Should empirical findings matter in metaethics?

In the present paper I have two aims. First, show that current arguments for the relevance of empirical findings have not distinguished different kinds of metaethical inquiry sufficiently. Second, I will argue that whether and if empirical findings are relevant for some metaethical questions is itself best understood as a normative question. Call this the normative priority thesis.

I distinguish between the metaethical tasks of (1) describing actual moral thought and talk; (2) identifying what that thought and talk (if anything) is about; and (3) the conceptual ethics of normativity (See McPherson and Plunkett 2024). Empirical work (for example on the objectivity of folk morality) can be relevant to some but not all these tasks.

I will argue that (1) and (2) are not kept sufficiently distinct in the literature and that whether empirical findings are relevant to (2) is a normative question.