metaeetika

Metaeetika, or metaethics, is the branch of ethics that studies the nature, status, and foundations of moral judgments and moral language rather than prescribing how to act. It asks what moral terms such as good, right, and ought mean; whether moral claims are objective truths or subjective expressions; and how moral knowledge or justification is possible. The field distinguishes questions about meaning and truth conditions from normative ethics (what we ought to do) and applied ethics (moral problems in practice).

Core questions include whether moral properties exist, and if so, whether they are natural properties, non-natural properties, or constructs with no mind-independent existence. Are moral statements cognitively meaningful and truth-apt, or do they express attitudes, emotions, or prescriptions without truth conditions? How does moral motivation arise, and what explains moral disagreement? What is the status of moral relativism versus realism? How should we interpret moral language across different cultures and languages?

Major positions have developed along several axes. Cognitivism holds that moral statements can be true or false; non-cognitivism claims they express attitudes or commands. Realism argues that at least some moral properties exist independently of our beliefs; anti-realism contends that moral truths are not mind-independent. Within these, naturalism ties moral properties to natural properties, while non-naturalism maintains there are morally relevant properties beyond natural science. Prominent metaethical theories include emotivism and prescriptivism (early 20th century), expressivism (contemporary), moral error theory, and Moorean non-natural realism.

In contemporary discourse, metaethics interfaces with philosophy of language, psychology, and cognitive science, shaping debates on moral disagreement, justification, and the grounds for normative claims. The term is used in Estonian and other languages as a translation of metaethics.