Moral Values

In this essay I will be looking at whether moral value is an objective property of an action, or more simply, are moral values universal and the same for everybody. If a moral value is objective this means that it is true for everybody, rather than it being subjective, meaning that it is likely that not everybody agrees on the value. I am going to focus on and evaluate the following three meta-ethical theories; naturalism, intuitionism and emotivism. Depending on which theory I decide is the best I will make a decision on whether I believe moral value is an objective property of an action or not, as the case may be.

The theory of naturalism treats ethical statements the same way that we would treat non ethical statements so it requires us to look at empirical evidence and then gather the facts from what we have observed. For example, the following statement, “murder is wrong” would be true from a naturalistic point of view as murder does make people unhappy. This makes naturalism an objective theory as it believes that moral values are unchanging facts which are true for everybody. Naturalism is also a cognitive theory as it deals with propositions that can be proved either true or false. To use the murder example again, we can observe from the effects of murder that it is wrong or bad, therefore the proposition “murder is wrong” is proven to be true.

I believe that naturalism is to some extent an apt way for us to look at ethical statements. In daily life we already learn from observing the effects of certain actions on those around us such as family and the community that we live in so it seems like a good system to follow. However naturalism does not give an absolute meaning to ethical language, but rather only subjective ...

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...s ‘good’ and ‘bad’ as qualities that we attribute to things rather than the words themselves having meaning. I accept that it is flawed in the way that not everyone reaches the same moral conclusions however as a subjectivist I believe that intuition can be subjective. This would explain differences in the moral conclusions reached by people.

Works Cited

Ayer, A., 2013. A Critique of Ethics. In: R. Shafer-Landau, ed. Ethical Theory: An Anthology, Second Edition. 2nd ed. s.l.:John Wiley & Sons, Inc., pp. 16-21.

Hume, D., 1985. A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects. Penguin Classics; New Ed edition ed. London: Penguin Classics.

Moore, G., 2013. The Subject Matter of Ethics. In: R. S. Landau, ed. Ethical Theory: An Anthology, Second Edition. 2nd ed. s.l.:John Wiley & Sons, Inc., pp. 48-53.