Intuitions, Meaning, and Normativity: Why Intuition Theory Supports a Non‐Descriptivist Metaethic

Abstract

Non‐descriptivists in metaethics should say more about intuitions. For one popular theory has it that case‐based intuitions are in the business of correctly categorizing or classifying (as not water, as not knowledge, as impermissible, etc.) merely by bringing to bear a semantic or conceptual competence. If so, then the fact that all normative predicates have case‐based intuitions involving them shows that they too are in the business of categorizing or classifying things. This favors a descriptivist position in metaethics—normative predicates have descriptive content—and disfavors a purely non‐descriptivist position, like pure expressivism. However, we can say more. We can distinguish two different sorts of intuitional state, A‐grade intuitions and B‐grade intuitions, based on a cluster of properties that are distinctive of each. While a hypothesis about categorization best explains the cluster of properties enjoyed by A‐grade intuitions, it does not best explain the cluster of properties enjoyed by B‐grade intuitions. Indeed, a non‐categorizational (and so non‐descriptive), attitude‐expressive hypothesis about the relevant meanings best explains B‐grade intuitions. And intuitions involving thin normative predicates are B‐grade. So intuition theory supports non‐descriptivism, not descriptivism, about thin normative predicates.

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