noncognitivisme

Noncognitivism, in metaethics, is the view that moral judgments do not aim to describe states of the world with truth conditions. Instead, moral sentences are said to express attitudes, emotions, or prescriptions rather than propositions that can be true or false. As a result, moral discourse is not truth-apt in the same way as factual claims.

Two influential variants are emotivism and prescriptivism. Emotivism, associated with A. J. Ayer and later Charles Stevenson, holds that moral utterances primarily express emotional responses and are intended to influence others’ attitudes. Prescriptivism, advanced by R. M. Hare, contends that moral language functions as commands or guidelines that aim to guide action and are more like universalizable prescriptions than descriptive statements.

Noncognitivism has implications for how moral language is analyzed and how moral motivation is understood. If moral judgments express attitudes rather than beliefs about facts, disagreements may reflect differing feelings or directives rather than factual contradiction. Some noncognitivists acknowledge that moral discourse can have motivational force, though in a non-cognitive way. The approach faces several challenges, notably the Frege-Geach problem, which questions how non-cognitive theories can handle the logical structure of embedded moral statements in complex sentences. Critics also ask how non-cognitivism accounts for apparent moral reasoning and debated rational revision.

In response, some philosophers have developed quasi-realism, attempting to preserve the appearance of moral realism while maintaining non-cognitive commitments. Noncognitivism remains a central topic in metaethics, shaping discussions about meaning, normative language, and the nature of moral discourse.