phi202 Hume

Hume

Anti-realist re-cap.

Difference between relativists and other anti-realists.

Normative: relativism involves dissapproving of condemnation of out-group practices.

Other anti-realisms do not necessarily require such disapproval.

Descriptive: Relativists hold that such condemnation is 'irrational', given non-existence of moral facts. Other anti-realists think that you can rationally engage in such condemnation, even given non-existence of moral facts.


**************separate*************** disapproval and approval are not one and the same between part 1 and part 2 above and below


1. Naive subjectivism

They have this view: "X is good" means "I (or, my group) approves of x".

Standard objection: no contradiction between 'I approve of x' and 'I don't.' This view doesn't allow for moral conflict.

2. Emotivism

N.S says that your moral statements describe your sentiments of approval and disapproval.

The Emotivist says that moral statements don't describe your sentiments but express them.

Standard objection: Theory makes no sense when applied to cases where are moral statement is embedded in a larger sentence. E.g: "I wonder whether it's wrong to steal." According to the Emotivist 'it's wrong to steal' is equivalent to stealing.
But then 'I wonder' changes the scene. And thus it cannot be equated to stealing (it is neither true nor false).

Nonsense like: 'I wonder whether: ouch!"

'I wonder whether' can only be prefixed to a statement that is true or false.

"If liberal democracy is just then people will support it"

'If democracy, yay!' then people will support democracy.

According to emotivism.

3. Prescriptivism

Moral statements are emotive but they aren't descriptive either - they are prescriptive (hidden imperatives)

"Doing X is wrong" = "Hey, everyone, don't do X"

Standard objection: same as emotivism. Same problem or less because, again, moral statements are held to be without truth-value.

Hume and the background to anti-realism:

Emotivism and prescriptivism are 20th century views. These views derive from early 20th century Logical Positivism, and in particular logical positivists doctrines about meaning. Logical positivists held that if a sentence is going to be cognitively meaningful (i.e if it is to have a truth value) then it must fall into one of two categories. Either:

(A) it can be proved logically (e.g "p or not p")

(B) it's truth would make a difference to observation

ie you can lay out observations that distinguish the situation under which it's true from there to which it's false.

Obersvations which would make the statement true are verifying observations. This whole criteria of meaningfulness knowing the veritability criterion. There existed various versions of verious degrees of strictness.

Examples: 'mimsy were the baragues" is intuitively without truth-value and comes out that way according to one verifiability criterion.

"There is an evil demon causing our experiences" presented as a meaningful possibility but was according to positivists actually without truth value.

^^presented as a meaningful possibility but was according to positivists actually witohut truth-value.

Debating the truth of this statement was discouraged by positivists on the grounds that to do so was confuse. However, they agreed that there was a problem with uttering cognitive meaningless (truth valueless) statements as long as you were aware of it (and your interlocutors were aware as well).

So they held that it was not irrational to make moral statements, as long as you were aware that you weren't making a claim with a truth-value.