The Metaphysics of Moral Reality

Abstract

The general conceptual features of ordinary, commonsense morality are revisited, after which a detailed version of moral realism is developed based upon the specific findings of earlier chapters: moral truth and moral facts are rooted in a non-constructed metaphysical moral reality, exhibited by the actual world. This version of moral realism is then employed to reject the leading contemporary versions of moral antirealism: various moral non-cognitivisms, moral nihilism, and moral relativism in a variety of guises—sociocultural, radical subjectivist, pragmatist, linguistic, et al. Moral naturalism is also rejected, and a version of moral non-naturalism is developed and defended. The chapter closes with a defense of commonsense morality and the non-naturalist moral realism which best grounds it.