explain and evaluate metaethical positions, including moral realism, relativism, subjectivism and emotivism

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.

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.