Meta-ethics asks foundational questions about the meaning and nature of “good,” “right,” and “wrong.”
Ethics includes three tiers: meta-ethics (big-picture analysis), normative ethics (how we should act), and applied ethics (applying principles to real-world issues).
Meta-ethics contrasts moral realism (morality is objective and discoverable) and moral anti-realism (morality is subjective or constructed).
Naturalism
Naturalism claims moral values can be observed in the natural world and are objective facts.
Aquinas’ natural moral law and Bentham’s utilitarianism are forms of naturalism.
Bentham: pleasure is good and pain is bad, as observed in human behavior.
Strengths: Makes morality objective and aligns with established ethical systems.
Weaknesses: Hume’s “is-ought” criticism—cannot derive moral values from facts; Moore’s “naturalistic fallacy”—cannot equate natural properties with goodness.
Intuitionism
Intuitionism (G.E. Moore): Goodness is simple, indefinable, and known by intuition, not by observation.
Moore: Good is like “yellow”—recognized but not definable.
Strengths: Morality is objective and self-evident, supported by some universally agreed moral values.
Weaknesses: People’s intuitions differ (suggesting subjectivity); may result from social conditioning; emotivists argue intuition is not verifiable or meaningful.
Emotivism
Emotivism (A.J. Ayer): Moral statements are expressions of emotion or preference, not factual claims.
Influenced by the verification principle: since moral claims aren’t analytically true or empirically verifiable, they are meaningless.
Strengths: Promotes tolerance, aligns with personal moral diversity, matches Hume’s fact-value distinction.
Weaknesses: Undermines the possibility of moral standards, not useful for moral decision-making or societal rules.
Are Meta-Ethics Most Important?
Arguments for: Knowing “what is good” is necessary before building normative or applied ethics.
Arguments against: Meta-ethics is abstract, disputed, and may be less practical than focusing on real-world moral decisions.
Key Terms & Definitions
Meta-ethics — analysis of the meaning and nature of ethical terms and concepts.
Moral realism — belief that moral statements refer to objective facts.
Moral anti-realism — belief that morality is not objective or discoverable.
Cognitivism — view that moral statements can be true or false.
Non-cognitivism — view that moral statements cannot be true or false.
Naturalism — the view that moral values are grounded in facts about the natural world.
Intuitionism — view that moral truths are self-evident and grasped intuitively.
Emotivism — theory that moral judgments simply express emotions or preferences.
Naturalistic fallacy — Moore’s claim that it’s a mistake to define “good” in terms of natural properties.