Meta-Ethics

Overview

Meta-ethics is the branch of moral philosophy that asks about moral philosophy itself: not "what should I do?" — the question of normative ethics — but "what am I doing when I make a moral judgment?" The questions of meta-ethics are the questions about moral language, moral truth, and moral knowledge: What does the sentence "murder is wrong" mean? Is it the sort of sentence that can be true or false, or is it the expression of an emotion or a command? Do moral truths exist independently of our beliefs, and if so, how could we know them? What is the relation between the facts of the world (the "is") and the values of the moral life (the "ought")? Meta-ethics emerged as a distinct discipline in the early twentieth century, above all with the publication of G.E. Moore's Principia Ethica (1903), and it has become the most technically sophisticated branch of moral philosophy.

Historical Background

Meta-ethics has roots in the whole of the philosophical tradition, but it emerged as a distinct discipline in the early twentieth century. Hume had posed the is-ought problem in the eighteenth century — the observation that the moral arguments move from statements of fact to statements of value without explanation — and Kant had grounded the moral law in the pure practical reason. The modern discipline was founded by Moore's Principia Ethica (1903), which argued that "good" is a simple, unanalyzable, non-natural property, and that the attempt to define it in natural terms commits the "naturalistic fallacy." The twentieth century then developed the great theories of meta-ethics: the non-cognitivism of the emotivists (Ayer, Stevenson), who held that moral judgments express emotions; the prescriptivism of Hare, who held that they issue commands; and the revival of moral realism (Boyd, Brink, Railton), who held that moral truths are objective facts.

Core Ideas

The Questions of Meta-Ethics

Meta-ethics asks three families of questions. The semantic questions: what do moral judgments mean? Is "murder is wrong" a statement that can be true or false (cognitivism), or the expression of an emotion or a command (non-cognitivism)? The ontological questions: do moral facts exist? Are they objective features of the world (moral realism), or projections of our attitudes (anti-realism)? The epistemological questions: how could we know moral truths, if they exist? What is the relation of the "is" of fact to the "ought" of value — the problem posed by Hume?

Cognitivism and Non-Cognitivism

The first great division of meta-ethics is the division of cognitivism and non-cognitivism. The cognitivist holds that moral judgments are beliefs — statements that can be true or false, and that we can be right or wrong about. The non-cognitivist holds that moral judgments are not beliefs but something else: the expression of the emotion (emotivism), the issuing of the command (prescriptivism), or the projection of the attitude. The division matters: if moral judgments are not the sort of thing that can be true or false, then moral disagreement is not the disagreement of belief but the clash of attitudes, and the question of moral knowledge is dissolved.

Moral Realism and Anti-Realism

The second great division is the division of realism and anti-realism. The moral realist holds that moral truths exist independently of our beliefs and attitudes: the wrongness of torture is a fact, and the culture that believes otherwise is wrong about the fact. The anti-realist holds that moral truths are not independent: they are constructed by the culture (relativism), projected by the attitudes (expressivism), or the conventions of the community (constructivism). The division matters for everything: for the possibility of moral knowledge, for the justification of the human rights, for the confidence with which we judge the practices of other cultures.

Philosophy

Meta-ethics is the philosophy of the moral life in its most reflective form. Its questions are the questions that arise when the moral life reflects on itself: when we ask not "what should I do?" but "what am I doing when I judge that something should be done?" The discipline is technical — the semantic analysis, the logical form, the epistemology — but its stakes are the highest: the status of the moral truth, the possibility of the moral knowledge, the ground of the moral conviction. The meta-ethicist does not tell us what to do; they tell us what we are doing when we decide — and the analysis changes the confidence with which we decide. The person who has understood that their moral judgments may be the expressions of their emotions, or the projections of their culture, or the discoveries of the moral facts, is a different person from the one who has never asked the question.

Key Figures

The founding figure of meta-ethics is G.E. Moore, whose Principia Ethica (1903) posed the questions of the discipline and argued for the non-natural property of the good. Hume posed the is-ought problem that still structures the field. The twentieth-century theories were developed by A.J. Ayer and C.L. Stevenson (emotivism), R.M. Hare (prescriptivism), and the revival of realism by Richard Boyd, David Brink, and Peter Railton. The tradition of the discipline connects to the ethics of Kant and to the modern virtue ethics of MacIntyre, whose After Virtue is in part a meta-ethical diagnosis of the failure of the modern moral vocabulary.

Influence

Meta-ethics has transformed the modern moral philosophy. The distinction of the normative and the metaethical is now the standard framework of the discipline; the analysis of the moral language has shaped the philosophy of language and the theory of the emotions; and the debates over realism and anti-realism have structured the modern discussions of moral objectivity, moral disagreement, and the foundation of human rights. The is-ought problem remains one of the most discussed arguments in philosophy, and the question of the status of the moral truth — fact or projection? — remains the question on which the confidence of the moral life depends.

Sources

• Moore, G.E. Principia Ethica. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903.
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Metaethics" (plato.stanford.edu/entries/metaethics)
• Mackie, J.L. Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977.