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What is metaethics in philosophy?
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Jan 23, 2007 · Metaethics. First published Tue Jan 23, 2007; substantive revision Tue Jan 24, 2023. Metaethics is the attempt to understand the metaphysical, epistemological, semantic, and psychological, presuppositions and commitments of moral thought, talk, and practice.
Metaethics is a branch of analytic philosophy that explores the status, foundations, and scope of moral values, properties, and words. Whereas the fields of applied ethics and normative theory focus on what is moral, metaethics focuses on what morality itself is. Just as two people may disagree about the ethics of, for example, physician ...
In metaphilosophy and ethics, metaethics is the study of the nature, scope, and meaning of moral judgment. It is one of the three branches of ethics generally studied by philosophers , the others being normative ethics (questions of how one ought to be and act) and applied ethics (practical questions of right behavior in given, usually ...
Metaethics explores, for example, where moral values originate, what it means to say something is right or good, whether there are any objective moral facts, whether morality is (culturally) relative, and whether there is a psychological basis for moral practices and value judgements.
- Metaethics: Introduction. The prefix “meta” is derived from the Greek for “beyond”. Metaethics is therefore a form of study that is beyond the topics considered in normative or applied ethics.
- The Value of Metaethics. A former colleague once suggested that Metaethics was entirely and frustratingly pointless — academia for academia’s sake, she thought.
- Cognitivism versus Non-Cognitivism. Key to the successful study of Metaethics is understanding the various key terminological distinctions that make up the “metaethical map”.
- Realism versus Anti-Realism. The second key fork in the road that separates metaethical theories is the choice between Moral Realism and Moral Anti-Realism (as with Cognitivism, the “Moral” prefix is assumed from hereon).
Major metaethical theories include naturalism, nonnaturalism (or intuitionism), emotivism, and prescriptivism. Naturalists and nonnaturalists agree that moral language is cognitive—i.e., that moral claims can be known to be true or false. They disagree, however, on how this knowing is to be done.
Encyclopedia of Philosophy. METAETHICS Judgments to the effect that certain things (or certain classes of things) are good or bad, right or wrong, or just or unjust, are first-order ethical judgments. Source for information on Metaethics: Encyclopedia of Philosophy dictionary.
