Moral Realism - A-Level Philosophy AQA Detailed 25 Mark Essay Plan
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Course
Ethics
Institution
AQA
An essay plan answering ' Is Moral Realism Convincing?'
It is designed for the AQA Philosophy A-Level 25 Marks. All essays are Band 5 and above.
The essays largely follow the recommended RICE (Reason, Issue, Counterexample and Evaluation).
Introduction and Conclusion are not included. Statemen...
Is Moral Realism Convincing?
Statement of Intent: I will be arguing that moral realism is not convincing for three key reasons. Firstly,
because the verification principle shows that moral statements are meaningless and therefore not
referring to anything objective. More crucially, moral realism is not convincing because morals are not
judgements of reason and even if they could be it is unable to explain the is- ought gap. Most crucially,
moral realism misunderstands how motivation works.
RICE 1:
R: Moral Realism is not convincing because moral statements are meaningless as shown by the
verification principle. According to the verification principle a statement is meaningful if and only if it can
be analytically or empirically verifiable. Moral statements are not analytic nor is it empirically verifiable
and therefore it is meaningless. Therefore moral judgements don’t state truths or falsehoods at all. This
attacks the fact that moral judgements are cognitivist and therefore by default moral realism is not the
case.
I: This reason depends on the verification principle. But we can argue that the principle itself is
meaningless. The claim that ‘a statement only has meaning if it analytic or can be verified empirically’
itself is nor analytic nor empirically verifiable. Therefore the verification principle is meaningless. The
implications of this then what the verification claims cannot be true. Therefore we cannot use it to show
that ethical language is meaningless and therefore cognitivism isn’t proved false and therefore moral
realism isn’t proven false
C: This issue is quite weak. The principle is intended as a definition not an empirical hypothesis about
meaning. It is intended to reflect and clarify our understanding of meaningful uses of words.
E; Tbh the response is fairly weak - the verification is only convincing if it gives the right account of
meaning. If we feel it doesn't (which is plausible there are many other ways eg falsification) then we have
no other reason to say that ethical language is meaningless. This reason is weaker because it is only
convincing against moral naturalism. Intuitionism accepts that the non-natural properties are neither
analytic nor empirically verifiable yet we know them to be true or false by rational intuition. Therefore how
to challenge intuitionism requires something different.
RICE 2:
R: Moral Realism fails misunderstands how motivation works with ethical language. We want to say that
moral judgements motivates our actions - it leads to not murder etc. as we avoid actions we believe are
wrong and try to do action which are right. Reasons cannot motivate actions and therefore moral
judgements judgements of reasons. Judgements of reasons is judging what is true or false of reason and
therefore if moral judgements are not judgements of reasons they are not judging what can be true or
false and therefore it is not cognitivist and therefore moral realism is not the case. Is more crucial as it
attacks all forms of moral realism and is considering the implication of moral realism. Adding on from this,
Mackie’s argument from Queerness, shows that if moral properties were real they would be very unique.
Simply knowing what is good or bad would have to be enough to motivate us to act in certain ways - it
would therefore have to have a ‘to be persuedness’ property built into it. However how can such objective
property motivate us - it seems implausible for a direct immediate relation between some fact of the world
and our desire. Just to know something is true doesn't entail us being motivated to do anything about it.
Moral properties is real would be queer. Not only this this property cannot exist because people pursue
different people have different attitudes we’ve persued different moral judgements therefore moral
judgements can’t have the to be persuedness property
I: You could deny that moral judgements are intrinsically motivating. Firstly you can deny that moral
judgements within themselves motivate actions. To do good actions we have to have the desire to be
Is Moral Realism Convincing? 1
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