The Language of Ethics

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Carl Wellman investigates the meaning of ethical sentences—sentences expressing judgments of obligation or of value. His purpose is to show that existing theories are unsatisfactory, and to develop a more adequate analysis. Five lands of meaning—descriptive, emotive, evaluative, directive, critical—are distinguished, and Wellman shows that common ethical words like “good,” “bad,” “right,” “wrong,” and “ought” can be used with any or all of these meanings. He concludes that it is a mistake to look at ethical language as a segment of speech having a fixed land of meaning. It can be properly under stood only when its many lands of meaning are distinguished and characterized.