- Metaethics

Catalog description

We spend much of our time trying to answer such questions as: How ought we to act? What should we value? and What type of person should we be? Yet, it seems right that we can evaluate our answers to these questions and decide among them only if we correctly answer another set of questions first. For instance, how can we know what we should value unless we understand what values are, whether they exist and whether we can know them if they do? How can we know how we ought to act if we do not know what it means for an act to be morally good or why we are even obligated to do what is morally good in the first place? This course pursues answers to this other set of questions. It inquires into the nature of ethical statements, properties, judgments and attitudes. As such, it draws on many other areas of philosophy, including epistemology, metaphysics and the philosophy of language.