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Ethical Disagreement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Extract

In his 1947 British Academy lecture on Naturalistic Ethics, Mr. W. F. R. Hardie is concerned to ask himself whether a naturalistic theory of ethics can give a “satisfactory account of our moral knowledge or convictions,” or whether some form of non-naturalism is demanded by our moral experience. It will be remembered that after a careful sifting and examination of certain features of our moral knowledge or convictions, Mr. Hardie suspends judgment between naturalism and non-naturalism, observing that “on the one hand philosophers who start from the ostensible facts of our moral experience and thinking, and are most careful and accurate in their rendering of these facts, have tended to be led to objectivist and anti-naturalistic conclusions. Where they least carry conviction is in the moral epistemology which they assume or defend. When we reflect, with the epistemological issue in mind, on the actual process in ourselves of moral reflection and decision, we are more inclined to sympathize with a ‘moral sentiment’ theory than we ought to be if the rationalists are wholly in the right.” In what follows I wish to consider another feature of our moral experience which Mr. Hardie did not examine in his lecture and which appears to be of considerable importance, namely the situation where, to put it very roughly for the moment, we find ourselves at variance with another person or persons on a moral issue, where, for instance, I hold that a certain course of conduct is right, and the other person or persons hold that it is wrong, or vice versa, and where further we may pursue divergent courses of action accordingly. I wish to ask myself whether the naturalistic commentary on this situation of ethical disagreement is altogether satisfactory when we consider it in the light of “the ostensible facts of our moral experience and thinking,” whether, in fact, to use another phrase of Mr. Hardie's, it squares altogether with “our fundamental moral convictions” in regard to such a situation. The naturalistic commentary with which I am primarily concerned is that which is now sometimes labelled “the emotive theory of ethics,” and is to be found admirably developed, for example, in Professor Stevenson's book Ethics and Language.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1950

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References

page 301 note 1 Hardie, W. F. R., Naturalistic Ethics, Henriette Hertz Lecture, British Academy, 1947, p. 1Google Scholar.

page 301 note 2 Op. cit., p. 30.

page 303 note 1 Proc. Arist. Soc., Supplement, Vol. XXII, p. 100.

page 303 note 2 Moore, G. E., Ethics, pp. 100 fGoogle Scholar. Cf. the discussion of these arguments by Stevenson, C. L. in The Philosophy of G. E. Moore, pp. 7190Google Scholar.

page 303 note 3 Cf. for his later views, The Philosophy of G. E. Moore, pp. 536554Google Scholar.

page 305 note 1 Ross, , The Right and the Good, p. 87Google Scholar.

page 305 note 2 Ayer, , Language, Truth and Logic (1936 ed.), p. 156Google Scholar.

page 305 note 3 Philosophy, Vol. XXIV, January 1949.

page 307 note 1 Proc. Arist. Soc., Supplement. Vol. XXII, p. 100.

page 308 note 1 Language, Truth and Logic (1936 ed.), p. 160Google Scholar.

page 309 note 1 Ethics and Language, p. 30.

page 309 note 2 Op. cit., p. 113.

page 311 note 1 Op. cit., p. 252.

page 312 note 1 Stevenson, Op. cit., p. 90.

page 312 note 2 Philosophy of G. E. Moore, p. 90.

page 314 note 1 Language, Truth and Logic, p. 166.