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NORMATIVE ETHICS AND NON-NORMATIVE ETHICS
Normative Ethics ( Substantive Ethics or Morals )
General Meaning
Systematically to establish the general principles for determining right and wrong, good and evil.
The body of ethical statements, or the actual moral arguments or statements of the moral
philosophy.
Abstract Statements
Ethical Monism
Ethical Pluralism
Metaethics ( Analytical Ethics, Critical Ethics, Theoretical Ethics, Epistemology of Ethics, Ethical
Logic, Ethics )
General Meaning:
Discussions of the meanings or uses of moral terms and utterances about the nature of moral
concepts:
(1) About the uses or meanings of normative statements, utterances, or terms;
(2) About the logical status of moral claims;
(3) About the nature of moral arguments;
(4) About what constitutes a morality.
Metaethics is a part of a larger movement in analytic philosophy
Three Philosophical Trends (the critical, the constructive, and the mixture of two)
Socrates: "Pursuit of meaning"
Hume: "Anti-metaphysics"
Analytic Philosophy (the analysis and clarification of concepts)
Linguistic Philosophy (universal objects as the existence of universal terms in our language)
Relationship between normative ethics and metaethics
Normative ethics: Having human conduct as its subject matter as " the systematic inquiry into
man's conduct"?
Metaethics: Having the discipline of normative ethics as its subject matter, " the systematic inquiry
into normative ethics.
The third or high level--Metaphysics (twice removed)
The second or middle level--Normative ethics (removed)
The first or low level--Actual moral practice?
Normative ethics: first order concern: talking what is good and bad, right and wrong (about truth of
moral statements)
Metaethics: second order concern: Talking that talk (moral language, the meaning of word "good",
and the meaning of those statements)
The purposes of metaethics
The reasons of doing metaethics
Moore and the meaning of "good"
1) Naturalistic fallacy
What is naturalistic definition?
It cannot for good:
a. "Good" cannot be synonymous with any naturalistic property;
b. "Good" does not describe a naturalistic property; "Good" describes a "non-naturalistic"
property.
c. Definition as senseless but good
d. Definition as sensible but no good
(2) Indefinability of good
Absolutely simple and unanalyzable components of meaning, which cannot be broken down any
further.
" What is good in general "
" Good is indefinable "
" Good denotes a simple and unanalyzable property "
Emotivism
Ayer
(1) Meaningless statements
(2) Meaningful statements
(3) Emotional statements
(4) Value statements
Steveson
(1) Sharing the speaker's positive emotion
(2) Moral judgments as matter of emotion