Defence Of Moral Realism Research Articles

Robust Moral Realism and the Supervenience Argument

The paper examines the supervenience argument advanced by the robust moral realists in defense of moral realism. How defensible is the supervenience argument? The paper argues that answer to this question is not as straight forward as the proponents of the robust realism assumed. It argues that defending supervenience argument without paying proper attention to details about the main tenets of moral realism in relation to “is and ought” gap that exists between natural and non-natural properties is largely responsible for why moral realists assume that up till now, there is no demonstrative argument to show that their supervenience argument had been persuasively refuted. This paper does not intend to fill the traditional gap in favor of moral realism. Instead, it intends to challenge such assumption. The paper concludes that the supervenience argument is not as defensible as the proponents of the theory have claimed.

Magistrates, Mobs, and Moral Disagreement: Countering the Actual Disagreement Challenge to Moral Realism

AbstractI defend convergentist realism from counterarguments that appeal to apparently deep and widespread moral disagreement.Pacerecent claims by antirealists, I first argue that scenarios such as the prominent “Magistrate and the Mob” case betray cognitive defects in subjects, such as partiality, that we would not find in ideal agents. After this, I defend three reasons to expect cross-cultural disagreement on moral cases even if convergentist realism is true. These defusing explanations concern individual and group moral development and the moral models on which agents rely. While developing my defense of moral realism, I aim for comprehensive engagement with responses to arguments by Doris, Plakias, and others that have been dispersed across several related articles.

In Defence of Moral Realism: Examining Harry J. Gensler’s Critique of Cultural Relativism and Subjectivism

This paper will explore the nature of morality by providing a critique of cultural relativism and subjectivism and then arguing that moral realism provides a more coherent account of the nature of morality. The claim that moral realism provides a more coherent account of the nature of morality than cultural relativism or subjectivism is based on the arguments from moral progress, moral disagreement and moral semantics; and moral experience.

Moore on Twin Earth

In a series of articles, Terry Horgan and Mark Timmons have argued that Richard Boyd’s defence of moral realism, utilizing a causal theory of reference, fails. Horgan and Timmons construct a twin Earth-style thought experiment which, they claim, generates intuitions inconsistent with the realist account. In their thought experiment, the use of (allegedly) moral terms at a world is causally regulated by some property distinct from that regulating their use here on Earth; nevertheless, Horgan and Timmons claim, it is intuitive that the inhabitants of this world disagree with us in their moral claims. Since any disagreement would be merely verbal were the alleged moral facts identical to or constituted by different natural facts, the identity or constitution claim must be false. I argue that their argument fails. Horgan and Timmons’ thought experiment is underdescribed; when we fill out the details, I claim, we shall see that the challenge to moral realism fades away. I sketch two possible interpretations of the (apparently) moral claims of the inhabitants of moral Twin Earth. On one interpretation, they fail to disagree with us because they actually agree with us; on the other, they fail to disagree with us because they are not moralizers at all. Which interpretation is true, I argue, will depend on the facts that explain the differences between us and the inhabitants of moral twin Earth.

Moral realism and program explanation

Alexander Miller has recently considered an ingenious extension of Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit's account of ‘program explanation’ as a way of defending non-reductive naturalist versions of moral realism against Harman's explanatory criticism. Despite the ingenuity of this extension, Miller concludes that program explanation cannot help such moral realists in their attempt to defend moral properties. Specifically, he argues that such moral program explanations are dispensable from an epistemically unlimited point of view. I show that Miller's argument for this negative claim is inadequate, and that he has, in spite of himself, identified a promising defence of moral realism.

Democratic Values Education Revisited—Moral Realism or Pragmatism?

In an article discussing the means by which democratic values education is to be inculcated, Tapio Puolimatka argued that ‘it is possible to educate in democratic values in ways that foster the development of the rational and moral autonomy of children only within the moral realist context’. Examining in detail Puolimatka’s defence of moral realism, we will offer a Rortyan response to moral realism as well as a pragmatist account of democratic values education.

Crispin Wright on Moral Disagreement

Wright argues that if there are moral disagreements that cannot be attributed to inferential error, ignorance of relevant data or some similar form of deficiency (i.e., what I call ‘radical’ disagreements), then moral realists are committed to the view that moral truths are evidence-transcendent. Moreover, since he thinks that this view is implausible and that moral disagreements can indeed be radical, he has suggested that we should reject realism here. I indicate how a realist can respond to this challenge, by offering two arguments to the effect that a realist might plausibly hold that moral disagreements can never be found to be radical. However, this is not so much intended to be a defence of moral realism as a critique of Wright's basic strategy, since a similar defence may be provided in support of realism about any (minimally truth-apt) discourse.

In Defense of Moral Realism: Reply to Gabennesch

Moral realism is pervasive in everyday life, and the more of it the better. The moral realism of everyday life is not childlike egocentric realism, in Piaget's sense, nor is it, as Gabennesch argues, an avoidable or deplorable form of opacity, reification, or ethnocentrism. The social order is part of the moral order, yet natural moral law extends beyond issues of harm, rights, and justice. Turiel is a cognitivist who restricts his conception of natural moral law to harm, rights, and justice. Gabennesch is an emotivist or conventionalist who has no concept of natural moral law at all. I share with Turiel his cognitivism but not his restricted conception of natural law. I share with Gabennesch his reading of the evidence for a pervasive moral realism of everyday life, but not his conventionalist interpretation of it.

In Defense of Moral Realism: Reply to Gabennesch

In Defense of Moral Realism: Reply to Gabennesch

Sturgeon's Defence of Moral Realism

Can a moral principle be tested and confirmed empirically? Can the fact that an event exhibits a moral quality play a role in explaining why a person observes the event as having that quality? Gilbert Harman, in attempting to point to a radical difference between scientific and moral facts, has endorsed a negative answer to these questions. With Harman's discussion in mind, Nicholas Sturgeon takes the affirmative side in his “Moral Explanations,” a potentially influential essay that is now beginning to appear in the textbook anthologies. Sturgeon rounds out his defence of moral realism by further arguing that moral qualities of persons can play an essential role in the scientific explanation of human conduct. Finally, he attempts to enhance the appeal of moral realism by arguing for the plausibility of its compatibility with physicalism. While granting that Sturgeon's discussion is challenging and instructive I shall try to show that on all points mentioned here Sturgeon has failed to make a good case.