This book is a systematic and constructive treatment of a number of traditional issues at the foundation of ethics, the possibility and nature of moral knowledge, the relationship between the moral point of view and a scientific or naturalistic world view, the nature of moral value and obligation, and the role of morality in a person's rational life plan. In striking contrast to many traditional authors and to other recent writers in the field, David Brink offers an (...) integrated defense of the objectivity of ethics. (shrink)

Moral disagreement is often thought to be of great metaethical significance for moral realists. I explore what remains of that significance when we look at moral disagreement through the lens of a combination of two influential and independently plausible hypotheses about moral language. The Morality-As-Cooperation (MAC) hypothesis says that our capacity for and use of moral language is an adaptation to increase mutualistic cooperation. The Concepts-As-Tools (CAT) hypothesis says that we often engage in disputes about (...) language use and that many apparent moral disagreements are linguistic disagreements in disguise. The combined MAC-CAT view that I explore suggests that we frequently engage in linguistic disputes to find optimal means for mutualistic cooperation. I show that this perspective weakens sceptical claims based on moral disagreements, that is offers a novel way for moral realists to explain the apparent genuineness of moral disagreements without the need to accept theses borrowed from non-cognitivism. (shrink)

Moral Realism is a systematic defence of the idea that there are objective moral standards. Russ Shafer-Landau argues that there are moral principles that are true independently of what anyone, anywhere, happens to think of them. His central thesis, as well as the many novel supporting arguments used to defend it, will spark much controversy among those concerned with the foundations of ethics.

This book introduces readers to the major debates and positions related to moral realism, and defends a pluralistic version of moral realism.

In this major new work, Matthew Kramer seeks to establish two main conclusions. On the one hand, moral requirements are strongly objective. On the other hand, the objectivity of ethics is itself an ethical matter that rests primarily on ethical considerations. Moral realism - the doctrine that morality is indeed objective - is a moral doctrine. Major new volume in our new series _New Directions in Ethics_ Takes on the big picture - defending the objectivity of ethics (...) whilst rejecting the grounds of much of the existing debate between realists and anti-realists Cuts across both ethical theory and metaethics Distinguished by the quality of the scholarship and its ambitious range. (shrink)

According to robust moral realism, there exist objective, non-natural moral facts. Moral facts of this sort do not fit easily into the world as illuminated by natural science. Further, if such facts exist at all, it is hard to see how we could know of their existence by any familiar means. Yet robust realists are not moral skeptics; they believe that we do know the moral facts. Thus robust moral realism comes with a number (...) of hard-to-defend ontological and epistemological commitments. Recently, Sharon Street has claimed, in light of these commitments, that robust moral realism requires a kind of faith and “has become a strange form of religion.” I believe that Street is right. I argue at some length that robust moral realism does require faith, and is a religion. However, I further argue that it is an excellent religion. I argue that it has three principal advantages: it is avoids wishful thinking, is guaranteed not to contradict the results of natural science, and is profoundly simple in its ontological commitments. Further, robust moral realism may be rationally defensible on evidentialist grounds. Consequently, even if the standard arguments for traditional religions are not compelling, there might still be compelling arguments for robust moral realism. (shrink)

Moral realism faces a well known genealogical debunking challenge. I argue that the moral realist’s best response may involve abandoning metaphysical naturalism in favor of some form of axiarchism—the view, very roughly, that the natural world is “ordered to the good.” Axiarchism comes in both theistic and non-theistic forms, but all forms agree that the natural world exists and has certain basic features because it is good for it to exist and have those features. I argue that (...) theistic and non-theistic forms of axiarchism are better positioned than metaphysical naturalism to avoid two commitments that a moral realist should seek to avoid: that the correctness of our moral beliefs is a major coincidence, and that there is a complete explanation of our moral beliefs that does not mention any moral truths. (shrink)

In this paper I defend a ‘culturalist’ but nevertheless non-relativistic moral theory, taking Charles Taylor’s writings on this topic as my guide.1 Taylor is a realist concerning natural sciences, the ontology of persons and the ontology of goods (or meanings, significances or values). Yet, his realisms in these three areas differ significantly from one another, and therefore one has to be careful not to presuppose too rigid views of what realism must be like. Taylor’s moral realism can (...) be called culturalist, phenomenological, hermeneutical or even ‘expressivist’.2 According to culturalist moral realism, cognitivism is the correct view of our ordinary moral and evaluative reactions and responses to situations. In the realm of evaluative judgements, genuinely correct and incorrect (and better and worse) judgements are possible. These judgements can be implicit in our moral emotions and tacit agent’s knowledge, or more explicit in different articulations (section 1). What makes evaluative judgements correct are evaluative properties or ‘imports’ of the situation, and both the evaluative features of situations and our correct responses to them can be further understood in terms of a plurality of (conflicting and incommensurable) goods, ideals or values (section 2). The evaluative realm is not accessible from a disengaged perspective, but only from within an engaged, lifeworldly perspective. Evaluative properties are not merely a matter of subjective projection nor merely a matter of objective properties independent of valuers. Evaluative properties are relational, and neither the objective nor the subjective pole has priority (Section 3). The evaluative realm is in some sense dependent on social forms (concepts and practices), which are historically changing. Yet the validity of goods is (potentially) universal, goods that are valid in our culture would be valid in other cultures as well and vice versa. The correctness of evaluative judgements is not restricted by one’s own (or one’s culture’s) evaluations, framework or orientation (i.e.. (shrink)

According to moral realists, ethics concerns matters of fact. According to naturalist moral realists, moral facts just are natural facts. In this book, I provide an in-depth analysis of moral naturalism's ontological, epistemological, semantic and psychological foundations.

Many people accept, at least implicitly, what I call the asymmetry claim: the view that moral realism is more defensible than aesthetic realism. This article challenges the asymmetry claim. I argue that it is surprisingly hard to find points of contrast between the two domains that could justify their very different treatment with respect to realism. I consider five potentially promising ways to do this, and I argue that all of them fail. If I am right, those who accept (...) the asymmetry claim have a significant burden of proof. (shrink)

Samuel Guttenplan; V*—Moral Realism and Moral Dilemmas, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 80, Issue 1, 1 June 1980, Pages 61–80, https://doi.org/1.

Compassionate Moral Realism, by MarshallColin. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. 265 + xi.

Reductionist forms of moral realism, such as naturalist realism, are often thought immune to epistemological objections that have been raised against nonnaturalist realism in the form of reliability worries or evolutionary debunking arguments. This article establishes that reductionist realist views can only explain the reliability of our moral beliefs at the cost of incurring repugnant first-order conclusions.

I address Andrew Moon's recent discussion (2016, this journal) of the question whether third-factor accounts are valid responses to debunking arguments against moral realism. Moon argues that third-factor responses are valid under certain conditions but leaves open whether moral realists can use his interpretation of the third-factor response to defuse the evolutionary debunking challenge. I rebut Moon's claim and answer his question. Moon's third-factor reply is valid only if we accept externalism about epistemic defeaters. However, even if we (...) do, I argue, the conditions Moon identifies for a valid third-factor response are not met in the case of moral realism. (shrink)

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)

People disagree about whether “moral facts” are objective facts like mathematical truths (moral realism) or simply products of the human mind (moral antirealism). What is the impact of different meta-ethical views on actual behavior? In Experiment 1, a street canvasser, soliciting donations for a charitable organization dedicated to helping impoverished children, primed passersby with realism or antirealism. Participants primed with realism were twice as likely to be donors, compared to control participants and participants primed with antirealism. In (...) Experiment 2, online participants primed with realism as opposed to antirealism reported being willing to donate more money to a charity of their choice. Considering the existence of non-negotiable moral facts may have raised the stakes and motivated participants to behave better. These results therefore reveal the impact of meta-ethics on everyday decision-making: priming a belief in moral realism improved moral behavior. (shrink)

Wherever philosophers disagree, one of the things at issue is likely to be what they disagree about, itself. In addition to asking whether moral realism is true, and which forms of moral realism are more likely to be true than others, we can also ask what it would mean for some form of moral realism to be true. The usual aspiration of such inquiry is to find definitions that all can agree on, so that we can use (...) terms in a uniform way. But we doubt that this aspiration is always possible, or even desirable. It will be our goal in this chapter to sketch out some of our reasons for such skepticism, and to lay out a picture of what philosophical inquiry can look like in metaethics and beyond, even when it is impossible to reach uniform agreement on the terms of the debate. (shrink)

By emphasis on cognitive aspect of moral realism, this article surveys various divisions in moral realism and anti-realism and, regarding later Wittgenstein's courses, it explores his views about this matter. Thus, after a short description of Wittgenstein’s courses in Philosophical Investigations which are related to this topic, ideas of his commentators in this area are studied. Since moral realism has a firm relation with cognitive and non-cognitive discussion in meta-moral, thus later Wittgenstein’s view about this topic (...) is also investigated. At the end, it is shown that calling Wittgenstein a realist or anti-realist is due to the wrong usage of reality grammar and he cannot be categorized as such. (shrink)

If what we want from moral inquiry were the obtainment of objective moral truths, as moral realism claims it is, then there would be nothing morally unsatisfactory or lacking in a situation, in which we somehow had access to all moral truths, and were fundamentally finished with morality. In fact, that seems to be the realists’ conception of moral heaven. In this essay, however, I argue that some sort of moral wakefulness – that is, (...) always paying attention to the subtleties of life and people, and never taking for granted what their moral significance can possibly be – is an essential moral value, and, therefore, moral realism, which promotes a moral ideal that allows such moral lethargy and inattentiveness is morally objectionable. (shrink)

This paper considers John Doris, Stephen Stich, Alexandra Plakias, and colleagues’ recent attempts to utilize empirical studies of cross-cultural variation in moral judgment to support a version of the argument from disagreement against moral realism. Crucially, Doris et al. claim that the moral disagreements highlighted by these studies are not susceptible to the standard ‘diffusing’ explanations realists have developed in response to earlier versions of the argument. I argue that plausible hypotheses about the cognitive processes underlying ordinary (...) moral judgment and the acquisition of moral norms, when combined with a popular philosophical account of moral inquiry—the method of reflective equilibrium—undercut the anti-realist force of the moral disagreements that Doris et al. describe. I also show that Stich's recent attempt to provide further theoretical support for Doris et al.'s case is unsuccessful. (shrink)

We argue that genuine moral philosophy is realist, and genuine realism is a contextual realism. Thus, we introduce the position of a contextual moral realism. This is our interpretation of J. Benoist’s moral realism in terms of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy. The structure of the contextual realism is the structure of the gap between the ideal (rule, norm, concept) and the real. It is also the structure of Wittgenstein’s rule-following problem. Accordingly, the structure of the contextual (...) class='Hi'>moral realism is the structure of the application of a moral norm to reality. Norms, including moral norms, are defined and applied in context. The application of a moral norm implies moral sensitivity to a context that is not external to the norm. The contextual moral realism is a critique of moral objectivism, which ignores moral ontology, as well as metaphysical moral realism (Platonism) and naturalistic moral reductionism, which ignore the contextual (genuinely normative) dimension of morality. We also establish similarities between T. Williamson’s moral realism and Benoist’s moral realism, despite the difference in their approaches: for Benoist, philosophy is conceptual analysis, while Williamson sees no principal difference between science and philosophy. In particular, Williamson’s argument against moral inferentialism corresponds to Benoist’s argument against M. Gabriel’s “new moral realism”, and his argument in favour of moral knowledge by sensory perception and by testimony corresponds to contextual argument appealing to moral sensibility. (shrink)

A satisfactory theory of “strong evaluation” should manage to do two things: first of all, make sense of the distinction between impersonal ethical issues and personal orientation. Secondly, the deontic layer of reasons and norms should be taken into account, among other things because the central indicators of strong evaluation, namely praise and blame, presuppose norms and reasons as standards of praiseworthiness and blameworthiness. These two desiderata seem to pull in different directions. The suggested analysis of the deontic layer in (...) terms of external, value-based reasons for action may make it seem even more difficult to allow for reasons of one’s own. I argue that there can be reasons of one’s own, depending on one’s orientations, commitments and the actual shape of one’s affective-conative responses. First I discuss the general reasons that decisions and commitments create, and general (stance-insensitive) reasons for making a commitment to X. These suffice as a reply to MacIntyre’s worry (9.2). Yet the picture can be developed further. Drawing on the idea of exclusionary reasons (introduced in 9.1), I discuss the general reasons for having an orientation of one’s own and the difference between an orientation to the good and a commitment to a good. The difference is the role they have as reasons for action. Commitments play a stronger role in practical reasoning because they are exclusionary reasons (9.3). Then I turn to non-uniformity and stance-sensitivity of reasons, and ask whether different people have stance-sensitive reasons to make different commitments (9.4). In the last section I analyze more closely the nature of personal resonance and the difference it may make (9.5). (shrink)

Miriam Schoenfield argues that moral realism and moral vagueness imply ontic vagueness. In particular, she argues that neither shifty nor rigid semantic accounts of vagueness can provide a satisfactory explanation of moral vagueness for moral realists. This paper constitutes a response. I argue that Schoenfield's argument against the shifty semantic account presupposes that moral indeterminacies can, in fact, be resolved determinately by crunching through linguistic data. I provide different reasons for rejecting this assumption. Furthermore, I (...) argue that Schoenfield's rejection of the rigid semantic account is based on a presupposition that ultimately implies the very same claim that is under dispute: the vagueness of moral predicates in imperfect languages persists in the perfect language, as well. (shrink)

Quietist Moral Realists accept that there are moral facts and properties, while aiming to avoid many of the explanatory burdens thought to fall on traditional moral realists. This chapter examines the forms that Quietist Moral Realism has taken and the challenges it has faced, in order to better assess its prospects. The best hope, this chapter argues, lies in a pragmatist approach that distinguishes the different functions of diverse areas of discourse. This paves the way for (...) a form of Quietism that does not simply remain quiet about the explanatory demands of metaethics, but rather is able to diagnose where they go wrong. By combining a neopragmatic analysis of the discourse with an easy approach to ontology, , we can develop a form of Quietist Moral Realism that is far stronger than critics of quietism have appreciated. (shrink)

After qualifying in which sense ‘realism’ can be applied to eighteenth-century views about morality, I argue that while Kant shares with traditional moral realists several fundamental claims about morality, he holds that those claims must be argued for in a radically different way. Drawing on his diagnosis of the serious weaknesses of traditional moral realism, Kant proposes a novel approach that revolves around a hybrid view about moral obligation. Since his solution to that central issue combines elements (...) of realism with elements of voluntarist ascent, Kant’s position can be characterized as an idealist version of moral realism or, more specifically, as the combination of a strong realism about the moral law with an idealist account of moral obligation. (shrink)

Moral realists believe that there are objective moral truths. According to one of the most prominent arguments in favour of this view, ordinary people experience morality as realist-seeming, and we have therefore prima facie reason to believe that realism is true. Some proponents of this argument have claimed that the hypothesis that ordinary people experience morality as realist-seeming is supported by psychological research on folk metaethics. While most recent research has been thought to contradict this claim, (...) four prominent earlier studies indeed seem to suggest a tendency towards realism. My aim in this paper is to provide a detailed internal critique of these four studies. I argue that, once interpreted properly, all of them turn out in line with recent research. They suggest that most ordinary people experience morality as “pluralist-” rather than realist-seeming, i.e., that ordinary people have the intuition that realism is true with regard to some moral issues, but variants of anti-realism are true with regard to others. This result means that moral realism may be less well justified than commonly assumed. (shrink)

There have been times in the history of ethical theory, especially in this century, when moral realism was down, but it was never out. The appeal of this doctrine for many moral philosophers is apparently so strong that there are always supporters in its corner who seek to resuscitate the view. The attraction is obvious: moral realism purports to provide a precious philosophical good, viz., objectivity and all that this involves, including right answers to (most) moral (...) questions, and the possibility of knowing those answers. In the last decade, moral realism has re-entered the philosophical ring in powerful-looking naturalistic form. ln this paper we provide a dialectical overview: we situate the new wave position itself, and also our objections to it, in the context of the evolving program of philosophical naturalism in 20th century analytic philosophy. We seek to show that although this new contender might initially look like championship material, it succumbs to punches surprisingly similar to those that knocked out the old-fashioned versions of naturalist moral realism. (shrink)

This paper defends pro-realism, the view that it is better if moral realism is true rather than any of its rivals. After offering an account of philosophical angst, I make three general arguments. The first targets nihilism: in securing the possibility of moral justification and vindication in objecting to certain harms, moral realism secures something that is non-morally valuable and even essential to the meaning and intelligibility of our lives. The second argument targets antirealism: moral realism (...) secures a desirable independence for moral justification that is qualitatively different from the anti-realistic construal of independence that is only explicable in terms of degrees of distance from our subjective responses and attitudes. Finally, I argue that while the pan-expressivist semantic program of quasi-realism has significant effects on what can be appropriately said in meta-ethical discourse, it provides no comfort to the pro-realist who is already angsty about anti-realism. (shrink)

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)

SPECIAL ISSUE ON DISAGREEMENTS: The fact of moral disagreement is often raised as a problem for moral realism. The idea is that disagreement amongst people or communities on moral issues is to be taken as evidence that there are no objective moral facts. While the fact of ‘folk’ moral disagreement has been of interest, the fact of expert moral disagreement, that is, widespread and longstanding disagreement amongst expert moral philosophers, is even more compelling. (...) In this paper, I present three arguments against the anti-realist explanation for widespread and longstanding disagreement amongst expert moral philosophers. Each argument shows the argument from expert disagreement for moral anti-realism, that is, denial of morality’s objectivity, to be in one way or another self-undermining. I conclude that widespread and longstanding disagreement amongst expert moral philosophers is not a problem for moral realism. (shrink)

A long-standing family of worries about moral realism focuses on its implications for moral epistemology. The underlying concern is that if moral truths have the nature that realists believe, it is hard to see how we could know what they are. This objection may be called the “argument from skepticism” against moral realism. Realists have primarily responded to this argument by presenting accounts of how we could acquire knowledge of moral truths that are consistent with (...) realist assumptions about their nature. Less time has been spent, however, on the question of why it would be a problem for moral realism if it leads to skepticism in the first place, and on the related question of which skeptical conclusions it would be problematic for realists to simply accept. This paper considers several answers to these questions, thereby distinguishing a number of versions of the argument from skepticism, and discusses their prospects. (shrink)

This paper takes up an important epistemological challenge to the naturalistic moral realist: that her metaphysical commitments are difficult to square with a plausible rationalist view about the epistemology of morality. The paper begins by clarifying and generalizing this challenge. It then illustrates how the generalized challenge can be answered by a form of naturalistic moral realism that I dub joint-carving moral realism. Both my framing of this challenge and my answer advertise the methodological significance of (...) non-fundamental epistemological theorizing, which defends and deploys epistemological claims without adverting to the most fundamental epistemological facts. (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)

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)

In recent metaethics there has been a great deal of discussion regarding moral realism. Moral realism in the tradition of ethical naturalism has been revitalized in the form of a synthetic ethical naturalism. This brand of moral realism has interesting theoretical implications for individualistic and holistic models of environmental ethics. In this paper I argue that most theorists of environmental ethics presuppose an irrealist metaethic out of fear of violating Hume's law and Moore's naturalistic fallacy (e.g., Callicott, (...) Taylor, Elliot, and Sterba, while Rolston is a notable exception). But if we take moral realism (in the form of synthetic ethical naturalism) seriously, then environmental ethics has more options than the conventional metaethical maxims of Hume's law and Moore's naturalistic fallacy would allow. Accordingly, I lay out various prospects for a realist environmental metaethic. Environ-moral realism is an attempt to ground nonanthropocentrism in a realist metaethic. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss a new problem for moral realism, the problem of moral aliens. In the first section, I introduce this problem. Moral aliens are people who radically disagree with us concerning moral matters. Moral aliens are neither obviously incoherent nor do they seem to lack rational support from their own perspective. On the one hand, moral realists claim that we should stick to our guns when we encounter moral aliens. On (...) the other hand, moral realists, in contrast to anti-realists, seem to be committed to an epistemic symmetry between us and our moral aliens that forces us into rational suspension of our moral beliefs. Unless one disputes the very possibility of moral aliens, this poses a severe challenge to the moral realist. In the second section, I will address this problem. It will turn out that, on closer scrutiny, we cannot make any sense of the idea that moral aliens should be taken as our epistemic peers. Consequently, there is no way to argue that encountering moral aliens gives us any reason to revise our moral beliefs. If my argument is correct, the possibility of encountering moral aliens poses no real threat to moral realism. (shrink)

There have been times in the history of ethical theory, especially in this century, when moral realism was down, but it was never out. The appeal of this doctrine for many moral philosophers is apparently so strong that there are always supporters in its corner who seek to resuscitate the view. The attraction is obvious: moral realism purports to provide a precious philosophical good, viz., objectivity and all that this involves, including right answers to (most) moral (...) questions, and the possibility of knowing those answers. In the last decade, moral realism has re-entered the philosophical ring in powerful-looking naturalistic form. ln this paper we provide a dialectical overview: we situate the new wave position itself, and also our objections to it, in the context of the evolving program of philosophical naturalism in 20th century analytic philosophy. We seek to show that although this new contender might initially look like championship material, it succumbs to punches surprisingly similar to those that knocked out the old-fashioned versions of naturalist moral realism. (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)

Is it possible to found a Heideggerian ethic around the notion of a relationship to being (Bezug zum Seyn)? Going against much of the Western tradition, Gupta considers if the being-relationship could result in a feeling or mystical experience that is the basis of ethics. Along the way, such an affective and embodied approach to ethics brings us into dialogue with a range of thinkers, such as Kant and Schweitzer. Further, it is suggested that an environmental philosophy is consistent with (...) a Heideggerian ethics. Finally, recent research in the neurosciences is marshaled to at least show the plausibility of Heidegger's brand of moral realism as it is developed. (shrink)

Many philosophers argue that the face-value of moral practice provides presumptive support to moral realism. This paper analyses such arguments into three steps. (1) Moral practice has a certain face-value, (2) only realism can vindicate this face value, and (3) the face-value needs vindicating. Two potential problems with such arguments are discussed. The first is taking the relevant face-value to involve explicitly realist commitments; the second is underestimating the power of non-realist strategies to vindicate that (...) face-value. Case studies of each of these errors are presented, drawn from the writings of Shafer-Landau, Brink and McNaughton, and from recent work in experimental metaethics. The paper then considers weak presumptive arguments, according to which both realist and non-realist vindications of moral practice are possible, but the realist vindications are more natural. It is argued that there is no sense of ‘natural’ available that can make these arguments work. The conclusion is that all extant presumptive arguments for moral realism fail. (shrink)

For more than 15 years Professor Per Nortvedt has been arguing the case for moral realism in nursing and the health‐care context more generally. His arguments focus on the clinical contexts of nursing and medicine and are supplemented by a series of persuasive examples. Following a description of moral realism, and the kinds of considerations that support it, criticisms of it are developed that seem persuasive. It is argued that our moral responses are explained by our beliefs (...) as opposed to moral realities. In particular, two key arguments presented by Nortvedt are challenged: the so‐called argument from convergence and the argument from clinical sensitivity. Both of these key planks in the case for moral realism are rejected, and an alternative ‘social conditioning’ account briefly sketched, which, it is claimed, has the same explanatory power as Nortvedt's thesis but does not rest on an appeal to independently existing moral properties. (shrink)

Jude Edeh ABSTRACT: The challenge faced with the proliferation of various kinds of cognitivism is the difficulty of providing a straightforward characterization of moral realism and antirealism. In light of this tension, I identified a problem in Sayre-McCord’s way of specifying the criteria of moral realism. Furthermore, I provided a framework that characterized the moral ….

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. (shrink)

In this paper, I articulate a form of moral realism that I take to be of special promise. I hope to show, not only that this realist position satisfies cognitivist, objectivist and success constraints, but also that this position is particularly commended by a number of recent apologetic strategies that have been more commonly deployed in the defense of other non-moral varieties of realism. To this extent, I aim to show that moral realism, far from being (...) a desperate or quixotic position, is a perfectly natural extension of analytic philosophy’s efforts to reform itself in spirit of post-positivistic recovery. (shrink)