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Feb 19, 2004 · Moral relativism is an important topic in metaethics. It is also widely discussed outside philosophy (for example, by political and religious leaders), and it is controversial among philosophers and nonphilosophers alike. This is perhaps not surprising in view of recent evidence that people’s intuitions about moral relativism vary widely.
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Metaethics. 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 ...
- 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).
Meta-ethical. Meta-ethical moral relativists believe not only that people disagree about moral issues, but that terms such as "good", "bad", "right" and "wrong" do not stand subject to universal truth conditions at all; rather, they are relative to the traditions, convictions, or practices of an individual or a group of people.
But meta-ethical relativism is not quite fully-fledged moral relativism; for one could consistently affirm it and still insist that one particular standpoint was demonstrably superior to all others. It is the denial of this possibility that gives moral relativism a more radical edge and is responsible for much of the criticism it attracts.
Of the various views that have been called ‘moral relativism’, we can distinguish three plausible versions, which, for the purposes of this essay, I will label ‘normative moral relativism’, ‘moral judgement relativism’, and ‘meta‐ethical relativism’. Normative moral relativism asserts that different people, as agents, can be ...
