To What Extent Is Ethical Language Meaningful

To what extent is ethical language meaningful (35 marks)                Isobel Ely

Ethical language is used on a daily basis even subconsciously and it’s not until questioned that the meaning becomes hazy. Take good for instance, the dictionary entails it to have 11 different definitions but does that necessarily give it meaning? I agree with this idea. Ethicists who question this divide themselves into two categories: cognitivists and non-cognitivists. It is from here that the variations in answers to this question arise.

Cognitivists believe that ethical statements, much like natural facts, can be proven to be true or false. Generally, it is perceived that cognitivist views are weaker because moral statements are in themselves open questions and not derived from empirical evidence like other natural truths. Ethical naturalism which believes in the verification of ethical statements, is however easy to put into practice. Take euthanasia for example, the evidence that it ends suffering would suggest that it is good, so from the evidence we can derive - Euthanasia is a good thing. This is an objective, straightforward statement easy to agree with, but ethical naturalism has had many criticisms for the contradiction between the open ended nature of ethics and the empirical observation of ethical naturalism. G.E. Moore suggests it commits the naturalistic fallacy in which it attempts to define moral concepts with non-moral qualities. Moore goes onto continue by stating “If I am asked ‘what is good?’ my answer is good is good and that is the end of the matter.” Moore presents a valid point in that humans have to live with the limits of knowledge we can be certain about, perhaps ethical meaning is one of them.

The world we live in is so diverse and language is interpreted in many ways to a point where ethical meaning may be clouded. Prescriptivism dictates that we use ethical language for a specific purpose to suggest attitudes for adoption and to this extent it is meaningful, however in general ethical statements have no purpose beyond the intentions that lie behind our usage of them. Using utilitarian morals, Hare, a forefather of prescriptivism, promotes that we move beyond our viewpoints to come to a communal good. To Hare, when we say something is ‘good’ we use it in relation to a set of standards in order to commend actions. An example of this is if someone were to say, ‘Murder is wrong’ they are in actual fact saying, ‘you ought not to steal and nor will I’. Though this theodicy presents a strong argument in that ethical language can promote positive morality through use of particular vocabulary, it does not coincide with society’s view of morality, as prescriptions are not good enough reasons for morality. People do tend to set moral truths that they believe and follow daily, and it is a large leap to make to assume that people attach little meaning to ethical statements and do not consider them daily as objective truths.