Ethics
Metaethics
This guide helps you get your bearings in Metaethics before you start exploring the interactive timeline, framework graph, and concept maps.
Before You Dive In
- Metaethics asks what morality itself is — not "what should I do?" but "what does it even mean to say something is right or wrong?"
- The central divide is between moral realism (moral facts exist independently of us) and anti-realism (they don't) — almost every other debate flows from this.
- Start with the cognitivism vs. non-cognitivism debate: do moral statements express beliefs (true or false) or attitudes (neither true nor false)?
- Metaethics connects to philosophy of language and metaphysics as much as to practical ethics — questions about meaning and existence are central.
- Naturalism vs. non-naturalism is a debate within moral realism: can moral properties be reduced to natural properties, or are they sui generis?
Key Terms to Know
Moral realismThe view that there are objective moral facts independent of what anyone thinks or feels.
Non-cognitivismThe view that moral statements don't express beliefs but rather attitudes, emotions, or prescriptions (e.g. emotivism, prescriptivism).
Moral naturalismThe realist view that moral properties are identical to or constituted by natural properties.
SupervenienceThe relation by which moral properties depend on and covary with non-moral (natural) properties.
Error theoryMackie's view that all moral statements are false because they presuppose objective values that don't exist.
Common Confusions
Confusing metaethics with normative ethics — metaethics asks "what is moral goodness?" not "what actions are good?"
Thinking moral anti-realism implies "anything goes" — anti-realists can still be deeply committed to moral standards; they just analyze their status differently.
Assuming the is-ought gap (Hume's guillotine) settles the realism debate — both realists and anti-realists have sophisticated responses to it.
Recommended Reading
Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong— J.L. Mackie
1977Moral Realism: A Defence— Russ Shafer-Landau
2003An Introduction to Contemporary Metaethics— Alexander Miller
2003How to Use the Interactive View
1
Explore the timeline
Open the interactive view and scan the framework timeline. Which frameworks came first? Which ones overlap? Where are the big transitions?
2
Read the articles
Click into individual frameworks to read what each one claims, where it came from, and how it relates to its neighbors.
3
Check the concept map
See how the key ideas within a framework connect. This is useful for figuring out what to learn first and what depends on what.
4
Test yourself
Take the quiz for any framework you've read about. It's a quick way to find out whether you actually understood the core ideas or just skimmed them.