8.3 Metaethics

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Identify the meaning of the phrase “ontology of value.”
• Identify the significance of realism and anti-realism for moral discourse.
• Compare and contrast different theories regarding the foundations for moral theory.
• Explain the importance of the Euthyphro problem for metaethics.

Ethics is the broad study of morality and is often divided into metaethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics. Normative ethics and applied ethics are covered in separate chapters. Each field is distinguished by a different level of inquiry and analysis. Metaethics focuses on moral reasoning and foundational questions that explore the assumptions related to moral beliefs and practice. It attempts to understand the presuppositions connected to morality and moral deliberation. Metaethics explores, for example, where moral values originate, what it means to say something is right or good, whether there are any objective moral facts, whether morality is (culturally) relative, and whether there is a psychological basis for moral practices and value judgements.

In the previous two sections, in asking whether there is a fact-value distinction and what values are, we encountered a central question in metaethics—whether morality is grounded in objective or subjective values. We have also encountered questions about what is good or bad and right or wrong, which is the main concern of normative ethics. This section dives deeper into these questions and explores different foundations for moral values, such as God, religious faith, nature, society, politics, law, and rationality.