Ethical naturalism is the view that moral facts and properties are natural facts and properties, meaning they can be studied and understood through empirical investigation, similar to how we study the natural world. It holds that moral truths are objective and discoverable through scientific inquiry, rather than being purely subjective or requiring supernatural or a priori reasoning.
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Ethical naturalism rejects the idea that moral facts are fundamentally different from natural facts, arguing they can be studied using the same empirical methods.
Proponents of ethical naturalism believe that moral properties, like goodness or rightness, are real features of the natural world that can be discovered through scientific investigation.
Ethical naturalism challenges the traditional fact-value distinction by asserting that moral judgments can be objectively true or false, rather than being mere expressions of subjective preferences.
Supporters of ethical naturalism often point to the evolutionary origins of morality as evidence that moral facts are natural phenomena that can be studied scientifically.
Ethical naturalism is sometimes criticized for potentially reducing morality to mere biological or psychological facts, without accounting for the normative and prescriptive nature of ethics.
Review Questions
Explain how ethical naturalism challenges the fact-value distinction.
Ethical naturalism challenges the traditional fact-value distinction by arguing that moral facts and properties are natural facts that can be studied and understood through empirical investigation, just like scientific facts about the natural world. This contrasts with the view that there is a clear separation between factual, descriptive claims about 'what is' and normative, evaluative claims about 'what ought to be.' Ethical naturalists believe moral judgments can be objectively true or false, rather than being mere expressions of subjective preferences.
Describe the key tenets of ethical naturalism and how they differ from moral relativism.
The key tenet of ethical naturalism is the belief that moral facts and properties are natural facts and properties that can be studied and understood through scientific inquiry, similar to how we study the natural world. This stands in contrast to moral relativism, which holds that moral truths are relative to the individual, culture, or context, rather than being objective and universal. Ethical naturalists argue that moral facts exist independently of what any individual or culture believes, much like scientific facts exist independently of beliefs.
Evaluate the potential strengths and weaknesses of the ethical naturalist approach to morality.
A potential strength of ethical naturalism is that it provides an objective, scientific basis for morality, rather than relying on subjective preferences or supernatural reasoning. By grounding moral facts in the natural world, ethical naturalists argue that morality can be studied and understood empirically. However, a potential weakness is that this approach may be seen as reducing morality to mere biological or psychological facts, without fully accounting for the normative and prescriptive nature of ethics. Critics argue that ethical naturalism may struggle to capture the full complexity and nuance of moral reasoning and decision-making. Ultimately, the merits of ethical naturalism depend on how effectively it can reconcile the descriptive and the prescriptive aspects of morality.
The idea that there is a clear separation between factual, descriptive claims about the world (what 'is' the case) and normative, evaluative claims about what 'ought' to be the case. Ethical naturalism challenges this distinction.
The view that moral facts and properties exist independently of what any individual or culture believes, similar to how scientific facts exist independently of beliefs.
The view that moral truths are relative to the individual, culture, or context, rather than being objective and universal as claimed by ethical naturalism.