Good-reasons theory, in American and British metaethics, an approach that tries to establish the validity or objectivity of moral judgments by examining the modes of reasoning used to support them. The approach first appeared in An Examination of the Place of Reason in Ethics (1950) by Stephen Toulmin, a British philosopher of science and ethicist. In general, the approach represents a reaction against the positivism of the 1930s and ’40s, which, in its theory that moral terms have only emotive meaning, tended to support ethical relativism, subjectivism, and skepticism. It also represents the constructive influence of one of the founding fathers of linguistic analysis, Ludwig Wittgenstein, who in his later philosophy rejected all interpretations of meaning and language that reduce all significant discourse to categorical statements, proposing instead that the philosophical task is to recognize and describe different “language games,” or usages of language, as they actually manifest different forms of life. The good-reasons philosophers thus began to examine normative discourse, in general, and moral discourse, in particular, as a whole rather than exploring only the uniquely moral terms embedded in that discourse. This examination led to an appreciation of the complexity of the relationships between the evaluative and the descriptive aspects of moral discourse and, in particular, to a consideration of the logical connections between them.
Although these good-reasons moralists, such as Henry David Aiken, Kurt Baier, Kai Nielsen, John Rawls, Marcus G. Singer, Paul W. Taylor, Georg Henrik von Wright, and Geoffrey James Warnock, manifest a wide range of theories on normative issues, they generally agree that the primary function of moral utterances is practical—i.e., directive of action—rather than emotive and expressive. People give reasons, however, for what they say ought to be done, and the giving of these reasons follows a pattern; i.e., it is a rule-governed activity, involving elements both of formal logical consistency and of reference to facts. The good-reasons approach thus diverges from earlier efforts, which sought to establish the objectivity of morals by determining the cognitive content of unique moral terms such as good and right. The good-reasons approach shows some kinship with naturalist views in its agreement that moral reasoning does in some way ground values in facts, the “ought” in the “is,” and that there are limits to what will count as good reasons and thus as justified, valid, objective moral claims—limits which reflect standards of consistency that are logical and can be made universal and which also reflect criteria of the relevancy of facts, of impartiality of attitude, and of appropriate sensitivity.