Blackwell Reference Online

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E thics, philosophy of mind Ethical theories that hold that there is knowledge of moral facts and that normative ethical judgments can be said to be true or false. Cognitivism includes the majority of traditional ethical theories. In contrast, non-cognitivism , represented by emotivism and prescriptivism , holds that moral statements do not possess truth-values and cannot be known. Outside of ethics, cognitivism is a psychological theory that explains behavior by appeal to the information-processing states of the physical brain. “Roughly, cognitivists hold that there is ethical knowledge; non-cognitivists deny it.” Hancock, Twentieth-Century Ethics ... log in or subscribe to read full text