Dr Christoph Schuringa | Northeastern University London

Date | 28 January 2026

Title | 'What Is Wrong with Metaethics?'
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Abstract:

There is a widely accepted way of carving up the terrain of ethics according to which metaethics is a second-order enquiry that has a ‘target discourse’ whose nature it examines but in which it does not intervene. In this talk I make trouble for this conception, drawing on Mary Mothersill’s critiques of metaethics from the 1950s.

Partly I offer an exposition of Mothersill’s critiques (which tend to focus on the claims to non-normativity of metaethics and assumptions about the logical exclusivity of rival metaethical positions), and partly I add to them (by focusing on assumptions about the nature of ‘ethical discourse’ as the target discourse of metaethical enquiry).

While my task is largely critical, I end by considering positive prospects that open up once the dichotomy on which the standard conception relies is overcome – in particular that of progress towards metaethical truth within ‘ethical discourse’ itself.