In Defense of Moral Functionalism

Abstract

Moral functionalism, a variant of moral antirealism, holds that a moral utterance is an utterance that performs the two functions of encouraging and discouraging certain actions. Moral functionalism locates the essence of a moral judgment in what it does while other metaethical theories, such as moral realism, emotivism, prescriptivism, error theory, quasi-realism, and besire theory locate the essence of a moral judgment in what it is made up of. Moral functionalism has advantages over the other metaethical theories.