Meta Ethics can simply be defined as the nature of ethical evaluations.

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Meta Ethics

Meta Ethics can simply be defined as the nature of ethical evaluations. In basic terms it defines what is meant by a word used in an ethical statement.

A meta-ethical theory, unlike a normative ethical theory, does not contain any ethical evaluations, it evaluates the evaluations.

In meta ethics there are two kinds of belivers, those who say ethical terms can’t be diffined – the non-naturalists, and those who say ethical terms can be diffined – the naturalists.

To compare the two, we will look at the differences between the two beliefs using the term ‘good’. We use good in everyday life, for example most people would agree that Nottingham Forest are a good football team, expecially when campared to a team like Derby County. But can we actually define what good is?

G. E. Moore a non-naturalist said goodness is a simple, undefinable, non-natural property. He didn’t mean that goodness is a ‘super special’ word, it just means it can't be reduced to natural properties like human needs, wants, pleasures, and so forth. So Moore thought that goodness is indefinable. Now that doesn’t mean that talk of goodness is quite meaningless. It's just that you can't formulate what this meaning is in a definition. You can't say, for example, "goodness" means "pleasure."

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Some people would say that for a word to be meaningful it must be difined, but can you define the word ‘thing’? So Moore's claim, which is the central claim of the non-naturalist, is that "good" is indefinable. And if that's the case, then the meaning of sentences containing word good can't be explained entirely in terms of sentences not containing the word good. You can't substitute the pleasure, or needs, or anything like that for the word good.

We say that something is rounded if it’s round, some therefore we can say something is good if it contains goodness.

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