Articles #Metaethics

Metaethics is commonly treated as a subfield of philosophical ethics, but metaethical questions are largely theoretical rather than moral or practical. They are questions such as: Are there ethical properties, and if so what are they like (metaphysics)? How do we acquire ethical knowledge and justify ethical beliefs (epistemology)? What is the best theory of the meaning of terms like ‘good’ and ‘ought’ (philosophy of language)? And what is the nature of moral judgment and how does it motivate action (philosophy of mind/psychology)? Any full metaethical theory has to answer all of these questions and many subsidiary questions. Continuing the End Times series, Richard Marshall interviews Matthew Chrisman

In a nutshell, the late Cambridge pragmatist invites you to do two things. First, when presented with some apparently problematic concept (such as ‘wrongness’), don’t rush to ask what the concept stands for, or represents. Ask instead what function, or role, that concept plays in human thought. Second, when presented with some apparently problematic philosophical claim (such as ‘Wrongness exists’), don’t rush to treat it as an ‘external’ claim about the relationship between the problematic discourse and the world. Continuing the End Times series, Richard Marshall interviews Hallvard Lillehammer.