Is Moral Nihilism a Morality?

[vulcanlogician]

So, okay. Error theory is cognitivist. We're on the same page there. But I don't get why nihilists must be noncognitivists in your conception. It seems arbitrary really.

Error Theory says all statements about morality are wrong but according to Wikipedia:

Moral nihilism (also known as ethical nihilism) is the meta-ethical view that nothing is morally right or wrong.

(my emphasis)

You see, I agree with Wikipedia's definition of moral nihilism and that's exactly why I don't think Error Theory is a form of nihilism.

Now, a response would be if you were to say something like "Error Theory doesn't deem all statements to be morally wrong, so it can still be nihilistic, it just says that they are logically wrong from a metaethical standpoint." But then I'd just respond with "That's exactly why it isn't expressing anything normative." This is where I think the confusion resides.

In my conception, error theory qualifies according to Wikipedia's definition because it doesn't deem any moral action to be right or wrong. All error theory posits is that all statements of moral fact are in error. If all moral statements of fact are in error, then nothing can be deemed right or wrong.

Well, I've explained why I don't think evaluating something to be false, rather than meaningless, is nihilistic. But I think it would be helpful if we got past this purely semantic disagreement, do you agree?

Yes, I do. So I'm going to explain the substance of my categorizations at the bottom of this post.

(1) How exactly can a noncognitivist metaethical theory express normative function?

All noncognitivist theories are nihilistic. None of them allows that a moral statement can even be a belief, let alone a fact. If there are no moral facts, then a normative analysis becomes impossible.

(2) How exactly does saying that all statements about morality are false (Error Theory) express normative function?

Unless you think that erroneous factual information can express a normative function, error theory fails.


***

To get over our semantic disagreement-


Basically, as I divide things, there are three main categories: realists, relativists, and nihilists. Realists think that moral statements can be true, so error theorists (who think the opposite) don't belong here. Relativists think that moral statements are matters of opinion (cultural or individual) and --since opinions can't be false-- error theorists don't belong here either. Thus, the only category we have left is nihilism which says that moral facts cannot be true either because they are expressions of something (as per noncognitivism) or, as the error theorists say because they don't relate to any real feature of the world.

I suppose our semantic difference could be resolved by making error theory a distinct category, but that's hardly worthwhile. Or we could try to shove error theory into realist or relativist categories which doesn't make sense.

I say we just proceed in our ethical discourse, keeping in mind that we don't share the exact definition for nihilism. It doesn't actually matter anyway since we are both realists at the end of the day, and we both reject all forms of moral skepticism, nihilistic or otherwise.