ABSTRACT
In Chapter 1 we encountered the basic ideas that motivate noncognitivist metaethical theories – that is, the ideas which make philosophers wonder whether noncognitivism might be true. As we saw, the main idea of such theories is negative – we characterized noncognitivism as the idea that moral thought and language are not about anything in particular. And that left us with one big question: if moral thought and language are not about anything, then what are they for? To this question, different noncognitivists have given different answers. The best way to start to get a sense for what these answers are like is to start to look at some of them. Since noncognitivist theories have gotten progressively more subtle and complicated over the years, it’s best to start with some of the earliest noncognitivist theories.
