Saturday, November 29, 2014

The Appeal of Moral Realism

I am now and how long been sympathetic to Moral Realism, or

Moral Realism: the tripartite view that (1) ethical claims admit of truth and falsity; (2) some such claims are true; and (3) the ethical facts are stance-independent*; that is, ethical claims, when true, are not made true by the fact that they are endorsed by or follow from the views or attitudes of any actual or hypothetical individual or group.

There are of course arguments for this position that I find persuasive; likewise arguments against alternatives. But it has occurred to me that an important source of my sympathy seems to be that it is hard for me to see how two claims could be false. The first is that

(A) even if human beings had never existed, true moral claims would still be true,

the second that

(B) even if no one believed them, true moral claims would still be true.

Now, many people I know would be somewhat embarrassed to be heard endorsing Moral Realism in a public forum, and many simply find the thesis off-putting. For instance, recently I heard a friend who is organizing a conference explain his decision not to invite a particular philosopher to do the keynote because he just couldn't stand to sit through another defense of Moral Realism. I find this somewhat confusing, and I'd like to make some more sense of this reaction. In particular, if you're one of these people, I'm curious to hear what you think of (A) and (B). Do they strike you as plausible? If not, why not?

*: The term is due to Russ Shafer-Landau.