To what extent is ethical language meaningful?

It is very difficult to define the word "good" or the concepts of "right" and "wrong", and so as a result, it is difficult to derive meaning from statements including these words. Defining these terms and analysing meaning is what meta-ethics entails. A.J. Ayer and the logical positivists believed meaning can only be derived from cognitive statements. They defined cognitive statements as either analytic or synthetic, of which ethical statements are neither. There are many viewpoints that in fact disagree with this. However, in this essay I will aim to show how all of these perspectives have some insurmountable weaknesses and so some combination of theories must be utilised. I will argue that we must use a combination of naturalism with intuition and a bridge to be used to fill the "is-ought gap". - Introduction only