ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the question of the content of ethical claims, a question that faces subjectivists and objectivists. It begins with the two main subjectivist answers to this question. Expressivism is in danger of getting tied to an implausibly narrow account of the point of moral utterance. Ethical objectivists, by contrast, typically think that moral utterance, when correct, is fact-stating. This is much less narrow. Since error theory is a cognitivism, unlike expressivism, it does not raise the worries that we noted for expressivism about unduly restricting the point of moral judgement, or making moral utterance indistinguishable from emotional manipulation, or from any other kind of expression of approval. However, error theory does share some of expressivisms problems. These questions have been about how expressivism and error theory can offer a positive account of the nature of moral judgement: of what we are talking about when we make ethical claims.
