Egoism and Altruism

1. Metaethics
The term “meta” means after or beyond, and, consequently, the notion of metaethics involves a removed, or bird’s eye view of the entire project of ethics. We may define metaethics as the study of the origin and meaning of ethical concepts. When compared to normative ethics and applied ethics, the field of metaethics is the least precisely defined area of moral philosophy. It covers issues from moral semantics to moral epistemology[->0]. Two issues, though, are prominent: (1) metaphysical issues concerning whether morality exists independently of humans, and (2) psychological issues concerning the underlying mental basis of our moral judgments and conduct.
a. Metaphysical Issues: Objectivism and Relativism
Metaphysics is the study of the kinds of things that exist in the universe. Some things in the universe are made of physical stuff, such as rocks; and perhaps other things are nonphysical in nature, such as thoughts, spirits, and gods. The metaphysical component of metaethics involves discovering specifically whether moral values are eternal truths that exist in a spirit-like realm, or simply human conventions. There are two general directions that discussions of this topic take, one other-worldly and one this-worldly.
Proponents of the other-worldly view typically hold that moral values are objective[->1] in the sense that they exist in a spirit-like realm beyond subjective human conventions. They also hold that they are absolute, or eternal, in that they never change, and also that they are universal insofar as they apply to all rational creatures around the world and throughout time[->2]. The most dramatic example of this view is Plato[->3], who was inspired by the field of mathematics. When we look at numbers and mathematical relations, such as 1+1=2, they seem to be timeless concepts that never change, and apply everywhere in the universe. Humans do not invent numbers, and humans cannot alter them. Plato explained the eternal character of

References: and Further Reading · Anscombe,Elizabeth “Modern Moral Philosophy,” Philosophy, 1958, Vol · Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, in Barnes, Jonathan, ed., The Complete Works of Aristotle (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984). · Ayer, A · Hare, R.M., Moral Thinking, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981). · Hare, R.M., The Language of Morals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952) · Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, ed., E. Curley, (Chicago, IL: Hackett Publishing Company, 1994). · Hume, David, A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-1740), eds · Kant, Immanuel, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, tr, James W. Ellington (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1985). · Locke, John, Two Treatises, ed., Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963) · MacIntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue, second edition, (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1984). · Mackie, John L., Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, (New York: Penguin Books, 1977) · Mill, John Stuart, “Utilitarianism,” in Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, ed., J.M. Robson (London: Routledge and Toronto, Ont.: University of Toronto Press, 1991). · Moore, G.E., Principia Ethica, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903) · Noddings, Nel, “Ethics from the Stand Point Of Women,” in Deborah L. Rhode, ed., Theoretical Perspectives on Sexual Difference (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990). · Ockham, William of, Fourth Book of the Sentences, tr · Plato, Republic, 6:510-511, in Cooper, John M., ed., Plato: Complete Works (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997). · Samuel Pufendorf, De Jure Naturae et Gentium (1762), tr · Samuel Pufendorf, De officio hominis et civis juxta legem naturalem (1673), tr., The Whole Duty of Man according to the Law of Nature (London, 1691). · Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, trs · Stevenson, Charles L., The Ethics of Language, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1944). · Sumner, William Graham, Folkways (Boston: Guinn, 1906). Last updated: May 10, 2009 | Originally published: June 29, 2003 [->0] - ../mor-epis