Contemporary Metaethics

1. The view that moral properties exist and are irreducible (sui generis), natural properties. (7, 7)
6. The moral realist argues that moral properties and/or facts exist and are in some way independent from people’s judgements. (7)
7. A judgement is truth- apt if it is capable of being true or false. The judgement that it is raining is truth- apt, whereas the exclamation “Ow!” is not. (5, 3)
9. We know something a priori if we know it independent of experience, for example, knowledge of mathematical and logical truths. (1, 6)

2. The view that two situations cannot be different in their moral properties without differing in their natural properties. We are meant to know this a priori. (13)
3. Michael Smith’s (1994) name for the tension between three apparently intuitive positions: internalism about motivation, the Humean account of motivation and cognitivism. (5, 7)
4. According to speaker relativism, when I make a moral judgement what I am saying is elliptical and can only be judged as true or false in relation to my moral framework. (7, 10)
5. An agent who is psychologically normal but who is unmotivated by her moral judgements. The externalist about motivation thinks amoralists are common. The internalist about motivation thinks that the amoralist is a conceptual impossibility. (9)
8. The naturalist claims that the only things that exist are those that would appear in the scientific picture of what exists. (10)
10. A form of non- cognitivism that holds that moral judgements are expressions of the speaker’s emotions rather than a description of anything. This is not to be confused with subjectivism or relativism. (9)

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