ABSTRACT
Normative ethics and metaethics can be, and often are, pursued as distinct enterprises. In fact, some philosophers believe that they must be kept entirely separate. Noncognitivists hold, for example, that their metaethical theory that ethical convictions express noncognitive attitudes lacking truth value says nothing about which ethical attitudes one can sincerely avow: It leaves normative ethics entirely unaffected. A separation between normative theory and metaethics is also reflected in the way that ethics is usually presented to students. Philosophical ethicists who oppose consequentialism have also frequently tried to support their opposition philosophically with a metaethical theory. Rational intuitionists have argued on epistemological grounds that the intrinsic wrongness of torturing innocents is no less necessary and self-evident than the arithmetic fact that 7 added to 5 makes 12, and so must be capable of being known by reason alone, independent of sense experience.
