Explain the claim made in naturalist theories of ethics that good and bad are natural features of the world. Assess the strengths and weaknesses of this approach
Explain the claim made in naturalist theories of ethics that good and bad are natural features of the world. Assess the strengths and weaknesses of this approach.
Naturalism asserts that there are natural facts and that ‘good’ can be identified as an empirical property, for example ‘X makes everyone happy’. It is that ‘good’ and ‘bad’ moral judgments are independent properties that are independent of people’s thoughts and own personal opinions.
Naturalism suggests that unlike other theories, moral judgments are not autonomous, that they are in fact just another aspect of our ordinary world. This suggests that as we are able to make observations of our seemingly ordinary world, then therefore we must be able to draw moral conclusions from these observations. And so it would seem we are able to draw ethical conclusions from these factual (naturalistic) premises. Morality no longer belongs to a unique realm of some sort that we aren’t able to talk about or that only comes out in metaphorical or poetic terms.
However, there are many implications with this view, one being the idea that if ethics is not autonomous, then we should be able to define moral words using naturalistic terms. For instance, naturalists may say the ‘good’ ultimately comes down to ‘maximizing happiness’. It was this reductionism that led G. E. Moore to accuse Naturalism of a naturalistic fallacy. Moore believed that ‘good’ cannot be defined (as we will see later) and so the mere idea that Naturalism attempts to define ‘good’ using natural terms is clearly a fallacy, as it is after all a non-natural concept.
G. E. Moore suggests that ‘good’ is seemingly indefinable as in the past when people have defined ‘good’, they are saying something is equivalent to ‘good’ means X (where X is some fact or set of facts). For example, when you are defining a bachelor, you can say it is an unmarried man as it is merely a simile of the word bachelor. Yet Moore says this just forces us to ask the
Naturalism asserts that there are natural facts and that ‘good’ can be identified as an empirical property, for example ‘X makes everyone happy’. It is that ‘good’ and ‘bad’ moral judgments are independent properties that are independent of people’s thoughts and own personal opinions.
Naturalism suggests that unlike other theories, moral judgments are not autonomous, that they are in fact just another aspect of our ordinary world. This suggests that as we are able to make observations of our seemingly ordinary world, then therefore we must be able to draw moral conclusions from these observations. And so it would seem we are able to draw ethical conclusions from these factual (naturalistic) premises. Morality no longer belongs to a unique realm of some sort that we aren’t able to talk about or that only comes out in metaphorical or poetic terms.
However, there are many implications with this view, one being the idea that if ethics is not autonomous, then we should be able to define moral words using naturalistic terms. For instance, naturalists may say the ‘good’ ultimately comes down to ‘maximizing happiness’. It was this reductionism that led G. E. Moore to accuse Naturalism of a naturalistic fallacy. Moore believed that ‘good’ cannot be defined (as we will see later) and so the mere idea that Naturalism attempts to define ‘good’ using natural terms is clearly a fallacy, as it is after all a non-natural concept.
G. E. Moore suggests that ‘good’ is seemingly indefinable as in the past when people have defined ‘good’, they are saying something is equivalent to ‘good’ means X (where X is some fact or set of facts). For example, when you are defining a bachelor, you can say it is an unmarried man as it is merely a simile of the word bachelor. Yet Moore says this just forces us to ask the