[6] This has in recent years developed as a recognised category proceeding from the work of Hume, G. E. Moore and the error theories of J. L. Mackie[7] who seeks a real basis, if any, for talk of values and right and wrong.
These point to a general increasing cultural awareness of the hitherto dominance of reason and male based values[11] in society rather than a relational, contextual and communitarian view of the social world.
Pragmatism, and process philosophy in general, is increasingly adopted as a response to a constantly changing understanding of a dynamic world, both physically and in the realms of experiment and investigation.
Postmodernism and its aftermath has left behind the aspiration for an overarching theory of ethics, single ideas which were reputed to explain or justify whole aspects of human experience and knowledge, such as Marxism, religion, Freudianism or nationalism.
Major challenges for ethics include the fact/value distinction,[18] the error theory which seems to undermine the reality [19] of moral claims[20][21] and apparent relativism[22][23] across cultures and eras.
Stephen Darwall et al[24] referred to "a genuinely new period in twentieth century ethics, the vigorous revival of metaethics coincidental with the emergence .. of a criticism of the enterprise of moral theory itself".