Moral realism

This article is about moral realism in the robust sense. For moral realism in the moderate or minimal sense, see Moral universalism.

Moral realism is a non-nihilist form of cognitivism and is a meta-ethical view in the tradition of Platonism. In summary, it claims:

1. Ethical sentences express propositions.
2. Some such propositions are true.
3. Those propositions are made true by objective features of the world, independent of subjective opinion.

Moral realism stands in opposition to all forms of moral anti-realism, including:

• ethical subjectivism (which denies that moral propositions refer to objective facts);
• error theory (which denies that any moral propositions are true); and,
• non-cognitivism (which denies that moral sentences express propositions at all).

It also contrasts with other cognitivist positions, which hold to all the same epistemological and semantic claims as realism (that moral utterenaces are meaningful and can be objectively true), but do not hold that moral utterenaces correspond with moral facts. Within moral realism, the two main subdivisions are ethical naturalism and ethical non-naturalism.

One study found that two thirds of philosophers accept or lean towards moral realism as accept or lean towards moral anti-realism. Some notable examples of robust moral realists include David Brink, John McDowell, Peter Railton, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, Michael Smith, Terence Cuneo, Russ Shafer-Landau, G.E. Moore, John Finnis, Richard Boyd, Ayn Rand, Sam Harris, Nicholas Sturgeon, Thomas Nagel, Derek Parfit. Norman Geras has argued that Karl Marx was a moral realist.

Robust versus minimal moral realism

The robust model of moral realism commits moral realists to three theses:

1. The semantic thesis: The primary semantic role of moral predicates (such as "right" and "wrong") is to refer to moral properties (such as rightness and wrongness), so that moral statements (such as "honesty is good" and "slavery is unjust") purport to represent moral facts, and express propositions that are true or false (or approximately true, largely false, and so on).
2. The alethic thesis: Some moral propositions are in fact true.
3. The metaphysical thesis: Moral propositions are true when actions and other objects of moral assessment have the relevant moral properties (so that the relevant moral facts obtain), where these facts and properties are robust: their metaphysical status, whatever it is, is not relevantly different from that of (certain types of) ordinary non-moral facts and properties.

The minimal model, i.e. moral universalism, leaves off the metaphysical thesis, treating it as matter of contention among moral realists (as opposed to between moral realists and moral anti-realists). This dispute is not insignificant, as acceptance or rejection of the metaphysical thesis is taken by those employing the robust model as the key difference between moral realism and moral anti-realism. Indeed, the question of how to classify certain logically possible (if eccentric) views—such as the rejection of the semantic and alethic theses in conjunction with the acceptance of the metaphysical thesis—turns on which model we accept. Someone employing the robust model might call such a view "realist non-cognitivism," while someone employing the minimal model might simply place such a view alongside other, more traditional, forms of non-cognitivism.

The robust model and the minimal model also disagree over how to classify moral subjectivism (roughly, the view that moral facts are not mind-independent in the relevant sense, but that moral statements may still be true). The historical association of subjectivism with moral anti-realism in large part explains why the robust model of moral realism has been dominant—even if only implicitly—both in the traditional and contemporary philosophical literature on metaethics.

In the minimal sense of realism, R.M. Hare could be considered a realist in his later works, as he is committed to the objectivity of value judgments, even though he denies that moral statements express propositions with truth-values per se. Moral constructivists like John Rawls and Christine Korsgaard may also be realists in this minimalist sense; the latter describes her own position as procedural realism.

Science and moral realism

See also: Scientific realism

Cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker has argued that the game theoretic advantages of ethical behavior support the idea that morality is "out there" in a certain sense (as part of the evolutionary fitness landscape). Journalist Robert Wright has similarly argued that natural selection moves sentient species closer to moral truth as time goes on.

Writer Sam Harris has also argued that ethics could be objectively grounded in an understanding of neuroscience. He has admitted to being committed to some form of moral realism (viz. moral claims can really be true or false) and some form of consequentialism (viz. the rightness of an act depends on how it impacts the well-being of conscious creatures).

Advantages

Moral realism allows the ordinary rules of logic (modus ponens, etc.) to be applied straightforwardly to moral statements. We can say that a moral belief is false or unjustified or contradictory in the same way we would about a factual belief. This is a problem for expressivism, as shown by the Frege-Geach problem.

Another advantage of moral realism is its capacity to resolve moral disagreements: If two moral beliefs contradict one another, realism says that they cannot both be right, and therefore everyone involved ought to be seeking out the right answer to resolve the disagreement. Contrary theories of meta-ethics have trouble even formulating the statement "this moral belief is wrong," and so they cannot resolve disagreements in this way.

Criticisms

Several criticisms have been raised against moral realism: The first is that, while realism can explain how to resolve moral conflicts, it does not explain how these conflicts arose in the first place. The Moral Realist would appeal to basic human psychology, arguing that people possess various motivations that combine in complex ways, or else are simply mistaken about what is objectively right.

Others are critical of moral realism because it postulates the existence of a kind of "moral fact" which is nonmaterial and does not appear to be accessible to the scientific method. Moral truths cannot be observed in the same way as material facts (which are objective), so it seems odd to count them in the same category. However, such an argument could be applied to saying that the science of psychology also cannot be a science; or the acceptance of psychology as a cognitive science vitiates this argument (which would not be indicative of any weakness of the argument, as Feynman in the Cargo Cult Science made the same claim starting from different hypothesis). One emotivist counterargument (although emotivism is usually non-cognitivist) alleges that "wrong" actions produce measurable results in the form of negative emotional reactions, either within the individual transgressor, within the person or people most directly affected by the act, or within a (preferably wide) consensus of direct or indirect observers.

Another counterargument comes from moral realism's ethical naturalism. Particularly, understanding "Morality" as a science addresses many of these issues.

See also

• Ethics
• Moral absolutism
• Moral relativism
• Expressivism
• Cognitivism
• Morality
• Moral skepticism
• Nominalism
• Cornell realism

Further reading

• Moral realism - article from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Hume, David (1739). Treatise Concerning Human Nature, edited by L.A. Selby-Bigge. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1888.
• Kim, Shin (2006). "Moral Realism", The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Fieser & Dowden (eds.). (link)