meta-ethics

British  

noun

1. (functioning as singular) the philosophical study of questions about the nature of ethical judgment as distinct from questions of normative ethics, for example, whether ethical judgments state facts or express attitudes, whether there are objective standards of morality, and how moral judgments can be justified

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Other Word Forms

• meta-ethical adjective

Example Sentences

What else could you expect from someone like Harry Monaghan, who had publicly put ridiculous meta-ethics into his Arete profile before publicly deleting it altogether, which was as close as you could come these days to saying you didn’t care about the moral life at all?

From Slate

The plot of the story revolves around characters who try to briefly escape the system through clandestine Black Dinners, during which they leave their phones—and their meta-ethics—behind.

From Slate

Implicit in Burton’s story is the idea that the meta-ethics are linguistic in nature and translatable into logic compatible with Arete’s code base.

From Slate

Determining such clear moralistic/ethical statements has perplexed philosophers for centuries, and it is unlikely that a person could articulate a coherent set of meta-ethics for themselves within Arete.

From Slate

This, again, is meta-ethics: Are the things we consider morals natural properties?

From Slate