Metaethics: realism, relativism and emotivism: QCE Philosophy and Reason
“Explain and evaluate metaethical positions, including moral realism, relativism, subjectivism and emotivism”
Metaethics asks about the status of moral claims rather than which actions are right. The key divide is cognitivism (moral claims are beliefs that can be true or false) versus non-cognitivism (they are not truth-apt). Moral realism says there are objective moral facts, explaining disagreement and universal wrongs but facing the worry of how we know such facts. Cultural relativism makes morality relative to societies, capturing diversity but unable to condemn any culture or to justify its own tolerance. Subjectivism reduces moral claims to the speaker's attitudes and so loses genuine disagreement, while Ayer's emotivism treats them as expressions of feeling with no truth value, facing the Frege-Geach problem. Hume's is-ought gap warns against deriving values from facts alone.
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What this dot point is asking
QCAA wants you to step back from particular moral theories and ask about the status of moral claims themselves. This is metaethics: not "what is right?" but "what kind of thing is a moral claim, and can it be true?" You need the cognitivist and non-cognitivist families, the main positions (realism, relativism, subjectivism, emotivism), and the is-ought problem. It frames every normative theory you study.
The answer
Normative ethics versus metaethics
Normative ethics asks which actions are right and which traits are good; utilitarianism, Kantian ethics and virtue ethics are normative theories. Metaethics asks the prior questions: are moral claims true or false at all? If so, what makes them true? How do we know them? What do moral words mean? Metaethics is about the nature and status of morality.
Cognitivism versus non-cognitivism
The central divide:
- Cognitivism: moral statements express beliefs that are true or false, stating facts (or purported facts). "Torture is wrong" is the kind of thing that can be true.
- Non-cognitivism: moral statements do not state facts and are not true or false; they express something else, such as feelings or commands.
Moral realism
Moral realism is the cognitivist view that there are objective moral facts, true independently of what anyone thinks, much as mathematical or physical facts are. On this view "slavery is unjust" is objectively true. Strength: it explains moral disagreement as a dispute about facts and supports the idea that some practices are wrong everywhere. Objection: it is hard to say where moral facts exist or how we perceive them (the "queerness" worry pressed by J. L. Mackie).
Cultural relativism
Cultural (descriptive then normative) relativism holds that moral truth is relative to a culture: what is right is what a society approves. Strength: it explains the diversity of moral codes and encourages tolerance. Objections: it cannot condemn another culture's practices (even slavery or genocide) as wrong; it makes the reformer who opposes their society's norms automatically mistaken; and "be tolerant" looks like a non-relative value smuggled in.
Subjectivism and emotivism
- Subjectivism: a moral claim reports the speaker's own attitude ("X is wrong" means "I disapprove of X"). It makes moral claims true or false (about the speaker) but cannot capture genuine disagreement: if you and I just report different feelings, we are not actually disputing.
- Emotivism (A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic, 1936): a non-cognitivist view that moral claims express emotion and seek to influence others, rather than stating facts. "Stealing is wrong" functions like "Stealing, boo!" It has no truth value. Objection (the Frege-Geach problem): moral terms behave logically like fact-stating ones in arguments, which emotivism struggles to explain.
Hume's is-ought gap
David Hume observed that writers slide from statements about what is the case to claims about what ought to be, without explaining the transition. The is-ought gap (and the related charge of the naturalistic fallacy, named by G. E. Moore) warns that you cannot validly derive a moral conclusion from purely factual premises. This challenges any theory that tries to read values straight off the natural facts.
Locate the position behind "There are no real moral facts; saying murder is wrong just expresses our disgust" and assess it.
Step 1: Ask whether the claim treats moral statements as truth-apt
The speaker denies that moral statements state facts that are true or false, so this is a non-cognitivist position rather than realism or subjectivism.
Step 2: Identify the specific view
Because it says moral language expresses emotion (disgust) and aims to influence others rather than report the speaker's own attitude, it is emotivism (Ayer), not subjectivism (which would make it true or false about the speaker).
Step 3: State its appeal
It fits the motivational pull of moral talk (judging something wrong moves us to act) and avoids the metaphysical puzzle of where objective moral facts could exist.
Step 4: Apply a decisive objection
Run the Frege-Geach test: embed the claim in a conditional ("if murder is wrong, then ordering a murder is wrong") and a valid argument. The moral term keeps its meaning in unasserted contexts where no emotion is expressed, which emotivism cannot easily explain. This weakens the view by suggesting moral language is genuinely fact-stating.
The first question in metaethics is whether moral claims can be true or false at all. Cognitivists (realists, subjectivists) say yes; non-cognitivists (emotivists) say no, holding that moral language expresses feeling rather than stating facts. Sorting any position onto this map is the move that organises the whole debate.
- Confusing normative ethics with metaethics
- Utilitarianism answers "what is right"; metaethics asks whether such answers can be true at all.
- Treating relativism as obviously tolerant
- Relativism cannot ground a universal duty to be tolerant, since that would itself be a non-relative value.
- Equating subjectivism and emotivism
- Subjectivism makes claims true or false (about the speaker's attitude); emotivism denies they are true or false at all.
- Crossing the is-ought gap unnoticed
- A valid argument cannot move from purely factual premises to a moral conclusion without a value premise.
Try this
Q1. Distinguish normative ethics from metaethics. [2 marks]
- Cue. Normative ethics asks what is right; metaethics asks about the nature, truth and meaning of moral claims.
Q2. State one strength and one objection for cultural relativism. [4 marks]
- Cue. Strength: explains moral diversity and tolerance; objection: cannot condemn any culture's practices, and tolerance is itself non-relative.
Q3. Explain Hume's is-ought gap. [3 marks]
- Cue. You cannot validly derive an "ought" conclusion from purely "is" premises without a value premise.
Exam-style questions
Questions in the style of QCAA exam questions on this dot point, each with a worked answer. They are written by ExamExplained unless tagged "Past paper"; the year shows the paper a question is modelled on.
Practice7 marksEvaluate cultural relativism as a metaethical theory, considering at least one strength and two objections.Show worked answer →
A 7 mark response explains the view, then weighs strengths against objections.
The view. Cultural relativism holds that moral truth is relative to a culture: an action is right if the society approves it, so there are no culture-independent moral facts.
Strength. It accommodates the observed diversity of moral codes and seems to encourage tolerance of other ways of life rather than imposing one culture's values.
Objection 1 (no external critique). If right just means approved by one's society, no culture's practices (even slavery or genocide) can be judged wrong from outside, which clashes with the strong conviction that some practices are wrong everywhere.
Objection 2 (the reformer problem and self-refutation about tolerance). A moral reformer who opposes their society's norms is, by definition, mistaken, which seems wrong. And the recommended tolerance is itself a non-relative value, so relativism cannot consistently demand it.
Verdict. Relativism rightly notes diversity but fails as an account of moral truth, since it cannot condemn atrocities or ground its own tolerance.
Markers reward an accurate statement, a genuine strength, two developed objections, and a justified conclusion.
Practice5 marksDistinguish emotivism from subjectivism, and explain the Frege-Geach problem as an objection to emotivism.Show worked answer →
A 5 mark response separates the two views and explains the objection.
Distinction. Subjectivism is cognitivist: "X is wrong" reports the speaker's own attitude ("I disapprove of X"), which is true or false about the speaker. Emotivism (Ayer) is non-cognitivist: "X is wrong" expresses emotion and seeks to influence ("X, boo!"), with no truth value at all.
The Frege-Geach problem. Moral terms function logically like ordinary descriptive terms: we embed them in conditionals ("if stealing is wrong, then getting your brother to steal is wrong") and run valid arguments (modus ponens) on them. But in an unasserted context the speaker expresses no emotion, so emotivism struggles to explain how the same moral term keeps a constant meaning and supports valid inference. This suggests moral language is more fact-like than emotivism allows.
Markers reward the cognitivist-versus-non-cognitivist distinction and an accurate account of the embedding problem.