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Questions tagged [metaethics]

Metaethics is the attempt to understand the metaphysical, epistemological, semantic, and psychological, presuppositions and commitments of moral thought, talk, and practice.

Metaethics is the attempt to understand the metaphysical, epistemological, semantic, and psychological, presuppositions and commitments of moral thought, talk, and practice. As such, it counts within its domain a broad range of questions and puzzles, including: Is morality more a matter of taste than truth? Are moral standards culturally relative? Are there moral facts? If there are moral facts, what is their origin? How is it that they set an appropriate standard for our behavior? How might moral facts be related to other facts? And how do we learn about the moral facts, if there are any?

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Does practical moral skepticism end up as relativism?

Harman (2000a) argues that a moral judgment that a person ought to do X (an “inner judgment”) implies that the person has motivating reasons to do X, and that a person is likely to have such reasons only if he or she has implicitly entered into an…
user6917
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Does the existence of moral truth imply its objectivity?

I'm studying ethics and I have Shafer-Landau's fundamentals of ethics. I'm familiar with moral realism and moral skepticism. Moral skepticism is divided into ethical relativism and moral nihilism. Ethical relativism is further divided into cultural…
Alex D
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Are prescriptions truth-apt?

Considering the presupposition that there are objective answers to prescriptions, are prescriptions truth-apt? My definition of a prescription is that it is simply an conditional. Example You ought to take the flight to arrive at location B from A…
Vivek Joshy
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Do any moral realists say that subjective judgments also have moral truth?

Do any moral realists say that subjective judgments also have moral truth, such that unreal facts can oblige or permit us to act in a way that we really usually shouldn't?
anon
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Is cognitivism compatible with moral anti-realism?

According to my professor, Sharon Street is both a cognitivist and a moral anti-realist. Are the two compatible? How can a statement be truth-apt if there is nothing in the fabric of the world that fixes its truth value?
user14603
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What is the current status of Emotivism?

Emotivism is a meta-ethical view that claims that ethical sentences do not express propositions but emotional attitudes. Hence, it is colloquially known as the hurrah/boo theory. (WP) I have been reading the 3rd edition of Alisdair MacIntyre's…
labreuer
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If something is non derivatively good then is it always good?

This should explain the meaning of non derivatively good. Suppose that someone were to ask you whether it is good to help others in time of need. Unless you suspected some sort of trick, you would answer, “Yes, of course.” If this person were…
user6917
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Is racism a moral judgement?

If we have a society where one of the basic beliefs is systematic racism, would that be a moral belief, or a factual one? It seems to me like more of a factual one, since its a way of viewing the world where one race is not as good as another, but…
ewkochin
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Is there a moral motivation?

If, as a psychologically 'normal' human being, I find acts that I would call 'immoral' to be repugnant (and my gut response to immorality 'feels' different enough form aversion to, say, eating excrement, so that I can be justified in calling only…
That Guy
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How is metaethical contextualism different from metaethical relativism according to MacFarlane?

According to Mark Schroeder: Relativist metaethical theories are usefully contrasted with contextualist theories for most purposes, but are committed to normative ethical consequences in a very similar way. In general, whereas contextualists say…
the gods from engineering
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Does an absolute moral value always have the same value?

Does an absolute moral value always have an identical value? Assuming there is an absolute prohibition against murder, can context mitigate its wrongness? I am just interested in the question cos I'm thinking about ethics, rather than planning at…
user6917
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Is this ethical relativism?

Is there a term for the claim that: Smith is permitted to do something iff his reasons that he is so permitted are more compelling than his reasons that he is not so permitted, regardless of what Smith believes? It seems like relativism, is it? Is…
user6917
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Sub-Ethics: Subset or Strictly Inferior

Do you know if philosophers have argued that certain ethical theories are contained in other ones? That is, that the set of imperatives in one for arbitrary agent is a subset of the imperatives on that agent? That is, that one expresses a strictly…
Jacob Wakem
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In divine command theory, is there anything malum in se? Or in other words, is there a distinction between malum in se and malum prohibitum?

In Divine Command Theory, is there any distinction between malum in se and malum prohibitum, when it comes to divine commandments (as opposed to human defined laws)? For example, I would see failure to oblige to ritual prescriptions, when seen from…
kutschkem
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Why is the argument of companions in guilt in moral realism no cosidered meaningless?

The argument of Companions in guilt is meta-ethics says: Even if there is no rational reason to think to think that something is ethical, that is irrelevant because there is no rational reason to think logically. But I don't understand why this…
Rieke
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