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Questions tagged [metaethics]

Metaethics is the attempt to understand the metaphysical, epistemological, semantic, and psychological, presuppositions and commitments of moral thought, talk, and practice.

Metaethics is the attempt to understand the metaphysical, epistemological, semantic, and psychological, presuppositions and commitments of moral thought, talk, and practice. As such, it counts within its domain a broad range of questions and puzzles, including: Is morality more a matter of taste than truth? Are moral standards culturally relative? Are there moral facts? If there are moral facts, what is their origin? How is it that they set an appropriate standard for our behavior? How might moral facts be related to other facts? And how do we learn about the moral facts, if there are any?

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Does any philosophy designate thoughts (independent of expression or action) as a subject of morality?

Most moral philosophers consider only physical actions, speech and thoughts that may have an impact on others as within the scope of morality, while many religion believers who suppose the omniscience of deity (deities) think that there are ‘immoral…
James Young
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Does the existence of psychopaths pose a problem for moral realists who argue we have a moral intuition?

Psychopathy is not universally agreed upon in psychology, but among some there is a consensus that psychopathy is highly heritable, and that psychopaths are lacking in conscience and empathy. Psychopathy is sometimes understood as a predisposition…
Ruben
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Is there an advantage of a theistic account in terms of being able to define goodness?

I have been watching some debates about the existence of god, such as Peter Singer vs. Dinesh D'Souza, or Christopher Hitchens vs. John Lennox. On the religious side, one argument comes up surprisingly often. It says if you take god out of the…
Doc
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What makes moral realism so popular a standpoint?

According to wikipedia page on moral realism: A survey from 2009 involving 3,226 respondents found that 56% of philosophers accept or lean towards moral realism (28%: anti-realism; 16%: other). According to it the second most popular standpoint…
rus9384
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Does practical moral skepticism end up as relativism?

Harman (2000a) argues that a moral judgment that a person ought to do X (an “inner judgment”) implies that the person has motivating reasons to do X, and that a person is likely to have such reasons only if he or she has implicitly entered into an…
user6917
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Who applies the pessimistic induction to moral "truths"?

I happened upon the term pessimistic induction (the history of science is a "graveyard" of once empirically successful theories whose central terms have been found not to refer) on this page and thought I could articulate my question more clearly by…
Ruben
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Is it logical to seek revenge?

People believe revenge or "violence" to be illogical, impractical and immoral; illogical because the "violence" is executed in impulsive rage, impractical because the wheel of "violence" spins without end and immoral because the "violence"…
ActualCry
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Neo-liberalism, language and freedom?

Background Byung Chulhan in his book psychopolitics defines freedom in two ways: a. He defines it as an interlude which the subject feels when passing between lifestyles or ideologies. This is a somewhat cynical approach to defining liberty…
More Anonymous
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Should we not talk about ethics according to Wittgenstein?

Wittgenstein says in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: 6.4 All propositions are of equal value. 6.41 The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no…
Ben
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Has/can moral relativism be refuted and what are its implications for a true and useful ethical calculus?

It seems that the existence of moral relativism undermines the entire enterprise of ethics, as it devolves into a bunch of, albeit very smart, people abstractly formulating what is ultimately just a particular neurological sentiment. While I hope…
user4634
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Kant's need of God

My main issue is not the understanding of the text in question, it really is a question about his conception in general: Kant defends the idea of God by hypothising a "supreme (original) good", including both moral and sensual satisfaction (in…
Philip Klöcking
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Are there any philosophers who argue for a non-utilitarian moral realism from phenomenology?

What I have in mind is a non-utilitarian alternative to Sharon Hewitt Rawlette (a summary from a podcast) which would propose something like: Morality is objective because moral facts are equally as fundamental as physical laws. According to…
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For Kant, are spider moms that eat their kids immoral?

When we talk about morality, do we mean to say morality for human beings? It is morally bad for human mothers to eat their newborns. Black widow spiders females eat some of their newborns after giving birth (so they can live..let's assume this for…
Naeem Budhwani
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Moral nihilism?

I have two main worries, which are drawn from Nagel and Mackay for their expression, though I think I agree with neither of these philosophers. First I will sketch my idea about right and wrong, incase my question depends on it. Let "value" be a…
user6917
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What's wrong with aretaic consequentialism?

What problems does it face, either as a classification of Buddhism or as meta ethical theory in general? Another approach [to how to classify Buddhist ethics] is aretaic consequentialism, an indirect form of consequentialism in which the primary…
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