Any claim to be a moral objectivist presupposes some meta-ethical background whether one admits it or is aware of it or not. It’s important to confront that background which sets up a framework which constraints moral theories. I am going to make a case for taking meta-ethics seriously and tie it to Karl Popper’s work as well. So, let’s consider “values”. “In what way are values objective?” is an important question. Are they creations of our mind in the sense that they are arbitrarily invented or are they discovered? Any discovery starts with an invention -i.e., we invent theories or create theories which in turn can lead to discoveries. Secondly, are they discovered to be a property of the mind in the sense that we are genetically programmed to value certain things or are they independent of that. These are important questions that a moral objectivist must confront because if values are determined by our genes then the study of ethics and morality cannot be any more than studying human psychology, neuroscience, cultures or maybe even genetics. Karl Popper said that problems arose with life and so did values: “It has often been suggested that values enter the world only with consciousness. This is not my view. I think that values enter the world with life; and if there is life without consciousness (as I think there may well be, even in animals and men, for there appears to be such a thing as dreamless sleep) then. I suggest, there will also be objective values, even without consciousness.” ( see ref. 1) He goes on to say: “There are two sorts of values: values created by life, by unconscious problems, and values created by the human mind, on the basis of previous solutions.” ( see ref. 1) I think that this is a powerful met-ethical claim because if values can arise independent of the human mind then we can truly hope to make progress in ethics and morality as beyond our Psychology, cultures, neuroscience and genetics and it raises new and interesting questions that would not arise if one took the other stance. For e.g. can the domain of morality cover more agents/entities than humans? For example, if we discovered aliens with the capacity to create knowledge like us, we might agree upon values even though our cultures would most likely be different. Our cultures will be different, but if they have progressed enough, then they will be based on the same tradition – the one that supports the growth of knowledge. There is no guarantee that knowledge creating aliens/entities like us will be at this point in their understanding because it took humans thousands of years to discover how to create knowledge (epistemology) and we are still on the journey to improve our understanding. All this would only be a possibility if the values arose in the sense Popper says. This Popperian view of values would also have implications on the field of artificial intelligence. Would the AI that is creative as us be programmed on set values or do we need to understand creativity and how to implement it in a way that an agent (AI in this case) is free to create knowledge by which it can discover values just like us. There are also the implications that we might be opened to understanding what role values might play on a cosmic scale because the value of seeking truth goes hand in hand with the value to support a tradition that paves the way to an un-ended growth of knowledge. Knowing what human minds are capable of, we can’t even imagine what the future of the universe would like because of our (or AI or other knowledge creating entities) existence. In short Met-ethics is extremely important in the process of knowledge creation and we cannot turn our eye away from our meta-ethical biases. Only by taking them seriously can we hope to solve problems and create new and interesting ones. Reference. 1: Karl Popper - "Unended Quest" Chapter 40