A Modest Proposal for Religion and Morality Terminology: Part 3 (Cognitivism and Non-Cognitivism)

Source: PXFuel; License: Public Domain 

3. Defining "Truth-Apt" and "Not Truth-Apt"

In Part 2, I suggested that, in place of referring to "morality," it would be helpful instead to explicitly refer to the concept of morality the speaker has in mind. I identified the following two different concepts of morality.

• social moral system: a set of rules which define acceptable or unacceptable behavior towards other people
• Socratic moral system: a set of rules which define acceptable or unacceptable ways for living one's life, including situations which involve other people and situations which do not.

The "rules" of a moral system can be thought of as sentences which describe acceptable or unacceptable behavior.  Consider the following non-moral sentences.

• It is 60 degrees Fahrenheit outside.
• Ronald Regan was the 40th President of the United States of America.
• The earth is flat.

All of those sentences have truth-values, meaning that they are the kind of sentences which can be either true or false. We'll call sentences of this kind "truth-apt" or cognitive." Now consider the following sentences.

• Tomatoes: yuk!
• Boo on running a marathon!
• Professor: "For your next assignment, we are going to read Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment."
  Class: (groans)

These sentences are "not truth-apt" or "non-cognitive." They are not the kind of sentences which can be either true or false. 

Now consider the following sentences about the moral status of various kinds of behavior.

• Do unto others what you would have them do to you.
• Plural marriage, involving one husband and multiple wives, is acceptable.
• It is the duty of parents to ensure that their daughters are 'circumcised,' i.e., have their clitoris removed.

Cognitivists believe that these sentences are truth-apt. Non-cognitivists, on the other hand, believe they are not truth-apt.