Abstract

My purpose in this dissertation is not to argue for or against a specific thesis, but to analyze and evaluate various arguments for and against the position known as "ethical noncognitivism." I understand this position to consist in the claim that ascriptions of unconditional intrinsic value are incapable of being either true or false. By "unconditional intrinsic value" I mean value and does not depend on anyone's affective or cognitive disposition, and is not instrumental. ;I select two noncognitivists whom I take to be representative. Section I is devoted to a critical examination of their theories. The first is R. M. Hare, who argues that the truth of noncognitivism is necessary inasmuch as it can be established by conceptual analysis alone. The second is J. L. Mackie, who advances his version of noncognitivism not as a conceptual or necessarily true thesis, or a thesis about the meanings of moral words, but as an ontological and epistemological claim. I attempt to show in chapters 1 and 2 that the arguments that both Hare and Mackie adduce in support of noncognitivism are inconclusive. ;In sections II and III I consider various attempts to demonstrate conclusively that noncognitivism is false. Chapters 3 and 4 are devoted to the arguments of Alasdair MacIntyre, Max Black, John Searle and Alan Gewirth, all of whom try to show in their various ways that value-judgments can be validly inferred from purely factual judgments, Gewirth's argument having the added feature of purportedly showing that those who deny his brand of cognitivism fall into a formal contradiction. I contend that none of these philosophers succeeds in validly deriving a substantive, unconditional, non-instrumental "ought"-judgment from descriptive premises. ;In chapter 6 I analyze and criticize three arguments against noncognitivism that can be broadly categorized as "self-referential," an expression that I define in chapter 5. These arguments are advanced by C. I. Lewis, Hilary Putnam and John Finnis. My evaluation of these arguments leads me to conclude that each of them fails to establish that noncognitivism inevitably creates self-referential difficulties for those who affirm it. ;Thus the conclusion of the dissertation is that the aforementioned arguments are all equally inconclusive. While the philosophers considered in Section I fail conclusively to establish the truth of noncognitivism, those considered in Sections II and III likewise fail to establish the definitive falsity of the noncognitivist thesis