Metaethics: moral realism, relativism and the status of moral claims

What this dot point is asking

This dot point develops the ethics strand by asking not what is right but whether anything is really right at all. You are asked to map the main metaethical positions and evaluate whether morality can be objective.

What metaethics asks

Normative ethics asks which actions are right. Metaethics asks prior questions: are there moral facts, are moral claims true or false, and what do moral words mean? The central divide is between cognitivism, which says moral statements express beliefs that can be true or false, and non-cognitivism, which says they express something else, such as emotions or commands. Cutting across this is the question of objectivity: even if moral claims can be true, are they made true by mind-independent facts?

Moral realism

Moral realists hold that some moral claims are objectively true, true independently of what anyone thinks. On this view, the wrongness of torturing an innocent for fun is a fact, much as the roundness of the earth is a fact. Realists point to the apparent objectivity of moral discourse: we argue about morality, take ourselves to discover moral truths, and think people can be mistaken. Some realists, like the moral naturalists, identify moral properties with natural ones such as wellbeing; others, following G. E. Moore, hold that goodness is a non-natural, indefinable property and that defining it in natural terms commits the naturalistic fallacy.

Relativism

Moral relativism holds that the truth of moral claims is relative to a framework, usually a culture. What is right in one society may be wrong in another, with no neutral standpoint to judge between them. The main evidence is the diversity of moral codes across history and cultures. Relativism promotes tolerance and humility, but faces a serious objection: it seems to make moral reform impossible, since reformers like the abolitionists were, by their own society's standards, simply wrong. It also struggles to condemn practices we are confident are wrong, such as slavery, on more than parochial grounds.

Error theory and non-cognitivism

J. L. Mackie defended an error theory: ordinary moral thought assumes there are objective values, but no such queer entities exist, so all positive moral claims are systematically false. His argument from queerness holds that objective values would have to be metaphysically and epistemologically strange, unlike anything else we know. A different anti-realism comes from emotivism, associated with A. J. Ayer, who held that saying stealing is wrong merely expresses disapproval, like saying boo to stealing. Later expressivists such as Simon Blackburn refined this to explain why moral language behaves logically like fact-stating language even if it expresses attitudes.

Evaluating the debate

A strong answer weighs the cost of each view. Realism best fits how moral practice feels but owes an account of where moral facts come from and how we know them. Relativism explains diversity but undercuts cross-cultural criticism. Error theory takes objectivity seriously but concludes our moral claims are all false, which is hard to live by. Non-cognitivism avoids spooky facts but must explain moral disagreement and reasoning. Many contemporary philosophers seek a middle path, such as quasi-realism or constructivism associated with Christine Korsgaard, which grounds objectivity in the demands of practical reason. For the exam, show you can place a view on the cognitivism and objectivity map and state its leading objection.