How to Define ‘Moral Realism’

As advertised in its subtitle, Terence Cuneo's rich new book, The Normative Web, puts forth an argument for moral realism.1 Moral realism, Cuneo argues, is on a par with epistemic realism—roughly, the view that there are genuine epistemic facts, facts such as that it is reasonable to believe that astrology is false. These two realist doctrines stand or fall together. But epistemic realism is true. Therefore, so is moral realism. This is an important and widely held reason for thinking that moral realism might be true, and it deserves the book-length treatment Cuneo has provided. Readers will profit from studying it. Cuneo puts his main argument roughly as follows: If moral facts do not irreducibly exist, then epistemic facts do not irreducibly exist. Epistemic facts irreducibly exist. So, moral facts irreducibly exist. If moral facts irreducibly exist, then moral realism is true. So, moral realism is true. In a moment, I will review how Cuneo understands irreducibility, since others understand it differently. After I do this, I will move on to the main part of my comments. In the interests of full disclosure, let me say that I am attracted to moral realism of the sort Cuneo thinks is true. Nevertheless, I have my doubts about this particular kind of argument, the argument from epistemic realism. The purpose of this essay is to explain the main doubt I have about it, one that Cuneo does not explore much in the book. My remarks will concern P1, the parity premise. My main goal is to investigate open-question-style arguments as they relate to moral and epistemic realism. I will attempt to demonstrate that the epistemic open-question argument (OQA) is less plausible than the moral OQA. Then I will explain how this makes trouble for the first premise of Cuneo's main argument. Along the way, I provide an additional argument for epistemic descriptivism, the thesis, to be introduced later, that makes trouble for the parity premise. First, I want to clarify what Cuneo means by "moral realism," since it is not exactly the thesis I was expecting. The core of the moral realist view, as Cuneo uses the term, is the thesis that moral facts irreducibly exist.2 Cuneo is not here committing himself to the view that there are different kinds of existence or ways of existing. He just means that there are moral facts, and that these facts are not reducible to any other kind of fact. If I were to say, "moral facts are not reducible" or "moral facts irreducibly exist," I would mean at least that they are not identical to facts of another kind—that is, not identical to facts that can be adequately expressed in nonmoral language. But this is not what Cuneo means. He means that moral facts are not identical to facts of a kind that fail to satisfy the central platitudes of morality—that fail to make true our commonsense conception of morality. According to Cuneo, there are two such platitudes, a content platitude and an authority platitude (pp. 35–39). Simplifying somewhat, according to the content platitude, morality has fundamentally to do with human well-being. And according to the authority platitude, moral requirements are categorical, in that they give us reasons to act independent of our particular desires, interests, and goals (pp. 38–39). On Cuneo's usage, a meta-ethical view can be a form of nonreductionism about morality even if, according to it, moral facts are identical to facts of another kind. It will be a form of nonreductionism so long as the facts to which moral facts are identical do respect the central platitudes about morality. So, for Cuneo, a reductive view of morality is one that fails to capture enough of our commonsense conception of morality. If someone held, for example, that it really is true that torture is morally wrong, but also held that the fact that torture is morally wrong just is the fact that torture is, say, illegal, then this would be a reductionist view of moral facts if the fact about legality did not capture enough of our shared commonsense beliefs about morality (perhaps such a view would run afoul of the authority platitude). But if someone held that moral facts are, say, just psychological facts (e.g., facts about what we are disposed to value), then this might not be a reductionist view of morality. It would not be reductionist so long as these psychological facts captured enough of our commonsense conception of morality. Another thing worth mentioning about Cuneo's understanding of moral realism is that, as he defines it, it is no part of moral realism that moral facts are mind independent. If the moral fact that it is wrong to torture babies for fun is identical to the fact that the moral code of our society prohibits torturing babies for fun, moral realism can still be true, and it will be true, so long as this cultural relativistic theory preserves enough of the platitudes. Cuneo supports P1, the premise which requires a strong analogy between moral and epistemic realism, in two main ways. First, he identifies what he takes to be four important similarities between epistemic facts and moral facts (pp. 60–80). Second, he claims that the six main objections to the existence of irreducible moral facts apply just as strongly to epistemic facts, so that if we take these objections to give us reason to deny the existence of moral facts, we should also take them to give us reason to deny the existence of epistemic facts (pp. 89–112). These six objections are supposed to show that moral facts, were they to exist, would have certain objectionable features—features many think we should believe that probably nothing has. These are features such as supervening in a mysterious way, being epistemically inaccessible, being explanatorily idle, and others. I will discuss all of them a bit later. Cuneo claims that these features are no less true of epistemic facts, so that if we refuse to countenance moral facts on this basis, we should likewise refuse to countenance epistemic facts. I want to explore a way to block this claim, by examining the extent to which it is more plausible that epistemic facts are identical to some class of descriptive facts (facts which will not display so many of the objectionable features) than it is that moral facts are identical to some class of descriptive facts. The two relevant theses are moral descriptivism: moral facts are identical to descriptive facts and epistemic descriptivism: epistemic facts are identical to descriptive facts. Descriptive facts are facts that are expressed using descriptive terms. Some examples are the facts that snow is white, that Germany invaded Poland, that Bob is in pain, that I agreed to pay back the money I borrowed, and that people prefer happiness to misery. As some of these examples illustrate, all parties should agree that a fact can be a descriptive fact even if it is one that we think is morally relevant. The fact that Bob is in pain is, most people agree, a morally relevant fact, but it is nonetheless a mere descriptive fact about the world.3 In what follows, I will explain why it seems to me that epistemic descriptivism is more likely to be true than moral descriptivism. I will suggest a class of facts with which epistemic facts might plausibly be identified. I will try to show that the main obstacle to descriptivism—the OQA—makes trouble for moral descriptivism but not for epistemic descriptivism. Then I will explain why, if epistemic descriptivism is true, epistemic facts will not display most of the objectionable features that moral facts (about which descriptivism is not true) display. I will begin with a sympathetic presentation of the OQA as applied to moral facts. Then I will describe an OQA as applied to epistemic facts and invite you to agree that this argument is far less compelling. I believe that the best way to understand the idea of an open question—in particular, an open yes–no question like 'This is something we desire, but is it good?'—is in terms of whether one of the possible answers (yes or no) to the question would be self-contradictory, or incoherent. So I believe that, at bottom, Moore's OQA rests on intuitions about self-contradictoriness. So we may as well get down to brass tacks and state the argument directly in these terms.4 I will follow Moore in letting the focus of our moral OQA be the axiological notion of goodness, which appears in sentences of ordinary language such as 'Freedom is good,''The situation in Iraq is better than it was,' and 'The good things in life are free.' Consider some proposed definition or analysis of this notion, for example, 'good' (in the sense just specified) means the same as 'something we desire.' According to this analysis, if we say that freedom is good, what we are saying is that freedom is something we desire. Now ask yourself whether the following claim is self-contradictory: this is something we desire, but it's not good. We are not asking whether such a claim is ever false. We are asking whether it is self-contradictory, or incoherent, in the way that the claim this person is a bachelor, but he is married is not merely false but self-contradictory. If we heard someone say it, we would presume that he was conceptually confused, and not a competent user of the relevant notions. I believe that when we reflect on whether the statement 'this is something we desire, but it's not good' is self-contradictory, it seems to us—competent speakers of English, competent users of the term 'good'—that this statement, in all likelihood, is not self-contradictory. Thus we have: The statement 'this is something we desire, but it's not good' is not self-contradictory. If M1, then 'good' does not mean the same as 'something we desire.' Therefore, 'good' does not mean the same as 'something we desire.' Thus, the analysis above is shown to be mistaken. Note that it might still be true—necessarily true—that all and only the things that we desire are good; it is just that it is not analytically true. A.J. Ayer also states his version of the OQA in terms of self-contradictoriness. I will quote him at length, since doing so also serves to illustrate that the argument is meant to apply to any descriptive definition of any moral term: We reject the subjectivist view that to call an action right, or a thing good, is to say that it is generally approved of, because it is not self-contradictory to assert that some actions which are generally approved of are not right, or that some things which are generally approved of are not good. . . . And a similar argument is fatal to utilitarianism [put forth as an analysis, rather than a criterion, of moral rightness]. We cannot agree that to call an action right is to say that of all the actions possible in the circumstances it would cause, or be likely to cause, the greatest happiness, or the greatest balance of pleasure over pain, or the greatest balance of satisfied over unsatisfied desire, because we find that it is not self-contradictory to say that it is sometimes wrong to perform the action which would actually or probably cause the greatest happiness, or the greatest balance of pleasure over pain, or of satisfied over unsatisfied desire. And since it is not self-contradictory to say that some pleasant things are not good, or that some bad things are desired, it cannot be the case that the sentence "x is good" is equivalent to "x is pleasant," or to "x is desired."5 Upon observing this pattern, it is reasonable to conclude that no analysis of the moral in terms of the descriptive will be plausible. This is the conclusion of the moral OQA. Importantly, the moral OQA is not intended to show that anything that has the descriptive feature in question (being generally approved of, being pleasant, etc.) might not have had the moral feature in question—that there is no necessary connection between the two features. Since all parties agree that the moral supervenes on the descriptive, we all agree that some moral term is necessarily coextensive with some descriptive term. The point is that these necessarily coextensive terms will not be synonymous. The descriptive term cannot serve as an adequate definition of the moral term. If someone claimed that the descriptive term applied to something that the moral term did not, we might correct this person's false moral belief, but we would not accuse this person of simply failing to understand the meaning of the terms involved. Advocates of moral OQAs often explain why no descriptive definition of the moral can succeed by appealing to the fact that moral concepts are inherently normative or evaluative, while no merely descriptive concept is. Thus, any analysis of the moral in terms of the descriptive will leave something out. R.M. Hare, another advocate of the moral OQA, believes that no moral term means the same as any descriptive term because descriptive terms leave out the commendatory (or condemnatory) aspect of moral terms.6 Moral assertions are inherently evaluative in a way that no mere description of things can be.7 The moral OQA casts doubt on analytic descriptivism, the view that moral facts are identical to descriptive facts and that this identity can be discovered via conceptual analysis, or a priori reflection on the meaning of the sentences used to express these facts.8 Some object that M1, the claim that 'this is something we desire, but it's not good' is not self-contradictory, begs the question, since it is an immediate implication of the target definition that M1 is false. But M1 does not beg the question, because it is not just asserted; it is evidenced by the fact that it seems to us—ordinary, competent speakers of English—to be true. It is intuitively true. This is evidence that it is true. Note that the intuition that I am claiming has evidential value here is not even a moral intuition, which some may regard as less than reliable. It is a logico-linguistic (partly logical, partly linguistic) intuition, an intuition about whether a certain sentence of English is self-contradictory. Fewer philosophers are prepared to dismiss logico-linguistic intuitions, as it is not clear what other sources of evidence for claims of contradictoriness there could be. Some object that the reasoning just stated behind M1 assumes that the full meaning of our words is transparently obvious to any competent English speaker. If that is what this reasoning assumes, that would be a problem; but it does not assume that. It assumes only that our intuitions about self-contradictoriness provide evidence of self-contradictoriness. It assumes only that we have at least some insight into the meaning of our words. Surely, no defender of analytic descriptivism, the view the OQA is attacking, could reject this.9 Some object that the OQA proves too much, since we could use it to refute any proposed definition of a term whose definition was not obvious, such as: 'knows' means the same as 'has a justified, true belief.' Imagine if Gettier had instead offered the following as the main premise in his argument: The statement 'this is a justified, true belief, but it's not knowledge' is not self-contradictory. This would have been a bad argument. But advocates of the moral OQA can agree that this is a bad argument without having to say that their own argument is a bad argument. For the main premise of this Gettier OQA is not intuitively compelling. Maybe the statement 'this is a justified, true belief, but it's not knowledge'is self-contradictory. Or at least this would have been reasonable to think before we were exposed to the Gettier counterexamples of this analysis. The point is that our linguistic and logical intuitions do not speak to this; we do not have the same sort of intuitions about this statement as we do about the moral statement. Since we know about Gettier's counterexamples, we could of course reason to the claim that 'this is a justified, true belief, but it's not knowledge' is not self-contradictory. But we do not have an immediate logico-linguistic intuition, prior to that reasoning, that it is. Let me put the point another way. Consider the following definition of 'circle': 'circle' means the same as 'the set of all points equidistant from a single point.' Now consider this claim: The statement 'this is the set of all points equidistant from a single point, but it's not a circle' is not self-contradictory. This claim is not intuitively compelling. Maybe this statement is self-contradictory, maybe it is not. But our logico-linguistic intuitions do not speak to it. The moral OQA is different from OQAs about these other topics, I submit, because the evaluative and the descriptive just seem like two very different categories. The categories sets of points and shapes do not. This third objection is especially tempting if the moral OQA is presented in the way Moore presented it, by asking us to compare two questions (or other sentences). This way of presenting it can seem to make the argument trade on the fact that, given the target analysis, a sentence like 'this is something we desire, but it's not good' should feel just as self-contradictory as the sentence 'this is good, but it's not good.'This sort of argument would prove too much. 'This is a brother, but it's not a brother' does not have the same feel as 'this is a male sibling, but it's not a brother,' even assuming that we know the corresponding analysis to be correct. But the OQA as I presented it did not make use of this sort of test. For the epistemic OQA, I want us to focus on a certain kind of definition of epistemic normativity—of terms like 'justified belief,''reasonable belief,''has reason to believe,' etc. The basic idea is that these notions can be defined in terms of probability, or what is probably true. For reasons that will become clear shortly, we do not need to get hung up on the precise details of the definition. But one place to start is with a definition such as the following: 'p is reasonable for S to believe' means the same as 'p is likely, given S's information.' So when we say that it is reasonable for us to believe that astrology is false, all we mean, on this view, is that this belief is likely to be true, given the information available to us. A closely related idea is that when we say, for example, that your having an experience as of a hand in front of your eyes gives you reason to believe that there is a hand in front of your all we mean is something like that your having this experience makes it likely that there is a hand in front of your might have all of the of this definition. for that the definition is adequate that in all and only the in which it is reasonable for a person to believe that thing is likely to be true, given the information available to that and The statement 'this is likely, given my but it's not reasonable for me to believe is not self-contradictory. If P1, then for me to believe' does not mean given my Therefore, for me to believe' does not mean given my This argument, I you will agree, is not so compelling. The sentence 'this is likely, given my but it's not reasonable for me to believe does have an of about it in a way that axiological such false like is my idea here can be more by a I am having a experience as of a in front of this in fact makes it very likely that there is a in front of Now I say, I that it's likely to be true that there is a in front of I think it's reasonable for me to believe that there is a in front of This is a thing to It seems to be for thinking that I do not really understand what I am the very we the intuition that such a is not self-contradictory, even if we do not, in have the intuition that it is self-contradictory. This is not at all how it is in the moral we have the intuition that the axiological statement in question is not self-contradictory. This that it might be true that all that reasonable belief to is likely and that analytic descriptivism is true of epistemic I can get the sentence in question one in to seem if I to stand not for epistemic but for some other kind of such as If my me that there is a that I have only to it is true that, given my it is likely that I have only to but it may be reasonable for me not to believe this if I refuse to believe it, I will be in my But this is to of in that premise for epistemic It would still be epistemically not to believe what the has even if it would be is a point, to which I It does not if the analysis of epistemic above is exactly Maybe this definition is not adequate and some The point is just that the epistemic OQA does not show the analysis to be In the moral we could a plausible OQA even an analysis of we to be that, all and only the things that are good have the descriptive feature in the analysis. If is the correct axiological then the good' and an of are necessarily but it is still plausible that the statement 'this of pleasure is not false, is not incoherent. that there is some such between the descriptive and the But we are still to reject this as an analysis, because of the moral OQA. the epistemic OQA, things are Since we intuitions of self-contradictoriness in the epistemic we can a descriptive of epistemic notions do not leave anything out. we doing in the descriptive that is necessarily coextensive with the epistemic we can plausibly that these mean the same thing and express the same fact. epistemic OQA will us to as one such argument does in the moral that we have two necessarily coextensive on our This point is because if it was I would have to get into the of a adequate analysis of epistemic is a but would at least its own So if you think the analysis above is not right, that is so long as you agree that its is not the same kind of the moral OQA is meant to to its target analysis. is another way to put the yourself On the that the reasonable to believe' and likely, given the information are in fact necessarily does an analysis of the in terms of the does it instead leave something and fall to the epistemic OQA. In the moral I believe we have a strong intuition that something is in the epistemic I believe we do I conclude that there is an important between moral and epistemic facts. Since the epistemic OQA fails the kind of analysis we should be that epistemic facts just are facts about And since the moral OQA has any descriptive analysis of moral we should be about the that moral facts, if they exist, are identical to descriptive In a way that will be shortly, this casts doubt on of Cuneo's main argument, which requires a or strong between the moral and the the reason the epistemic OQA fails its target analysis is that its target analysis is not in fact the epistemic notion in the the notion in that notion of a being not merely descriptive, but inherently If it is, the epistemic OQA would its would be no evidence for epistemic descriptivism, since the target analysis would not be a descriptive analysis. It would be to the notion of in terms of, say, the notion of what it is or to if a normative analysis of such as this it is not because of open-question an analysis, its is at least not out the normative of might be a normative The most way is in a version of the of A is likely to be true given the available information just in case it is reasonable to believe given that If this is the correct theory of the of and if the notion of epistemic is not to some descriptive analysis, then this would the main argument of this But I do not believe that this is a plausible understanding of main is that it on an epistemic of we out the and that the are We conclude that it probably We also think that it is reasonable to believe that it But which seems it is true that it probably in of the fact that it is reasonable to believe that it or that it is reasonable to believe that it in of the fact that it probably Surely, the is correct. about what is probably true are more and we use these facts in what to believe in what is reasonable to We explain why it would be reasonable to believe something by that that thing is probably true, and not the other way makes some claim whether it has true is intuitively not the of but in the is this connection in the independent of our between being and its having This is what makes it true that if the are it has probably claims are true in this way is especially when one a kind of case of the of that is than and that is than it is to be true that is than And if something is to be true, a it is probably true. Thus, we have the following claim: that is than and that is than is probably than makes this The would seem to be the following: The claim above is true because of the fact that being than and being than that is than that, if then is given Thus, at when some evidence some that the conclusion is probably true given the evidence is something that is true by some feature of facts about It would be if we something and for in which some evidence does not but merely strongly some we say that something is probably true, given some other it is not obvious what we are But what we are saying is something It is a mere of fact about the It is true not by the of but by in the It on the fact of the that you cannot an from an is, and this in us an idea of the between an and an is, we intuitively claims such as to as on the is what the of the in between the moral and epistemic OQAs is for Cuneo's main argument, I want to take us from open-question and an independent argument for epistemic descriptivism, and in particular, for the view that facts about epistemic just are facts about The argument has to do with the following between reasonable belief and reasonable If we believe that some belief of is not we it. if there can be to this they are We can put the another way by saying that there is very between a belief and thinking it But there is much more between doing an act and thinking it It is that I that some act of is not, say, in my but I cannot and I

Moral realism is the doctrine that some propositions asserting that some action is ‘morally’ good (obligatory, bad, or wrong) are true. This paper examines three different definitions of what it is for an action to be ‘morally’ good (with corresponding definitions for ‘morally’ obligatory, bad, or wrong) which would make moral realism a clear and plausible view. The first defines ‘morally good as ‘overall important to do’; and the second defines it as ‘overall important to do for universalizable reasons’. The paper argues that neither of these definitions is adequate; and it develops the view of Cuneo and Shafer-Landau that we need a definition which is partly in terms of paradigm examples of morally good actions, which they call ‘moral fixed points’. Hence the third and final definition is that an action is morally good if it is ‘overall important to do because this follows from a fundamental universalizable principle, belonging to a system of such principles which includes almost all the moral fixed points; when a suggested fundamental principle is one which would be shown to be very probably true by the exercise of reflective equilibrium over many centuries’.

The paradox of Durkheim's manifesto: Reconsidering The Rules of Sociological Method

One of the alleged advantages of a constructivist theory in metaethics is that the theory avoids the epistemological problems with moral realism while reaping many of realism's benefits. According to evolutionary debunking arguments, the epistemological problem with moral realism is that the evolutionary history of our moral beliefs makes it hard to see how our moral beliefs count as knowledge of moral facts, realistically construed. Certain forms of constructivism are supposed to be immune to this argument, giving the view a key advantage. This paper considers the challenge that evolutionary debunking arguments pose for the possibility of moral knowledge and concludes that such arguments do not reveal any advantages for constructivism. Furthermore, once we consider how defenders of moral knowledge should best respond to this epistemological objection, constructivists may face more difficulties, not less, explaining how our moral beliefs represent moral knowledge.

This paper reconstructs what I take to be the central evolutionary debunking argument that underlies recent critiques of moral realism. The argument claims that given the extent of evolutionary influence on our moral faculties, and assuming the truth of moral realism, it would be a massive coincidence were our moral faculties reliable ones. Given this coincidence, any presumptive warrant enjoyed by our moral beliefs is defeated. So if moral realism is true, then we can have no warranted moral beliefs, and hence no moral knowledge. In response, I first develop what is perhaps the most natural reply on behalf of realism – namely, that many of our highly presumptively warranted moral beliefs are immune to evolutionary influence and so can be used to assess and eventually resuscitate the epistemic merits of those that have been subject to such influence. I then identify five distinct ways in which the charge of massive coincidence has been understood and defended. I argue that each interpretation is subject to serious worries. If I am right, these putative defeaters are themselves subject to defeat. Thus many of our moral beliefs continue to be highly warranted, even if moral realism is true.

This chapter discusses epistemic objections to non-naturalist moral realism. The goal of the chapter is to determine which objections are pressing and which objections can safely be dismissed. The chapter examines five families of objections: (i) one involving necessary conditions on knowledge, (ii) one involving the idea that the causal history of our moral beliefs reflects the significant impact of irrelevant influences, (iii) one relying on the idea that moral truths do not play a role in explaining our moral beliefs, (iv) one involving the claim that if moral realism is true then our moral beliefs are unlikely to be reliable, and (v) one involving the claim that moral realism is incompatible with there being a plausible explanation of our reliability about morality. The overall conclusion of the chapter is that the final objection is by far the most pressing.

There is considerable consensus on the idea that Aristotelian virtue ethics advocates moral realism. In numerous works, the well‐known business ethicist Edwin Hartman grapples with reconciling the unitary vision of life that a particular kind of moral realism advocates and the pluralist respect for diverse cultures and belief systems that comprise our world. This paper closely follows Hartman's efforts to reconcile his liberal values with his guarded support for Aristotelian moral realism. We argue that the realist interpretation of Aristotle's function argument can be employed to strengthen Hartman's critique of the concept of Homo economicus, which is often posited by its proponents and critics alike as the only viable position for a business manager. Drawing from Aristotle, the paper posits a novel notion of species‐excellence as the ultimate telos of human life and an objective basis for a critique of Homo economicus.

In the late twentieth century, moral realists began to resurrect a type of argument that emerged during the Enlightenment. These realists appealed to moral progress as evidence for moral facts, and their arguments took the form of inferences to the best explanation. Recently, the argument style has emerged again. This time, the inference to the best explanation is being used by empirically-informed sentimentalists to argue that their theories can provide accounts of moral evolution that have greater explanatory and predictive power than the accounts offered by the moral realists. This thesis examines the arguments to the best explanation of such moral realists as Nicholas Sturgeon, Michael Slote, Michael Smith, Peter Singer, and Thomas Nagel. The views of these moral realists are confronted with the substantial empirical evidence provided by Shaun Nichols to bolster his Sentimental Rules account, which is a variety of sentimentalism. Nichols attempts to expand epidemiological approaches to cognitive anthropology to accommodate his research on affect-backed norms. I elucidate Nichols’ research and his own inference to the best explanation of the data he examines as well as his attack on the accounts provided by the moral realists. After examining this substantive piece of the debate over what actually counts as the best explanation of moral evolution, I argue that the inference to the best explanation is actually being employed in two distinct uses by these theorists. The first use presupposes a metaethical thesis regarding the nature of moral facts and renders the inference circular. The majority of the moral realists examined employ the inference in this fashion. The second use is not circular, but leaves the theorist with a very restricted ability to fill out the content of moral beliefs and moral facts.

In her effort to recast moral realism in the style of the later Wittgensteinian philosophy of language, Sabina Lovibond seeks to ground moral knowledge in a historical community and its rules of language. In Stanley Hauerwas’ writings, we find an account of Christian ethics that is similarly modeled on Wittgensteinian realism. The main problem with Wittgensteinian moral realism, as it is appropriated by both Lovibond’s and Hauerwas’ society-dependent accounts of morality, is that they are unable to resolve difficult issues created by epistemic relativism. Both thinkers are vulnerable to epistemic relativism in two ways. First, with its contextualist approach to the justification of moral beliefs, their conception of moral realism makes any historical community the ultimate authority in all matters of morality. Second, their conception of moral realism also turns moral truth into a social property of a historical community, while denying the exclusive ownership of truth by one particular community.

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.

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.

My case for moral realism depends on coherentism and the plausibility of belief in moral realism itself and in the reliability of considered moral beliefs. Chapter 6 considered rebuttals to these metaphysical and epistemological claims based on the existence of an is/ought gap. My main concern in that chapter was to defend the intelligibility of the realist's metaphysical and epistemological claims against certain attacks. But even if moral realism makes intelligible metaphysical and epistemological claims that are initially plausible, there may nonetheless be good empirical reasons for rejecting these claims. In this chapter I consider a posteriori rebuttals to my case for moral realism. There are two kinds of argument I shall consider: one metaphysical, one epistemological. Although there have been many proponents of both kinds of argument, we can focus discussion by considering recent and perspicuous formulations of these arguments by J. L. Mackie (1977: chap. 1) and Gilbert Harman (1977: 3–23). Mackie's metaphysical argument claims that the moral realist's account of moral facts and properties, though intelligible, is queer or mysterious compared to the metaphysical commitments of recognizably realist disciplines such as the natural or social sciences. His epistemological argument claims there is no plausible methodology or theory of justification that a moral realist can hold. In particular, Mackie thinks that there are good a posteriori objections to intuitionism, and although he does not, we can construct a posteriori objections to a coherence theory of justification in ethics by appeal to Harman's argument for the observational immunity of moral theories and Mackie's argument from moral relativity or diversity.

ABSTRACT:Evolutionary debunking arguments (EDAs) claim that evolution has influenced our moral faculties in such a way that, if moral realism is true, then we have no positive moral knowledge. I present several popular objections to the standard version of this argument before offering a new EDA that has clear advantages in responding to these objections. Whereas the Standard EDA argues that evolution has selected for many moral beliefs with certain contents, this New EDA claims that evolution has selected for one belief: belief in the claim that categorical reasons exist. If moral realism is true, then this claim is entailed by all positive moral claims, and belief in it is defeated due to evolutionary influence. This entails that if realism is true, then we have no positive moral knowledge. While there may be objections against this New EDA, it is much stronger than the Standard EDA, and one realists ought to worry about.

This book explores arguments for and against moral realism and mathematical realism, how they interact, and what they can tell us about areas of philosophical interest more generally. It argues that our mathematical beliefs have no better claim to being self-evident or provable than our moral beliefs. Nor do our mathematical beliefs have better claim to being empirically justified. It is also incorrect that reflection on the “genealogy” of our moral beliefs establishes a lack of parity between the cases. In general, if one is a moral anti-realist on the basis of epistemological considerations, then one ought to be a mathematical anti-realist too. And yet, the book argues that moral realism and mathematical realism do not stand or fall together – and for a surprising reason. Moral questions, insofar as they are practical, are objective in a sense in which mathematical questions are not, and the sense in which they are objective can only be explained by assuming practical anti-realism. It follows that the concepts of realism and objectivity, which have been widely identified, are actually in tension. The author concludes that the objective questions in the neighborhood of questions of logic, modality, grounding, nature, and more are practical questions as well. Practical philosophy should, therefore, take center stage.

This article explores evolutionary debunking arguments as they arise in metaethics against moral realism and in philosophy of religion against naturalism. Both literatures have independently grappled with the question of which beliefs one may use to respond to a potential defeater. In this article, I show how the literature on the argument against naturalism can help clarify and bring progress to the literature on moral realism with respect to this question. Of note, it will become clear that the objection that the moral realist begs the question, when appealing to the truth of some of her moral beliefs, is unsuccessful.