Meta-Ethics 30 th March 2020

Starter Task:

Either:

Go around the house to find a yellow item, then ask one of your social distancing squad (SDS) if they are able to define what colour it is without using the term ‘yellow’. Then ask them if they can define ‘good’.

Or:

Create / find an item which represents something mythical – ask your SDS if the item represents something that is real and if not, why it might not be. What do they say? Ask them if ‘good’ is real?

Or:

Use your ‘chatterbox’ to explain meta-ethical concepts to your SDS.

Today’s learning purpose it to recap learning on meta-ethics and consolidate knowledge of key terms plus to practise answering PPQs for the A Level.

Task 1: Please tackle the 3 mark PPQs i.e. Qs 1, 2 & 3.

Task 2: Then please tackle Qs 8 & 9 i.e. the 5 mark Qs

which you have not peer assessed. NB. There is a mark scheme below to help you with Q9.

Task 3: Tackle Qs 11 and 12 [12 mark Qs].

Complete for homework please and save your answers.

Plenary: Email me your highest scoring word from the

meta-ethics topic. (You can use the same letter twice.) I will reveal the winner at the end of the day!

3 mark PPQs

1. What is moral realism?2. What is the difference between

ethical naturalism and ethical non-naturalism?

3. According to Hare’s prescriptivism, what does ‘x is morally right’ mean?

5 mark PPQs 4. Explain the “Boo-Hurrah” theory. (5)5. Explain Hume’s Fork. (5)6. Explain the verification principle and

how it leads to factually meaningful truths. (5)

7. Explain Mackie’s Error theory. (5)8. Explain what error theory claims

about the status of ethical language. (5)

9. Explain why emotivism is a non-cognitivist theory of ethical language.(5)

12 mark PPQs10. Outline and explain Moral

Naturalism and how it is different to non-naturalism. (12)

11. Explain the similarities and differences between what emotivists and prescriptivists say about ethical language. (12)

12. Explain Moore’s open question argument. (12)

25 mark PPQs 13. Are moral realists right to claim that

there are mind-independent moral properties/facts? (25)

14. Is ethical language meaningful? (25)15. Moral judgements do not describe

reality.’ Assess this claim with reference to either emotivism or prescriptivism. (25)

One of you may wish to email me the marks for the Peer Assessment task set last Monday… here are those answers if you still need them. Thank you.

Now peer assess these candidate answers: Use the 5 mark Q mark scheme and email me your scores…

4. Explain the “Boo-Hurrah” theory. (5)

Emotivism is nicknamed the boo-hurrah theory as Emotivists claim that moral statements are merely an expression of emotion, making it non-cognitivist and mind-independent anti realist theory. This means that when one says “genocide is wrong” they are just expressing emotions, it is the same as saying “boo!” to genocide, and “hurrah” to protecting babies. Stevenson distinguishes between beliefs and desires. Beliefs are about how we think the world is, and desire is how we think the world should be. Meaning beliefs have no truth value, and desires have are not truth-apt. According to Stevenson opinions are based on evidence and facts.

5. Explain Hume’s Fork. (5)

Hume’s fork can be understood by comparing two prongs, which represents rationalism and empiricism, these two prongs never meet. One prong is relations of ideas, which are truths known through reason and logic. These are analytical, necessary statements (tautologies) that are knowable a priori. These are known through reason and thought alone, such as ‘1+1=2’ and “bachelors are unmarried men”. Conversely, the second prong is relation of facts, statements around the world. They are gained by empirical evidence. These are synthetic, contingent, knowable a posteriori. We know these though our senses, for example, “the apple tastes sweet”, “the man is hitting the chair”.

6. Explain the verification principle and how it leads to factually meaningful truths. (5)

This means that it is logically possible to prove whether a claim is true. For example, “the world is round” is verifiable in principle because we know what to do to verify the claim. The evidence gathered by scientist would prove the falsity or rightness of this claim. Not all synthetic statements are meaningful. In order for a synthetic statement to be factually meaningful it must be verifiable in principle by sense experience. Taughtologies such as “yellow is yellow” is factually meaningful. However propositions which are neither analytic nor verifiable in principle are factually meaningless. Therefore in order for a proposition to be factually meaningful, it must be either; analytic or synthetic and verifiable in principle, possible or at least logically possible. Logical positivists would also argue that “murder is wrong” is factually not meaningful, as it is clear that Ayer and the Vienna Circle claim that moral statements carry meaning in as much as they express feelings or emotions, but they do not express truth-apt propositions.

7. Explain Mackie’s Error theory. (5)

Error theory is cognitivst, moral anti-realist meta-ethical theory. Mackie claims when we make moral statement we are trying to map out mind-independent moral realities, such as “torture is wrong”. But no such thing exists, and so all our moral assertions are false. Therefore all moral assertions are making a mistake and all statements about morality are false. Mackie uses the term “queer” to mean strange, and argues that if moral facts existed, then they would be totally different from other types of facts existed, and therefore be very queer.

Mackie devised two types of queerness; metaphysical and epistemological. Metaphysical is the study of what exists, if moral facts existed they would be mind-independent and part of the fabric of the universe. He also put forward that moral facts would need an element of persuasiveness, which would make it metaphysically queer. Epistemological queerness is the study of knowledge; if moral facts existed how would they be known? Mackie argues that facts can’t be known through experience and reason alone, as examining facts would not tell us the rightness or wrongness of an act, it also faces the is-ought gap. Additionally, you cannot know facts through reason or intuition because they do not make themselves known to us, because they are not self-evident.

Use the 12 mark Q mark scheme and email me your score…

10. Outline and explain Moral Naturalism and how it is different to non-naturalism (12)

Devised by Bentham, Mill and Aristotle, moral naturalism is a cognitive moral realist theory which suggests that we articulate beliefs when making a moral statement about mind-independent moral realities. Moral realists are those who believe we should take things at face-value, moral claims to purport to report facts and are true if they get the facts right. We observe the world around us and create moral theories to fit out observations. Natural facts are those that can be verified or falsified using natural evidence, i.e. our senses and are therefore truth-apt. Naturalism argues that goodness= something defined by natural properties and can be empirically experienced.

An example of this is in Utilitarianism, where goodness is reduced to pleasure, a more natural term that we all experience. This means that if goodness=pleasure then there is no mystery about which acts are good, and all we do is apply the principle of utility. Conversely, wrongness can be reduced to something that makes people upset. Therefore utilitarianism is a form of moral naturalism because we look for evidence of goodness through acts of pleasure and pain.

In contrast to moral naturalism, non-naturalism, devised by G.E. Moore, claims moral facts do not exist, and you can’t examine natural facts to get moral facts because they are not identical, so therefore moral facts cannot be reduced to natural facts. Therefore goodness=goodness because it can’t be reduced to anything else. Moore explain that we have general intuitions about what is right (our duties), therefore the right act is the one which produces the most happiness. Moore explains that we use moral intuition when grasping self-evident truths, like most a priori truths they may not be as obvious to everyone, which therefore explains why people have different ethical beliefs. In Moore’s open question argument, he concludes that goodness is indefinable ad cannot be reduced, this is reflected in his findings; ‘goodness’ in terms of X- but is X good? People define goodness as happiness, but is happiness always good? Nozick’s experience machine would agree with the latter, as many people would choose to live in a reality than live in a life which was happy but not reality. Here Moore concludes that it is not a tautology, so therefore is still an open question.

Use the 25 mark Q mark scheme and email me your score…

13. Are moral realists right to claim that there are mind-independent moral properties/facts? (25)

I will argue that moral realists cannot claim that mind independent moral properties or facts exist. My argument relies on empiricism, and if that is proven to be false my argument may lose some integrity. To justify my argument, I will be supporting it with Hume’s Fork and Ayer’s Verification principle, Hume’s argument from motivation and Hume’s Is-Ought gap. I will be discussing objections against these arguments, but will prove these criticisms false and conclude that moral realists are unable to prove that mind independent moral properties or facts are existent.

Hume’s Fork and Ayer’s Verification Principle are two arguments with merit when weakening moral realism. Hume’s Fork states that we can only have knowledge of anything through relations of ideas or matters of fact, and therefore we can only have two types of judgement (about relations of ideas or matters of facts). Hume’s Fork is a strong argument against moral realism, because it successfully proves (within the realms of empiricism) that moral judgments are not judgements of reason, and therefore we cannot have any knowledge of them. Moral realists such as Moore disagree with this statement, claiming that moral intuitions are not relations of ideas in the same sense that Hume is relating them to because they are not analytic truths. Moral judgements are just self-evident, and therefore cannot be constituted in the same way as other empirical matters of fact are. Moral judgements are unquestionable within our reality because we know them intuitively, and therefore cannot be included within the same domain of matters of facts that we can see and prove empirically. Hume however refutes their objection, challenging them to simply prove how this can be possible at all. Moral judgements cannot be relations of ideas because moral claims are not conceptual truths, and relations of ideas are supposed to be. Relations of ideas that relate to morality can also be used to describe physical objects, which are not immoral or moral. For example, if the property of killing is immoral, but plants can kill one another and they have no morality, then there is nothing within the concept of killing that is intrinsically morally wrong. To say that moral judgements are matters of facts is incorrect as well. For instance, murder. As we cannot empirically find the property of wrongness within it, it is not a matter of fact, there is no fact, except the motives or thoughts behind it. There is no ‘fact’ of its wrongness. This is how Hume’s Fork successfully disproves moral realism.

Ayer disproves moral realism by demonstrating that statements can only have meaning through empirical or analytical proof with his Verification Principle. When we relate this to morality, it is a strong argument against moral realism because it shows that moral facts and

properties cannot be analytically or empirically proven, contrary to what moral realists think. For instance, to say that ‘murder is wrong’ has no strength as a statement because it is not true within the definition of murder, nor can we physically show the ‘wrongness’ involved within murder empirically. The Verification Principle is an adaptation upon Hume’s Fork, where it shows what statements have meaning rather than what we can have knowledge of. Therefore, Moore’s dispute against it is similar to his one against Hume’s Fork. Moore once again explains that we know things innately, and therefore cannot be empirically or analytically proven. Ayer’s reply against this is strong because he challenges the extent to which one can argue something is innate. He discusses a scenario where one person claims that murder is innately wrong to them, while the other person claims that it is innately right. We cannot know who is innately correct in this scenario because there are no bases to what it means to know something ‘innately’. Another objection against the verification principle is that it fails its own test of being analytically or empirically verifiable, and therefore is not meaningful. Ayer disputes this, claiming that it is only to be used as a definition, and cannot be discounted as a valid way to determine whether something is meaningful or not. It is only intended to reflect or help us understand what classifies something as meaningful. The verification principle is still viable and credible in determining meaningful statements such as those of morality and holds a strong argument against moral realism and the existence of mind independent moral properties.

Another strong argument against moral realism and the existence of mind independent moral properties is Hume’s argument from motivation. It highlights that desires and emotions motivate us to act, and judgements of relations of ideas and matters of facts do not. They only tell us about the world and direct our emotions and desires to motivations. Moral judgements can motivate actions, but reason cannot motivate action, and therefore moral judgements are not judgements of reason. This is strong because we can use our prior knowledge of the world to understand the claim. We know that we are motivated by desires, rather than just the essence of knowing a fact. For example, knowing that the kitchen has food creates a desire to go eat, rather than being the desire itself. If we recognise that these are true, then we know that moral judgements are motivating, but cannot be judgements of reason (because reason is not motivating). An objection against Hume’s argument, however, is that moral judgements alone don’t motivate. We must also have the desire to be good at the same time. Because moral judgements don’t motivate us on their own, this argument does not provide solid grounds for us to not believe that moral judgements are not judgements of reason as well. For example, we could hold the view that ‘murder is wrong’ but still not care about what is wrong and still do it despite it being morally incorrect. This means that knowing something is wrong is not enough to motivate something, and therefore moral judgement alone is not enough to motivate. We can reply to this by using prescriptivism. The argument from motivation is still a viable argument despite this objection because the main premise of it is upheld, and is still coherent to understanding, and therefore we can still classify it as a strong argument against moral realism and mind independent properties existing.

The last argument I will use to support my view that moral realism cannot claim mind independent moral properties or facts exist is Hume’s Is-Ought gap. He claims that we cannot draw a correlation or a link between what you are ought to do and what you should do. Hume explains that we cannot acquire an imperative from a fact about life. This makes sense and is a strong argument against moral realism because it shows that moral arguments cannot reasonably provide explanation against doing something. For example, claiming that ‘eating meat causes animal suffering, therefore you shouldn’t eat meat’ is a moral claim about what someone should do, from a fact about life. There is a clear gap between the two premises of that statement which Hume infers is essential to directing moral claims or truths. This is how it strongly disproves moral realism.

It is clear to claim after reviewing these four strong arguments that moral realists cannot claim that mind independent moral properties or facts exist. When presenting these arguments against the objections of moral realists we can conclude that there is no coherent argument from a moral realist point of view that can prove any of the four arguments presented false, thus concluding that moral realism itself is incorrect.

Does the essay consider/overcome objections to the anti-realist stance that is pursued?

Is the conclusion robustly defended?

14. Is ethical language meaningful? (25)

In order to discuss the meaningfulness of ethical language it is important to first establish what sense of ‘meaningful’ we are using. ‘Meaningful’ can be understood as serious, important, useful or as intending to express something. It is this latter sense that A.J. Ayer adopts in order to make a case for meaninglessness of both ethical and religious language. Ayer’s Verification Principle states that an utterance is meaningful if it is either analytically true (true by definition) or if it can be shown to be synthetically true or false (using the experience of the world around us) It is clear that ethical language contained in moral utterances such as, ‘Murder is wrong’ cannot be analytically true (there is nothing in the definition of murder that contains ‘wrong’) but it is also true that one cannot prove such a claim using experience of the world. Moral utterances then do not express anything true or false about the world, they are devoid of meaning. We might consider them to be serious and important as they underpin systems of law, rights and responsibilities but this is not enough to establish their objective truth or falsity. As Hume himself states, moral judgements are not judgements of reason since they are neither ‘relations of ideas’ or ‘matters of fact’. Hume challenges us to examine a wilful, gruesome murder and point out the ‘vice’ we observe in the action (the ‘wrongness’ of the action) But, he claims, “…the vice entirely escapes you”. Hume’s suggestion is that moral properties such as ‘right’, ‘wrong’, ‘good’, ‘bad’ (which must exist in actions or people that we are judging to be so) are not empirically discoverable as they are not facts of the external world; there are no such properties that exist either in actions or in people. I intend to show that moral utterances such as, ‘Murder is wrong’ are meaningless as they do not and cannot report anything about the way the world actually is. I will conclude that a non-cognitive approach to ethical language and moral utterances, such as that posited by the emotivists Ayer and Stevenson, is the only defendable position and that while moral utterances cannot report facts about the world, they can be used as expressions of emotion and that they may, in that sense, be meaningful.

I will first present the counter claim, that of cognitivism and objections to it. Cognitivism is the view that ethical language expresses moral facts about how the world actually is. This means that ethical statements such as 'Murder is wrong' describe the world and can be therefore be true or false. A cognitivist would argue it is possible to have knowledge of moral truths while a non-cognitivist would argue that moral truths do not exist and are thus subjective. Moral realism claims that ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are real properties of actions and people. The property of ‘goodness’ in a person is a property in the same way that being ‘5 feet tall’ is a property. These properties are a real part of the world and whether a person is good or bad depends on circumstances in the external world. Ethical naturalism and ethical non-naturalism are two forms of cognitivism which dispute the nature of goodness. Ethical naturalism is a form of ontological reduction as it claims that things in the moral domain are identical to those in the natural world. An example presents itself from Utilitarian naturalism where it is claimed that goodness can be reduced to the psychological property

of happiness. Ethical non-naturalism, on the other hand, claims that moral properties and truths exist in a different domain to natural properties and that goodness cannot be understood in terms of natural properties.

Ethical naturalism in the form of Utilitarian naturalism reduces the moral property of goodness to the natural property of happiness. This is not to say that happiness is the only thing that is good but rather than happiness just is what goodness is. They are the same thing. This means that goodness is a natural property and psychological state. Whether an act maximises happiness provides the means by which we can empirically prove whether it is good. To combat Hume’s criticism, the naturalist can say that to observe the pain induced by an action is to observe the ‘vice’. Ethical naturalism does not posit another new type of property which is new and mysterious; rather it reduces them to physical and psychological properties meaning it appeals to Ockham's razor.

However, a problem with ethical naturalism in general is the ‘naturalistic fallacy’ proposed by G.E. Moore. Moore argues that Mill may not have realised that he was defining good as the natural property of 'desired' in order to prove that goodness is happiness but that goodness is equated with what is desirable. Since all people desire their own happiness, happiness must be equivocated with goodness, but Moore points out that this only works if we accept that ‘good’ is what is desirable which may simply not be the case (especially if we consider deontological accounts of what is good where my desires might directly conflict with what is ‘good’). Moore argues that goodness is a simple yet unanalysable property which cannot be defined in terms of natural properties.

Furthermore, Moore’s 'Open Question' argument suggests that a reduction of goodness to pleasure is impossible. Using the example of happiness, if goodness is just pleasure then it would not make sense to ask 'Is pleasure good?' The question would be tautological as it would be like asking 'Is good good?' This question isn't real because the answer has to be yes as the answer is contained in the question. Moore argues that 'Is pleasure good?' is a meaningful and real question as the answer can either be 'yes' or 'no'. This suggests that goodness cannot be equated to happiness or any other property as the question 'is x good?' will always be meaningful while the question 'is x x?' is not. Moore goes further and argues we can only meaningfully say that pleasure is good if we distinguish between pleasure and goodness, otherwise the question becomes meaningless. Moore therefore reaches the conclusion that goodness cannot be defined and that happiness is loosely correlated with goodness but does not constitute it.

But what of ethical non-naturalism? Is that more successful at establishing the reality of moral properties and thus the meaningfulness of moral utterances? Ethical non-naturalism claims that moral properties and truths are in a different domain to natural properties. This means they refute any form of reduction of moral property to natural. A form of non-

naturalism proposed by G. E. Moore claims that although moral properties may be correlated with certain natural properties it does not mean they are the same thing. Even if goodness is correlated with happiness that does not show that they are the same property. We simply cannot define goodness in any other terms. To explain this Moore used the analogy of yellow. Yellow is a simple property yet no one can explain yellow to someone who hasn't seen yellow. We cannot define yellow but we recognize it when we see it in the world. It may be correlated with certain wavelengths but yellow and the wavelengths are not one and the same. Moore argues that goodness and badness were like yellow in this way and so discoverable in action and people through intuition (the ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning) A problem with intuitionism is the reality of moral relativity. Intuitionism argues that our morality comes from our intuitions rather than our reason suggesting that there should be some moral convergence. In reality though, there is little moral convergence as people intuit their way to different conclusions all the time. There are fundamental moral disagreements about the status of human life for example. These conflicts may include issues such as abortion, euthanasia and capital punishment. If the ‘rightness’ or ‘wrongness’ of these could be intuitively known we would expect greater convergence and less debate.

Furthermore, if ethical non-naturalism is true we have to posit some kind of new property that is ontologically distinct from any other kind of property known to us. Such a property would need to be motivating since it would guide our action. J.L. Mackie famously dismissed the existence of such non-natural properties by suggesting their metaphysical and epistemological ‘queerness’. Since Ockham’s Razor would confirm that we have no reason to accept such queer properties, the existence of non-natural moral properties must be false.

What I have shown so far is that if we cannot establish the existence of the properties of ‘right’, ‘wrong’, ‘good’ or ‘bad’ then we cannot talk of persons or actions as being in possession of them. Therefore it cannot be meaningful (in the sense of expressing some fact about the world) to utter, ‘Murder is wrong’. But what if we could understand the statement as not attempting to express any kind of fact about the world, but something altogether different? I will now argue the case for an account of ethical language known as emotivism; that ethical language has only emotive meaning.

Non-cognitivist theories argue that ethical language does not try to describe the world and cannot be true or false. Moral judgements therefore do not express beliefs but some other sort of state of mind. Non-cognitivism is a rejection of moral realism so there are no moral properties or a world within which moral judgements can be true or false. Emotivism claims that moral judgements express feelings or attitudes of approval or disapproval. Defended by A.J. Ayer, emotivism asserts that my saying, ‘murder is wrong’ is simply an expression of my dislike of murder. It is as if I had said, ‘boo to murder!!!’ which is a statement devoid of any factual meaning. Both Ayer and latterly Stevenson argue that central ethical terms have only

emotive meaning, not descriptive and so the utterance, ‘murder is wrong’ is only ever going to assert my disapproval of such an action not describe a fact about murder. The emotive meaning of moral judgements is related to their use and so the purpose of moral judgements is not to state facts but to influence behaviour. This explains why we are moved to behave in certain ways or not off the back of moral discussion; we have had our emotions stirred up.

If this is the case, it seems that moral disagreements are simply attempts to emotionally manipulate and so not actually disagreements at all (since there is no competition for who is correct or not as neither viewpoint will be) Ayer and Stevenson both offer an account for why disagreements over murder and the like occur.

Ayer asserts that so-called ‘moral arguments’ are not arguments over moral judgements, but over facts. When two people argue about factory farming, one participant (who is against such practices) is not trying to demonstrate that the other has the ‘wrong’ ethical feeling about the situation, but rather that he is simply not in possession of the full facts of the case. When arguing, both participants will be drawing the other’s attention to different facts; possible differences between animal and human suffering, a possible hierarchy of species, contribution to climate change, human health implications and so on. If by the end of this exchange of facts the two participants agree on these facts but still disagree morally, there is nothing left to discuss; there is no further argument that can take place. Moral judgements always presuppose a system of values and objective moral standards; but no sensible argument for these can be given since we cannot ‘pick out’ or establish moral properties in our world.

In conclusion, I have shown that cognitivism is not a defendable position. The failure of both ethical naturalism and ethical non-naturalism to establish the existence of moral properties renders it impossible for us to talk meaningfully about an action or a person being in possession of them. An action cannot be ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in any meaningful sense. It must be then, that the ethical terms contained within moral utterances have some other ‘meaning’, namely emotive.

NB Ayer thinks that, insofar as it is characteristically ethical, ethical language lacks literal meaning in the logical positivists' narrow sense - that is, it is non-descriptive. Talk about 'evaluative meaning' or 'emotive meaning' would then be metaphorical at best. As he puts it: "in so far as statements of value are significant, they are ordinary ’scientific’ [i.e empirically verifiable, descriptive] statements; and that in so far as they are not scientific, they are not in the literal sense significant [meaningful], but are simply expressions of emotion which can be neither true nor false".

15. ‘Moral judgements do not describe reality.’ Assess this claim with reference to either emotivism or prescriptivism. (25)

This statement claims that moral statements are not truth apt. That is, they are neither true nor false, as there are no properties of moral truth or falsity which exist. This is in contrast to statements about physical properties, such as height or length, which can be true or false as height exists as an empirical reality. I disagree with this statement and will assess it with reference to emotivism.

Emotivism is the theory of meta ethics associated with A J Ayer and the Vienna Circle. The Vienna Circle were logical positivists and wanted to discuss philosophy, ethics and religion in a securely scientific way. Therefore, they agreed that only statements which were either analytic or synthetic could be verified. All other statements were literally meaningless. This meant that statements about morality, such as ‘Murder is wrong’ had no meaning. Ayer asserted that such a statement simply meant ‘I don’t like murder’: it is expressing the emotion of the speaker, and not related to any actual truth of ‘wrongness’.

However, this view can be criticised strongly. The verification principle fails its own test. It cannot be verified either analytically or synthetically, so therefore fails as a criterion of assessment. This fundamental flaw in Ayer’s view undermines his emotivist theory entirely. However, the wider concerns about non cognitivism which Ayer identified still need to be addressed. How do moral judgements describe reality?

Hume believed that values could not be derived from facts. There was an ‘is – ought’ distinction in accounts; no factual description of an action can lead to a value judgement about it (ie it is logically wrong to say ‘Murder hurts people, therefore murder is wrong’). G.E. Moore spoke about the naturalistic fallacy: it is impossible to identify ‘the good’ with any set of natural facts.

However, many philosophers and ethicists have sought to do just that. Utilitarians identify ‘the good’ as pleasure. Bentham justified this prima facie idea on the grounds of empirical evidence: all over the world, men seem to want to pursue pleasure and avoid pain, therefore pleasure is good and pain is bad. Whilst this does not entirely logically follow, it is surely an important point. If a property has been widely recognised as desirable by the vast

majority of humankind over centuries, then claiming it as ‘good’ is neither facile nor inconsequential.

However, the naturalistic utilitarian idea, whilst suitable for general use, does have some flaws. What of the tyranny of the majority? What of the cases of flagrant human rights violations in order to pursue some apparently worthy consequence (such as raping a terrorists’ daughter and subsequently setting her on fire in order to provoke the terrorist into sharing where he had planted his bomb?) Here utilitarianism’s naturalistic approach has no satisfactory answers. We must turn to principles, such as justice, fairness and the sanctity of the human person, for that. This can be found in religion. It is logical that a good God, being all wise, all knowing and all powerful, would be both willing and able to set and communicate overarching principles such as these.

Moral judgements can describe reality. Not all moral judgements (some of course may be false, as moral statements are truth apt and therefore can be wrong), but many moral judgements, such as ‘murder is wrong’, ‘raping children is wrong’, ‘truth telling is good’ are reflections of reality as recognised by many naturalistic philosophers and decreed by God.

Q4. I gave this 4/5. I thought that the last sentence could be clearer. It needed to be clear that CL Stevenson is an emotivist also that imperatives cannot be proved but can be supported.

Q5. Most of us agreed that this should achieve 5/5.

Q6. I agreed with two of you that this deserved 5/5 although one of you thought it deserved only 1/5. BTW sp. tautologies

Q7. I agree with two of you that this deserved 5/5 although we all agreed that it deserved 4 or 5. BTW sp. cognitivist

Q10. The opening sentence is imprecise but good to see examples - although not clear what type of utilitarianism. 'Term' - should be property, so an imprecision. Questions were used here but it worked because the candidate was demonstrating the open question argument. I awarded this 9/12 and two of you gave it 11 and two of you gave it 6/12

Q13. A lovely intro here despite the 1st person pronoun. This needed to be broken into paragraphs. Arguments were weighted well but the candidate needed to overcome all of the objections of the moral anti-realist stance pursued, and there was not enough in the conclusion. I awarded this 23/25 as did one of you, but one of you felt it was more like 13/25 as it wasn't integrated enough, whilst two of you agreed on 18/25!

Q14. This didn't include any weighting of arguments - too much AO1 so I gave it 20/25 which was similar to two of you but much more generous than the other two of you!

Q15.Three of us agreed on this one - 18/25 but one of you really didn't like this!I thought that this was a well integrated response but that the last few sentences let it down enormously - especially as they randomly discussed religious language and made comments about God which were unsupported!

It would be great to know what the mark scheme would say if there was one.