The Evaluation Task

Meta ethics asks what moral language is really doing when people say an action is right, wrong, good or bad. The three AQA ideas give different answers:

When AQA asks for strengths and weaknesses, a strong answer should not simply say which view a student personally likes. It should test each account by asking whether it explains moral language clearly, gives moral claims authority, helps moral decision making, and can answer objections about knowledge, disagreement and reduction.

Use these criteria throughout the lesson:

Divine Command Theory

Divine Command Theory is strongest when it is assessed inside a theistic worldview. If God is perfectly good and has supreme authority, then moral obligations do not depend on human fashion, majority vote or private preference. Right and wrong have an objective source beyond human beings.

This gives the theory a clear account of moral obligation. If God commands truthfulness, for example, truthfulness is not merely useful or socially approved; it is required by the ultimate moral authority. That can also give moral life seriousness: humans are accountable to God for whether they obey or reject divine commands.

The main weakness is conceptual. Plato's Euthyphro raises the dilemma behind a standard objection: does God command something because it is already right, or is it right because God commands it? If God commands it because it is already right, then rightness seems independent of God's command. If it is right only because God commands it, morality can look arbitrary.

Some defenders reply that God's commands flow from God's perfectly loving nature, so God would not command cruelty for its own sake. That softens the arbitrariness objection. The remaining challenge is that the theory now relies on the idea that God's nature is good or loving, and critics can ask how that goodness is recognised without using moral standards outside the command itself.

There is also a knowledge problem. Even if God gives commands, people may disagree about revelation, interpretation, religious authority and application to new cases. AQA does not require sacred-text examples here, so the point should stay general: Divine Command Theory must explain not only why commands would be authoritative, but also how fallible humans can know and apply them responsibly.

Naturalist Utilitarianism

AQA names naturalism through utilitarianism: right is what causes pleasure, and wrong is what causes pain. This is a meta-ethical claim because it explains moral language by connecting it to natural features of experience.

Its first strength is public clarity. Pleasure, happiness, suffering and pain are part of ordinary human and sentient experience. A naturalist utilitarian account can therefore make moral claims testable in a way that purely private preference cannot. If an action predictably relieves suffering, there is at least a clear natural fact for moral reasoning to consider.

Its second strength is practical action guidance. Moral decisions often involve comparing harms and benefits. Naturalist utilitarianism gives a shared basis for argument: ask what consequences an action produces, who is affected, and whether pleasure or pain is increased overall. This can be especially attractive in public ethics because it does not require everyone to share a religious authority or a private intuition.

The central weakness is reduction. If right simply means pleasure-producing, it is still meaningful to ask whether a pleasure-producing action is actually right. A cruel entertainment might produce pleasure for a majority, but that does not settle whether it is morally acceptable. This is the force of the open-question style objection: natural facts may matter morally, but they may not be identical with moral value.

Naturalist utilitarianism can also struggle with measurement and justice. Pleasures and pains differ in kind, intensity, duration and distribution. If the account focuses only on total pleasure over pain, it may overlook dignity, rights, fairness or the suffering of a minority. These are not merely practical problems; they challenge whether pleasure and pain fully capture the meaning of right and wrong.

Non-Naturalist Intuitionism

Non-naturalist intuitionism says moral values are self-evident. It rejects the idea that goodness can be fully defined as a natural property such as pleasure, biological survival, social approval or psychological desire.

Its main strength is that it protects the distinctiveness of moral value. If someone says that torturing an innocent person is wrong, intuitionism can treat that judgement as recognition of a real moral truth rather than as a disguised statement about pleasure, command, emotion or social convention. It can therefore explain why moral criticism can stand against popular opinion or short-term advantage.

This makes intuitionism a strong reply to a simple form of naturalism. Even if an action produces pleasure, that may not answer the moral question. The intuitionist can say that moral terms point to a distinctive kind of value, known directly rather than reduced to non-moral facts.

The weakness is epistemic: how do people know that their moral intuition is reliable? People often claim that different moral beliefs are self-evident. Some intuitions may be shaped by upbringing, culture, fear, self-interest or prejudice. If two people sincerely report conflicting intuitions, intuitionism needs a way to decide between them without quietly appealing to some further test.

There is also an action-guidance problem. Self-evident moral values may be clear in simple cases, but many ethical issues involve competing values. If justice, compassion, honesty and freedom all seem morally important, intuitionism may tell us that values are real without telling us how to rank them in difficult decisions.

Compare The Three Ideas

The three ideas are not weak in the same way. A good evaluation notices the different pressure point in each theory.

This comparison prevents shallow AO2. It is not enough to say that Divine Command Theory is weak because some people are atheists, that naturalism is weak because pleasure is not everything, or that intuitionism is weak because people disagree. Those points become stronger only when they are tied to the theory's actual aim.

For example:

Build An AO2 Judgement

The best AO2 judgement is comparative and limited. It should say what a theory explains well, what it struggles to explain, and whether the weakness damages the whole account or only one version of it.

Use this AO1-to-AO2 bridge:

A developed paragraph can move like this:

1. State the meta-ethical claim precisely.
2. Explain the strength in relation to the meaning of right and wrong.
3. Give the strongest objection.
4. Judge whether a defender can answer it.

A useful judgement for this lesson is that each idea is strongest when it stays modest. Divine Command Theory works best as an account of obligation for theists, naturalist utilitarianism works best as a public guide to consequences, and intuitionism works best as a defence of irreducible moral value. Each becomes weaker when it claims to solve every meta-ethical problem by itself.

Synoptic link: this lesson belongs in the future C1-meta-ethics and C1-ethics-synoptic clusters. It can later connect to normative ethical theories and applied ethics, but only when a broader question asks how meta-ethical views affect moral decision making.