Analytic and synthetic statements Essay Example

Analytic and synthetic statements Essay Example Analytic and synthetic statements Paper Analytic and synthetic statements Paper H.A. Prichard also believes in intuitionism. He says that no definition can be given to the word ‘ought,’ but we all recognise its properties. He thought there were two types of thinking – reason and intuition. Reason looks at the facts of a situation and intuition decides what to do. In any situation, Prichard thought that intuition would show which action was right and where our moral obligation lay. He agreed that there was the problem that people’s morals were different, but said that this was because some people had developed their moral thinking further than others. He says that where there is a conflict of obligations he says we must look at the situation and decide which obligation is greater. However, according to Prichard, intuition would not be something that everyone could use to prove goodness. Another version of intuition was proposed by W.D. Ross. He was a deontologist who argues that it was obvious that certain types of actions, called prima facie duties, were right. In any particular situation we would come to recognise certain prima facie duties. He listed seven classes of prima facie duties: duties of fidelity, reparation, gratitude, justice, beneficence, self-improvement, non-maleficence. Ross says that when these duties conflict, we must follow the one we think it right in the situation, and sometimes one duty will have to give way to another. The duty a person thinks is right in a situation will depend on a person’s moral maturity. According to intuition, religious language is meaningful because people have certain intuitions about right and wrong. The problem with intuitionism is that it claims that we know what is good by intuition and not by empirical evidence but this is not proved by Moore – he says you either agree with him or have not thought about it properly. However, it would seem that if the naturalistic fallacy shows that you cannot conclude value judgements from natural facts by means of evidence obtained through the senses, then the idea of ‘non-natural’ facts and a special ‘intuition’ does not make sense. Some philosophers say that out emotions and practical wisdom gave us this intuitive knowledge. Also, we cannot be sure that intuitions are correct since people may come to different conclusions, whether they use intuition or reason to come to their decisions. There is also the question of how we can decide between our intuitions if sense experience cannot be used. If they contradict each other, both cannot be right, but they will be right for the person whose intuition tells him what to do. We can never know which intuition is true or false; as we do not all recognise goodness intuitively in the same way. Moral intuitions seem to come largely from social condition and differ between cultures, so it is hard to see how such intuitions can be a reliable guide to objective ethical truths. For this reason, intuitionism cannot be used to argue that ethical language is meaningful. The second approach to the meaningfulness of ethical language is the non-cognitivist approach. This is the idea that when someone males a moral statement they are not describing the world, but expressing their feelings or telling people what to do. They say that moral statements are not descriptive they cannot be described as true or false – they are subjective. There is no ethical knowledge, because statements are not statements that can be proved true or false. Thus to say â€Å"Euthanasia is wrong† is not a statement about facts, but some other kind of saying. Non-cognitivists make a distinction between facts and values. This approach is often followed by anti-realists. One non-cognitive theory of ethics is emotivism. A.J Ayer starts with the premise that there is no ethical knowledge because ethical judgements are not the kinds of statements that can be true or false. Emotivism will not tell you how to live a moral life, but simply helps us understand moral statements: as action guiding and as conveying certain attitudes. This view says that when we talk about â€Å"good† and â€Å"bad† we are simply expressing emotional states of approval and disapproval. Any other interpretation of ethical statements is meaningless. A.J Ayer said that there are only two kinds of meaningful statements: analytic and synthetic statements. Analytics statements are the idea that the truth or falsity of the statement can be determined simply by understanding the terms that occur I them. Synthetic statements are the idea that the truth or falsity of a statement can be determined by checking to establish the facts either way. Ethical statements are not verifiable – there are no empirical facts which can be checked to see if any ethical statement is true or false – so they are meaningless. The only way they can be understood is as an expression of feelings. Emotivism shows that the ethical statements we make depend on our own attitudes and feelings, and this can lead it to be criticised as just being subjectivism. However, although Ayer does argue that ethical statements have no factual content, he does not believe they have no meaningful function. It simply reduces ethical statements to the level of giving ones opinion and so they are simply meaningless.