metaethics
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.41 in modern English
17
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
1
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The study of the nature and meaning of moral judgments, and the foundations and the possibility of ethical reasoning as such.
Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "However, he holds that ethics is not capable of proving cruelty—or happiness, for that matter—to be either good or bad. This view of the limitations of the reasoning of normative ethics belongs to metaethics."
- "With respect to metaethics, some philosophers, known as cognitivists, believe that it is possible to identify objective criteria for determining what is ethically right or wrong, or good and bad. Others, however, question whether this is possible."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *me Proto-Indo-European *meth₂? Ancient Greek μετᾰ́ (metắ) Ancient Greek μετᾰ- (metă-)lbor. English meta- English ethics English metaethics From meta- + ethics. First attested in the 1930s.