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Jan 23, 2007 · Metaethics. Metaethics is the attempt to understand the metaphysical, epistemological, semantic, and psychological, presuppositions and commitments of moral thought, talk, and practice.
For example, one could argue that humans, like other primates, have evolved to cooperate and care for others as a part of their survival, so actions that promote cooperation and care are good, and actions that harm others are bad. Reason. Some ethical theories focus exclusively on certain human capacities, like reason.
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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 ...
Moral nihilism, also known as ethical nihilism, is the metaethical view that nothing has intrinsic moral value. For example, a moral nihilist would say that killing someone, for whatever reason, is intrinsically neither morally right nor morally wrong.
- 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).
Central issues in normative ethics include what it is for an action to be morally permissible and what it is for a society to be just. Beyond normative ethical theory, we can ask yet more fundamental questions about the nature of ethics. These will be meta-ethical issues. We will organize this chapter around two meta-ethical issues.
Meta-ethics is a major field of enquiry in philosophy. The 'meta' in 'meta-ethics' signifies 'above'. Meta-ethics is the attempt to answer questions about ethics. Philosophers working in this area are not so much concerned with what people or acts in particular are ethical.