Metaethics

1. Introduction

Metaethics examines morality from a reflective, second-order standpoint. Instead of asking which actions are right or wrong, it investigates what it means to call something right or wrong, whether such claims can be true, what they might be true in virtue of, and how they could guide or motivate action.

Where normative ethics proposes principles of right action, and applied ethics addresses concrete moral problems, metaethics stands back and asks about the status, meaning, and justification of any such principles or judgments. It is therefore closely connected to the philosophy of language (through questions about the meaning and truth of moral sentences), to the philosophy of mind (through questions about moral belief, emotion, and motivation), and to metaphysics and epistemology (through questions about the existence of moral facts and the possibility of moral knowledge).

A central fault line in metaethics runs between moral realism, which maintains that at least some moral judgments are objectively true, and various forms of moral anti‑realism, which deny this, either by reinterpreting moral discourse (as noncognitivists do), by claiming it is systematically in error (as error theorists do), or by relativizing its truth or justification to agents, cultures, or procedures.

Over the 20th and 21st centuries, metaethics has undergone several shifts: from early analytic concerns with definition and meaning, through mid‑century debates over emotivism and prescriptivism, to contemporary disputes about naturalism, constructivism, debunking explanations, and the relationship between morality and empirical science. Throughout, it has remained an area in which no consensus view dominates, but in which competing theories often share a common set of questions and constraints.

The following sections survey the scope of metaethical inquiry, its historical development, and the main contemporary positions and debates that structure the field.

2. Definition and Scope of Metaethics

Metaethics is commonly defined as the branch of ethics that examines the meaning, truth, and justification of moral judgments and the nature of moral properties and facts. It operates at a “meta‑” level: it does not propose substantive moral rules, but reflects on the concepts, commitments, and presuppositions underlying any moral discourse.

2.1 Distinguishing Metaethics from Other Parts of Ethics

A standard tripartite distinction situates metaethics within ethical theory:

Metaethical discussion can inform, but does not itself settle, particular moral disputes.

2.2 Dimensions of Metaethical Inquiry

Metaethics is often divided into several intersecting sub‑questions:

Different theories sometimes focus on one dimension (for example, semantics) while making minimalist or deflationary claims about others, but many aim to give an integrated account.

2.3 Scope and Limits

The scope of metaethics is broad, yet it is typically constrained in at least two ways:

1. It concerns moral rather than prudential, aesthetic, or legal norms, though comparisons are often made.
2. It addresses the general structure of moral thought and language, not only particular concepts (such as “justice” or “rights”).

Some philosophers extend metaethical inquiry to neighboring topics such as the nature of practical reasons, normativity in general, or the relation between morality and rationality, while others propose to reserve “metaethics” for issues more narrowly tied to moral discourse.

3. The Core Questions of Metaethics

Metaethics revolves around a relatively stable set of core questions. Different theories can be seen as competing answers to these questions, often emphasizing different dimensions (semantic, metaphysical, epistemic, psychological) of the same underlying issues.

3.1 Semantic Questions: Meaning and Truth‑Aptness

One cluster concerns the meaning of moral statements:

• What is expressed by a sentence like “Stealing is wrong”?
• Are moral sentences truth‑apt (capable of being true or false), as cognitivists maintain, or do they primarily express non‑cognitive states, as noncognitivists propose?
• How should we understand the apparent logical structure of moral discourse—its use in arguments, conditionals, and negations?

These questions structure debates between realism, noncognitivism, and error theory.

3.2 Metaphysical Questions: Moral Facts and Properties

Another cluster asks about the ontological status of morality:

• Are there moral facts or properties?
• If so, are they natural (continuous with facts studied by sciences) or non‑natural?
• How do moral properties relate to non‑moral ones—for example, do they supervene on natural facts so that no two situations can differ morally without differing non‑morally?

Different forms of moral realism, naturalism, and non‑naturalism offer contrasting answers, while error theorists and some relativists deny robust moral facts altogether.

3.3 Epistemological Questions: Moral Knowledge and Justification

Metaethics also asks:

• Can we know moral truths, and if so, how?
• Are there distinctively moral methods of justification (intuition, reflective equilibrium, rational construction), or are moral beliefs ultimately justified in the same ways as empirical beliefs?
• Do evolutionary and cultural influences on moral belief undermine moral knowledge?

These questions underlie disputes between rationalists, empiricists, intuitionists, and debunkers.

3.4 Psychological and Motivational Questions

A further set concerns the connection between moral judgment and motivation:

• Does sincerely judging that one ought to do something necessarily involve some motivation to do it (motivational internalism)?
• Or can an agent judge that something is morally required without any corresponding motivation (externalism)?
• How are moral judgments related to emotions, desires, and other conative states?

Answers to these questions often interact with positions on semantics and metaphysics; for example, noncognitivists typically emphasize expressive and motivational roles of moral language.

3.5 Normativity and Practical Authority

Finally, metaethics asks about the normative authority of morality:

• In what sense do moral claims give reasons for action?
• Are moral requirements categorically binding, or do they depend on agents’ aims, identities, or agreements?

Constructivist and contractualist theories typically address these questions by appealing to procedures of practical reasoning or agreement, while realists and relativists provide contrasting accounts.

4. Historical Origins and Ancient Approaches

Although the explicit term “metaethics” is modern, many ancient philosophers raised questions that anticipate contemporary concerns about the nature and objectivity of moral values.

4.1 Plato and Objective Forms

Plato’s dialogues often investigate whether moral properties are objective and knowable. In the Euthyphro, Socrates famously asks whether the pious is loved by the gods because it is pious, or pious because the gods love it, probing the dependence (or independence) of value on divine attitudes. In the Republic and Phaedo, Plato associates moral goodness with the Form of the Good, an abstract, non‑empirical reality knowable by reason:

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“The good is not only the cause of the knowledge of all things known, but of their being and reality.”

— Plato, Republic VI

This has often been interpreted as an early form of moral realism, treating values as mind‑independent.

4.2 Aristotle and the Human Function

Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics focuses mainly on how to live well, but it also contains metaethical elements. He grounds ethical evaluation in the function (ergon) of human beings and the virtues needed for flourishing (eudaimonia). Moral properties are not separate entities, but features of living well in accordance with rational nature. Some interpreters view this as a proto‑naturalist account, linking the good to facts about human function and form, while others emphasize its teleological and irreducibly normative aspects.

4.3 Sophists, Conventionalism, and Skepticism

The Sophists (such as Protagoras and Thrasymachus as portrayed by Plato) raised questions about whether morality is conventional rather than natural. Protagoras’ famous dictum “Man is the measure of all things” has been taken to suggest a kind of relativism, while Thrasymachus’ claim that justice is “the advantage of the stronger” challenges moral objectivity by tying norms to power or convention.

Later Skeptics, such as Sextus Empiricus, highlighted deep disagreement about ethical matters as grounds for suspending judgment about moral truth, anticipating contemporary arguments from disagreement.

4.4 Hellenistic Schools: Stoics, Epicureans, and Others

Stoic philosophers treated moral value as objective and rooted in living according to reason and nature, often integrating ethics with a deterministic cosmology. Epicureans located the good in pleasure and the absence of pain, developing more explicitly naturalistic accounts of value and motivation.

These ancient approaches provided early templates for later debates about naturalism, realism, relativism, and skepticism in metaethics.

5. Medieval Theological and Natural Law Frameworks

Medieval philosophy foregrounded the relationship between morality, God, and law. Metaethical questions were often framed in terms of divine nature, will, and the structure of creation.

5.1 Divine Command and the Euthyphro‑Style Question

Many medieval thinkers investigated whether moral rightness depends on God’s commands. A divine command perspective holds that what is right is what God wills or commands. However, Christian philosophers also confronted a version of the Euthyphro problem: is an action right because God commands it, or does God command it because it is right?

Some voluntarist thinkers, such as William of Ockham, leaned toward the idea that God’s will plays a decisive role in determining moral obligations, while others emphasized the stability of moral truths grounded in divine nature.

5.2 Natural Law Theory

Natural law frameworks, developed in different ways by Augustine and especially Thomas Aquinas, offered a more structured account of moral objectivity. On a natural law view, moral norms reflect rational participation in the eternal law governing creation. Aquinas characterizes natural law as:

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“the rational creature’s participation in the eternal law.”

— Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I‑II, q. 91, a. 2

Moral requirements are thus grounded both in God’s providential ordering of the world and in the natures and ends of human beings. This combination raises metaethical questions about:

• whether moral truths are independent of particular divine commands,
• how moral properties relate to facts about human nature,
• and whether moral knowledge is attainable through reason alone or requires revelation.

5.3 The Status of Moral Facts and Knowledge

Medieval thinkers typically treated moral truths as objective and knowable, at least in part, by natural reason. Debates concerned:

• the extent to which reason can discover moral principles without revelation,
• whether God could have decreed different moral principles (for example, could God make lying permissible),
• and the role of conscience as a faculty of moral cognition.

These discussions shaped later questions about whether theological accounts of morality are compatible with robust moral realism, and about the relation between moral norms, human nature, and divine authority.

6. Modern Transformations: Reason, Sentiment, and Autonomy

Early modern philosophy transformed metaethical inquiry by shifting focus from divine law to human reason, sentiment, and autonomy. Disputes emerged over whether morality is grounded primarily in rational principles or in human feelings and desires.

6.1 Hobbes and Early Modern Naturalism

Thomas Hobbes advanced a largely naturalistic and psychological account of morality. In Leviathan, he portrays moral norms as arising from conventions established to escape the “state of nature” and secure peace. Obligation depends on covenants and the authority of the sovereign. This raised questions about whether moral requirements are objective or contingent on human interests and political arrangements.

6.2 Moral Sense Theories and Sentimentalism

18th‑century moral sense theorists such as Francis Hutcheson and David Hume argued that moral distinctions are rooted in human sentiment. For Hutcheson, a special moral sense disposes us to approve benevolence and disapprove cruelty. Hume famously contends that:

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“Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions.”

— David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, 3.1.1

and that moral distinctions are “derived from a moral sense or feeling.” This invited later comparisons with noncognitivist and expressivist views, given the emphasis on emotion, motivation, and the non‑derivability of “ought” from purely factual “is” statements.

6.3 Rationalism and Objective Principles

In contrast, rationalist thinkers such as Samuel Clarke, Richard Price, and later Immanuel Kant held that moral truths are accessible through reason and have a necessity akin to mathematical truths. Price, for example, argued that right and wrong are real qualities, knowable by rational intuition.

Kant’s critical philosophy redirected this rationalism toward autonomy and practical reason. In the Groundwork, he interprets moral requirements as categorical imperatives—laws that rational agents give to themselves, independent of empirical desires:

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“The will is… a kind of causality belonging to living beings insofar as they are rational.”

— Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals

Kant thus links moral obligation to the structure of rational agency, an idea that later informed constructivist and contractualist approaches.

6.4 Emerging Metaethical Themes

These modern debates introduced several enduring themes:

The period thus reframed metaethical questions in largely secular terms, focusing on human cognitive and affective capacities rather than primarily on divine command or natural law.

7. Analytic Metaethics and the Linguistic Turn

In the 20th century, especially within Anglo‑American “analytic” philosophy, metaethics was reshaped by the linguistic turn—the idea that many philosophical problems can be clarified by analyzing language. Moral philosophy increasingly focused on the meaning and logical structure of moral terms and sentences.

7.1 Moore and the Open Question Argument

G. E. Moore’s Principia Ethica (1903) is often seen as inaugurating analytic metaethics. Moore argued that “good” is a simple, non‑natural property not analyzable in purely natural or descriptive terms. His Open Question Argument holds that for any proposed naturalistic definition of “good” (for example, “good = pleasurable”), it remains an open and non‑trivial question whether what is pleasurable is really good. This was intended to show that moral properties are irreducible and to diagnose “naturalistic fallacies” in ethical theory.

7.2 Emotivism and the Turn to Attitude‑Expression

Logical positivism and ordinary language philosophy encouraged suspicion of non‑empirical properties. A. J. Ayer, in Language, Truth and Logic (1936), argued that moral statements lack cognitive content and serve chiefly to express emotions:

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“If I say ‘Stealing money is wrong,’ I produce a sentence which has no factual meaning… it is as if I had written ‘Stealing money!!’”

— A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic

C. L. Stevenson developed emotivism further, emphasizing the persuasive and attitude‑guiding function of moral language.

7.3 Prescriptivism and Universalizability

R. M. Hare, in The Language of Morals (1952), proposed prescriptivism, interpreting moral judgments primarily as universal prescriptions. For Hare, “ought” statements are logically tied to action‑guiding imperatives and to a requirement of universalizability—a structural feature later echoed in some forms of constructivism.

7.4 The Rise of Systematic Metaethical Theories

Mid‑to‑late 20th‑century analytic philosophy saw the emergence of more systematic accounts:

• Moral realists refined naturalist and non‑naturalist options.
• Noncognitivists and expressivists sought increasingly sophisticated semantic and logical models of moral discourse.
• Error theorists, notably J. L. Mackie, argued that ordinary moral claims are systematically false due to their commitment to “queer” objective values.

These developments established the central positions and vocabulary—realism, noncognitivism, error theory, naturalism—that continue to structure contemporary metaethical debate.

8. Moral Realism and Its Varieties

Moral realism is the view that there are objective moral facts or properties and that some moral judgments are true in virtue of these facts, independently of anyone’s attitudes or conventions. Within this broad camp, several varieties can be distinguished, often differing over the nature of moral properties and our access to them.

8.1 Core Commitments of Moral Realism

Most realists endorse three theses:

1. Cognitivism: Moral statements express beliefs and are truth‑apt.
2. Truth: At least some ordinary moral claims are literally true.
3. Objectivity: Their truth does not constitutively depend on any individual’s or group’s attitudes, preferences, or endorsements.

Realists differ over whether these moral facts are natural, non‑natural, or constituted in other ways.

8.2 Naturalist Moral Realism

Moral naturalists identify moral properties with, or at least fully ground them in, natural properties, broadly construed as those studied by empirical sciences or compatible with a scientific worldview. For example, “wrongness” might be analyzed in terms of promoting or hindering well‑being, preference satisfaction, or social cooperation.

Proponents argue that naturalism:

• avoids metaphysically “queer” entities,
• allows moral facts to enter causal explanations (for instance, explaining social stability),
• and supports a unified picture of reality continuous with science.

Critics invoke Moore’s Open Question Argument, the “is–ought” gap, and the alleged inability of natural properties to capture the normative authority of moral requirements.

8.3 Non‑Naturalist Moral Realism

Non‑naturalist realists accept the existence of objective moral facts but deny that these facts are reducible to, or identical with, purely natural or descriptive facts. Moral properties are taken to be sui generis normative features of reality, although they are typically held to supervene on natural properties.

Influential contemporary defenders (such as Derek Parfit and some neo‑Mooreans) argue that:

• non‑naturalism respects the independent normativity of morality,
• fits our intuitive sense that “good” and “ought” cannot be fully captured in naturalistic terms,
• and can explain moral knowledge through a form of rational intuition or reflective equilibrium.

Objections focus on metaphysical and epistemological “queerness,” the difficulty of explaining our epistemic access to non‑natural facts, and worries about ontological extravagance.

8.4 Robust vs. Minimal Realism and Quasi‑Realism

Some philosophers distinguish robust realism (which posits a substantial moral ontology) from more minimal or “quietist” forms that retain realist‑sounding talk while adopting deflationary views about truth and facts. Quasi‑realists (treated in detail under expressivism) seek to explain how noncognitivist theories can mimic many realist commitments without endorsing stance‑independent moral facts.

Moral realism in these forms remains a central reference point against which anti‑realist and constructivist theories define themselves.

9. Noncognitivism, Expressivism, and the Frege–Geach Problem

Noncognitivism denies that moral judgments primarily aim to describe facts or state beliefs. Instead, they are said to express non‑cognitive states such as emotions, attitudes, or commitments. This section surveys classic noncognitivist theories, more sophisticated expressivist developments, and the central logical challenge known as the Frege–Geach Problem.

9.1 Classical Noncognitivism: Emotivism and Prescriptivism

Emotivism, associated with A. J. Ayer and C. L. Stevenson, holds that moral utterances express emotions and attempt to influence others’ attitudes. Saying “Stealing is wrong” is likened to saying “Boo to stealing!” with an added persuasive element.

Prescriptivism (R. M. Hare) instead treats moral judgments as prescriptions or imperatives. “You ought to keep your promises” is primarily a universalizable command rather than a statement of fact.

Both views aim to explain:

• the tight connection between moral judgment and motivation,
• the action‑guiding, commendatory, and disapproving roles of moral language,
• and the apparent lack of empirical content in moral claims.

9.2 Expressivism and Quasi‑Realism

Later theorists, notably Simon Blackburn and Allan Gibbard, developed expressivism, which maintains the core idea that moral statements express evaluative attitudes, but seeks to account for their apparently truth‑apt and logically embedded behavior.

Expressivists claim that:

• moral sentences can be treated as truth‑apt in a minimalist sense,
• logical relations (like consistency and entailment) reflect relations between underlying attitudes,
• and we can make sense of moral disagreement as clashes of “plans,” “endorsements,” or “norm‑acceptances.”

Quasi‑realism is Blackburn’s project of explaining how a purely expressivist starting point can earn the right to much of the realist’s vocabulary—talk of truth, facts, and objectivity—without committing to an independent moral ontology.

9.3 The Frege–Geach Problem

The Frege–Geach Problem challenges noncognitivist accounts of moral language. It arises from the observation that moral statements appear in embedded contexts (conditionals, negations, arguments) where they do not function as straightforward expressions of attitude. For example:

1. If lying is wrong, then getting your little brother to lie is wrong.
2. Lying is wrong.
3. Therefore, getting your little brother to lie is wrong.

To explain the validity of this argument, it seems necessary to treat “lying is wrong” as expressing the same content in both premises and the conclusion. Critics argue that if moral sentences merely express attitudes (like booing or prescribing), it is hard to secure this kind of logical consistency and inferential structure.

Expressivists have responded with sophisticated semantic models (e.g., using higher‑order attitudes, plan‑laden contents, or norms of acceptance) intended to preserve logical relations among moral statements while maintaining a fundamentally noncognitive interpretation.

The adequacy of expressivist solutions to the Frege–Geach Problem remains a central point of contention in contemporary metaethics.

10. Error Theory, Nihilism, and Debunking Arguments

Error theory is a form of moral anti‑realism that combines cognitivism with a global negative verdict on the truth of moral claims. It is often associated with broader ethical nihilism, and it overlaps with debunking arguments that question the epistemic or metaphysical credentials of moral beliefs.

10.1 The Structure of Error Theory

Error theorists typically accept:

1. Cognitivism: Moral statements purport to describe objective facts and are truth‑apt.
2. Falsity: There are no such objective moral facts or properties.
3. Systematic error: Therefore, all positive moral judgments (such as “Murder is wrong”) are false.

J. L. Mackie’s Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (1977) is the canonical statement. He famously writes:

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“There are no objective values.”

— J. L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong

Mackie’s arguments include the argument from relativity (pointing to persistent disagreement) and the argument from queerness (claiming that objective values would be metaphysically and epistemologically strange).

10.2 Moral Nihilism and Its Variants

Error theory is one form of moral nihilism, understood as the denial that there are any genuine moral truths, obligations, or values. Some nihilists accept that moral language is systematically erroneous; others advocate revising or abandoning moral discourse altogether.

Variations include:

• Fictionalism, which treats moral discourse as a useful fiction, to be “accepted” rather than believed.
• Revolutionary nihilism, which urges replacing moral concepts with alternative normative vocabularies (e.g., prudential or political).

10.3 Debunking Explanations

Recent decades have seen the rise of debunking arguments, drawing on evolutionary biology, psychology, and cultural anthropology. These arguments claim that:

• many moral beliefs are best explained by evolutionary pressures (for cooperation, kin selection, etc.) or cultural forces,
• these explanations seem largely independent of the truth of any particular moral claims,
• and this may undermine the justification or reliability of moral beliefs.

Debunking strategies are used by error theorists and some relativists to support anti‑realist conclusions, but they are also employed more modestly, for example, to challenge specific moral beliefs (about purity, hierarchy, or gender roles) without embracing global error theory.

10.4 Criticisms and Alternatives

Critics of error theory and nihilism argue that:

• it is psychologically difficult or practically unstable to believe that all moral claims are false,
• moral language might not be best interpreted as strictly fact‑stating, weakening the error theorist’s semantic premise,
• and debunking explanations may be compatibilist, showing how evolution or culture helped track moral truths rather than undermining them.

The dialectic between error theory, nihilism, and responses to debunking remains an active area of metaethical discussion.

11. Constructivism, Contractualism, and Practical Reason

Moral constructivism holds that moral truths are not discovered as independent facts, but are in some sense constructed by appropriate procedures of reasoning, agreement, or reflection. This section focuses on constructivism’s relation to contractualism and the role of practical reason.

11.1 Constructivist Core Idea

Constructivists maintain that:

• moral norms are the outcome of a constructive procedure (for example, what agents would agree to under ideal conditions),
• their validity depends on being appropriately generated by this procedure,
• yet the resulting norms can still possess a form of objectivity, in that agents have reasons to accept them regardless of contingent desires.

This positions constructivism between robust realism (which posits stance‑independent moral facts) and subjectivism or relativism (which ties morality directly to actual preferences or cultures).

11.2 Kantian Constructivism

Kant’s idea that morality is grounded in the structure of practical reason and the autonomy of rational agents has inspired modern constructivists. On a Kantian reading, moral requirements are those principles that rational agents must will as universal laws if they are to act coherently.

Contemporary Kantians such as Christine Korsgaard develop this into an explicitly constructivist view: the authority of moral norms arises from their being the outcome of procedures that rational agents cannot reject on pain of undermining their own identities or agency.

11.3 Contractualism and Public Justification

Contractualist theories interpret moral principles as those that could be agreed upon by suitably situated agents. John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice famously proposes the original position, where parties, behind a veil of ignorance, choose principles of justice. Rawls characterizes his view as a kind of “Kantian constructivism.”

T. M. Scanlon’s contractualism (What We Owe to Each Other) focuses on principles that no one could reasonably reject as a basis for informed, unforced general agreement. The emphasis here is on mutual justifiability and the interpersonal standpoint.

11.4 Practical Reason and Normative Authority

Constructivists typically link moral normativity to practical reason. Moral principles are seen as:

• those that are the outcome of rational deliberation under specified ideal conditions,
• or those that agents must accept if they are to count as reasoning correctly about what to do.

Critics question whether constructivist procedures can avoid presupposing substantive moral standards (e.g., about fairness or respect), whether they yield unique answers, and whether constructivism ultimately collapses into some form of realism about the correctness of the procedures themselves or into relativism if multiple reasonable procedures are possible.

12. Moral Naturalism, Non‑Naturalism, and Supervenience

This section examines competing realist accounts of the metaphysics of moral properties—particularly naturalism and non‑naturalism—and the widely discussed structural relation of supervenience between moral and non‑moral facts.

12.1 Moral Naturalism

Moral naturalism holds that moral properties are natural properties, continuous with those studied by the empirical sciences. Naturalists typically claim that:

• moral properties can be identified with, or reduced to, complex natural properties (e.g., promoting well‑being, satisfying preferences, supporting cooperation),
• moral facts can play a role in causal explanations (such as explaining social cohesion or individual flourishing),
• and moral knowledge is not radically different in kind from empirical knowledge.

Some naturalists offer analytical reductions of moral terms; others adopt more non‑reductive or “Cornell realist” positions, arguing that moral properties are realized by, but not strictly identical to, natural properties.

12.2 Non‑Naturalist Realism

Non‑naturalist moral realists accept that moral facts supervene on natural facts but insist that moral properties are irreducible and non‑natural. These properties are said to be:

• inherently normative, involving reasons or “oughts,”
• not capturable in purely descriptive or scientifically specifiable terms,
• and known through some form of rational intuition, understanding, or reflective equilibrium.

Neo‑Moorean realists argue that attempts to reduce moral predicates to descriptive ones fail to capture this distinctively normative aspect. They may appeal to conceptual analysis or to the role of moral judgments in reasoning about reasons.

12.3 The Supervenience of the Moral on the Natural

Supervenience is a structural thesis about how moral properties relate to non‑moral (often natural) properties. A common formulation is:

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There can be no moral difference between two situations without some non‑moral difference.

In other words, if two situations are identical in all natural respects, they cannot differ morally. This is often taken as a minimal constraint on any realist view, but it is also accepted, in some form, by many anti‑realists.

12.4 Debates Over Explanation and Queerness

Debates between naturalists and non‑naturalists often center on:

• explanatory power: whether naturalist identifications enhance or distort moral explanation,
• ontological parsimony: whether postulating irreducible moral facts is metaphysically costly,
• and queerness: whether non‑natural normative properties are “too strange” to fit into a plausible ontology.

Non‑naturalists respond that normativity is itself a basic feature of reality that cannot be explained away, while naturalists and some anti‑realists suggest that appealing to natural properties and psychological or social facts suffices to explain moral practice.

13. Moral Relativism, Contextualism, and Pluralism

This section examines views that challenge or qualify the idea of a single, universal moral truth: moral relativism, contextualism, and value pluralism.

13.1 Moral Relativism

Moral relativism holds that the truth or justification of moral judgments is relative to some standpoint—such as a culture, society, or individual—without an overarching absolute standard.

Forms include:

• Cultural relativism: moral truths are relative to cultural norms.
• Subjectivism: moral truth depends on individual attitudes or commitments.
• Relativized truth theories: the truth of “X is wrong” is indexed to a parameter (e.g., a community’s standards).

Proponents appeal to:

• the diversity of moral codes across societies,
• the role of social practices in shaping moral concepts,
• and the alleged absence of neutral, culture‑independent criteria for resolving deep disagreements.

Critics argue that relativism complicates moral criticism of practices like slavery or oppression, makes sense of “moral progress” only relative to changing standards, and risks self‑refutation if the claim that “no moral standard is objectively correct” is itself advanced as an objective truth.

13.2 Contextualism About Moral Language

Contextualism focuses on the semantics and pragmatics of moral expressions. Contextualists maintain that the content of a moral statement partially depends on the context of utterance—for example, on the speaker’s standards, the comparison class, or presupposed ideals.

On some versions, “X is wrong” might mean roughly “X is wrong by the standards in play here,” where those standards can shift between contexts (e.g., theoretical discussion, internal criticism, cross‑cultural evaluation). This allows contextualists to explain apparent disagreements and the flexibility of moral discourse without necessarily endorsing full‑blown metaphysical relativism.

13.3 Value Pluralism

Value pluralism, associated with figures such as Isaiah Berlin, holds that there are many fundamental, sometimes incommensurable moral values (e.g., liberty, equality, loyalty, compassion), none of which can be fully reduced to or ranked by a single master value.

Pluralists maintain that:

• moral conflict can be tragic, involving clashes between genuine values rather than between right and wrong simpliciter,
• there may be no single uniquely correct resolution in some cases,
• and attempts to impose a monistic value system risk distorting moral life.

Pluralism can be combined with realism, relativism, or contextualism, depending on how plural values are understood (as objective, culturally grounded, or practice‑relative).

These positions highlight complexities in moral disagreement and evaluation that challenge simple pictures of a unified, universally shared morality.

14. Moral Epistemology and Moral Motivation

This section addresses two interrelated topics: how moral beliefs can be justified or known (moral epistemology), and how moral judgments relate to motivation and action.

14.1 Sources of Moral Knowledge

Moral epistemology investigates whether, and how, moral claims can be justified or known. Major approaches include:

• Rationalism and intuitionism: Some philosophers hold that we have a faculty of rational intuition or understanding that directly apprehends basic moral truths (e.g., that unnecessary suffering is wrong). More complex principles are then justified by reflection and inference.
• Empiricism and naturalism: Others emphasize observation, experience, and empirical science. On these views, knowledge of human flourishing, social cooperation, or psychological well‑being informs moral judgment.
• Reflective equilibrium: Popularized by John Rawls, this method seeks coherence between specific moral judgments and general principles by mutual adjustment, without privileging either as infallible.
• Constructivist epistemology: Constructivists link moral justification to the outcomes of appropriate procedures of reasoning or agreement; knowledge consists in recognizing principles generated by these procedures.

Debates concern the reliability of intuitions, the role of disagreement, and whether evolutionary and cultural influences undermine moral justification.

14.2 Moral Disagreement and Skepticism

Persistent and deep moral disagreement raises epistemic questions:

• Does widespread disagreement suggest that there is no moral truth, or that humans lack reliable access to it?
• Or is disagreement compatible with truth, as in other domains (e.g., theology, philosophy, or complex science)?

Some argue that the combination of disagreement and debunking explanations supports forms of skepticism or error theory, while others maintain that disagreement is to be expected given complexity, limited information, or divergent non‑moral beliefs.

14.3 Moral Motivation: Internalism vs. Externalism

Motivational internalism holds that there is a conceptual or necessary connection between sincere moral judgment and motivation: if someone genuinely judges that they ought to do X, they are, ceteris paribus, at least somewhat motivated to do X.

Externalists deny such a necessary connection, allowing for amoralists who acknowledge moral requirements without any motivation to comply. They typically posit that motivation requires an additional desire or conative state.

Internalism is often associated with noncognitivist and some constructivist views that tie moral judgment closely to attitudes or commitments. Externalism is commonly favored by robust realists who treat moral judgments as beliefs that may or may not align with an agent’s desires.

14.4 Reason and Desire

Related debates concern whether moral reasons themselves are grounded in agents’ desires (a Humean picture) or can exist independently of them (anti‑Humean). These disputes bridge metaethics and the broader theory of practical reason, influencing accounts of why moral considerations should move us to act.

15. Interdisciplinary Connections: Science, Religion, and Politics

Metaethics interacts extensively with other disciplines that inform, challenge, or presuppose views about moral objectivity, meaning, and knowledge. This section highlights connections with science, religion, and politics.

15.1 Science: Evolution, Psychology, and Neuroscience

Empirical research has influenced metaethical debates in several ways:

• Evolutionary biology provides accounts of how cooperative behaviors, altruistic tendencies, and moral sentiments might have evolved. These explanations underlie evolutionary debunking arguments, which question whether moral beliefs formed under such influences are truth‑tracking.
• Moral psychology and cognitive science investigate the cognitive and affective processes underpinning moral judgment, including dual‑process models (intuitive vs. reflective systems), the roles of emotion and reason, and patterns of moral development.
• Neuroscience identifies brain regions involved in moral decision‑making and empathy, raising questions about the relation between neural mechanisms and normative evaluation.

Some philosophers use these findings to support naturalist accounts of moral properties or to argue for the centrality of emotion and intuition, while others caution against drawing strong metaethical conclusions from descriptive science alone.

15.2 Religion and Theological Ethics

Religious traditions offer their own metaethical frameworks:

• Divine command theories ground moral obligations in God’s will or commands.
• Natural law approaches (in contemporary as well as medieval forms) tie morality to human nature as understood within a theistic worldview.
• Religious doctrines can bolster claims to moral objectivity, while also raising questions about pluralism, revelation, and interpretive authority.

Metaethicists examine whether appeals to God provide an ultimate foundation for moral norms or instead introduce a further dependence on contested theological claims. They also consider how religious diversity bears on debates about relativism and pluralism.

15.3 Politics, Law, and Public Reason

Metaethical views inform, and are informed by, political theory and legal philosophy:

• Liberal and human‑rights discourses often presuppose some form of moral realism or at least robust objectivity regarding human dignity and basic rights.
• Constructivist and contractualist approaches support ideas of public reason and legitimacy, linking political norms to what citizens could reasonably agree to under fair conditions.
• Relativist and pluralist perspectives highlight the diversity of values in multicultural societies, influencing debates over toleration, cultural accommodation, and the limits of moral criticism.

These interdisciplinary connections illustrate how metaethical theories both draw on and shape wider intellectual and social debates.

16. Contemporary Debates and Future Directions

Contemporary metaethics is marked by a wide array of positions and an absence of consensus. Several debates dominate current discussions and suggest possible future directions.

16.1 Evolutionary Debunking and Moral Realism

One prominent debate concerns whether evolutionary and cultural explanations of moral belief undermine moral realism. Evolutionary debunkers argue that if our moral intuitions are shaped mainly by fitness considerations, their reliability as guides to stance‑independent moral truth is questionable. Realists respond by:

• developing models on which evolution helped track moral truths (e.g., by favoring cooperation),
• distinguishing between different domains of morality (some more, some less evolutionarily influenced),
• or embracing more modest, domain‑specific forms of realism.

16.2 New Forms of Expressivism and Hybrid Theories

Expressivism has evolved into increasingly sophisticated semantic frameworks, often drawing on tools from formal semantics and pragmatics. At the same time, hybrid theories have emerged that combine cognitive and non‑cognitive elements—for example, treating moral judgments as expressing both beliefs about natural facts and attitudes toward them.

These developments seek to reconcile the motivational force of moral judgments with their apparently belief‑like, truth‑apt character.

16.3 Constructivism vs. Realism

Debates between constructivists and robust realists remain central. Questions include:

• whether constructivist procedures can yield sufficiently determinate and authoritative moral norms,
• whether constructivism can avoid presupposing independent moral standards when specifying those procedures,
• and whether disputes about the “correct” procedures effectively reintroduce realist commitments.

Some philosophers explore metaethical pluralism, suggesting that different domains (e.g., interpersonal morality, political justice, personal virtues) may be best understood through different metaethical lenses.

16.4 Expanding the Canon and Methodologies

Recent work has also broadened the scope of metaethics by:

• engaging with non‑Western traditions (Confucian, Buddhist, African philosophies) and questioning whether standard Western categories (realism, noncognitivism, etc.) adequately capture their views,
• integrating feminist, critical race, and postcolonial perspectives that scrutinize the social and power‑laden dimensions of moral discourse,
• and employing new methodological tools, such as experimental philosophy, corpus linguistics, and formal modeling.

These trends may reshape existing debates or introduce new questions about how metaethicists should proceed.

16.5 Prospects

Future directions are likely to include further interaction with empirical sciences, refinements of naturalist and non‑naturalist realisms, continued work on hybrid and pluralist frameworks, and deeper engagement with global and critical perspectives on normativity. The field’s ongoing diversity suggests that multiple, partially overlapping research programs will continue rather than converge quickly on a single dominant theory.

17. Legacy and Historical Significance of Metaethics

Metaethics has had a substantial impact on both philosophical practice and broader intellectual culture. Its legacy can be traced in several domains.

17.1 Shaping Ethical Theory

By distinguishing clearly between metaethical, normative, and applied questions, 20th‑century metaethics helped structure the discipline of ethics. The clarification of this division has:

• encouraged more precise debates within each area,
• highlighted the dependence of some normative theories on underlying metaethical assumptions,
• and made it possible to compare normative views that share a metaethical framework, or conversely, to explore how the same normative outlook can be grounded in different metaethical bases.

17.2 Influencing Philosophy of Language, Mind, and Metaphysics

Metaethical debates have contributed significantly to wider philosophical discussions:

• Noncognitivism and expressivism spurred developments in philosophy of language (e.g., about meaning, force, and the semantics of evaluative terms).
• Theories of moral judgment and motivation inform the philosophy of mind, particularly in debates over the nature of belief, desire, and practical reasoning.
• Realist and anti‑realist disputes over moral properties intersect with metaphysics and ontology, influencing views about universals, properties, and the status of normative entities.

17.3 Impact Beyond Academic Philosophy

Metaethical ideas have seeped into legal theory, political discourse, theology, and public debates about relativism, tolerance, and the possibility of moral progress. Discussions of human rights, multiculturalism, and international law often implicitly rely on assumptions about whether moral claims can be objectively true or are culturally relative.

Moreover, in everyday reflection, questions about whether morality is “just a matter of opinion,” whether science can settle moral issues, or whether religious belief is needed for morality are, in effect, metaethical questions that reflect the field’s concerns.

17.4 Ongoing Significance

Historically, metaethics has provided a framework for organizing disagreements that might otherwise remain inchoate. By making explicit the semantic, metaphysical, epistemological, and psychological dimensions of moral thought, it has allowed philosophers and other theorists to diagnose where and why they diverge.

The historical significance of metaethics thus lies not in settling moral disputes, but in reshaping how such disputes are understood and in clarifying the possible forms that moral justification, objectivity, and disagreement can take.