The idea that people by default have no idea at all what moral language is hard to
credit, whether claimed of people in general, or claimed by individuals of themselves.
Everyone, after all, is brought up from an early age with a great deal of moral exhortation, to do Good things and refrain from Naughty things. Perhaps
not everybody gets very far along the
Kohlberg scale, but no one is starting
from scratch. People may not be able to articulate a clear definition, or not
the kind of definition one would expect from a theory, but that does not
mean one needs a theory of metaethics to give a meaning to “moral”.
The idea that people by default have no idea at all what moral language is hard to credit, whether claimed of people in general, or claimed by individuals of themselves. Everyone, after all, is brought up from an early age with a great deal of moral exhortation, to do Good things and refrain from Naughty things. Perhaps not everybody gets very far along the Kohlberg scale, but no one is starting from scratch. People may not be able to articulate a clear definition, or not the kind of definition one would expect from a theory, but that does not mean one needs a theory of metaethics to give a meaning to “moral”.
No. One only needs a theory of metaethics to prevent philosophers from giving it a disastrously wrong meaning.