Winning Position: Non-cognitive, because...
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Non-cognitive, because...
Here is the ultimate resource that goes over the subject and a variety of relevant philosophies. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-cognitivism/
I will summarize everything for you, in case you are too lazy to read all that (keep in mind the original source will be a lot more detailed, and misunderstanding of mine may have taken place, if any misunderstandings here have taken place, please correct me).
Morality - What is right or wrong, what we ought to do, and what we ought not to do.
Non-cogntiivism: Morality isn't truth apt, neither in any substantiation is it true or false. Morality rather, is expressions of what we approve of and disapprove of, and desires.
Cognitivism: the rejection of non-cognitivism, where morality is truth apt, and can be substantiated as true of false.
Two negative constitutive non-cognitivist claims - Two negative theses comprise the central non-cognitivist claims.
- semantic non-factualism: The claim that moral sentences do not express propositions that are qualified to be truth apt.
- psychological non-cognitivism: The claim that the state of mind when stating a moral sentence are not cognitive (the mental state itself whether the individual realizes it is not thinking of morality as a truth apt.
Subjective cognitivism (this is something I actually just learned) - that subjective morality does not equivacate to non-cognitivism, it is apparently possible to hold morality as truth apt, but yet subjective. In other words, if morality is subjective, whatever is morally TRUE is dependent on you.
emotivism - moral statements express emotions and feelings of something.
prescriptivism/universal prescriptivism - moral statements are analogous to moods, and apply to everyone.
quasi-realism - Moral statements being truth apt, there is reasoning to act as though morality is truth apt.
expressivim - moral statements simply express our approval and disapproval, immoral means "Boooo!!!" while moral means "Hurrraaahhh!!!"
Norm-expressivism/plan-expressivism - Moral judgements although non-cognitive can be judged on how rational they are. To call a moral judgement ration is acception of a system of norms that accept the moral judgement, to call a moral judgement irrational is to accept a system of norms that forbid it.
Borderline cases/hybrid theories
Hermenuetic fictionism - The langauge of morality does express truth apt, which aligns with error theory (the theory that our use of moral language is in error), however fictionalists disagree with error theorists, do not believe the propositions content, and the moral statement is used fictively.
Hybrid-expressivism - A combination of expressivism while holding the position that morality is non-cognitive with cognitive features. This can form in a lot of different ways.
Counter-arguments
Embedding problem - if morality is not truth apt then the lines of logic below cannot be true
P1: Torturing the cat is bad, thus getting your little brother to torture the cat is bad.
P2: torturing the cat is bad.
the line of logic is thought to be alluding to morality being truth based.
Logic of attitudes - that moral statements have logical relations to each other, thus alluding to moral truth apt.
Blackburns solution to this is that although morality isn't truth apt, our moral statements must make logical sense in relation to each other, otherwise we have clashing attitudes within our own mental state.
P1: torturing the cat is bad, thus getting your little brother to torture the cat is also bad
p2: torturing the cat is bad.
According to Blackburn's logic, if one feels that torturing the cat is bad, it would be inconsistent of them, and contradictory of their own attitudes to believe that getting your little brother to torture your cat is also bad.
In other words, in order for one to hold a disaproving attitude of torturing of the cat, one must also disaprove of someone else torturing the cat.
Minimalism - minimalism or deflationism about truth aptness can allow non-cognitivists to bypass the embedding problem and logical attitudes of morality.
piggybacking on the descriptive content in a hybrid theory - hybrid theorists explain the logical attitudes problem with claiming that moral judgements are not truth apt with their being "descriptive meaning" allows logical attitudes as their is belief content in moral statements that are "co-equal".
Wishful thinking objection - (I do not quite understand what this is saying, so if you have the capacity to explain please let me know.)
**not everything from the source has been included, if you want to analyze other information, please do refer to the source**