Talk:Metaethics

message: I think some of the theories listed under antirealism are actually realist.  Aren't divine command theory and ideal observer theories realist theories?  They claim that there are moral values that are objectively true or false independent of us.Eric (talk) 18:14, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Not quite.  DCT claims that there are moral values independent of humans, but they are not mind-independent in the sense required for the metaphysical thesis of moral realism.  IOT does not rely on you or me specifically, but it does rely on an ideal version of you or me.  That is, it argues that if we were perfectly rational, we would prefer acts of one sort over acts of another.  But if IOT is to be distinguishable from those views, such as Kantianism, which argue that moral truths are logically necessary truths, it must not think these are objective. Postmodern Beatnik (talk) 18:29, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Realism vs Antirealism 

message: How can we do meta-ethics without even mentioning Emmanuel Levinas??? 170.35.208.21 21:19, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Easily.  For one thing, it is commonly thought that Levinas didn't write an ethics at all, at least not in the traditional sense this article is concerned with.  Second, his thought is thoroughly Continental.  And while this is respectable in itself, it is again not the concern of this article.  Your own fervor for Levinas is not a rationale for including him in every philosophy article. Postmodern Beatnik 15:18, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Levinas 

message: The addition of the "in Philosophy" qualification is the start of my practical contributions to resolving the mess in the Ethics article. This article (meta-ethics) is excellent IMO, and is about Philosophy. The existing Ethics article says it's about Philosophy, but much of it is not. It's a bit of a mess, and possibly the Ethics article should be replaced by a disambiguation page. --Andrewa 21:20, 7 Sep 2003 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cleaning up 

message: :"It is seen by many as a "default" (though not necessarily correct) view, as it is seemingly obvious that when one says "Murder is wrong" they are saying that the act of murder, or some consequence of it, is objectively wrong. However, many meta-ethicists (for example A.J. Ayer, C. L. Stevenson and R. M. Hare) have argued that this is incorrect [...]"
If not PoV, this is certainly an odd way of phrasing things. First saying that it is seemingly obvious to consider a moral utterance an utterance of matter of facts, and then claim that some people do argue against this "seemingly obvious" theory. Adding the word seemingly might seem like it is all taken care of, but it still sounds wrong in my ears. Is it really even seemingly obvious? Why not at least add "they argue that" before saying this?
:Hello, anonymous contributer. Firstly, you might want to sign up for an account. It is quick, easy and safe, and means we are not talking blindly. Secondly, thank you for posting on the talk page before making an edit; a practice not enough Wikipedians do. To your point: it was my edit that you object to. I agree that it is a clumsy way of saying what I am trying to say. Basically, I am saying (roughly): cognitivism is the common-sense view. It is common-sense because what it says "sounds right" when you first hear it. However, there are other views, and one needs to appreciate the nuances of all of them to come to a proper decision. If you do not like it, would you like to sugest a better wording, and I will gladly re-edit and re-re-edit until we come to an agreement. Happy editting! --Batmanand 23:37, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  PoV? 

message: Why are there no citations in this article? I thought we are supposed to refer our edits to verifiable sources?
:I concur.  This article is in desperate need of citations.  It would even just be a start to put in the sources where these philosophers are supposed to have endorsed these views.  For example, if someone claims that A.J. Ayer endorses ethical subjectivism, then put in the reference to his Language, Truth, and Logic, for example, and cite that he endorses it there. We should then probably have a references and further reading section with stuff instead of these footnote-style references. Any objections? -- Jaymay 19:48, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citations 

message: I was under the impression a primary concern of meta-ethics was to ask the question, "Are the moral value judgments we accept justified, and if so, on what grounds?" I would like to add this in the section entitled "meta ethical questions". Any thoughts? I took this out of a Frakena Ethics text. Somaticvibe 21:40, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That question sounds like the essence of first-order ethics to me. What's meta about it? Could you quote a bit from the text you refer to, so the rest of us can get a sense of what you have in mind? --Christofurio 04:13, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: How could it possibly be first order ethics?  Once we take a step back and ask about the justification for everything we've been saying, we're into a meta-field.  Just look a meta-philosophy or metaphysics. Postmodern Beatnik 15:32, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

text: I concur with this analysis.  Once we take a step back from normative ethics and attempt to justify its claims, we have clearly made a jump from first to second order ethics (i.e. from normative ethics to meta-ethics). Postmodern Beatnik 15:32, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Justification 

message: Is there a reason we use the hyphen, rather than the preferred spelling that omits it?  Just wondering. Postmodern Beatnik 17:41, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know that omitting the hyphen is the preferred spelling.  I've seen it mostly with the hyphen in current professional academic philosophy. But, I don't think it matters either way.  It's definitely legit both ways. I think the hyphen at least makes it more legible. -- Jaymay 19:50, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Meta-ethics or Metaethics? 

message: Would Weber be a value pluralist? 
Btw, shouldnt we have a link to a "value pluralism" section, instead of redirecting it to Isaiah Berlin?
:We do have a link to value pluralism.  The link to Isaiah Berlin is a "see also." Postmodern Beatnik 19:04, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Max Weber 

message: If by moral relativism we mean the opposite of moral absolutism, then relativism may of course be morally realist. To say that moral turth is relative is not to say that it does not exist, but rather an admission that it does exist and is ("being" being an exclusive property of that which exists) relative.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.68.179.159 (talk) 21:02, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, you have a point, and may be right, if moral realism is the thesis that "moral facts, of whatever kind, exist."  (IOT and DCT would of course also be realisms under this definition.)  Now it is generally thought that this is not enough to count as realism, that the moral facts must also be "robust," which is cashed out as something like "independent of what particular minds happen to think about morality, as individuals or groups."  In which case it is not a form of moral realism, nor is DCT, and Ideal Observer Theory may or may not be. I'm still waiting to see if someone can document a clear, consistent definition of moral realism which resolves this and related issues; as noted in above discussions, there are at least two different definitions of realism in the article, under one of which Hare, for example, counts as a realist, while under the other he does not. So this and other questions may hinge on this issue.--ScottForschler (talk) 22:20, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think that's the point our anonymous commenter is making.  Richard Joyce has made the point, here for example, that the objective/subjective and absolute/relative dichotomies concern orthogonal matters (despite our confused terminiology).  As such, what has been called moral relativism or metaethical moral realism (MMR) should be called something like "group subjectivism."  This is perhaps quite true, but I don't think it is a problem so long as we are clear about how we are using the term "moral relativism" (which is, after all, still the dominant label). Postmodern Beatnik (talk) 12:53, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The Joyce article does make a very important distinction, but I'm not sure how this shows that I have misread the commenter, assuming some convention understandings of the terms being used.  Indeed, I read Joyce's conclusion as leaving space for the commenter's point.  If it is the subjective-objective distinction which characterizes moral realism (the latter requiring objectivity), then if this is *all* it requires, then since a statement like "it is wrong for agent A to do X" is objectively true according to moral relativism just if A lives in a culture whose rules forbid X, it follows that moral relativism is committed to objective moral facts, and hence is a form of moral realism. Now if moral realism *also* is thought to require that moral facts be robust in a way that don't depend on the particular beliefs of any persons or group thereof (is this what is meant by absolutism? Joyce doesn't define the term) then it wouldn't be a form of moral realism. But this seems to add something to Joyce's definition. I'm not against adding it as long as we're clear on this and have grounds for doing so in the literature, but I agree so far that this distinction needs to be made more clear and consistently held to throughout the article, while important possible variations and finer distinctions (such as those Joyce discusses) may be worth mentioning as well.--ScottForschler (talk) 15:37, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that the article leaves room for our anonymous commenter's point.  Indeed, I would say it makes room for the point.  The reason I thought you originally missed his meaning is that the distinction, as presented in Joyce, does not rely on realism being the thesis that "moral facts, of whatever kind, exist."  Joyce employs the robust model of metaethics, and so DCT and other subjectivisms count as anti-realism for him.  Relativism, then, states that moral statements are indexical, whereas absolutism suggests they are not.  While this is not fully explored in the Joyce supplement, it could be argued that certain acts are situationally relative but still objectively right or wrong.  That is, on a Kantian view suicide is absolutely wrong (wrong for all people in all circumstances at all times).  But cutting someone open with a knife is relative (murder does not treat someone as an end, surgery does).  So here we have a relativist realism (or at least relativism in realism) that does not make moral truths relative to a person or a culture.  Reading the original comment again, however, I am no longer sure that this was the point being made.  If it was just a defense of the minimal model, then you are correct in your responses.  Sorry for being a bit quick on the draw! Postmodern Beatnik (talk) 13:37, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Moral relativism is not nessecarily anti-realist 

message: Just a note: In the first line of the first section "Meta-ethical questions", when you click on the Link "Richard Garner" you end up at a Wiki page that refers to a different Richard Garner (a Canadian sports broadcaster) than the one actually referred to in this article.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.59.115.1 (talk) 05:01, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Wrong Link to Richard Garner

message: From the hed:
:Meta-ethics is one of the three branches of ethics generally recognized by philosophers, the others being normative ethics and applied ethics. Ethical theory and applied ethics make up normative ethics.
This seems, if not contradictory, at least confused, since it suggests that applied ethics is both part of and counter-posed to normative ethics. Can someone clarify, either here or in the article? · rodii · 17:30, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Good catch, thanks. Not sure where that came from. Fixed now. --Pfhorrest (talk) 02:27, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text:  Thanks. · rodii · 15:07, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Muddled hed 

message: Does anyone know why Daniel Dunn redirects to this article? Senator2029 (talk) 19:04, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I have changed it to now redirect to Daniel Donne.  If there are objections, please let me know. Senator2029 (talk) 19:21, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why does [[:Daniel Dunn]] redirect to this article? 

message: I offer no excuse for the following question other than my own curiosity. Can anyone name me a contemporary (living as of 2015) academic/published thinker on ethical/meta-ethical questions whose views may fairly be described as (a) cognitivist, (b) intuitionist, (c) consequentialist, and (d) pluralist. It seems a natural combination. It amounts to saying we can have knowledge of what is good, through intuition (rather than inference), that acts which INCREASE in sum of goodness so understood are right actions, but that there may be a plurality of conflicting right courses of conduct. 
I think for example that Isaiah Berlin would probably have qualified on all counts if I had asked 20 years ago. Any suggestions will be very appreciated. Christofurio (talk) 17:48, 15 February 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Contemporaries 

message: As someone with little grounding in philosophy, some sections of this article are too dense to get through - shorter sentences, reduced use of jargon, and clear explanation of terms before their use (or immediately following their initial use) would help a lot.
As an example, this sentence explaining non-centralism in the Centralism and Non-centralism section:
* "Non-centralism has been of particular importance to ethical naturalists in the late 20th and early 21st centuries as part of their argument that normativity is a non-excisable aspect of language and that there is no way of analyzing thick moral concepts into a purely descriptive element attached to a thin moral evaluation, thus undermining any fundamental division between facts and norms"
Phrasing like "non-excisable," the extreme length of this sentence, and use of the word normativity without explaining its meaning make these passages a challenge to understand for laymen. I'm proposing adding the  tag to the article to help address this. 204.9.220.36 (talk) 18:55, 9 September 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Technical Language 

message: Why would morals be discussed under Meta-ETHICS? This is not an entry on Meta-Morals, but Meta-Ethics. There are no such things as Meta Morals to discuss. Morals are relative to the people and societies that create and subscribe to them. Ethics are NOT morals. Confusing the two--over 200 hundred years after Hegel reasoned and laughed at those who confused the two--here we are seeing the casual confusion lingering on.... Morals are a set of values held by people through nurture/upbringing, including all the horrors visited on homosexuals, women, people of other faiths, etc. Ethics are independent of what people think or do or say or believe. Its source is the Natural Law, therefore, universal, absolute and unchanging. One may object morally to, say, homosexuality but ethically protect the homesexuals to have the exact same equality with other people everytime and everywhere.   So, lets hope under the heading "Meta-ethics" it would be ethics that gets discussed not morals  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2604:2000:1383:8B32:223:12FF:FE20:7BC7 (talk) 20:17, 20 August 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Hegel may have distinguished between ethics and morals that way, but that's far from universally accepted usage in common English, where "ethics" is frequently taken to mean the branch of philosophy that studies morality. --Pfhorrest (talk) 20:53, 20 August 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  The usual confusing of ethics with morals