An Analysis of Ethics and Perspective Sentences
Abstract
Moral languages and perspective sentences are different from indicative sentences. Inspired by Hare, the article tries to illuminate the fallacy of ethical naturalism, as well as the insufficiency of Davidsonian truth-conditional semantics by demonstrating the distinctive character of perspective sentences which cannot be thoroughly appreciated by formal semantics alone. Value words function distinctively than descriptive words, it is a mistake of naturalism to take value ascription the same as property description. Perspective sentences differ from indicative sentences because of their commending power and speakers’ intentionality. By showing how the intentionality and commending power are diminished when treating perspective sentences and indicative sentences as equal, the article argues that a new perspective is required to investigate moral semantics in a more appropriate way. With proper modification, phenomenology and virtue theory have the potential of becoming the new field of ethical investigation, and further reconciliation between the two traditions can yield fruitful results
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