Metasemantics and Metaethics

Abstract

Metaethicists disagree about the semantic content of normative and evaluative terms. To adjudicate such disagreements, we need consider different metasemantic theories, which seek to explain what makes it the case that certain words (and the thoughts they express) have the semantic contents they do. In this chapter, we explain how answers to this metasemantic question impact on debates within metaethics.