Meta-ethics

What's this all about then?
Meta (meaning 'above' in Greek) ethics is how we approach examining, not morality, but moral discussion itself. Here you'd be looking at stuff like:
 * 'Is morality a human construct?' (is there any outside source for morality? - you'll have seen a bit of this when examining morality and religion last year with the idea that God could be the source of morality, or there could be something higher than God, thus making God not omnipotent. Or on the other hand, we could just be making this all up and there's not really any meaning behind it, it's just a set of evolved behaviours that have helped us survive as a social species)
 * Do moral words have meaning? (this is basically the second half of the course. If yes, then it is possible to achieve the moral framework that gives a definitive right and wrong. On the other hand, if not, there is no meaning behind our saying that's bad other than expressing a personal distaste. This is sometimes referred to as the 'boo-hurrah' theory and one of the major criticisms of Non-Cognitivism, especially Emotivism)

More things:
Meta ethics is a rather wide topic, but the relevant things to our course would be
 * Cognitivism/Non-Cognitivism
 * The Is/ought gap
 * the Naturalistic Fallacy
 * Objectivity/subjectivity of moral judgements

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