Episode 32, Meta-Ethics (Part IV - Further Analysis and Discussion)

The Panpsycast Philosophy Podcast

Jack Symes | Andrew Horton, Oliver Marley, and Rose de Castellane

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4.8 • 604 Ratings

🗓️ 11 February 2018

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Please visit our Patreon page and show your support! (www.patreon.com/panpsycast) This episode is proudly sponsored by The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast. For information, please visit www.partiallyexaminedlife.com. Everything you could need is on www.thepanpsycast.com! Please tweet us your thoughts at www.twitter.com/thepanpsycast. Meta-ethics is the attempt to understand the metaphysical, semantic, epistemological and psychological presuppositions of moral thought. It investigates our ethical language, in search of the meaning that lies behind it. Meta-ethics is concerned with are a broad range of puzzles, for example: What do we mean we make moral claims? Do our preferences or feelings motivate moral assertions? Or are we stating facts when we make moral claims? Is morality more a matter of taste than truth - and if it is a matter of truth, how do we learn about the moral facts? This episode we’ll be introducing you to three meta-ethical views. In Part I, we’ll be discussing naturalism, in Part II, we’ll be looking at intuitionism, in Part III, we’re going to dive into emotivism, and finally, in Part IV, we’ll be engaging in some further analysis and discussion.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Part four, further analysis and discussion.
0:16.2	Beautiful.
0:17.5	Okay, let's jump straight into philosophical ultimatum.
0:23.9	Right, we're going to play.
0:26.1	We've got one, two, three, four, five questions.
0:29.3	So all three of you are going to play, and whoever's got the most points at the end wins.
0:33.8	Okay?
0:34.4	Question number one.
0:36.2	Is what is meant by the word good, the defining question in the
0:39.9	study of ethics? Boo. Philosophically, I think you need to have some foundation of what is defined as
0:46.9	good because, and that is the job of meta ethics, obviously. Because if you don't, then you do slip into
0:53.7	that just everything's subjective. I can do whatever I want. And if you don't, then you do slip into that just everything's subjective. I can do
0:56.6	whatever I want. And if you try to tell me that I'm wrong, well, I've just got a different definition
1:00.4	of good to you and that I can kind of get away with it. However, my actual kind of practical side of it
1:07.9	is that if you can't just kind of perhaps decide, maybe this is what AJA would say, is that if you if you can't just kind of perhaps decide and maybe this is
1:12.6	what a.J.A. would say is that if you just pick something, go for it. It might not be the actual
1:17.8	definition, but if everybody can agree and that you can kind of work on that, then you can start
1:22.5	doing things like applied ethics. Because if, if not, if every time a doctor said like, is it it right to operate on this patient? And then they said, like, well, what is the definition of good? And then ponded on that for hours, that would be useless, pointless. And ethics needs to be practical. Remember, it's, it's carpentry, not geometry. Follow-up question. Where was that? Oh, very nice. I like that quote.
1:44.8	Next, but who wants to jump in the second one? Second response. Well, I think what you said is really the crux of it all. I don't know that necessarily anything much more can be added to that. But I also think that the study of ethics isn't just about what's good. it's also about all of the things that we've discussed, feelings, intuitions.
2:04.7	It's a mixture.
2:05.6	It's a sort of hot pot of things.
2:07.8	It's like a stew and all sorts of things come out of it.
	...

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