Resumen Summary: Metatics

tica y Valores

Mauro Suarez Tolentino

Matricula: 814913

Derecho nico 2 Cuatrimestre

09/07/2017
Metathetics is the discipline that studies the meaning of ethical words, in other
words, it is the study of the language of morality.

Hume defined the type of moral philosophy often referred to as metaethics, as

that which consists in the study of moral language, its meaning, its function
and certainty. Metahetics does not offer moral advice to anyone, does not dare
to take that step; Its objective is the analysis of moral statements and their
meaning. Its starting point is the examination of the difference between "is" and
"must be", or the possibility or impossibility of building bridges between "is" and
"must". On the contrary, ethics is the study of the "content" of moral
statements. Metaethics, then, is not normative.

According to this view, ethics is a second level study. Its object of study (first
level) are the linguistic expressions that typically use the moral agents. The
metaetic label designated these inquiries and opposed two other labels, that of
"descriptive ethics" (the empirical study of moral phenomena) and that of
"normative ethics" (The Moral Opinions of Moral Agents and Philosophers of
Moral pursuit of normative purposes.

Since the Principia Ethica and its attempt to define the word "good", meta-
ethics has grown markedly in scope. It now includes not only matters
pertaining to the meaning and use of terms and moral propositions, but more
generally to all conceptual brushing linked to such themes, but also questions
linked to the possible logic of moral statements. Perhaps the most important
function of metaethics is of a gnoseological character: to establish how
normative or value judgments could be based, if possible. That is to say,
although in the metaethical primate a pretension of normative and value
neutrality of its analyzes, its doing is closely related to the question of the
validity of the moral propositions.

Meta-ethics is not therefore concerned with what people should do, but with
what they do when they talk about what to do. For this, it examines normative
ethics in order to clarify its terminology. The moralist distinguishes the moral
philosopher as the former prescribes what is to be done, what is "good" or
"bad", while the second analyzes the discourse of the first, the way in which he
uses the terms "good "," Bad "," due "and the characteristics that define moral
language as such. The distinction pointed out is sometimes expressed by
saying that the moralist is interested in ethics, while the moral philosopher as
such is interested in metaethics.
The main metathetical theories are ethical naturalism, ethical non-naturalism
and ethical non-cognocitivism, different positions that try to answer questions
such as: What kind of judgments are moral judgments? Can they be replaced
without changing their meaning by factual statements? Do they appeal to
reason or emotion?

Also metaethics is understood as the reflection on the frontier problems that

constitute the last horizon of the ethical reflection and they point the line of
demarcation between the purely philosophical reflection and the theological
one.

A first series of problems facing metaethics is that which refers to the analysis
of moral language, that is, the terms with which we express our moral
thoughts, to clarify the semantics of the terminology used. It would correspond
to the explictio terminorum of the moral or dogmatic reflection of traditional
theology. But more concretely, metaethics indicates that kind of reflection that,
although it does not try to offer normative indications, deepens in the
knowledge of the problematics around the Kantian postulates of the morality,
the presuppositions of the normative ethic or the indispensable conditions For
the correct approach of ethical reflection.

Another order of problems confronting metaethics is that relating to the

knowability of ultimate moral judgments or to the distinction between good and
evil, which determines the fundamental moral choice. With it we are asked
whether it is or can be considered as the result of a cognitive act the assertion
from which the moral perspective is deduced: assuming the viewpoint of
fairness is good, while assuming the opposite point of view is bad.