What is meant by meta-ethics?
January 2002 Foundation a) What is meant by meta-ethics Ethics is the study of moral standards and conduct. For this reason, the study of ethics is also often called "moral philosophy," meaning "What is good?" "What is bad" etc. However, Meta-ethics is the study of this moral language and of what different people mean when they use ethical terminology. There are many accepted schools of thought that give definitions of ethical language. Meta-ethics is the study of how these theories account for moral language. Take, for example, Ethical Naturalism; this theory takes it origins from the teachings of Aristotle. Aristotle believed that everything in the universe has a purpose, which he called its 'final cause,' for which it has been designed. In fulfilling this purpose things can achieve 'goodness.' From this Ethical naturalists believe that 'good' can be explained in terms of features of the natural world. However, ethical non-naturalists believe that you cannot determine goodness in terms of natural phenomena. They believe that goodness is simply a term we use to describe something, not something which can be discovered within the nature of something. To ethical non-naturalists, ethical statements can be reduced to non-ethical ones, without denying that they are meaningful. G.E Moore accused ethical naturalists as committing what he called the 'naturalistic fallacy;'
