The Morals of Attitudes

Summary

Maze has argued that all users of moral discourse thereby attribute factual properties to moral propositions. His argument is challenged. It is suggested that the factual format of moral propositions tends to mislead, but that moral propositions are, after all, policy statements, statements about goals and rules for attaining them. Maze's suggestion that the factual format of many moral propositions arose as a polite form of social manipulation is seen as solving certain difficulties in a utilitarian account of moral discourse; its nonutilitarian appearance is thus a form of self-effacing ellipsis, not a sign of its real intent.