## 1. General Observations



The range of issues, puzzles and questions that fall within
metaethics' purview are consistently abstract. They reflect the
fact that metaethics involves an attempt to step back from particular
substantive debates within morality to ask about the views,
assumptions, and commitments that are shared by those who engage in
the debate. By and large, the metaethical issues that emerge as a
result of this process of stepping back can be addressed without
taking a particular stand on substantive moral issues that started the
process. In fact, metaethics has seemed to many to offer a crucial
neutral background against which competing moral views need to be seen
if they are to be assessed properly. Indeed, some metaethicists go so
far as to hold that their own work makes no substantive moral
assumptions at all and has no practical
 implications.[2]
 Whether any view that is recognizably still a view about the nature
and status of ethics could manage this is dubious. But there is no
doubt that, whatever metaethics's substantive assumptions and
practical implications might be, it involves reflecting on the
presuppositions and commitments of those engaging in moral thought,
talk, and practice and so abstracting away from particular moral
judgments.



Such reflection quickly reveals the extent to which various aspects of
morality might reasonably be seen as both intellectually and
practically problematic. On the intellectual side, many have worried
that there is no good way to vindicate the assumptions and commitments
of morality. A careful and clear-eyed study of morality will reveal,
some argue, that it is a myth that there are moral values, duties, or
responsibilities; others argue that the various principles that are
presented as authoritative standards for all are actually merely
expressions of emotion or projections of the idiosyncratic attitudes
of those advocating the principles; still others argue that in some
other way morality is not what it pretends to be and not what it needs
to be if it is to be legitimate. On the practical side, many have
pressed the difficulty of getting people to judge themselves and
others impartially; others have worried that, while we have an
interest in convincing others to conform to morality, we ourselves
rarely have any reason, really, to conform; still others have thought
that the sort of freedom morality assumes is not available to humans
as they actually are.



Of course these worries and arguments regularly find counterparts on
the other side, with people maintaining that, properly understood,
morality is no myth, that its pretensions can be vindicated, that we
have all the reason we need to embrace morality and meet its demands,
and that people, at least some people under some circumstances, have
whatever sort of freedom it is that morality might require.



None of the arguments, on either side, can go quickly or easily. They
all depend, first, on identifying and defending the presuppositions
and commitments one takes to be at issue and then, second, on showing
that those commitments either cannot, or can, be defended. What is at
stake is, at least, an understanding of what is an important part of
most peoples' lives. Yet there is potentially a lot more at
stake to the extent the presuppositions and commitments people take
for granted turn out to be suspect. For then, not only will our
*understanding* of moral thought, talk, and practice be
compromised, our sense that morality is important may well disappear
as well.



Despite the abstract and deeply controversial nature of metaethics,
its central concerns arise naturally--perhaps even
inevitably--as one reflects critically on one's own moral
convictions. So it is no surprise that, in Plato's
*Republic*, Polemarchus' off-hand claim that being a just
person enhances one's life developed quickly into a decidedly
metaethical discussion of the origin and nature of justice. Early in
Book I, for instance, Thrasymachus defends the idea that justice is
whatever is in the interest of the stronger, arguing that morality is
a human creation designed by the rich and powerful to control and
exploit others. A myth for the weak-minded, arranged for the advantage
of a few, justice imposes burdens most have reason to set aside. So
Thrasymachus argues. Glaucon follows up, in Book II, with an
alternative, and less cynical, proposal. While he too sees morality as
a human creation, he sees it as a salutary solution to the serious
problems we would otherwise face. He argues that people naturally find
themselves unable successfully to ensure that their own wills will
rule while, simultaneously, being subject regularly to the will of
others. The principles of justice are, he thinks, reasonably
introduced and enforced by all as a good way to ensure peace and
stability in society. Socrates, in contrast, rejects the idea that
justice is a human invention and argues instead that justice provides
independent and eternal standards against which human practices,
conventions, and institutions can be judged. These different views
will likely have implications for what value justice might have. At
the same time, though, accepting one or the other view of the nature
of justice is compatible with a range of substantive views about what,
specifically, justice consists in and about its value. On the one
hand, one might see justice as a social convention while still holding
that the relevant conventions are in place whenever they are enforced
by the powerful or that only mutually advantageous conventions
establish justice. On the other hand, one might see justice as
transcending human invention and conventions entirely and yet hold
that they either demand treating others with respect or with promoting
their happiness.


## 2. The Euthyphro Problem



According to many, Socrates's position fits well with
morality's pretensions. It fits well also with the thought that
whatever standards humans might put in place are, one and all, liable
to moral criticism. Of course, Socrates's position brings along
a suite of puzzles concerning the nature of these transcendent
standards. What is their origin and from where do they derive their
authority?



Many have thought the right answers to these questions are found in an
appeal to God. On their view, moral principles are the expression of
God's will--they are His commands to us--and they get
their authority from their source. In important ways, though, this
merely shifts the puzzles back a step. Whatever problems one might
have making sense of eternal transcendent standards re-emerge when
trying to make sense of an eternal transcendent being who might issue
commands. And, as Plato emphasized in *Euthyphro*, one is also
left with the difficulty of explaining why God's commands are
authoritative.



One plausible answer might be that God's perfect knowledge of
right and wrong, or God's own moral perfection, explains why his
commands serve legitimately as standards for us. But that answer
assumes that standards of morality exist independently of God's
will (either as objects of his knowledge or as standards in light of
which He counts as morally perfect), in which case speaking of
morality as consisting of God's commands will not explain the
origin or nature of these independently existing standards.



Alternatively, one might eschew an appeal to God's knowledge or
goodness and claim that there is no independent standard for
God's will and nature. But that leaves in place the puzzle
concerning the authority of moral principles. If we reject the idea
that God's commands reflect His knowledge of right and wrong,
and reject the idea that there is an independent standard for
God's will and nature (in light of which we recognize Him as all
good), it seems reasonable to wonder why his commands have any special
 authority.[3]



One might here point to God's power to punish or to His role in
our creation. But neither consideration seems to establish legitimate
authority on its own. In general, at least, the mere fact that one has
the power to enforce one's commands does not establish those
commands as legitimate, nor does it ensure that one has a right to
punish those who fail to conform to one's commands. Similarly,
in general, the mere fact that one created something does not
establish that one properly has absolute control over what one has
created. Of course, room remains to argue that there is something
special about God's power, or about His role as creator, that
makes his commands distinctively legitimate. What is needed is an
account of what is special. And, in this context, it needs to be an
account that explains how God's commands, as opposed to the
commands that others might issue, have an authority. Moreover, if
appealing to God is to solve the metaethical puzzle posed by
Euthyphro, the account offered must not itself rely on, or presuppose,
the sort of transcendent standards we have been attempting to
explain.


## 3. Naturalism and Non-naturalism



One appealing feature of Glaucon's account of morality as a
mutually advantageous convention is that it renders morality's
origin and nature non-mysterious. Moral facts, on this sort of view,
emerge as no more puzzling than facts about what is legal or polite.
In each case, the standing of some behavior (as moral, or legal, or
polite) depends on its conforming to, or conflicting with, various
standards that have been put in place. Glaucon's account also
makes clear why it is that people might care deeply about
morality's demands (even as they are, in their own cases,
tempted to violate them when they believe they can with impunity),
since the relevant conventions are mutually advantageous.



Yet conventionalist views such as Glaucon's have real
difficulties fitting with the common idea that the fundamental
principles of morality are universal. Conventions, after all, are
contingent creations that differ from place to place and come in to,
and go out of, existence. Moreover, conventions seem liable to
arbitrariness in ways that threaten to undermine their claim to
authority unless they are recognized (at least implicitly) as
satisfying some convention-independent standard. That some convention
demands something seems to provide reason to conform to the demand
only when the convention is, itself, just or reasonable, or in some
other way good. And this suggests that, to whatever extent specific
moral rules and principles are products of convention, their claim to
authority relies on some standards that are not products of
convention.



Needless to say, these considerations are not decisive, and those who
see morality as a kind of convention have a variety of plausible ways
to address the worries mentioned above. As a result, the view remains
attractive. Still, many--even many who think an appeal to
convention is essential to making sense of morality--think that
the proper account of morality cannot be a matter of conventions
"all the way
 down".[4]
 But that does not mean that they think that the standards that serve
to justify the demands of (some) conventions are mysterious. Some, for
instance, argue that what makes a convention good, and so serves to
justify its demands, is its contribution to overall happiness, while
others see the measure of conventions in their ability to advance the
interests of each considered singly, and still others maintain that
the value of conventions is found in their capacity to secure the
approval of those who consider them impartially. On all such accounts,
value is convention-independent, but it is nonetheless metaphysically
non-mysterious. Each of these accounts portrays value as, at bottom, a
familiar, completely natural, feature of the world. Moreover, while
(on these accounts) particular claims concerning value will prove hard
to establish and controversial, there is no special puzzle about what
we would be trying to discover or what would count as relevant
evidence.



These are all examples of naturalist accounts of morality that
identify various moral properties with non-problematic natural
features of the world. As a result, they are commonly characterized as
versions of naturalism and are contrasted with non-naturalist views
that see morality as presupposing, or being committed to, properties
over and above those that would be countenanced by natural
science.



Non-naturalism comes with two distinctive burdens: (i) accounting for
how the realm of moral properties fits in with familiar natural
properties and (ii) explaining how it is that we are able to learn
anything about these moral properties. Naturalism, in contrast, avoids
these metaphysical and epistemological burdens.



Despite its advantages, naturalism has difficulty capturing well what
people take to be the true nature of morality. In saying something is
good or right or virtuous we seem to be saying something more than, or
at least different from, what we would be saying in describing it as
having certain natural features. Correspondingly, no amount of
empirical investigation seems by itself, without some moral
assumption(s) in play, sufficient to settle a moral question. (See the
entries on
 moral realism;
 moral non-naturalism;
 moral naturalism;
 moral relativism; and
 supervenience in ethics.)


## 4. Is/Ought and the Open Question Argument



David Hume seemed to have these points in mind when he observed that
an 'ought' cannot be derived from an
 'is.'[5]
 There is substantial debate about just what Hume meant, and similarly
substantial debate as well about whether he was right. But at least
part of Hume's concern seems to have been that no set of claims
about plain matters of fact ('is' claims) entail any
evaluative claims ('ought' claims). He seems to have
thought that one can infer the latter from the former only if, in
addition to premises concerning plain matters of fact, one has on hand
as well at least one evaluative premise. If, for instance, one infers
from the fact that someone is feeling pain that something bad is
happening, one is at least presupposing that pain is bad. That
presupposition, in turn, is not entailed by any claims concerned
solely with plain matters of fact. If Hume is right, every valid
argument for an evaluative conclusion either includes or presupposes
some evaluative premise. And, as a result, there is no value-neutral
argument for an evaluative conclusion.



Coming at the same issues from a different direction, G. E. Moore
argued (at the beginning of the twentieth century) that no naturalist
account of morality could do justice to what we are actually thinking
and claiming when we make moral
 judgments.[6]
 Moore had in mind a variety of naturalist views that, at the time,
had come to be seen as, on balance, the most attractive accounts of
the nature of morality. While these views differed among themselves as
to what goodness, rightness, virtue, and justice might consist in,
they shared a commitment to seeing morality as a wholly natural
phenomenon and they all saw moral judgment as a matter of thinking
that actions, institutions, or characters had some particular natural
property or other. According to these views, moral properties are to
be identified with some natural property or other (e.g., with what is
pleasant, or what satisfies someone's desire, or what conforms
to social rules that are in force).



Considering specifically views that identified goodness either with
pleasure or with being the object of a desire one desires to have,
Moore maintained that such views confused the property goodness with
some other property that good things might happen to have. In support
of his claim, Moore offered a simple test. Take whichever account you
will--say, one according to which to be good is to be
pleasant--and then consider whether a person who understands the
terms involved might nonetheless intelligibly ask whether something
she acknowledges to be pleasant is good. It seems she could. And it
seems too that in asking the question she would not then be revealing
any kind of conceptual confusion or incompetence. The question is, as
Moore put it, a genuinely open one. But then we must grant that to
think something is pleasant is not identical to thinking it is good.
Otherwise, wondering whether something that is, admittedly, pleasant,
is good would be as senseless as wondering whether a given pleasant
thing was pleasant. If, though, to think something good is different
than thinking it pleasant, such thoughts (Moore assumed) must involve
attributing distinct properties.



Moore was quick to point out that granting that the question is open,
in the sense his argument supposes, is compatible with discovering
that, as a matter of fact, everything that is pleasant is also good.
Moore's point is that the question is not settled--not
closed--on conceptual grounds (whereas it would be if thinking
something good were just a matter of thinking it pleasant). Because
analogous questions remain open for all the candidate naturalist
proposals, Moore argued that no such proposal could legitimately be
defended as a conceptual truth and that they all failed to capture
accurately what we are thinking in thinking of something that it is
good.



Moore's argument had a tremendous impact, striking most people
at the time as decisive. As a result, non-naturalism got a new lease
on life with a number of people working in metaethics trying to
articulate, systematize, and defend accounts of morality that resisted
the temptation to identify moral properties with natural
 properties.[7]
 Much of the attention was given, by those who have come to be called
intuitionists, to defending the idea that moral knowledge, while not
based on our senses and on the empirical data we might collect, was
nonetheless on as secure a footing as, say, our knowledge of
mathematics or of the fundamental concepts (of, say, causation and
necessity) that play crucial roles in science. Much of the work in
metaethics pursued a strategy of finding companions in guilt, of
showing that the status of moral properties as non-natural and the
attendant implications for what we must suppose about the nature of
moral evidence, did not leave morality any worse off than other
respected fields of knowledge.



Yet Moore's casual slide from claims about what we are thinking
to the nature of the properties we are attributing in thinking as we
do, offered an important point of resistance. As Moore saw things, to
make a moral claim is to express a distinctive belief (that might be
true or false) about how things are. Specifically, it is to express
the belief that some course of action, or institution, or character
trait had the property of being right, or good, or virtuous. The
challenge (Moore assumed) is to figure out what property it is that we
are taking a thing to have, in thinking of it as right, or good, or
virtuous. And the place to look, he thought, is at the content of our
beliefs.



According to many, while Moore's Open Question argument does
show that moral thinking is distinctive and should not be treated as
part and parcel of thinking about non-moral matters, Moore was wrong
in holding that the important difference should be traced to the
nature of the properties we are taking things to have. According to
some of these critics, Moore's mistake is in thinking we are
attributing properties at all, when we think of something as right, or
good, or virtuous; according to others, his mistake was in thinking
that how we think of a property reveals the true nature of the
 property.[8]



The first line of criticism emerged soon after Moore first offered his
Open Question Argument, with philosophers suggesting that in thinking
morally we may well not be attributing properties at
 all.[9]
 Agreeing that it was a mistake to see moral claims as attributing
natural properties to things, non-cognitivists argue that
Moore's mistake was in thinking that moral claims attribute any
sort of property to things, and so he was also wrong in thinking that
moral claims have propositional content and express genuine beliefs.
The Open Question is always open, they argue, not because we are, in
making a moral judgment, attributing some non-natural property to
things, but because we are not attributing any property at all. We are
not saying anything that might be true or false, nor are we expressing
a belief. We are doing something altogether different: taking a stand,
or expressing an emotion, or prescribing something. On these views,
moral judgments express some attitude other than belief and lack the
sort of cognitive content that would allow them to be true or
false.



From the start, non-cognitivists have had an eye on both (i) the
non-cognitive attitudes that are *expressed* in making a moral
claim and (ii) what people are *doing* in making such claims.
When focusing on the first, they emphasize that moral terms get their
meaning not by their link to beliefs that represent the world as being
a certain way, but by their connection to non-cognitive
attitudes--e.g., reactions to the way the world is, or desires
for how the world might be. Here, in giving an account of the
"meaning" of moral terms, non-cognitivists focus on the
conventionally-established connection between moral terms and certain
attitudes. (Of course, people can use such a term without actually
having the corresponding attitudes, but understanding the term,
non-cognitivists argue, is a matter of seeing that it is a
linguistically appropriate way to express the attitude.) When focusing
on the second, non-cognitivists emphasize moral language's role
as tool for influencing others. Here their attention is on how moral
claims guide actions. In saying that something is, say, wrong, people
are consistently not just expressing their opposition to it but
telling others not to do it, or working to persuade them not to, or in
some other way working to direct action. The two ideas go together
naturally, since if the first is right, then it would help explain why
people can and do use moral language in the way the second suggests.
But the ideas are separable. And many think that the expressivist idea
advanced by the first goes to the heart of the matter, while
concentrating on the directive or prescriptive *use* of moral
language can at best be secondary.



Whatever the details, the non-cognitivists share the idea that one can
admit that something is pleasant, or the object of a desire, or such
that it conforms to some rule in force, and nonetheless not take a
stand regarding it, or not have any particular emotion concerning it,
or not have any interest in prescribing anything relating to it. The
Open Question is open, they hold, precisely because the attitudes
expressed by a moral judgment all involve something other than merely
believing of something that it has certain features (whether natural
or not). At the same time, the non-cognitivists' proposals fit
well with granting Hume's claim concerning the gap between
'is' and 'ought': whatever facts one grants,
whatever 'is' claims one endorses, there is no logical
inconsistency involved in failing to take a relevant stand, or to
express an emotion towards it, or to prescribe something related to
it. Between the beliefs we might have and the other attitudes we might
form, no entailment relations hold at all.



Non-cognitivists, of course, need to explain why it seems so plausible
to see moral judgment as an expression of belief and as a matter of
attributing properties to actions, institutions, and characters. And
they need to explain why moral thought seems appropriately subject to
the rules of logic, whereas the various attitudes that play central
roles in the non-cognitivist accounts all seem to fall outside of that
 realm.[10]
 Taking the challenge head-on, recent versions of expressivism, flying
the banner of "quasi-realism", have taken as a central
project explaining, on non-cognitivist foundations, how and why moral
language has all the trappings of being cognitivist and realist. These
views start with a picture of the world as having neither moral
properties nor people believing in moral properties (though they have
other beliefs), and then explain how a practice of thinking and
talking about moral properties, moral beliefs, moral truth, and moral
facts, might naturally and *properly* emerge. The central idea
is that we can see our thought and talk as fundamentally a matter of
our expressing our affective attitudes or commitments which gives rise
to legitimate thought and talk about corresponding properties,
beliefs, truths, and facts. Two moves underwrite this idea. One is to
hold that talk of properties, beliefs, truths, and facts comes cheap:
Once one holds sincerely that "Lying is wrong", no
additional commitments come with adding "Lying has the property
of being wrong" or "I believe that lying is wrong"
or "It is true that lying is wrong" or that "It is a
fact that lying is wrong". These are all, in effect, just
different ways of saying the same thing. And if, in the first place,
sincerely saying "Lying is wrong" is a matter of
expressing an attitude or a commitment then so too are these
alternative ways of saying the same thing. The second move that
underwrites quasi-realism is pointing out that the question of whether
realist-sounding moral discourse is legitimate is, itself, an
evaluative question judged in light of one's attitudes and
commitments. There is, on this view, no independent standard of, say,
"matching the world" that one can deploy without, in
choosing *that* standard, expressing one's attitudes and
commitments.



Various versions of non-cognitivism, and in particular versions of
quasi-realist expressivism, remain among the most attractive ways of
resisting the non-naturalist implications of Moore's Open
Question
 Argument.[11]
 But they are not the only option. Many argue that, while
Moore's argument shows that *thinking something is good*
is different than *thinking it is pleasant* (or the object of a
desire, or such as to conform to some norm that is in force), it does
not show that *being good* is different from *being
pleasant* (or the object of a desire, or such as to conform to
some norm that is in force). After all, they point out, *thinking
that some liquid is H2O* is different from *thinking
it is water* and one might intelligibly wonder whether what one
grants to be water really is H2O. Yet that does not show
that *being water* is anything other than *being
H20*. Far from it. A difference between the thoughts
does not establish a difference in the properties. Thus, for all the
Open Question Argument shows, it might turn out that a naturalist
account of the nature of moral properties is correct. The naturalist
account cannot be defended simply as a conceptual truth but it also
cannot be rejected, as Moore thought it could be, as obviously
confusing one property (the natural property) for another one (the
moral property). This sort of cognitivism has no trouble explaining
why it seems so plausible to see moral judgment as an expression of
belief and as a matter of attributing properties to actions,
institutions, and characters. Moral judgments are in fact, on this
sort of account, the expression of belief and they do involve
attributing properties to actions, institutions, and characters
(though the account holds that the true nature of the property being
attributed is something that might come as a surprise to some).
Similarly, this sort of cognitivism can explain why moral thought
seems appropriately subject to the rules of logic: it seems
appropriately subject to these rules because it is. Problems emerge,
however, when it comes to explaining the apparently distinctive nature
of moral thinking. If thinking that something is good or right is a
matter of attributing to the thing some natural property or other,
then what explains the apparently distinctive nature of moral
thought?



Cognitivists and non-cognitivists face a common challenge: to account
for the nature of moral thought and talk that simultaneously does
justice to its distinctive nature without failing to appreciate the
significant ways in which it is continuous with non-moral thought and
talk. Cognitivism has a relatively easy time accommodating the
continuity between moral and non-moral thought and talk, but,
especially when combined with naturalism, it faces a real challenge in
marking the distinctive nature of moral thought and talk;
non-cognitivism has no trouble making room for the distinctive nature
of moral thought and talk, but it has trouble accommodating the
continuity. (See the entry on
 moral cognitivism vs. non-cognitivism.)



What has always been attractive about Moorean non-naturalism is its
capacity to combine the continuity and the difference into a coherent
picture. There is room, at least, to account for moral thought's
continuity with other thought by emphasizing that it is all a matter
of attributing properties (albeit different properties) to things; and
there is room too for locating the distinctive nature of moral thought
in the putatively authoritative standing of the properties attributed.
Of course, leaving room for an account is not the same as actually
providing one, and Moore himself does not actually offer much at all
by way of an explanation of the normative authority (as we might call
it) of moral properties. In any case, what has always been troubling
about Moore's view is that the coherent picture that emerges
seems to presuppose (i) the existence of metaphysically dubious
properties that fall outside the causal nexus and, so, are such that
(ii) it would be a complete mystery how we could ever reliably learn
anything about them, if they were to exist. Moore, and the
intuitionists who followed him, work in various ways to address these
concerns. Error theorists, in contrast, hold that the coherent picture
painted by Moore is, at least roughly, the right account of what moral
thought and talk involves, but they go on to argue that the
metaphysically and epistemically troubling implications of that
picture properly undermine its credibility. They argue that we have
compelling reasons to reject moral thought, at least to the extent
Moore was right about what moral thought
 presupposes.[12]
 That is of course compatible with thinking that we should use the
same language meaning something different by it, or replacing it
altogether with some other way of thinking and speaking.



The error theorists' position regarding morality is the
counterpart, with respect to moral thought, of the atheist's
position with respect to views concerning God's will and ways.
In both cases, the suggestion is that the thoughts at issue involve a
mistake or a failed presupposition, and that, because of this, they
cannot be true. The error theorist's position, it is worth
noting, requires establishing two claims that have each met a lot of
resistance: that moral thought really has the presuppositions the
error theorist supposes and that those presuppositions are as
untenable as the error theorist maintains. At the same time, though,
anyone who hopes to vindicate moral thought has the burden of showing
that its actual presuppositions and implications are, after all,
defensible. (See the entry for
 moral anti-realism.)


## 5. Moral Epistemology



Anyone mounting such a defense needs to offer some account of how it
is we might successfully justify one set of moral judgments as over
against others. When we turn to morality, what counts as good grounds
for holding one view rather than another? What sort of evidence might
be available? If Hume and Moore are right, no evidence that appeals
solely to non-evaluative considerations will be sufficient (unless we
presuppose some principle of inference that connects non-moral
premises to moral conclusions). But if we need to rely on evaluative
premises or principles in order to infer substantive moral conclusions
from non-moral premises (e.g., non-moral premises regarding the impact
of a course of action on pleasure or on the satisfaction of human
interests), the question immediately arises, "How might we
justify these evaluative premises or principles?"



One answer often offered is that, at a suitably abstract level, there
are premises or principles that everyone in fact accepts. Perhaps
'Murder is wrong', or 'pain is bad', or
'everyone should be treated equally', are candidates. But
clearly such claims hardly do much work since questions immediately
arise about which killings constitute murder and about how different
pains should be compared and about which way of treating people counts
as treating them equally in the relevant way. No moral claim that is
plausibly offered as actually accepted by all, or nearly all, people
can possibly be substantive enough to help settle on one set of moral
judgments rather than another as better justified.



One might, in light of this, offer a more substantive principle, not
as one that people actually all accept, but as one that they are all,
in fact, committed to (though they may not realize it). This strategy
offers the prospect of identifying a principle rich enough in content
to serve as the justifying ground for other moral judgments. Yet it
requires showing how the principle(s) identified work to justify the
more specific judgments they are meant to support. Moreover, one who
takes this approach needs also to justify the claim that people are
actually committed to the principle in the first place. And this
raises the suspicion that claiming there are certain principles to
which everyone is committed simply relocates the original challenge,
without actually meeting it.



In any case, even if there are suitably substantive principles to
which people are committed, and this can be shown, and even if there
is a way to establish as well that the principles in question would
(if right) actually justify more specific moral judgments, one might
understandably worry about the status of the resulting structure. Why
not think of it as a castle in the sky, a structure with no
appropriate foundation? After all, the fact that we happen to accept,
or are committed to accepting, some principle, seems a long way from
showing that the principle is true or right.



Our moral judgments (about particular cases as well as about general
principles) seem to float disconcertingly free from our normal sources
of evidence concerning the nature of the world. We cannot see, touch,
taste, or smell value or rightness or virtue, even as we can see,
touch, taste, or smell some of the things that have value or that are
right or that manifest virtue. So how do we learn about value and
rightness and virtue themselves? What grounds do we have for thinking
our various moral judgments link up appropriately with what they are
judgments of?



Of course, moral judgments are not the only judgments that face such a
challenge. Many mathematical, modal, and religious judgments face a
similar challenge. They all apparently concern matters that are not
directly available to the senses and that are, in various ways,
mysterious. That establishes some companions in guilt, but also
provides the hope that reasonable accounts of how we might learn (or
not) about numbers, possibility and necessity, and God, might provide
insight into the evidence (if any) we are able to secure concerning
morality.



One approach is to argue, as Kant (1785) does, that the relevant moral
commitments, although neither immediately obvious nor universally
acknowledged, can be known *a
 priori*.[13]
 On his account, the concept of a rational agent contains within it
the resources to ground the unconditional demands, on such agents,
that they (i) act always either to take the necessary means to their
ends or abandon (or adjust) those ends and (ii) act always to treat
themselves and others as ends and never solely as means. The first, on
Kant's account, structures practical rationality generally, the
second structures morality specifically. Both are, as Kant sees it,
inescapable demands on rational agents.



It is worth emphasizing that positive theories of moral epistemology
are inevitably bound up with accounts of the nature of moral judgment
and their metaphysical presuppositions and commitments. On some
accounts, there is nothing to know, so there is no need for a theory
of moral knowledge. On others, a proper understanding of moral
judgments will reveal that justifying them is of a piece with
justifying other judgments for which we have, or hope to have, a
plausible epistemology, so the epistemology of morality will be
continuous with epistemological theories of other domains (see McGrath
2020). On still other accounts, moral judgments are such that only a
*sui generis* epistemology would make sense of our capacity to
acquire moral knowledge. No matter which of these options one takes,
epistemological skepticism looms as a threat. And in the first case,
where there is by implication nothing to know, it does not merely
loom, it arrives inevitably. Even if one succeeds in developing a
positive theory of moral epistemology in light of which moral
knowledge might be possible, the substantive challenge of showing that
knowledge has actually been secured remains formidable.



Moreover, the deep and apparently irresolvable moral disagreements,
even among those who in other respects regard each other as peers,
calls into question the idea that people are even justified in holding
the views they do. After all, if someone equally informed, smart,
concerned, and sensitive know that they arrive at different moral
conclusions, how can either regard themselves as justified in their
opinion. On what grounds? Thanks to what evidence? (See the entry on
 disagreement.)



One way to respond to this worry is to maintain that apparent peers
actually are not peers either because they lack relevant evidence, or
they suffer from distorting evidence, or they fail, at least when it
comes to moral matters, to give the proper weight to their evidence in
their reasoning. Taking this line commits one to some view or other of
what evidence is the relevant evidence and what is involved in giving
it the proper weight in moral reasoning. Not surprisingly, there is a
huge variety of views on these matters concerning, for instance,
whether one's moral judgments are justified only if they have
their foundation in, say, distinctive set of moral intuitions (see
Moore 1903; Ross 1930; Huemer 2005); or only if one's moral
judgments cohere properly with one another, with one's
principles connecting and supporting one's more particular moral
judgments (see Rawls 1971; Daniels 1979; Sayre-McCord 1996); or only
if they can be grounded in an inescapable aspect of rational agency
(Korsgaard 1996).)



Any moral epistemology is likely to inherit virtually all the
complexity that comes with epistemology in general, including not just
the challenge of disagreement among peers, and the debate between
foundationalists and coherentists about justification, but worries
about our access to the relevant truths (if such there be), and the
persistent looming threat of skepticism (see Enoch 2011;
Sinnott-Armstrong 2006). When that is added to the apparently
distinctive nature of moral thought, the challenges are daunting. (See
the entries on
 moral epistemology
 and
 moral skepticism.)



At the same time, much of morality seems clearly a matter of knowing
*how*--how to respond to the need of others, how to
respond to threats, how to carry oneself in various
situations--and not primarily (if at all) a matter of knowing
*that* something is the case. No doubt, focusing on knowing
how, rather than knowing that, does not address skepticism concerning
the claims we might make as to which know-how is morally significant.
But paying attention to the degree to which people count as moral (or
immoral) not because of what they say or believe, but because of how
they act, is important to appreciating both the nature of morality and
what all a plausible account of moral knowledge must encompass.


## 6. Morals, Motives, and Reasons



Among morality's distinctive features, all agree, is its
apparently intimate connection to action. In making moral judgments,
for instance, we seem to be making a claim that, if true, establishes
that someone or other has a reason to act or be a certain way. This
marks an important difference between moral claims and claims
concerning, say, color. The claim that something is red is, even if
true, only contingently connected to whether anyone has any reason at
all to act or be a certain way. Whereas if a certain thing is morally
good it seems that everyone necessarily has at least some reason
(perhaps overridable or defeasible, but still some reason) to promote,
pursue, protect, or respect it--at least if they recognize that
it is good. Moreover, many have thought, to judge sincerely that
something is good (whether or not one is right) is to have some
motivation (again, perhaps overridable or defeasible, but still some
motivation) to promote, pursue, protect, or respect it.



Thus there seem to be necessary connections between moral properties
and reasons and also between moral judgments and motivations. Some
have thought as well that there is a necessary connection between
moral judgments and reasons, such that if one judges that something is
good or right then (whether one is correct or not) one had a reason to
act or be a certain way. Others have thought that there is a
connection, again, a necessary connection, between there being a
reason for someone to act or be a certain way and that person being,
or at least being able to be, motivated in a certain
 way.[14]
 This last suggestion, that (say) one can have reason to do only what
one might be motivated to do, has implications as well for what might
count as good, if something is good only if one has a reason to act in
a certain way with respect to
 it.[15]



Each of these supposed necessary connections is controversial and yet
each has plausibly been taken to be at the heart of what is
distinctive about
 morality.[16]
 At the same time, different proposed connections fit more or less
well with different accounts of morality and at least some of the
supposed connections are flat out incompatible with some of the
accounts. Thus those versions of non-cognitivism that see making a
moral judgment as a matter of expressing some motivating attitude have
an easier time explaining the internal connection (if there is one)
between sincerely making a moral judgment and having an appropriate
motive, while certain naturalist cognitivist proposals, for instance
those that identify goodness with having the capacity to garner
approval from someone who is fully informed, must hold that a person
might sincerely judge that something would secure that approval and
yet be utterly unmotivated by that
 fact.[17]
 (See the entries on
 moral motivation
 and
 reasons for action: internal vs external.)



Working through the ways in which a proper appreciation of the
relations between morality, reasons, and motivation constrain and
inform an account of morality has been a central issue in metaethics.
In fact, Glaucon's original proposal concerning the nature of
morality (according to which morality is a conventional solution to
problems we would otherwise have to face) was introduced as a way of
pressing a worry about morality: Morality pretends to provide reason
to all, virtue is supposed to be its own reward, and a person is told
she should do the right thing because it is right and not because she
hopes for some reward, yet, in the face of the demands morality
sometimes makes, these claims concerning its nature and value all seem
dubious. Specifically, if morality is (as Glaucon's proposal
would have it) constituted solely by a set of conventional rules we
put in place to secure the benefits we receive from the restraint of
others, it looks as if the only reason (and the only motive) we would
each have for conforming to the rules would be found in the
consequences we hope such compliance would secure. In cases where we
could get the benefits without the restraint (as when our failure to
restrain ourselves would be undetected) we would have neither reason
nor motive not to violate the rules. Thus, if Glaucon is right about
the nature of morality, then morality (properly understood) would only
provide reason to some, under some circumstances, not reason to all,
always. Moreover, virtue would not be its own reward. And morality
would not be such that it would make sense for a person to do the
right thing (as defined by the rules in place) for its own sake, since
the sole value of the relevant rules is found in the benefits that
come from others complying with those rules.



Glaucon's ultimate hope was Socrates would provide an account of
morality that--unlike his own--would serve to vindicate
morality's pretensions. Glaucon assumed that if no such account
is forthcoming morality's claim on our allegiance is undermined,
even as we might continue to have our own reasons for perpetuating the
myth and for working to see that others comply with its rules. Much of
the *Republic* is then given over to Socrates' first,
developing an account of the nature of morality (specifically, of
justice) and then, second, arguing that being moral is valuable
regardless of the consequences. Socrates' concern, in showing
that being moral is valuable, is to show specifically that it is
valuable to the person who is moral, that the virtuous person, and not
just others, benefits from her virtue. Indeed, he tries to show that
being moral is so valuable to the person who is moral, that whatever
the consequences of injustice might be, however great the rewards,
they could never be valuable enough to outweigh the loss of
one's virtue.



Socrates' own account of the metaphysical and epistemological
underpinnings of his view (his appeal to eternal, non-physical
Platonic Forms and to our intellectual access to those Forms) commits
him unmistakably to non-naturalism and to something like intuitionism.
Yet his account of the nature of justice (as a matter of people
successfully being ruled by reason) and the specific features of
justice that he takes to establish its value (specifically its
connection to freedom), are as available to a naturalist as to a
non-naturalist (as long as reason and freedom can be understood
naturalistically).



In any case, the question underlying Glaucon's concern
is--Why should I be moral?--has consistently been at the
center of attempts to explain the connection between morality and what
we have reason to
 do.[18]
 Some have argued that the question is misplaced, at least if it
assumes there must be some non-moral reason to be moral. Others have
held that the question is easily answered on the grounds that the fact
that some action is morally required, for instance, entails that one
has reason to do it. And still others have maintained that the
question presses the single most important challenge to
morality's legitimacy, since morality's claim on our
allegiance depends on our having reason to comply with its demands,
yet explaining why we might have those reasons is extraordinarily
difficult.



Whatever view one ends up adopting concerning the connections that
hold (or do not hold) among moral properties, moral judgments, reasons
for action, and effective motivations, no account is plausible as a
vindication of morality unless it makes sense of how and why moral
considerations might properly figure in practical deliberation that
results in decision and action. Doing this successfully is, in
principle, compatible with thinking moral properties do not always
provide reasons, compatible too with holding that moral judgments
sometimes fail to motivate, and, finally, compatible as well with the
idea that one might have a reason to perform some action that one has
no motivation to perform. Of course, these various views are each
quite controversial and involve rejecting what others have thought to
be necessary truths.


## 7. Freedom and Responsibility



Making sense of how moral considerations might figure in practical
deliberation is especially important when it comes to explaining when
and why people are responsible for what they do or fail to do. Some of
that explanatory job is a matter of moral theory, not metaethics, and
involves figuring out what counts as good excuses, legitimate
justifications, and appropriate burdens. A theory of moral
responsibility inevitably relies on substantive moral theory.



Yet there are important metaethical issues bound up in giving an
account of moral responsibility. They emerge most sharply as one
considers the nature and significance of free will. Does
responsibility presuppose free will? If so, when does someone count as
having a free will? It cannot merely be a matter of her will being
uncaused. After all, a person whose will was utterly random,
responsive neither to her nor to the reasons she had for doing things,
would be a person no freer (in the relevant sense) than a person whose
will was fully and directly controlled by someone else as a puppeteer
might control a puppet. What would it take for her will to count as
appropriately responsive, either to her or to her reasons? Is this
appropriate responsiveness a matter of being undetermined or of being
determined by the right things or in the right way? In any case, if
one has the sort of free will that moral responsibility requires
(whatever that turns out to be) how are we to understand the
connection between the will, and what influences it, on the one hand,
and the various psychological and physical causes that apparently
determine the behavior that is identified as the action one performs
willingly, on the other? How do agents with a free will fit within a
natural world?



Not surprisingly, the range of answers that have been offered to these
questions covers an exceedingly broad spectrum. Some hold that moral
responsibility requires a certain kind of freedom and then argue that
we lack that sort of freedom or, alternatively, that we at least
sometimes have it. Others, though, maintain that freedom is irrelevant
and that holding people morally responsible makes sense only if we see
their wills as determined. And others identify a truly free will not
with a will that is undetermined, but with one that is determined by
reason. And still others argue that the right understanding of moral
responsibility will show that metaphysical questions concerning the
nature of the will are irrelevant. (See the entries on
 free will
 and
 moral responsibility.)


## 8. Moral Principles and Particular Judgments



The history of moral theory is a history of attempts to identify,
articulate, and defend general moral principles that serve to explain
when and why various types of action, institutions, or characters
count as right or wrong, just or unjust, virtuous or vicious. The
assumption has consistently been that there is a general and
principled account of morality to be given. And this assumption has
survived the fact that few people think any particular set of
principles that we have actually succeeded in articulating, is fully
adequate. What explains the assumption? Why not hold, as
particularists do, that there may well be no set of general principles
that adequately mark moral distinctions? Or, why not think, as
skeptics do, that our repeated failures actually to identify fully
adequate principles shows that morality is a chimera? (See the entries
on
 moral particularism
 and
 moral particularism and moral generalism.)



Wrestling with these questions returns one immediately and directly to
wondering about the nature of morality and the role it is supposed to
play in human life. What is it about morality's nature, or its
role, that would make sense of the idea that general principles are
essential to it? Why not suppose that one case of cruelty might be
wrong, and another not wrong, without there being any ground that
would justify treating them as different? Why is it so natural to
suppose that there must be some other difference--say a
difference in their consequences, or a difference in what has led up
to the act of cruelty--that underwrites and justifies the thought
that one is wrong, but not the other? Why not grant that one of the
two just happened to be wrong and the other happened not to be? Could
not moral properties just happen to have been distributed randomly so
that, in the end, there is no justification for one action having a
certain moral standing while another, otherwise the same, has a
different standing? These suggested possibilities are, I believe, not
real possibilities at all. They would each entail that moral demands
are fundamentally arbitrary in a way that is incompatible with
morality's claim to authority. But what is it about morality
that precludes it being fundamentally arbitrary? A good answer, I
suspect, will lead one away from the idea that moral properties are
merely there in the world to be found, wholly independent of our
concerns and practices. But a good answer is needed. And a good answer
is not provided simply by supplying, if one could, a consistent and
coherent set of principles that successfully systematized particular
moral judgments about acts, institutions, and characters. The
challenge here is not simply to show that moral judgments can be seen
to fit a pattern; the challenge is to show that the pattern they
fit--the principle(s) to which they conform--work to explain
and justify their importance.