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“How fair is the claim that ethical language is meaningless?”
Ethical language can be argued to have significant meaning behind it in the sense that it
can be defined further than just the word itself
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The meta-ethical theories supporting the question are emotivism and
intuitionism while the critical theory is naturalism
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Emotivism is the belief that ethical terms are used only to express feelings
and emotions and it is non-cognitive and generally subjective to each person
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This, coupled with the support of Charles L
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Furthermore, the theory of intuitionism is also in support of ethical language being
meaningless
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Moore specifically highlights the word ‘good’ as a prime
example of how ethical language is meaningless because we know what good means but
cannot define it, so therefore there is no meaning behind the word, making it
meaningless
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Additionally, intuitionism allows people to get away with anything they say
which is a major flaw in the theory itself as people can just blame their intuition for an
ethical decision they make
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On the other hand, the theory of naturalism disagrees with the statement and actually
believes that ethical language has meaning
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However, David Hume challenges the idea of naturalism,
believing that we don’t determine moral rights or wrongs simply by using reason or

through observation, we are using our conscience and sentiment to determine this
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Therefore, while Hume makes a good argument
against Bradley, both Bradley and Foot put across substantial evidence and arguments
which would make us believe that there is some sort of meaning behind ethical language
and in this case, this is apparent through cognitive ideas
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We cannot come to an overall judgement on what makes a word such as
‘right’ or ‘wrong’ definable just simply based upon observation or through our own
mind, it is a combination of both and the use of both observation and your own intuition
to define ethical language give these words meaning

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