Reality and Morality

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Billy Dunaway
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Moral Language ◽  
Moral Properties ◽  
Realist View

This book develops and defends a framework for moral realism. It defends the idea that moral properties are metaphysically elite, or privileged parts of reality. It argues that realists can hold that this makes them highly eligible as the referents for our moral terms, an application of a thesis sometimes called reference magnetism. And it elaborates on these theses by introducing some natural claims about how we can know about morality, by having beliefs that are free from a kind of risk of error. This package of theses in metaphysics, meta-semantics, and epistemology is motivated with a view to an explanation of possible moral disagreements. Many writers have emphasized the scope of moral disagreement, and have given compelling examples of possible users of moral language who appear to be genuinely disagreeing, rather than talking past one another, with their use of moral language. What has gone unnoticed is that there are limits to these possible disagreements, and not all possible users of moral language are naturally interpreted as capable of genuine disagreement. The realist view developed in this book can explain both the extent of, and the limits to, moral disagreement, and thereby has explanatory power that counts significantly in its favor.

Disagreement and Convergence

2020 ◽  
pp. 193-212
Author(s):  
Billy Dunaway
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Moral Language ◽  
Moral Beliefs ◽  
The Core ◽  
Realist View

The main problem in the first five chapters is that of explaining why it is that many possible users of moral language disagree with one other, rather than talk past each other. There are other problems about moral disagreement which relate to the core claims of the realist view that I have defended. These problems center on the notion of convergence: many users of moral terms do not appear to be disposed to agree, or converge, on moral matters, even after extensive reflection. Some argue that non-converging users of moral language cannot refer to the same property. Others claim that if convergence does not obtain, then moral knowledge is not possible. This chapter shows how the realist view developed in the previous chapters should reject these claims. It should hold that reference magnetism allows for non-converging speakers to co-refer, and that the possibility of a non-converging speaker does not show that moral beliefs are at risk of being false, and so not knowledge.

scholarly journals Mathematical and Moral Disagreement

2019 ◽  
Vol 70 (279) ◽  
pp. 302-327
Author(s):  
Silvia Jonas
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Central Problem ◽  
Mathematical Realism

Abstract The existence of fundamental moral disagreements is a central problem for moral realism and has often been contrasted with an alleged absence of disagreement in mathematics. However, mathematicians do in fact disagree on fundamental questions, for example on which set-theoretic axioms are true, and some philosophers have argued that this increases the plausibility of moral vis-à-vis mathematical realism. I argue that the analogy between mathematical and moral disagreement is not as straightforward as those arguments present it. In particular, I argue that pluralist accounts of mathematics render fundamental mathematical disagreements compatible with mathematical realism in a way in which moral disagreements and moral realism are not.1

Ontological Entanglement in the Normative Web

Dialogue ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 483-501
Author(s):  
BENJAMIN WINOKUR
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Moral Properties

Terence Cuneo has recently argued that we have to be committed to the existence of epistemic facts insofar as they are indispensable to theorizing. Furthermore, he argues that the epistemic properties of these facts are inextricably ‘ontologically entangled’ with certain moral properties, such that there exist ‘moral-epistemic’ facts. Cuneo, therefore, concludes that moral realism is true. I argue that Cuneo’s appeal to the existence of moral-epistemic facts is problematic, even granting his argument for the existence of indispensable epistemic facts. I conclude, therefore, that Cuneo’s argument fails to justify moral realism.

scholarly journals Blackburn’s Supervenience Argument Against Moral Realism: Revisited

Metaphysica ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 151-165
Author(s):  
Harold W. Noonan
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Natural Properties ◽  
Moral Properties ◽  
Descriptive Names

AbstractBlackburn argues against naturalistic moral realism. He argues that there is no conceptual entailment from satisfying a naturalistic predicate to satisfying a moral predicate. But the moral is conceptually supervenient on the natural. However, this conjunction of conceptual supervenience with lack of conceptual entailment is something the non-realist can explain, but the realist cannot. I argue first that Blackburn’s best formulation of his challenge is his first one. Subsequently he reformulates it as a demand for a ‘ban on mixed worlds’. Critics have directed their arguments against this formulation but they are ineffective against Blackburn’s first formulation. My second thesis is, even so formulated the realist can meet the challenge. The bare conceptual supervenience of the moral on the natural can be given a realist explanation by understanding names of moral properties as descriptive names of natural properties.

Moral and Theological Realism: The Explanatory Argument

2007 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 311-329 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russ Shafer-Landau
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Theological Realism ◽  
Moral Facts

AbstractThere are striking parallels, largely unexplored in the literature, between skeptical arguments against theism and against moral realism. After sketching four arguments meant to do this double duty, I restrict my attention to an explanatory argument that claims that we have most reason to deny the existence of moral facts (and so, by extrapolation, theistic ones), because such putative facts have no causal-explanatory power. I reject the proposed parity, and offer reasons to think that the potential vulnerabilities of moral realism on this front are quite different from those of the theist.

scholarly journals Are We Playing a Moral Lottery? Moral Disagreement from a Metasemantic Perspective

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sinan Dogramaci
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Content Determination ◽  
Sharon Street ◽  
Gilbert Harman

If someone disagrees with my moral views, or more generally if I’m in a group of n people who all disagree with each other, but I don’t have any special evidence or basis for my epistemic superiority, then it’s at best a 1-in-n chance that my views are correct. The skeptical threat from disagreement is thus a kind of moral lottery, to adapt a similar metaphor from Sharon Street. Her own genealogical debunking argument, as I discuss, relies on a premise of such disagreement among evolutionary counterparts.In this paper, I resist the threat from disagreement by showing that, on some of the most influential and most attractive theories of content determination, the premise of moral disagreement cannot serve any skeptical or revisionary purposes. I examine and criticize attempts, made by Gilbert Harman and Sharon Street, to argue from disagreement to relativism by relying on a theory of content determination that involves a principle that, within certain constraints, maximizes the attribution to us of true beliefs. And I examine and criticize Robert Williams’s attempt to show there is moral disagreement by relying on a theory of content determination that involves a principle that instead maximizes the attribution to us of rationality. My overall aim is to defend commonsense moral realism via a careful look at the theory of content and concepts.

scholarly journals Considering Dispositional Moral Realism

Perspectives ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-22
Author(s):  
Prabhpal Singh
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Secondary Qualities ◽  
Dispositional Account ◽  
Affective Attitudes ◽  
Simon Blackburn ◽  
Moral Properties ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
David Enoch

AbstractMy aim in this paper is to consider a series of arguments against Dispositional Moral Realism and argue that these objections are unsuccessful. I will consider arguments that try to either establish a dis-analogy between moral properties and secondary qualities or try to show that a dispositional account of moral properties fails to account for what a defensible species of moral realism must account for. I also consider criticisms from Simon Blackburn (1993), who argues that there could not be a corresponding perceptual faculty for moral properties, and David Enoch (2011), who argues that Dispositional Moral Realism does not most plausibly explain the difference between moral disagreements and disagreements of mere preference. Finally, I examine a novel criticism concerning the relationship between the diverse variety of moral properties and the range of our normative affective attitudes, arguing that the view has no problem accounting for this diversity.

scholarly journals A debunking explanation for moral progress

2019 ◽  
Vol 177 (11) ◽  
pp. 3171-3191
Author(s):  
Nathan Cofnas
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Moral Truth ◽  
Moral Progress ◽  
Cultural Convergence ◽  
Moral Beliefs ◽  
Debunking Arguments ◽  
Empirical Argument ◽  
Evolutionary Debunking

Abstract According to “debunking arguments,” our moral beliefs are explained by evolutionary and cultural processes that do not track objective, mind-independent moral truth. Therefore (the debunkers say) we ought to be skeptics about moral realism. Huemer counters that “moral progress”—the cross-cultural convergence on liberalism—cannot be explained by debunking arguments. According to him, the best explanation for this phenomenon is that people have come to recognize the objective correctness of liberalism. Although Huemer may be the first philosopher to make this explicit empirical argument for moral realism, the idea that societies will eventually converge on the same moral beliefs is a notable theme in realist thinking. Antirealists, on the other hand, often point to seemingly intractable cross-cultural moral disagreement as evidence against realism (the “argument from disagreement”). This paper argues that the trend toward liberalism is susceptible to a debunking explanation, being driven by two related non-truth-tracking processes. First, large numbers of people gravitate to liberal values for reasons of self-interest. Second, as societies become more prosperous and advanced, they become more effective at suppressing violence, and they create conditions where people are more likely to empathize with others, which encourages liberalism. The latter process is not truth tracking (or so this paper argues) because empathy-based moral beliefs are themselves susceptible to an evolutionary debunking argument. Cross-cultural convergence on liberalism per se does not support either realism or antirealism.

scholarly journals A New Route from Moral Disagreement to Moral Skepticism

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-207
Author(s):  
OLLE RISBERG ◽  
FOLKE TERSMAN
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Moral Skepticism ◽  
Reasoning Skills ◽  
Moral Facts

AbstractMoral disagreement is sometimes thought to pose problems for moral realism because it shows that we cannot achieve knowledge of the moral facts the realists posit. In particular, it is ‘fundamental’ moral disagreement—that is, disagreement that is not due to distorting factors such as ignorance of relevant nonmoral facts, bad reasoning skills, or the like—that is supposed to generate skeptical implications. In this paper, we show that this version of the disagreement challenge is flawed as it stands. The reason is that the epistemic assumptions it requires are incompatible with the possibility of fundamental disagreement. However, we also present an alternative reconstruction of the challenge that avoids the problem. The challenge we present crucially invokes the principle that knowledge requires ‘adherence’. While that requirement is usually not discussed in this context, we argue that it provides a promising explanation of why disagreement sometimes leads to skepticism.

Moral Perception and the Contents of Experience

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 294-317 ◽  
Author(s):  
Preston J. Werner
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Moral Perception ◽  
Philosophy Of Perception ◽  
Normal Individuals ◽  
Moral Properties

I defend the thesis that at least some moral properties can be part of the contents of experience. I argue for this claim using acontrast argument, a type of argument commonly found in the literature on the philosophy of perception. I first appeal to psychological research on what I call emotionally empathetic dysfunctional individuals (eedis) to establish a phenomenal contrast betweeneedis and normal individuals in some moral situations. I then argue that the best explanation for this contrast, assuming non-skeptical moral realism, is thatbadnessis represented in the normal individual’s experience but not in theeedi’s experience. I consider and reject four alternative explanations of the contrast.

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