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- 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).
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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- History of Metaethics
- The Normative Relevance of Metaethics
- Semantic Issues in Metaethics
- Ontological Issues in Metaethics
- Psychology and Metaethics
- Epistemological Issues in Metaethics
- Anthropological Considerations
- Political Implications of Metaethics
- References and Further Reading
a. Metaethics before Moore
Although the word “metaethics” (more commonly “meta-ethics” among British and Australian philosophers) was coined in the early part of the twentieth century, the basic philosophical concern regarding the status and foundations of moral language, properties, and judgments goes back to the very beginnings of philosophy. Several characters in Plato’s dialogues, for instance, arguably represent metaethical stances familiar to philosophers today: Callicles in Plato’s Gorgias (482c-486d) advances t...
b. Metaethics in the Twentieth-Century
Analytic metaethics in its modern form, however, is generally recognized as beginning with the moral writings of G.E. Moore. (Although, see Hurka 2003 for an argument that Moore’s innovations must be contextualized by reference to the preceding thought of Henry Sidgwick.) In his groundbreaking Principia Ethica (1903), Moore urged a distinction between merely theorizing about moral goods on the one hand, versus theorizing about the very concept of “good” itself. (Moore’s specific metaethical v...
Since philosophical ethics is often conceived of as a practicalbranch of philosophy—aiming at providing concrete moral guidance and justifications—metaethics sits awkwardly as a largely abstract enterprise that says little or nothing about real-life moral issues. Indeed, the pressing nature of such issues was part of the general migration back to a...
a. Cognitivism versus Non-Cognitivism
One of the central debates within analytic metaethics concerns the semantics of what is actually going on when people make moral statements such as “Abortion is morally wrong” or “Going to war is never morally justified.” The metaethical question is not necessarily whether such statements themselves are true or false, but whether they are even the sort of sentences that are capable of being true or false in the first place (that is, whether such sentences are “truth-apt”) and, if they are, wh...
b. Theories of Moral Truth
A related issue regarding the semantics of metaethics concerns what it would even mean to say that a moral statement is “true” if some form of cognitivism were correct. The traditional philosophical account of truth (called the correspondence theory of truth) regards a proposition as true just in case it accurately describes the way the world really is independent of the proposition. Thus, the sentence “The cat is on the mat” would be true if and only if there really is a cat who is really on...
a. Moral Realisms
If moral truth is understood in the traditional sense of corresponding to reality, what sort of features of reality could suffice to accommodate this correspondence? What sort of entity is “wrongness” or “goodness” in the first place? The branch of philosophy that deals with the way in which things exist is called “ontology”, and metaethical positions may also be divided according to how they envision the ontological status of moral values. Perhaps the biggest schism within metaethics is betw...
b. Moral Relativisms
Other metaethical positions reject altogether the idea that moral values— whether naturalistic, non-naturalistic, or dispositional—are real or objective in the sense of being independent from human belief or culture in the first place. Such positions instead insist on the fundamentally anthropocentric nature of morality. According to such views, moral values are not “out there” in the world (whether as scientific properties, dispositional properties, or Platonic Forms) at all, but are created...
One of the most pressing questions within analytic metaethics concerns how morality engages our embodied human psychologies. Specifically, how (if at all) do moral judgments move us to act in accordance with them? Is there any reason to be moral for its own sake, and can we give any psychologically persuasive reasons to others to act morally if the...
Analytic metaethics also explores questions of how we make moral judgments in the first place, and how (if at all) we are able to know moral truths. The field of moral epistemologycan be divided into questions about what moral knowledge is, how moral beliefs can be justified, and where moral knowledge comes from.
Although much of analytic metaethics concerns rarified debates that can often be highly abstracted from actual, applied moral concerns, several metaethical positions have also drawn heavily on cultural anthropological considerations to motivate or flesh-out their views. After all, as discussed above in section one, it has often been actual, histori...
In addition to accommodating or accounting for the existence of moral disagreements, metaethics has also been thought to provide some insight concerning how we should respond to such differences at the normative or political level. Most often, debates concerning the morally appropriate response to moral differences have been framed against analyses...
a. Textual Citations
1. Adams, Robert. (1987). The Virtue of Faith and Other Essays in Philosophical Theology. Oxford University Press. 2. Altham, J.E.J. (1986) “The Legacy of Emotivism,” in Macdonald & Wright, eds. Fact, Science, and Morality. Oxford University Press, 1986. 3. Appiah, Kwame Anthony. (2008). Experiments in Ethics. Harvard University Press. 4. Audi, Robert. (1999). “Moral Knowledge and Ethical Pluralism,” in Greco and Sosa, eds. Blackwell Guide to Epistemology, 1999, ch. 6. 5. Ayer, A.J. (1936). L...
b. Anthologies and Introductions
1. Fisher, Andrew and Kirchin, Simon, eds. (2006). Arguing about Metaethics. Routledge Press. 2. Harman, Gilbert and Thomson, J.J. (1996). Moral Relativism and Moral Objectivity. Blackwell Publishers. 3. Miller, Alexander. (2003). An Introduction to Contemporary Metaethics. Polity Press. 4. Moser, Paul and Carson, Thomas, eds. (2001). Moral Relativism: A Reader. Oxford University Press. 5. Sayre-McCord, Geoffrey, ed. (1988). Essays on Moral Realism. Cornell University Press. 6. Shafer-Landau,...
Author Information
Kevin M. DeLapp Email: kevin.delapp@converse.edu Converse College U. S. A.
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.
Feb 19, 2004 · The first point is a form of metaethical relativism: It says one morality may be true for one society and a conflicting morality may be true for another society. Hence, there is no one objectively correct morality for all societies. The second point, however, is a concession to moral objectivism.
Meta-ethical moral relativism holds that in such disagreements, nobody is objectively right or wrong. Normative moral relativism holds that because nobody is right or wrong, everyone ought to tolerate the behavior of others even when large disagreements about morality exist. [2]
Meta-ethical relativism holds that moral judgments are not true or false in any absolute sense, but only relative to particular standpoints. This idea is essential to just about any version of moral relativism.
