This makes moral realism a non-nihilist Moral nihilism, also known as ethical nihilism, is the meta-ethical view that nothing is moral or immoral. For example, a moral nihilist would say that killing someone, for whatever reason, is not inherently right or wrong. This view can lead to amoralism form of cognitivism Cognitivism is the meta-ethical view that ethical sentences express propositions and can therefore be true or false , which noncognitivists deny. Cognitivism is so broad a thesis that it encompasses (among other views) moral realism (which claims that ethical sentences express propositions about mind-independent facts of the world), moral. Moral realism stands in opposition to all forms of moral anti-realism In analytic philosophy, the term anti-realism is used to describe any position involving either the denial of an objective reality of entities of a certain type or the denial that verification-transcendent statements about a type of entity are either true or false. This latter construal is sometimes expressed by saying "there is no fact of, including ethical subjectivism This makes ethical subjectivism a form of cognitivism. Ethical subjectivism stands in opposition to moral realism, which claims that moral propositions refer to objective facts, independent of human opinion; to error theory, which denies that any moral propositions are true in any sense; and to non-cognitivism, which denies that moral sentences (which denies that moral propositions refer to objective facts), error theory Moral nihilism, also known as ethical nihilism, is the meta-ethical view that nothing is moral or immoral. For example, a moral nihilist would say that killing someone, for whatever reason, is not inherently right or wrong. This view can lead to amoralism (which denies that any moral propositions are true), and non-cognitivism Non-cognitivism is the meta-ethical view that ethical sentences do not express propositions and thus cannot be true or false . A noncognitivist denies the cognitivist claim that "moral judgments are capable of being objectively true, because they describe some feature of the world." If moral statements cannot be true, and if one cannot (which denies that moral sentences express propositions at all). Within moral realism, the two main subdivisions are ethical naturalism This makes ethical naturalism a definist form of moral realism, which is in turn a form of cognitivism. Ethical naturalism stands in opposition to ethical non-naturalism, which denies that moral terms refer to anything other than irreducible moral properties, as well as to all forms of moral anti-realism, including ethical subjectivism , error and ethical non-naturalism.

According to Richard Boyd^[1], moral realism means that:

Most philosophers today lean towards moral realism, as do most meta-ethicists.^[2] Some examples of robust moral realists include David Brink, John McDowell John Henry McDowell is a philosopher, formerly a fellow of University College, Oxford and now University Professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Although he has written extensively on metaphysics, epistemology, ancient philosophy, and meta-ethics, McDowell's most influential work has been in the philosophy of mind and language, Peter Railton^[3], Geoffrey Sayre-McCord^[4], Michael Smith, Terence Cuneo^[5], Russ Shafer-Landau^[6], G.E. Moore George Edward Moore OM, usually known as G. E. Moore , was a distinguished and influential English philosopher. He was, with Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and (before them) Gottlob Frege, one of the founders of the analytic tradition in philosophy^[7], Ayn Rand Ayn Rand , was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism. Born and educated in Russia, Rand emigrated to the United States in 1926. She worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood and had a play produced on Broadway, John Finnis John Finnis , is an Australian philosopher, specializing in the philosophy of law. He is Professor of Law at University College, Oxford and at the University of Notre Dame, teaching jurisprudence, political theory, and constitutional law, Richard Boyd, Nicholas Sturgeon^[8], and Thomas Nagel Thomas Nagel is an American philosopher, currently University Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University, where he has taught since 1980. His main areas of philosophical interest are philosophy of mind, political philosophy and ethics. He is well-known for his critique of reductionist accounts of the mind in his essay "What Is it. Plato Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the foundations of Western philosophy and science. Plato was originally a and (arguably) Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant (22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was an 18th-century German philosopher from the Prussian city of Königsberg. Kant was the last influential philosopher of modern Europe in the classic sequence of the theory of knowledge during the Enlightenment beginning with thinkers John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume^[9] could also be considered moral realists. Norman Geras has argued that Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, political economist, historian, political theorist, sociologist, communist, and revolutionary, whose ideas played a significant role in the development of modern communism and socialism. Marx summarized his approach in the first line of chapter one of The Communist Manifesto, published in 1848: " was a moral realist.^[10]

Robust versus minimal moral realism

The robust model of moral realism commits moral realists to three theses:^[11]

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

The minimal model Moral universalism is the meta-ethical position that some system of ethics, or a universal ethic, applies universally, that is, for "all similarly situated individuals", regardless of culture, race, sex, religion, nationality, sexuality, or other distinguishing feature. Moral universalism is opposed to moral nihilism and moral relativism, on the other hand, leaves off the metaphysical thesis, treating it as matter of contention among moral realists (as opposed to between moral realists and moral anti-realists). This dispute is not insignificant, as acceptance or rejection of the metaphysical thesis is taken by those employing the robust model as the key difference between moral realism and moral anti-realism. Indeed, the question of how to classify certain logically possible A logically possible proposition is one that can be asserted without implying a logical contradiction. This is to say that a proposition is logically possible if there is some coherent way for the world to be, under which the proposition would be true. Thus, "the sky is blue" is logically possible: there exists some logically coherent (if eccentric) views—such as the rejection of the semantic and alethic theses in conjunction with the acceptance of the metaphysical thesis—turns on which model we accept ^[12]. Someone employing the robust model might call such a view "realist non-cognitivism," while someone employing the minimal model might simply place such a view alongside other, more traditional, forms of non-cognitvism.

The robust model and the minimal model also disagree over how to classify moral subjectivism (roughly, the view that moral facts are not mind-independent in the relevant sense, but that moral statements may still be true). The historical association of subjectivism with moral anti-realism in large part explains why the robust model of moral realism has been dominant—even if only implicitly—both in the traditional and contemporary philosophical literature on metaethics.^[12]

In the minimal sense of realism, R.M. Hare Richard Mervyn Hare was an English moral philosopher who held the post of White's Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford from 1966 until 1983 and then taught for a number of years at the University of Florida. His meta-ethical theories were influential during the second half of the twentieth century could be considered a realist in his later works, as he is committed to the objectivity of value judgments, even though he denies that moral statements express propositions with truth-values In logic and mathematics, a logical value, also called a truth value, is a value indicating the relation of a proposition to truth per se. Moral constructivists like John Rawls John Bordley Rawls was an American philosopher and a leading figure in moral and political philosophy. He held the James Bryant Conant University Professorship at Harvard. His magnum opus A Theory of Justice (1971) is now regarded as "one of the primary texts in political philosophy." His work in political philosophy, dubbed Rawlsianism, and Christine Korsgaard Christine M. Korsgaard is an American philosopher whose main academic interests are in moral philosophy and its history; the relation of issues in moral philosophy to issues in metaphysics, the philosophy of mind, and the theory of personal identity; the theory of personal relationships; and in normativity in general. She has taught at Yale, the^[13] may also be realists in this minimalist sense; the latter describes her own position as procedural realism.

Advantages

Moral realism allows the ordinary rules of logic (modus ponens In classical logic, modus ponendo ponens is a valid, simple argument form sometimes referred to as affirming the antecedent or the law of detachment. It is closely related to another valid form of argument, modus tollens, etc.) to be applied straightforwardly to moral statements. We can say that a moral belief is false or unjustified or contradictory in the same way we would about a factual belief. This is a problem for expressivism Expressivism in meta-ethics is a theory about the meaning of moral language. According to expressivism, sentences that employ moral terms–for example, “It is wrong to torture an innocent human being”–are not descriptive or fact-stating; moral terms such as “wrong,” “good,” or “just” do not refer to real, in-the-world properties, as shown by the Frege-Geach problem.

Another advantage of moral realism is its capacity to resolve moral disagreements: If two moral beliefs contradict one another, realism says that they cannot both be right, and therefore everyone involved ought to be seeking out the right answer to resolve the disagreement. Contrary theories of meta-ethics In philosophy, meta-ethics is the branch of ethics that seeks to understand the nature of ethical properties, statements, attitudes, and judgments. Meta-ethics is one of the three branches of ethics generally recognized by philosophers, the others being ethical theory and applied ethics. Ethical theory and applied ethics make up normative ethics have trouble even formulating the statement "this moral belief is wrong," and so they cannot resolve disagreements in this way.

Criticisms

Several criticisms have been raised against moral realism: The first is that, while realism can explain how to resolve moral conflicts, it does not explain how these conflicts arose in the first place^[14]. A common response^{[by whom?]} to this argument is that moral conflicts occur when an individual or group simply is not sufficiently educated in the fundamentals of realistic morality, and so are compelled to act in ways that transgress concrete moral boundaries^{[citation needed]}.

Others are critical of moral realism because it postulates the existence of a kind of "moral fact" which is nonmaterial and does not appear to be accessible to the scientific method Scientific method refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning. A scientific method consists of^[15]. Moral truths cannot be observed Observation is either an activity of a living being , consisting of receiving knowledge of the outside world through the senses, or the recording of data using scientific instruments. The term may also refer to any data collected during this activity in the same way as material facts (which are objective), so it seems odd to count them in the same category^[16]. One emotivist Emotivism is a meta-ethical view that claims that ethical sentences do not express propositions but emotional attitudes. Influenced by the growth of analytic philosophy and logical positivism in the 20th century, the theory was stated vividly by A. J. Ayer in his 1936 book Language, Truth and Logic, but its development owes more to C. L. Stevenson counterargument^{[by whom?]} (although emotivism is usually non-cognitivist Non-cognitivism is the meta-ethical view that ethical sentences do not express propositions and thus cannot be true or false . A noncognitivist denies the cognitivist claim that "moral judgments are capable of being objectively true, because they describe some feature of the world." If moral statements cannot be true, and if one cannot) alleges that "wrong" actions produce measurable results in the form of negative emotional reactions, either within the individual transgressor, within the person or people most directly affected by the act, or within a (preferably wide) consensus of direct or indirect observers^{[citation needed]}.

See also

• Ethics Ethics is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality — that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, justice, virtue, etc
• Moral absolutism Moral absolutism is the ethical view that certain actions are absolutely right or wrong, regardless of other contexts such as their consequences or the intentions behind them. Thus lying, for instance, might be considered to be always immoral, even if done to promote some other good , and even if it does in the end promote such a good. Moral
• Moral relativism Descriptive relativism is the observation that different cultures have different moral standards. Descriptive relativists do not necessarily affirm or deny the existence of a single correct normative appraisal, given the same set of circumstances. Likewise, they do not necessarily make any meta-ethical commitments to the semantics, ontology, or
• Expressivism Expressivism in meta-ethics is a theory about the meaning of moral language. According to expressivism, sentences that employ moral terms–for example, “It is wrong to torture an innocent human being”–are not descriptive or fact-stating; moral terms such as “wrong,” “good,” or “just” do not refer to real, in-the-world properties
• Cognitivism
• Morality Morality is a sense of behavioral conduct that differentiates intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good (or right) and bad (or wrong). A moral code is a system of morality (for example, according to a particular philosophy, religion, culture, etc.) and a moral is any one practice or teaching within a moral code. Immorality is
• Moral skepticism "Moral skepticism" denotes a class of metaethical theories all members of which entail that no one has any moral knowledge. Many moral skeptics also make the stronger, modal, claim that moral knowledge is impossible. Moral skepticism is particularly opposed to moral realism: the view that there are knowable, mind-independent moral truths
• Nominalism Nominalism is a metaphysical view in philosophy according to which general or abstract terms and predicates exist, while universals or abstract objects, which are sometimes thought to correspond to these terms, do not exist. Thus, there are at least two main versions of nominalism. One version denies the existence of universals—things that can

References

1. ^ Boyd, Richard N. (1988), "How to Be a Moral Realist", in Sayre-McCord, Geoffrey, Essays on Moral Realism, Cornell University Press Cornell University is a private university located in Ithaca, New York, USA, that is a member of the Ivy League, pp. 181–228, ISBN The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering (SBN) code created by Gordon Foster, now Emeritus Professor of Statistics at Trinity College, Dublin, for the booksellers and stationers W.H. Smith and others in 1966 0-8014-2240-X
2. ^ PhilPapers survey, 2009, http://philpapers.org/surveys/
3. ^ Railton, Peter (1986). "Moral Realism". Philosophical Review, 95, pp. 163-207.
4. ^ Sayre-McCord, Geoff (2005). "Moral Realism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2005 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). (link)
5. ^ Cuneo, Terence (2007). "The Normative Web: An Argument for Moral Realism", Oxford.
6. ^ Shafer-Landau, Russ (2003) "Moral Realism: A Defense", Oxford, ISBN 0199259755.
7. ^ * Moore, G. E. (1903). Principia Ethica, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
8. ^ Sturgeon, Nicholas (1985). "Moral Explanations", in Morality, Reason, and Truth, edited by David Copp and David Zimmerman, Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Allanheld, pp. 49-78.
9. ^ Kant, Immanuel (1785). Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, translated by James W. Ellington. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. is an academic publishing house based in Indianapolis, Indiana. Since beginning operations in 1972, Hackett has concentrated mainly on humanities, especially classical and philosophical texts. Many Hackett titles are used as textbooks, making the company very visible at American colleges and universities. Their, 1993.
10. ^ Geras, Norman (1985). "The Controversy about Marx and Justice", New Left Review, 150, pp. 47-85.
11. ^ Väyrynen, Pekka (2005). "Moral Realism", Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd Edition, Donald M. Borchert (ed.). (link)
12. ^ ^{a b} Joyce, Richard (2007), "Moral Anti-Realism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2007 Edition), Edward N. Zalta Edward N. Zalta, born in 1952, is a Senior Research Scholar at the Center for the Study of Language and Information. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Massachusetts - Amherst (ed.). (link)
13. ^ Korsgaard, Christine (1996). The Sources of Normativity, New York: Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press is the publishing business of the University of Cambridge. Granted Letters Patent by Henry VIII in 1534, it is the world's oldest continually operating book publisher.
14. ^ Mackie, John, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (Viking Press, 1977) part 1, chap. 1, section 8 : The argument from relativity: "The actual variations in the moral codes are more readily explained by the hypothesis that they reflect ways of life than by the hypothesis that they express perceptions, most of them seriously inadequate and badly distorted, of objective values"
15. ^ Harman, Gilbert, The Nature of Morality : An Introduction to Ethics (Oxford,1977), I.1, "Ethics and observation"
16. ^ Mackie, John, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (Viking Press, 1977) part 1, chap. 1, section 9 : The argument from Queerness

Further reading

• Moral realism - article from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a freely-accessible online encyclopedia of philosophy maintained by Stanford University. Each entry is written and maintained by an expert in the field, including professors from over 65 academic institutions worldwide. Authors contributing to the Encyclopedia give Stanford University the permission to
• Hume, David David Hume was a Scottish philosopher and historian, regarded as one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment. Hume is often grouped with John Locke, George Berkeley, and a handful of others as a British Empiricist (1739). Treatise Concerning Human Nature, edited by L.A. Selby-Bigge. Oxford: Oxford University Press Oxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as OUP's chief executive and as its major representative, 1888.
• Kim, Shin (2006). "Moral Realism", The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Fieser & Dowden (eds.). (link)

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