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In philosophy, 'meta-ethics' (sometimes called "analytic ethics")^[1] is the branch of ethics that seeks to understand the nature of ethical properties, and ethical statements, attitudes, and judgments. Meta-ethics is one of the three branches of ethics generally recognized by philosophers, the others being ethical theory and applied ethics. Ethical theory and applied ethics make up normative ethics. Meta-ethics has received considerable attention from academic philosophers in the last few decades.
While normative ethics addresses such questions as "Which things are (morally) good and bad?" and "What should one do?", thus endorsing some ethical evaluations and rejecting others, meta-ethics addresses the question "What is (moral) goodness?", seeking to understand the nature of ethical properties and evaluations.

Contents

Meta-ethical questions

Meta-ethical theories

Moral realism

Moral anti-realism

References

External links

Meta-ethical questions

According to Richard Garner and Bernard Rosen, there are three kinds of meta-ethical problems, or three general questions:

#What is the meaning of moral terms or judgments?
#What is the nature of moral judgments?
#How may moral judgments be supported or defended?^[2]

A question of the first type might be, "What do the words 'good', 'bad', 'right' and 'wrong' mean?" (see value theory). The second category includes the question of whether moral judgments are objective or relative. Questions of the third kind ask, for example, how we can know if something is right or wrong, if at all. Garner and Rosen say that answers to the three basic questions "are not unrelated, and sometimes an answer to one will strongly suggest, or perhaps even entail, an answer to another."²

Meta-ethical theories

A meta-ethical theory, unlike a normative ethical theory, does not attempt to evaluate specific choices as being better, worse, good, bad, or evil; although it may have profound implications as to the validity and meaning of normative ethical claims. An answer to any of the three example questions above would not itself be a normative ethical statement.
The major meta-ethical views are commonly divided into ''realist'' and ''anti-realist'' views (despite the fact that some labels, such as cognitivism, do not recognize the realist/anti-realist distinction).

Moral realism

Moral realism holds that there are objective moral values. Moral realists believe that evaluative statements are factual claims, which are either true or false, and that their truth or falsity does not depend on our beliefs, feelings, or other attitudes towards the things that are evaluated.
Moral realism comes in two main variants:
# Ethical intuitionism and ethical non-naturalism, which hold that there are objective, irreducible moral properties (such as the property of 'goodness'), and that we sometimes have intuitive awareness of moral properties or of moral truths. (See G.E. Moore.)
# Ethical naturalism, which holds that there are objective moral properties but that these properties are reducible to entirely non-ethical properties. Most ethical naturalists hold that we have empirical knowledge of moral truths. (See Alasdair MacIntyre)

Moral anti-realism

Moral anti-realism holds that there are no objective moral values. This view comes in three main variants:
# Ethical subjectivism, which holds that moral statements are made true or false by the attitudes and/or conventions of observers. There are several different versions of subjectivism, including:
#
★ Moral relativism (compare "cultural relativism"): This is the view that for a thing to be morally right is for it to be approved of by society; this leads to the conclusion that different things are right for people in different societies and different periods in history. Though long out of favor among academic philosophers, this view has been popular among anthropologists, such as Ruth Benedict.
#
★ Divine command theory: Another subjectivist theory holds that for a thing to be right is for a unique being, God, to approve of it, and that what is right for non-God beings is obedience to the divine will. This view was criticized by Plato in the ''Euthyphro'' (see the Euthyphro problem) but retains some modern defenders (Robert Adams, Philip Quinn, and others).
#
★ Individualist subjectivism: Another view is that there are as many distinct scales of good and evil as there are subjects in the world. This view was put forward by Protagoras.
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★ Ideal observer theory: Finally, some hold that what is right is determined by the attitudes that a hypothetical ''ideal observer'' would have. An ideal observer is usually characterized as a being who is perfectly rational, imaginative, and informed, among other things.
# Non-cognitivism, which holds that ethical sentences are neither true nor false because they do not express genuine propositions. Non-cognitivism encompasses:
#
★ Emotivism, defended by A.J. Ayer and C.L. Stevenson, which holds that ethical sentences serve merely to express emotions. So "Killing is wrong" means something like, "Boo on killing!"
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★ Prescriptivism, defended by R.M. Hare, which holds that moral statements function like imperatives. So "Killing is wrong" means something like, "Don't kill!"
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★ Quasi-realism, defended by Simon Blackburn, which holds that ethical statements behave linguistically like factual claims and can be appropriately called "true" or "false", even though there are no ethical facts for them to correspond to. Projectivism and moral fictionalism are related theories.
# Error theory (also known as moral nihilism) holds that ethical claims are generally false. They hold that there are no objective values---that nothing is morally good, bad, wrong, right, etc.---because there are no moral truths. For example, an error theorist would say that murder is not wrong, but it's not right either. J. L. Mackie is probably the best-known proponent of this view. (Note that error theory is also sometimes associated with moral skepticism, but they have some slight differences. Error theories are a type of moral skepticism, but there are other types of moral skepticism.)
Subjectivism, non-cognitivism, and error theory are the only forms of anti-realism: If there are no objective values, this must be either because ethical statements are subjective claims (as subjectivists maintain), because they are not genuine claims at all (as non-cognitivists maintain), or because they are mistaken objective claims. The only alternative is for ethical statements to be correct objective claims, which entails moral realism.
Another way of categorizing meta-ethical theories distinguishes between monistic theories (in which there is one true, or at least one highest, good) and pluralistic theories.
Value pluralism contends that there are two or more genuine values, knowable as such, yet incommensurable, so that any prioritization of these values is either non-cognitive or subjective. A value pluralist might, for example, contend that both the life of a nun and that of a mother realize genuine values (in an objective and cognitivist sense), yet there is no purely rational measure of which is preferable. (See also: Isaiah Berlin.)

References

1. Cline, Austin "Analytic Ethics (Metaethics)," URL = http://atheism.about.com/library/FAQs/phil/blfaq_phileth_anal.htm."
2. Moral Philosophy: A Systematic Introduction to Normative Ethics and Meta-ethics, , Richard T., Garner, Macmillan, 1967, LOC card number 67-18887

External links

★ by Geoff Sayre-McCord.

★ ''The Language of Morals'' (1952) by R.M. Hare.

★ Metaethics - §1 of the "Ethics" entry in the ''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' by James Fieser.

★ Essays by philosopher Michael Huemer on meta-ethics, especially intuitionism.

★ ''Relativity theory of ethics'' by J.J. Mittler.