Abstract

An important class of metaethical views seeks to explain what it is for something to fall under an ethical or evaluative category in terms of its being something towards which we ought, or have reasons, to have certain kinds of attitudes. These Fitting Attitude [FA-] Analyses might hold, for instance, that an outcome’s goodness consists in its being an outcome we should desire or have “pro-attitudes” towards (Ewing 1939); or that an action’s moral blameworthiness consists in the fact that the agent who performed it ought to feel guilty, and that others are justified in feeling resentment or indignation towards her for doing it (Gibbard 1990, chapters 3 and 7). ¹