Abstract

According to the social ontology proposed by John Searle, there are ontologically objective facts or “brute facts”, independent from human attitudes, and ontologically subjective facts. Among the latter, the most notable are institutional facts, such as money or borders, which existence is explained through a collective attribution of status function within a certain social context. Could “moral truths” exist according to an ontology like this? Assuming the truth as correspondence, the notion of “moral truth” remits to the notion of “moral fact”. As we will see, these moral facts, contrary to what authors such as Markus Gabriel suggest, are similar to institutional facts. For this reason, the truth or falsity of moral statements will be, as indicated by authors such as Gilbert Harman, relative to a social context; without that being an obstacle for acknowledging their expressive and directive function.