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Non-cognitivism
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{{Short description|Meta-ethical theory}} {{About|the meta-ethical theory|non-cognitivism regarding religious language|theological noncognitivism}}{{Ethical frameworks sidebar}} '''Non-cognitivism''' is the [[meta-ethics|meta-ethical]] view that ethical [[Sentence (linguistics)|sentence]]s do not express [[proposition]]s (i.e., [[statement (logic)|statements]]) and thus cannot be [[truth value|true or false]] (they are not truth-apt). A noncognitivist denies the [[cognitivism (ethics)|cognitivist]] claim that "moral judgments are capable of being objectively true, because they describe some feature of the world."<ref name="Garner and Rosen">{{cite book |last=Garner |first=Richard T. |author2=Bernard Rosen |title=Moral Philosophy: A Systematic Introduction to Normative Ethics and Meta-ethics |year=1967 |publisher=[[Macmillan Publishers|Macmillan]] |location=New York |pages=219β220 |isbn=0-02-340580-5}}</ref> If moral statements cannot be true, and if one cannot [[knowledge|know]] something that is not true, noncognitivism implies that moral knowledge is impossible.<ref name="Garner and Rosen" /> Non-cognitivism [[logical consequence|entails]] that non-cognitive [[Attitude (psychology)|attitudes]] underlie moral discourse and this discourse therefore consists of non-declarative [[speech act]]s, although accepting that its surface features may consistently and efficiently work as if moral discourse were cognitive. The point of interpreting moral claims as non-declarative speech acts is to explain what moral claims mean if they are neither true nor false (as philosophies such as [[logical positivism]] entail). Utterances like "Boo to killing!" and "Don't kill" are not candidates for truth or falsity, but have non-cognitive meaning.
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