Ethics, Epistemology, and Metaphysics

Ethics, Epistemology, and Metaphysics

Ethics, as currently conceived and taught, is divided into three parts: metaethics, ethical theory (normative ethics), and practical ethics. This seems like a sensible division. Metaethics deals with issues concerning the status of moral discourse, what values ultimately consist in, how ethics is known (if it is), whether values are subjective or objective. Ethical theory deals with general theories of right and wrong such as utilitarianism and deontological theories: is it about consequences or duties (or contracts or God’s commands)? Practical ethics deals with specific moral issues such as abortion, euthanasia, animal rights, and capital punishment. The labels may not be ideal, but the divisions exist and it is useful to recognize them. You can plan courses around them and specialize in one or the other. But other major departments of philosophy are not given a similar treatment. Why? Could they be so treated? Would it be useful?

I think yes. Take epistemology: we could distinguish meta-epistemology, epistemological theory, and applied (“practical”) epistemology. The first would deal with the definition of knowledge, its relation to belief and perception, what conversational function statements of knowledge serve. The second would deal with issues like foundationalism and holism, a priori and a posteriori knowledge, introspective and perceptual knowledge, skepticism, moral and scientific knowledge. The third would deal with local issues concerning different types of knowledge: whether particular scientific theories can be truly known (the big bang theory or the theory of evolution), what type of evidence is appropriate in particular cases (history and physics), why astrology is a pseudoscience, how to improve medical knowledge (“evidence-based medicine”). This too seems like a helpful division of labor; not earth-shattering but useful pedagogically. An epistemologist might describe himself as a pragmatist in meta-epistemology, a holist in epistemological theory, with a special interest in the epistemology of psychoanalysis. He thinks knowledge statements are all about predictive utility, that nothing is foundational, that justification apples to whole theories not individual propositions, that psychoanalysis is epistemically superior to quantum physics. He might refuse to teach meta-epistemology, regularly teaches epistemological theory, and keeps his views on psychoanalysis secret. He is like a non-cognitivist in ethics, a staunch utilitarianism, and a believer in animal rights.

What about metaphysics? We have already heard of meta-metaphysicians: they may think that all metaphysics is meaningless, or that metaphysical statements are unknowable, or that metaphysical speech acts are merely expressive, or that metaphysics is basic to all philosophy; they have a general theory of what metaphysics is up to. Then there are specific metaphysical theories such as idealism, materialism, and dualism. These may be arrived at a priori or by means of experience; they may be analytic or synthetic. There may be theories that exclusively deal in events, rejecting the existence of substances; or vice versa. This branch of metaphysics will cover the main field of metaphysics as currently practiced. Third, there will be particular areas of metaphysical interest: the quantum world, space and time, consciousness, the unconscious, the ontology of animal rights (not the same as human rights because non-contractual). That is, you can be interested in metaphysical discourse as a whole, or fascinated by general metaphysical theories, or obsessed with specific examples within metaphysics. You can, for example, be the equivalent of a moral non-cognitivist (a metaphysical expressivist), a hard-boiled materialist, and a subscriber to an irreducible ontology of persons. Metaphysics admits the same tripartite division as ethics and epistemology. In particular, you can be a believer in metaphysical realism and in moral realism, holding that in both areas there is an objective realm of truth-makers—mind-independent metaphysical facts and moral facts. Or you can be a rabid anti-realist about both: they are nothing but cognitively empty boos and hurrahs. The point is that the undifferentiated field of metaphysics divides up in ways comparable to the field of ethics: meta, theoretical, and applied.

How about the rest of philosophy? The answer is not far to seek: they are already covered. That is, all of philosophy is exhausted by metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics (indeed, all might be described as metaphysics, since Being includes everything, including knowledge and value). Take the philosophy of mind: it is really a department of metaphysics (the “metaphysics of mind”) with a bit of epistemology thrown in (knowledge of other minds and one’s own mind). Similarly for the philosophy of language: the “metaphysics of meaning” plus “radical interpretation” (how we know what other speakers mean). Aesthetics is the same—a combination of metaphysics and epistemology (perhaps also some ethics). As such it will include meta-aesthetics, aesthetic theory, and applied aesthetics. Aesthetic discourse may be deemed fact-stating or expressive; beauty may be conferred or intrinsic; sculpture might be interrogated for its own sake (someone might bill himself as a philosopher of sculpture and do little else). So: philosophy as a whole has three basic departments: a meta department, a theory department, and an applied department. Put simply, it has a department that asks whether a given discourse is true-evaluable (as opposed to merely useful), what is the correct theory of the nature of a given type of thing, and what to say about particular concrete cases. Ethics thus provides a model for the rest of philosophy. In practice a philosopher will do all three (or should do so), but the divisions are real and recognizing them sharpens our understanding of what we are up to. The tripartite division gives the discipline a welcome measure of structure.[1]

[1] This could be useful for advertising purposes, since the discipline can seem somewhat formless. Other subjects tend to have their own major divisions: for example, physics divides into pure physics and applied physics, or particle physics and astrophysics; and similarly for psychology, chemistry, history, engineering, biology. Philosophy too needs to be officially compartmentalized, especially in these days of specialization—though there should be room for generalists.