Moral Realism

Papers 22-26 of this series reached normative appraisal - inquiry, action, autonomy, individual responsibility, and collective responsibility - but each consumed its governing norms (the norm-application NormApp and the specifications Sigma_R, Sigma_A) as declared, contestable inputs and explicitly deferred their grounding. This paper takes up that debt without a global legislator-of-value: a subsystem jointly possessing complete access to the space of values and reasons, the uniquely correct ranking of them, infallible detection of what each situation requires, binding authority to make (...) a value hold, and finality over the result. -/- Normativity is reconstructed as grounded but unlegislated. The grounding of "norm N has standing" is not a decree but the invariance of N's constraint across an admissible normative family under open challenge - world-side structural standing under a declared specification, not certification of any "one true norm" (a target the architecture neither licenses nor represents). This is the normative lift of the series' account of objectivity (Paper 15) and physical law (Paper 17). The grounding is non-circular: its input is an already-normative appraisal practice, so it grounds graded standing among norm-candidates, not normativity ex nihilo; and because actual invariance does not entail admissible-family invariance, a stable convention or shared pathology that is stable only by excluding a relevant perspective or closing challenge earns no standing. Two results organize the account. R-A (Invariance-Grounding / No-Legislation): for an admissible specification responsive to admissible-family invariance, norm-standing is not a function of the actual endorsement-field - neither legislated by endorsement (against subjectivism and conventionalism) nor identically zero (its internal standing is non-void); the reduction excluded is the actual-endorsement-only one, not every idealized reconstruction. R-B (Non-Self-Certification): no norm can self-certify within an admissible, challenge-open specification, so a self-certifying foundation is unavailable and warrant rests provisionally on presently-undefeated challenge-open invariants, while perspective-relativity of value-claims does not entail relativism of value-standing. An explicit map then grounds, at criterion level, the norms Papers 25-26 left declared, with a fully declared application-level instantiation for a representative first-order norm. Normativity is neither a decree nor a void: it is corrigible, typed, admissible-challenge-open invariance reconstructed from inside the history. (shrink)

The world in which we move as human agents is, in crucial respects, a deeply personal one. Perceptions of meaning and significance, as well as pathways for action, are partly shaped by each person's idiosyncratic psychological constitution. This insight, long familiar to psychoanalytically inclined thinkers, also plays a central role in the moral philosophy of Iris Murdoch. The aim of this paper is to highlight this point of connection between psychoanalytical thinking and Murdochian moral philosophy, thereby presenting Murdoch as a (...) prime source of inspiration for building bridges between areas of philosophy that are often assumed to be opposed or playing different games altogether. Thus, Murdoch's repeated emphasis--despite her commitment to the impersonal reality of the Good--on the often highly personal, or even private, dimension of moral insight and action will be reconsidered in a new interpretive framework. (shrink)

Philosophers often speak of normativity as if it named a single phenomenon requiring a unified metaphysical explanation. This paper argues that the term is systematically overburdened. In discussions of moral ontology, normativity usually refers to categorical practical authority: obligations, requirements, or reasons that purport to bind agents independently of their contingent desires, projects, values, or commitments. In discussions of rationality, logic, epistemology, and decision theory, however, normativity usually refers to structural coherence: requirements internal to an agent's beliefs, ends, standards, methods, (...) or avowed commitments. These are not merely two applications of one deep concept. They have different logical forms. Moral normativity purports to evaluate the content of an agent's commitments from a standpoint independent of those commitments. Rational normativity evaluates the consistency of commitments from within a standpoint already adopted. A basketball player who claims to want victory while deliberately scoring for the opposing team illustrates the distinction. The player has acted incoherently relative to his stated aim, but he has not thereby acted immorally. His error is not moral wickedness but practical inconsistency. The paper also argues that the denotation of normativity can be clarified by attending to its etymological neighbors and antonyms: normal, abnormal, and abandoning norms suggest deviation from a standard, pattern, rule, or expectation, not automatic moral wrongness. The paper argues that much philosophical confusion results from treating normativity as a free-standing noun rather than a parameterized relation: normative for whom, relative to which standard, in which domain, with what force, and conditional on what? Once these parameters are made explicit, the existence of rational, logical, or instrumental normativity gives no independent support to moral realism. The moral non-realist can accept all the normativity required for logic, evidence, and practical consistency while rejecting stance-independent moral facts. (shrink)

This paper develops a non-realist account of why human beings are tempted to invent a moral realm. The target is not the practical use of evaluative language, nor the pro-social need to condemn cruelty, betrayal, and domination. The target is the emotional promotion of human aversion, care, resentment, disgust, and fear into a supposedly mind-independent order of moral facts. Moral realism, on this account, often functions as consolation: it stabilizes affect by making our deepest reactions appear authorized by reality itself. (...) The paper is a companion to three nearby treatments but addresses a different question. The Moral Grammar Exit argued that non-realists can translate moral language into pro-social reasons without collapsing into nihilism. The Outrage Trap argued that structural outrage does not establish moral facts. The Amoral Predicate Defense analyzed how evaluative terms can be used without realist metaphysics. The present paper asks why moral realism feels so psychologically necessary in the first place. Drawing on Mackie, Joyce, Blackburn, Gibbard, Haidt, Becker, and terror management theory, I argue that moral realism answers an affective need before it answers a metaphysical problem. It promises that condemnation is not merely ours, that the vulnerable are not merely preferred but cosmically protected, and that social life is anchored in more than negotiated concern. Those promises are emotionally intelligible. They are not evidence for moral furniture. The conclusion is not quietism but conceptual honesty: we can defend humane practices without pretending our sentiments are inscriptions in the universe. (shrink)

This paper develops a staunchly moral non-realist account of evaluative language that is often misread as moral commitment. Terms such as arrogance, bias, dogmatism, lack of humility, and strategic self-defeat can be used descriptively or instrumentally without implying objective moral facts. The central problem is projection: moral realists often hear social criticism as moral accusation because their own grammar treats disapproval as implicitly moralized. The non-realist need not accept that frame. One can call a speaker arrogant because the speaker overestimates (...) competence; biased because the speaker processes evidence asymmetrically; dogmatic because the speaker resists counterevidence; or strategically self-defeating because the speaker's conduct reduces persuasive success. None of these descriptions confers ontological legitimacy on moral properties. I propose a classification test: a predicate is moral only if it purports to carry categorical authority independent of goals, preferences, practices, social effects, or chosen standards. By that test, many terms commonly commandeered by moralists are amoral. They are not empty; they are functionally useful. Their point is not to name moral wrongness, but to describe patterns that matter to creatures who care, deliberate, cooperate, and argue. (shrink)

The obstacle to objective practical normativity is not that it concerns values rather than facts, but that it has no settled analogue of what truth supplies for belief: a standard of correctness. Practical normativity can be objective only if some standard plays that same structural role—fixing what practical assessment is about, setting a shared, endorsement-independent correctness question, and sustaining correction through grounds that can be cited, contested, and redeployed. The better–worse dimension of conscious experience—how conscious life goes for the subject (...) living it—satisfies these conditions and explains why anything can matter practically to a subject at all. Once this dimension occupies the standard-role, harms, benefits, duties, autonomy, blame, care, and responsibility are not rival standards but role-structural forms within one field of objective justification: they matter as ways conscious life is protected, damaged, organized, or degraded. Symmetry in normative standing is then not an independent moral premise but the closure condition of objective correction itself: outside this structure, condemnation, preference, and enforcement remain possible, but no verdict can be vindicated as correct rather than merely opposed. (shrink)

Contemporary moral philosophy frequently appeals to objective reasons said to hold independently of desire. Yet when such reasons conflict, no non-arbitrary criterion exists for determining which should prevail. This article introduces Objective Morality, a liberty-based framework grounded in the invariant structure of conscious agency. Because conscious awareness necessarily involves preferred orientation, desire is a constitutive feature of consciousness, and liberty understood as non-imposition emerges as the necessary condition for action. On this basis, the article demonstrates how this structure subsumes influential (...) moral frameworks by resolving their foundational tensions. It shows that Scanlon’s reasonable rejection reduces to the rejection of liberty-imposing principles ; it provides the missing criterion to resolve Parfit’s conflicting objective reasons ; it identifies why Berlin’s positive liberty collapses into unjustified coercion ; and it reframes the Capabilities Approach as a derivative function of adequate opportunities to acquire time, money, and know-how. By situating liberty as a structural precondition rather than a contingent value, the paper provides a unified normative framework capable of grounding moral judgment without contradiction. (shrink)

This paper develops a constraint-based extension of the Dual-Closure framework, which holds that authentic subjective experience and objective moral normativity jointly require non-contingent grounding in order to avoid justificatory regress. While the Dual-Closure Thesis establishes the necessity of such grounding, it leaves open the structural criteria any adequate ground must satisfy. This manuscript introduces the Multi-Closure Thesis, a conditional diagnostic framework consisting of five ontological and epistemic constraints. Rather than identifying or naming a specific metaphysical source, the framework delineates the (...) minimal requirements any candidate ground must meet if it is to successfully terminate regress across consciousness, normativity, and rational agency. By applying these constraints—echoed in historical precedents such as Al-Ghazali and Maturidi—the paper demonstrates why contingent, consensus-based, and purely naturalistic accounts fail to achieve full closure. The result is not a doctrinal conclusion, but a narrowed ontological space within which any viable account of ultimate grounding must fall. (shrink)

The founding assertion that certain truths are "self-evident" reflects a deeper philosophical commitment to moral realism—the view that objective moral facts exist independently of human opinion. Yet contemporary American discourse reveals a paradox: while citizens engage in passionate moral debates as if objective truths were at stake, many simultaneously embrace relativistic frameworks that deny such truths exist. This contradiction suggests a fundamental crisis in moral epistemology that transcends partisan politics. Through analysis of the philosophical foundations underlying moral claims, this paper (...) argues that moral realism provides the necessary framework for coherent ethical discourse. The very possibility of meaningful moral disagreement presupposes objective standards by which competing claims can be evaluated. Drawing on transcendental arguments and the self-refutation of relativistic positions, this study demonstrates that moral realism is not merely one philosophical option among many, but a logical prerequisite for any serious engagement with ethical questions. The practical implications extend beyond academic philosophy: without shared commitment to objective moral standards, democratic discourse devolves into mere expressions of preference rather than reasoned deliberation about justice and human flourishing. This analysis suggests that addressing contemporary polarization requires not political compromise but renewed philosophical rigor in understanding the nature of moral truth itself. -/- Keywords: moral realism, objective morality, meta-ethics, moral subjectivism, self-refutation, transcendental arguments, moral epistemology, democratic discourse, Intersubjective morality, self-evident truths, . (shrink)

New natural law (NNL) is an approach in contemporary normative and applied ethics, legal and political philosophy and moral theology that is closely associated with the work of Germain Grisez, John Finnis, Joseph Boyle, Robert George and Christopher Tollefsen. NNL arose in the second half of the 20th century as a result of a critical revision of the neo-scholastic natural law, as well as an attempt to reconcile Thomism with contemporary analytical philosophy. NNL is based on the idea that there (...) are a number of basic goods that are valuable to all people, such as life, friendship, knowledge, beauty, love, practical reason, etc. NNL theorists further argue that all people have natural rights to have these goods in their lives free from targeted harm. Some more orthodox Thomists criticize NNL on the grounds that such a commitment to respect the goods in the lives of all people implicitly relies on a Platonic concept of the good, which gives these goods an ontological status independent of their actualization in a particular life. While some NNL theorists do accept Platonic conceptions of the good, there are alternative ways of justifying such a duty by appeal to more “subjective” notions. In this case, the duty of respect for the goods in someone else’s life will be included in the conditions for the actualization of goods in one’s own life. Four arguments of this kind can be proposed, referring to four different goods: friendship, justice, harmony with oneself and practical reason. (shrink)

Persistent moral and political disagreements are often treated as failures of reasoning, evidence, or communication, with the expectation that sufficient deliberation should yield convergence. This paper argues that many such disagreements are not epistemic in character but ontological: they arise between incompatible background frameworks that determine what counts as real, meaningful, or normatively binding in the first place. Where such frameworks do not overlap, disagreement cannot be resolved by appeal to shared standards of rational adjudication because no such standards are (...) jointly recognised. -/- Drawing on insights from work on incommensurability, language-games, and tradition-bound rationality, the paper distinguishes disagreements of opinion from disagreements of ontology and examines how the latter are routinely misdiagnosed within Enlightenment-inherited moral discourse. It argues that familiar accusations of “relativism” or “subjectivism” function less as substantive objections than as mechanisms of boundary maintenance within dominant normative frames. The paper also rejects the claim that the absence of stance-independent moral facts entails arbitrariness or moral paralysis. Evaluation persists under post-foundational conditions, but it does so without neutral referees, relocating moral conflict to political forms of persuasion, coalition-building, institutional contestation, and power. -/- The paper is diagnostic rather than prescriptive. It does not propose a new normative framework or method of moral adjudication, but aims to clarify why certain disagreements persist despite sustained argument and why attempts at mediation or rational convergence often misfire under conditions of ontological incommensurability. (shrink)

Review of Lloyd Gerson's Plato's Moral Realism.

In this essay I argue for a life-grounded ethic, one which positions survival as the necessary precondition of moral reasoning while advancing flourishing as its normative aim. This theory starts with the premise that no ethical system can operate without first addressing the material conditions that sustain life. Marx’s critique of capitalist production begins from precisely this premise: the primacy of securing the conditions necessary for survival – access to food, shelter, healthcare, and a stable environment – as the foundation (...) upon which any ethical system must be built. Through historical materialism, which situates survival within the socio-economic base; evolutionary biology, which provides insights into how survival imperatives shape value systems; and critiques of ideological constructs, which reveal how flourishing is often subordinated to power structures, I demonstrate that ethical systems – if they treat universality as axiomatic – must ground that universality in survival while adapting to the evolving demands of real-world human flourishing. (shrink)

Some think normative properties like being good are basic: they cannot be explained in only non-normative terms. Moreover, some think these properties are instantiated—things are good. Others have argued the instantiation of basic normativity (with some plausible assumptions about grounding) implies pannormism, roughly the view that some atoms (and sub-atoms, and sub-sub…) and their behavior is also either good or bad. All the way down the levels of reality, normativity lurks. For example, if a seizure is bad, then the atomic (...) behavior (and sub-atomic behavior, and so on) explaining it is also bad. These same philosophers believe pannormism could be taken as a reductio against basic normativity and normative realism. I’ll argue that with plausible additional premises, the argument for pannormism implies all atomic (and sub-atomic, and so on) behavior (and every atom, sub-atom, and so on) is normative. I’ll then explore whether this stronger pannormism, along with the weaker one, should be thought of as a reductio. My conclusion is that it isn’t clear what is absurd about pannormism, partly because the intuitions supporting the alleged reductio are surprisingly similar to those supporting basic normativity. This means believers in basic normativity and normative realism shouldn’t be as worried about their view implying pannormism as some suggest they should, and in fact, it might be antipannormism that’s absurd. (shrink)

This paper proposes a unified rational framework integrating PROVABLE and TESTABLE objective moral realism(P.13-20), along with metaphysical necessity, and cosmological coherence into a single system. It begins with the empirical observation that teleology (intrinsic drive/purpose) and moral order are intrinsic to life and consciousness, suggesting that these internal principles reflect a universal order. Evidence from the fine-tuning of the cosmos supports the necessity of a non-contingent, infinite ground that transcends space and time. From this, the paper argues that a being (...) possessing properties traditionally ascribed to God(Unity, Necessity, Moral Perfection, and Creative Will) is the most metaphysically probable and necessary conclusion. The framework further shows that misalignment with this moral order produces predictable and observable decay (“Vice/Sin” to disorder), positioning morality as a foundational and testable law of existence. The model provides a rational foundation for evaluating theological claims without presupposing revelation, while avoiding pitfalls such as God-of-the-gaps reasoning and self-defeating axioms like nihilism. (shrink)

This paper proposes a unified rational framework integrating PROVABLE and TESTABLE objective moral realism(P.13-20), along with metaphysical necessity, and cosmological coherence into a single system. It begins with the empirical observation that teleology (intrinsic drive/purpose) and moral order are intrinsic to life and consciousness, suggesting that these internal principles reflect a universal order. Evidence from the fine-tuning of the cosmos supports the necessity of a non-contingent, infinite ground that transcends space and time. From this, the paper argues that a being (...) possessing properties traditionally ascribed to God(Unity, Necessity, Moral Perfection, and Creative Will) is the most metaphysically probable and necessary conclusion. The framework further shows that misalignment with this moral order produces predictable and observable decay (“Vice/Sin” to disorder), positioning morality as a foundational and testable law of existence. The model provides a rational foundation for evaluating theological claims without presupposing revelation, while avoiding pitfalls such as God-of-the-gaps reasoning and self-defeating axioms like nihilism. (shrink)

This paper introduces the Superposition–Collapse Theorem (Moral Superposition Principle), showing that the resolution of moral indeterminacy—evil versus good—occurs not through the passage of time but through coherent moral action. Drawing on the Redemption Optimization and Moral Kernel Optimization frameworks, it unifies moral agency, information theory, and the physics of coherence into a single system where “creation” itself is understood as sequential moral collapse: every “it was good” in Genesis is a completed measurement of coherence. The theorem implies that a benevolent (...) Creator is not a metaphysical postulate but the necessary condition for an intelligible universe. Evil’s existence is shown to be necessary only once—its repetition would contradict coherence—and thus moral and physical reality share the same closure law. (shrink)

In a paper from 2013, Huemer presented what he describes as a proof of moral realism. Huemer’s argument is interesting, first, because it promises to be a new argument for moral realism, and second, because it aims to prove moral realism through switching focus to “first-person moral reasons” (aka “subjective reasons”): that is, what we have moral reason to do given our epistemic situation. At a very general level, Huemer’s proof has the following form: he first presents an argument for (...) a first-person normative conclusion (“the Antitorture Argument”), and then argues that the features of the Antitorture Argument make it the case that its normative conclusion is true in a realist, attitude-independent, fashion. In this paper I argue that this suggested proof fails: Huemer’s considerations fail to support this attitude independence-claim, some because they concern the wrong kind of attitude-independence, and some because they are simply unconvincing. (shrink)

This paper extends Emergent Pragmatic Coherentism (EPC), the framework from The Architecture of Inquiry, to the problem of moral objectivity. We develop Procedural Realism, a naturalistic account arguing that the same diagnostic tools used to measure epistemic brittleness in scientific paradigms can be adapted to measure the normative brittleness of social systems. By applying EPC’s Systemic Brittleness Index (SBI), we show that both descriptive and normative claims are filtered by the same external standard: the real-world costs generated by their misalignment (...) with pragmatic constraints. This offers a powerful way of reframing the is/ought gap at the level of justification, by showing that both domains are filtered through the same pragmatic constraints. The argument proceeds by operationalizing this diagnostic test for the historical domain. We analyze a network’s brittleness by tracking a hierarchy of systemic costs—from bio-demographic crises to coercive overheads—using this data to construct a Negative Canon of empirically falsified, high-cost normative principles. This reveals moral progress to be a real, observable process of systemic debugging: the identification and replacement of brittle predicates drawn from the Negative Canon. On this account, moral objectivity is not a metaphysical fiat but an emergent, procedural fact about which normative architectures prove resilient under pragmatic selection. The result is a robust, fallibilist realism that naturalizes the reference of moral terms and offers a decisive reply to error theory and quasi-realism. (shrink)

Some moral propositions are so obviously true that we refuse to doubt them, even where we believe that many people disagree. Following Fritz and McPherson, I call our behaviour in such cases ‘moral steadfastness’. In this paper, I argue for two metaethical implications of moral steadfastness. I first argue that morally steadfast behaviour is sufficiently prevalent to present an important challenge for some prominent analogies between moral epistemology and non‐moral forms of epistemology. These analogies are often pressed by moral realists. (...) I then argue that moral quasi‐realism, unlike realism, can explain and vindicate our presumption that moral steadfastness is frequently rational. On the assumption that we frequently act as it is rational to act, quasi‐realism is therefore well placed to explain why we are so frequently morally steadfast. I conclude that this is an important respect in which quasi‐realism is explanatorily preferable to realism. (shrink)

The text explores the moral law as a super-natural phenomenon that can be demonstrated rationally. Starting from the observation that, in nature, every action is governed by the instinct for survival and personal interest, it shows how purely altruistic behavior seems apparently impossible. Yet, the moral law emerges as a coherent and universal principle: although it can generate personal advantages, its essence does not depend on self-interest, thus distinguishing it from natural causality. The novelty of this work lies in the (...) logical and conceptual demonstration of the moral law, without relying on traditional religious, cultural, or empirical assumptions. Unlike Kant, who postulated it a priori, or Thomas Aquinas, who grounded it in theology, here morality derives from ontological coherence and the concrete possibility of application. In this way, the text proposes an original paradigm of moral philosophy: the moral law is not merely a postulate, but a rationally necessary emergence, conceptually super-natural and applicable. The six appendices build the argumentative framework: Appendix A defines the implications of the principle of conservation. Appendix B distinguishes between freedom of choice, which is subordinated to personal interest, and the choice of freedom, attainable only through adherence to the moral law, highlighting how morality represents the only coherent choice capable of emancipating the individual from servitude. Appendix C explores the dialectic between the Self and the Ego: left to instinct alone, the individual degenerates; the moral method, instead, enables authentic freedom, coherence, and objective understanding. Appendix D introduces scientific analogies, such as the wave-particle duality, to show the symbolic limits of human knowledge, while emphasizing that the moral law can be understood through concrete and universal examples. Appendix E, through a logical-formal demonstration, makes explicit the conceptual validity of the moral law, clearly distinguishing absolute moral freedom from illusory freedom of choice. The lemmas and theorem show how a coherent moral action, guided by rational will and immune to self-interest, is necessarily possible and applicable, providing a rigorous and rational foundation for the idea of super-natural moral behavior. Appendix F presents a logical-formal example. In summary, the text builds a bridge between philosophical narrative and logical formalization, proposing an innovative, coherent, and deeply original framework for moral philosophy. (shrink)

Influenced by Max Scheler, Nicolai Hartmann’s 1926 Ethics theorizes an “axiological” dimension of Being populated by ideal objects he calls “values.” Like mathematical objects, they are essentially atemporal and immaterial, but they can be “actualized” in the spatio-temporal world. Truths about them and their hierarchical order are objective, and we can have a priori knowledge of them. In sensing values, we apprehend their “Ought-to-be,” a metaphysical tension which constitutes their “axiological” character. We apprehend them with a unique faculty of “value-feeling,” (...) which is irreducible to the intellect and includes an indispensable affective component. Within this framework, I offer an account of why and how art is uniquely equipped to disclose moral values. I contend that while moral values inhere only in persons and their acts, artifacts can disclose moral values whether or not they actualize them. Representational artifacts, I argue, do this primarily by facilitating acts of imagination whose objects instantiate moral values. After an important interlude on the role of affectivity in acts of value-feeling, I proceed to account for two major ways in which non-representational art can aid in the disclosure of moral values: namely, by simulating the affective states appropriate to their apprehension, and/or by bearing similar properties to them. Finally, I consider three major potential objections to my position. (shrink)

In his "A Critical Examination of Mainland China’s Scholarship in the History of Philosophy," Jinze Liu objecting to Gongqing Wu says that psychological egoism and moral realism are consistent. Psychological egoism is, um... er... um... er..., the view that all of our actions are motivated by our individual self-interest; or maybe the view that any individual's actions are motivated by what they believe to be their self-interest. Moral realism is the view that, um... er.... um... er...., (i) some moral discourse (...) consists of sentences expressing propositions and (ii) some moral propositions are true and (iii) this is because they correctly represent reality as featuring moral properties that are there whether we believe in them or not. For example the sentence "The Holocaust was bad" expresses the proposition that the Holocaust was bad and this proposition is true because the Holocaust had the property of being morally bad, whether we believe it had this property or not. I cannot see any logical inconsistency between psychological egoisim, understood in either of the ways specified, and moral realism. But one of the arguments against moral realism is that the best explanation for disagreements over which moral propositions are true is that there are no moral properties. Now if you accept psychological egoism, you are going to think that the parties to the disagreement just assert the propositions that are, or seem to them, to be in their self-interest. Even if psychological egoism is logically consistent with moral realism, a psychological egoist might well find it difficult to resist arguments such as this against moral realism.Once you adopt this perspective, there is a question of why you would believe that there nevertheless are moral properties. Why do you need to posit them? (shrink)

A decade ago I offered a defence of naturalistic moral realism against evolutionary debunking arguments. It had two elements. One was rejecting a dichotomy between evolutionary vindication and debunking in favour of a continuum. The second (a) proposed a metaethical principle on the basis of a hypothesis about the evolutionary drivers of moral thinking: a moral principle is true if it is part of a set of moral norms which, if acted upon, would optimise the cooperation profits of a community, (...) and (b) argued that by this criterion, folk moral opinion was quite often approximately true. I still reject the dichotomy, but the rest of the argument was too friendly to realist naturalism in ethics. It mischaracterised the selective history of moral thinking, over-estimating its role as a cooperation amplifier, and under-estimating the epistemic challenges facing individual agents as they develop their moral opinions. The upshot is a shift towards the debunking end of the vindication-debunking continuum. (shrink)

I argue that relaxed moral realists are not ontologically committed to moral properties. Regardless of whether we tie ontological commitment to quantification, entailment, or truthmaking, if moral properties are not explanatory (as relaxed realists claim), then moral truths do not require moral properties. This permits a nominalist form of relaxed realism that is both simpler and more ecumenical than extant formulations. The possibility of such a position places pressure on the ontology of competing views—and helps focus attention on the critical (...) and underexplored explanatory element of the relaxed realist’s program. (shrink)

Normative realism is the view that there are ought facts, i.e. facts about what we ought to do. A recent influential challenge to normative realism, raised separately by Justin Clarke-Doane and Matti Eklund, argues that ought facts—even if they exist—are inert in the sense that they cannot tell us what to do. The ground for this challenge is the epistemic possibility of a normative pluriverse, that is, the epistemic possibility of there being not only ought facts but also ought-like facts. (...) I counter this challenge by showing the inconsistency, and thus the epistemic impossibility, of a normative pluriverse. I do so mainly by revealing a certain constraint on ought-likeness. (shrink)

Joseph Raz devotes one section of “The Truth in Particularism” to explaining the irrelevance of supervenience to the debate between generalists and particularists. Really, however, his claim is that supervenience is irrelevant to metaethics in general. If there is a true supervenience thesis, he argues, it is not one that we now have access to; moreover, it is not one that we are ever likely to have access to. Raz’s discussion of supervenience has been largely neglected. The chief aim of (...) this chapter is to bring it to light, for it is an argument that merits serious consideration. The secondary aim is to defend it. First, it reconstructs the argument before responding to objections. These objections concern the explanatory role of the general supervenience thesis, the inconceivability of its falsity, the claim that supervenience is a deep feature of our evaluative discourse, and the claim that supervenience of the evaluative on the nonevaluative must hold because the evaluative is grounded in the nonevaluative. The key move in Raz’s argument against supervenience concerns observations that he makes about ordinary evaluative practice. As they stand, these observations are suggestive but brief; however, these observations, supplemented by considerations about thick evaluation, give Raz the resources to respond to all of the above objections. (shrink)

Generally, we want certain ethical claims to be unconditionally true. One such claim is “Apartheid was unjust”. In this paper, I discuss a group of South African post-structuralist philosophers who call their view Critical Complexity (CC). Because of post-structuralism’s radical contextualism, CCists can only claim that things are ‘as if’ Apartheid was unjust. They cannot claim that Apartheid was unconditionally unjust. Many will find this unsatisfying. I argue that a naturalised or Darwinian notion of rationality can help CCists (and perhaps (...) post-structuralists in general) in this regard. This kind of rationality is what has come to be known as embodied rationality. We employ embodied rationality when navigating the ecological and social domains. It has, though, been co-opted for navigating the ethical domain. We can, then, claim that Apartheid was unconditionally unjust because it is embodied rational to do so. This does not involve embracing the kind of Cartesian rationality that CCists rightly reject. (shrink)

Good-for theorists claim that to be valuable is to be good for someone, in the sense of being beneficial for them. Their opponents deny this, arguing that some things are good-simpliciter: good independently of being good for anyone. In this article I argue in favor of good-simpliciter. I appeal to the category of symbolically valuable acts, acts which seem valuable even when they do not benefit anyone and even when they are costly to the agent. I explore various strategies a (...) good-for theorist might pursue to address these apparently valuable acts, for example by appealing to the acts’ connection to beneficial character traits or practices, and I argue that none of these strategies succeed. Instead, I propose that the best way to understand the value of these acts involves seeing them as appropriate responses to what is good-simpliciter, and more specifically, as ways of loving what is worthy of love. (shrink)

Moral realism is the metaethical position that moral facts exist. Some philosophers have advanced arguments in opposition to this idea by appealing to the evolutionary formation of our moral capacities – these arguments have come to be known as “evolutionary debunking arguments”. Sharon Street’s famous ‘Darwinian dilemma’ is one of such arguments. The argument is this: since our moral capacities have an evolutionary past, the realist must clarify whether there is a relation between this background and the postulated moral facts (...) or not. According to Street, both responses are untenable for the realist. We believe that this is not true. By accepting Street’s challenge, by exploring consequent replies available in the literature, and by looking at the nature of morality in light of the evolution of cooperation, we construct a conjecture for the moral realist to assert the existence of such a relation in a satisfactory way. Moral facts are facts about cooperation, which in turn are facts about evolutionary adaptation. We argue this naturalist route can overcome the Darwinian dilemma, undermining the strength of “evolutionary debunking arguments”, and bolstering moral realism. While we concede that cooperation-based moral realism still faces difficult challenges, it nevertheless escapes evolutionary debunking. (shrink)

Este artigo analisa a discussão sobre o Dilema Darwiniano para o realismo metaético, proposto por Sharon Street (2006), e entende o seu “debunking” como estruturas aporéticas. Street desenvolve um dilema específico para o realismo metaético em que as verdades avaliativas pressupostas porela estariam em desarmonia com uma perspectiva evolutiva-darwiniana da moralidade. Street mostra que o realismo não consegue fornecer uma explicação boa o suficiente sobre a relação entre o processo evolutivo e nossos juízos morais verdadeiros. Ela propõe uma explicação metaética (...) antirrealista alternativa, coerente com a explicação evolutiva da moralidade. Da perspectiva de Nicholas Rescher (1985), mostraremos que o Dilema Darwiniano para o realismo moral, apontado por Street, pode ser analisado de forma aporética. De acordo com Rescher, aporias se apresentam como inconsistências dentro de um conjunto de comprometimentos teóricos, que formarão estruturas aporéticas que demandarão ou a rejeição ou a justificação destes comprometimentos teóricos responsáveis pelas aporias no conjunto total. Indicaremos que a perspectiva antirrealista de Street também engendra aporias, assim como o realismo, e pelas mesmas bases, poderá ser rejeitada. Por fim iremos propor uma abordagem pluralista para a metaética, na qual os méritos explicativos das teorias devem ser utilizados para esclarecer o fenômeno moral. (shrink)

Quasi‐realists are expressivists who say much of what realists say. To avoid making their view indistinguishable from realism, however, they usually stop short of saying everything realists say. Many realists therefore think that something important is missing from quasi‐realism. I argue that quasi‐realists can undermine this thought by defending a version of quasi‐realism that I call super‐quasi‐realism. This version seems indistinguishable from realism, but I argue that this is a mistaken impression that arises because we cannot believe super‐quasi‐realism.

Is suffering really bad? The late Derek Parfit argued that we all have reasons to want to avoid future agony and that suffering is in itself bad both for the one who suffers and impersonally. Nietzsche denied that suffering was intrinsically bad and that its value could even be impersonal. This paper has two aims. It argues against what I call ‘Realism about the Value of Suffering’ by drawing from a broadly Nietzschean debunking of our evaluative attitudes, showing that a (...) recently influential response to the debunking challenge (the appeal to phenomenal introspection) fails. It also argues that a Nietzschean approach is well suited to support the challenge and is bolstered by the empirical literature. As strangers to ourselves, we cannot know whether suffering is really intrinsically bad for us. (shrink)

One of the arguments that is put forward both for and against strong moral realism is the argument for the causal effects of moral properties; Whether moral properties have a causal effect on the external and physical world to prove their reality or not. The first who argue this was Gilbert Harman, who considered moral properties to have no causal effects. Shafer-Landau has also obtained an ontological account of it and examined it. In this article, we examine the arguments of (...) Harman and Landau and the drawbacks that have been made to them, and the result is that the arguments of those who consider moral properties to have no causal effects have significant drawbacks and are not defensible. Explanations can also be used to defend the causal effects of moral properties and to use them to the benefit of realism. (shrink)

No presente artigo argumentamos que os fatos morais dependem da realidade da consciência. Por esse viés, abordamos, então, que apenas seres sencientes dotados de razão estão aptos a conhecer os valores objetivamente. Considerando a teoria do Pampsiquismo, que afirma ser a consciência uma propriedade essencial da matéria, analisamos a possibilidade de que se organismos subjetivos evoluírem em outros sistemas solares alcançando a racionalidade, poderiam ter a mesma percepção das leis naturais que o homem tem. Nesse contexto, a existência de um (...) direito natural cosmológico é viável. Analisamos, portanto, o realismo moral sob a ótica do Pampsiquismo, segundo Thomas Nagel. Em contraste, examinamos também o Biopsiquismo. Concluímos que o conhecimento do valor terá interpretações distintas para cada uma das teorias da mente. (shrink)

This book examines a variety of arguments that might be thought to support skepticism about the existence of morality, and it explains how these arguments can be answered by those who believe in objective moral truths. The focus throughout is on discussing questions that frequently trouble thoughtful and reflective individuals, including questions like the following: Does the prevalence of moral disagreement make it reasonable to conclude that there aren't really any moral facts at all? Is morality simply relative to particular (...) societies and times? What could objective moral facts possibly be like? If there were moral facts, how could we ever come to know anything about them? Shouldn't belief in the theory of evolution undermine our confidence that our moral intuitions reliably reveal moral truths? Would moral facts ever actually explain anything at all? Can morality really have the motivating and rational force we normally take it to have? How can one possibly find a place for objective moral values in a scientific worldview? The book explores plausible answers to questions like these and it thus aims to show why the belief in objective morality remains an intellectually reasonable one. (shrink)

In § 37 of the "Elements of First Practical Philosophy", Baumgarten provides important qualifications to the controversial notion of ‘objective morality’, which had long been at the centre of the dispute between realists like Wolff and his adversaries. The chapter shall examine how he construes his view of morality in §§ 36-38 with a specific focus on the central § 37. I shall analyse that section, first considering how Baumgarten understands the key notion of ‘objective morality’ and how he argues (...) for it, focusing both on its relational character and its connection with God’s will. Then I will examine the last, and arguably most surprising of the implications that he draws per negativum from the main claim, namely that affirming objective morality does not amount to rule out what Baumgarten calls ‘subjective morality’. Finally, I will briefly consider how Baumgarten’s distinctive way to take side in the Wolffian camp in that dispute reflects, through the close dialogue with the Elements in Kant’s private notes and lectures, on the development of Kant’s own views in practical philosophy. (shrink)

Under review at Canadian Journal of Philosophy. This paper does five things: (1) It provides an analysis of meta-ethical Non-Realist Cognitivism. (2) It assesses two arguments in favour of the view which have been largely overlooked in analyses so far. (3) It argues that different proponents of the view offer crucially different strategies for vindicating moral objectivity without the metaphysical commitments of traditional non-naturalism. (4) Contrary to other commentators, it argues for the no-truthmaker interpretation of Parfit’s view. (5) It argues (...) that each version of Non-Realist Cognitivism is unlikely to be able to do the explanatory work that seemed to call for an ontologically committal non-naturalism. (shrink)

According to principles of modal security, evidence undermines a belief only when it calls into question certain purportedly important modal connections between one’s beliefs and the truth (e.g., safety or sensitivity). Justin Clarke-Doane and Dan Baras have advanced such principles with the aim of blocking evolutionary moral debunking arguments. We examine a variety of different principles of modal security, showing that some of these are too strong, failing to accommodate clear cases of undermining, while others are too weak, failing to (...) do their advertised work of blocking evolutionary moral debunking arguments. If there is a security principle that slips between the horns of this dilemma—one that is both viable and debunker-blocking—it remains to be formulated. (shrink)

It can be tempting to read Iris Murdoch as subscribing to the same position as standard contemporary moral realists. Her language is often similar to theirs and they share some key commitments, most importantly the rejection of the fact-value dichotomy. However, it is a mistake to assume that her realism amounts to the same thing theirs does. In this paper I offer a sketch of her alternative conception of realism, which centres on the idea that truth and reality are fundamentally (...) ethical concepts. For Murdoch, I suggest, realism is a matter of doing justice to the objects one is confronted with—something that cannot be understood except in ethical terms. (shrink)

This chapter discusses central problems and prospects for ethical naturalism. Section 1 explains what is meant by “ethical naturalism” and surveys different versions of the view. Section 2 discusses the central philosophical challenge to ethical naturalism, viz., the “Normativity Objection.” Section 3 offers a battery of responses to it on behalf of the ethical naturalist. Section 4 explores a promising and novel approach to ethical naturalism, viz., a moral nativist theory that that combines a Chomskian approach to moral competence with (...) a structuralist metaphysics. (shrink)

The article presents the metaethical discussion of moral properties with emphasis on the connection between metaphysical views on properties and theories on moral properties. Theories on moral properties vary along three dimensions: realism vs. anti-realism, naturalism vs. non-naturalism, and reductionism vs. non-reductionism. It is argued that realism should be understood in terms of Specific Mind-Independence which entails that moral properties are not arbitrarily dependent on the mental states of individuals agents. It is further noticed that theories on moral properties should (...) account for the practicality of morality. The article then considers different versions of naturalism and non-naturalism in reductionist and non-reductionist forms. It is discussed how these theories account for the practicality of morality and what metaphysical challenges they face. Moreover, it is suggested that Specific Mind-Independence offers plausible classifications of metaethical theories as ‘realist’ or ‘anti-realist’. (shrink)

Normative naturalism holds that normative properties are identical with, or reducible to, natural properties. Various challenges to naturalism focus on whether it can make good on the idea that normative concepts can be used in systematically different ways and yet have the same reference in all contexts of use. In response to such challenges, some naturalists have proposed that questions about the reference of normative terms should be understood, at least in part, as normative questions that can be settled through (...) normative inquiry. In this paper I have two goals. First, I argue that these naturalist proposals do not yet allow for radical disagreement on normative matters, or at least do not explain how such disagreement is possible. Secondly, I argue that, in order to account for radical disagreement, naturalists should not only treat normative reference as a normative issue but also adopt a non-representationalist account of normative concepts, on which such concepts are individuated through their practical role. I illustrate this point by showing how a view that combines naturalism and expressivism about normative discourse can vindicate the elasticity of normative concepts, their referential stability, and the objectivity of normative truths. (shrink)

Scholars of ideology in social-scientific disciplines, including psychology, sociology, and political science, stand to benefit from taking seriously the philosophical contributions of Professor Peter Railton. This is because Railton provides much-needed conceptual precision—and a rare sense of epistemological and moral clarity—to a topic that is notoriously slippery and prone to relativistic musing and the drawing of false equivalences. In an essay entitled “Morality, Ideology, and Reflection: Or, the Duck Sits Yet,” Railton (2000/2003) aptly identified the purpose of ideological analysis as (...) the unmasking of “nonepistemic” interests—that is, interests other than truth-seeking, accuracy, or warrant —that contribute to the development, adoption, and dissemination of political and religious belief systems. (shrink)

Il testo esplora la legge morale come fenomeno sovra-naturale razionalmente dimostrabile. Partendo dall’osservazione che, in natura, ogni azione è governata dall’istinto di sopravvivenza e dall’interesse personale, mostra come un comportamento altruistico puro sembri apparentemente impossibile. Eppure, la legge morale emerge come principio coerente e universale: pur potendo generare vantaggi personali, la sua essenza non dipende dall’interesse, distinguendosi così dalla causalità naturale. La novità del lavoro consiste nella dimostrazione logica e concettuale della legge morale, senza ricorrere a presupposti religiosi, culturali o (...) empirici tradizionali. A differenza di Kant, che la postulava a priori, o di Tommaso d’Aquino, che la fondava sulla teologia, qui la moralità discende dalla coerenza ontologica e dalla possibilità concreta di applicazione. In tal modo, il testo propone un paradigma originale di filosofia morale: la legge morale non è solo postulato, ma emergenza razionalmente necessaria, concettualmente sovra-naturale e applicabile. Le sei appendici costruiscono il percorso argomentativo: Appendice A definisce le implicazioni del principio di conservazione. Appendice B distingue tra libertà di scelta, subordinata all’interesse personale, e scelta di libertà, realizzabile solo aderendo alla legge morale, evidenziando come la morale rappresenti l’unica scelta coerente in grado di emancipare l’individuo dal servilismo. Appendice C esplora la dialettica tra Io ed Ego: lasciato al solo istinto, l’individuo degenera; il metodo morale, invece, consente libertà autentica, coerenza e comprensione oggettiva. Appendice D introduce analogie scientifiche, come il dualismo onda-corpuscolo, per mostrare i limiti simbolici della conoscenza umana, ma sottolinea come la legge morale possa essere compresa attraverso esempi concreti e universali. Appendice E, tramite la dimostrazione logico-formale, rende esplicita la validità concettuale della legge morale, distinguendo chiaramente la libertà morale assoluta dall’illusoria libertà di scelta. I lemmi e il teorema mostrano come un’azione morale coerente, guidata dalla volontà razionale e immune dall’interesse personale, sia necessariamente possibile e applicabile, conferendo un fondamento rigoroso e razionale all’idea di comportamento morale sovra-naturale. Appendice F propone un esempio logico-formale. In sintesi, il testo costruisce un ponte tra narrazione filosofica e formalizzazione logica, proponendo un quadro innovativo, coerente e profondamente originale della filosofia morale. (shrink)

Plato's moral realism rests on the Idea of the Good, the unhypothetical first principle of all. It is this, as Plato says, that makes just things useful and beneficial. That Plato makes the first principle of all the Idea of the Good sets his approach apart from that of virtually every other philosopher. This fact has been occluded by later Christian Platonists who tried to identify the Good with the God of scripture. But for Plato, theology, though important, is subordinate (...) to metaphysics. For this reason, ethics is independent of theology and attached to metaphysics. This book challenges many contemporary accounts of Plato's ethics that start with the so-called Socratic paradoxes and attempt to construct a psychology of action or moral psychology that makes these paradoxes defensible. Rather, Lloyd Gerson argues that Plato at least never thought that moral realism was defensible outside of a metaphysical framework. (shrink)

Gilbert Harman, in a well-known thought experiment, evokes the intuition that moral value can be perceptually seen. However, Harman dismisses the intuition, contending that moral concepts and judgments are the products of agent psychology and do not map onto mind-independent objects. Robert Audi, attempting to account for moral perception himself, fails to meet Harman’s challenge since his own ontological commitments do not allow for objects that moral concepts can map onto. This paper will offer an alternate theory of moral perception (...) that maps moral concepts onto mind-independent entities, thereby meeting Harman’s challenge. To accomplish this, I offer that moral properties are not supervenient but are relational properties which possess their own non-reducible phenomenology. (shrink)

According to a common prejudice in ethical theory, morality cannot be grounded in emotional experience unless we are to forfeit an a priori foundation for ethics. This prejudice in ethics is often buttressed by a formalist assumption about the a priori in general, according to which all a priori truth must ultimately redound to formal reason. Upon this view, even if we were to grant intentional directedness to certain affective experiential contents, the epistemic relevance of such contents would be limited (...) to disclosing empirically contingent facts. In this paper, I aim to make some headway in over- coming this prejudice through an appropriation of Max Scheler’s material a priori account of values. On the Schelerian account I defend, law-like constraints on evaluative truths are grounded in emotionally given value essences, which constitute a unique domain of a priori experiential facts alongside those pertaining to all experiential modalities (e. g. color, tone, space, etc.). (shrink)