nonnaturalism in ethics and its ambiguities

Document Type : Original Article

Author
Mohammad Ali Mobini
Associate Professor of Islamic Sciences and Culture Academy, Research Center for Islamic Philosophy and Theology, Department of Moral Philosophy, Qum
10.30470/phm.2021.528372.1978
Abstract
Some thinkers believe that moral value has its own unique identity and cannot be reduced to nonmoral things. By expressing such an idea, George Moore sees the consequence of this unique nature of moral value in that it cannot be studied in the natural sciences, including psychology, and therefore calls it "nonnatural". But later he sees calling moral value nonnatural for this reason problematic and tries to explain its being nonnatural in other ways. He acknowledges the ambiguity in this issue. This ambiguity has continued since Moore, and there has always been debate over the distinction between natural and unnatural and how unnatural moral value is. In this article, an attempt has been made to reveal the ambiguities in this field by describing and analyzing the discussions that have taken place in this field. Finally, it is concluded that, given the existing ambiguities, it is better to abandon the titles "nonnatural" and "nonnaturalism" and instead use positive titles to express our position about the Autonomy of moral value and its Irreducibility

Keywords

Subjects

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