Metaethics and the Functions of Moral Language

Abstract

Metaethics has long included debates about the function of moral discourse. Some have argued that moral statements express our attitudes, others that they serve as prescriptions for how to act, still others that they describe moral facts or properties. This article argues that we can best address these questions about function by attending to work in empirical linguistics. Tracing the development of moral language through different grammatical forms, and noting the additional functions added at each stage of development, enables us to give a more empirically grounded and fine‐grained answer to questions about the functions of moral discourse. This analysis shows how multiple functions come to be layered up through different grammatical forms. Interestingly, it also preserves the different grains of truth picked up on by historically “rival” views—including prescriptivist, expressivist, and even descriptivist views. In so doing, it helps develop a comprehensive neo‐pragmatist approach to understanding moral discourse.