The Ethical Content of Metaethics

Abstract

<p>This thesis is a critical examination of' the claim that metaethics is ethically neutral and that it has no ethical content. Broadly speaking, I have dealt with each of the three different categories of metaethical theory - naturalist, nonnaturalist and non-cognitivist. Chapter I is an outline of the differences between ethics and metaethics and a discussion of the relation between the two in the case of a non-naturalist metaethical theory (i.e. that of G.E. Moore in Principia Ethica.) Chapter II is an examination of the various possible interpretations of the claim of ethical neutrality in an attempt to see what is being claimed and how the claim can be best formulated. Chapter III is first an explanation of the non-neutrality of Naturalistic metaethical theories and secondly a critique of the fundamental presupposition (i.e. that all naturalistic theories are false) of those who claim neutrality. Chapter IV is a discussion of further problems of and prospects for the construction of a neutral metaethic. These problems which burden even the non-cognitivist, while perhaps not insurmountable, indicate that any truly neutral metaethic will be so only at the cost of being irrelevant to ethics.</p>