6: Metaethical Theories

*WARNING*

In purely length terms, this is a longer chapter than any other in this textbook. In addition, it contains lots of key terminology that will be unique to this chapter. Thus, we don’t advise that this chapter should be read/considered/crammed in merely one sitting.

Rather, we suggest that you choose specific sections of the chapter, perhaps informed by your course specifications or our suggested tasks at the end of the chapter, and engage with those sections in any one sitting. In addition, the first “Issue to Consider” at the conclusion of this chapter should be especially useful in guiding your journey through Metaethics. The ideas herein are no more complex, fundamentally, than elsewhere in the book; the breadth should not be daunting if properly managed.

1. 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. Recall as we stated in the introduction, the differences between these forms of ethical study are helpfully captured in an analogy put forward by Fisher (2011) involving different participants in a game of football.

• Applied Ethics is the study of how we should act in specific areas of our lives; how we should deal with issues like meat-eating, euthanasia or stealing (to use examples familiar to this textbook). To use the football analogy, the applied ethicist kicks the philosophical football around just as a footballer kicks the ball on the field. A good applied ethicist might score goals and be successful by offering specific arguments that convince us to change our moral views in a particular corner of our lives.
• Normative Ethics is focussed on the creation of theories that provide general moral rules governing our behaviour, such as Utilitarianism or Kantian Ethics. The normative ethicist, rather than being a football player, is more like a referee who sets up the rules governing how the game is played. Chapter 1).
• Metaethics is the study of how we engage in ethics. Thus, the metaethicist has a role more similar to a football commentator rather than to a referee or player. The metaethicist judges and comments on how the ethical game is being played rather than advancing practical arguments, or kicking the football, themselves. For example, the metaethicist might comment on the meaning and appropriateness of ethical language, just as the football commentator might remark on the appropriateness of particular tactics or set-piece routines.

Nobody is perfect, and it is therefore possible that some of you are not avid football fans. To respect this possibility, here is a non-football based explanation of what Metaethics amounts to. Metaethical conclusions do not tell us how we should morally act or which type of decision is morally correct in any one particular circumstance. Instead, Metaethics is focussed on questions regarding how ethical study — at both normative and applied levels — works. Some typical metaethical questions are:

• When we say something is “morally good”, what do we mean?
• If the claim that “euthanasia is morally wrong” is true, what makes it true?
• If moral claims are sometimes true, what methods do we use to access these moral truths?

You should not expect a metaethical argument to provide specific guidance regarding how to act, but you should expect a metaethical argument to critique the foundations of normative or applied action-guiding moral theories.

2. The Value of Metaethics

A former colleague once suggested that Metaethics was entirely and frustratingly pointless — academia for academia’s sake, she thought. There are, however, good reasons for thinking that metaethical arguments can be just as worthy and valuable as their normative and applied counterparts.

One such factor in favour of Metaethics is as follows. If ethics is fundamentally concerned with good behaviour or, as per Chapter 3), good characters, then it would seem to be desirable to properly understand what exactly “good” amounts to.

Analogously, we would not consider attempting applied mathematics without first understanding what was meant by fundamental concepts like addition or subtraction. Nor would we consider attempting surgery on a person without being sure of the meanings of terms like blood, heart or liver. Understanding goodness — what it is and how we might access it — seems like a fundamental presupposition of successful ethical study, rather than a merely abstract topic of philosophical debate.

3. Cognitivism versus Non-Cognitivism

Key to the successful study of Metaethics is understanding the various key terminological distinctions that make up the “metaethical map”. Metaethical theories can be categorised, at least for our purposes, in respect of where they fall in the debates between Cognitivism and Non-Cognitivism, and Realism and Anti-Realism. Thus, it is a prerequisite for understanding and evaluating metaethical theories that you understand these two debates. In this section, we deal with the debate between cognitivists and non-cognitivists.

If you are a Moral Cognitivist (the “moral” prefix is assumed from hereon) then you have a particular view about the meaning of moral terms and a particular view about the psychology behind moral utterances. The former version of Cognitivism, concerned with meaning, is captured in the discussion of Semantic Cognitivism while the latter version of Cognitivism, concerned with psychology, is captured in the discussion of Psychological Cognitivism. Cognitivism, as discussed in the remainder of this chapter, is a combination of these two positions.

4. 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). As before, understanding these broad positions is crucial to understanding and critiquing the specific metaethical theories outlined later in this chapter.

5. The Metaethical Map

The broad explanations of Cognitivism, Non-Cognitivism, Realism and Anti-Realism have been crucial because they allow the following categorisation of specific metaethical views to make sense. You really need to learn what these terms mean if any of the following is going to make sense. Drawing out the metaethical map might be very helpful, to this end.

Example theories which are both cognitivist and realist

Moral Naturalism

Moral Non-Naturalism (e.g. intuitionist realist accounts)

Theories both cognitivist and anti-realist

Moral Error Theory

Theories both non-cognitivist and realist

We only know of one person holding this view: Kahane.5

Theories both non-cognitivist and anti-realist

Emotivism

Prescriptivism

The natural bedfellows between the broad positions outlined are thus Cognitivism and Realism, and Non-Cognitivism and Anti-Realism. If we aim for truth in our moral utterances, it makes sense to think that there are properties existing that we are trying to refer to and accurately describe.

However, if our moral utterances do not aim for truth then this may neatly sit with the view that no such moral properties exist (otherwise, why would we not try to describe them?).

The outlying theory is Moral Error Theory, which combines the cognitivist view that our moral utterances are expressions of truth-apt beliefs with the view that there are no realist objective moral properties in the world. Thus, moral error theorists believe that our moral utterances are always, in every circumstance, false. This is a controversial view and is explored in more depth in sections ten and eleven.

6. Cognitivist and Realist Theory One: Naturalism

Naturalists hold that there are moral properties in the world that make true at least some of our ordinary moral beliefs. Unsurprisingly, naturalists also hold that these moral properties are perfectly natural properties rather than being non-natural. To understand this claim, we need a better grip of what the philosophical and ethical naturalist actually means by the term “natural”.

Naturalists in ethics hold that moral properties are as natural as those properties discussed and examined in the sciences, for example. So, the property of being “wet” is a perfectly natural property as is the more complex property of “being magnetic”. These properties can be investigated by scientists and are not supernatural or beyond the study of natural sciences.

Gilbert Harman (1938–) suggests that “…we must concentrate on finding the place of value and obligation [morality] in the world of facts as revealed by science”.6 If murder has the property of being morally wrong, then this property is natural if it fits into the world of facts as revealed by science.

Simon Blackburn (1944–) (though not a realist himself) outlines the desirability and purpose of this commitment to Naturalism when he says that: “The problem is one of finding room for ethics, or placing ethics within the disenchanted, non-ethical order which we inhabit, and of which we are a part”.7

Moral Naturalism thus speaks to those who wish to defend Realism and truth in ethics, without resorting to non-natural justifications based on Gods, Platonic Forms and the like. The naturalist seeks to fit moral properties into the non-mystical world of ordinary science.

Utilitarianism is a normative ethical theory that is underpinned by a metaethical Naturalism. Chapter 1, defined moral goodness in terms of the act (or set of rules) that promoted the greatest amount of pleasure/happiness for the greatest number of people. Utilitarians thus view good as an entirely natural properties for there is nothing mystical, enchanted or supernatural about pleasure; scientists can perfectly well understand pleasure in terms of neural firings or psychological explanations.

In addition, both Chapter 3) within a naturalist metaethical framework.

According to Hursthouse, human beings function well if they meet four particular ends — survival, reproduction, enjoyment/freedom from pain, and possession of an appropriate functional role within a group. As rational beings, we can determine the character traits and dispositions that can help us to meet these aims and such character traits and dispositions will then be virtuous. Virtue Ethics, thus defined, would therefore be a normative theory based on Naturalism because what makes something good or virtuous is entirely determined by natural factors to do with our psychology, behaviour, biology and social dynamics. As with Utilitarianism, no mystical or supernatural stuff is required to explain the virtues and associated moral goodness.

Does Naturalism lead to Relativism? Harman claimed that, if correct, Naturalism would naturally lead us to Moral Relativism and away from Moral Absolutism (these theories are more specifically discussed in Chapter 1). Harman suggests that if ethical guidelines and rules were absolute in nature then they would need to apply irrespective of contingent situations or contingent lifestyles; murder, for example, would be wrong irrespective of any specific situational factors if the claim that “murder is wrong” were absolutely true. However, if moral properties are natural properties, then Relativism may make more sense in virtue of the fact that natural properties can vary in presence from case to case.

For example, it is not absolutely true that “London is north of Paris” because at some point continental plates will shift and these cities could move in relative location to each other. Nor is it absolutely true that “sections of the Australian coast have coral reefs”, since human activity and climate change might change this natural fact. Equally then, if a natural property is what makes true the claim that “murder is wrong” then this natural property might seem to depend upon the amount of pleasure produced, or else on some other changeable natural factor. If moral properties are natural properties, then actions might not be absolutely wrong but might instead be wrong relative to the changeable presence of those natural properties.

Michael Smith (1954–) rejects Harman’s claim and suggests that Naturalism is, in and of itself, irrelevant to the debate between moral relativists and moral absolutists. Smith argues that absolutists and relativists will differ on questions regarding the rationality or reasonableness of human behaviour and that these questions cannot be settled by taking a stance on Naturalism or Non-Naturalism in ethics.

For Smith, important questions relevant to the absolutist and relativist debate are a priori rather than a posteriori — meaning that these debates must be analysed and investigated by methods that do not involve testing the world. Thus, testing the world in order to determine the natural or non-natural status of moral properties cannot settle the a priori differences between relativists and absolutists.

7. Objections to Naturalism

G. E. Moore was a supporter of Cognitivism and Realism. However, Moore was not a naturalist — he was a non-naturalist — and objected to the idea that moral properties were natural properties. Moore’s objection to identifying moral properties as natural properties was two-fold. Firstly, he thought that moral properties were fundamentally simple and secondly he thought the identification of the moral with the natural failed what he termed the Open Question Argument.

Moore’s first objection to Naturalism, from simplicity, is based on an analogy between moral properties and colour properties. According to Moore, the concept of the colour yellow is a fundamentally simple concept in so far as it cannot be explained in terms of any other concept or property. Consider, as an example of a complex property, the idea of a horse. A horse can be explained to someone who has never come into contact with the animal because the concept of a horse can be reduced to simpler part. As a mammal of a typically brown colour, with certain organs and certain dimensions. In an obvious way, the concept of a horse can be broken down to simpler components.

Moore denies that the same is true for the concept of yellow. Yellow cannot be explained to someone who has not come into visual contact with it, because yellow is a simple concept that cannot be broken down into simpler component parts. Yellow is just yellow, and we can say nothing else about it that will explain it in simpler terms. The same, says Moore, is true for moral properties. According to Moore:

If I am asked, ‘What is good?’ my answer is that good is good, and that is the end of the matter. Or if I am asked ‘How is good to be defined?’ my answer is that it cannot be defined, and that is all I have to say about it.8

On this basis, Moore cannot accept that moral properties can be reduced to natural properties as this would imply that moral properties are not fundamentally simple. The utilitarian, for example, defines goodness in terms of pleasure and so reduces goodness to pleasure. Moore suggests that moral naturalists make a mistake in trying to ground simple moral properties in terms of other natural properties.

As it stands, Moore’s analogy between goodness and yellow has some argumentative pull but lacks sufficient robustness. However, Moore’s Open Question Argument more formally drives home his point.

Moore suggests that we take some putative moral claim such as “giving to charity is good”. For goodness, Moore suggests we follow the naturalist’s lead and insert some natural property such as “pleasure”. Now, we have the claim that “giving to charity is pleasurable”. This identification between goodness and pleasure is the type of identification a naturalist about goodness might have in mind.

However, according to Moore it remains an open question as to whether or not something creating pleasure is actually good. The question remains meaningful in a way that it should not remain meaningful if goodness is actually reducible to pleasure. After all, it is not possible to meaningfully ask whether or not a bachelor is an unmarried man as the concept of a bachelor can be reduced to the concept of an unmarried man. Thus, if this utilitarian-style naturalist is correct about the identification of goodness and pleasure, it should not be a meaningful question — an open question — to ask whether a pleasurable act is a morally good act. Yet, it seems to remain open as to whether Action A is good, even if I am told that Action A is pleasurable.

Moore suggests that any attempted reduction of a moral property to a natural property will leave a meaningful open question of the form “this act possesses the natural property suggested” but “is it a good act”? Julia Tanner provides a modern example of the Open Question Argument in action:

Some people talk as if they think that that which has evolved is the same thing as being good. Thus, for instance, capitalism may be justified on the basis that it is merely an expression of ‘the survival of the fittest’ and ‘the survival of the [fittest]’ is good. To make such an argument is, according to Moore, to commit the naturalistic fallacy because good has been defined as something other than itself, as ‘the survival of the fittest’.9

Tanner refers to the Naturalistic Fallacy, which is Moore’s own terminology for the mistake of attempting to reduce the moral property to the natural property. All such attempted reductions will fail because it will always be possible to meaningful ask whether the suggested natural property is actually good; if this question is open then goodness does not equal the suggested natural property. Think of the Open Question Argument as the searchlight seeking out those who commit the naturalistic fallacy.

It is worth noting that Moore’s arguments, although directed against naturalistic reductions of goodness, are just as powerful against non-natural reductions of goodness. Any attempt to reduce the concept of goodness to, for example, “what God wills’” will also fail because the question of “this is what God wills, but is it good?” appears to remain open. Self-evidently, this non-natural reduction is not an example of a naturalistic fallacy, but it can be no more acceptable if, like Moore, you believe that good is a fundamentally simple concept.

8. Cognitivist and Realist Theory Two: Non-Naturalism

Moore’s critique of Naturalism sets the scene for his own metaethical view. According to Moore, moral properties do exist but they are fundamentally simple non-natural properties. The best way to understand what non-natural means is as follows. If Goodness is non-natural then it is not the kind of property that is discoverable through the kind of empirical means that help us to identify natural properties, such as in the sciences. How we might come to know non-natural properties depend on the particular theory under consideration. However, typically non-naturalists think that we intuit the presence of these simple non-natural properties via a moral sense. So although intuitions are about how we discover moral properties rather than what moral properties are like, typically non-naturalists are also intuitionists.

Richard Price (1723–1791) suggested that truths are intuited when they are acquired “without making any use of any process of reasoning”.11 An example should make this method of intuiting non-natural moral properties much clearer.

Becky is watching a BBC news report on a woman who has been helped to hear for the first time in her life via the use of new medical technology. Having been so helped, the news report points out that this person has made a documentary which involves her passing on this technology to poor children who are living with deafness in Bangladesh. While watching the report and the associated interview, Becky intuits the fact that the doctors have acted in a morally good way in researching and implementing the cure for this woman’s deafness and that she too is acting morally well in helping others to hear. The moral goodness is self-evident in the situation and does not require Becky to use her faculties of reason to identify it; the property of goodness is picked up via her moral sense.

W. D. Ross specifically suggests that there are various self-evident prima facie duties that we can intuit (prima facie meaning, in this sense, apparent on first glance); duties that should guide our behaviour but that sometimes can be overridden by other competing duties. Ross outlines duties such as not harming others, not lying, and keeping promises. Ross suggests that no formal empirical or logical defence of these duties is appropriate because they are self-evident. We cannot argue to the claim we should not lie, only from it in terms of how to act in specific situations.

If you are an intuitionist and a realist this might offer a route to surviving both the Open Question Argument and the Naturalistic Fallacy. Intuitionists claim that moral properties are fundamentally simple and non-natural, open to apprehension via our moral sense. When we utter moral sentences we seek to describe the presence of such properties accurately and, sometimes, we will correctly and appropriately refer to the presence of these non-natural properties in the world. When we so appropriately refer, we make true moral statements.

9. Objections to Intuitionism

Intuitionism offers a way around the Open Question Argument and the Naturalistic Fallacy, consequently it has a number of modern proponents (e.g. Ralph Wedgewood). However, objections to a basic Intuitionism are not particularly difficult to conceive of.

Firstly, Intuitionism might be thought to struggle when explaining moral disagreement. If moral truths are self-evident and can be intuited, then why do even self-professed intuitionists such as Moore and Ross have radically different ethical views (Moore is a teleologist, whereas Ross intuits proto-Kantian moral truths).

In response, Ross has suggested that we need a certain moral maturity to our intuitive sense, just as our other faculties require maturity and tuning to properly pick up on features of the world. Indeed, Samuel Clarke (1675–1729) suggested that, amongst other things, stupidity may lead to our intuitions going astray and this may explain continuing moral disagreement. If only we were less daft, our intuitive moral sense might be more reliable!

In addition, on a related note, we may wonder how such intuitive moral judgments might be properly verified. If you support the Verification Principle — which you may be lucky enough to come across in a unit on Religious Language — then you believe that statements that cannot be empirically verified (tested against the world to determine their truth or falsity) or are true by definition are meaningless.

If moral judgments are intuitively supported judgments about non-natural properties, then it is not clear how we could verify whether it is Moore or Ross, to use two examples, who intuits goodness correctly. Certainly, we could not use empirical means to test for the presence of non-natural properties in the world. Thus, verificationists may suggest that moral statements — if Intuitionism is correct — would be meaningless in virtue of our inability to verify such statements.

Finally, returning to the theme of disagreement, we might posit evidence that our intuitions are so unreliable that they are better understood as irrational moral judgments expressing our own feelings or personal beliefs, rather than judgments giving voice to the existence of mind-independent, objective, non-natural moral properties.

Consider responses to the standard ethical dilemma of a trolley case. In one version, you can redirect a train to save five people tied to the track, but doing so will kill one person tied in the path of the redirected train. In a second case, you can save five people tied to the track by pushing one rather portly gentleman to his death in front of the train to stop its progress. Most responders favour saving five over one in the first case, but favour saving one over five in the second case. If our intuitions point so divergently when we make moral judgments, might we be better to assume our pre-rational intuitive responses are expressions of feelings or initial beliefs, rather than a reflection of objective truths?

Perhaps responses based on moral maturity or stupidity will apply here also, but this may be harder to hold when explaining one person’s own personal divergent intuitions about such cases rather than disagreement across a group of different people.

J. L. Mackie (1917–1981) also offers criticisms of Intuitionism, but these are explored in the next section as they feed into explanation of Mackie’s own Moral Error Theory. It is, as ever, for you to judge whether the intuitionist has any plausible defence of their theory against the criticisms suggested thus far.

10. Cognitivist and Anti-Realist Theory One: Moral Error Theory

Thus far, we have seen that Cognitivism tends to be associated with Realism. Mackie breaks with this trend with his Moral Error Theory. Mackie accepts that our moral utterances are expressions of truth-apt beliefs, but denies Realism. In so doing, Mackie denies that possibility that our truth-apt beliefs are ever true, because a moral description of the world can never accurately describe a world without any moral properties in it.

In Mackie’s own words, “Although most people in making moral judgments implicitly claim, among other things, to be pointing to something objectively prescriptive, these claims are all false”.12 By prescriptive, Mackie means action-guiding and Mackie denies that any objective guides to action (moral properties, in our terms) actually exist.

Mackie’s view is startling and raises loads of questions about how we should live if morality is entirely false. Although interesting, these discussions are not for this chapter. Instead, we must explain and evaluate Mackie’s theory as it stands rather than consider its implications if true. A theory having depressing or liberating implications does not make that theory any more or less likely to be accurate (though it is surprising how often even the best philosophers are prone to such mistaken thinking).

Mackie’s Anti-Realism is supported by the following two arguments. It should be made clear that Mackie’s arguments are directed against both Naturalistic and Non-Naturalistic Realism.

11. Objections to Moral Error Theory

Realists have various responses to Mackie. Firstly, realists might just agree and accept the conclusion that moral properties would be queer in virtue of bridging the “is-ought” gap; they may simply deny that such queerness is a problem. Indeed, intuitionists may be very happy to accept the uniqueness of moral properties in virtue of their fundamental simplicity and their irreducibility to other properties. Naturalists, meanwhile, may simply wonder why something being different to other things should be seen as a problem; is it not the case that everything is different to everything else, in at least some sense? In addition, Mackie’s views regarding the importance and depth of moral disagreement can be criticised.

A. J. Ayer (1910–1989), for example, felt that moral disagreements existed only where there were disagreements over the non-moral facts. On this view, Max and Ethan disagree over the morality of meat-eating only because they disagree over the non-moral fact of how much pain is endured by animals sent for slaughter. If all the non-moral facts were clear, then their disagreement would no longer persist. Thus, Ayer would have felt that moral disagreement is not as deep and pervasive as Mackie suggests.

A different response to moral disagreement is to defend the idea of moral progress. It may be tempting to argue that moral disagreement has actually reduced over time because we have come into contact with truths regarding the badness of slavery, sexism and racism etc. Moral Error Theory denies the possibility of moral progress in virtue of denying any moral truth; progress requires correct answers. If you believe that progress has been made in ethics, perhaps in the form of human rights being identified, then you have a reason to disagree with Moral Error Theory.

Moral Error Theory is also highly counterintuitive. It says that all of your moral beliefs are false and that they could never be true because no moral truth making properties exist in the world. It suggests that murder is not morally wrong (but it is not morally right either!) and that giving to charity is not morally right (but it is not morally wrong either!). Given there is no truth to be found in ethics, it might be thought that we should abandon our faulty moral language entirely — a rather extreme metaethical conclusion!

However, if you do accept Cognitivism as an accurate explanation of moral language and psychology, but find it hard to grant that objective, mind-independent moral facts or properties actually exist in the world, then Moral may be worth these seeming costs.

12. Non-Cognitivism

Prior to an explanation and evaluation of the specific theoretical options for the non-cognitivist, it is worthwhile just providing a few words in favour of Non-Cognitivism more generally.

If you are impressed by anti-realist arguments but do not wish to end up an error theorist, then it may be worth denying Cognitivism rather than following Mackie. Indeed, this is what the majority of anti-realists tend to do. Thus, non-cognitivists will be unconcerned by the lack of moral properties in the world because they deny that our moral utterances are attempts to pick such properties out.

As well as supporting Anti-Realism, Hume’s identification of the “is-ought” gap might be taken as helpful evidence for Non-Cognitivism. If moral utterances carry with them an action-guiding force, this may be because moral utterances are not descriptive beliefs but are instead expressions of attitudes, feelings or emotions. This picture is certainly what Hume had in mind given his Humean Theory of Motivation. Hume claimed that beliefs alone cannot motivate behaviour because beliefs are motivationally inert. The function of a belief as a psychological state is to offer a motivationally neutral description of the world; beliefs say what we believe “is” and do not by themselves lead to us to action. To be motivated to actually act, according to Hume, a belief must be coupled with a desire in our heads. The following case should make Hume’s claim clearer.

Liz believes that her friends will soon be arriving for a barbecue. However, Liz lacks any desire to cater for her friends and so does not act. Liz’s belief, by itself, does not and cannot motivate action on her part. Now, if we change the situation and add to Liz’s psychology a desire to feed and cater for her friends, then Liz would come to be motivated to act and prepare a delightfully sumptuous feast. Thus, Hume argues, desires are required in the explanation of our actions.

So why is this relevant to a defence of Non-Cognitivism? Well, when a person utters a moral phrase, if the phrase is sincerely uttered, then they’ll be motivated. For example, if I utter the words “giving to charity, for those who can afford to do so, is morally required”, then you would expect me to be motivated to give charity if I were able to do so; if I chose not to give to charity in that circumstance you might question the sincerity of my moral utterance.

Moral utterances, and relevant moral motivations, seem to be remarkably well tied to each other. Now, if moral utterances were expressions of moral beliefs we would need to, in addition to the moral belief, grant the existence of a continuous desire to do what we believe is moral. However, if moral utterances were themselves moral desires then we need not add the extra belief into our psychology. If the phrase “giving to charity is morally right” is simply an expression of my desire that everyone should give to charity, then it is exceedingly simple to explain why our moral utterances and our motivations tend to track each other so well — our moral utterances are just expressions of our moral desires! But the claim that our moral judgements are simply an expression of our desires just is Non-Cognitivism.

13. Non-Cognitivist and Anti-Realist Theory One: Emotivism

A. J. Ayer and C. L. Stevenson (1908–1979) were defenders of Emotivism, a metaethical view that held considerable sway for a time in the early parts of the twentieth century. According to Emotivism, the moral statement that murder is wrong is simply an expression of emotion against the act of murdering. It gives formal linguistic voice to what is essentially a negative “boo” to murder. Indeed, Emotivism is referred to as the “boo/hurrah” metaethical theory; when we claim that something is morally wrong we boo that action and when we claim that something is morally right we hurrah that action. This explains the connection between morality and motivation; we express motivationally-relevant emotional distaste or emotional approval when we use moral words rather than expressing motivationally inert moral beliefs.

Although a verificationist about language himself, Ayer did not wish to deny that moral utterances had a meaning even though, as a non-cognitivist and anti-realist, he plainly could not suggest that moral utterances were empirically verifiable or open to real-world testing in order to determine their truth value (moral utterances, on this view, are not truth-apt beliefs attempting to describe the world). Thus, Ayer suggested that moral utterances had an emotive meaning. Ayer, speaking of the claim that “stealing money is wrong” says this is simply an act of “…evincing my moral disapproval of it. It is as if I had said, ‘You stole that money’ in a peculiar tone of horror, or written it with the addition of some special exclamation marks”.15 Thus, the moral judgment meaningfully reveals an emotion, even if not a description of the world. Emotivism does not, therefore, straightforwardly lead to nihilism as some meaning for moral values and moral judgments is preserved. On this basis, there is no pull to the idea that we should stop using moral language.

Stevenson, in addition, suggested of moral terms like “right”, “wrong”, “good” and “bad” that they have only emotive meanings in the sense of approval and disapproval. Therefore, just as we cannot say that a “boo” is false, for it is not truth-apt so too we cannot say that a linguistic boo of the form “stealing is wrong” is either true or false. Stevenson thus argued that Emotivism captured the “magnetism” of morality — our moral utterances track our motivations because our moral utterances are expressions of the emotions that underpin our motivations.

14. Objections to Emotivism

Despite early popularity, Emotivism is not a popular position today and it is widely considered to be an unduly and unhelpfully simplistic form of Non-Cognitivism. We consider three objections here.

Firstly, on a psychological level, Emotivism is unlikely to feel correct. When I suggest that a certain action is right or wrong, I take myself to be making a claim that is true and making a claim that reflects how I take the world to be (reflecting a moral belief in my head). I do not consider myself to be booing an action in a rather academic and indirect way. We might question whether abstract philosophising about the meaning of words should ever trump our own psychological reflections when it comes to what we mean when we utter moral sentences. Can it be the case that Ayer or Stevenson knew better than I what I meant when I said that “terrorism is morally wrong”? Can they know better than you, if you take yourself to be making truth-apt and descriptive moral judgments?

Secondly, some of our moral utterances do not seem to be in the least part emotional. For example, Charlotte may feel that “it is wrong to avoid paying tax” but be quite depressed about this judgment. If we were cognitivists, this emotional divorce could be easily explained; Charlotte believes there to be a moral fact that is independent of her mind and her desires and this fact depresses her. However, it is not immediately obvious how Emotivism might explain Charlotte’s “boo to avoiding tax” when she harbours a desire to avoid tax herself. Perhaps we can have second-order emotions about our emotions (Charlotte is sad that she feels negatively towards tax avoiding), or perhaps Charlotte feels that others should not avoid tax — boo them — while she is happy act in this way — hurrah for her own tax avoidance. However, both of these responses require careful statement and defence if you seek to pursue them.

Finally, we can return to moral disagreement. Consider a sincere moral disagreement between William and Wendy over the issue of euthanasia. Wendy says that euthanasia is morally right in at least some cases, whilst William says that euthanasia is morally wrong in all circumstances. William and Wendy may seem to be disagreeing via utilising logic and reason just as scientists, or economists, or computer technicians, disagree over a substantively correct answer that is independent of their own minds.

However, once the facts of matter are agreed upon the emotivist must reduce this disagreement to a series of emotional boo’s and hurrah’s regarding euthanasia, where truth is never the aim of the moral utterances. Suggesting that moral debates are always emotive rather than factual, and so are swayed only by emotional rather than rational means, is a controversial claim given that moral reasons seem to be deployed very carefully in just such debates. Indeed, the emotivist explanation of moral debate seems to suggest moral arguments have more in common with arguments over which ice-cream flavour is best (boo for chocolate, hurrah for vanilla) than with truth-based disagreements in other academic disciplines. If this is not how we believe moral debates should be described, then Emotivism has a problem. As 16 Brandt, as per the above discussion, feels that moral utterances are things we take to be truth-apt, contra the emotivist interpretation of those moral utterances.

The previous objection to Emotivism may seem to highlight possible links between Emotivism and moral relativism. But do not be deceived. Recall from Chapter 1 that relativists, as opposed to absolutists, hold that no moral claim is ever absolutely true in all circumstances. As a specific type of relativist, the cultural relativist may suggest that the claim “murder is wrong” can be true in some cultural settings and false in others depending on the different cultural standards for behaviour. Thus, there may be some suggestion that Cultural Relativism and Emotivism have the same set of grounding beliefs — no absolute moral truths exist and moral expressions reflect the culturally backed emotions of particular speakers, rather than anything more absolutely and mind-independently true.

However, this is a mistake. Contra Emotivism, cultural relativists do tend to believe in a form of realist moral truth, even if such relativists do not hold that absolute moral truths exist. Whilst the cultural relativist may admit that ethical judgments often reflect personal and culturally supported emotions, they define goodness as a genuine property that is determined or fixed in nature by the cultural standards of a given society.

Thus, if “murder is wrong” is a true relative to my culture, then it is still true. I am, therefore, mistaken if I claim that “murder is acceptable”, at least within the boundaries of my society even if not in the societies of others. This truth is non-absolute and relative to culture, but the cultural relativist accepts that it exists and that our moral statements attempt to describe such truths. On the other hand, the emotivist, obviously, does not accept that our moral statements are such attempted descriptions of realist, albeit relativistic, moral truths.

15. Non-Cognitivist and Anti-Realist Theory Two: Prescriptivism

R. M. Hare was a committed non-cognitivist and anti-realist but he was not a defender of a simple emotivist position. Instead, Hare was a metaethical prescriptivist.

As a prescriptivist, Hare felt that our moral utterances express more than just emotional approval and disapproval. Instead, our moral utterances express a subjective prescription for others to act in accordance with our moral judgments. So, for example, if William claimed that “euthanasia is morally wrong” then this utterance means that William wants others to cease supporting or deciding in favour of euthanasia. Prescriptivism thus attempts to capture the action-guiding nature of moral utterances without resorting to claims of moral truth.

Prescriptivism also seems to better account for moral disagreement than does Emotivism, because Prescriptivism suggests that the action-guiding normative edge of moral utterances is fundamentally built into the meaning of a moral statement. In addition, perhaps crucially, Prescriptivism also allows us to legitimately criticise another person for their moral views without needing to invoke claims of realist moral truth or realist moral falsehood. Consider the following example.

Cristina claims that “murder is universally and absolutely morally wrong”. According to the prescriptivist, this is not a descriptive belief but is a reflection of Cristina’s non-cognitive attitude that no one should ever murder. However, if Cristina later utters the words “murdering this terrible dictator is morally acceptable”, then we can criticise Cristina’s inconsistency. On the one hand, she wants no one to ever murder whilst on the other hand also wanting the murder of a terrible dictator. It is not that Cristina had made a false moral claim that justifies criticism of her, according to the prescriptivist, but it is her inconsistency in the actions she prescribes for others that justifies criticism. Thus, we cannot cry “false!” against Cristina, but we can cry “inconsistent”. This, at least, may give some genuine meaning back to moral disagreement and provide a method for legitimately and rationally criticising the moral claims of others. Prescriptivism is, on this basis, often viewed as a step-up on Emotivism when it comes to non-cognitivist and anti-realist metaethical theories.

16. Objections to Prescriptivism

Many of the challenges to Prescriptivism carry over from the challenges suggested regarding Emotivism. The prescriptivist must also explain why they know better the meaning of our moral statements than we do, at least if we take ourselves to be making truth-apt and descriptive claims about moral properties in the world.

In addition, we might accept that Prescriptivism captures the qualities of moral disagreement better than Emotivism, but deny that the picture of moral disagreement offered by the prescriptivist is good enough. After all, is inconsistency the most serious objection we can make to someone with whom we disagree morally? Prescriptivism does not allow us to suggest that a racist who believes “it is morally acceptable to kill those of a different racial background” utters something false. Indeed, so long as the racist holds morally consistent views then we have no grounds to criticise his position at all. If we feel that retaining the ability to cry “false!” — with proper, rational and realist justification — is important when confronting the moral views of racists, sexists and other morally deplorable individuals, then Prescriptivism does not offer the tools that we need. Of course, the prescriptivist may reply that we cannot claim that Realism is correct just because we wish it to be so and that Prescriptivism, like it or not, is actually the proper understanding of the meaning of our moral judgments. Again, this is a judgment you should make for yourself.

SUMMARY

There is much more that could be said in this chapter. Metaethical theories are as varied and nuanced as their normative rivals, and it is impossible to give a fair hearing to all of them in a single chapter. Catherine Wilson has authored an enquiry into Metaethics that reflects the challenge of coming to your own, first-person, view on these issues.17 However, we have tried as far as possible on this whistle-stop tour to outline these theories clearly and to give them such a fair hearing. It is for you to decide where you sit in the debate between Cognitivism and Non-Cognitivism, Realism and Anti-Realism, and, more generally, to decide how much importance Metaethics has relative to the normative and applied camps of ethical study.

COMMON STUDENT MISTAKES

• Not breaking down the chapter so as to be firmly in grasp of the meanings of key terms, and then the nature of the theories, before trying to engage in evaluation.
• Confusing Cognitivism, Non-Cognitivism, Realism and Anti-Realism.
• Misunderstanding the queerness complaint.
• Forgetting the importance of asking a meaningful question when explaining the mechanism of the Open Question Argument.
• Not using analogies appropriately — think of other realist/naturalist/cognitivist/non-cognitivist disciplines and examples, then compare these to ethics.
• Ignoring the explanations of disagreement offered by intuitionists.
• Not linking criticisms of one position to support for another position; e.g. Moore’s attack on Naturalism explains his intuitionist views and Mackie’s attack on Realism justifies his anti-realist position.
• Not using examples to aid explanation because not directly dealing with obviously normative or applied issues.

ISSUES TO CONSIDER

1. Can you create your own Metaethical Map? Try drawing out a flow-chart style diagram that separates Cognitivism and Non-Cognitivism, followed by the associated theories. If feeling confident, then try to add weaknesses and strengths to your map. We recommend this as an excellent study aide!18
2. Does Emotivism lend support to Relativism?
3. Does Naturalism lend support to Absolutism?
4. Does something being queer (in Mackie’s sense of the term) make it less likely that it exists?
5. Does moral disagreement lend support to Anti-Realism?
6. Can a philosopher ever know what you mean better than you know?
7. Is Metaethics as important as normative or applied ethics?
8. Are moral judgments meaningless if they are about non-natural properties? If they are non-cognitive?
9. Do we just know what is right or wrong based on common sense? Does this support Intuitionism?
10. Can you give another example of an Open Question Argument, with a different candidate natural moral property?
11. Is there such a thing as moral progress? What does this suggest in terms of Metaethics?
12. Can a non-cognitivist properly explain moral disagreement?
13. What is the Humean account of motivation? Why does it support Non-Cognitivism?

KEY TERMINOLOGY

A priori

A posteriori

Anti-Realism

Cognitivism

Empirical

Naturalistic Fallacy

Non-Cognitivism

Normative

Prescriptivism

Prima facie

Queer

Realism

Relativism

Semantic

Truth-apt

Verificationism

References

Ayer, A. J., ‘A Critique of Ethics’, in Ethical Theory, ed. by Russ Shafer-Landau (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007).

―, ‘The Emotive Theory of Ethics’, in Ethics: Essential Readings in Moral Theory, ed. by George Sher (London: Routledge, 2012), pp. 103–10.

Blackburn, Simon, Ruling Passions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).

Brandt, Richard, Ethical Theory: The Problems of Normative and Critical Ethics (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1959).

Fisher, Andrew, Metaethics: An Introduction (Oxford: Routledge, 2011), https://doi.org/10.1017/upo9781844652594

Harman, Gilbert, Explaining Value and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000).

Hume, David, A Treatise on Human Nature (London: John Noon, 1739), freely available at www.davidhume.org/texts/thn.html

Joyce, Richard, The Myth of Morality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511487101

Kahane, G., ‘Must Metaethical Realism Make a Semantic Claim?’, Journal of Moral Philosophy, 10.2 (2013): 148–78, https://doi.org/10.1163/174552412x628869

Mackie, J. L., Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (New York: Penguin, 1977).

Miller, A., An Introduction to Contemporary Metaethics (Cambridge: Polity, 2003).

Moore, G. E., ‘The Open-Question Argument: The Subject Matter of Ethics’, in Arguing About Metaethics, ed. by Andrew Fisher and Simon Kirchin (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 31–47.

Price, Richard, ‘A Review of the Principle Questions in Morals’, in The British Moralists 1650–1800, ed. by D. D. Raphael (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), pp. 131–98.

Railton, Peter, ‘Moral Realism’, The Philosophical Review, 95.2 (1986): 163–207, doi.org/10.2307/2185589

Ross, W. D., The Right and the Good (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1930), https://doi.org/10.1093/0199252653.001.0001

Tanner, Julia, ‘The Naturalistic Fallacy’, The Richmond Journal of Philosophy, 13 (2006), freely available at http://www.richmond-philosophy.net/rjp/rjp13_tanner.php

Wedgwood, Ralph, The Nature of Normativity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199251315.001.0001

Wilson, Catherine, Metaethics from a First Person Standpoint (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2016), doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0087; freely available at www.openbookpublishers.com/reader/417

1 A. J. Ayer, ‘A Critique of Ethics’, p. 21.

2 R. Joyce, The Myth of Morality, p. 14.

3 R. Wedgwood, The Nature of Normativity, p. 37.

4 P. Railton, ‘Moral Realism’, p. 165.

5 G. Kahane, ‘Must Metaethical Realism Make a Semantic Claim?’

6 G. Harman, Explaining Value and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy, p. 79.

7 S. Blackburn, Ruling Passions, p. 49.

G. E. Moore, ‘The Open-Question Argument: The Subject Matter of Ethics’, p. 35.

http://www.richmond-philosophy.net/r...p13_tanner.php

10 R. Price, ‘A Review of the Principle Questions in Morals’, p. 159.

11 W. D. Ross, The Right and the Good, p. 29.

12 J. L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, p. 35.

www.davidhume.org/texts/thn.html

14 J. L. Mackie, Ethics, p. 38.

15 A. J. Ayer, ‘The Emotive Theory of Ethics’, p. 106.

16 R. Brandt, Ethical Theory: The Problems of Normative and Critical Ethics, p. 226.

www.openbookpublishers.com/reader/417

18 For an excellent Metaethical map see A. Miller, An Introduction to Contemporary Metaethics, p. 8.