Moral Metaphysics and Epistemology

Moral Metaphysics and Epistemology
In the first lesson we mentioned two significant branches of philosophy called metaphysics and
epistemology. Metaphysics studies being or reality. It gives an account of what sorts of beings exist and
what kind of reality they have. Epistemology studies knowledge. It gives an account of the different types
of knowledge that we have, and explains where they come from, and which are more reliable than others.
Many of the puzzles in metaethics are metaphysical or epistemological—they are puzzles about moral
reality and knowledge. What sort of reality do moral concepts such as goodness, right, or justice have?
Where does our knowledge of such things come from, and what sort of knowledge is it?
Like any other discipline, ethics claims to give us knowledge about some sort of reality—in this case,
knowledge about right and wrong. When I say, “Murder is wrong,” or “Kindness is a virtue,” I seem to be
claiming two things:
1. That actions and persons can have features I call “wrongness,” and “virtue.”
2. That I know something about these features.
But do moral features such as “wrongness” or “virtue” really exist in actions and persons, or are these
supposed features of reality actually in my head? Could they just be my interpretations of or responses to
reality? Those are metaphysical questions, and they imply epistemological ones: Can I really have
knowledge of these features, or do I only ever have opinions or preferences about them? Chapter 1 deals
with these metaphysical and epistemological questions.
Subjective and Objective Statements
Statements in general make claims—they assert that something is or is not the case. However, different
kinds of statements do this very differently—so differently, in fact, that although all statements appear to
make truth claims, only some of them actually have truth value. Consider:
• “2 + 2 = 4.”
• “Socrates was Greek.”
• “The moon is made of green cheese.”
In the three statements above, the object of the statement is a purported fact about the world: that two and
two is four; that Socrates was Greek; that the moon is made of green cheese. These facts (if they exist) are
independent of the mind of the subject (the person uttering the sentence)—and the sentences claim that
that fact holds true—that is, they claim real knowledge about the world. These sentence are, therefore,
about the (purported) facts that they express. They do not tell us anything about the subject, aside from
the fact he is making that claim. If I say, “2 + 2 = 4,” you learn that I believe that two and two is four, but
you don’t learn much about me, except that I’m capable of doing basic arithmetic.
Such claims are called objective. In general, we can say that objective claims are true relative to the
object. They are true if and only if the object (a fact about the world) really is the way the statement
claims it is. So, the first two examples above are true, while the third one is false, but all of them are
objective. Objective claims are not matters of opinion, taste, or preference, and they do not tell us much
about the subject beyond the fact that he or she is making the claim. This means that objective claims are
either true or false, and if two people disagree about them, at least one of them is incorrect