Moral Epistemology

Abstract

Meta-ethics comprises three branches: semantics, metaphysics, and epistemology. However, while epistemological concerns drive much of contemporary meta-ethical theorizing, epistemology tends to receive less explicit attention than semantics and metaphysics. In part, this might be because of an assumption that only moral realists need provide us with an epistemology, for only if we suppose that there are moral properties and facts that are appropriately independent of our moral beliefs and attitudes will we need to tell a story about how we can come to know them. Irrealist accounts might be thought to face considerably reduced epistemological burdens, or to escape them altogether.