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Gilbert Harman - The Nature of Morality
Chapter One: Ethics and observation
Can moral principles be tested in the same way as scientific principles - can we ever perceive the rightness or wrongness of what someone does?
though we say we can see that an act is wrong, can we ever test the wrongness of what we see? if not, then it could be a reflection of anything - a moral sense, an upbringing
In both science and ethics, general principles are invoked to explain particular cases
and, in ethics, these general principles can be tested by appealing to particular judgements that certain things are right/wrong, just/unjust etc
In science we need to make assumptions about physical facts in order to explain the occurrence of observations that support a scientific theory e.g. the observation of a vapour trail in a cloud chamber only confirms a scientific theory to the extent that there actually was a proton going through the cloud chamber - we must assume the proton to explain the observation
BUT in ethics we can explain the occurrence of moral observations without assuming the existence of any moral facts - all we need to explain someone saying ‘Killing is wrong’ is to assume some psychology and more or less well articulated moral principles
Chapter Two: Nihilism and naturalism
1. Moral nihilism
Nihilism = no moral facts, no moral truths, no moral knowledge
this can explain why moral facts don’t help us to explain observations - there are no such facts
extreme nihilism - nothing is ever right or wrong
moderate nihilism - non-cognitivism/expressivism
on this view, we shouldn’t expect moral judgements to help to explain observations because such judgements are akin to ‘Alas!’ or ‘Close the door!’
both forms conflict with our ordinary way of talking e.g. ‘it’s true that x is wrong’
2. Reductions
Even if assumptions about moral facts don’t directly help us to explain observations, moral facts may be reducible to other sorts of facts, assumptions about which do help to explain observations
this may in turn give us evidence for assumptions about moral facts
e.g. we can explain colour perception without assuming that objects have colours, by reducing colour to particular reflective properties of objects
this would help us to explain colour perception, but would not prove that there are no facts about colours, just that these facts are not additional facts, over and above physical and psychological facts
3. Ethical naturalism: Functionalism
We could define goodness in terms of natural function: e.g. a good watch is one that tells the time correctly, a good heart is one that pumps blood constantly
alternatively we could call this functioning ‘answering relevant interests’
good farmer, good soldier, good thief
this would be to define goodness in terms of natural facts; relative to a cluster of interests/roles/functions
Problem: the question for morality is what we ought to do, taking all interests into account
can this evaluation of interests be based on factual judgements?
this might in part be rectified if we had less vague standards e.g. of what we want from teachers
but even then, sometimes indeterminacy is unavoidable
4. The open question argument
‘I agree that for P to do D would be for P to do something that is C, but ought P to do D?’
this remains an open question, because describing an act is not the same as endorsing it
But the nihilist/non-naturalist must show that the question is genuinely open in the relevant respect
it would be question begging against naturalism to simply say that describing an act as having certain natural features cannot amount to endorsing the act
e.g. question could be rephrased as ‘I agree that, if P does D, P will satisfy the relevant interests, but ought P to do D?’
then we need to define ‘the relevant interests’ naturalistically
It may be an open question whether water is H20, but this doesn’t mean that water is not H20, so we shouldn’t trust this form of argument
the OQ argument must be aimed at someone who thinks that a naturalistic definition captures the meaning of moral terms in the sense that judgements we make are synonymous with judgements that describe natural facts
6. Why ethics is problematic
So we don’t have to accept ethical nihilism simply because moral facts don’t seem to help explain observations - we might hope for a naturalistic reduction of moral facts
but reduction to facts about interests, roles and functions would be complex, vague and difficult to specify
Whereas for e.g. colours, it seems plausible that even after reduction we will continue to explain colour perception with reference to what colour something is, this doesn’t seem to be the case for ethics
citing moral facts seems less helpful than citing moral views/sensibilities in explaining moral observations
Since moral facts seem neither precisely reducible nor useful in practice in our explanations of observations, it remains problematic whether we have any reason to suppose that there are any moral facts
Chapter Three: Emotivism as moderate nihilism
1. Emotivism: The basic idea
Nihilism = no moral facts, no moral truths, no moral knowledge
moderate nihilism - this doesn’t mean we have to abandon morality: morality doesn’t describe facts but does something else
e.g. moral judgements express the feelings or attitudes of the speaker
moral disagreement = disagreement in attitude
On this view, ‘x is wrong’ does NOT mean ‘I disapprove of x’
‘x is wrong’ is not a statement about approval, it is an expression of approval
to value something is to be in an emotional state, not a cognitive state
on the other hand, to say ‘I believe that this act is wrong’ is roughly to say ‘I disapprove of this act’
2. Emotivism and the open question argument
Emotivists argue that it will always be an open question whether...
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