Abstract

In recent years, metaethicists have debated the pros and cons of the following five claims regarding the essential features of moral as opposed to nonmoral judgments: Moral judgments are universalizable; Moral judgments are prescriptive; Moral judgments take normative priority over nonmoral evaluative judgments; Moral judgments are essentially connected with a substantive normative concern; Moral judgments can legitimately be said to be objective, intersubjectively valid, or true. The thesis of the dissertation is that on adequate interpretations of , , , and , these claims are true of moral judgments, but is false on any interpretation. ;The first chapter delimits the scope of the inquiry and makes it clear that the thesis of the dissertation applies to a descriptive-elucidatory analysis of moral judgments as they are understood and intended by those who make them. Carefully bracketed are revisionary considerations based on psychological, metaphysical, or epistemological theories. It is claimed that intelligent revision is possible only after an adequate descriptive analysis of the phenomena. ;The second chapter addresses and . It is argued that moral judgments are universalizable and prescriptive, but that two doctrines thought to be implied by Hare's version of universal prescriptivism are false, namely, the doctrines that to make a moral judgment necessarily involves appeal to principles and the noncognitivist thesis that moral judgments are neither true nor false. ;The third and fourth chapters contain a detailed argument for and against . The version of that is defended, the priority thesis, asserts that an evaluative judgment is a moral judgment only if it is taken by the person uttering it to normatively override any other evaluative judgment that might conflict with it. In defending the priority thesis against the objections of William Frankena, the moral point of view is analyzed within the context of a broader conception of practical reason in relationship to other evaluative points of view, e.g., the religious, aesthetic, and prudential points of view. It is further argued that it follows from the truth of the priority thesis that is false. ;In the final chapter, it is argued that although moral judgments are prescriptive in an important sense, this action guiding function is best explained on the cognitivist thesis that moral judgments are either true or false. It is argued that this is true even on Hare's universal prescriptivism.