QuestionsWhat makes something right?Ethics cannot be put into words
What makes something right?Morality questioned

Ethics cannot be put into words

Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889 · 1951The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.
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What it claims

Ethics cannot be expressed: its sentences are not false, they are, strictly speaking, senseless.

Why

Words can only state facts, and no fact contains an absolute value, which is what ethics is about.

In short

"Ethics cannot be put into words" is an argument by Ludwig Wittgenstein (A Lecture on Ethics (1929); Tractatus, 6.42-6.421) on the question "What makes something right?" (answer: morality questioned). Its claim: Ethics cannot be expressed: its sentences are not false, they are, strictly speaking, senseless. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the conclusion does follow from its 3 premises. AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 1 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

A Lecture on Ethics (1929); Tractatus, 6.42-6.421
Valid

In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein writes that "there can be no ethical propositions". In 1929, in his only popular lecture, he explains why with simple examples: a bad tennis player, a liar, a book that would describe the whole world. This is not contempt for ethics: he ends by saying he respects it deeply. The "§n" numbers of the lecture are our own division.

P1Our words, used with sense, only express facts.
P2No statement of fact can ever be, or imply, a judgment of absolute value. A book describing the whole world, murders included, would contain no ethical judgment: only "facts, facts, and facts".
P3Yet ethics is about absolute value, not relative value. "You play tennis badly" can be turned into facts; "you ought to want to behave better" cannot.
Therefore ethics cannot be expressed: its sentences are not false, they are, strictly speaking, senseless.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Valid as it stands: no hidden premise is needed, and each one is essential. P2 resembles Hume's idea that one cannot derive an "ought" from an "is". So the debate is about the premises: P1 (are facts really all that can be said?) and P2 (are there no moral facts?).
Analogy. A teacup will only hold a teacup full of water, even if you pour a whole bucket over it. For Wittgenstein, our words are cups made to hold facts: ethics, if it is anything, overflows. The image is his own, in the lecture.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

G. E. Moore (Principia Ethica) 1903 · attacks premise 1

Good is a simple property that no natural fact defines: trying to reduce it to a fact is the "naturalistic fallacy". But judgments about what is good in itself make sense and can be true: we know them by intuition. Ethics is a genuine enquiry, as Moore's definition says, which Wittgenstein takes up at the start of his lecture.

no reply
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
We have not yet found a direct reply by Wittgenstein in the texts.
The debate goes on (our summary) Moore and Wittgenstein agree on one point: no natural fact is goodness itself. Then they part ways: for Moore, there are ethical truths that are not natural facts; for Wittgenstein, what is not a fact cannot be said. Moore's text is not yet in our corpus.
Objection anticipated by Wittgenstein attacks premise 2

If certain experiences constantly tempt us to attribute absolute value to them, these words must mean something. Absolute value is a fact like other facts: we have simply not yet found the correct logical analysis of our ethical sentences.

Wittgenstein replies
Wittgenstein
He then sees "as it were in a flash of light" that no description would do: he would reject in advance every significant description, precisely because it would be significant. The nonsensicality of ethical sentences is not a temporary flaw, it is their very essence.
The debate goes on (our summary) A moral realist will answer that this is a decision, not a demonstration: by refusing every analysis in advance, Wittgenstein assumes what he wants to show. Many philosophers today hold that there are objective moral truths, whether natural facts or not.
Wittgenstein himself, later (Investigations) 1945 · attacks premise 1

The later Wittgenstein breaks with the idea that language always serves the same purpose: to convey thoughts "about houses, pains, good and evil". If the meaning of a word is its use, the words "good" or "ought" have meaning in our practices, even if they describe no fact.

no reply
We have not yet found a direct reply by Wittgenstein in the texts.
The debate goes on (our summary) The Investigations say almost nothing about ethics, and we have found in them no return to the 1929 lecture. Scholars are divided: for some, the Investigations give moral language back its meaning; for others, he kept to the end the idea that absolute value cannot be said.