Philosophy Assignment | Essay Help Services
Short Paper Assignment
900-1200 words
Due 11:59PM, July 28th
Choose one of the following.
- Respond to G. E. Moore’s attack on naturalism. Does Moore’s argument that good cannot be reduced to anything else succeed? Consider at least one possible objection to Moore.
- Assess A. J. Ayer’s argument for emotivism. How does Ayer justify his claim that moral language is descriptively meaningless? Are there reasons for thinking that emotivism isn’t the correct interpretation of moral language?
- Consider Allan Gibbard’s argument for norm-expressivism. What makes beliefs, actions, and emotions rational, according to Gibbard? Consider at least one argument against Gibbard’s account.
- Evaluate at least one of John Mackie’s arguments for error theory (either supervenience or disagreement). What is ordinary moral thought committed to, and why doesn’t this seem compatible with a naturalistic understanding of the world? Consider at least one possible response to Mackie.
- Compare Gilbert Harman’s argument against the possibility of moral explanation to Nicholas Sturgeon’s response. Who is correct? Can moral properties play a role in the explanation of our experience?
Make sure to cite your sources with a bibliography at the end of the paper and use in-line citations for any quotes or paraphrases. For each of these, you will need to cite both the required reading article and at least one other article—probably the article/book chapter that I list as supplementary for that module.
Note that when you turn in your paper via Turnitin, it will likely highlight substantial portions of your paper and give you a percentage score. Turnitin finding matches does not on its own mean you plagiarized, it just means that the same words were used in a different paper. That’s fine as long as you’ve cited everything properly!
Some Example in-line Citations
Gibbard (1992) argues that an action need not be voluntary for it to be assessed as rational (pp. 38-9).
Moore argues that non-naturalism in ethics can be an epistemic benefit:
If we start with the conviction that a definition of good can be found, we start with the conviction that good can mean nothing else than some one property of things; and our only business will then be to discover what that property is. But if we recognise that, so far as the meaning of good goes, anything whatever may be good, we start with much more open mind (Moore, 1997, p. 60).
Ayer says that “we are inquiring whether statements of ethical value can be translated into statements of empirical fact” (Ayer, 1946/2012, p. 64).
Example Bibliography
Ayer, A. J. (2012). Language, truth and logic. New York, NY: Dover. (Original work published 1946)
Gibbard, A. (1992). Wise choices, apt feelings: A theory of normative judgment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Moore, G. E. (1997). From Principia Ethica. In S. L. Darwall, A. Gibbard, & P. A. Railton (Eds.), Moral discourse and practice: Some philosophical approaches (pp. 51–63). New York: Oxford University Press.
