Both cognitivism and non-cognitivism are in the first instance doctrines in philosophical moral psychology, though the terms
‘cognitivism’ and ‘non-cognitivism’ are all too often applied to views in moral metaphysics as if they were interchangeable with ‘realism’
and ‘irrealism’ (or ‘anti-realism’). (This is highly misleading, not least because there are forms of irrealist cognitivism, namely error theory and many varieties of fictionalism.) Why have these moral psychological terms come to designate the main options in metaethics as a whole? It seems that while metaethical problems in different areas can be approached piecemeal, there is a natural order of dependence between them. Insofar as moral semantics studies what moral utterances convey and how, it seems obvious that an answer to this question depends on the answer that we give to the question of what moral judgments consist in – that is, what it is to think something is right or wrong – since it is those very judgments that sincere moral utterances give expression to. In other words, the following Expressive Identity Thesis (EIT) holds:
(EIT) What moral judgments consist in = what moral utterances express
As it is sometimes put, moral judgments provide the sincerity conditions for moral utterances – an utterance of ‘Bombing civilians is
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wrong’ is sincere only if the speaker really thinks bombing civilians is wrong, whatever having that thought consists in. (It may be the case that moral utterances convey more about the speaker’s psychological states than just their sincerity conditions, perhaps by way of pragmatic implicatures. The study of moral language, therefore, does not reduce to moral psychology, though the latter is essential to it.) Further, insofar as moral metaphysics studies what ontological commitments moral utterances involve and whether the world meets them or not, the answers it gives seem to depend in part (but essentially) on answers given by moral semantics. So, the following Metaphysical Identity Thesis (MIT) holds:
(MIT) What moral utterances commit us to = what kind of facts (if any) would make moral utterances true
Given EIT, what moral utterances commit us to is inherited from moral judgments, so given MIT, psychological study of moral judgment is central to the answers of moral metaphysics. For example, if to think that bombing civilians is wrong is to ascribe a non-natural property to bombing civilians, what would (or does) make bombing civilians wrong would be its having such a property.
(Of course, there is the further metaphysical question of whether the sort of facts moral judgments ascribe exist and what their nature is.
While moral psychology is essential to moral metaphysics, the latter does not by any means reduce to moral psychology.17) Similarly, moral epistemology could hardly get off the ground before we have an understanding of whether there is moral knowledge in the first place and what it consists in. Thus, epistemology again points back to questions about the nature of moral judgment. In this way, moral psychology has a certain limited explanatory priority in metaethics, and it often makes sense to classify comprehensive metaethical positions as cognitivist or non-cognitivist.
17 Error theory makes this point vivid: according to Mackie (1977), for example, non-naturalist cognitivism is the correct view in moral psychology, but there simply are no facts that would make the moral beliefs true.
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However, it is still possible that methodologically, some other branch of metaethics provides a more fruitful entry point to the interlinked questions. Traditionally, and for a good reason, it is moral semantics that has enjoyed this sort of methodological priority. The question about what moral utterances express is, arguably, a question about public linguistic norms that are accessible to philosophical reflection and so offer the prospect of intersubjective agreement. In such reflection, we can exploit EIT in the other direction: since moral judgments are what moral utterances express, knowing what moral utterances express is knowing what moral judgments are. This is why knowing whether moral utterances are disguised imperatives, for example, has direct implications for moral judgment, and someone like Hare can be unhesitatingly classified as a non-cognitivist, in spite his focus on moral language rather than moral psychology. However, we can also ask more directly what counts as taking a moral stance while still exploiting the publicly available character of conceptual norms by asking what makes attributions of moral judgments true. That is, we can inquire into the truth conditions of the following sorts of claims:
Jordan thinks that she morally ought to go home.
Paul thinks giving money to charity is morally good.
James thinks Paul is generous.
Michael thinks it would be dishonest to take the money.
Anne thinks she owes gratitude to Michael.
In each case, what makes the attribution true is something about the psychological condition of the person involved – his or her beliefs, desires, intentions, emotions, and so on.18 For a long time, metaethicists have focused on the first two kinds of judgments, assuming that other sorts of moral judgments can be reduced to some combination of them and factual judgments. This non-accidentally parallels the focus in normative ethics on duties and obligations, right and wrong, or good and bad. As normative
18 This is, perhaps, not a truth universally acknowledged; see Knobe and Roedder 2006 and my response in Kauppinen 2006.
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ethicists have come to have a richer picture of the ethical landscape, emphasizing the notions of virtue and vice and the plurality of deontic concepts, metaethicists are slowly beginning to follow.19
2.2 Perspectives on Practical Reasoning and Moral