History of Meta-ethics

	Revision 5 . . December 14, 2001 1:59 am by Larry Sanger [Consensus seems to be that we need only to link the first instance of a word or phrase to another article]
	Revision 4 . . (edit) December 14, 2001 12:30 am by Craig Pennington [* Just adding a few links within the text and replacing some bad characters]
	Revision 3 . . (edit) August 2, 2001 8:02 pm by Buttonius [Removed a s**tload of non-standard microsoft "smart quotes"]

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Changed: 5c5

Well, that's really not quite right. That question, about what "good" means, would be better regarded as a topic under the theory of value. That's really just my opinion; other philosophers, like Hospers in our reading, would say that the meaning of the word "good" is definitely a topic in meta-ethics, not the theory of value. They would say that the theory of value investigates which sorts of things are good, once the meaning of "good" is explained. But as far as I'm concerned, we may as well consider these two questions, about what "good" means and about which things, in general, are good, as being at bottom the same. And they are both questions answered in the theory of value. But in that case, if meta-ethics isn't in the business of defining "good," then how is it concerned with the meaning of ethical sentences at all? How are we to understand this claim that meta-ethics is the study of what sort of meaning ethical sentences have?

Well, that's really not quite right. That question, about what "good" means, would be better regarded as a topic under the theory of value. That's really just my opinion; other philosophers, like Hospers in our reading, would say that the meaning of the word "good" is definitely a topic in meta-ethics, not the theory of value. They would say that the theory of value investigates which sorts of things are good, once the meaning of "good" is explained. But as far as I'm concerned, we may as well consider these two questions, about what "good" means and about which things, in general, are good, as being at bottom the same. And they are both questions answered in the theory of value. But in that case, if meta-ethics isn't in the business of defining "good," then how is it concerned with the meaning of ethical sentences at all? How are we to understand this claim that meta-ethics is the study of what sort of meaning ethical sentences have?