Card 3.1 · Root III — Ethics and Axiology
Meta-Ethics
When you say cruelty is wrong, what kind of statement are you making?
Meta-ethics asks what kind of thing a moral claim is — not whether an act is wrong, but what someone is doing when they say so.
On this card
Where it sits
Root III Ethics and Axiology. Parent of 3.1.1 Moral Realism vs Anti-Realism, 3.1.2 Moral Semantics, 3.1.3 Moral Epistemology, 3.1.4 Moral Motivation. Borders 3.2 Normative Ethics, 2.1 Theories of Knowledge.
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Narrower questions under this one:
- 3.1.1 Moral Realism vs Anti-Realism If everyone approved of torturing children, would it still be wrong?
- 3.1.2 Moral Semantics Does "wrong" describe an act, or do something to the listener?
- 3.1.3 Moral Epistemology How would you check whether a moral claim is true?
- 3.1.4 Moral Motivation Can you know an act is wrong and be entirely unmoved?
The rival answers
Spectrum moral facts fully real → no moral facts at all
The table divides at a place the spectrum alone does not show. Everything down to subjectivism holds that moral claims say something that can be true. Emotivism and prescriptivism deny this. Error theory grants it and says every such claim fails.
| Position | Moral claims are | Are they ever true? |
|---|---|---|
| Non-natural realism | Reports of irreducible moral facts | Yes |
| Natural realism | Reports of stance-independent natural facts or properties | Yes |
| Theological voluntarism / divine command | Moral status or obligation depends, in the relevant respect, on divine will or command | Truth-apt on the theory |
| Natural law | Reports of what human nature requires | Yes |
| Constructivism | Reports of what an appropriate constructive or idealized rational procedure yields | Yes, in a constructed sense |
| Relativism | Claims whose truth or correctness is relative to a framework, standard or standpoint | True relative to that framework |
| Subjectivism | Claims whose truth or correctness is relative to an individual's attitudes or responses | True relative to the individual |
| Emotivism | Expressions of feeling, not reports | Not truth-apt |
| Prescriptivism | Disguised imperatives | Not truth-apt |
| Error theory | Reports of moral facts — which do not exist | Positive moral claims all false |
Where do you stand?
When you say cruelty is wrong, what kind of statement are you making?
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Key figures
| Figure | Dates | Tradition | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plato | c. 428–348 BCE | Greek | The Euthyphro question |
| Mencius | trad. c. 372–289 BCE | Chinese | Moral responses as natural to human beings |
| Xunzi | c. 310–after 238 BCE | Chinese | Morality as deliberate construction against nature |
| Al-Ash'ari | 874–936 | Islamic | Theological voluntarism: moral status depends on divine determination or command |
| Mu'tazili theologians | 8th–early 11th c. | Islamic | Moral facts knowable by reason; God, being just, necessarily acts in accordance with them |
| David Hume | 1711–1776 | European modern | No ought from an is |
| G. E. Moore | 1873–1958 | Analytic | The open question argument |
| J. L. Mackie | 1917–1981 | Analytic | Error theory; the argument from queerness |
| Friedrich Nietzsche | 1844–1900 | German | Genealogy: asks how a value was produced, and by what kind of life, before asking whether it is true |
Also on this question: Mou Zongsan
Talk about it here
Conversations about this question in Meta-ethics:
- Existentialism can ground an ethics, and Beauvoir showed how 6 replies
- Was the abolition of slavery a moral discovery or a moral change? A teacher’s test case 6 replies
- Strong moral intuitions count as evidence, in the same way that perceptions count as evidence 6 replies
- The Mu’tazila were right: reason can know that injustice is wrong before any revelation 6 replies
- Reading group: Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (1977), chapter one 5 replies
Join free to ask about it Everything in Meta-ethics
Connections
→ 3.1.1, 3.2 · ↔ 3.2.6, 2.5, 1.10, 6.1 · ◇ moral realism, natural law, constructivism, relativism, subjectivism, emotivism, prescriptivism, error theory, divine command · ○ Axial Age; Islamic golden age; Modern; Table 5
→ depends on · ↔ borders: genuine overlap, neither prior · ◇ answered by: points from question to answers · ○ appears in: points to the timeline and the comparisons
The full card is in the book
In The Coordinates of Thought this card goes on to a worked example that sets the answers against one case, and to where the question touches daily life — page 127.