Semantic Import of Moral Terms: Cognitivism vs. Noncognitivism (original) (raw)
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Between Non-Cognitivism and Realism in Ethics: A Three-Fold Model
The aim of the paper is to propose an alternative model to realist and non-cognitive explanations of the rule-guided use of thick ethical concepts and to examine the implications that may be drawn from this and similar cases for our general understanding of rule-following and the relation between criteria of application , truth and correctness. It addresses McDowell's non-cognitivism critique and challenges his defence of the entanglement thesis for thick ethical concepts. Contrary to non-cognitivists, however, I propose to view the relation between the two terms of the entanglement as resulting from the satisfaction of a previously applied moral function. This is what I call a " ThreeFold Model " .
THE SEMANTICS OF MORAL LANGUAGE IN META-ETHICAL NON-COGNITIVISM
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According to non-cognitivism in meta-ethics, moral terms are merely non-cognitive (expressive/emotive) linguistic items that events, or actions in question. In this sense, moral terms (e.g. right, wrong, permissible and etc.), in their the first-order and non-parenthetical uses, are on par with expressive (non-moral terms have no semantic content-simply, meaning-to contribute into the meaning of sentences in which they occur. Yet, they only function to surface non-cognitive (i.e. emotive) roval of or aversion from the act of killing. Hence, non-cognitivism entails that moral judgments do not express a proposition at all and thereby moral judgments are not truth evaluable. Nevertheless, it is questionable if non-cognitivism provides a coherent semantics for the analysis of moral sentences. In this work, I will discuss the coherency of non-cognitivist semantics by addressing one essential problem for it, namely the Frege-Geach problem. As the problem suggests, moral sentences can be uttered with non-expressive attitudes ter all, the antecedent merely describes/indicates a case in which some act is evaluated as such-and-such while the consequent is laid out by virtue of its truth-conditional relation with the described case in the antecedent. Thus, moral sentences do not necessarily entail to non-cognitive/expressive ascriptions and thereby they appear to have propositional contents. In this respect, I will explicate the Frege-Geach problem and critically discuss whether there is any room for non-cognitivism to explain away the problem.
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MORAL LINGUISTICS AND LANGUAGE OF ETHICS: CONSTRUCTIVIST RESPONSE TO THE EMOTIVIST POSITION
Jezik, Kontekst, Književnost, 2020
Metaethics is an ethical branch concerned with the status of morality in language. Firstly, we would have to define moral linguistics itself. Moral linguistics is a branch concerned with the question of semantic function and context of moral discourse. We would first start with an emotivist position which belongs in the non-cognitivist branch and states that there are no moral facts and no moral values; thus, the definition of moral language is an emotional reaction towards certain events, deeming them acceptable or unacceptable in relation to our subjective self. Furthermore, this would mean that there would be no way of finding a link between two contradictory moral statements ("stealing is good" or "stealing is bad") stated by two different subjects and also two different moral statements stated by a single subject ("democracy is good", "stealing is bad"). This also means that there will be no space for language context since our moral statements would be immediate and proximate. However, is it truly the case that there is no place for language context in our use of moral language? Our paper examines the problems emotivism encounters and offers an alternative view, constructivism, which states that we form our moral language not only on emotion, but also rationality. Having said that, our paper will have the following structure-elaboration of normative and descriptive statements in our moral language, arguments for and against emotivism and providing an alternative view: constructivism.
Practical Cognitivism: An Essay on Normative Judgment
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This dissertation aims to recover two key insights that have animated the so-called “noncognitivist” tradition in ethics – insights that have been continually distorted and obscured through attempts to express them in a theoretical framework that cannot accommodate them. The two key insights are, first, that ethical thinking is fundamentally practical in a way that rules out a substantially representationalist account of such thinking, and, second, that purely ontological questions about the nature and existence of certain sorts of entities (e.g., ethical properties and facts) are irrelevant to concerns about the objectivity of ethics. When properly understood, these ideas point toward a distinctive kind of metaethical view that I call ‘practical cognitivism’. This view understands ethical practice as the product of a distinctively practical kind of cognition, which we engage in by considering, adopting, rejecting, and carrying out practical commitments. Understanding ethical practi...
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Scholars claim that there are different sources of knowledge. These sources have come to be thought of as foundations for knowledge. Cognitivists are not united on the foundation of knowledge but they agree that knowledge is possible as against the skeptics. Intuitionism is a cognitive theory which states that knowledge is attainable through the mental faculty of intuition. Our concern in this paper centres on what might be called ethical intuitionism. Although there are variants of this theory, intuitionists believe that there are objective moral facts which are self-evident or known through intuition. In this form, it has been classified as ethical non-naturalism because it does not depend on empirical verification of its principles or truths. We shall argue that there are serious objections to ethical intuitionism. Moreover, we shall show that ethical intuitionism does not take cognizance of important findings in psychology and biology regarding human dispositions which are capab...
Truth Conditions and the Meanings of Ethical Terms1
Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Volume 8, 2013
is paper motivates and develops what I call a condition semantics for moral terms. According to condition semantics, moral sentences conventionally distinguish among moral standards (or test whether a moral standard meets a certain condition) just as ordinary factual sentences conventionally distinguish among possible worlds (or test whether a possible world meets a certain condition). is point is captured formally within an extension of a familiar truth-conditional paradigm. e resulting analysis improves upon its main competitors: invariantism and contextualism. e framework of condition semantics also offers a perspicuous way of posing various classical ethical and metaethical questions-e.g., concerning relativism, expressivism, and judgment internalism. is can motivate clearer, better motivated answers and suggest new ways the dialectic may proceed.
Cognitivist Presumptions of Moral Realism in Justification of Moral Truths
Beytulhikme International Journal Philolosopy, 2024
This study critically examines the foundational principles of impartial- ity and value independence advocated by moral realist epistemologies in the pur- suit of objectivity. Central to moral realists is the cognitivist presupposition ne- cessitating a clear distinction between cognitive and emotional components in- herent in moral judgments. The investigation focuses on the cognitive-emo- tional dichotomy underlying the moral realist perspectives of David Enoch and Thomas Nagel. The research findings unveil that the interplay between cogni- tion and emotion, as evidenced by experimental data, poses a formidable chal- lenge to the traditional understanding of impartiality and value independence. The article's initial section delves into the ontological nature of moral judgments, followed by an exploration of the cognitive assumptions shaping Nagel and Enoch's conceptualizations of objectivity. The final section elucidates the cog- nitive-emotional interdependence that disrupts the conditions of impartiality and value independence, conventionally posited as prerequisites for objectivity.
This paper argues that non-cognitivism about moral judgements is compatible with moral realism. In order to reveal the possibility, and plausibility, of this hitherto under-explored position in metaethics, it surveys a series of four increasingly fine-grained formulations of the distinction between cognitivism and non-cognitivism. It argues that all but the last of these distinctions should be rejected, on the grounds that they lead advocates of non-cognitivism away from what initially motivated them to advocate non-cognitivism in the first place. One significant pay-off of this reconceived formulation of the cognitivism/non-cognitivism distinction is that it reveals what it would take to properly appreciate the place of virtue ethics in contemporary metaethical debates.