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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)
Seeing that no one took up my suggestion to re-write the realism/anti-anti-realism definitions, I did so myself. The result is surely not fully satisfactory, but I endeavored at least to make them more consistent, and point out that three different things were at stake here: objectivity, robustness, and truth-aptness of ethical sentences. Depending on whether one counts only the first, or two, or all three of these as requirements of "realism," one gets different results about who counts as a realist and who doesn't.
To be complete, some further rearrangement and dicsussion is doubtless required. Or perhaps someone will endeavor to show that there is agreement in the literature about what counts as realism; but this should be adequately sourced, which the previously definitions were not, and consistent, as again they were not, as they conflated these three distinctions. I will not accept any reversion or rewriting which classifies Hare, for example, as a non-realist and therefore rejecting objective moral values, because he does not, merely because he does not think that ethical sentences are statements. With such caveats in mind, further revisions are invited.-- ScottForschler ( talk) 19:34, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
How can we do meta-ethics without even mentioning Emmanuel Levinas??? 170.35.208.21 21:19, 6 April 2007 (UTC)SaySomethingThen
The article could do with mentioning the rationalism of the kind that Kant/Nagel/Smith all argue for. Any objections? There are also some other changes I'd suggest (e.g constructivism, a bit more on the normative vs. meta ethics debate, and perhaps pointing out that meta-ethics can perhaps be well described by splitting it into 3 sub-sections: psychology (moral motivation), ontology (what are moral facts?) and epistemology): any thoughts?
What exactly is the rationalist tradition in relation to meta-ethics? Please explain a little more (I like the idea, but would like to know what you propose before you do it). Batmanand 15:13, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Comment: One should avoid inserting miscellaneous extra views into the "meta-ethical theories" section of the article. As I originally wrote it, there was a logic to the division: Naturalism, intuitionism, subjectivism, error theory, and non-cognitivism are the five main categories of theories that are recognized in the field; and logically, any theory (that addresses the same questions) *must* fall into one of those categories (so things like "constructivism" and "rationalism" are not separate categories). This is because those five alternatives arise from asking:
1. Are there objective values? If yes, then 2. Are they reducible?; 3. Do we know about them a priori or empirically?
If no to #1, then 2. Do moral statements *assert that* there are objective values? If no to #2, then 3. Do they assert propositions at all? -- owl232 15:29, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
What about fictionalism? Amcfreely 06:04, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
"I take it to be a matter of logic that morality is not objective."
"you seem to be using it as the thesis that reason alone can lead us to some foundational truths about ethics. But this is again misleading"
Rationalism may likewise be fuzzy-edged; until you pressed me on the point of whether they had to believe that standard ethical sentences like "we ought to maximize utility" are true or false, or simply warranted/uniquely rationally prescribable/acceptable or what-have-you, I confess I hadn't explored the difference carefully, but this is at least one crucial factor in deciding whether Hare counts as rationalist, or whether rationalism counts as moral realism (assuming we can nail that one down further...)
I realized there's another source for this, more recent than Gewirth: Harry Frankfurt, “Rationalism in Ethics,” Autonomes Handeln: Beitrage zur Philosophie von Harry G. Frankfurt, eds. Monica Betzler and Barbara Guckes. Berlin: Akademie Verlag GmbH, 2000. 259-273. My notes taken when I first read this include: He starts with a nice observation of the “creative and robust” tendency of rationalism in ethics, including Kant and Nagel by name, defining it as the attempt to “prove that moral principles and moral commands can be rigorously elicited from the requirements of rationality alone.” (259) Frankfurt opposes rationalism, and I think significantly misunderstands it, so he may not be reliable; but as stated it needn't lead to "truth," just "rigorously [derived] principles." Frankly I don't know if there's a more authoritative source than this, I may have to track down multiple ones and document them appropriately....-- ScottForschler ( talk) 22:06, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
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)
I believe it can be proven as fact, not opinion, that in certain academic philosophy circles, meta-ethical investigations or allied fields are increasingly far more privileged than traditional normative ethics. -- Dpr 03:54, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
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?
The introduction situates Meta-ethics as one of two areas of thought within ethics. My understanding was that a more accurate division could be made seperating meta-ethics, normative ethics and applied ethics. The latter being a fairly large field in and of itself such a distinction would make sense. If this scheme is in some way outdated or problematic let me know. If I'm right change it or tell me that I'm right and I will. -- Jsn4 02:14, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
Hope no one is upset by my edit changing the overall structure of meta-ethical theories. However, the way I have it now really is more correct (see my comment under "Rationalism"). The earlier version portrays the main division in meta-ethics as "non-cognitivism vs. everybody else", but that isn't the way it's usually seen. Subjectivists, for instance, are (rightly) considered closer to emotivists than they are to intuitionists. (In case anyone cares, I'm Mike Huemer, author of the first version of this after Larry Sanger's lecture notes.) -- owl232 15:40, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
What about the meta-ethical theory that ethics are grounded in our biology? That ethics come about because we are society-froming animals? That something that is "wrong" for a human would not nessesarily be wrong for a (sentient) tiger or ant?
Hi all. I've recently improved on (I think) the organization and presentation of the meta-ethical theories section. Hopefully most agree. I didn't change any content, though, at least not in that one edit to the presentation. I think it is much easier on the eyes and more organized now. -- Jaymay 19:52, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
Why are there no citations in this article? I thought we are supposed to refer our edits to verifiable sources?
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)
"As usually concieved, meta-ethics asks the following questions. 1) What is the meaning or definition of ethical terms or concepts like 'right', 'wrong'...2) How are moral uses of such terms to be distinguished from non moral ones...3) What is the analysis or meaning of related terms or concepts like 'action', 'conscience', 'free will', 'motive'...4) Can ethical and value judgments be proved, justified, or shown valid? If so, how, and in what sense? Or, what is the logic or moral reasoning and of reasoning about value?...Of these 4) is primary. What we mainly want to know is whether the moral and value judgments we accept are justified or not; and if so, on what grounds...Apart from conceptual understanding...we only need to be concerned about the meaning or nature of ethical and value judgments only if this helps us to understand whether and how they may be justified, only if it helps us to know which of them are acceptable or valid." (96, Frakena, Ethics 2nd ed.) This is taken from a chapter, Meaning and Justification, in a more basic ethical text; it might not be extensive enough to be of value to this article. Let me know if this helps clarify what I am proposing. Somaticvibe 21:52, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
Basically I would like to add something along the lines of; "Are there objective or absolute values, and if so how do we logically justify them?" Somaticvibe 21:54, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
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)
Would Weber be a value pluralist? Btw, shouldnt we have a link to a "value pluralism" section, instead of redirecting it to Isaiah Berlin?
There has been some discussion above and on Talk:Moral skepticism about just how we are to name various positions. On Talk:Moral skepticism I have suggested using the robust model as Richard Joyce and Pekka Väyrynen do in their respective articles in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Macmillan's Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd Edition. The robust model delineates the various metaethical positions according to three theses (as given by Väyrynen):
All anti-realists deny 3. Moral subjectivists deny 3, but accept 1 and 2. Moral nihilists deny 3 and 2, but are then subdivided by whether they accept 1 (error theory) or deny 1 (non-cognitivism). It's an simple and intuitive model, but also a powerful one. Moreover, it is the standard way of thinking about metaethics (so much so that Väyrynen doesn't even mention the minimal model in his article). I propose that we take the robust model as our guide when developing all pages related to metaethics and metaethical positions. Postmodern Beatnik ( talk) 19:12, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
I didn't see this earlier, apparently it was somehow posted simultaneously with several other posts. Now I more clearly see what you were objecting to in my description of rationalism with respect to Hare (as opposed to everything else I said about it). What Hare has in common with Kant, Gewirth, etc. is indeed a method, not a realist position. Thanks for this clarification, I think it supports the points we have come to agree with, reflected in the current version of the article, and suggests a possible way forward for indicating what Hare has and does not have in common with Kant, etc.-- ScottForschler ( talk) 11:50, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
OK, so here's a new thought. My original suggestion was to count rationalism and IOT both as forms of procedural realism, a category I take from Korsgaard's work (though I don't know that she invented it). That entire edit was removed on other grounds and I reintroduced the category of rationalism by itself. But maybe I'm just thinking of certain forms of rationalism, the ones I'm most familiar with. If moral rationalism is better understood as the view that practical reason alone constrains agents into accepting specific practical judgments (not necessarily truths), then one can be a rationalist but not a realist (though some rationalists certainly are realists, which is why I insisted that intuitionism and naturalism do not constitute the only realist categories). Error theorists are not rationalists because they don't believe that any such practical judgments have a priviledged truth or acceptability status. Rationalists like Korsgaard and Kant are procedural realists, and I think Gewirth too though I'd have to re-read his work very carefully to be sure, he seems to cut a fine line here. More generally, maybe what we need here most is to lay out some other meta-ethical distinctions besides the realist/anti-realist one, as has been suggested earlier. Comments?-- ScottForschler ( talk) 13:10, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
OK, here's a better description of the problem I'm having with the current classification of Hare. Consider this passage right after the 3 anti-realist points:
This equates anti-realism with the absence of objective values (as does the first sentence under anti-realism), and the belief that some ethical statements are objectively correct with moral realism. The later Hare obviously believes that objective values exist, namely utilitarian ones. Any agent who holds contrary values is to some degree fanatical, that is to say irrational, and doesn't even consistently hold the values he claims to have. This is an objective fact for Hare. So he can't be an anti-realist under this description. The final sentence is more problematic, since Hare denies that ethical sentences are necessarily statements in the proper sense (they may be insofar as they have some descriptive element, but their ethical content is non-descriptive). But if he is denied the status of moral realist on this ground, then he's neither a realist nor an anti-realist, which suggests that one or the other description has got to go (unless his position is utterly confused; but while he may be wrong, I think he is quite clear so this would not be a promising move). If we more charitably assume that "ethical statement" means "ethical sentence or judgment" then again, Hare believes that quite a few of these are objectively correct, and is again a moral realist.
This elaborates a more general point I was going to make, which is that my earlier comment about what is important about the "mind-independence" criteria used in this article, and often floated around when meta-ethics is discussed, presumably is trying to get at the idea that your ethics aren't objective if you can just make it up as you go along; supervenience on the objective fact of what whim you (or god) have at the moment is not robust enough to make a position count as a realist one. I think this is a good and important distinction. But again, Hare clearly falls on the realist side if that's what we were trying to get at; he emphatically denies that it's ok to make it up as you go along. In this respect he radicaly disagrees with all the other listed theories called "anti-realist"--except, perhaps, for quasi-realism, which I confess I never understood, and perhaps for some forms of ideal observer theory, about whch I would make the same point, conceding however that less constraining forms of IOT may not be realist because the allowed moral norms depend too much upon empirical attitudes.-- ScottForschler ( talk) 20:23, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
So, I'm still wondering about this last point; do the different definitions of "realism" in the meta-ethics article reflect confusion with the literature on meta-ethics itself? If so we should note this; the current text suggests that everything is crystal clear and undisputed. Or is there a clear definition, in which case some of the contrary definitions are simply wrong? Again, my main concern is here is over the correct classification of both ethical rationalism, and Hare in particular. If realism entails "ought statements are true or false," he's not a realist. But if anti realism means "value judgments are not objective," then he is a realist. I have no objection to using the former definition and classifying him as an anti-realist, as long as it is made clear that anti-realists can still be committed to objectivity in moral judgment; the current article does not make this clear, indeed it denies this, and hence unfairly represents Hare's position.-- ScottForschler ( talk) 19:32, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
PB, I finally got to a library and looked at Hare's essay on Foot again: as I very storngly suspected, he does //not//endorse cultural relativism in this work, and to think he did is a serious misreading. He says, rather, that CR is an inevitable consequence of what he calls "descriptivist" theories of ethical statements, and the point is: so much the worse for descriptivist theories, but look here at some forms of non-descriptivism like mine... Now whether his argument or terminology is good or not, he is absolutely not endorsing CR. So I renew the insistance that this article must be reorganized, and "realism" and its implications more carefully defined, so that Hare is //not// labelled as holding that values are non-objective, for he insists that they are; he only quibbles about applying the word "true" to moral judgments. So call him an anti-realist if this means "ethical statements can be true", but then note that anti-realism needn't mean non-objective; or if realism includes all objective theories, then fit him in there; but the current mish-mash of definitions has got to go. Since you know more about "realism" debates than I, I'll give you first crack at it, or invite others to do; I could go in myself and remove the inconsistencies but the end result might be a hack job.-- ScottForschler ( talk) 00:32, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
References
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)
I'm wondering if, in light of the disagreements over what does or does not constitute moral realism, anti-realism, etc, it might be more productive to use a table or tree labeled with the distinguishing theses (the semantic thesis, etc) to categorize the positions - very similar to the nested lists we have now, just labeled differently - and then follow that up with a section stating (and citing) different definitions of which clades of that tree should be labeled with which term?
So you'd have something like:
(Of course that's an incomplete and possibly incorrect tree there but I'm in a rush at the moment).
Followed up by "according to source1, moral realism encompasses only those theories which hold that moral sentences can truthfully assert propositions about mind-independent facts, while according to source2 realism encompasses...".
Thoughts? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pfhorrest ( talk • contribs) 01:08, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
My apologies for that poorly-organized first foray into your talk page here, I was in a bit of a rush and things got somewhat garbled. I originally was going to propose a table, so that things could be more neutrally categorized according to different orthogonal features; however as soon as I sat down to suggest that it dawned on me that that would require a table of more than two dimensions, awfully difficult to represent on a website... and that drove that thought careening off into the mess above.
Instead, I would like to suggest that the page be reorganized into subsections on different, orthogonal distinctions, with the different particular metaethical theories being listed within each category as appropriate. So for example, one subsection would discuss the realist-vs-antirealist distinction, and would list things much as they are now (though in a less space-consuming way perhaps). Another subsection would discuss the universalist-vs-relativist distinction, in which case IOT, DCT, and Hare's Prescriptivism (which all prescribe the same morality for all people) would be grouped together with the "realist" theories, and in opposition to moral relativism, individualist subjectivism, emotivism, etc (which all tolerate disagreements between different peoples' moral judgements). Perhaps another subsection would discuss cognitivism-vs-noncognitivism, and another objectivism-vs-subjectivism, etc.
In short, I think the way metaethical theories are categorized here focuses too heavily on the realist-vs-antirealist distinction. As important as that distinction is, it obscures some important groupings of theories which appear widely separated in this format, particularly the universalist theories, which include all of the "realist" category, and some but not all of both the "subjectivist" and "noncognitivist" categories of "anti-realism". -
Pfhorrest (
talk)
02:54, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
Sorry to keep following up to my own comments here, but after some attempts to graph the problem I no longer believe that the above is necessary; a table could work, with minimal modification to the structure of the nested lists present now. However, I'm not experienced enough with wiki code to recreate that image without dropping into actual XHTML tables; though I'll gladly do so if that's the appropriate way, and you all like this idea. - Pfhorrest ( talk) 07:10, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
Here is the beginning of a revised nested list more akin to the structure in the image above; I'm still unsure how to break out the "universalism" box without using XHTML tables, so I've just incorporated some notes on universalism into the text as it is... but this is a start at least.
If nobody object to this in the next few days, I'm going to be bold and apply this to the article. Please comment. Thanks. - Pfhorrest ( talk) 22:44, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
I just had another thought: break down the page into sections for the three questions referenced at the top; semantics, metaphysics, and epistemology. What we have now would serve as a basis for the semantics section, and primarily discuss cognitivism vs noncognitivism. The metaphysics section would discuss universalism vs relativism. The epistemology section would discuss rationalism, rational intuitionism, sentimentalism, and empiricism. So Hare, for a good example, would be listed as a noncognitivist, a universalist, and a rationalist (or perhaps a rational intuitionist?). Does that sound good to everyone? - Pfhorrest ( talk) 22:58, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
hello everyone. i read your disscussion so far. it made me wonder about hare and rationalism, i still dont anderstand why calling him rationalist. it is true that he claims that moral truths can be, by principal, revealed by ratio, but he is not clearly claiming for the existance of such truth. maybe i didnt undestand him quite right, but i think he evokes the view that everyone can put forward any moral proposition, and there is not necessarily only one that is true. rationalism, on the other hand, is the view by which there is only one truth, like math, which can be revealed a-priori by ratio. hare, so i understood, didnt dicuss the possibility of someone being wrong in their moral propositions, he just tried to show what do we mean when we declair a moral proposition. have i missed something? thanks for your great work so far guys. matan. Hametaken ( talk) 23:40, 6 September 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.250.79.9 ( talk) 23:27, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
I am in the process of attempting a more extensive organization/reorganization of not just the listing of meta-ethics articles here, but of all of the meta-ethics articles on wikipedia, focusing on bringing them all into agreement with each other and with the main article on meta-ethics here. In the process of this, it has become clear to me that there is some contradictory use of terminology in different articles (and sometimes within the same article), and I would like to clear that up, move content around, and add redirects and disambiguations as necessary, so as to make this reorganization possible.
In particular, the terms whose meanings are in question are:
For your reference, I have diagrammed my proposed solution to the problem yet again, in more detail this time. Dotted lines indicate disambiguation links; dotted boxes indicate disambiguation articles; boxes with grey text are for categorical display only and do not represent actual wiki articles.
As has already been discussed here to a great degree, realism is rather contentious. From what I have read, the consensus seems to be that there are two senses of moral realism:
As far as I can tell, the minimal sense of moral realism makes the exact same claim as moral universalism: the same moral judgements are correct or incorrect everywhere regardless of what people anywhere think is correct or incorrect. Furthermore, some senses of moral objectivism (in particular as used in a sourced quote on moral absolutism and some of the text on moral relativism) seems to mean the exact same thing as well.
Currently, our article on moral objectivism defines it in essence as robust moral realism minus the alethic claim; it is the set of all robust realist theories plus error theory. However, both the page on moral nihilism (where error theory redirects) and the SEP article on moral anti-realism seem to imply that error theory is a subcategory simply of cognitivism, not of objectivist cognitivism specifically; and the latter article in turn dubs non-error-theoretic forms of cognitivism as "moral success theory", encompassing both objectivist and subjectivist cognitivisms. If we adopt that notion of error theory in our taxonomy here, that would make our "moral objectivism" equivalent to our "robust moral realism".
However, in light of the frequent equivocation of universalism, realism, and objectivism, and the previous contentions on the moral objectivism page about the inclusion of Rand's objectivist ethics (which are now a separate article), I propose that rather than having moral objectivism just redirect to moral realism, we make it a disambiguation page directing people to either moral realism, moral universalism, or Objectivist ethics. Furthermore, I propose that we make moral realism discuss robust moral realism specifically and explicitly, diverting people to moral universalism for discussion of minimalist moral realism. The "also called..." parenthetical expression in the opening sentence on moral universalism can then list "moral objectivism" and "minimalist moral realism" as synonyms.
Further still, it seems that moral absolutism is being partly equivocated with universalism/objectivism/minimalist-realism, and partly differentiated as an "anti-contextual" class of theories, for lack of a better term; a class of theories opposed to situational ethics, consequentialism, etc. I would like to suggest that that article be used solely to discuss the latter type of theory, and that readers be again diverted to moral universalism for the general concept of a universal/objective/absolute/"non-relative" system of morality.
Which brings me to my last and most difficult point. Moral relativism. Just what the heck is it? From what I can tell just reading wiki here, the term is used in several distinct ways:
I'm not really certain what the best course of action regarding this term is, but I have a rough thought. Just as I have recently created a (stub) article on individualist ethical subjectivism, we could create an article on cultural ethical subjectivism (or some other better-established equivalent term), clearly identify it as the main form of moral relativism in its own intro and the intro to moral relativism, and then have the former article focus on the specific semantic theory and the latter article focus on the more general issue of non-universalistic yet non-nihilistic ethical theories.
This still leaves the issue of "anti-absolutism" unresolved. The moral absolutism article suggests that consequentialism may be the best antonym, yet consequentialism is usually considered a class of normative ethical theory, not a meta-ethical theory. In my personal opinion consequentialism per se seems metaethical (just saying "I'm a consequentialist" doesn't tell your audience anything about what in particular you think is right or wrong, any more than "I'm a universalist" or "I'm a relativist" does), but this is wikipedia and my personal opinion isn't what matters. So I'm looking for ideas here.
A few other tangential thoughts:
So, that's about it. I'm going to be directing people here from the talk pages of the various topics in question, so that discussion can all happen here in a centralized place. - Pfhorrest ( talk) 10:06, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
Robert Firth, who is responsible for the modern version, held that ideal observer theory is objective, essentially because it does not depend on the existence of experiencing agents. This is not undisputed, but I think is very good reason not to just group ideal observer theory under subjectivism. Warm Worm ( talk) 21:35, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
I want to clarify that I mean Roderick Firth, I'm not sure what my brain was doing there.
Yeah, there's definitely not total agreement on what exactly is meant by "objective" and "subjective." I would guess part of that stems from the tremendously vague definitions that are frequently thrown about of objective as "mind-independent" and subjective as "mind-dependent."
Firth's use of "objective" is distinct from universalism. He considers a view subjective if under it moral propositions would be false by definition if no experiencing agents existed, and objective if not. I see that the ethical subjectivism page is based on a definition from Richard Brandt. Brandt though seems to have accepted Firth's classification of ideal observer theory as objective: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2103510 (I'm of course not sure if you have full jstor access, but even if not, you can see him say it is objective without comment on the first page, and he says nothing contrary to that in the rest of the text.)
I wouldn't have a real issue with the classification it if it was just article categorizing, but whether the theory is objective or subjective is part of the actual encyclopedic content. Summarily saying ideal observer theory is subjective based on a Wikipedia standard without further comment is misleading. Like you said, there isn't real consensus on what is meant by "objective" and "subjective." Why do these articles make it seem like there is?
Maybe this is something that would best be dealt with on the ideal observer theory talk page? I guess I'll probably make a similar post there. I don't really know the protocol for this sort of thing. Warm Worm ( talk) 11:41, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
I've been thinking about this a bit more, and I'm curious as to why the decision was made to use robust moral realism for classification purposes. The minimal moral realism/anti-realism distinction is fairly clear cut, but once the objectivism condition is added some views weave between between realism & anti-realism based on how "objective" is understood.
Anyway, I'm interested in working on the ethical subjectivism article & expanding to discuss various ways in which the distinction can be understood. I've noticed you're especially active on the meta-ethics topics so I wanted to run it by you first; do you think that would be useful? It wouldn't be immediate, just sometime in the nearish future. Warm Worm ( talk) 16:00, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
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)
From the hed:
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)
Does anyone know why Daniel Dunn redirects to this article? Senator2029 ( talk) 19:04, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
The article's Emotivism section, which is set forth near the end of this Semantic Theories section, states that in the emotivist view '..."Killing is wrong" means something like "Boo on killing!" ' A negative of that 'Boo' quotation is that it implies that the speaker of the ethical statement is childlike, unrefined, etc, in the emotivist view. Is there some more-dignified phrasing?, e.g. 'Killing sickens me' or 'Killing disgusts me.' -Bo99
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)
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:
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 {{Technical}} tag to the article to help address this. 204.9.220.36 ( talk) 18:55, 9 September 2016 (UTC)
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)
The result of the move request was: Page moved. ( closed by non-admin page mover) Jerium ( talk) 01:41, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
Meta-ethics → Metaethics – It looks like this renaming question was raised some 15 years ago, above. I seem to find "metaethics" more frequently in my reading, which Google Ngram confirms (if I set it up correctly), so I figured it'd be good to discuss this. Arbitrarily0 ( talk) 21:38, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
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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)
Seeing that no one took up my suggestion to re-write the realism/anti-anti-realism definitions, I did so myself. The result is surely not fully satisfactory, but I endeavored at least to make them more consistent, and point out that three different things were at stake here: objectivity, robustness, and truth-aptness of ethical sentences. Depending on whether one counts only the first, or two, or all three of these as requirements of "realism," one gets different results about who counts as a realist and who doesn't.
To be complete, some further rearrangement and dicsussion is doubtless required. Or perhaps someone will endeavor to show that there is agreement in the literature about what counts as realism; but this should be adequately sourced, which the previously definitions were not, and consistent, as again they were not, as they conflated these three distinctions. I will not accept any reversion or rewriting which classifies Hare, for example, as a non-realist and therefore rejecting objective moral values, because he does not, merely because he does not think that ethical sentences are statements. With such caveats in mind, further revisions are invited.-- ScottForschler ( talk) 19:34, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
How can we do meta-ethics without even mentioning Emmanuel Levinas??? 170.35.208.21 21:19, 6 April 2007 (UTC)SaySomethingThen
The article could do with mentioning the rationalism of the kind that Kant/Nagel/Smith all argue for. Any objections? There are also some other changes I'd suggest (e.g constructivism, a bit more on the normative vs. meta ethics debate, and perhaps pointing out that meta-ethics can perhaps be well described by splitting it into 3 sub-sections: psychology (moral motivation), ontology (what are moral facts?) and epistemology): any thoughts?
What exactly is the rationalist tradition in relation to meta-ethics? Please explain a little more (I like the idea, but would like to know what you propose before you do it). Batmanand 15:13, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Comment: One should avoid inserting miscellaneous extra views into the "meta-ethical theories" section of the article. As I originally wrote it, there was a logic to the division: Naturalism, intuitionism, subjectivism, error theory, and non-cognitivism are the five main categories of theories that are recognized in the field; and logically, any theory (that addresses the same questions) *must* fall into one of those categories (so things like "constructivism" and "rationalism" are not separate categories). This is because those five alternatives arise from asking:
1. Are there objective values? If yes, then 2. Are they reducible?; 3. Do we know about them a priori or empirically?
If no to #1, then 2. Do moral statements *assert that* there are objective values? If no to #2, then 3. Do they assert propositions at all? -- owl232 15:29, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
What about fictionalism? Amcfreely 06:04, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
"I take it to be a matter of logic that morality is not objective."
"you seem to be using it as the thesis that reason alone can lead us to some foundational truths about ethics. But this is again misleading"
Rationalism may likewise be fuzzy-edged; until you pressed me on the point of whether they had to believe that standard ethical sentences like "we ought to maximize utility" are true or false, or simply warranted/uniquely rationally prescribable/acceptable or what-have-you, I confess I hadn't explored the difference carefully, but this is at least one crucial factor in deciding whether Hare counts as rationalist, or whether rationalism counts as moral realism (assuming we can nail that one down further...)
I realized there's another source for this, more recent than Gewirth: Harry Frankfurt, “Rationalism in Ethics,” Autonomes Handeln: Beitrage zur Philosophie von Harry G. Frankfurt, eds. Monica Betzler and Barbara Guckes. Berlin: Akademie Verlag GmbH, 2000. 259-273. My notes taken when I first read this include: He starts with a nice observation of the “creative and robust” tendency of rationalism in ethics, including Kant and Nagel by name, defining it as the attempt to “prove that moral principles and moral commands can be rigorously elicited from the requirements of rationality alone.” (259) Frankfurt opposes rationalism, and I think significantly misunderstands it, so he may not be reliable; but as stated it needn't lead to "truth," just "rigorously [derived] principles." Frankly I don't know if there's a more authoritative source than this, I may have to track down multiple ones and document them appropriately....-- ScottForschler ( talk) 22:06, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
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)
I believe it can be proven as fact, not opinion, that in certain academic philosophy circles, meta-ethical investigations or allied fields are increasingly far more privileged than traditional normative ethics. -- Dpr 03:54, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
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?
The introduction situates Meta-ethics as one of two areas of thought within ethics. My understanding was that a more accurate division could be made seperating meta-ethics, normative ethics and applied ethics. The latter being a fairly large field in and of itself such a distinction would make sense. If this scheme is in some way outdated or problematic let me know. If I'm right change it or tell me that I'm right and I will. -- Jsn4 02:14, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
Hope no one is upset by my edit changing the overall structure of meta-ethical theories. However, the way I have it now really is more correct (see my comment under "Rationalism"). The earlier version portrays the main division in meta-ethics as "non-cognitivism vs. everybody else", but that isn't the way it's usually seen. Subjectivists, for instance, are (rightly) considered closer to emotivists than they are to intuitionists. (In case anyone cares, I'm Mike Huemer, author of the first version of this after Larry Sanger's lecture notes.) -- owl232 15:40, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
What about the meta-ethical theory that ethics are grounded in our biology? That ethics come about because we are society-froming animals? That something that is "wrong" for a human would not nessesarily be wrong for a (sentient) tiger or ant?
Hi all. I've recently improved on (I think) the organization and presentation of the meta-ethical theories section. Hopefully most agree. I didn't change any content, though, at least not in that one edit to the presentation. I think it is much easier on the eyes and more organized now. -- Jaymay 19:52, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
Why are there no citations in this article? I thought we are supposed to refer our edits to verifiable sources?
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)
"As usually concieved, meta-ethics asks the following questions. 1) What is the meaning or definition of ethical terms or concepts like 'right', 'wrong'...2) How are moral uses of such terms to be distinguished from non moral ones...3) What is the analysis or meaning of related terms or concepts like 'action', 'conscience', 'free will', 'motive'...4) Can ethical and value judgments be proved, justified, or shown valid? If so, how, and in what sense? Or, what is the logic or moral reasoning and of reasoning about value?...Of these 4) is primary. What we mainly want to know is whether the moral and value judgments we accept are justified or not; and if so, on what grounds...Apart from conceptual understanding...we only need to be concerned about the meaning or nature of ethical and value judgments only if this helps us to understand whether and how they may be justified, only if it helps us to know which of them are acceptable or valid." (96, Frakena, Ethics 2nd ed.) This is taken from a chapter, Meaning and Justification, in a more basic ethical text; it might not be extensive enough to be of value to this article. Let me know if this helps clarify what I am proposing. Somaticvibe 21:52, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
Basically I would like to add something along the lines of; "Are there objective or absolute values, and if so how do we logically justify them?" Somaticvibe 21:54, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
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)
Would Weber be a value pluralist? Btw, shouldnt we have a link to a "value pluralism" section, instead of redirecting it to Isaiah Berlin?
There has been some discussion above and on Talk:Moral skepticism about just how we are to name various positions. On Talk:Moral skepticism I have suggested using the robust model as Richard Joyce and Pekka Väyrynen do in their respective articles in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Macmillan's Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd Edition. The robust model delineates the various metaethical positions according to three theses (as given by Väyrynen):
All anti-realists deny 3. Moral subjectivists deny 3, but accept 1 and 2. Moral nihilists deny 3 and 2, but are then subdivided by whether they accept 1 (error theory) or deny 1 (non-cognitivism). It's an simple and intuitive model, but also a powerful one. Moreover, it is the standard way of thinking about metaethics (so much so that Väyrynen doesn't even mention the minimal model in his article). I propose that we take the robust model as our guide when developing all pages related to metaethics and metaethical positions. Postmodern Beatnik ( talk) 19:12, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
I didn't see this earlier, apparently it was somehow posted simultaneously with several other posts. Now I more clearly see what you were objecting to in my description of rationalism with respect to Hare (as opposed to everything else I said about it). What Hare has in common with Kant, Gewirth, etc. is indeed a method, not a realist position. Thanks for this clarification, I think it supports the points we have come to agree with, reflected in the current version of the article, and suggests a possible way forward for indicating what Hare has and does not have in common with Kant, etc.-- ScottForschler ( talk) 11:50, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
OK, so here's a new thought. My original suggestion was to count rationalism and IOT both as forms of procedural realism, a category I take from Korsgaard's work (though I don't know that she invented it). That entire edit was removed on other grounds and I reintroduced the category of rationalism by itself. But maybe I'm just thinking of certain forms of rationalism, the ones I'm most familiar with. If moral rationalism is better understood as the view that practical reason alone constrains agents into accepting specific practical judgments (not necessarily truths), then one can be a rationalist but not a realist (though some rationalists certainly are realists, which is why I insisted that intuitionism and naturalism do not constitute the only realist categories). Error theorists are not rationalists because they don't believe that any such practical judgments have a priviledged truth or acceptability status. Rationalists like Korsgaard and Kant are procedural realists, and I think Gewirth too though I'd have to re-read his work very carefully to be sure, he seems to cut a fine line here. More generally, maybe what we need here most is to lay out some other meta-ethical distinctions besides the realist/anti-realist one, as has been suggested earlier. Comments?-- ScottForschler ( talk) 13:10, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
OK, here's a better description of the problem I'm having with the current classification of Hare. Consider this passage right after the 3 anti-realist points:
This equates anti-realism with the absence of objective values (as does the first sentence under anti-realism), and the belief that some ethical statements are objectively correct with moral realism. The later Hare obviously believes that objective values exist, namely utilitarian ones. Any agent who holds contrary values is to some degree fanatical, that is to say irrational, and doesn't even consistently hold the values he claims to have. This is an objective fact for Hare. So he can't be an anti-realist under this description. The final sentence is more problematic, since Hare denies that ethical sentences are necessarily statements in the proper sense (they may be insofar as they have some descriptive element, but their ethical content is non-descriptive). But if he is denied the status of moral realist on this ground, then he's neither a realist nor an anti-realist, which suggests that one or the other description has got to go (unless his position is utterly confused; but while he may be wrong, I think he is quite clear so this would not be a promising move). If we more charitably assume that "ethical statement" means "ethical sentence or judgment" then again, Hare believes that quite a few of these are objectively correct, and is again a moral realist.
This elaborates a more general point I was going to make, which is that my earlier comment about what is important about the "mind-independence" criteria used in this article, and often floated around when meta-ethics is discussed, presumably is trying to get at the idea that your ethics aren't objective if you can just make it up as you go along; supervenience on the objective fact of what whim you (or god) have at the moment is not robust enough to make a position count as a realist one. I think this is a good and important distinction. But again, Hare clearly falls on the realist side if that's what we were trying to get at; he emphatically denies that it's ok to make it up as you go along. In this respect he radicaly disagrees with all the other listed theories called "anti-realist"--except, perhaps, for quasi-realism, which I confess I never understood, and perhaps for some forms of ideal observer theory, about whch I would make the same point, conceding however that less constraining forms of IOT may not be realist because the allowed moral norms depend too much upon empirical attitudes.-- ScottForschler ( talk) 20:23, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
So, I'm still wondering about this last point; do the different definitions of "realism" in the meta-ethics article reflect confusion with the literature on meta-ethics itself? If so we should note this; the current text suggests that everything is crystal clear and undisputed. Or is there a clear definition, in which case some of the contrary definitions are simply wrong? Again, my main concern is here is over the correct classification of both ethical rationalism, and Hare in particular. If realism entails "ought statements are true or false," he's not a realist. But if anti realism means "value judgments are not objective," then he is a realist. I have no objection to using the former definition and classifying him as an anti-realist, as long as it is made clear that anti-realists can still be committed to objectivity in moral judgment; the current article does not make this clear, indeed it denies this, and hence unfairly represents Hare's position.-- ScottForschler ( talk) 19:32, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
PB, I finally got to a library and looked at Hare's essay on Foot again: as I very storngly suspected, he does //not//endorse cultural relativism in this work, and to think he did is a serious misreading. He says, rather, that CR is an inevitable consequence of what he calls "descriptivist" theories of ethical statements, and the point is: so much the worse for descriptivist theories, but look here at some forms of non-descriptivism like mine... Now whether his argument or terminology is good or not, he is absolutely not endorsing CR. So I renew the insistance that this article must be reorganized, and "realism" and its implications more carefully defined, so that Hare is //not// labelled as holding that values are non-objective, for he insists that they are; he only quibbles about applying the word "true" to moral judgments. So call him an anti-realist if this means "ethical statements can be true", but then note that anti-realism needn't mean non-objective; or if realism includes all objective theories, then fit him in there; but the current mish-mash of definitions has got to go. Since you know more about "realism" debates than I, I'll give you first crack at it, or invite others to do; I could go in myself and remove the inconsistencies but the end result might be a hack job.-- ScottForschler ( talk) 00:32, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
References
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)
I'm wondering if, in light of the disagreements over what does or does not constitute moral realism, anti-realism, etc, it might be more productive to use a table or tree labeled with the distinguishing theses (the semantic thesis, etc) to categorize the positions - very similar to the nested lists we have now, just labeled differently - and then follow that up with a section stating (and citing) different definitions of which clades of that tree should be labeled with which term?
So you'd have something like:
(Of course that's an incomplete and possibly incorrect tree there but I'm in a rush at the moment).
Followed up by "according to source1, moral realism encompasses only those theories which hold that moral sentences can truthfully assert propositions about mind-independent facts, while according to source2 realism encompasses...".
Thoughts? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pfhorrest ( talk • contribs) 01:08, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
My apologies for that poorly-organized first foray into your talk page here, I was in a bit of a rush and things got somewhat garbled. I originally was going to propose a table, so that things could be more neutrally categorized according to different orthogonal features; however as soon as I sat down to suggest that it dawned on me that that would require a table of more than two dimensions, awfully difficult to represent on a website... and that drove that thought careening off into the mess above.
Instead, I would like to suggest that the page be reorganized into subsections on different, orthogonal distinctions, with the different particular metaethical theories being listed within each category as appropriate. So for example, one subsection would discuss the realist-vs-antirealist distinction, and would list things much as they are now (though in a less space-consuming way perhaps). Another subsection would discuss the universalist-vs-relativist distinction, in which case IOT, DCT, and Hare's Prescriptivism (which all prescribe the same morality for all people) would be grouped together with the "realist" theories, and in opposition to moral relativism, individualist subjectivism, emotivism, etc (which all tolerate disagreements between different peoples' moral judgements). Perhaps another subsection would discuss cognitivism-vs-noncognitivism, and another objectivism-vs-subjectivism, etc.
In short, I think the way metaethical theories are categorized here focuses too heavily on the realist-vs-antirealist distinction. As important as that distinction is, it obscures some important groupings of theories which appear widely separated in this format, particularly the universalist theories, which include all of the "realist" category, and some but not all of both the "subjectivist" and "noncognitivist" categories of "anti-realism". -
Pfhorrest (
talk)
02:54, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
Sorry to keep following up to my own comments here, but after some attempts to graph the problem I no longer believe that the above is necessary; a table could work, with minimal modification to the structure of the nested lists present now. However, I'm not experienced enough with wiki code to recreate that image without dropping into actual XHTML tables; though I'll gladly do so if that's the appropriate way, and you all like this idea. - Pfhorrest ( talk) 07:10, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
Here is the beginning of a revised nested list more akin to the structure in the image above; I'm still unsure how to break out the "universalism" box without using XHTML tables, so I've just incorporated some notes on universalism into the text as it is... but this is a start at least.
If nobody object to this in the next few days, I'm going to be bold and apply this to the article. Please comment. Thanks. - Pfhorrest ( talk) 22:44, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
I just had another thought: break down the page into sections for the three questions referenced at the top; semantics, metaphysics, and epistemology. What we have now would serve as a basis for the semantics section, and primarily discuss cognitivism vs noncognitivism. The metaphysics section would discuss universalism vs relativism. The epistemology section would discuss rationalism, rational intuitionism, sentimentalism, and empiricism. So Hare, for a good example, would be listed as a noncognitivist, a universalist, and a rationalist (or perhaps a rational intuitionist?). Does that sound good to everyone? - Pfhorrest ( talk) 22:58, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
hello everyone. i read your disscussion so far. it made me wonder about hare and rationalism, i still dont anderstand why calling him rationalist. it is true that he claims that moral truths can be, by principal, revealed by ratio, but he is not clearly claiming for the existance of such truth. maybe i didnt undestand him quite right, but i think he evokes the view that everyone can put forward any moral proposition, and there is not necessarily only one that is true. rationalism, on the other hand, is the view by which there is only one truth, like math, which can be revealed a-priori by ratio. hare, so i understood, didnt dicuss the possibility of someone being wrong in their moral propositions, he just tried to show what do we mean when we declair a moral proposition. have i missed something? thanks for your great work so far guys. matan. Hametaken ( talk) 23:40, 6 September 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.250.79.9 ( talk) 23:27, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
I am in the process of attempting a more extensive organization/reorganization of not just the listing of meta-ethics articles here, but of all of the meta-ethics articles on wikipedia, focusing on bringing them all into agreement with each other and with the main article on meta-ethics here. In the process of this, it has become clear to me that there is some contradictory use of terminology in different articles (and sometimes within the same article), and I would like to clear that up, move content around, and add redirects and disambiguations as necessary, so as to make this reorganization possible.
In particular, the terms whose meanings are in question are:
For your reference, I have diagrammed my proposed solution to the problem yet again, in more detail this time. Dotted lines indicate disambiguation links; dotted boxes indicate disambiguation articles; boxes with grey text are for categorical display only and do not represent actual wiki articles.
As has already been discussed here to a great degree, realism is rather contentious. From what I have read, the consensus seems to be that there are two senses of moral realism:
As far as I can tell, the minimal sense of moral realism makes the exact same claim as moral universalism: the same moral judgements are correct or incorrect everywhere regardless of what people anywhere think is correct or incorrect. Furthermore, some senses of moral objectivism (in particular as used in a sourced quote on moral absolutism and some of the text on moral relativism) seems to mean the exact same thing as well.
Currently, our article on moral objectivism defines it in essence as robust moral realism minus the alethic claim; it is the set of all robust realist theories plus error theory. However, both the page on moral nihilism (where error theory redirects) and the SEP article on moral anti-realism seem to imply that error theory is a subcategory simply of cognitivism, not of objectivist cognitivism specifically; and the latter article in turn dubs non-error-theoretic forms of cognitivism as "moral success theory", encompassing both objectivist and subjectivist cognitivisms. If we adopt that notion of error theory in our taxonomy here, that would make our "moral objectivism" equivalent to our "robust moral realism".
However, in light of the frequent equivocation of universalism, realism, and objectivism, and the previous contentions on the moral objectivism page about the inclusion of Rand's objectivist ethics (which are now a separate article), I propose that rather than having moral objectivism just redirect to moral realism, we make it a disambiguation page directing people to either moral realism, moral universalism, or Objectivist ethics. Furthermore, I propose that we make moral realism discuss robust moral realism specifically and explicitly, diverting people to moral universalism for discussion of minimalist moral realism. The "also called..." parenthetical expression in the opening sentence on moral universalism can then list "moral objectivism" and "minimalist moral realism" as synonyms.
Further still, it seems that moral absolutism is being partly equivocated with universalism/objectivism/minimalist-realism, and partly differentiated as an "anti-contextual" class of theories, for lack of a better term; a class of theories opposed to situational ethics, consequentialism, etc. I would like to suggest that that article be used solely to discuss the latter type of theory, and that readers be again diverted to moral universalism for the general concept of a universal/objective/absolute/"non-relative" system of morality.
Which brings me to my last and most difficult point. Moral relativism. Just what the heck is it? From what I can tell just reading wiki here, the term is used in several distinct ways:
I'm not really certain what the best course of action regarding this term is, but I have a rough thought. Just as I have recently created a (stub) article on individualist ethical subjectivism, we could create an article on cultural ethical subjectivism (or some other better-established equivalent term), clearly identify it as the main form of moral relativism in its own intro and the intro to moral relativism, and then have the former article focus on the specific semantic theory and the latter article focus on the more general issue of non-universalistic yet non-nihilistic ethical theories.
This still leaves the issue of "anti-absolutism" unresolved. The moral absolutism article suggests that consequentialism may be the best antonym, yet consequentialism is usually considered a class of normative ethical theory, not a meta-ethical theory. In my personal opinion consequentialism per se seems metaethical (just saying "I'm a consequentialist" doesn't tell your audience anything about what in particular you think is right or wrong, any more than "I'm a universalist" or "I'm a relativist" does), but this is wikipedia and my personal opinion isn't what matters. So I'm looking for ideas here.
A few other tangential thoughts:
So, that's about it. I'm going to be directing people here from the talk pages of the various topics in question, so that discussion can all happen here in a centralized place. - Pfhorrest ( talk) 10:06, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
Robert Firth, who is responsible for the modern version, held that ideal observer theory is objective, essentially because it does not depend on the existence of experiencing agents. This is not undisputed, but I think is very good reason not to just group ideal observer theory under subjectivism. Warm Worm ( talk) 21:35, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
I want to clarify that I mean Roderick Firth, I'm not sure what my brain was doing there.
Yeah, there's definitely not total agreement on what exactly is meant by "objective" and "subjective." I would guess part of that stems from the tremendously vague definitions that are frequently thrown about of objective as "mind-independent" and subjective as "mind-dependent."
Firth's use of "objective" is distinct from universalism. He considers a view subjective if under it moral propositions would be false by definition if no experiencing agents existed, and objective if not. I see that the ethical subjectivism page is based on a definition from Richard Brandt. Brandt though seems to have accepted Firth's classification of ideal observer theory as objective: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2103510 (I'm of course not sure if you have full jstor access, but even if not, you can see him say it is objective without comment on the first page, and he says nothing contrary to that in the rest of the text.)
I wouldn't have a real issue with the classification it if it was just article categorizing, but whether the theory is objective or subjective is part of the actual encyclopedic content. Summarily saying ideal observer theory is subjective based on a Wikipedia standard without further comment is misleading. Like you said, there isn't real consensus on what is meant by "objective" and "subjective." Why do these articles make it seem like there is?
Maybe this is something that would best be dealt with on the ideal observer theory talk page? I guess I'll probably make a similar post there. I don't really know the protocol for this sort of thing. Warm Worm ( talk) 11:41, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
I've been thinking about this a bit more, and I'm curious as to why the decision was made to use robust moral realism for classification purposes. The minimal moral realism/anti-realism distinction is fairly clear cut, but once the objectivism condition is added some views weave between between realism & anti-realism based on how "objective" is understood.
Anyway, I'm interested in working on the ethical subjectivism article & expanding to discuss various ways in which the distinction can be understood. I've noticed you're especially active on the meta-ethics topics so I wanted to run it by you first; do you think that would be useful? It wouldn't be immediate, just sometime in the nearish future. Warm Worm ( talk) 16:00, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
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)
From the hed:
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)
Does anyone know why Daniel Dunn redirects to this article? Senator2029 ( talk) 19:04, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
The article's Emotivism section, which is set forth near the end of this Semantic Theories section, states that in the emotivist view '..."Killing is wrong" means something like "Boo on killing!" ' A negative of that 'Boo' quotation is that it implies that the speaker of the ethical statement is childlike, unrefined, etc, in the emotivist view. Is there some more-dignified phrasing?, e.g. 'Killing sickens me' or 'Killing disgusts me.' -Bo99
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)
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:
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 {{Technical}} tag to the article to help address this. 204.9.220.36 ( talk) 18:55, 9 September 2016 (UTC)
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)
The result of the move request was: Page moved. ( closed by non-admin page mover) Jerium ( talk) 01:41, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
Meta-ethics → Metaethics – It looks like this renaming question was raised some 15 years ago, above. I seem to find "metaethics" more frequently in my reading, which Google Ngram confirms (if I set it up correctly), so I figured it'd be good to discuss this. Arbitrarily0 ( talk) 21:38, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
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