Organon F
Volume 33, August 2026, Issue 3, Pages 240–257
ISSN 2585-7150 (online)
Research Article
Folk Moral Semantics, Moral Naturalism, and Moral Descriptivism
Wade A. Tisthammer
Whether morality exists entirely as part of the natural world depends at least in part on what we mean by “morality.” Using analysis and formal logic it can be shown that, if one adopts a certain colloquial moral semantics whereby “is” and “ought” are different relations with respect to the type of ought that morality uses, it leads to deontic morality not being part of the natural world (at least not entirely so), thereby leading to a folk moral semantics argument against moral naturalism (or for moral non-naturalism). A similar argument can be used for arguing that, if one adopts the view that moral facts are natural facts, they should also adopt the view that moral facts are descriptive facts, i.e., that moral naturalism implies moral descriptivism.
Moral naturalism; moral non-naturalism; moral descriptivism; the is/ought gap; moral semantics; normativity objection.
Author
Wade A. Tisthammer
Affiliation
Holy Apostles College and Seminary
Address
Holy Apostles College and Seminary, 33 Prospect Hill Rd, Cromwell, CT 06416, United States
Received
29 October 2024
Accepted
28 January 2026
Publishers
Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences
Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences
APA
Tisthammer, W. A. (2026). Folk Moral Semantics, Moral Naturalism, and Moral Descriptivism. Organon F, 33(3), 240–257. https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2026.33301
Chicago
Tisthammer, Wade A. 2026. "Folk Moral Semantics, Moral Naturalism, and Moral Descriptivism." Organon F 33 (3): 240–257. https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2026.33301
Harvard
Tisthammer, W. A. (2026). Folk Moral Semantics, Moral Naturalism, and Moral Descriptivism. Organon F, 33(3), pp. 240–257. https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2026.33301
© Wade A. Tisthammer
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