Metaethics

In metaphilosophy and ethics, metaethics (meta-ethics) is the study of the nature, scope, ground, and meaning of moral judgment, ethical belief, or values. It is one of the three branches of ethics generally studied by philosophers, the others being normative ethics (questions of how one ought to be and act) and applied ethics (practical questions of right behavior in given, usually contentious, situations).

philosophical positions about the differences in moral judgments across peoples and cultures

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. Influenced by the growth of analytic philosophy and logical positivism in the 20th century, the theory was stated vividly by A. J. Ayer in his 1936 book Language, Truth and Logic, but its development owes more to C. L. Stevenson.

philosophical problem articulated by David Hume in 1739 about how one can deduce prescriptive statements (what ought to be) from descriptive statements (what is)

Contractualism as a broad term refers to a family of political or ethical theories that have their roots in the social contract tradition. Contractualist ethical theories base morality in mutually beneficial agreement or contract among rational, reasonable agents. Contractualism is sometimes referred to as the "third approach" in morality as opposed to its two prominent rivals, consequentialism and deontology. Contractualism in its narrower meaning refers to one particular branch of contractualist ethical theories developed by T. M. Scanlon.

academic discipline

Conventionalism is the philosophical attitude that fundamental principles of a certain kind are grounded on (explicit or implicit) agreements in society, rather than on external reality. Unspoken rules play a key role in the philosophy's structure. Although this attitude is commonly held with respect to the rules of grammar, its application to the propositions of ethics, law, science, biology, mathematics, and logic is more controversial.

philosophical terms

position that a universal ethic applies universally to all

Contextualism, also known as epistemic contextualism, is a family of views in philosophy which emphasize the context in which an action, utterance, or expression occurs. Proponents of contextualism argue that, in some important respect, the action, utterance, or expression can only be understood relative to that context. Contextualist views hold that philosophically controversial concepts, such as "meaning P", "knowing that P", "having a reason to A", and possibly even "being true" or "being right" only have meaning relative to a specified context. Other philosophers contend that context-depen

meta-ethical view that nothing is intrinsically moral or immoral

persistence of will in obtaining the optimal quality of spiritual, mental, physical, and material being

ethical theory

metaethical position

family of views in moral epistemology

Decisionism (derived from the German Dezisionismus, which is sometimes encountered untranslated in English texts) is a political, ethical and jurisprudential doctrine which states that moral or legal precepts are the product of decisions made by political or legal bodies. According to decisionism, it is not the content of the decision, but rather the fact that it is a decision made by the proper authority, or by using a correct method, which determines its validity.

Non-cognitivism is the meta-ethical view that ethical sentences do not express propositions (i.e., statements) and thus cannot be true or false (they are not truth-apt). A noncognitivist denies the cognitivist claim that "moral judgments are capable of being objectively true, because they describe some feature of the world." If moral statements cannot be true, and if one cannot know something that is not true, non-cognitivism implies that moral knowledge is impossible.

theory that morality is commanded by, and originates only from, the divine

Ethical theory which postulates that societal progress can inform standards of moral behavior

metaethical view that ethical sentences function similarly to imperatives which are universalizable—whoever makes a moral judgment is committed to the same judgment in any situation where the same relevant facts obtain

metaethical theory that there are several values, equally correct/fundamental, yet in conflict with each other, and that such incompatible values may be incommensurable, i.e. there is no objective ordering of them by importance

meta-ethical view

theory in meta-ethics

In meta-ethics, expressivism is a theory about the meaning of moral language. According to expressivism, sentences that employ moral terms – for example, "It is wrong to torture an innocent human being" – are not descriptive or fact-stating; moral terms such as "wrong", "good", or "just" do not refer to real, in-the-world properties. The primary function of moral sentences, according to expressivism, is not to assert any matter of fact but rather to express an evaluative attitude toward an object of evaluation. Because the function of moral language is non-descriptive, moral sentences do not h

moral intellectualism is a view in meta-ethics according to which genuine moral knowledge must take the form of arriving at discursive moral judgements about what one should do

Humeanism refers to the philosophy of David Hume and to the tradition of thought inspired by him. Hume was an influential eighteenth century Scottish philosopher well known for his empirical approach, which he applied to various fields in philosophy. In the philosophy of science, he is notable for developing the regularity theory of causation, which in its strongest form states that causation is nothing but constant conjunction of certain types of events without any underlying forces responsible for this regularity of conjunction. This is closely connected to his metaphysical thesis that there

meta-ethical view

the meta-ethical view that ethical sentences express propositions and can therefore be true or false

type of ethical theory

meta-ethical view