Abstract:

Normative ethicists have a laudable goal: to identify and defend correct moral principles that could help us to answer hard practical questions. I argue that the best way to reach this goal involves metaethical enquiry into the semantics, psychology, and ontology of morality. This conclusion may appear surprising: it has sometimes been said that metaethical theories must be neutral between normative theories, and it is common for contemporary normative ethicists to develop their theories without doing metaethics. In doing so, they follow the lead of John Rawls, who explicitly argued for what he called the 'independence' of moral theory.

The dissertation begins by offering an account of the distinction between metaethics and normative ethics. It then defends metaethical enquiry against the challenge that it presupposes a mistaken conception of the moral enterprise. The central argument of the dissertation rests on two main claims. First, the idea that metaethics must be normatively neutral is refuted by showing that a range of leading metaethical theories have divergent implications for normative ethics or its methodology. Second, it is argued that the epistemic quality of research in metaethics is at least as good as that of normative ethical research. Together with plausible epistemic principles, these claims support a powerful argument for the normative significance of metaethical enquiry.

This result is important because normative ethicists face deep controversy concerning both the substance of their claims and the methods they employ to justify those claims. Because metaethical theories have methodological implications, metaethical theorizing can help to resolve this controversy. In virtue of this, it is argued that the best way to approach normative theorizing involves unified enquiry into both metaethical and normative questions. The dissertation then rebuts Rawlsian arguments for the independence of normative theory, and shows that engaging in systematic normative theorizing uninformed by metaethical commitments offer a significant hostage to metaethical fortune.

Keywords . autonomous ethics, metaethical quietism, metaethics, moral epistemology, moral methodology, moral neutrality, morality, normative ethics, Rawls.