Having It Both Ways

Guy Fletcher, Michael Ridge

"The two main competing traditions in mainstream metaethics are cognitivism and non-cognitivism. The traditional view of this divide is that the cognitivist understands moral (and other normative) judgments as representational states (e.g. beliefs) whereas the non-cognitivist understands them instead as non-representational states - typically as desire-like states of some kind (e.g. emotions, plans, preferences). Because moral and other normative judgments genuinely do seem to have both belief-like and desire-like elements, this debate has seen each side going through seemingly endless epicycles to either accommodate or debunk what the other side explains easily. Recently, there has been an explosion of interest in theories which transcend these categories by holding that moral and other normative judgments are themselves constituted by both belief-like and desire-like elements and/or...