Portal:Philosophy/Selected article/2
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In ethics, cognitivism is the view that ethical sentences express propositions and can therefore be true or false (they are truth-apt). See also non-cognitivism.
Propositions are, roughly, what meaningful declarative sentences are supposed to express (but not interrogative or imperative sentences). Different sentences, in different languages, can (it is often thought) express the same proposition: "snow is white" and "Schnee ist weiß" (in German) both express the proposition that snow is white. A common assumption among philosophers who use this jargon is that propositions, properly speaking, are what are true or false (what bear truth values; they are truthbearers). So if an ethical sentence does express a proposition, then the sentence expresses something that can be true or false.
