Introduction to meta ethics

What meta-ethics asks#

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Meta-ethical theories

Fig. 1Theories divide into cognitivist (moral facts exist) and non-cognitivist (moral language expresses attitudes).

Meta-ethics is second-order ethics: it does not ask what is right or wrong (that is normative ethics), but asks about the nature, meaning and status of moral thought and language. Its central questions are: what do we mean when we call something 'good' or 'wrong'? Are moral judgements statements of fact that can be true or false, or expressions of something else (feelings, commands, attitudes)? If there are moral facts, what kind of facts are they and how do we know them? Are moral truths objective (holding independently of what anyone thinks) or subjective/relative? Meta-ethics thus underlies all normative debate: whether it even makes sense to argue that euthanasia is 'really' wrong depends on what 'wrong' means and whether it can be true.

The primary division in meta-ethics is between cognitivism and non-cognitivism. Cognitivism holds that moral statements are cognitive — they express beliefs, assert propositions, and are capable of being true or false; 'murder is wrong' states something that is the case (or not). Non-cognitivism holds that moral statements are non-cognitive — they do not assert facts or express beliefs at all, but do something else: express or evoke emotions, issue commands, or prescribe actions; 'murder is wrong' is not a fact-stating claim but (roughly) an expression of disapproval or a prescription not to murder, and so is neither true nor false. This is the same cognitive/non-cognitive divide met in religious language, now applied to moral language.

Within cognitivism there is a further split over what kind of fact moral facts are. Ethical naturalism holds that moral facts are natural facts — facts about the world (about happiness, wellbeing, human flourishing, or God's commands) that could in principle be investigated empirically or rationally; 'good' can be defined in non-moral terms (e.g. 'good' = 'what maximises happiness'). Ethical non-naturalism (intuitionism) holds that moral facts are real but not natural — 'good' names a simple, non-natural property that cannot be defined in natural terms and is known by a special faculty of moral intuition. The dispute between them turns on G. E. Moore's 'naturalistic fallacy', examined next.

These positions can be arranged as a spectrum of increasing distance from objective moral fact: ethical naturalism (moral facts are natural, knowable facts — the most robustly objective), intuitionism (moral facts are real but non-natural, known by intuition), emotivism and prescriptivism (no moral facts; moral language expresses attitudes or prescriptions — anti-realist). Moral realism is the umbrella term for the view that there are objective moral facts (naturalism and intuitionism are both realist); anti-realism denies this (the non-cognitivist theories are anti-realist). Locating each theory on this realism/anti-realism spectrum is the framework for the whole topic, and the recurring evaluative question is whether the objectivity of ethics can be defended or whether morality is, at bottom, an expression of human attitudes.

Worked example

Reading a moral utterance

How does each meta-ethical family understand the utterance 'cruelty is wrong'?

Naturalism
It states a natural fact — e.g. that cruelty reduces wellbeing or violates flourishing — which is true or false and empirically/rationally accessible.
Intuitionism
It states a real but non-natural fact: cruelty has the indefinable property of wrongness, known by moral intuition.
Emotivism
It expresses the speaker's disapproval of cruelty ('cruelty — boo!') and seeks to evoke like feeling; it is neither true nor false.
Prescriptivism
It prescribes universally: 'do not be cruel — and let no one be cruel', a command the speaker commits to, not a fact.

Result: The same sentence is read as a natural fact, a non-natural fact, an expression of feeling, or a universal prescription depending on the theory — which is exactly what meta-ethics investigates.

Typical mistakes

Answering a meta-ethics question with normative content (arguing what is right) instead of discussing the meaning and status of moral language.
Confusing ethical naturalism (a cognitivist, realist theory) with the naturalistic fallacy (Moore's objection to it).

Active revision

Explain the difference between cognitivist and non-cognitivist theories of ethical language. (Structured AO1 response)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for religious studies (Department for Education)

Naturalism and the naturalistic fallacy#

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Moore's open-question argument

Fig. 2For any naturalistic definition of 'good', the question 'but is that good?' remains open, so 'good' is not identical to the natural property.

Ethical naturalism is the cognitivist, realist view that moral properties are natural properties and that moral statements can be reduced to, or defined in terms of, non-moral facts about the world. Utilitarianism is a paradigm: it defines 'good' as 'that which maximises happiness', so that whether an act is good becomes a factual question about its consequences. A theological naturalism defines 'good' as 'commanded by God' or 'in accordance with human nature/flourishing' (natural law has naturalist tendencies). The attraction of naturalism is that it makes moral disagreement genuinely factual and resolvable in principle, and it explains how we can have moral knowledge — by investigating the natural facts (happiness, flourishing) that morality tracks.

David Hume raised an early problem for any move from facts to values: the is/ought gap. In the Treatise he observes that writers proceed with factual statements ('is' and 'is not') and then suddenly slip to 'ought' and 'ought not', without explaining how this new relation is derived from the old. His point is that no purely factual (descriptive) premise can validly yield an evaluative (prescriptive) conclusion — you cannot logically derive 'you ought to help' from 'helping increases happiness' without a further evaluative premise ('you ought to increase happiness'). If Hume is right, ethical naturalism's attempt to define moral terms wholly in factual terms is in trouble, because the definition would bridge exactly the gap Hume says cannot be bridged.

G. E. Moore, in Principia Ethica (1903), turned this into the decisive objection: the naturalistic fallacy. Moore argued that 'good', like 'yellow', is a simple, unanalysable property — you cannot define it, only point to it — and that any attempt to define 'good' in terms of some natural property (pleasure, desire, evolutionary fitness) commits the naturalistic fallacy of confusing 'good' with the natural thing that happens to be good. His test is the open-question argument: for any proposed naturalistic definition, say 'good = pleasant', it remains an open, sensible question to ask 'but is the pleasant good?' — the question is not trivial or self-answering the way 'is the pleasant pleasant?' is. Since the question stays open, 'good' cannot mean 'pleasant'; and the same holds for every naturalistic definition. Therefore 'good' is indefinable, and naturalism fails.

Moore's argument was hugely influential but is itself contested. Critics reply that the open-question argument may prove only that we have not found the correct definition, not that no definition is possible (the identity of water and H2O was once an 'open question' to those who did not know the chemistry, yet water is H2O). Some naturalists (the 'Cornu realists', and earlier ethical naturalists) argue that moral properties can be identified with, rather than synonymously defined as, natural properties, escaping the fallacy. Others accept Moore's point against reductive definition but reject his non-natural intuitionist conclusion in favour of non-cognitivism. The naturalistic fallacy therefore does not settle meta-ethics; it poses a challenge that naturalists must meet — either by finding a non-reductive identity between moral and natural facts, or by conceding that ethics cannot be straightforwardly defined in factual terms.

Worked example

The water/H2O reply to Moore

Assess whether the open-question argument refutes ethical naturalism.

State Moore's argument
Since 'is the pleasant good?' remains a substantive open question, 'good' cannot mean 'pleasant'; likewise for any natural definition.
The analogy
'Is water H2O?' was once an open question to those ignorant of chemistry, yet water IS H2O — an open question can reflect ignorance, not non-identity.
Definition vs identity
Naturalists can claim moral properties are identical to (not synonymous with) natural ones, so the analytic open-question test does not touch the metaphysical identity.
Moore's rejoinder
Moral 'good' seems different: no empirical discovery closes the question the way chemistry closed the water question, which suggests genuine indefinability.
Judgement
The argument refutes crude synonymy-definitions but not the more sophisticated identity-naturalism, so naturalism is challenged, not defeated.

Result: The open-question argument defeats naive definitional naturalism but not the claim that moral properties are identical to natural ones; so it constrains naturalism rather than refuting it outright.

Typical mistakes

Confusing the naturalistic fallacy (defining 'good' in natural terms) with the appeal-to-nature fallacy ('natural = good'); Moore's target is the definition of 'good', not appeals to nature.
Treating Moore's argument as a proven refutation; the water/H2O reply shows an open question may reflect ignorance, not indefinability.

Active revision

'The naturalistic fallacy shows that goodness cannot be defined in natural terms.' Assess this view. (Extended essay)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for religious studies (Department for Education)

Intuitionism (Moore, Ross)#

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Naturalism and intuitionism compared

Fig. 3Both are cognitivist and realist, but naturalism defines 'good' in natural terms while intuitionism holds it is non-natural and intuited.

Intuitionism is the cognitivist, non-naturalist response to the failure of naturalism: it holds that moral facts are real but non-natural, and that we know basic moral truths not by empirical investigation or by inference but directly, by moral intuition. Having argued that 'good' is a simple, indefinable, non-natural property, Moore concluded that we simply intuit what things are good in themselves (he thought personal affection and the appreciation of beauty were the greatest intrinsic goods). Intuition, for Moore, is not a mysterious sixth sense but the way we grasp self-evident truths, as we grasp that '2 + 2 = 4' or that a whole is greater than its part — immediately, without proof. Intuitionism thus preserves moral objectivity and truth while accepting that goodness cannot be reduced to natural facts.

H. A. Prichard extended intuitionism to obligation ('ought'), arguing that our sense of duty is likewise underived and self-evident: we simply see, on reflection, that we ought to keep a promise or tell the truth, and the mistake of moral philosophy has been to try to prove these obligations from something else (a mistake he called the error of 'moral philosophy'). W. D. Ross gave the most sophisticated version with his theory of prima facie duties. Ross argued that we intuit a plurality of prima facie (conditional) duties — fidelity (keeping promises), reparation, gratitude, justice, beneficence, self-improvement and non-maleficence — each of which is genuinely binding but can be outweighed by another in a particular case. When duties conflict, there is no formula; we must use moral judgement to discern which is the actual duty (duty proper) in the situation. Ross's theory captures the pluralism and conflict of real moral life better than single-principle theories.

The strengths of intuitionism are considerable. It respects the phenomenology of moral experience — we do seem to grasp that gratuitous cruelty is wrong immediately, without deriving it from anything more basic. It preserves moral objectivity and truth against the sceptical drift of non-cognitivism, explaining how moral disagreement can be genuine (we can be right or wrong). Ross's prima facie duties in particular give a realistic account of moral conflict without the rigidity of absolutism or the single-mindedness of utilitarianism. And by locating basic moral knowledge in intuition, it avoids both the naturalistic fallacy and the regress of trying to prove every moral claim from another.

The weaknesses are equally serious and are the standard evaluative points. First, the epistemology is obscure: what is this faculty of 'intuition', and how does it detect non-natural moral properties? Intuition looks suspiciously like a name for a strong feeling of conviction, which is not evidence of truth. Second, intuitions conflict — between individuals and cultures — and intuitionism offers no way to adjudicate: if my intuition says one thing and yours another, and both are supposed to be self-evident, we have no method to decide who is right, which threatens to collapse intuitionism back towards subjectivism. Third, the postulation of 'non-natural' moral properties is metaphysically extravagant (J. L. Mackie's 'argument from queerness': such properties would be utterly unlike anything else in the world, and a faculty to detect them utterly unlike any other, so we have good reason to doubt they exist). Whether intuitionism's preservation of moral objectivity is worth these epistemological and metaphysical costs is the evaluative crux.

Worked example

Ross on conflicting duties

Explain how Ross's theory handles a conflict between keeping a promise and preventing harm, and assess it.

The case
I promised to meet a friend, but on the way I could stop to help an injured stranger — fidelity vs non-maleficence/beneficence conflict.
Prima facie duties
Both fidelity (keep the promise) and beneficence (help the injured) are genuine prima facie duties, each binding in itself.
Duty proper
In this situation the weightier duty — helping to prevent serious harm — becomes the actual duty; the promise is overridden but not cancelled (I owe an apology/reparation).
Strength
This captures moral experience: we feel the pull of both duties and the residue when one is overridden.
Weakness
Ross gives no rule for weighing conflicting prima facie duties, relying on unexplained intuition, so intractable conflicts have no principled resolution.

Result: Ross's prima facie duties realistically model moral conflict and the 'residue' of overridden duties, but the reliance on intuition to weigh them leaves genuinely balanced conflicts without a principled resolution — the central weakness of intuitionism.

Typical mistakes

Treating 'intuition' as an emotion — for the intuitionist it is the rational grasp of self-evident truths, analogous to grasping simple mathematical truths.
Omitting Ross's prima facie/duty proper distinction, which is the most examinable and defensible part of intuitionism.

Active revision

'Intuitionism cannot resolve moral disagreements.' Discuss. (Extended essay)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for religious studies (Department for Education)

Emotivism and prescriptivism (Ayer, Hare)#

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Emotivism: the boo/hurrah theory

Fig. 4For emotivism a moral utterance expresses the speaker's attitude and seeks to evoke like feeling, asserting no fact.

Emotivism is the non-cognitivist theory that moral statements express and evoke emotions rather than stating facts. It follows naturally from logical positivism: A. J. Ayer, applying the verification principle, argued that since moral statements are neither analytic nor empirically verifiable, they are not genuine factual assertions; instead, to say 'stealing is wrong' is to express the speaker's disapproval and to seek to arouse similar feeling in others — it adds nothing factual to 'you stole that money' but the tone of moral condemnation. Ayer's view is often nicknamed the 'boo/hurrah theory': moral utterances are essentially 'stealing — boo!' and 'charity — hurrah!'. On this account moral statements are neither true nor false, and moral 'disagreement' is a clash of attitudes, not of beliefs.

C. L. Stevenson developed emotivism more subtly, distinguishing the 'descriptive' and 'emotive' meaning of ethical terms and analysing moral language as expressing attitudes and seeking to influence the attitudes of others (dynamic use). For Stevenson, moral disagreements are 'disagreements in attitude' rather than in belief: two people who agree on all the facts about capital punishment may still disagree morally because they have different underlying attitudes, and moral argument works by trying to alter attitudes, sometimes by marshalling facts that will change how the other feels. This captures something real about moral debate — that it is often about what to favour, not only about what is the case.

R. M. Hare's prescriptivism is a more sophisticated non-cognitivism that tries to preserve the rationality of ethics that emotivism seemed to lose. Hare argued that the primary function of moral language is not to express emotion but to prescribe: to say 'you ought to do X' is to issue a universalisable command — 'do X, and let anyone in like circumstances do likewise'. Moral judgements are thus prescriptive (they guide action, like imperatives) and universalisable (they commit the speaker to the same judgement in all relevantly similar cases, including cases where they are on the receiving end). This universalisability introduces a rational constraint: I cannot consistently prescribe that others be treated in ways I would not accept for myself, which allows moral reasoning and argument without moral facts, and connects prescriptivism to the golden rule and to Kant.

Non-cognitivism has real strengths: it explains the action-guiding, motivating force of moral judgements (why sincerely judging something wrong disposes us not to do it) in a way cognitivism struggles to (the 'is/ought' and motivation problems), and it avoids the metaphysical extravagance of non-natural facts and the epistemological mystery of intuition. But it faces powerful objections. First, it seems to make moral disagreement merely a clash of feelings or preferences, unable to say that torturing children is really wrong, not just disapproved of — which offends against the strong sense that some moral claims are objectively true. Second, on emotivism moral argument looks impossible or merely rhetorical (if I 'boo' and you 'hurrah', there is nothing to argue about), though Hare's universalisability restores some rationality. Third, it struggles with the phenomenon of moral progress (abolishing slavery seems like discovering a truth, not just changing attitudes). Whether non-cognitivism's explanatory strengths outweigh its apparent surrender of moral objectivity is the decisive evaluative question of the topic.

Worked example

The moral-progress objection

Assess whether emotivism can account for moral progress, such as the abolition of slavery.

The intuition
The abolition of slavery looks like moral progress — the discovery that slavery was always wrong, not merely a change in fashion.
Emotivism's account
On emotivism there is no fact 'slavery is wrong' to discover; abolition is a change in society's attitudes, from approval to disapproval.
The objection
This cannot capture 'progress': a mere change of attitude is not obviously an improvement, and emotivism cannot say the abolitionists were right and slaveholders wrong.
The emotivist reply
Stevenson: attitudes changed partly through new facts and arguments; Hare: universalisability shows slaveholders could not consistently prescribe their own enslavement.
Judgement
Emotivism strains to explain progress as improvement; prescriptivism's universalisability does better, but neither delivers the robust objectivity the intuition seems to demand.

Result: Emotivism cannot easily represent moral change as genuine progress towards truth, which is a serious cost; Hare's universalisability recovers some rational grip, but the full objectivity behind the intuition of 'progress' favours a realist meta-ethics.

Typical mistakes

Reducing all non-cognitivism to 'boo/hurrah' — Hare's prescriptivism is far more sophisticated and restores rational argument via universalisability.
Claiming emotivism makes moral statements false; on emotivism they are neither true nor false, because they are not assertions.

Active revision

'Moral statements are merely expressions of emotion.' Assess this view. (Extended essay)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for religious studies (Department for Education)

Are moral facts real? Evaluation#

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Cognitivist and non-cognitivist meta-ethics compared

Fig. 5Cognitivism secures moral truth at metaphysical cost; non-cognitivism explains motivation but denies moral facts.

The central meta-ethical question — whether moral statements describe objective facts — pits the strong intuitions supporting realism against the explanatory advantages of anti-realism. On the realist side stand powerful considerations: the phenomenology of moral experience (we experience some things, like gratuitous cruelty, as simply wrong, not merely disapproved of), the apparent objectivity of moral progress (abolishing slavery seems like getting something right), the genuineness of moral disagreement (we argue as if there is a fact of the matter), and the action-guiding authority of morality (its claims feel binding on us whether we like them or not). These support the view that there are moral truths independent of our attitudes.

On the anti-realist side stand equally serious difficulties for realism: the metaphysical strangeness of moral facts (Mackie's argument from queerness — objective values would be entities unlike anything else in the universe, and a faculty to know them unlike any other), the epistemological obscurity of moral 'intuition', the persistence and depth of moral disagreement across cultures and history (which looks more like divergent attitudes than error about facts), and the tight link between moral judgement and motivation (which non-cognitivism explains naturally and realism does not). These support the view that moral language expresses attitudes, prescriptions or commitments rather than tracking facts.

Each of the four theories buys its strengths at a characteristic cost, and a strong evaluation weighs them. Ethical naturalism secures objectivity and moral knowledge but faces the naturalistic fallacy and the is/ought gap. Intuitionism preserves objectivity and the phenomenology of self-evident duties but relies on a mysterious faculty and cannot resolve conflicting intuitions. Emotivism explains motivation and avoids queer facts but seems to reduce morality to feeling and make disagreement and progress unintelligible. Prescriptivism recovers rational argument through universalisability but still denies moral facts and struggles to ground the authority of morality. There is no cost-free option: robust objectivity comes at metaphysical/epistemological cost, and metaphysical economy comes at the cost of moral objectivity.

The most defensible judgement will take a considered position while acknowledging the force of the other side. One defensible line is a qualified realism: the intuitions supporting objectivity (that torturing children for fun is really wrong) are so strong that a theory which cannot honour them pays too high a price, so we should prefer a realist meta-ethics — perhaps a non-reductive naturalism or a chastened intuitionism (Ross) that grounds a plurality of duties — even at some metaphysical cost. An equally defensible line is a sophisticated non-cognitivism (Hare, or later 'quasi-realism') that captures the practical, action-guiding character of morality and, through universalisability, preserves enough rationality and quasi-objectivity to do justice to moral argument without positing queer facts. What matters at A-Level is a sustained argument to a conclusion, weighing the intuitions supporting objectivity against the metaphysical and epistemological costs of realism, rather than a mere survey. The debate also connects to religion: a theistic ethic can ground objective moral facts in God (natural law, divine command), which is why some argue that abandoning God threatens moral objectivity — a claim examined in the dialogue between religion and ethics.

Worked example

Model evaluation plan: are moral facts real?

Plan an essay assessing whether moral statements are objectively true.

Thesis
The intuitions supporting objectivity are strong enough to favour a qualified realism, despite its metaphysical costs.
Case for realism
Phenomenology, moral progress, genuine disagreement, and the binding authority of morality.
Case against
Mackie's queerness, the obscurity of intuition, deep cross-cultural disagreement, and the motivation link (non-cognitivism's strength).
Weigh the costs
Realism pays metaphysical/epistemological costs; anti-realism pays the cost of moral objectivity and progress.
Judgement
Prefer a non-reductive realism or chastened intuitionism because abandoning the objectivity of 'torturing for fun is wrong' costs more than positing modest moral facts — while conceding non-cognitivism's insight about motivation.

Result: A defensible verdict: the strength of core moral intuitions favours a qualified moral realism over non-cognitivism, accepting some metaphysical cost as the lesser price than surrendering the objective wrongness of paradigm evils.

Typical mistakes

Surveying the four theories without weighing them to a judgement about whether moral facts are real.
Assuming realism or anti-realism is obviously correct; the strongest answers acknowledge that each side pays a real price.

Active revision

'Ethical statements are objectively true.' Evaluate this claim. (Extended essay)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for religious studies (Department for Education)

Key points

Reading a moral utterance

Key points

The water/H2O reply to Moore

Key points

Ross on conflicting duties

Key points

The moral-progress objection

Key points

Model evaluation plan: are moral facts real?

Sources

Introduction to meta ethics

Key points

Reading a moral utterance

Key points

The water/H2O reply to Moore

Key points

Ross on conflicting duties

Key points

The moral-progress objection

Key points

Model evaluation plan: are moral facts real?

Sources