Ethical Language Is Purely Subjective

...

which we have as moral thinkers is a freedom to reason”, and thus he argues that we can settle moral disputes in principle on the basis of nothing but clear-headed agreement on the moral language (philosophical logic) and the actual facts. Conversely, this has received criticism from intuitionists such as H.A. Pritchard; by saying that burglary is evil, I am attributing to it a property, and making a statement about it. But I am also, according to Hare, making a third person prescription, which can be expressed by an utterance of ‘Let it be the case that burglary is not done’. Pritchard concluded that ‘ought’ cannot have a definition, but, just as G.E. Moore argues, we can recognise the properties of a ‘good’ action, as moral obligations are obvious and innate. He stated in ‘Moral Obligation’ that right action is that which is “morally suitable to the situation in which an individual finds himself”. Here, he suggests that a statement such as ‘Abortion is wrong’ suggests that it is wrong simply in that particular situation; they are not talking in terms of absolute goodness and morality. This is a direct contrast to Hare’s view prescriptive approach, and is arguably viewed as a stronger stance because it recognises the value in thinking rationally, and rewards good actions.

To conclude, I disagree with the view in the question that ethical language is purely subjective because the evidence clearly shows that moral truth can be inferred through intuitionism; we cannot use our senses to tell us whether something is good, but we can use out ‘moral intuition’ and therefore we can still say whether a moral statement is true or false. This is a cognitive approach, which assumes the existence of moral facts, but maintains that ‘good’ is indefinable. Nineteenth-century philosopher G.E. Moore agreed with this stance, and also argued that we can recognise goodness when we see it - this was deemed a ‘simple notion’. Trying to define the concept of ‘good’ is similar to trying to define the colour yellow; “we know what yellow is and recognise it whenever it is seen, but we cannot actually define yellow. In the same way, we know what good is but we cannot actually define it” (taken from his book ‘Principia Ethica’). This idea became known as the naturalistic fallacy, and is the strongest argument towards justifying that ethical language is both meaningful and not subjective.