Talk:Metaethics

Rationalism

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)

But the article as written does not have a place for rationalism, which suggests confusion either in your classification or in your descriptions of the categories. Rationalists would say 1. yes, 2. yes, 3. a priori; but that puts them in your "intuitionist" category, apparently; but both this term and your description of it is simply misleading or erroneous to describe rationalism. Also, you have misclassified several other theories: divine command theory and ideal observer theory believe there are objective moral values, they just say they come from other sources besides intuition or empirical facts. I am amending the article to correct these problems and invite further discussion.--ScottForschler (talk) 18:49, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

What about fictionalism? Amcfreely 06:04, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Fictionalism is a form of error theory. Postmodern Beatnik (talk) 17:52, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Not necessarily; moral fictionalism does not entail ontological commitments (i.e. the claim that there are no moral facts). It can simply be a framework for adjudicating propositions in a discourse that does not aim at truth. Skomorokh 18:06, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Moral fictionalism says that morals have the same ontological status as fictions. That is, neither "goodness" nor "Sherlock Holmes" exist, but that does not necessarily have to stop us from talking about them as if they did exist. If we do not believe the discourse aims at truth, we are non-cognitivists of some sort. Of course, what we say about ontology here may still make us error theorists, but you seem to be suggesting some form of hermeneutical non-cognitivism. Postmodern Beatnik (talk) 19:08, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Beatnik, could you please explain your recent reversion? You assert that DCT and IOT are "patently" not realist positions. But I wonder which patent office you are going to. :-) See the following from the Moral realism article:

Moral realism is the view in philosophy that there are objective moral values. Moral realists argue that moral judgments describe moral facts. This combines a cognitivist view about moral judgments (they are truth-evaluable mental states that describe the state of the world), a view about the existence of moral facts (they do in fact exist), and a view about the nature of moral facts (they are objective: independent of our cognizing them, or our stance towards them, etc.).

Now, it seems obvious to me that ethical rationalists, including Hare's *later* position, and many if not all forms of ideal observer theory, and DCT, do claim that unique ethical facts will be derived by any rational agent or ideal observer, or that God does indeed command what he commands and not some other thing, at any particular time. Hence all of these views are committed to the view that ethical claims are *objective*. They also agree that moral facts *exist*, although they disagree about what *constitues* their existence. Since you allow that ethical naturalism is a form of realism, even though in this case moral facts are not some separate things but supervene upon some non-moral facts, I see no reason to disallow these theories, which likewise claim that moral facts are not some separate entities, but ones which supervene upon non-natural facts (supernatural facts, or facts about logic--which one might choose to count as natural but non-empirical, if you like). If you disagree, please state your definition of moral realism, and explain how it can include intuitionism *and* naturalistic supervenience, but not these other forms of supervenience. Lacking such an explanation by next week I will revert again.--ScottForschler (talk) 23:31, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

My definition of moral realism follows the robust model of metaethics. My problem with your analysis, then, is that I disagree with your premise that DCT involves supervenience as understood vis-a-vis ethical naturalism. I understand that many proponents of DCT want to have their theory yield objective morality, but God's fiat contravenes the metaphysical thesis (which is intended to secure the sort of mind-independence necessary for moral objectivism, though perhaps Väyrynen's wording is not optimal). Now, I happen to be an error theorist. I don't think that naturalism succeeds in capturing moral objectivity, either. But at least the problem there is with the falsity of its theses, and not its relation to the model. That is the relevant difference, and that is why DCT is anti-realist. As for IOT, insofar as Smith and Hume are given as examples, it is clear that it must be an anti-realist theory. Firth's own version claims to be objectivist, but I see no real evidence of that so long as IOT is distinguishable from the Kantian claim that moral truths are necessary truths (and thus a matter of logic). This brings us to "moral rationalism." As described on its Wikipedia entry, it is not clear just what it claims. I take a largely rationalist approach to metaethics, but I take it to be a matter of logic that morality is not objective. This does not seem to be what you want the term "moral rationalism" to apply to, however. Instead, 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. While still being an error theorist, I can agree with the supervenience principle stating that there can be no difference of moral properties without a difference in natural properties. Such principles do not rest on the assumption that there are actually moral differences or moral properties, after all. Instead, then, you seem to be taking moral rationalism as the assertion that there are moral truths/properties and that they are accessible by way of reason. Great, that would be a fine way to sum up Kant's basic position (or that of anyone else who takes moral truths to be a matter of logic) while still allowing for people to disagree with him on the specifics but not the method. But IOT doesn't quite say that. What it says is not that the ideal observer ascertains already existing moral truths, but that his preferences are not based on biases or logical errors. His judgments are still based on preferences, however, and thus contravene the metaphysical thesis in a way similar, though not identical, to DCT. Postmodern Beatnik (talk) 19:08, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

You make a good point about DCT, and I was originally thinking more of what DCT supporters sometimes claim it can produce rather than what acutal formulations of it permit (which is again distinct from whether it works, of course). So I'll grant that DCT's claim to moral realism is highly questionable at best

It is odd to characterize both IOT and DCT as examples of Ethical Subjectivism. In classical theism, moral truths derive from God's being, where God is conceived as morally perfect. In the framework of classical theism, moral truths are akin to logical truths because they are grounded upon God's being. Those truths are objective in the sense that they are mind independent, i.e., they do not depend upon human conventions or subjective taste, but ultimately upon God, who is the ground of all being. For this reason, it is odd to characterize DCT as subjective, even though the morality is dependent upon one mind, namely the divine mind. But this dependency upon God's mind rather makes morality objective and not subjective, because God, within classical theism, is conceived as the ground for all objective reality, and as such is also the ground for moral reality. God is not understood as a morally capricious being, but rather as a perfect being who is the source of objective reality, and this includes also a moral reality where moral truths are understood as moral facts. Theophilius (talk) 09:25, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

However I didn't think that IOT was so sharply distinguished from Kantian claims in the way you suggest. True, Kant says, essentially, that it's a matter of pure logic, while IOT adds specific substantive intuitions needed to derive basic ethics. Nevertheless, I thought the claim was that if you have the *right* substantive assumptions about what constitutes an ideal observer, you get unique, aka objective, aka real moral truths. The agent has preferences, and the IO has preferences, but these are corrected given the "ideal" status, and corrected in some way that makes them not only more objective, but generally accomodating of other people's preferences as well in some way. Just because the IO would sometimes advise the non-ideal agent to pursue some of his idiosyncratic preferences wouldn't mean that the resulting ethical rules are not objective, any more than a utilitarian's saying "go ahead and buy whatever ice cream you want when there's no better way to maximize utility" means that utilitarianism is a form of subjectivism. The IO's preferences are corrected and shaped by the idealization process in ways that create moral constraints on his preferences and choices; it's by no means the "anything goes" of subjectivism. But perhaps Firth denies some aspect of what I just said and I won't insist upon changes until I have re-read him. Now back to rationalism--you say

"I take it to be a matter of logic that morality is not objective."

I don't understand why you would think this, and it seems to simply deny moral realism and certainly to deny moral rationalism. If this is your basis for rejecting space for this in the article I submit you are violating NPOV. If you don't understand moral rationaism you should make way for someone who does.

"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"

What is misleading? This IS the way the term is used by those who use it. And it is certainly a meta-ethical claim, that truths of ethics are constituted by certain facts about practical reason. You suggest a distinction between claiming that there are certain moral truths versus that any such truths would take a certain form (but there may or may not be any). OK, I suppose that one could call someone a "moral rationalist" who thought that if they were moral truths they would necessarily be derived from reason, but no such derivation is possible so no such truths exist, and you have a kind of error theory again. This raises the possibly interesting suggestion that there are many kinds of error theorists, just as it is sometimes jokingly said that there Catholic atheists, Lutheran atheists, etc., differing on just exactly which kind of God they think doesn't exist (but would have to if there were any). But in any case I see no special reason to deny a place to ethical rationalism here; if you want to distinguish between ethical naturalists who simply believe that there's a necessary relation between moral facts and natural facts, but the necessary natural facts don't exist so neither do the moral ones--versus those who think the relationship *and* the facts exist, etc., fine, but then do this systematically. In practice most people who consider themselves ethical naturalists doubtless also believe that there are real moral facts, and likewise with rationalists. So I'll add it again, but reassess the other theories at a later time.--ScottForschler (talk) 20:02, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

It just occurred to me what might be tripping you up here, in part. The article's definition of moral realism is that moral truths may not be based on "our beliefs, feelings, or other attitudes." But you may be confusing that with the claim that they cannot be based on the attitudes that our idealized selves would have (or the beliefs, etc. we would have if we eliminated contradictions from our thoughts). According to IOT and rationalism, our beliefs etc. are indeed answerable to a higher authority, and are not the basis of moral truth; that the higher authority bears some relationship to our current selves is not an objection, since it is a more-or-less significantly corrected version. Incidentally the DCT also doesn't think that moral truths are based on "our" beliefs--we are not God. But again I grant it has enough in common with subjectivism that it may indeed be better placed there.--ScottForschler (talk) 20:21, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I am glad you understand the point about DCT; I take it that issue has been resolved. As for IOT, I forgot to get to Firth in my last comment. If you are taking him as representative of IOT, I understand why you think IOT is (or at least claims to be) a realist theory. But the literature goes back further than that and includes anti-realists such as Hume. Indeed, given the variety of people who have been described as ideal observer theorists, I wonder if it really picks out anything more than a method for making summary moral judgments (as opposed to reaching moral "truths"). Perhaps it does not belong on the list of realist and anti-realist positions at all, but under a separate section on methodology. I would be slow to make such a change, since it is so widely viewed as the same sort of theory as the others listed there. And, of course, there is also the possibility that Firth muddied the terminological waters by referring to his theory as a version of IOT when indeed it was really a form of moral rationalism.

This brings me to the point about distinguishing IOT from moral rationalism (including Kantianism). It seems there must be some difference if the former is not to collapse into the latter; and given who it has been applied to, I don't think we can just call it a form of moral rationalism that rests a little less on pure logic. After all, if Hume can be seen as forwarding IOT and as a staunch opponent of rationalism, the connection becomes rather questionable. I also wonder about your equivocation on "unique/objective/real." You seem to be assuming that if everyone agrees to something, that makes it objective. This may be true in the Wittgensteinian sense in which the "objective" is the "public," but not in the sense here at issue. If all the world agrees you're a fish, that doesn't make you a fish (and how powerful that last person would be when we went around confirming everyone's opinion: no one else's opinion would mean squat if he held-out on judging you a fish).

Moving on to your comments about rationalism, keep in mind that I have no objection to including it in the article. What I object to is an unhelpful description that does not clearly categorize it. The changes you made recently are an improvement on what you have said on this page, and I have no problem letting them stand. That said, you did not need to take me out of context and accuse me of violating NPOV to get this agreement out of me. I offered my philosophical position by way of illustration, and your misappropriation of my words betrays an unnecessarily combative approach to this discussion. I believe that morality is not objective as a matter of logic, but that is the subject of my professional work and not an assumption that I am projecting onto my editing. The point was that, for what you had said about moral rationalism, it was not clear that my position would not count as morally rationalist. And if it did count as such, the contention that moral rationalism was a realist view would be falsified. My own opinion, however, has nothing to do with "rejecting space for [moral realism] in the article" (something I had no desire to do to begin with). Context is important, and I suggest you pay better attention to it.

You question about "what is misleading" is another context violation. I was quite clear about it in the next sentence: if a moral anti-realist can agree that reason can lead us to certain foundational truths about ethics, and if this is enough to constitute moral rationalism, then it would again be improper to call moral rationalism a realist theory. As such, I was led to the conclusion that moral rationalism, despite your disjointed explanations, must be the thesis that there are moral truths/properties and that they are accessible by way of reason. This is much the same as the explanation you ultimately placed in the article—one which is at last cogent.

Finally, there is you comment about what might be "tripping [me] up." Understand that I am not going by the article's explanation (which is erroneous and should be changed), but by my years of experience as a moral philosopher. The word "our" is an oversimplification: the metaphysical thesis is meant to secure the notion of mind-independence for moral truths. They cannot be, in the final analysis, reducible to the judgments of a conscious entity. This rules out God in a very straight-forward way. It also seems to rule out the IO, while leaving an opening for the possibility that moral truths are logical necessities that can be accessed by perfectly rational agents (or possibly even just agents who are rational enough for long enough). Postmodern Beatnik (talk) 00:18, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, if IOT is taken to include Hume (and I can indeed see why someone might suggest this, although he didn't use the term and it is quite different from Firth's version), then I can see why you are hesitant to classify it as realist. Perhaps it cuts across these categories depending on the version used, and your suggestion that it may not belong here is tempting. I'll leave that alone then as an unresolved issue. The suggestion that Firth might really have been a kind of rationalist is intriguing; I once wondered that but haven't pursued the issue.

"You seem to be assuming that if everyone agrees to something, that makes it objective." Absolutely not!. Ethical rationalism is the view that logic generates unique moral truths. What people *actually* agree to is pretty much irrelevant in this view; rather, rational agents *must* agree to certain moral truths (and as Socrates said we should listen to the wise only, not the many), such truths are unique, and since logically unavoidable, they are objective, and since objective and not dependent on non-robust whims, they are realism. This is not equivocation, just a compressed argument chain. I'm not sure if you're characterizing Wittgenstein rightly here, but please leave the stuff about fish out of this discussion; rationalism is about what we are logically required to commit to, not what we might whimsically say when logic takes its leave.

I see now that I did indeed entirely misunderstood the example of your views on logic and ethics; I apologize for this and regret the insinuation. I only plead that since ethical rationalism is, as I have said before, the view that objective moral truths can be derived from reason/logic, your suggestion that your position could be in any way construed or mistaken as moral rationalism as commonly understood was utterly puzzling, and I tried to interpret your claim in some other way; I see now that I was mistaken. I am happy to refocus discussion on the issues, not on us.

"context violation...I was quite clear about it in the next sentence: if...[the claim that] reason can lead us to certain foundational truths about ethics, and if this is enough to constitute moral rationalism"--this is certainly *not* enough to constitute rationalism, as I now understand you to mean "truths about ethics" to include things like "no ought-sentences are true." But I don't believe I ever said it in this way; if I ever did it would have been a mistake, and in any case a charitable reading of such a mis-statement should make it clear that, as I have often said, rationalism is the view that *moral truths/true moral statements* can be so derived. Apparently you like my more recent re-statement of this in terms of *moral properties*, which presumably are understood as using terms like ought, right, etc., and hopefully this eliminates the ambiguity that led us to talk past each other for a bit. So I don't think you explained what was misleading, but I now see why you thought you had, and why you might've been misled.

I think there have been some misreadings on both sides. I for one have been enlightened by your points about DCT and IOT, and I hope you have found this discussionuseful as well. I've also learned a little more about how ethical rationalism, or statements about it, can be prone to be misunderstood; I will review the moral rationalism article to see if any rewording can pre-empt similar misreadings. We've gone on at length here, and settled on something; I would like to suggest that we leave our respective discussions up at least a short time for further reflection, but perhaps later take them down so our lengthy dialogue doesn't get in the way of other issues.--ScottForschler (talk) 02:41, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Regarding IOT, I agree that we may have to leave it as an unresolved issue at the moment. Whichever one of us gets to researching it first should pass some references the other's way and maybe we can reach some agreement on how to address it. This would be helpful for the IOT article, as well. I can't say that it's a high priority for me, but I would try to read anything you sent my way in fairly short order.

As for consensus and objectivity, the problem I was having was with your use of the word "unique." "Unique" could mean that, under the given conditions, everyone would come to the same (unique) conclusion—but this does not entail that said conclusion is objective, or even true. The fish story (!) is an old Chinese intuition pump from the Tao of Silence that illustrates the point quite nicely, in my opinion. As such, the phrase "unique, aka objective, aka real moral truths" (emphasis added) that you used above was ambiguous to me. This might work in the other direction (real, therefore objective, therefore unique), but a compressed argument is only helpful when it comes after a presentation of the uncompressed argument. ; ) Still, your clarification is most helpful (and in keeping with what is in the actual article). As before, I just wanted to be absolutely clear about what you take moral rationalism to involve.

Regarding our mutual misunderstanding regarding my views on logic and metaethics, it is certainly in no small part the result of my habit to think in text. I was trying to go through the various things that could be meant by what you had said, and only meant for the last bit (about moral rationalism suggesting that there are moral truths/properties and that they are accessible by way of reason) to be an attribution. In my quest for clarity in the article, I sacrificed a bit of clarity on this page. "Misleading," for example, was obviously a poor word choice (despite my earlier self-defense). I am glad we have come to understand each other in this regard. As I noted on your talk page, I will look into getting an archive for this talk page. That will allow us to automatically move this discussion elsewhere once it has gone out of date. Postmodern Beatnik (talk) 17:45, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I was wrong to use aka earlier, your criticism is quite correct and I apologize for this mistake.--ScottForschler (talk) 19:03, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

No problem. What is philosophy, after all, but one long conversation full of criticisms and clarifications? :) Postmodern Beatnik (talk) 13:00, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Just one last point--if you agree that the article's definition of moral realism is inadequate, that helps explain some of our misunderstandings about the other points; I was assuming you agreed with it. But I don't think "mind independence" is clearer, indeed it seems more ambiguous. Must moral truths simply be independent of what actual, empirical minds think in order to be "realist" claims? Or independent also of any analytic truths about what minds are, what constitutes a rational mind, etc.? I take it that the point of "mind-independence" is simply something like "you can't just make it up as you go along"--which, as you have convinced me, is indeed the key thing that subjectivism and DCT have in common. But of course ethical rationalism is nothing like this (and perhaps not Firthian rationalism; about Humean & other IOT's I'm not sure).--ScottForschler (talk) 03:06, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

As I am sure you are well aware, it has been a long standing issue in ethics how precisely to articulate the metaphysical thesis and the very notion of objectivity. It is something that most of us have a fairly intuitive grasp of what it is and what it isn't. But intuitions are fuzzy-edged, and it is precisely at the edges where the dangers lurk. Mind-independence involves at least not being able to make it up as you go along. It is also typically understood as "would be true in the absence of anyone believing it." This is what rules out those forms of IOT in which one reaches a merely practical judgment, even if through logic, so long as an alternative judgment is not inconceivable. That is, rationalism requires that logic take us to moral truths and that those who reach alternate conclusions have made an error. IOT, in the above sense at least, requires only that one use logic to reach a moral judgment. Because while an IOT advocate would argue that there is an objective fact about what the judgment would be, it is not necessary that the judgment itself be objectively true. Postmodern Beatnik (talk) 17:48, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

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)

I've been reading the Frankfurt paper and it seems that he is taking ethical rationalism as being in opposition to sentimentalism (à la Smith and Hume—further confusing the place of IOT, though I continue to wonder about such attributions). Even if he does mistake rationalism in its specifics (as you suggest), so long as he has the general relationship correct, this is evidence that the rationalism/sentimentalism debate may be orthogonal to the realism/anti-realism debate and that procedural realism (if we keep that name) is at least one place where the two connect. If you could perhaps follow up on Korsgaard and the term procedural realism, we might be able to figure this out. Postmodern Beatnik (talk) 13:25, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Cleaning up

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)

Technical Language

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:

• "Non-centralism has been of particular importance to ethical naturalists in the late 20th and early 21st centuries as part of their argument that normativity is a non-excisable aspect of language and that there is no way of analyzing thick moral concepts into a purely descriptive element attached to a thin moral evaluation, thus undermining any fundamental division between facts and norms"

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)

The usual confusing of ethics with morals

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)

Hegel may have distinguished between ethics and morals that way, but that's far from universally accepted usage in common English, where "ethics" is frequently taken to mean the branch of philosophy that studies morality. --Pfhorrest (talk) 20:53, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

Requested move 25 March 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Page moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Jerium (talk) 01:41, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

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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)

Support: The IEP and SEP use ‘metaethics’. Turning to Leiter Reports’ ranking of general philosophy journals, Philosophical Review favours metaethics 164–28, Noûs 61–11, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 87–24, and Mind 129–100.

References

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.