Moral realism (also ethical realism) is the position that

ethical Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns ma ...

sentences express

proposition In logic and linguistics, a proposition is the meaning of a declarative sentence. In philosophy, " meaning" is understood to be a non-linguistic entity which is shared by all sentences with the same meaning. Equivalently, a proposition is the no ...

s that refer to objective features of the world (that is, features independent of subjective opinion), some of which may be true to the extent that they report those features accurately. This makes moral realism a non-

nihilist Nihilism (; ) is a philosophy, or family of views within philosophy, that rejects generally accepted or fundamental aspects of human existence, such as objective truth, knowledge, morality, values, or meaning. The term was popularized by Ivan ...

form of ethical cognitivism (which accepts that ethical sentences express propositions and can therefore be evaluated as true or false) with an

ontological In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality. Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into categories and which of these entities exis ...

orientation, standing in opposition to all forms of moral

anti-realism In analytic philosophy, anti-realism is a position which encompasses many varieties such as metaphysical, mathematical, semantic, scientific, moral and epistemic. The term was first articulated by British philosopher Michael Dummett in an argument ...

and

moral skepticism Moral skepticism (or moral scepticism in British English) is a class of meta-ethical 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 impo ...

, including

ethical subjectivism Ethical subjectivism or moral non-objectivism is the meta-ethical view which claims that: #Ethical sentences express propositions. #Some such propositions are true. #The truth or falsity of such propositions is ineliminably dependent on the (actu ...

(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 morally right or wrong. Moral nihilism is distinct from moral relativism, which allows for actions to be wrong relative to a particular culture or indivi ...

(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 (i.e., statements) and thus cannot be true or false (they are not truth-apt). A noncognitivist denies the cognitivist claim that "moral judgments are ...

(which denies that moral sentences express propositions at all). Within moral realism, the two main subdivisions are

ethical naturalism Ethical naturalism (also called moral naturalism or naturalistic cognitivistic definism) is the meta-ethical view which claims that: # Ethical sentences express propositions. # Some such propositions are true. # Those propositions are made true ...

and

ethical non-naturalism Ethical non-naturalism (or moral non-naturalism) is the meta-ethical view which claims that: # Ethical sentences express propositions. # Some such propositions are true. # Those propositions are made true by objective features of the world, indep ...

. Many philosophers claim that moral realism may be dated back at least to Plato as a philosophical doctrine, and that it is a fully defensible form of moral doctrine. A survey from 2009 involving 3,226 respondents found that 56% of philosophers accept or lean towards moral realism (28%: anti-realism; 16%: other). Another study in 2020 found 62.1% accept or lean towards realism. Some notable examples of robust moral realists include David Brink,Brink, David O., Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

John McDowell John Henry McDowell, FBA (born 7 March 1942) is a South African philosopher, formerly a fellow of University College, Oxford, and now university professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Although he has written on metaphysics, epistemology, ...

Peter Railton Peter Albert Railton (born May 23, 1950) is an American philosopher who is Gregory S. Kavka Distinguished University Professor and John Stephenson Perrin Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he has taught since ...

Geoffrey Sayre-McCord Geoffrey Sayre-McCord (né McCord, born December 10, 1956) is an Americans, American philosopher who works in moral theory, ethics, meta-ethics, the history of ethics, and epistemology. He teaches at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill ...

,Sayre-McCord, Geoff (2005). "Moral Realism", ''The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2005 Edition)'', Edward N. Zalta (ed.).
link
Michael Smith, Terence Cuneo,Cuneo, Terence (2007). "The Normative Web: An Argument for Moral Realism", Oxford.

Russ Shafer-Landau Russ Shafer-Landau (born 1963) is an American philosopher and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Education and career Shafer-Landau is a graduate of Brown University and completed his PhD work at the University of ...

,Shafer-Landau, Russ (2003) "Moral Realism: A Defense", Oxford, . G. E. Moore,Moore, G. E. (1903). ''Principia Ethica'', Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

John Finnis John Mitchell Finnis, , (born 28 July 1940) is an Australian legal philosopher, jurist and scholar specializing in jurisprudence and the philosophy of law. He is the Biolchini Family Professor of Law, emeritus, at Notre Dame Law School and a P ...

Richard Boyd Richard Newell Boyd (May 19, 1942 – February 20, 2021) was an American philosopher, who spent most of his career teaching philosophy at Cornell University where he was Susan Linn Sage Professor of Philosophy and Humane Letters Emeritus. He speci ...

, Nicholas Sturgeon,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.

Thomas Nagel Thomas Nagel (; born July 4, 1937) is an American philosopher. He is the University Professor of Philosophy and Law Emeritus at New York University, where he taught from 1980 to 2016. His main areas of philosophical interest are legal philosophy, ...

and

Derek Parfit Derek Antony Parfit (; 11 December 1942 – 1 or 2 January 2017) was a British philosopher who specialised in personal identity, rationality, and ethics. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential moral philosophers of ...

Norman Geras Norman Geras (; 25 August 1943 – 18 October 2013) was a political theorist and Professor Emeritus of Politics at the University of Manchester. He contributed to an analysis of the works of Karl Marx in his book '' Marx and Human Nature'' and the ...

has argued that

Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...

was a moral realist. Moral realism has been studied in the various philosophical and practical applications.

Robust versus minimal moral realism

A delineation of moral realism into a minimal form, a moderate form, and a robust form has been put forward in the literature. The robust model of moral realism commits moral realists to three theses:Väyrynen, Pekka (2005). "Moral Realism", ''Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd Edition'', Donald M. Borchert (ed.).
link
) * ''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). * ''The alethic thesis:'' Some moral propositions are in fact true. * ''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 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 (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.Joyce, Richard (2007), "Moral Anti-Realism", ''The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2007 Edition)'',

Edward N. Zalta Edward Nouri Zalta (; born March 16, 1952) is an American philosopher who is a senior research scholar at the Center for the Study of Language and Information at Stanford University. He received his BA at Rice University in 1975 and his PhD fro ...

(ed.).
link
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-cognitivism. 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. In the minimal sense of realism, R. M. Hare 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-value In logic and mathematics, a truth value, sometimes called a logical value, is a value indicating the relation of a proposition to truth, which in classical logic has only two possible values (''true'' or '' false''). Computing In some progra ...

s per se. Moral constructivists like

John Rawls John Bordley Rawls (; February 21, 1921 – November 24, 2002) was an American moral, legal and political philosopher in the liberal tradition. Rawls received both the Schock Prize for Logic and Philosophy and the National Humanities Medal in 1 ...

and

Christine Korsgaard Christine Marion Korsgaard, (; born April 9, 1952) is an American philosopher who is the Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Philosophy Emerita at Harvard University. Her main scholarly interests are in moral philosophy and its history; the relat ...

Korsgaard, Christine (1996). ''The Sources of Normativity'', New York:

Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII of England, King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press A university press is an academic publishing hou ...

. may also be realists in this minimalist sense; the latter describes her own position as procedural realism. Some readings of evolutionary science such as those of

Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended fr ...

and

James Mark Baldwin James Mark Baldwin (January 12, 1861, Columbia, South Carolina – November 8, 1934, Paris) was an American philosopher and psychologist who was educated at Princeton under the supervision of Scottish philosopher James McCosh and who was one o ...

have suggested that in so far as an

ethics Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns m ...

may be associated with survival strategies and natural selection then such behavior may be associated with a moderate position of moral realism equivalent to an ethics of survival.

Advantages

Moral realism allows the ordinary rules of logic (

modus ponens In propositional logic, ''modus ponens'' (; MP), also known as ''modus ponendo ponens'' (Latin for "method of putting by placing") or implication elimination or affirming the antecedent, is a deductive argument form and rule of inference. ...

, 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 In meta-ethics, expressivism 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; ...

, 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 metaphilosophy and ethics, meta-ethics is the study of the nature, scope, and meaning of moral judgment. It is one of the three branches of ethics generally studied by philosophers, the others being normative ethics (questions of how one ought ...

have trouble even formulating the statement "this moral belief is wrong," and so they cannot resolve disagreements in this way.

Proponents

Philippa Foot adopts a moral realist position, criticizing Stevenson's idea that when evaluation is superposed on fact there has been a "committal in a new dimension." She introduces, by analogy, the practical implications of using the word "injury." Not just anything counts as an injury. There must be some impairment. When we suppose a man wants the things the injury prevents him from obtaining, haven’t we fallen into the old

naturalistic fallacy In philosophical ethics, the naturalistic fallacy is the claim that any reductive explanation of good, in terms of natural properties such as ''pleasant'' or ''desirable'', is false. The term was introduced by British philosopher G. E. Moore in ...

? Foot argues that the virtues, like hands and eyes in the analogy, play so large a part in so many operations that it is implausible to suppose that a committal in a non-naturalist dimension is necessary to demonstrate their goodness. W. D. Ross articulates his moral realism in analogy to mathematics by stating that the moral order is just as real as "the spatial or numerical structure expressed in the axioms of geometry or arithmetic". In his defense of

Divine Command Theory Divine command theory (also known as theological voluntarism) is a meta-ethical theory which proposes that an action's status as morally good is equivalent to whether it is commanded by God. The theory asserts that what is moral is determined ...

and thereby moral realism,

C. Stephen Evans Charles Stephen Evans (born 1948) is an American philosopher. He is one of the United States' leading experts on Søren Kierkegaard and has also published extensively on subjects including philosophy of religion and the relationship of psychology ...

comments that the fact that there are significant moral disagreements does not undermine moral realism. Much of what may appear to be moral disagreement is actually disagreement over facts. In abortion debates, for example, the crux of the issue may really be whether a fetus is a human person. He goes on to comment that there are in fact tremendous amounts of moral agreement. There are five common principles that are recognized by different human cultures, including (1) A general duty not to harm others and a general duty to benefit others; (2) Special duties to those with whom one has special relations, such as friends and family members; (3) Duties to be truthful; (4) Duties to keep one's commitments and promises; (5) Duties to deal fairly and justly with others.

Criticisms

Several criticisms have been raised against moral realism. A prominent criticism, articulated by

J.L. Mackie John Leslie Mackie (25 August 1917 – 12 December 1981) was an Australian philosopher. He made significant contributions to the philosophy of religion, metaphysics, and the philosophy of language, and is perhaps best known for his views on ...

, is that moral realism postulates the existence of "entities or qualities or relations of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe. Correspondingly, if we were aware of them it would have to be by some faculty of moral perception or intuition, utterly different from our ordinary ways of knowing everything else." A number of theories have been developed for how we access objective moral truths, including

ethical intuitionism Ethical intuitionism (also called moral intuitionism) is a view or family of views in moral epistemology (and, on some definitions, metaphysics). It is foundationalism applied to moral knowledge, the thesis that some moral truths can be known no ...

and

moral sense theory Moral sense theory (also known as moral sentimentalism) is a theory in moral epistemology and meta-ethics concerning the discovery of moral truths. Moral sense theory typically holds that distinctions between morality and immorality are discovered b ...

. Another criticism of moral realism put forth by Mackie is that it can offer no plausible explanation for cross-cultural moral differences—

ethical relativism Moral relativism or ethical relativism (often reformulated as relativist ethics or relativist morality) is used to describe several philosophical positions concerned with the differences in moral judgments across different peoples and cultures. ...

. "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". The evolutionary debunking argument suggests that because human psychology is primarily produced by evolutionary processes which do not seem to have a reason to be sensitive to moral facts, taking a moral realist stance can only lead to

. The aim of the argument is to undercut the motivations for taking a moral realist stance, namely to be able to assert there are reliable moral standards.

Robust versus minimal moral realism

Advantages

Proponents

Criticisms

See also

References

Further reading