Moral Realism

Sam Harris (2010) argues that, given our neurology, we can experience well-being, and that seeking to maximize this state lets us distinguish the good from the bad. He takes our ability to compare degrees of well-being as his starting point, but I think that the analysis can be pushed further, since there is a (non-religious) reason why well-being is desirable, namely the finite life of an individual organism. It is because death is a constant possibility that things can be assessed (...) as “for” or “against” one (Champagne 2011a; Smith 2000). Such an account lets us objectively adjudicate moral questions, as Harris desires. However, by anchoring itself in the mortal body as a whole and not just the brain, such an account dampens the claim that neuroscience would have all the answers. Moreover, it pivots on an affirmation of one’s life that can seem mysterious by regular scientific standards. This chapter thus explains why the trade-off is worthwhile. (shrink)

There have been universal debates by philosophers about the core foundations of morality and its relationship with religion, upon which, three assumptions stood out, “religious belief is needed to get us to do our duty”, “morality must be created by someone, and God by far is the best candidate for the job” and “religious wisdom is the key to providing us with moral guidance (Landau 2010:63).” Russ Landau in chapter 5 of his book, In The Fundamentals of Ethics closely scrutinizes (...) these assumptions and the view of morality depending on religion. In my opinion, I am convinced by his arguments that his objective is that whether God exists or not, morality is not dependent on religion. As such, I will firmly stand by my opinion and will form the basis of my arguments from his. In the first part of my review will be a brief summary of the three central assumptions and their arguments, then attempt to elaborate on the objections raised by Landau to these assumptions to strengthen both Landau’s position and mine and critic the last assumption. (shrink)

Hardly a week passes without new findings emerging from evolutionary psychology regarding how our view of morality has been influenced by our biological evolution. Evolutionary ethics is a normative project built upon these scientific insights. Evolutionary ethicists fall into two groups: substantiators or skeptics. Substantiators believe moral ideas can now be scientifically proven. Skeptics believe there are no moral truths because morality is just a biological adaptation. I believe the project of evolutionary ethics is misconceived. I argue that both the (...) substantiators and the skeptics fail to show the direct relevance of biology to ethics. Moral truths can be established. But biology cannot support nor undercut these truths. I present the doctrine of moral realism as embodying the proper process of ethical inquiry, and I defend moral realism from evolutionary psychology’s skeptical conclusions. I determine that biology can indirectly inform ethics, but never guide it. The ethical realm is independent. (shrink)

I argue that our general disposition to make moral judgments and our core moral intuitions are likely the product of social selection—a kind of gene–culture coevolution driven by the enforcement of collectively agreed-upon rules. Social selection could potentially track mind-independent moral truth by a process that I term realist social selection: our ancestors could have acquired moral knowledge via reason and enforced rules based on that knowledge, thereby creating selection pressures that drove the evolution of our moral psychology. Given anthropological (...) evidence that early humans designed rules with the conscious aim of preserving individual autonomy and advancing their collective interests, the theory of realist social selection appears to be attractive for moral realists. The goal of evolutionary debunking arguments should be to show not that our moral beliefs are the product of natural selection, but that realist social selection did not occur. (shrink)

Anselm’s ontological argument is an argument for the existence of God. This paper presents Iris Murdoch’s ontological argument for the existence of the Good. It discusses her interpretation of Anselm’s argument, her own distinctive appropriation of it, as well as some of the merits of her version of the argument. In doing so, it also shows how the argument integrates some key Murdochian ideas: morality’s wide scope, the basicness of vision to morality, moral realism, and Platonism.

It is common for constructivists to claim that Kant was the first philosopher to understand moral facts as ‘constructions of reason’. They think that Kant, just like the constructivist, proposes a procedure – the Categorical Imperative – from which the order of value can be ‘constructed’ and grounds the validity of this construction procedure not in some previous value but in its capacity to solve a practical problem, the problem of ‘free agency’. I here argue that this reading is misguided (...) and propose that we read Kant as a teleological realist instead. Kant is a realist in that he takes the value of rational nature to be objective and so not ‘constructed’. Kant is a teleological realist insofar as his derivation of the moral law from the objective value of rational nature relies on a teleological understanding of rational nature. (shrink)

My aim is to challenge recent attempts at reconciling moral realism and naturalism by pushing ethical naturalists into a dilemma. According to one horn of the dilemma, ethical naturalists must either build unique facts and properties about divergent social structures into their subvenient sets of natural facts and properties, and so jeopardize the objectivity of moral truths, or insist, in the face of all possible worlds in which people have different moral beliefs than ours, that they are all mistaken—this despite (...) the fact that the belief-forming mechanism responsible for their moral beliefs was never concerned with the truth of those beliefs in the first place. This will bring me to suggest that moral properties might only weakly supervene upon natural phenomena. But, according to the other horn of the dilemma, weak supervenience is a defeater for moral knowledge. (shrink)

This thesis will explain in detail two closely related but jointly defensible moral realist positions. I show how each position responds to the initial dilemma of whether moral judgments are propositions. Following this discussion, I defend this combined position against an objection that the position is inherently contradictory. I conclude that one can coherently maintain both positions without a contradiction.

Moorean arguments are a popular and powerful way to engage highly revisionary philosophical views, such as nihilism about motion, time, truth, consciousness, causation, and various kinds of skepticism (e.g., external world, other minds, inductive, global). They take, as a premise, a highly plausible first-order claim (e.g., cars move, I ate breakfast before lunch, it’s true that some fish have gills) and conclude from it the falsity of the highly revisionary philosophical thesis. Moorean arguments can be used against nihilists in ethics (...) (error theorists), too. Recently, error theorists have recognized Moorean arguments as a powerful challenge and have tried to meet it. They’ve argued that moral Moorean premises seem highly credible to us, but aren’t, by offering various debunking explanations. These explanations all appeal to higher-order evidence—evidence of error in our reasoning. I argue that drawing attention to higher-order evidence is a welcome contribution from error theorists, but that the higher-order evidence actually counts further against error theoretic arguments—including their debunking explanations—and further in favor of Moorean arguments and the commonsense views they support. Along the way I answer a few prominent objections to Moorean arguments: that they are objectionably question-begging, rely on categorizing some facts as “Moorean Facts”, and that reports of one’s credence in a proposition bears no interesting relation to that proposition’s credibility. (shrink)

Traditional sources of morality--philosophical ethics, religious standards, and cultural values--are being questioned at a time when we most need morality's direction. Research shows that though moral direction is vital to our identities, happiness, productivity and relationships, there is a decline in its development and use, especially among younger adults. This book argues that hermeneutic moral realism is the best hope for meeting the twenty-first century challenges of scientism, individualism, and postmodernism. In addition to providing a thorough understanding of moral realism, (...) the volume also takes preliminary steps toward its application in important practical settings, including research, psychotherapy, politics, and publishing. (shrink)

Against standard approaches to evolution and ethics, this book develops the idea that moral values may find their origin in regularly recurring features in the cooperative environments of species of organisms that are social and intelligent. Across a wide range of species that are social and intelligent, possibilities arise for helping others, responding empathetically to the needs of others, and playing fairly. The book identifies these underlying environmental regularities as biological natural kinds and as natural moral values. As natural kinds, (...) moral values help to provide more complete explanations for the selection of traits that arise in response to them. For example, helping in an aquatic environment is quite different than helping in an arboreal environment, and so we can expect the selection of traits for helping to reflect these underlying environmental differences. With the human ability to name, talk, and reason about important features of our environment, moral values become part of moral discourse and argument, helping to produce coherent systems of moral thought. Combining a naturalistic approach to morality with an equal emphasis on moral argument and truth, this book will be of interest to philosophers and historians of biology, theoretical biologists, comparative psychologists, and moral philosophers. (shrink)

I defend convergentist realism from counterarguments that appeal to apparently deep and widespread moral disagreement. Pace recent claims by antirealists, I first argue that scenarios such as the prominent “Magistrate and the Mob” case betray cognitive defects in subjects, such as partiality, that we would not find in ideal agents. After this, I defend three reasons to expect cross-cultural disagreement on moral cases even if convergentist realism is true. These defusing explanations concern individual and group moral development and the moral (...) models on which agents rely. While developing my defense of moral realism, I aim for comprehensive engagement with responses to arguments by Doris, Plakias, and others that have been dispersed across several related articles. (shrink)

Perhaps the most familiar understanding of “naturalism” derives from Quine, understanding it as a continuity of empirical theories of the world as described through the scientific method. So, it might be surprising that one of the most important naturalistic moral realists, Philippa Foot, rejects standard evolutionary biology in her justly lauded _Natural Goodness_. One of her main reasons for this is the true claim that humans can flourish (eudaimonia) without reproducing, which she claims cannot be squared with evolutionary theory and (...) biology more generally. The present argument concludes that Foot was wrong to reject evolutionary theory as the empirical foundation of naturalized eudaimonist moral realism. This is based on contemporary discussion of _biological function_ and _evolutionary fitness_, from which a definition of “eudaimonia” is constructed. This gives eudaimonist moral realism an empirically respectable foundation. (shrink)

An updated reprint of Singh, Prabhpal. 2018. "Considering Dispositional Moral Realism". Perspectives: An International Postgraduate Journal of Philosophy 8(1): 14-22.

Some moral propositions are so obviously true that we refuse to doubt them, even where we believe that many people disagree. Following Fritz and McPherson, I call our behaviour in such cases ‘moral steadfastness’. In this paper, I argue for two metaethical implications of moral steadfastness. I first argue that morally steadfast behaviour is sufficiently prevalent to present an important challenge for some prominent analogies between moral epistemology and non-moral forms of epistemology. These analogies are often pressed by moral realists. (...) I then argue that moral quasi-realism, unlike realism, can explain and vindicate our presumption that moral steadfastness is frequently rational. On the assumption that we frequently act as it is rational to act, quasi-realism is therefore well placed to explain why we are so frequently morally steadfast. I conclude that this is an important respect in which quasi-realism is explanatorily preferable to realism. (shrink)

The purpose of this thesis is to provide a metaphysic for moral realism and moral perception. This thesis is in two parts. The first is concerned with basic ontology. I begin in chapter 1 with an analysis of causation, demonstrating that substance theory is superior to Humeanism at accounting for our observations; thus I defend a substance ontology. In chapter 2, I address human agency, demonstrating that reasons internalism does not allow for incompatibilist freedom; hence, I affirm reasons are states (...) of affairs. I move on to qualia in chapter 3, demonstrating that arguments both for and against qualia realism involve question begging. In response, I argue that qualia realism is just as reasonable as anti-realism, and affirm realism. Given this, I address the mind-body problem in chapter 4, demonstrating the failure of physicalists to account for mental causation. I conclude that panpsychism, idealism, and substance dualism are equal reasonable alternatives: each allows for intrinsic properties, which are integral to substance ontology. The second part builds a moral ontology, along with an account of moral perceptual knowledge, compatible with the above basic ontology. In chapter 5, I reject moral properties as monadic since this would bar mapping moral concepts onto mind-independent reality. Instead, I argue that moral properties are relations. More specifically, in chapter 6, I make the case that they are features of relations, relations themselves being the total complex states of affairs between one or more substances. This allows moral properties to have their own nonreducible phenomenal quality. To account for moral normativity, I argue that moral features are actually a class of causal features, and briefly argue that final causes determine the normative causal trajectory of all substances. In chapter 7, I conclude this thesis with addressing possible objections to my theory of perception and perceptual knowledge. (shrink)

I exploit parallel considerations in the philosophy of mind and metaethics to argue that the reasoning employed in an important argument for panpsychism overgeneralizes to support an analogous position in metaethics: panmoralism. Next, I raise a number of problems for panmoralism and thereby build a case for taking the metaethical parallel to be a reductio ad absurdum of the argument for panpsychism. Finally, I contrast panmoralism with a position recently defended by Einar Duenger Bohn and argue that the two suffer (...) from similar problems. I conclude by drawing some general lessons for panpsychism. (shrink)

Fifteen years ago, Sharon Street and Richard Joyce advanced evolutionary debunking arguments against moral realism, which purported to show that the evolutionary history of our moral beliefs makes moral realism untenable. These arguments have since given rise to a flurry of objections; the epistemic principles Street and Joyce relied upon, in particular, have come in for a number of serious challenges. My goal in this paper is to develop a new account of evolutionary debunking which avoids the pitfalls Street and (...) Joyce encountered and responds to the most pressing objections they faced. I begin by presenting a striking thought experiment to serve as an analogy for the evolution of morality; I then show why calibrationist views of higher-order evidence are crucial to the evolutionary debunking project; I outline a new rationale for why finding out that morality was selected to promote cooperation suggests that our moral judgments are unreliable; and I explain why evolutionary debunking arguments do not depend on our having a dedicated faculty for moral cognition. All things considered, I argue, evolutionary debunking arguments against moral realism are on relatively secure footing – provided, at least, that we accept a calibrationist account of higher-order evidence. (shrink)

Moral subjectivism is commonly associated with out-of-favour theories like, e.g., Alfred Ayer’s emotivism or John Mackie’s error theory. This paper approaches the field against the background of the attitudinal character of morality and religion. The possibility of a brand of moral subjectivism is established which is common to Ayer’s and Mackie’s theories in name only yet still has significant merits. The perspective from action theory and the philosophy of mind suggests that the problem of moral obligation, central to moral philosophy, (...) is more convincingly dealt with by subjectivism than by its rivals: In contrast to realism or even relativism (with which subjectivism is often confused), subjectivism can help to explain the peculiarities of obligation without forcing us to disregard the parallel problem in the field of religion. This finding calls into question the rationale for, as well as the success of, central assumptions in ontology and semantics which the realist so freely hands out in order to make his point: If religious facts and the truth-aptness of religious judgements will not explain religious obligation, moral facts and the truth-aptness of moral judgements will not help the moral realist either. So unless we do not wish to simply cast the problem of moral obligation aside, in future, moral subjectivism must be seriously considered as a worthwhile position in its own right. [in German] **************************************************************************************************** ********** Moralischer Subjektivismus ist ein Oberbegriff für Theorien wie Alfred Ayers „Emotivismus“ und John Mackies „Irrtumstheorie“, die heute kaum noch Vertreter finden. In diesem Aufsatz beleuchte ich das Feld vom Einstellungscharakter von Moral und Religion her. Ich lege so die Möglichkeit eines anderen moralischen Subjektivismus dar, der mit Ayers oder Mackies Theorie nur das Rubrum gemein hätte und doch gewichtige Vorzüge aufweist. Die handlungstheoretische Betrachtung von Moral und Religion mit Hilfe der Philosophie des Geistes legt nahe, dass dieser moralische Subjektivismus mit dem für die Moralphilosophie zentralen Problem des moralischen Sollens besser umgehen kann als seine Rivalen: Anders als der Realismus oder gar der Relativismus (mit dem der Subjektivismus oft verwechselt wird), kann der hier ausgeleuchtete Subjektivismus mit der besonderen Verbindlichkeit moralischer Forderungen umgehen, ohne die Parallele zur besonderen Verbindlichkeit religiöser Forderungen in Abrede stellen zu müssen. Die Rolle und Durchschlagkraft der vom Realisten so freigiebig gespendeten ontologischen oder semantischen Zusatzannahmen er- scheint vor diesem Hintergrund fragwürdig. Dem religiösen Realisten wird man vergleichbare Annahmen nicht zugeben wollen und muss es auch nicht. Dann aber können wir die Erklärung besonderer Verbindlichkeit generell nicht auf Ontologie oder Semantik gründen. Der verbreitete Appell an sogenannte moralische Tatsachen oder die behauptete Wahrheitsfähigkeit moralischer Sätze erweist sich so als wirkungslos. Sofern wir das Problem des moralischen Sollens überhaupt weiter ernst nehmen wollen, muss der moralische Subjektivismus als Position künftig ernsthaft erwogen werden. (shrink)

I argue that Spinoza is more of a moral realist than an anti-realist. More specifically, I argue that Spinoza is more of a realist than Kant, and that his view has deep similarities with Plato's metaethics. Along the way, I identify three approaches to the moral realism/anti-realism distinction. Classifying Spinoza as a moral realist brings out a number of important complexities that have been overlooked by many of Spinoza's readers and by many contemporary metaethicists.

In the essays which make up The Sovereignty of Good, Iris Murdoch gives us a picture of moral life in which ‘the metaphor of vision [is] almost irresistibly suggested’. This chapter aims to clarify the role played by the metaphor of vision in Murdoch’s philosophical thinking. I’ll examine two different things which might be meant by the term ‘moral vision’: vision of moral things or vision which is itself moral. The suggestion will be that whilst both capture something important about (...) Murdoch’s work, each may mislead about what is distinctive in her views. For Murdoch, I shall suggest, there is no distinctively moral vision. There is only vision: a loving gaze directed upon the reality of others. (shrink)

The claim that there are objective ethical truths has attracted its share of doubters. Many have thought that such truths would require an extra-ethical foundation or vindication—in metaphysics, or the philosophy of language, or epistemology—and have worried that no such thing is available. Pragmatist Quietism argues that, on the contrary, there are objective ethical truths, and that these neither require nor admit of a foundation or vindication from outside of ethics. Recognizing that the idea of an ethical realm untethered from (...) inquiry into reality, meaning, and knowledge may strike us as mysterious, this book offers a comprehensive meta-ethical worldview within which this jarring proposal may be ensconced. The key moves are, first, the assimilation of normative-ethical inquiry to the sorts of debates that many have labelled 'merely verbal' or 'non-substantive', and second, the adoption of pragmatism—the approach to inquiry and explanation on which we endeavour to guide our thinking by considerations of value, rather than aiming to correctly represent the world. (shrink)

Is suffering really bad? The late Derek Parfit argued that we all have reasons to want to avoid future agony and that suffering is in itself bad both for the one who suffers and impersonally. Nietzsche denied that suffering was intrinsically bad and that its value could even be impersonal. This paper has two aims. It argues against what I call ‘Realism about the Value of Suffering’ by drawing from a broadly Nietzschean debunking of our evaluative attitudes, showing that a (...) recently influential response to the debunking challenge (the appeal to phenomenal introspection) fails. It also argues that a Nietzschean approach is well suited to support the challenge and is bolstered by the empirical literature. As strangers to ourselves, we cannot know whether suffering is really intrinsically bad for us. (shrink)

Debates about the implications of empirical research in the natural and social sciences for normative disciplines have recently gained new attention. With the widening scope of neuroscientific investigations into human mental activity, decision-making and agency, neuroethicists and neuroscientists have extensively claimed that results from neuroscientific research should be taken as normatively or even prescriptively relevant. In this chapter, I investigate what these claims could possibly amount to. I distinguish and discuss three readings of the thesis that neuroscientific evidence has normative (...) implications: an action-theoretic, an epistemological, and a metaphysical reading. I conclude that the action-theoretic reading has the most direct normative consequences, even though it is limited to the questions of whether some pre-established moral norms can be realized by individual agents. In contrast, in applying the other two readings, neuroscience can only be said to have normative implications in a very indirect way and only under the condition of making contested metaethical assumptions. All in all, the room for inferring concrete. (shrink)

Evolutionary debunking accounts claim that the evolutionary origins of our moral beliefs provide a problem for moral realists because evolutionary explanations of our moral beliefs have more plausibility than realist accounts. A certain kind of response, which I term ‘rationalist’ offers a dual response to evolutionary debunking. First, they offer a supposedly plausible account of how we acquire objective moral knowledge through use of our rationality. Second, they claim that certain moral beliefs are not amenable to evolutionary explanation. I argue (...) that neither of these putative advantages survives further scrutiny. An appeal to ‘rational insight’, although it makes reference to a somewhat familiar faculty, gives no useful explanation of how we come to know moral facts. Moreover, the supposedly problematic moral beliefs are in fact amenable to evolutionary explanation. As such, rationalist accounts are, like other realist accounts, on the wrong side of the balance of justification against evolutionary debunking. (shrink)

A familiar claim, meant as a challenge to moral knowledge, is that we can credibly accept putative moral facts just in case they explain natural facts. This paper critically addresses Elizabeth Tropman’s response to a version of that claim. Her response has interest partly because it falls within, and extends, an influential philosophical tradition – that of trying to expose (some) skeptical challenges as spurious or ill-conceived. Also, Tropman’s target is not just any version of the claim just mentioned. It (...) is Gilbert Harman’s classic version, according to which putative moral facts must earn credibility by explaining the formation of moral beliefs. This version has wide influence, and variations of it can arise in many areas. Tropman’s response is thus well worth attention. (shrink)

The essay introduces Michael Quante's pragmatistic anthropology, focusing on three main ethical issues, namely: (1) the problem of realism, (2) the problem of particularism, and (3) the question about personal identity and its social conditions. By also emphasizing Quante's historical-philosophical debts, the essay thus aims to present the project of the pragmatistic anthropology as a worthwhile alternative to some of the fundamental assumptions of modern ethics. The essay is the Editor's Introduction to the volume: Michael Quante, "Antropologia pragmatista. Padova Lectures" (...) (Padova University Press, 2020). (shrink)

The relation between normativity and reality represents one of the most important and challenging issues that metaethics has to deal with. Both Hegel and McDowell have faced the problem in an original way, by reaching philosophical positions that reveal interesting similarities. The core of their proposals, in fact, is the idea that both the extremes of ethical antirealism (for which norms are completely dependent on subjectivity) and strong ethical realism (for which norms are completely independent from subjectivity) provide unsatisfying answers. (...) My aim is to sketch some outlines for a comparison between Hegel’s and McDowell’s metaethical solutions, in order to consider their affinities and divergences. (shrink)

As with all other moral realists, so-called relaxed moral realists believe that there are moral truths. Unlike metaphysical moral realists, they do not take themselves to be defending a substantively metaphysical position when espousing this view, but to be putting forward a moral thesis from within moral discourse. In this paper, I employ minimalism about truth to examine whether or not there is a semantic analysis of the claim ‘There are moral truths’ which can support this moral interpretation of one (...) of moral realism’s key theses. My results are both discouraging and encouraging: Whilst I will argue that the claim ‘There are moral truths’ cannot be shown to be both moral and capable of demarcating relaxed realism from irrealism on the basis of a convincing semantic analysis that would be compatible with relaxed commitments, the moral interpretation of moral realism can be secured by modifying our understanding of what distinguishes relaxed realism from error-theoretic irrealism. Yet, we will see that this moral interpretation of moral realism does not ‘tumble out’ of the semantics provided for its central claims. Rather, hard work needs to be done before we can fully relax. (shrink)

Focusing on Erik Wielenberg’s metaphysic of morals, I argue that his moral Platonism is, given the presumption against the existence of abstract objects, unmotivated. Moreover, Godless Normative Realism is implausible in light of the mysterious causal relations said to obtain between concrete objects and moral abstracta. His appeals to theism in order to motivate such causal connections is nugatory. If Wielenberg walks back his moral Platonism, then his metaphysics of morals collapses and Godless Normative Realism becomes explanatorily vacuous.

In Robust Ethics, I defend a nontheistic version of moral realism according to which moral properties are sui generis, not reducible to other kinds of properties and objective morality requires no foundation external to itself. I seek to provide a plausible account of the metaphysics and epistemology of the robust brand of moral realism I favor that draws on both analytic philosophy and contemporary empirical moral psychology. In this paper, I respond to some objections to my view advanced by William (...) Craig, Mark Murphy, Tyler McNabb, and Adam Johnson. (shrink)

Relaxed realists hold that there are deep differences between moral truths and the truths studied by the empirical sciences, but they deny that these differences raise troubling metaphysical or epistemological questions about moral truths. On this view, although features such as causal inefficacy, perceptual inaccessibility, and failure to figure in the best explanations of our empirical beliefs would raise pressing skeptical concerns were they claimed to characterize some aspect of physical reality, the same is not true when it comes to (...) the moral domain. This chapter raises some doubts about this general picture of morality and some prominent ways of defending it. First, it takes up a comparison that is frequently invoked by relaxed realists, and one on which they often place a great deal of weight: a comparison between irreducibly normative properties and truths on the one hand, and mathematical properties and truths on the other. It argues that this comparison is much less favorable to the relaxed realist’s cause than is often thought. It then offers an extended critique of a particularly vigorous and sustained presentation of relaxed realism: that offered by Ronald Dworkin in Justice for Hedgehogs. (shrink)

If there is something (P) that every possible agent is committed to value, and certain actions or attitudes either enhance or diminish P, then normative claims about a range of intentional actions can be objectively and non-trivially evaluated. I argue that the degree of existence as an agent depends on the consistency of reflexive-relating with other individuals of the agent-kind: the ontological thesis. I then show that in intending to act on a reason, every agent is rationally committed to value (...) ‘above all else’ being an agent, what consists in exercising the capacity to act and having the freedom to discriminate between more or less valuable actions: the transcendental thesis. Since the degree of possession of this personal but non-contingent good depends on relating to other agents in a special way, certain actions and attitudes may be objectively right or wrong for all agents. (shrink)

Several leading moral philosophers have recently proposed a soft version of moral realism, according to which moral facts—though it is reasonable to postulate them—cannot metaphysically explain other facts (Dworkin 2011; Parfit 2011; Scanlon 2014). However, soft moral realism is faced with what I call the “Hard Problem”, namely, the problem of how this soft version of moral metaphysics could accommodate moral knowledge. This paper reconstructs three approaches to solving the Hard Problem on behalf of the soft realist: the autonomy approach, (...) the intuitionist approach, and the third-factor approach. I then argue that none of them is successful. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider the relationship between Matthew Kramer’s moral realism as a moral doctrine and expressivism, understood as a distinctly non-representationalist metasemantic theory of moral vocabulary. More precisely, I will argue that Kramer is right in stating that moral realism as a moral doctrine does not stand in conflict with expressivism. But I will also go further, by submitting that advocates of moral realism as a moral doctrine must adopt theories such as expressivism in some shape or form. (...) Accordingly, if you do not want to accept positions such as expressivism, you cannot defend moral realism as a moral doctrine. Similarly, if you want moral realism to compete with expressivism, you cannot accept Kramer’s take on moral realism either. Hence, moral realism as a moral doctrine stands and falls with theories such as expressivism, or so I shall argue. (shrink)

According to “debunking arguments,” our moral beliefs are explained by evolutionary and cultural processes that do not track objective, mind-independent moral truth. Therefore (the debunkers say) we ought to be skeptics about moral realism. Huemer counters that “moral progress”—the cross-cultural convergence on liberalism—cannot be explained by debunking arguments. According to him, the best explanation for this phenomenon is that people have come to recognize the objective correctness of liberalism. Although Huemer may be the first philosopher to make this explicit empirical (...) argument for moral realism, the idea that societies will eventually converge on the same moral beliefs is a notable theme in realist thinking. Antirealists, on the other hand, often point to seemingly intractable cross-cultural moral disagreement as evidence against realism (the “argument from disagreement”). This paper argues that the trend toward liberalism is susceptible to a debunking explanation, being driven by two related non-truth-tracking processes. First, large numbers of people gravitate to liberal values for reasons of self-interest. Second, as societies become more prosperous and advanced, they become more effective at suppressing violence, and they create conditions where people are more likely to empathize with others, which encourages liberalism. The latter process is not truth tracking (or so this paper argues) because empathy-based moral beliefs are themselves susceptible to an evolutionary debunking argument. Cross-cultural convergence on liberalism per se does not support either realism or antirealism. (shrink)

Are moral terms semantically plastic—that is, would very slight changes in our patterns of use have shifted their meanings? This is a delicate question for moral realists. A 'yes' answer seems to conflict with the sorts of intuitions that support realism; but a 'no' answer seems to require a semantics that involves hefty metaphysical commitments. This tension can be illustrated by thinking about how standard accounts of vagueness can be applied to the case of moral terms, and also by considering (...) how realists should respond to the Moral Twin Earth problem. After presenting the puzzle, I will argue that moral realists can accept the semantic plasticity of moral expressions while accounting for contrary intuitions in a way that is nearly cost-free. (shrink)

The main aim of this paper is to identify a type of fact-given warrant for action that is distinct from reason-based justification for action and defend the view that there are two types of practical warrant. The idea that there are two types of warrant is familiar in epistemology, but has not received much attention in debates on practical normativity. On the view that I will defend, normative facts, qua facts, give rise to entitlement warrant for action. But they do (...) not, qua facts, give rise to reason-based warrant. Normative practical reasons, I will argue, are true propositions that represent fact-based favouring and that are made true by normative facts. (shrink)

In his new book Unbelievable Errors, Bart Streumer argues that there is no way around the result that all metaethical views other than the error theory either fail for the same reasons as metaphysical normative realism, or for the same reasons as expressivism. In this contribution, I seek to show that this is false: We can eschew this result by ‘relaxing’ about normative truths. Even if Streumer were right about the fate of metaphysical normative realism and expressivism, then, relaxed realists (...) can avoid the problems he raises. (shrink)

This is a review of Eklund's book. It discusses his suggestion that "ardent realists" use the practical profiles of normative concepts to A) explain what it is for a concept to be normative, B) fix reference, and C) provide an extensional theory of normative properties. I argue that those sympathetic to ardent realism will be happier to focus on the way in which normativity presents itself to cognition, particularly that presentation of inherent, authoritative guidance, and whether that 1) explains what (...) it is for a concept to be normative, 2) fixes reference, 3) aptly characterizes the nature of normativity in the world, and perhaps 4) explains why normative thoughts have the Eklund-style normative roles—the practical profiles of things like motivation, preference, and intention—that they have. (shrink)

Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer have recently provided an evolutionary argument for utilitarianism. They argue that most of our deontological beliefs were shaped by evolution, from which they conclude that these beliefs are unjustified. By contrast, they maintain that the utilitarian belief that everyone’s well-being matters equally is immune to such debunking arguments because it wasn’t similarly influenced. However, Guy Kahane remarks that this belief lacks substantial content unless it is paired with an account of well-being, and he adds (...) that utilitarian beliefs about wellbeing—e.g. the belief that pleasure is good and pain is bad—were probably shaped by evolution. Logically, de Lazari-Radek and Singer should therefore reject these beliefs along with the deontological beliefs that evolved. The present paper is a defense of their argument. After considering a number of unsuccessful replies to Kahane’s objection, I put forward a more promising solution: de Lazari-Radek and Singer should combine their objectivist view in metaethics with a subjectivist account of well-being, such as the desire theory. Such a hybrid account would tackle Kahane’s challenge because subjective accounts of value are immune from evolutionary debunking arguments. And it would be compatible with utilitarianism, which doesn’t fit very well with metaethical subjectivism. Before concluding, I deal with two concerns that this solution might raise: I argue that the desire theory is actually subjective enough to escape Kahane’s objection, and I deny that retreating to the combination of ethical objectivism and prudential subjectivism is ad hoc. (shrink)

Some moral realists have defended moral realism on the basis of the purported fact that moral facts figure as components in some good explanations of non-moral phenomena. In this paper I explore the relationship between theism and this sort of explanationist defense of moral realism. Theistic explanations often make reference to moral facts, and do so in a manner which is ineliminable in an important respect – remove the moral facts from those explanations, and they suffer as a result. In (...) this respect theistic moral explanations seem to differ from the sorts of moral explanations typically offered by moral explanationists. (shrink)

In this essay I examine the moral message presented in Woody Allen's film, "Crimes and Misdemeanors.".

This book offers a ground-up defense of objective morality, drawing inspiration from a wide range of philosophers, including John Locke, Arthur Schopenhauer, Iris Murdoch, Nel Noddings, and David Lewis. The core claim is compassion is our capacity to perceive other creatures' pains, pleasures, and desires. Non-compassionate people are therefore perceptually lacking, regardless of how much factual knowledge they might have. Marshall argues that people who do have this form of compassion thereby fit a familiar paradigm of moral goodness. His argument (...) involves the identification of an epistemic good which Marshall dubs "being in touch". To be in touch with some property of a thing requires experiencing it in a way that reveals that property - that is, experiencing it as it is in itself. Only compassion, Marshall argues, lets us be in touch with others' motivational mental properties. -/- This conclusion about compassion has two important metaethical consequences. First, it generates an answer to the question ";Why be moral?", which has been a central philosophical concern since Plato. Second, it provides the keystone for a novel form of moral realism. This form of moral realism has a distinctive set of virtues: it is anti-relativist, naturalist, and able to identify a necessary connection between moral representation and motivation. The view also implies that there is an epistemic asymmetry between virtuous and vicious agents, according to which only morally good people can fully face reality. (shrink)