ABSTRACT
Cognitivism is unable to give a satisfactory account of the specifically moral element in moral enquiries. Further, if the fundamental tenets are neither analytic nor synthetic, then there are no ethical propositions, and therefore no ethical truths at all; ethical knowledge is impossible, and cognitivism is false. Moral discourse seems to be more closely related to action and to its motivation than cognitivist theories allow. Its role in guiding action and in expressing the attitudes of speakers have become the focus of a variety of theories, many of which reject cognitivism altogether. Neither the practicality of ethical discourse nor the illocutionary acts in which it is employed strengthen the case for noncognitivism. But cognitivism can only be true if either nonnaturalism or naturalism is true. The defence of cognitivism does not require the truth of any one particular form of naturalism to be established.
