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  • Is it wrong to steal to feed your family?

  • Is there such a thing as a good lie?

  • Questions like these are the domain of ethicsthe branch of philosophy that studies morality, or right and wrong behavior.

  • But before we can parse questions like these, we need to go deeperinto metaethics, which studies the very foundations of morality itself.

  • Metaethics asks questions as basic as: what is morality?

  • What's its nature?

  • Like, is it an objective thing, out there in the world, waiting to be known?

  • Or is it more like a preference, an opinion, or just a bunch of cultural conventions?

  • There are lots of different metaethical views out there.

  • And one way to understand them is to put them to a test to see how they'd help you solve some thorny ethical problems.

  • Like a scenario where you have to steal food or lie for a good cause.

  • Or what about this: What if you set out to harm someone, but you ended up saving their life by accident?

  • [Theme Music]

  • Some people think that ethics is a kind of science, that it seeks to discover moral truths, whose existence is testable and provable.

  • But others believe the nature of morality is every bit as subjective as whether you prefer plain M&Ms, or peanut.

  • There's just no right answer.

  • Unless you have a peanut allergy.

  • So, you and your friend might totally agree on whether something is immoral or not, but you might disagree fervently about why.

  • For an example of a slippery moral scenario, let's just head straight over to the Thought Bubble for some Flash Philosophy.

  • A burglar plots to break into an old woman's house on a Sunday morning, a time when he knows she's always at church.

  • So one Sunday, he creeps up to her back window, and smashes it with a hammer.

  • But, after he looks inside, he sees that the old woman isn't at church.

  • She's in there, laying face-down on the floor.

  • The sight of her body scares the burglar, and he runs away.

  • He was down for a little bit of burglary, but getting nabbed for murder was NOT part of his plan.

  • But what the burglar didn't know was that the old woman wasn't dead.

  • She was unconscious, having passed out because of a carbon monoxide leak that would have killed her.

  • When the burglar broke the window, he let out some of the toxic gas, and let in fresh air, which allowed her to regain consciousness.

  • So, the burglar broke into the house with the intention of stealing from the woman, but, inadvertently, he saved her life.

  • Did the burglar do a good thing?

  • Does he deserve praise, even though he didn't intend to help the woman?

  • Likewise, does he still deserve blame, even though he didn't actually get around to stealing anything, and ended up saving the woman's life?

  • Thanks Thought Bubble!

  • Your answers to these questions will help you suss out where your moral sensibilities lie.

  • And why you answer the way you do will say a lot about what metaethical view you subscribe to.

  • One of the most widely held metaethical views is known as Moral Realism, the belief that there are moral facts, in the same way that there are scientific facts.

  • In this view, any moral proposition can only be true, or false.

  • And for a lot of us, our gut intuition tells us that there are moral facts.

  • Some things are just wrong, and others are indisputably right.

  • Like, a lot of people think that gratuitous violence is always wrong, and nurturing children is always rightno matter what.

  • But, you don't have to dig very deep into moral realism before you run into trouble.

  • Like for one thing, if there are moral facts, where do they come from?

  • How do we know what they are?

  • Are they testable, like scientific facts are?

  • Are they falsifiable?

  • And, if morality is based on facts, then why is there so much disagreement about what's moral and what's not, as opposed to science, where there's often more consensus?

  • This is what's known as the grounding problem.

  • The grounding problem of ethics is the search for a foundation for our moral beliefs, something solid that would make them true in a way that is clear, objective, and unmoving.

  • If you can't find a way to ground morality, you might be pushed toward another metaethical view: Moral Antirealism.

  • This is the belief that moral propositions don't refer to objective features of the world at allthat there are no moral facts.

  • So a moral anti-realist would argue that there's nothing about gratuitous violence that's inherently wrong.

  • Likewise, they'd say, if you look at the rest of the animal kingdom, sometimes nurturing your kids doesn't seem like it's that important.

  • So, maybe morality isn't the same for everyone.

  • But still, most people you knowincluding yourselfare committed to some form of moral realism.

  • And there are MANY forms.

  • So let's familiarize ourselves with some of its most popular flavors.

  • Some moral realists are Moral Absolutists.

  • Not only do they believe in moral facts, they believe there are some moral facts that don't change.

  • So, for them, if something is wrong, it's wrong regardless of culture or circumstance.

  • Moral facts apply as universally and as constantly as gravity or the speed of light.

  • If moral absolutism sounds too rigid, maybe Moral Relativism would appeal to you.

  • This view says that more than one moral position on a given topic can be correct.

  • And one of the most common forms of moral relativism is cultural relativism.

  • But there are actually two different things a person might mean when they talk about cultural relativism.

  • The more general kind is Descriptive Cultural Relativism.

  • This is simply the belief that people's moral beliefs differ from culture to culture.

  • No one really disputes thatit seems obviously true.

  • Like, some cultures believe that capital punishment is morally right, and other cultures believe it's morally wrongthat killing another human is inherently unethical.

  • But there's also Normative Cultural Relativism, which says that it's not our beliefs, but moral facts themselves that differ from culture to culture.

  • So in this view, capital punishment is morally correct in some cultures and is morally wrong in others.

  • Here, it's the moral fact of the matter that differs, based on culture.

  • Now, normative cultural relativism might sound pretty good to you; it does at first to a lot of people.

  • Because it seems like it's all about inclusiveness and tolerance.

  • Who am I to tell other cultures how they should live, right?

  • But this view actually has some pretty big flaws.

  • If every culture is the sole arbiter of what's right for it, that means no culture can actually be wrong.

  • It means Nazi culture actually was right, for the people living in that culture.

  • A dissenting German voice in, say, 1940, would have just been wrong, if it had claimed that Jewish people deserved to be treated the same as other Germans.

  • And what makes things even weirder is that, if normative cultural relativism is true, then the concept of moral progress doesn't make sense, either.

  • If what everyone is doing right now is right, relative to their own culture, then there's never any reason to change anything.

  • Problems like these make some people take a second look at the antirealist stance, which, remember, is the view that there just aren't any moral facts.

  • Just one flavor of moral antirealism is Moral Subjectivism.

  • This view says that moral statements can be true and falseright or wrongbut they refer only to people's attitudes, rather than their actions.

  • By this thinking, capital punishment is neither right nor wrong, but people definitely have preferences about it.

  • And those preferences key into personal attitudes, but not into actual, objective moral facts about the world.

  • Like, some people favor capital punishment, and think it's just.

  • Others oppose it and think it's unjust.

  • But it doesn't go any deeper than that.

  • There are no moral facts, only moral attitudes.

  • There are other varieties of both moral realism and antirealism, but this should give you an idea of the general, metaethical lay of the land.

  • And by now, it probably seems like I've given you a lot more problems than solutions.

  • So let's talk about the moral frameworks you'll use to navigate your way through all of these moral mazes.

  • These frameworks are known as ethical theories.

  • They're moral foundations that help you come up with consistent answers about right and wrong conduct.

  • All ethical theories have some kind of starting assumptions, which shouldn't be surprising, because really all of our beliefs rest on some basic, assumed beliefs.

  • For instance, natural law theory, which we'll study soon, relies on the starting assumption that God created the universe according to a well-ordered plan.

  • While another ethical theory, known as utilitarianism, relies on the starting assumption that all beings share a common desire to seek pleasure and avoid pain.

  • The starting assumptions of a theory can lead us to other beliefs, but if you reject those initial assumptions, the rest of the theory just doesn't follow.

  • Now, in addition to starting assumptions, ethical theories also consist of Moral Principles, which are the building blocks that make up the theories.

  • And these principles can be shared between more than one theory.

  • For instance, many ethical theories agree on the principle that it's wrong to cause unjustified suffering.

  • Some ethical theories hold the principle that any unjustified killing is wrongand that includes animalswhile other theories hold the principle that it's only wrong to unjustifiably kill humans.

  • But the thing about ethical theories is that most people don't identify with just one.

  • Instead, most people identify with principles from several theories that help them form their own moral views.

  • We're going to be spending several weeks learning about these ethical theories, and you'll probably find elements of some that you already believe, and others that you definitely disagree with.

  • But all of this accepting and rejecting will help you develop a new way to talk aboutand think aboutwhat are, for now, your gut moral intuitions.

  • Today we talked about metaethics.

  • We discussed three forms of moral realism and we learned the difference between descriptive and normative cultural relativism.

  • We also learned about moral subjectivism, which is a form of moral antirealism.

  • And we introduced the concept of an ethical theory.

  • Next time we're going to learn about the ethical theory known as the Divine Command Theory.

  • Crash Course Philosophy is produced in association with PBS Digital Studios.

  • You can head over to their channel and check out a playlist of the latest episodes from shows like:

  • Physics Girl, Shanks FX, and PBS Space Time.

  • This episode of Crash Course Philosophy was filmed in the Doctor Cheryl C. Kinney Crash Course Studio

  • with the help of all of these awesome people and our equally fantastic graphics team is Thought Cafe.

Is it wrong to steal to feed your family?

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Metaethics: Crash Course Philosophy #32

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    郭仲恩 に公開 2021 年 03 月 30 日
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