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Meta-Ethics and the Moral Life

1956; Duke University Press; Volume: 65; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/2182829

1558-1470

Frederick A. Olafson,

Philosophical Ethics and Theory

Two assumptions are frequently met with in current discussions of ethics. First, it is commonly supposed that the task of moral philosophy is to explicate the logic of moral reasoning and to show how our most important moral concepts such as and right are systematically related to one another. Further, it is held that the success of any proposed analysis of these terms turns on the degree to which it correctly formulates the ways in which they are actually used, and that it is a sufficient refutation of a proposed analysis if it differs from the speaker's use of the analyzed term in first-order moral pronouncements. The second assumption is that analytic ethics is to be sharply distinguished from normative ethics. In the latter, one uses the words whose rules the philosopher has elucidated. Many philosophers not only believe that it is not the special concern of the moral philosopher to say what things are good or what actions we should perform; they have also assumed that the acceptance of a proposed analysis of ethical concepts has no implications at all for first-order moral attitudes. The latter stand on their own legs. If I were to reject an intuitionist meta-ethic to which I had been committed previously and were suddenly to turn emotivist, my moral life could remain just what it was before the change, without any absurdity. I could be for and against the same things, present the same arguments, and in all respects, other than the ways in which I talk about these procedures, remain morally unchanged. No logical connection would obtain between any set of first-order moral views and any second-order analysis of the formal structure of moral discourse.1 Both of these assumptions may be traced to a view of philosophical method which makes a sharp distinction between the actual use of a concept in accordance with its governing rules and