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Can Ethical Judgments Be Rationally Justified? A Reappraisal of the

Analytic-Positivist Critique of Ethics

Wrendolf C. Juntilla

I. Introduction

Of all the beliefs which necessitate justification, perhaps the belief about morality is uppermost. One can be mistaken about the weather, other people, history, places, culture, ideas, or facts in general, but it is not always that mishap about these things would result to unlikely consequences; or, even if consequences are tragic, ignorance of the relevant information sometimes mitigates the seriousness of failure. But this is not the case when one is mistaken about values, especially moral values. Someone who believes that he is fighting in the name of religion might be mistaken in believing that he is fighting for the right cause. Thus, if he kills other people – innocent people – in the name of God, he might be convinced that he is acting morally and is in fact fulfilling a moral obligation. If this man is mistaken about his moral beliefs, (which, indeed, is the case), it would be preposterous to grant him excuse on the account of ignorance. It is because we take it as an ethical commonplace that any reasonable person at the least, if not always, has a correct moral sense. Therefore, under the presumption of rationality, a person does not only have a responsibility to act morally but also has the responsibility to know what is right from what is wrong. This only goes to say that, of everything that must be known, neglect of the knowledge of right and wrong is something which we cannot settle on a comfortable compromise.

Yet, far too often, it is our moral beliefs that are found most difficult to justify, especially when we are confronted with people who hold values that are very different from ours. When challenged deeply about our moral convictions, we are pushed to make explicit our assumptions which we may have been taking for granted, thereby rendering our beliefs vulnerable to more damaging criticisms. Thus, there arises a problem about the possibility of justifying our moral beliefs based on grounds that everybody can reasonably accept.

This problem is made more serious when we come to compare disputes about values and disputes about facts. Disputes about facts are easily resolved once disputants get access to the relevant information. Disputes about values, however, most likely do not depend on the kind of facts involved. In fact, it would be oblivious to settle disputes about values based on “information”, for the subject of dispute, i.e. the different values disputants hold, suggests already that the problem does not lie on which facts are relevant, but on the diversity of values which determine which facts are relevant (See Ayer 1936, p. 115; Cf. Stevenson 1964, p. 511).

This dichotomy between facts and values had long been the subject of much scrutiny by the philosophers in the 20th century known as logical-positivists or analytic-positivists. Their commitment to scientific truths led them to cast an interminable doubt, and even rejection, to the possibility of achieving the so-called moral truths. In consequence, their investigation downplayed ethics as a valid inquiry, suggesting that ethics does not tell us anything sensible at all and that ethical judgments cannot be rationally grounded.

However, logical-positivism as a philosophical movement has seen its decline since the 50’s. Much of their philosophical assumptions have been dramatically challenged. In particular, their notion of the dichotomy of fact and value has been regarded as untenable even in the sciences themselves, and their verification principle which served for them as a canon of truth has been regarded as self-defeating. (See Sontag 1957; Putnam 2002; Harris 2005)

Even if logical-positivism is no longer appealing today, there is still much to learn about their view of ethics which can provide us useful insights about our moral beliefs and of ethics as a philosophical inquiry. Thus, this paper reappraises the basic arguments of the analytic-positivists against ethics. Specifically, I will inquire about how the fact-value dichotomy rules out the possibility of rationally justifying ethical judgments according to analytic-positivists. My investigation would show that their premiss is insufficient for dismissing ethics and the possibility of rationally justifying ethical judgments. At the outset, I will argue that far from dismissing ethics, analytic-positivists had actually given us the tools that would allow us to affirm the autonomy of ethics and to protect it from being subsumed into mere study of moral behaviour. It is hoped that the investigation may shed us light on the relation between ethics and science, and may also help dispel the cynical attitude against the possibility of rationally justifying our ethical judgments independent on mere volitional interests of a person or group of people, an attitude which generally characterize our highly globalized society today.

II. The Analytic-Positivists Critique of Ethics

Background

The analytic-positivist critique of ethics is grounded on the distinction between fact and value which had its first exhortation in Hume. In his Treatise on Human Nature on the section about vice and virtue, Hume maintains that value-concepts such as virtue and vice are not empirically observable, and hence are not matters of fact. Hume writes:

But can there be any difficulty in proving, that vice and virtue are not matters of fact, whose existence we can infer by reason? Take any action allow’d to be vicious: Wilful murder, for instance. Examine it in all lights, and see if you can find that matter of fact, or real existence, which you call vice…There is no other matter of fact in the case. The vice entirely escapes you, as long as you consider the object. (Hume 1739, p. 244)

On the contrary, for Hume, what we do find as observable are certain “passions, motives, volitions, thoughts” or mental states that accompany every ethical judgment (Ibid.). What this suggests is that value-concepts and statements are not object of reason but of feeling or sentiment. Being objects of passion, Hume maintains that it is impossible that “they can be pronounced either true or false, and be either contrary or conformable to reason” (Ibid., p. 240). As we shall see later, the relegation of value-concepts and statements into mere expressions of emotion or sentiment is all but common among almost analytic-positivists.

Another distinction which largely shapes the position of analytic positivists in the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments expounded most profitably by Immanuel Kant (1781, pp. 7-9). Although Hume has also made this same distinction under the names matters of fact (which correspond to synthetic judgments) and relations of ideas (which correspond to analytic judgments), it is the use of the terms analytic and synthetic which is adopted by the analytic positivists. An analytic judgment is where the predicate in contained already in the comprehension of the subject; it is a tautology. There is no difficulty in determining the truth of an analytic judgment since we only have to look at the meaning of the subject itself and see whether or not the predicate is included in the comprehension of the subject. Synthetic judgments, on the contrary, are a bit more complicated. In synthetic judgments, the predicate adds some new information about the subject. In order to know truth of synthetic judgment, we would have to know the truth of the state of affairs it purports to describe.

It is not always easy to know if the states of affairs describe by synthetic judgments indeed are what actually the case. In response to this difficulty, the analytic-positivists adopt what is called the verification principle. The principle states that a synthetic judgment or statement is only significant – that is, can be known to the be true or false – if it can be verified in sense-experience, i.e., if the state of affairs it describes is empirically observable (See Carnap 1931, pp. 61-65; Ayer 1936, p. 35). Any synthetic judgment that does not qualify under the verification principle can be regarded as meaningless or non-sense.

This idea has a very serious implication when it comes to statement which contain value-concepts such as good, evil, vice, virtue, beauty, kindness, justice, etc. because, as already propounded by Hume, these concepts are not empirically observable. Ethical judgments contain value-concepts, and they are also non-analytic. To say, for instance, that abortion is immoral is not to make a tautology, since we can comprehend abortion without necessarily attaching the idea of “immoral”. For analytic-positivists, ethical judgments can only be synthetic, therefore (Ellis 1966, p.438). But it is found that they do not qualify as significant under the verification principle because they necessarily contain concepts that are not empirically observable. This only goes to say that ethical judgments cannot be truth-claims, and hence, are meaningless. We find this idea adhered to explicitly or implicitly by analytic-positivists to whom we shall now turn.

G.E. Moore

Any discussion of analytic-positivist critique of ethics cannot be complete without a reference to G.E. Moore and his position about the naturalistic fallacy. But apart from his account of the naturalistic fallacy, one compelling reason why we must include and even begin with Moore is that he is the first to give us the rationale of why there is a need for a logical analysis of ethical statements and concepts – a study which is now known today as metaethics.

In his influential work, Principia Ethica (1903), Moore endeavours to clarify the notion of good – the concept on which all of ethics rest. “What is good? Unless this question is fully understood…the rest of ethics is as good as useless” (Moore 1903, p. 57). By clarifying the notion of good, Moore hopes to set an unambiguous starting point for future ethical investigations. In his observation, much of the prevalent ethical philosophies (he is specifically referring to naturalism, a view that goodness is a natural property) are misdirected due largely to the confusion of good with some other properties. Moore is surprised to find out that the question “What is good?” is answered by “this” or “that”, but not good itself. He finds it erroneous that in defining “good”, some philosophers would reduce goodness to pleasure or general happiness of society. For Moore, good cannot be confused with, and be reduced to, some other property or some state of affairs because good is an indefinable and irreducible concept. He compares the concept of good to that of yellow which is also indefinable. Definition for Moore means giving the properties that constitute an object. Good and yellow are indefinable because they contain no parts and are not constituted by other properties; they are, so to speak, simple concepts, immediately perceived by the mind (See Moore 1903, pp. 59-66).

In this connection, any attempt to confuse good with some other property, say, the law of the land, or pleasure, is untenable. To this, Moore speaks most relevantly of the so-called naturalistic fallacy: “When a man confuses ‘good’, which is not in the same sense a natural object, with any natural object whatever, then there is a reason for calling that a naturalistic fallacy” (Ibid., p. 67). To support further this claim, Moore introduces the so-called ‘open-question argument’. He writes that “Whoever will attentively consider with himself what is actually before his mind when he asks the question ‘Is pleasure (or whatever it may be) after all good?’ can easily satisfy himself that he is not merely wondering whether pleasure is pleasant” (p. 68). Such a question, then, is an open-question. This suggests that there is an idea of good that is other than pleasure or whatever it may be.

As an alternative, Moore proposes a non-naturalistic ethics which rely on an intuitive knowledge of the good. It is why Moore’s ethical theory is also known as intuitionism (See Ellis 1966). Later on, Ayer would criticize intuitionism on the grounds that reliance on intuition makes it difficult to specify the standard of validity of ethical judgment. Ayer writes that by suggesting that ethical statements are derived from ‘mysterious intellectual intuition’, “[intuitionism] makes statements of value unverifiable” (Ayer 1936, p. 108) “…unless it is possible to provide some criterion by which one may decide between conflicting intuitions, a mere appeal to intuition is worthless as a test of a proposition’s validity. But in the case of moral judgments no such criterion can be given” (Ibid. p. 109).

Notwithstanding Ayer’s criticism, we can find that Moore’s idea of the naturalistic fallacy presupposes the fact-value dichotomy. The fact-value dichotomy undermines any attempt to confuse value-concepts as facts, i.e. as concepts denoting some natural property, since value-concepts are not empirically observable and hence, cannot be facts. Although Moore does not want to give up the idea that value-concepts such as “good” do still have meaning, he nevertheless affirms that they cannot be reduced to natural properties, which is the same as saying that they cannot be regarded as facts.

Bertrand Russell

Although Moore has initiated the so-called ‘linguistic turn’ in ethics, commentators such as Welchman (1989) suggests that Moore’s influence among subsequent analytic-positivists are not that overwhelming. One reason is that others do not buy Moore’s idea that the notion of good still has meaning. They find it hard to reconcile the idea that good is not a natural property, and yet, still meaningful.

Bertrand Russell, for instance, once adhered to Moore’s claim about the indefinability of the good, but he eventually dismissed the question of the meaning of good altogether twenty years after Moore published the Pricipia (Russell’s essay on the topic was not published until 1988). Employing logical analysis, Russell claims that goodness is not a property at all. Since one of the conditions for the truth of a statement is that the object it refers to exists or can exist in reality and since “good” is not an object or any property whatsoever, ethical statements are therefore, strictly speaking, false (Russell 1988; See also Ryan 1988, pp. 146-147). Although Russell is adamant when it comes to social and political issues, commentators such as Pigden (2008) interpret Russell’s treatment of moral judgments in the linguistic level as having the role not of stating facts or of describing the way the world is, but rather of expression emotions, desires or even commands. As mentioned earlier, treating ethical judgments as mere expressions of emotion or sentiment is common among analytic positivists.

Rudolf Carnap

While Russell claims that all ethical statements are false, Rudolf Carnap is more unforgiving. Carnap denies that ethical statements (along with metaphysical and aesthetic statements) even belong to the category of statements which can be true or false. For Carnap, ethical statements are simply non-sense. In fact, they cannot be regarded as statements at all, for a statement by definition means a description of a state of affairs. Ethical statements are not description of any state of affairs; hence, they should rather be called pseudo-statements (Carnap 1931, pp. 76-77). Carnap’s reason for this is obvious: “The objective validity of a value or norm is not empirically verifiable nor deducible from empirical statements; hence it cannot be asserted in a meaningful statement at all” (Ibid., p. 77). Carnap concludes that these pseudo statements “do not serve for the description of state of affairs…They serve for the expression of the general attitude of a person towards life” (p. 78).

Alfred Jules Ayer

A.J. Ayer followed Carnap’s treatment of ethical statement. Using the verification principle (1936, p. 35ff.), Ayer denies that ethical statements have a place among intelligible, meaningful statements.

“…the fundamental ethical concepts are unanalysable, inasmuch as there is no criterion by which one can test the validity of the judgments in which they occur…We say that the reason why they are unanalysable is that they are mere pseudo-concepts. The presence of an ethical symbol in a proposition adds nothing to its factual content. Thus if I say to someone, ‘You acted wrongly in stealing that money,’ I am not stating anything more than if I had simply said, ‘You stole that money.’ In adding that this action is wrong I am not making any further statement about it. I am simply evincing my moral disapproval of it.” (Ayer 1936, p. 110)

Consequently, he denies that ethical disputes can be resolved based on a rational grounding because there is no way to know which ethical judgment is correct and which is not (Ibid., pp. 114-115; See also Miller 1998). Ayer adds that in ethical judgments, “the function of the relevant ethical word is purely ‘emotive’ (p. 111). Hence, moral judgments do not say anything; “they are pure expressions of feeling and as such do not come under the category of truth and falsehood” (p. 112).

What, then, is left of ethics? For Ayer, the only legitimate tasks when it comes to ethics would be about describing the different moral practices and habits of a person or group of people, the different emotional behaviours attached to ethical terms and statements, and the factors that cause the utterance and acceptance or disapproval of a moral judgment. These tasks, Ayer believes, are properly the tasks of sociologists or psychologists. “It appears, then, that ethics, as a branch of knowledge, is nothing more than a department of psychology or sociology” (p. 116).

Stephen Toulmin

Stephen Toulmin was unwilling to swallow Ayer’s admission that there is no rational grounding to resolve ethical disputes and that, ethical judgments are simply expressions of emotion. He takes it as self-evident that we can speak of good reason and irrelevant or bad reasons in ethical judgments.
“Sometimes, when we make ethical judgments, we are not just ejaculating. When we say that so-and-so is good, or that I thought to do such-and-such, we do something for good reasons and sometimes for bad reasons” (Toulmin 1953, p. 60). There is, then, for Toulmin, a place of reason in ethics.

However, when Toulmin grapples with the issue on how reason plays significant role in ethics, he has lead himself into an untenable and ambiguous position. In Toulmin’s view, ethically relevant reasons are those that conform to the moral code of the community and those that can show that the action at issue can avoid causing suffering to other members of that community (1953, p. 132). But as Nakhnikian (1956) points out, making the community as the locus of ethically relevant reasons make these reasons trivial, for the question of morality does not only involve members of our own community but also those who are outside our community. It seems, then, that Toulmin’s account of reason in ethics affirms cultural relativism. In this case, he is not actually disagreeing with Ayer when Ayer indicates that the approval or disapproval of moral judgments is not based on a rational grounding but is partly influenced by one’s psychological dispositions and partly by one’s cultural background (See Ayer 1936, pp. 112-116). A moral code of a community and the psychological disposition of its members can hardly be the rational basis for ethical judgments because, in fact, they too require a rational basis. All these suggest that although Toulmin tried to find a place of reason in ethics, he has, at the very attempt, confused a rational basis with culturally and psychologically held ethical beliefs. The issue, however, is not what a person or group of people believe to be good or bad, but of what really is good or bad.

Moritz Schlick

Moritz Schlick settles comfortably with the idea that the determination of moral value depends not on reason but on the opinions of society (1939, p. 474). Thus, in presenting his own ethical philosophy, Schlick tells his readers that “We do not desire to construct a concept of the good but we want only a simple determination of what in human society is held to be good” (Ibid., p. 473). Leinfellner (1985) tells us that “the central task of ethics according to Schlick is to explain average ethical behaviour (ethical act and decisions) by psychological and social law-like rules, i.e. rules for decision-making” (p. 319). Hence, Schlick affirms Ayer’s prescription for ethics.

The problem, however, is that if we take their suggestion, we are no longer actually pronouncing ethical judgments. Rather, we are simply describing ethical beliefs which is tantamount to saying that we are actually no longer doing ethics. Schlick and Ayer’s view actually undermines ethics as a normative discipline – an ethics that tells us how we ought to act, to live, and to relate with others.

Charles Stevenson

Putting the absence of literal significance aside and following Ayer’s emotivism, Charles Stevenson puts a radical focus on the emotive significance of ethical judgments. For Stevenson, other than their factual content, ethical judgments also contain an emotive meaning which can account for an objective basis why there is a disagreement in attitude about ethical beliefs (1964, p. 512).

But to say that this emotive meaning can serve as a rational basis for resolving ethical disputes is hardly promising. This is because Stevenson’s account of emotive meaning is not really something that is universally valid and acceptable. He seems to affirm the tendency of Ayer to regard basis for ethical judgments as nothing but shaped by a person’s psychological and cultural make-up. Stevenson writes, “The emotive meaning of a word is a tendency of a word, arising through the history of its usage to produce…affective responses of people” [my emphasis] (1937, p. 23). “The emotive meanings of words depend on the habits that have been formed throughout the course of their use in emotional situations” [my emphasis] (p. 41). This, too, suggests that all we can possibly hope is not to find a rational basis for ethical judgments but only, if we are lucky, an agreement of the ethical values we hold. Even then, it does not follow that just because we all affirm the same ethical values then our ethical beliefs and judgments are already justified.

It can be admitted that our discussion of the analytic-positivist critique of ethics is in no way exhaustive. Nevertheless, our discussion allows us to point a common direction of the different analytic positivists’ stand on ethical judgment and of ethics at large. We can see that their premiss of the fact-value dichotomy leads them to nowhere but either to speak of an indefinable, hence inexpressible knowledge of the good (Moore), or to relegate ethical judgments into mere emotive expressions (Russell, Carnap, Ayer, Stevenson), or to speak of ethical beliefs as mere constraints of society (Schlick, Toulmin). In either way, their position rules out the possibility of rationally justifying ethical judgments – of giving justifiable grounds for our ethical beliefs. But does their premiss really allow them to undermine ethics as a normative discipline? This is the point at which we would begin with our analysis.

III. Analysis

The traditional interpretation of fact-value dichotomy is that it points to the distinction between fact-concepts and value-concepts or statements of fact and statements of value. However, a deeper analysis of fact-value dichotomy would reveal that there are actually two versions of it, both of which are present in the text of Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature and are also recognized by the analytic-positivists, although they consider these two versions as identical.

The first version is the traditional interpretation, the distinction between fact concepts/propositions and value concepts/propositions. The first version of the fact-value dichotomy points to the notion that statements of value are not statements of facts, which implies that statements of value do not tell us anything about reality. Using the verification principle, it was easy for analytic-positivists to dismiss statements of value since, allegedly, these statements purport to describe reality even if they actually do not and cannot.

The second version is the Is-Ought distinction, a distinction between descriptive judgments (Is) and normative judgments (Ought) which was also pointed out by Hume at the latter part of the same text. Hume writes:

In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remark’d, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surpriz’d to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. (Hume 1739, pp. 244-245)

This version points to the notion that norms or values cannot be derived from, and be based on, empirical data. An example that points to this dichotomy is the following ad populum fallacy: “In our community, X is held to be good (Is). Therefore, X is good (Ought).” Analytic-positivists such as Moore, Carnap, and Ayer recognize this version of the fact-value dichotomy.

Moore’s makes a reference to Sidgwick who, he claims, was the first to recognize the unanalyzability of the “ought” (1903, p. 69). Here, Moore speaks of ‘ought’ as denoting ‘good’ to suggest that when speaking of ethical judgments, he is not referring to descriptive statements but to normative statements. That is why, his naturalistic fallacy actually expresses the implausibility of reducing statements about the good to statements about facts or empirical data. Carnap also speaks of ethical judgments as normative judgments, i.e. as “ought” statements. This is the reason why he claims that ethical judgments are not statements at all.

Either empirical criteria are indicated for the use of “good” and “beautiful” and the rest of the predicates that are employed in the normative sciences, or they are not. In the first case, a statement containing such a predicate turns into a factual judgment, but not a value judgment; in the second case, it becomes a pseudo-statement. It is altogether impossible to make a statement that expresses a value judgment. (Carnap 1931, p. 77)

Ayer, too, clearly recognizes the distinction between normative and descriptive judgments, and the implausibility of reducing normative judgments to statements of fact or descriptive judgments. Ayer (1936, p. 108) writes:

Our contention is simply that, in our language, sentences which contain normative ethical symbols are not equivalent to sentences which express psychological propositions, or indeed empirical propositions of any kind…It is advisable here to make it plain that it is only normative ethical symbols, and not descriptive ethical symbols, that are held by us to be indefinable in factual terms.

In general, analytic-positivists recognize the distinction between normative and descriptive judgments which is the second version of the fact-value dichotomy. This is why they would rather speak of ethical judgments as expressions of emotion rather than statements of fact. The reason why analytic-positivists consider the two versions to be identical is because they consider statements of fact as the same with descriptive statements and statements of value as the same with normative statements. While there is no doubt that statements of fact and descriptive statements are identical, we cannot give the same interpretation with statements of value and normative statements; for although all normative statements are statements of value, not all statements of value are normative statements. For instance, the statement “This ring is precious” is a statement of value, but it is not a normative statement, i.e. it does not propose a norm for action.

We can reconstruct the line of reasoning of analytic-positivists using the following syllogism:

All meaningful statements are statements of fact.

Statements of value are not statements of fact.

Therefore, statements of value are not meaningful statements.

From this argument, they derive the logical conclusion that statements of value cannot be rationally justified. This is because, for a statement to be rationally justified, it has to satisfy the criterion of truth. Since statements of value and neither true nor false (and as for Russell, are all false), therefore they cannot be rationally justified. We have already made a distinction between statements of value and normative statements, so one may reasonably ask: Does this conclusion apply to normative statements as well? In other words, as it is clear that ethical judgments are statements about norms of action, does the criterion of the validity of statements (which are, strictly speaking, descriptive statements) undermine the validity of ethical judgments? Analytic-positivists believe it to be the case.

On a closer inspection, however, we can see that the premiss of logical-positivists which is the principle of verification under the fact-value dichotomy is inadequate for dismissing the validity of ethical judgments. The fundamental error of analytic-positivists is to assume that since ethical judgments are not descriptions of actual state of affairs, i.e. they are not statements of fact, they are therefore invalid. This assumption begs the question of the second version. The second version of the fact-value dichotomy tells us that ethical judgements cannot be grounded on empirical data because, in the first place, they are not statements of fact. Ethical statements do not tell us what is the case; rather, they tell us normatively what ought to be the case or put negatively, what ought not to be the case. Thus, if we follow the dichotomy consistently, no amount of facts, however accurate and precise, can ever be the ground of ethical or normative judgments. Therefore, the premiss of analytic positivists which leads them to dismiss ethical judgments since they are not statements of fact, does not have a bearing on the validity of ethical judgments because, in the first place, ethical judgments are not statements of fact and cannot be grounded on empirical facts or data. In other words, since the standard for the validity of normative judgments is different from the standard of validity for descriptive statements, we cannot dismiss the validity of normative judgments just because they do not satisfy the criteria of the validity of descriptive statements. This goes without saying that the verification principle is not the criterion for the validity of normative judgments although it may be the criterion for the truth of descriptive statements.

One can ask: if ethical judgments cannot be grounded on empirical data, where else do we justifiably base our ethical judgments? We maintain the old epistemological notion that a judgment is rationally justified if it is true, and is not rationally justified if it is false or neither true nor false. Thus, the statement, “X is good/right/just” is rationally justified if indeed, “X is good/right/just”. Therefore, the validity of ethical judgments has to rely on some notion of “goodness”, “rightness”, or “justice” (or any equivalent normative concept). The problem, however, is that, if analytic-positivists are correct, then the verification principle rules out the possibility of making sense of these concepts. For Moore, the concept of good is indefinable; for the rest, it is utterly meaningless. We have noted previously that this conclusion is derived from the position that ethical statements are not empirical facts. However, it is one thing to call something as non-empirical, and it is another thing to call it meaningless. Our previous analysis of the logical implication of the fact-value dichotomy shows that ethical judgments are not statements of fact and not based on empirical data. However, as we have noted above, this position does not exclude the validity of ethical judgments. This observation suggests that ethical judgments are not meaningless.

We adopt, therefore, a dispositional attitude of willingness to grant that ethical judgments can be rationally grounded. This rational grounding, as we have noted, presupposes a notion of good. Our point of departure would be to ask: If there is a notion of good that grounds our ethical judgments, can good be determined or better yet, be defined? This is the same as asking, “Can ethical judgments be grounded?” This is a difficult question. Analytic positivists have already denied the possibility of an answer to this perplexity. For them, good cannot be defined because in the first place good is nothing at all. Value-concepts are pseudo-concepts as Ayer and Carnap claim. But there is good reason to contradict analytic-positivists on this stance. This is not because our bias rests on showing that ethical judgments can be rationally grounded. Rather, this is because our previous analysis has shown us that empirical criterion cannot be the criterion of ethical judgments.

In dealing with the question about the determination of what is good, two problems springing from the analytic-positivist critique of ethics come to the fore. The first is Moore’s claim that good is indefinable which precludes any attempt to determine what is good. The second difficulty arises from the notion that if we attempt to determine what is good, such as when we say X is good, are we not, in fact, attempting to make a statement of fact so that our statement falls within the scope of their criticism?

In relation to the first difficulty, a closer analysis on Moore’s argument of the naturalistic fallacy shows that his notion of the indefinability of good does not preclude the determination of good, and that his claim of the naturalistic fallacy itself itself would require a certain definition of good.

Frankena’s (1939) analysis of Moore’s naturalistic fallacy reveals that it is actually a version of definist fallacy. A definist fallacy is the process of confusing or identifying two properties, of defining one property by another, or of substituting one property for another (Frankena 1939, p. 471). According to Frankena, Moore’s naturalistic fallacy as a definist fallacy does not rule out any attempt to define good since it can be argued that the property to which the concept “good” is reduced is actually “the good”, and it would be an open question to deny that good cannot be defined based on such a property (Ibid., p. 472).

However, Frankena fails to see Moore’s main point in the naturalistic fallacy (Cf. Darwall, Gibbard, and Railton 1992, p. 116). The reason why good is indefinable, for Moore, is that it is a simple concept; and, being a simple concept, it contains no parts which arguably are the elements for a definition of a concept. Moore does not provide an argument to prove that “good” is a simple concept; he merely compares it with the term “yellow”. Needless to say, such a comparison allows us to see that the reason why good is a simple concept is because of the logical structure of the concept “good” itself. “Good”, which, as Moore notes, is not to be confused with the phrase “that which is good” which refers to a concrete object (1903, p. 61), is an absolute concept. An absolute concept in Logic is a concept that presents to the mind a property but does not denote a concrete object. Philosophers, for instance, argue that we do not see “man” in reality; what we see are janitors, parents, this man, those men, etc. who are concrete individuals. This is because “man”, like “good”, is an absolute idea. “Yellow”, too, does not denote a concrete object; what we see are things that are yellow but not yellow itself which is an absolute concept. For Moore, to define means to give the constituent parts of a property (1903, p. 60). But only concrete objects have parts. This suggests that an absolute concept such as “good” cannot be defined in Moore’s terms because it does not have any parts, i.e. it does not denote a concrete object.

Our explication of the logical structure of Moore’s understanding of the notion of good enables us to clarify the distinction between definition and determination. Our position is that even if good cannot be defined (in Moore’s sense of definition), it does not follow that good cannot be determined. When we say, for instance, that some property X is good, we are not reducing good to X, but is simply determining good in X. Thus, in determining good, we are not actually violating good’s indefinability, that is, we are not exhausting goodness to its concrete instance. To say that X is good, we do not mean that X is goodness itself just as we do not mean that Alice is beauty herself when we call her beautiful.

Of course, our position does not rule out the importance of being able to define good in our attempt to determine good in concrete objects or states of affairs. It is here that Frankena’s criticism against the naturalist fallacy is relevant. Frankena, as we have pointed above, shows that definition of good is possible. Moore suggests that to define good in terms of some other property is an open-question. This is exactly Frankena’s point. The fact that a definition of good is an open-question suggests that a definition of good is not entirely ruled out. It remains for the ethical theorist to show why his definition of good is the most consistent.

But if Moore had only made constant insistence of the presupposition of the fact-value dichotomy that good, as a value, cannot be reduced to empirical objects, then Moore’s naturalistic fallacy could be strong enough to defy Frankena’s criticism. This is because Moore could now respond to Frankena by claiming that it is no longer possible to define good in naturalistic terms because good is non-natural. There are two possible directions that Moore could take thereafter: either he would claim like all the other analytic-positivists that good is just really non-sense so that any definition of good would be just be an empty babble; or, he would claim that good has meaning although it is a non-natural property. It is clear that Moore has taken the second option and so has affirmed the meaningfulness of good. But by doing so, Moore has to admit that he holds a certain knowledge of good, hence a certain definition of good. In such a case, Moore has to reject his claim that good is indefinable, and Frankena would no longer bother him by trying to prove otherwise that good is definable. What this analysis suggests, at the outset, is that good can be determined, and if we push our analysis of Moore’s position further, we can but affirm that good can be defined.

In response to the second difficulty, we invoke the classical concept of practical reason present especially in Thomistic understanding. The classical doctrine of practical reason states that a rational action – an action guided by reason – presupposes good as its object or end (See Grisez 1965). Good, then, is understood as that which ought to be done or pursued. Now, in determining good, say “X is good”, we are not actually making a statement of fact in the analytic-positivist sense, that is, if a statement of fact is understood as a description of an empirically observable state of affairs. What we are actually making is a normative judgment. However, ethical judgment as a normative judgment cannot be simply understood as an expression of command. Stevenson, for instance, understood the emotive significance of the ethical judgement “X is good” as having the meaning “I should do or pursue X, so you should too” which is more likely a command. To say, for instance, that “Killing innocent people is immoral” is very different from making a command such as “Put the book on the table”. Commands, themselves, may require an ethical grounding for their justification. One cannot justifiably command someone to do something that is obviously morally wrong. But when a command is aimed at fulfilling a moral duty, then it gains a higher status and demands an objective obedience. This suggests that an ethical judgment is more than a command, and that even command themselves require moral grounding for their justification. In other words, it not the case the something is good because we ought to do or pursue it; rather, we ought to do or pursue something because it is good (See Veatch 1975). Thus, when we say X is good we are at the same time saying that X ought to be done or pursued.

Hence, our analysis shows us that rational justification of ethical judgments is possible. The rational justification rests on some notion of good, rightness, or justice which has yet to be determined. We have shown that the determination of good is possible without falling within the scope of the analytic-positivist critique of ethics. However, we must note that to say that ethical judgments can be rationally grounded is one thing – one which we have done in this paper; to say what precisely is the rational justification of ethical judgments is another. Such a task is better left for ethical theorists.

IV. Conclusion

In this paper, I have discussed the analytic-positivist critique of ethics. Although their views vary considerably, there is a common thread that runs through their critiques, and that is the presupposition of the fact-value dichotomy. Under this presupposition, some of them have affirmed the indefinability of the good (Moore), while others relegated ethical judgments into mere expressions of emotion (Russell, Carnap, Ayer and Stevenson), while some others reduced ethical judgments to mere culturally-held beliefs (Toulmin and Schlick). Although it can be admitted that our discussion of the analytic-positivist critique of ethics is not exhaustive, our discussion has nevertheless allowed us to see the logical implications of their views which are found centered on their commitment to facts and to science in general. The problem with ethics, they suggest, is that it deals with something not subject to the scientific method of verification, something that cannot properly be called facts. Normative judgments simply do not make sense, for they do not tell us anything, that is, they are not statements of facts. Yet, I have tried to show that it is precisely the difference between normative and descriptive judgments that makes it untenable to dismiss ethics as a normative discipline. Hence, under the presupposition of analytic-positivists, ethical judgments and ethics cannot be deemed senseless and groundless.

The central assumption of this paper is that the justification of ethical judgments has to rely on some notion of good itself – a notion that simply cannot be discerned from what things are as we observe them, for the good we are referring to points not to what things are, but to what things ought to be. It is under this presupposition that we can recognize the truth of Moore’s claim about the intuitive knowledge of goodness. Moore’s only error as well as his inconsistency is that he claims that good is indefinable, hence make goodness incapable of being spoken about meaningfully. Such a claim is the logical implication of limiting meaning only to that which can count as fact, i.e. that which can count as empirically observable. Moore’s criterion of definition attests to this logical implication. But the truth in Moore’s claim about the intuitive knowledge of the good remains significant. This epistemological consideration explains why, despite the idea that good cannot be learned in (sense) experience, because strictly speaking only empirical objects can be objects of sense-experience, there is still knowledge of goodness.

Such a view actually affirms the classical doctrine that all rational beings have a natural capacity to discern the good. Contrary to Ayer, the problem is not that there is no way to verify this innate knowledge of goodness. Rather, the problem lies in the cynical attitude of limiting truth to science. Today, many socio-political theorists recognize the role of this intuitive knowledge of goodness in nation and community building. This fact is attested by the universal recognition of human dignity and rights by the United Nations. Of course, there are certain philosophies that may serve as a theoretical foundation for the existence and truth of human dignity. But not all people know these philosophies. Even then, almost every reasonable individual in the world knows the value of human life or at least cannot deny this truth of human dignity without falling into a contradiction. This suggests that moral truths are not simply expressions of our emotion which are fleeting nor are they simply constraints of our culture. They are objective in the sense that all of us can reasonably accept them.

To some extent, analytic-positivists are correct in claiming that ethics is not a science, but they are wrong in claiming that since it is not a science, it is therefore non-sense. Our investigation simply turns the story upside down. We accept their claim that ethics may not really be a science at all. And it is precisely this distinction between ethics and science that keeps analytic-positivists from undermining ethics within their framework. Our investigation has shown us that far from dismissing ethics, the fact-value dichotomy has actually enabled us to affirm the autonomy of ethics and keep it from being subsumed into mere study of moral behavior.

Throughout the course of the history of modernity, there have been many attempts to subject every human problematic into scientific investigation, or to limit reasonable human problems to those which can be solved scientifically. But despite our advancements in science and technology, the moral question remains to hunt humanity’s quest for truth. No gadgets, no machines, no scientific discoveries can ever strip us of our responsibility to seek goodness and detest evil. It only suggests why ethics simply cannot be compromised, and why we are forever condemned into having to choose between what is right and what is wrong.

Ateneo de Davao University

11 October 2014

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