look, some of our evaluative reactions to things are in the space of reasons. They are the sorts of things we can reason to. For example, if you prefer a to b, and b to c, but you prefer c to a, there is something wrong with your preferences. They're irrational this is something that's well studied by theorists of preference. Theorists or rational preference and choice. That seems like the sort of thing that you can then reason your way to say, oh well, I need to change my preference about a and c somehow to sort this out so that it's not irrational. But those preferences they are beliefs in objective matters of fact, or relative to matters of facts. They're evaluative attitudes. So if you've thought of our moral attitudes, our moral judgements as like preferences. And when we make moral claims, we're expressing a certain kind of moral preference, rather than just an emotive reaction. then, then maybe the emotivist or this is, a more refined version of motivism could answer that challenge, that, we can't make sense of the way we reason to our moral views. So again, that's just one possible response to the objection I mentioned for each of these three theories. You'll have to think yourself about whether you think those responses are compelling, or whether there's then counter objections that come up because of the response. But this is the methodology of good philosophy, thinking about how we can refine our views, refine our initial intuitions and opinions. In light of the types of objections that people who have different views from us would raise in order to get closer and closer to what we think is the right view about the status of morality. So that's what I wanted to talk to you about today by considering the three theories and then also considering the objections. It's been a pleasure talking to you about the status of morality. These lectures have been free and open to the public, and so I was wondering if I could ask a favor of you back. My favorite charity is a charity called Partners in Health, who are doing some amazing work in public health and health care access in places like Rwanda and Milhaud and Mexico. So if you'd like to give a little tip to this lecture you could click on the link to www.pih.org and give a small donation to Partners in Health, I'd really appreciate it. Thank you.
