The big idea: You already know cruelty is wrong and kindness is good. But stop and ask a stranger question: where did those values come from? The whole of meta-ethics starts here.
Two possible answers: Did you discover them, the way you discover that water is wet — already true, waiting to be found? Or did people invent them, the way we invented money and manners?
Notice this isn't a question about what's right. It's the step behind it: what kind of thing a moral value even is. That deeper step is called meta-ethics.
Discovered
- Values are out there to be found
- 'Cruelty is wrong' is true like '2+2=4'
- We uncover morality, we don't make it
Invented
- Values are made by us
- Right and wrong are human creations
- Different people could have made them differently
Free preview
This is the free notes preview
You're reading the free notes. Aimnova Pro unlocks the full study experience — and you can try it with your first topic free to keep:
- FlashcardsLock in vocabulary and key terms with spaced repetition.
- Practice questionsAnswer exam-style questions and get instant AI marking.
- Mock exams & past-paper vaultSit full mocks and see exactly how examiners award marks.
- Personalised study planA daily plan built around your exam date and weak areas.
Whichever side you lean to, you still have to say what actually gives us our values. Four answers keep coming up.
Four candidate sources of morality
Reason
Right and wrong are worked out by thinking clearly — logic shows that some acts don't make sense to will for everyone.
Emotion
Morality grows from feeling — sympathy for others, disgust at cruelty. We feel what's wrong before we reason it.
Nature
Values come from human nature or a natural purpose — what helps us flourish as the kind of creature we are.
Culture
Values are handed down by the group you grow up in — its traditions, rules and shared way of life.
Reason · Emotion · Nature · Culture
Checkpoint — the four sources: In one line: reason, emotion, nature or culture — each is a candidate for where morality really comes from. Hold that — the next step lines up the two strongest against each other.
Never wonder what to study next
Get a personalized daily plan based on your exam date, progress, and weak areas. We'll tell you exactly what to review each day.
The oldest fight in the topic is between reason and emotion — and one thinker put it most bluntly.
Hume: reason serves the feelings: David Hume argued that morality comes from feeling, not pure reason. His famous line: 'reason is the slave of the passions' — thinking helps you get what you want, but it's your feelings that set what you care about in the first place.
Look at a cruel act: what reason gives you
- The facts — who did what to whom
- But the wrongness isn't one of those facts
Where the wrongness comes from
- The sympathy and disgust you feel
Go further — higher-level insight: Notice Hume's move is really a challenge to the 'discovered' side, shown below. That gap between facts and values is the engine of the whole topic; naming it early is a top-band move.
Hume's challenge
- If wrongness were a fact out there, reason should be able to point at it like any other fact.
- Hume says it can't — you can list every fact and never hit 'wrong'.
Checkpoint — Hume: In one line: for Hume, morality is rooted in feeling — reason serves our cares, it doesn't create them. Hold that; the next micro asks whether moral facts exist at all.