Lesson designed for A-Level RS (EDUQAS) Component 3 - Ethics

1. Theme 1 – D – Ethical Naturalism
By the end of today’s
lesson you will have:
• Understood the
difference between
ethical theories and
meta-ethics
• Learnt what ethical
naturalism is
• Familiarised yourself
with the key
terminology for this
course

3. Virtue Theory Challenges
Normative agent focussed ethic based on
self-interest as opposed to altruism;
ethical theory that matches the moral
agent’s psychological state (psychological
egoism); concentration on long term self-
interests rather than short term
interests; Max Stirner, self-interest is the
root cause of every human action even if
it appears altruistic; rejection of egoism
for material gain; union of egoists
Destruction of a community ethos; social
injustices could occur as individuals put
their own interest first; a form of bigotory
(why is one moral agent more important
than any other?)
The extent to which ethical egoism
inevitably leads to moral evil
The extent to which all moral actions are
motivated by self-interest

4. Key Words
COGNITIVE NON-COGNITIVE
ETHICAL
STATEMENTS CAN BE
TRUE OR FALSE
ETHICAL
STATEMENTS CAN
NOT BE PROVEN
TRUE OR FALSE

5. Key Words
REALIST ANTI-REALIST
ETHICAL
STATEMENTS ARE
OBJECTIVE AND
TRUE OR FALSE
ETHICAL
STATEMENTS ARE
NOT OBJECTIVE AND
TRUE OR FALSE

6. Key Words
OBJECTIVE SUBJECTIVE
TRUE FOR
EVERYONE. FACTUAL
BASED ON OPINIONS
RATHER THAN FACT.
TRUE FOR THE
INDIVIDUAL.

7. Key Words
EMPIRICAL NON-EMPIRICAL
CAN BE PROVED
USING THE SENSES.
CAN NOT BE
PROVED USING THE
SENSES.

8. Objective Moral Laws exist
independently of human beings
• Naturalism = Ethical naturalism (also called
moral naturalism or naturalistic cognitivistic
definism) is the meta-ethical view which
claims that ethical sentences express
propositions. Some such propositions are
true. Those propositions are made true by
objective features of the world, independent
of human opinion.

9. Objective Moral Laws exist
independently of human beings
• Ethical Naturalism (or Naturalistic Ethics) is the meta-ethical doctrine that there
are objective moral properties of which we have empirical knowledge, but that
these properties are reducible to entirely natural properties, such as needs, wants
or pleasures (as opposed to relating the ethical terms in some way to the will of
God, for example).
• What is right or wrong can be discovered through looking at natural wants and
needs in the world
• Ethical Naturalism is a type of Moral Realism and assumes Cognitivism (the view
that ethical sentences express propositions and can therefore be true or false). It
holds that the meanings of these ethical sentences can be expressed as natural
properties without the use of ethical terms (e.g. "good", "right", etc).
• Ethical statements have to be true or false because they relate to real life needs
in the world such as natural needs
• It suggests that inquiry into the natural world can increase our moral
knowledge in just the same way it increases our scientific knowledge, and that any
"ethical value" is confirmable through the methods of science. Moral facts are
therefore effectively facts of nature.
• Ethics should be regarded in the same sense of science whereby what is right or
wrong is proven as a fact , not just a subjective statement

10. Objective Moral Laws exist
independently of human beings
• This means that if I was to make an ethical
statement such as ‘murder is wrong’ this would
be objectively true. It would be a cognitive, realist
and objective statement.
• Regardless of my subjective existence, the
statement would still be true.
• TASK: In groups, read the extract on ‘moral
naturalism’ in your workbook and write what you
think ethical naturalism is in your own words on
your whiteboard

11. Moral goods can be understood by
analysing the natural world
• TASK: What sort of observations about the natural world
can you make that could lead to ethical suggestions?
• Think of pain, suffering, relationships, thirst, hunger….
• It is wrong to murder
• It is wrong to torture someone
• It is okay to steal if you are dying of hunger
• These show us that for an ethical naturalist, what is ‘good’
or ‘bad’ can be proven in the realms of the natural world,
without the need for a higher being

12. Moral goods can be understood by
analysing the natural world
• We analyse the modern world to discover
empirical truths which can be objectively
proven as ‘good’ or ‘bad.
• If I hit someone, this leads to physical pain,
which feels bad and unpleasant. This shows
me that hitting someone is wrong.

13. Ethical statements are cognitive and
can be verified and falsified
• TASK:
• You have 2 mins to remember what you can
about falsification and verification principles
• Make notes on your whiteboards

14. Key Words
VERIFIED FALSIFIED
SOMETHING IS TRUE
BECAUSE IT CAN BE
PROVEN TRUE
EMPIRICALLY
SOMETHING IS TRUE
BECAUSE YOU HAVE
THE TOOLS TO
PROVE AGAINST IT

15. Ethical statements are cognitive and
can be verified and falsified
• The chair is blue
• The chair is red
• It is raining outside
• All birds can fly
• Task: Try and think of 3 statements which can be
verified
• Try and think of 3 statements which can be
falsified

16. Ethical statements are cognitive and
can be verified and falsified
• Because ethical naturalism holds that ‘good’
or ‘bad’ is objective as proven in the natural
world, they believe that their statements are
cognitive
• It holds that you can verify your statements
e.g ‘torture is wrong’ can be verified when we
see someone screaming in pain when they are
being tortured

17. F.H Bradley’s Naturalism
• Advocates Ethical Naturalism - the belief that a statement could
only be factual and have meaning if it can be verified empirically
like literal statements/ propositions.
• 1. Ethical sentences express propositions.
• 2. Some such propositions are true.
• 3. Those propositions are made true by objective features of the
world, independent of human opinion.
• Suggests that there is a link between science and morality.
• Meta-ethical statements can be defined in scientific terms. This is
Naturalism (the philosophical belief that everything arises from
natural properties and causes)

18. Ethical Naturalism – Mini Quiz
1. Define cognitive
2. Define realist
3. Define objective
4. Define empirical
5. Explain ethical naturalism in one sentence
6. What is an example of something which can be
ethically proved through natural observation?
7. Why does ethical naturalism try and be like science?
8. Which scholar was an advocate of ethical naturalism?

19. Write Up
• ‘Explain ethical naturalism’
• Essay snake

20. Challenges Against Ethical Naturalism
By the end of today’s lesson
you will have:
• Re-capped your knowledge
of ethical naturalism
• Considered the challenges
against it from Hume and
Moore
• Learnt what the ‘open
ended question’ criticism is

21. Spec Check
Ethical Naturalism Challenges
Objective moral laws exist
independently of human beings; moral
terms can be understood by analysing
the natural world; ethical statements
are cognitivist and can be verified or
falsified; verified moral statements are
objective truths and universal; FH
Bradley – ethical statements express
propositions; objective features of the
world make propositions true or false;
meta-ethical statements can be seen in
scientific terms
Hume’s law (the is-ought problem);
Moore’s naturalistic fallacy (moral
language is indefinable); the Open
Question Argument (moral facts cannot
be reduced top natural properties)
* Whether ethical and non-ethical
statements are the same
* The extent to which ethical statements
can be objective

22. Starter – Re:Cap
• Empirical
• Cognitive
• Verified
• Objective
• Unnecessary violence
• Realist
• Physical world
• Proof
• Good/Bad

23. Challenges Against
• TASK: Why do you think that people are going
to challenge ethical naturalism?
• Why do some people think it is impossible to
prove whether an ethical statement is right or
wrong?
• What is naïve or illogical about it?
• Try and write as many criticisms as you can on
your whiteboard

25. David Hume and the is-ought gap
• Known as ‘Hume’s law’ the is-ought gap is the
main problem against ethical naturalism
• Hume’s believed that there were only three ways
of proving something true or false:
• Analytic statements – true by definition
• Synthetic Statements – true by experience
• Mathematical statements – true by maths
• TASK: How does ethical naturalism try and fit
under one of these categories?

26. David Hume and the is-ought gap
• Ethical language TRIES and puts itself as empirical and synthetic
truth because it uses PRACTICAL and EMPIRICAL things in the world
to prove what is right and wrong
• For instance, an ethical naturalist would say ‘I know that
unnecessary violence is wrong because it causes physical pain and
people physically cry so it must be wrong’
• IS = when we say something ‘is’ something, we mean the actual
state of someone i.e. she is crying – means that someone is actually
empirically crying
• OUGHT = an ethical duty which tell sus what is right and wrong, for
instance when we say ‘someone ought to be good’ we mean that
someone has an abstract sense of duty to be good

28. Is-Ought Gap
• The ought is gap suggests that ethical and moral
language CAN NOT be seen as true as an
empirical statement such as ‘the grass is green’
• We CAN NOT prove anything is right or wrong
with regards to ethics
• Hume says that we are creating a GAP in our
argument. We jump from saying ‘to hit someone
will leave them crying and bloody’ to saying ‘it is
wrong to hit someone’
• He says we make this jump without any evidence

29. Is-Ought Gap

30. Moore’s Naturalistic Fallacy
• 5mins
• Individually read ‘the naturalistic fallacy’ in your
workbooks
• Sum up the argument on your whiteboards individually
• EVERYONE MUST WRITE AT LEAST SOMETHING
• 5mins
• Share your answers with the person next to you
• 10mins
• As a group, read pages 32 and 33 of your workbook
and make notes on your A3 sheet

31. Moore’s Naturalistic Fallacy
• Moore stated that you cannot move from facts to
values
• He said that moral truths CANNOT be defined by
looking at the natural world
• Similarly to Hume, he stated that you cannot
draw an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’
• Fact = Oranges have vitamin C
• Value = It is good to eat oranges

32. Moore’s Naturalistic Fallacy
• We can’t say that ‘pain is bad’ or ‘happiness is good’ because pain
will never fully sum up ‘bad’ and happiness will never sum up
‘good’. Bits of pain might be bad, bits of happiness might be good –
but it doesn’t do it justice to say ‘pain is what it means to be bad’ or
‘happiness is what it means to be good’
• Moore compared trying to define ‘good’ as pointless as trying to
define ‘yellow’.
• There are lots of ways in which we can try to define good, just as
there are lots of ways of trying to define yellow. But ultimately
there is no definite answer – it simply rests with our intuition

33. Open Question Argument
• Question: Do you think it is always good to make people happy?
• For Moore, the question ‘Is it good to make people happy?’ can
logically be answered yes or no. Therefore it is an open question.
There is not only one answer. Sometimes YES it is good to make
people happy, other times NO it isn’t good to make people happy.
• If a question can be answered ‘maybe yes, maybe no’, then Moore
doesn’t think it can have objective meaning.
• Therefore, happiness and goodness aren’t the same thing.
• Therefore it is fallacious to define good and bad in terms of natural
properties.

34. Open Question Argument
• What other examples of ‘natural properties’ could
you use to make a question answered ‘maybe,
maybe not’
• Think of the examples we used for ethical
naturalism: pain, tears, thirst, hunger
• 1. Is it bad to make people cry?
• 2. Is it bad to draw blood from someone?
• 3. Is it good to see someone laugh?

35. Questions
• 1. Give an example of how ethical naturalists would try and
define good
• 2. What is meant by an ‘is’?
• 3. What is meant by an ‘ought’?
• 4. Why does Hume think we can’t jump from an ‘is’ to an
‘ought’?
• 5. Give an example of an open ended ethical question
• 6. Why does Moore think open ended ethical questions can
disprove ethical naturalism?
• 7. What does Moore say is as hard to define as ‘good’?
• 8. What does it mean to say that something is indefinable?