Concept

Cognitivism (ethics)

Overview

Cognitivism is the meta-ethical view that ethical sentences express propositions and can therefore be true or false (they are truth-apt), which noncognitivists deny. Cognitivism is so broad a thesis that it encompasses (among other views) moral realism (which claims that ethical sentences express propositions about mind-independent facts of the world), ethical subjectivism (which claims that ethical sentences express propositions about peoples' attitudes or opinions), and error theory (which claims that ethical sentences express propositions, but that they are all false, whatever their nature).

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Philosophers who discussed Cognitivism (ethics)

• Crispin Wright
• Jerry Fodor
• Zenon Pylyshyn
• Robert C. Solomon
• Peter Glassen

Related ideas

• Moral nihilism
• German language
• Harvard University Press
• Norm (philosophy)
• Moral universalism
• If and only if
• Truth value
• Expressivism
• Contingency (philosophy)
• Game
• Mathematics
• Metaethics
• Coherence theory of truth
• Imperative mood
• Non-cognitivism
• Anti-realism
• Ontology
• Protagoras
• J. L. Mackie
• Divine command theory
• Semantics
• Crispin Wright
• Quasi-realism
• World

Opposing perspectives

• Metaethics
• Proposition

Place in the tradition

Part of Aesthetics.

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