AQA Philosophy A2 Level
Moral Philosophy
How do people justify their actions? How do we understand truth and the application to morality? If truth is external to the individual how do we respond to it? If truth is internal from the individual how we know what is really true? How should we apply these to moral situation?
This part of the course will look at the concept that moral concepts can be understood as being objective. These moral concepts are external to the individual. We need to take account of how the individual is to then respond to these moral truths.
What types of moral truths are there?
2. Based on natural facts!
Natural Facts – Moore
Naturalistic Fallacy
- Moral realm cannot be described through natural properties. Whilst morals exist, it is not something we can meaningfully talk about without acknowledging that our knowledge has to come through naturalistic properties and our language is only naturalistic.
Open Question
- Moore attempts to prove the above by saying it should result in tautology if you ask is happiness good as you are asking to define the key terms with the key terms (i.e. is a bachelor an unmarried man? Yes). Doesn’t work when you apply it to moral consideration of good (i.e. is it good to make people happy? Yes/No/Maybe).
- Asking ‘is x good?’ when definition given for good should result in ‘is x x?’ However, due to naturalistic fallacy we are left with ‘is x good?’