Plato’s Moral Realism, written by Gerson, L. P.

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 stands for the idea that there are some moral claims that are true in a certain way. Their truth does not depend on the attitudes that anyone takes towards their content. Theological realism is simply theism: the view that God exists. In this chapter, the God refers to the traditional God of Western monotheism: an omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect agent. Among philosophers, it is a common thought that moral and theological realism can easily be prised apart. The author takes the liberty of placing some fancy philosophical terms in the mouths of the men on the Clapham omnibus, so as to more precisely capture popular thinking in this area. The chapter considers the pressure that arguments for religious skepticism place on arguments favoring moral realism. The author's assessment of the explanatory argument seeks to establish parity between the vulnerability of moral and theological realism. Keywords:God; moral realism; religious skepticism; theological realism

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Moral Realism and Moral Nonnaturalism

This paper aims to come to grips with the moral realism of Charles Taylor by focusing on the debate between realists and nonrealists. I believe that a close examination of Taylor’s moral realism can express Taylor’s critical attitude to contemporary moral philosophy, it also brings out a new way which can face to the challenges of nonrealism. Ruth Abby argues that Taylor’s moral realism is different from two current popular realisms: strong and weak moral realism and she takes Taylor’s moral realism as a falsifiable realism. But some of Taylor’s commentators contend that his moral realism belongs to the strong side. However, there are also some claims that his realism is weak. I attempt to argue against those commentators and defend his moral realism as a falsifiable realism. As a result, the contribution of this paper is twofold. First, it reveals the defects of both strong moral realism and weak moral realism. Second, as a consequence, this analysis not only make us believe that Taylor’s moral realism does not belong to strong or weak side, but also his attention to individual’s moral life and experience has its own unique characteristic and superiority, It also illustrates the importance of good and why his realism is called a falsifiable realism.

This study aims to expose certain weaknesses in Moore’s moral objectivist argument against moral relativism and subjectivism. It suggests that a moral objectivist argument has to explain moral diversity against moral relativism. Moral relativism is one of the most critical debates in metaethics, and it can be interpreted in two different ways: one as moral realism and the other as moral anti-realism. Moral realism, when reduced to moral objectivism, excludes moral relativism and subjectivism beyond moral realism. I will refer to this interpretation as narrowed moral realism. But moral realism can be extended in an inclusive way such as moral subjectivism and relativism. I will refer to this as extended moral realism. Due to the focus of the study, I will introduce both extended moral realism and narrowed moral realism in the introduction section. Then, I will address G. E. Moore's narrowed moral realism. I will criticize his arguments for their failure to explain the diversity of moral codes. Finally, I suggest that moral subjectivism and moral relativism can be appropriately addressed within extended moral realism. Contrary to Moore's claims, I contend that moral relativism and moral subjectivism would be claims within moral realism. I also evaluate the two main claims from a moral realist perspective. Moral subjectivism claims that moral reality is constructed by an individual’s mental state. Moral relativism argues that social codes of human conduct completely determine moral reality. In the first section of the study, I discussed moral relativism from a Moorean perspective, which asserts that there are self-evident and indefinable truths at the foundation of objective morality. The second section contends that if Moore is correct, however, it necessitates an explanation for why different cultures accept different moral codes. The third section argues the fact that Moore fails to provide any explanation for this. In the conclusion part, I claim that moral relativism and moral subjectivism can be viewed as moral realist theories based on the failure of Moore's arguments.

This paper will appear under the rubric of “Quietism” in the OXFORD HANDBOOK OF MORAL REALISM, yet the term “quietism” is rejected by nearly every moral philosopher to whose work it is applied. In the first half of this paper, after a terse introductory section, I expand on why the term “quietism” is so objectionable. In lieu of that term, the phrase “moral realism as a moral doctrine” is the best designation for the moral-realist theory which I have expounded in some of my previous writings. (Other designations that are acceptable alternatives to “quietism” – and to the equally pejorative phrase “relaxed realism” – are “non-inflationary moral realism” and “minimalist moral realism.”) As is argued in the first half of the paper, quietism is a chimerical property insofar as it is predicated of moral realism as a moral doctrine. Thereafter, the focus shifts to the property of robustness. Supposedly what separates moral realism as a moral doctrine from some other varieties of non-naturalistic moral realism is that the latter are robust. Such is the contention of numerous opponents of moral realism as a moral doctrine. However, when the property of robustness is invoked to distinguish between moral realism as a moral doctrine and other non-naturalistic varieties of moral realism – rather than to advert to something which they have in common – it turns out to be illusive. As is argued in the second half of this paper, every dimension of objectivity ascribed to morality by robust non-naturalistic realists is also ascribed to morality by proponents of moral realism as a moral doctrine. Hence, philosophers err both when they affirm that moral realism as a moral doctrine is a species of quietism and when they deny that moral realism as a moral doctrine is robust.

This essay considers 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, it argues that Kramer is right in stating that moral realism as a moral doctrine does not stand in conflict with expressivism. But it also goes further, by submitting that advocates of moral realism as a moral doctrine must adopt a position such as expressivism in some shape or form. Accordingly, if you do not want to accept theories 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 this chapter will argue.

This paper critically examines Yong Huang’s proposal of ‘agent-focused’ moral realism based on Zhu Xi’s virtue ethics. Huang characterizes Zhu Xi’s ethics as naturalistic moral realism, claiming that it successfully counters major philosophical challenges that confront other forms of moral realism: Hume’s IS/OUGHT challenge, Moore’s Open Question challenge, Mackie’s Queer challenge, and Mackie’s argument from relativity. This paper explores whether Zhu Xi’s framework, as interpreted by Huang, truly withstands such challenges and can be deemed a viable naturalistic moral realism. The crux of the critique lies in the objectivity of moral properties and their independence from the mind. This paper scrutinizes the distinction Huang makes between ‘action-focused’ and ‘agent-focused’ moral realism, questioning the latter’s ability to address moral disputes and its claim of mind-independent moral properties. It concludes that Huang's interpretation, while innovative, may not provide a definitive resolution to the issues within meta-ethical discourse regarding moral realism.

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 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.

Traditionally, the realism and anti-realism debate within metaphysics has been restricted to a dichotomy between realism and anti-realism. This dichotomy trickles down to more specific areas within the debate. One of these areas effected by the traditional realism and anti-realism dichotomy is moral realism and moral anti-realism. This thesis focuses on moral realism and moral anti-realism, and shows that restricting the debate to only moral realism and moral anti-realism is a false dichotomy. It does this through providing an alternative option to the two traditionally given: Humean Scepticism. The goal of this thesis is to argue that Humean Scepticism is a viable third option in the moral realism and moral anti-realism debate. This thesis demonstrates that scepticism should sometimes be taken seriously and acknowledged in some debates that it has traditionally been excluded from.

This article describes the relationship of skepticism with moral and quasi realism. It discusses the main reason why quasi realists believe that they can explain and justify the realist-seeming appearances of ordinary moral thought and discourse. It explains the distinction among the three different varieties of quasi realism and argues that none of them provide a more satisfactory job of explaining the acquisition of moral knowledge than robust realism. It concludes that some varieties of quasi realism fail to comport with platitudes central to our ordinary understanding of knowledge, while others do comport but fail to explain the acquisition of moral knowledge in a way that is more illuminating than robust realism.

Moral naturalism and moral realism have enjoyed a prominent place on agenda metaethics recently, and David Brink's book, Moral Realism and Foundations of Ethics, will add to their prominence. Brink defends a moral realism that is naturalistic but nonreductive. He combines it with a coherentist moral epistemology and an externalist moral psychology. The most important advance by Brink is to argue that these positions, which would standardly or widely have been thought individually implausible or mutually incompatible, can be defended and integrated into a coherent theory. Some philosophers would object that existence of gap rules out naturalism. But Brink's nonreductive naturalism does not depend on a view about meaning relations, such as synonymy, between moral terms and corresponding nonmoral expressions. If he is correct, naturalism he favors is tenable even if there is an is/ought gap. A realist need not be saddled with common objections to nonnaturalist moral metaphysics. If, addition, Brink is correct that combination of realism with coherentism is tenable, then a realist need not be saddled with an intuitionist moral epistemology. A common strategy of noncognitivists was to invoke action-guiding character of morality an argument against cognitivism and therefore against realism. Brink argues, however, that an externalist moral psychology combined with realism can explain practical nature of morality better than any noncognitivist theory. Overall, Brink aims to show that naturalistic moral realism is not subject to kind of metaphysical and epistemological objections that have standardly been leveled against it and that neither noncognitivism nor constructivism is as plausible. He aims to support the parity of ethics and (p. 11) by arguing that ethics is objective in much same way as sciences (p. 4).1 Brink is unusually careful and skillful drawing of distinctions, detailed attention he gives to arguments, and delimiting import of many standard antirealist claims and arguments. I shall argue, however, that Brink's theory cannot explain normativity of morality and cannot deal adequately

This paper seeks to clarify and defend the proposition that moral realism is best elaborated as a moral doctrine. I begin by upholding Ronald Dworkin’s anti-Archimedean critique of the error theory against some strictures by Michael Smith, and I then briefly suggest how a proponent of moral realism as a moral doctrine would respond to Smith’s defense of the Archimedeanism of expressivism. Thereafter, this paper moves to its chief endeavor. By differentiating clearly between expressivism and quasi-realism (or moral realism as a moral doctrine), the paper highlights both their distinctness and their compatibility. In so doing, it underscores the affinities between Blackburnian quasi-realism and moral realism as a moral doctrine. Finally, this paper contends ─ in line with my earlier work on these matters ─ that moral realism as a moral doctrine points to the need for some reorienting of meta-ethical enquiries rather than for the abandoning of them.

The aim of this article is to identify the strongest evolutionary debunking argument (EDA) against moral realism and to assess on which empirical assumptions it relies. In the recent metaethical literature, several authors have de-emphasized the evolutionary component of EDAs against moral realism: presumably, the success or failure of these arguments is largely orthogonal to empirical issues. I argue that this claim is mistaken. First, I point out that Sharon Street’s and Michael Ruse’s EDAs both involve substantive claims about the evolution of our moral judgments. Next, I argue that combining their respective evolutionary claims can help debunkers to make the best empirical case against moral realism. Some realists have argued that the very attempt to explain the contents of our endorsed moral judgments in evolutionary terms is misguided, and have sought to escape EDAs by denying their evolutionary premise. But realists who pursue this reply can still be challenged on empirical grounds: debunkers may argue that the best, scientifically informed historical explanations of our moral endorsements do not involve an appeal to mind-independent truths. I conclude, therefore, that the empirical considerations relevant for the strongest empirically driven argument against moral realism go beyond the strictly evolutionary realm; debunkers are best advised to draw upon other sources of genealogical knowledge as well.

The paper considers three possible definitions of what it is for an action to be ‘morally’ good: (1) that it is overall important to do; (2) that it is overall important to do in virtue of a universalisable principle; and (3) that it is overall important to do in virtue of a universalisable principle, belonging to a system of such principles, which includes almost all of certain moral fixed points. I defend (3) and show how we can reach such a system, starting from the basic beliefs with which we find ourselves, through the process of reflective equilibrium. Moral realism is then the doctrine that there is such a system of true moral beliefs. My optimistic view is that all human communities could eventually reach the same such system. But, if they cannot, then there will be two (or more) different such systems, and so two (or more) different senses of ‘moral realism’.