Moral Realism

Moral Realism

1. (i) Our moral claims are truth apt (capable of being true or false) and (ii) at least some of our (positive) moral claims would be true

   • Intuitively, being a moral realist is something to do with believing there are moral facts
   • ...Because it is a conjunction (&), you can be an anti-realist by denying either condition (i) or (ii)
   • If you think our positive moral claims are truth apt but ALL false, then you are an error theorist
   • Cognitivism: The view that moral claims express propositions and are therefore truth apt, and that moral judgements are beliefs
   • Non-Cognitivism: The view that moral claims do not express propositions and are therefore NOT truth apt, and that moral judgements are not beliefs. Most non-cognitivists think that moral judgements are more like desires or commands, and that the distinctively moral language in our moral claims is expressive, like 'hello' or 'ouch', and not descriptive, like '...is blue'

2. The Varieties of Realism

   • We'll call the facts which are required to make the true moral claims true the truth conditions for those claims
   • Intersubjectivism: In the case of cultural relativism, the idea that the truth conditions for our moral claims are facts about what people collectively think or do
     • The view that the truth conditions for our (fundamental) moral claims are essentially facts about the attitudes, conventions or practices of groups of individuals
   • Subjectivism: The truth of a moral claim depends upon what a particular person thinks - the person acting, or the person making the judgement
     • The view that the truth conditions for our (fundamental) moral claims are essentially facts about individuals' beliefs or other attitudes
   • Objectivism: The view that the truth conditions for our (fundamental) moral claims are facts about neither the attitudes of individuals not the attitudes, conventions or practices of groups of individuals - It is the negation of idealism, meaning it it is the negation of both subjectivism and intersubjectivism
     • Idealism: The view that the truth conditions for our moral claims are essentially about the attitudes, practices and conventions etc. of people (or other things with minds). Subjectivism and intersubjectivism are species of idealism
     • They might be facts about, e.g. what is instrumentally good for the survival of a species, or what has some non-natural abstract moral property (of goodness, for example)

3. Some (not very good) Reasons for Resisting Realism

   • You might worry about realism because you think we don't know the moral facts: why should we believe in them if we don't know them?
     • REMEMBER: Not to confuse (i) with knowledge with (ii) agreement: some people might know the moral facts, even if others disagree with them
       • In general, not knowing something is not in itself a good reason to believe that there is no fact of the matter about it
         • BUT, perhaps the problem for moral realism is not that there are particular moral facts which are not known, but that none of the facts in the domain are known; for example in mathematics we might not know whether the Twin Primes Conjecture is true, but we know lots of other mathematical facts which can give us confidence that there is a fact to be known here
           • If this is the problem - i.e. that none of the supposed moral facts are known - then everything rests on the premise that nobody knows any moral facts
             • Is this plausible without assuming that there are no facts to be known (i.e. without begging the question)?

4. Why should we think that there are any of the sorts of moral facts which would be required to make our moral claims true?

   • DOXASTIC PARSIMONY
     • If there is no good reason for believing P, then don't believe P
       • According to Doxastic Parsimony, if there are no good reasons to belive in moral facts, then we should no believe in them (shouldn't be realists)
     • SO, unless we can think of another source of good reasons to believe in moral facts aside from perception, deduction, memory and IBE, then not only do we lack an argument for realism; we have to REJECT moral realism
       • THE REALIST STRIKES BACK
         • 1) Reject Doxastic Parsimony
           • Having no reasons, doesn't undermine rationality (no evidence either way), so long as they haven't seen good reasons not to have it
         • 2) Show that IBE does give us good reasons to believe in moral facts after all
         • 3) Invoke another source of good reasons to believe in moral facts
   • INFERENCE TO THE BEST EXPLANATION (IBE)
     • We should believe in whatever is required by the best explanations (we have) of the things we need to explain (such as the observations we make)
       • Our best explanations will be those which, amongst other things, are ontologically parsimonious
         • ONTOLOGICAL PARSIMONY
           • Only postulate those facts (properties, objects etc) which are required to explain well the phenomena being explained
     • IBE is what gives us good reasons to believe in all sorts of things which we can't directly observe
     • 2 Things to mount an IBE Defence of Realism
       • 1) Identify something that needs explaining
       • 2) In order to get explanations, is to believe in moral facts
       • Usually, the best explanation of our judgements about what is in front of us feature actual objects which we are perceiving. Similarly, the best explanations of our moral judgements might feature moral facts to which we are responding
         • BUT, the best explanation of our moral judgements doesn't seem to require any moral facts - I could believe the same things about wrongness and hence make the same judgements, without there being any facts of that sort
       • If our particular moral judgements can be adequately explained by our background general moral beliefs, perhaps they are best explained as responses to some general moral facts
         • BUT, the best explanation of our general moral beliefs doesn't seem to require any moral facts either - That we are brought up with certain moral codes is sufficient to explain why we have the general moral beliefs that we do
       • Perhaps we act in certain ways in response to the fact that something is morally wrong/morally obligatory/morally bad/ morally desirable
         • BUT, the best explanations for our actions - even when we are acting out of moral concern - seem again to require only beliefs about what is right/wrong/good/bad etc.
       • SO, it looks like none of the best explanations available for any of the things we need explaining require moral facts in the way that the best scientific explanations require protons, Higgs Bosons and a Big Bang