  The range of issues, puzzles and questions that fall within metaethics’ purview are consistently abstract. They reflect the fact that metaethics involves an attempt to step back from particular substantive debates within morality to ask about the views, assumptions, and commitments that are shared by those who engage in the debate. By and large, the metaethical issues that emerge as a result of this process of stepping back can be addressed without taking a particular stand on substantive moral issues that started the process. In fact, metaethics has seemed to many to offer a crucial neutral background against which competing moral views need to be seen if they are to be assessed properly. Some metaethicists early in the twentieth century went so far as to hold that their own work made no substantive moral assumptions at all and had no practical  implications.[2]  Whether any view that is recognizably still a view about the nature and status of ethics could manage this is dubious. But there is no doubt that, whatever metaethics's substantive assumptions and practical implications might be, it involves reflecting on the presuppositions and commitments of those engaging in moral thought, talk, and practice and so abstracting away from particular moral judgments.