"Ethical language is meaningless" Discuss
“Ethical language is meaningless” Discuss
Ethics is concerned with what is right and what is wrong. Meta-ethics however looks at the language, it asks “What does it mean to say that something is right or wrong”. In the words of Pojman, "normative ethics is a philosophical examination of morality, meta-ethics is philosophising about ethics -that is, about the very terms and structure of ethical theories." I aim to explore the claim that all ethical language is meaningless by looking at some of the common statements used in the ethical language and what they actually mean.
Firstly let me take the question itself- what exactly is ethical language? Dr Richard Paul defines ethics as "a set of concepts and principles that guide us in determining what behaviour helps or harms sentient creatures". Paul also states that most people confuse ethics with behaving in accordance with people’s religious beliefs and the law, and don't treat ethics as a stand-alone concept. However, according to the dictionary ethics is defined as the “study of morality's effect on conduct: the study of moral standards and how they affect conduct”. With people defining ‘ethics’ in different ways, ethical statements would have contrasting meanings depending on how you viewed the actual term ‘ethical’.
This idea of looking into the language of a statement before determining whether the outcome/notion would be right or wrong is called meta-ethics. This view of language limits its meaning to something that can be verified by sense experience (i.e. proven true or false). This view can be found in the works of Wittgenstein in ‘Tractatus’ (1921). This initial view went on to influence a group of philosophers known as the ‘Vienna Circle’ who developed the idea of ‘positivism’.
This then influenced A J Ayer who claimed in his publication of ‘Language, Truth and Logic’ that there are only two kinds of proposition being the truths known by definition, and the truths known by reference to sense
Ethics is concerned with what is right and what is wrong. Meta-ethics however looks at the language, it asks “What does it mean to say that something is right or wrong”. In the words of Pojman, "normative ethics is a philosophical examination of morality, meta-ethics is philosophising about ethics -that is, about the very terms and structure of ethical theories." I aim to explore the claim that all ethical language is meaningless by looking at some of the common statements used in the ethical language and what they actually mean.
Firstly let me take the question itself- what exactly is ethical language? Dr Richard Paul defines ethics as "a set of concepts and principles that guide us in determining what behaviour helps or harms sentient creatures". Paul also states that most people confuse ethics with behaving in accordance with people’s religious beliefs and the law, and don't treat ethics as a stand-alone concept. However, according to the dictionary ethics is defined as the “study of morality's effect on conduct: the study of moral standards and how they affect conduct”. With people defining ‘ethics’ in different ways, ethical statements would have contrasting meanings depending on how you viewed the actual term ‘ethical’.
This idea of looking into the language of a statement before determining whether the outcome/notion would be right or wrong is called meta-ethics. This view of language limits its meaning to something that can be verified by sense experience (i.e. proven true or false). This view can be found in the works of Wittgenstein in ‘Tractatus’ (1921). This initial view went on to influence a group of philosophers known as the ‘Vienna Circle’ who developed the idea of ‘positivism’.
This then influenced A J Ayer who claimed in his publication of ‘Language, Truth and Logic’ that there are only two kinds of proposition being the truths known by definition, and the truths known by reference to sense