Normative ethics asks what things are moral, while meta-ethics discuss what are moral things. In other words, what is the nature of morality. People are perhaps most familiar with the concept of moral objectivism. In ordinary terms, this refers to morality being objective: there is the right and there is the wrong. Someone who is a moral objectivist believes in a brand of moral realism. They think that morality as a concept truly exists. This doesn't mean that their own moral claims are true - it only means that moral claims have the capacity to be true, and that they are meaningful. The intuition for this likely comes from trying to understand what certain sentences mean. If we say something like "Killing is wrong", for this to be true seems to be saying something about "wrong". It appears to be a genuine property, or at least a real thing. By real, I don't mean that we can always perceive it. What I mean is that it exists, even if we can't perceive it. In other words, it is mind independent.
Keep Moral realism in mind as a main point of comparison. The following positions I'm going to discuss deviate from the realist position in different ways.
When discussing meta-ethics with friends who do not study philosophy, a very common line of argument I hear is "Isn't it all subjective?" I will now attempt to describe what such a position entails.
The claim made here sounds like moral subjectivism. Like realism, this claims that moral sentences are truth evaluable. The difference is that the truth of such sentences are dependent on the evaluating agent. For example we might hold that morality is relative to a given society or even to a given person. In this sense, what might be morally wrong in the UK might not morally wrong in other countries. What might be right for you might not be right for me.
I think the main motivation people have towards this position are concerns about cultural superiority. They don't want to say that the moral standards of their own society are better than others. The thought is presumably something like:
1) I live in society X and adopt moral standards Y
2) If morality is objective, then there is only one kind of standard
3) If morality is objective then Either that standard is mine or it is not mine
4) If it is mine, then any opposing ones are wrong. Thus societies with opposing standards are wrong.
5) If it is not mine, then why am I even behaving in accordance to this standard. Why shouldn't I go about for example killing people?
Both 4 and 5 are uncomfortable. We don't want to say we're better than others, yet we also don't want to say our standards are meaningless. By being more 'open minded' and adopting moral relativism, we side step these issues.
Now for some issues. The first of course is a question regarding the mechanism involved. Suppose that you and I have a disagreement about morality. You believe we should go around and enslave children for our bidding. I think that this is morally wrong. If you adopt a version of subjectivism, presumably we must engage in a degree of mutual tolerance to one another. If you suppose that the law is based at least partially upon morality, you can recognise that morality has real practical impacts. We need to make ethical decisions and differentiate between different actions. Moral subjectivism offers no way to disagree if both sides are equally right. Perhaps you respond that we live in the same society and thus must follow the same rules, but this also seems problematic. This kind of argument seems to be social as opposed to ethical. You're saying something along the lines that I agree to a certain set of rules by being in this society. Yet you aren't saying whether or not these rules have any kind of real moral status. You're instead going towards a kind of moral scepticism.
The version of moral scepticism I will now discuss is known as error theory. This claims that all moral sentences are false. Since they are all false, everyone is effectively wrong. Thus we capture the idea that everyone has made a mistake. One advantage of error theory compared to subjectivism is its approach to disagreement. If morality does not exist, our disagreements can be understood in terms of non moral concepts. We can explain it in terms of social concepts, for example we are pressured by society to accept certain ideas.
One issue of course is that one now needs to explain why we are systemically making these mistakes. Recall that our error theory means that whenever we make a moral claim, we are saying something false. There are no moral concepts. Yet we think or at least act as though there are. This needs an explanation. One obvious objection of course is that since our moral talk is meaningless, we are free (on 'moral' grounds at least) to do as we choose. This seems a fairly outrageous conclusion that I think few people would accept. Thus one needs a satisfying social explanation, one that is descriptive in terms of our behavior, and also normative in why we should continue behaving in this way.
I think the social argument also has a few difficulties. The main problem is that there is something very uncomfortable about the idea that the only thing stopping us from killing people is that society tells us to. There are also difficulties with reconciling how our attitudes change. We like to believe that the reason we are able to reach ethical conclusions that for example homosexuality is permissible is because we are reaching the truth of the matter, achieved after evaluating the evidence or argument. It is concerning if such conclusions are not grounded by anything, just lessons from society. We might give an explanation of moral behaviour in terms of pragmatic or social optimality, but this seems rather unsatisfying.
Before I end this post, I'm going to quickly discuss some worries concerning moral realism. I think the reasons why people adopt these sceptical positions is just because they don't think realism is capable of dealing with these problems.
1) Explaining disagreement: as I discussed earlier, how can we reconcile objective morality with the fact that disagreement occurs?
2) Accessing moral properties: We seem to have intuitions about morality, but we never seem to actually experience or see the moral properties. We say that killing is wrong, but do we ever 'see' wrong? It certainly seems to be something very different from for example experiencing the colour and property of redness.
3) Accessing the objective standard. People often associate objective morality with God-like beings, or something that dictates the standard. If they do not believe in God they think that said objectivity can not be attained. The actual problem is not that morality can't be objective, but the question of how on earth we discover it. At least the bible is professing to tell us about an objective standard from God and we can see if we're on track. If it comes else where, we need to rely on alternative mediums.
