Card 3.1.2 · Root III — Ethics and Axiology
Moral Semantics
Does "wrong" describe an act, or do something to the listener?
This question asks what moral words mean — what kind of content "wrong" carries, and whether moral sentences describe or do something else.
On this card
Where it sits
Under 3.1 Meta-ethics. Borders 6.10 Philosophy of language, 3.1.1.
New to ethics? Read the guide
The rival answers
| Position | Moral sentences |
|---|---|
| Cognitivism | Express beliefs; they can be true or false |
| Naturalism | Mean something statable in non-moral terms |
| Non-naturalism | Have irreducible moral content |
| Emotivism | Express feeling; no truth value |
| Prescriptivism | Function as universalised imperatives |
| Expressivism | Express attitudes, while behaving grammatically like descriptions |
| Hybrid views | Do both — describe and express at once |
Where do you stand?
Does "wrong" describe an act, or do something to the listener?
One tap, no sign-up. You can change your answer at any time. Answers are counted anonymously.
Key figures
| Figure | Dates | Tradition | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| G. E. Moore | 1873–1958 | Analytic | The open question argument |
| A. J. Ayer | 1910–1989 | Analytic | Moral statements as expressions of emotion |
| R. M. Hare | 1919–2002 | Analytic | Prescriptivism; universalisability |
| Peter Geach | 1916–2013 | Analytic | The embedding problem |
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, 3.1.1 · ↔ 6.10, 6.10.1, 4.2 · ◇ cognitivism, emotivism, prescriptivism, expressivism · ○ 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 133.