| A | B |
|---|
| Cognitivism | a view that maintains moral statements are either true or false |
| Noncognitivism | a view that maintains the moral statements are not statements that are either true or false |
| Emotivism | a noncognitivist view that says moral statements are expressions of feeling |
| David Hume | was an empiricist who thought moral claims arose out of feeling and not rational processes |
| moral realism | maintains that moral statements can express moral facts that are true, independent of any subjective, personal beliefs about those facts |
| moral realism arrives at moral facts by discovering them through the reasoning process | in contrast, emotivism maintains moral claims are the result of subjective expressions of feeling and as such, can't be right or wrong |
| moral truths, according to moral realism | are correct---even if no one actually holds those truths. |
| "killing the innocent is unethical" is a moral truth, even if no one on the planet had that opinion | according to the view of moral realism |
| A weakness of emotivism/noncognitivism: | one can't argue about feelings. Feelings just are. So moral argument ends. |
