metaethical

Metaethics is a branch of ethics that investigates the nature of moral judgments, properties, language, and truth rather than the prescription of action. It asks what moral terms such as good, bad, right, and wrong refer to, whether moral facts exist independently of human attitudes, and how we might know them if they do.

The central questions of metaethics can be organized around two axes. Cognitivism versus non-cognitivism asks whether moral statements are truth-apt and capable of expressing beliefs, or whether they express attitudes, commands, or prescriptions without stating facts. Realism versus anti-realism concerns the existence and status of moral facts: do such facts exist independently of us, or are they dependent on human minds, language, or practice? Within realism there are naturalist accounts that tie moral properties to natural properties, and non-naturalist accounts that posit moral properties beyond natural science. Within anti-realism, non-cognitivist theories hold that moral judgments do not aim at truth; error theory claims moral statements are systematically false; constructivism contends that moral truths arise from rational procedures, negotiation, or conventions rather than discoverable facts.

Historically, metaethics engages with problems such as Hume’s is-ought distinction and Moore’s open-question argument. It encompasses discussions from emotivism and expressivism (Ayer, Blackburn, Gibbard, Joyce) to contemporary defenses of realism (Shafer-Landau) and various constructivist approaches (Korsgaard, Scanlon).

Metaethics thus clarifies what moral language means, whether moral claims report objective truths, and how such claims could be known or justified. Its findings illuminate the foundations of normative and applied ethics, shaping how ethical theories are evaluated and applied in practice.