scholarly journals Peter Railton’s moral realism

2011 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 79-103
Author(s):  
Voin Milevski
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Moral Realist ◽  
Moral Goodness ◽  
Moral Rightness ◽  
Moral Standards ◽  
Plausible Answer ◽  
Normative Role ◽  
Peter Railton ◽  
Moral Facts

Peter Railton is a moral realist, a naturalistic cognitivist, and a reductivist. He is a moral relist because he believes that moral facts exist. These moral facts are constituted by a complex set of natural facts (this is why Railton is a naturalistic realist). In order to make his naturalism plausible, Railton has to prove that moral facts (which are constituted by natural facts) can satisfy certain important conditions. Namely, he has to show that moral facts can have both explanatory and normative role. In the first part of this paper I shall attempt to demonstrate Railton?s arguments with which he proves that these conditions are satisfied in the area of non-moral goodness and in the area of moral rightness. In the conclusion of this paper I shall attempt to show that the most serious argument against Railton?s position is that Railton does not and cannot give a plausible answer to some very important questions about moral standards.

Moral realism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Dancy
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Moral Fact ◽  
Moral Realist ◽  
The World ◽  
The Right ◽  
Natural Fact ◽  
Moral Facts

Moral realism is the view that there are facts of the matter about which actions are right and which wrong, and about which things are good and which bad. But behind this bald statement lies a wealth of complexity. If one is a full-blown moral realist, one probably accepts the following three claims. First, moral facts are somehow special and different from other sorts of fact. Realists differ, however, about whether the sort of specialness required is compatible with taking some natural facts to be moral facts. Take, for instance, the natural fact that if we do this action, we will have given someone the help they need. Could this be a moral fact – the same fact as the fact that we ought to do the action? Or must we think of such a natural fact as the natural ‘ground’ for the (quite different) moral fact that we should do it, that is, as the fact in the world that makes it true that we should act this way? Second, realists hold that moral facts are independent of any beliefs or thoughts we might have about them. What is right is not determined by what I or anybody else thinks is right. It is not even determined by what we all think is right, even if we could be got to agree. We cannot make actions right by agreeing that they are, any more than we can make bombs safe by agreeing that they are. Third, it is possible for us to make mistakes about what is right and what is wrong. No matter how carefully and honestly we think about what to do, there is still no guarantee that we will come up with the right answer. So what people conscientiously decide they should do may not be the same as what they should do.

Moral realism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Dancy
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Moral Fact ◽  
Moral Realist ◽  
The World ◽  
The Right ◽  
Natural Fact ◽  
Moral Facts

Moral realism is the view that there are facts of the matter about which actions are right and which wrong, and about which things are good and which bad. But behind this bald statement lies a wealth of complexity. If one is a full-blown moral realist, one probably accepts the following three claims. First, moral facts are somehow special and different from other sorts of fact. Realists differ, however, about whether the sort of specialness required is compatible with taking some natural facts to be moral facts. Take, for instance, the natural fact that if we do this action, we will have given someone the help they need. Could this be a moral fact – the same fact as the fact that we ought to do the action? Or must we think of such a natural fact as the natural ‘ground’ for the (quite different) moral fact that we should do it, that is, as the fact in the world that makes it true that we should act this way? Second, realists hold that moral facts are independent of any beliefs or thoughts we might have about them. What is right is not determined by what I or anybody else thinks is right. It is not even determined by what we all think is right, even if we could be got to agree. We cannot make actions right by agreeing that they are, any more than we can make bombs safe by agreeing that they are. Third, it is possible for us to make mistakes about what is right and what is wrong. No matter how carefully and honestly we think about what to do, there is still no guarantee that we will come up with the right answer. So what people conscientiously decide they should do may not be the same as what they should do.

Reidian Moral Perception

2003 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terence Cuneo
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Corresponding States ◽  
Moral Perception ◽  
Good Theory ◽  
Moral Realist ◽  
Epistemic Access ◽  
Cognitive Faculties ◽  
Moral Faculty ◽  
States Of Knowledge ◽  
Moral Facts

It is a common antirealist strategy to reject realism about some domain of entities for broadly epistemological reasons. When this strategy is applied to realism about moral facts, it takes something like the following form:The moral realist believes that there are full-blooded, irreducible moral facts. But if there are moral facts of this sort, then we shall have no plausible story to tell about how we have epistemic access to them. After all, how can facts about what ought to be the case impinge upon our cognitive faculties so as to produce the corresponding states of knowledge? Indeed, rather than give us any plausible story about how we have epistemic access to moral facts, the realist posits a moral faculty by which we are supposed to ‘intuit’ or ‘see’ moral facts. But in doing so, the realist offers us an overly mysterious epistemology in addition to an already mysterious ontology. But any good theory ought not to multiply mysteries. So, all other things being equal, we ought to reject moral realism.

scholarly journals The contstructivistic defence of the objectivity of moral standards and natural law that does not require the debate on moral realism

2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 653-663
Author(s):  
Slavenko Sljukic
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Moral Realism ◽  
Categorical Imperative ◽  
Moral Relativism ◽  
The Other ◽  
Moral Sentiments ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Social Fact ◽  
Moral Standards ◽  
Theories Of Justice

The main goal of Kenneth R. Westphal?s How Hume and Kant Reconstruct Natural Law: Justifying Strict Objectivity without Debating Moral Realism is to defend the objectivity of moral standards and natural law and thus avoid the discussion about moral realism and its alternatives by interpreting Hume and Kant in a constructivistic sense. The reason behind the author?s disagreement with both: moral realism and non-realism (its alternative) is our inability to properly understand and answer one of the two parts in Socrates? question to Euthyphro: ?Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved?? Moral realists cannot provide an answer to its second part, since it is not possible to prove that moral standards are not artificial; conversely, moral non-realists cannot provide an answer to its first part, since it is not possible to avoid the relatitvity of moral standards. The author tends to solve this problem by avoiding the confrontation between moral realism and non-realism and thus choosing the constuctivistic stance that, as he argues, can be found in both Hume?s and Kant?s theories. The main point of this stance is that moral standards are indeed artificial, yet not arbitrary. He proves this by pointing out that both Hume and Kant treat the moral standards as a social fact (that is, artificial), but also as objective. Westphal points out that Hume explicitly writes about moral standards as a social fact, while showing that, at the same time, his theory of justice, which precedes all of the moral standards, is established independently of his theory of moral sentiments (potentially leading to moral relativism). In this manner, he provides the objectivity of those standards. On the other hand, Kant?s theory is interpreted as advanced, yet similar to Hume?s in its structure. The crucial similarity is that both Hume and Kant interpret the moral standards as a social fact (that is, as an artificial) and, at the same time, as the objective ones. Kant, unlike Hume, provides this objectivity by using a specific moral criterion - a categorical imperative. Those assumptions will be used as the main premises of a distinctively inspiring interpretation of Hume?s and Kant?s theories of justice.

Voluntarism, Naturalism, and Moral Realism

2020 ◽  
pp. 130-140
Author(s):  
Terence Irwin
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Objective Reality ◽  
Moral Rightness ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Vicious Regress ◽  
Divine Commands

Pufendorf criticizes Hobbes from a voluntarist point of view. He argues that if there were no divine commands, Hobbes would be right to derive morality from self-interest. Divine commands introduce the element of morality that goes beyond self-interest. Suarez is wrong, therefore, to believe in objective morality without divine commands. Shaftesbury attacks both egoists and voluntarists as ‘nominal moralists’ who overlook the objective reality of moral rightness and wrongness. Cudworth defends this position, arguing that any attempt to derive genuine morality from commands leads to a vicious regress. Clarke argues, from a position similar to Cudworth’s, that Hobbes cannot consistently maintain his view that nothing is morally right or wrong without enforcement by an organized state.

The Hard Problem for Soft Moral Realism

2019 ◽  
Vol 116 (10) ◽  
pp. 555-576
Author(s):  
Lei Zhong ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Hard Problem ◽  
The Third ◽  
Moral Metaphysics ◽  
The Hard Problem ◽  
Moral Philosophers ◽  
Moral Facts

Several leading moral philosophers have recently proposed a soft version of moral realism, according to which moral facts—though it is reasonable to postulate them—cannot metaphysically explain other facts (Dworkin 2011; Parfit 2011; Scanlon 2014). However, soft moral realism is faced with what I call the “Hard Problem,” namely, the problem of how this soft version of moral metaphysics could accommodate moral knowledge. This paper reconstructs and examines three approaches to solving the Hard Problem on behalf of the soft realist: the autonomy approach, the intuitionist approach, and the third-factor approach. I then argue that none of them is successful.

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.

An Ambiguity in Marx's and Engels's Account of Justice and Equality

1982 ◽  
Vol 76 (2) ◽  
pp. 328-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Gilbert
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Logical Structure ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Progress ◽  
Ethical Argument ◽  
Distribution Of Wealth ◽  
Moral Standards ◽  
The Status ◽  
International Distribution ◽  
Recent Debate

Given the widespread moral conventionalism or historicism in contemporary social science and ethics, many have viewed Marx as arguing either that conceptions of justice simply shift historically and lack objectivity (relativism) or that notions of justice are to be understood solely as expressions of class interests (reductionism). Although metaethical ambiguities about the status of conceptions of justice influenced some of Marx's and Engels's formulations, they condemned the “crying contrasts” of rich and poor. Marx is better understood as defending a version of moral objectivity or moral realism. The paper begins with an example from the recent debate about justice in the international distribution of wealth to highlight the implausibility of a relativist or reductionist account. It then describes alternative views of the status of justice and equality in Marx and Engels and explores the logical structure of Marx's critique of Proudhon. A fourth section examines the analogy between Marx's and Engels's realism in the philosophy of science and their realist arguments in ethics, focusing on Marx's and Engels's non-relativist and non-reductionist conception of moral progress. The conclusion sets Marx's use of concepts of exploitation in the context of his overall moral judgments and suggests that Marx's social or historical theory rather than his moral standards are the most controversial part of his ethical argument.

scholarly journals On the Defensibility and Believability of Moral Error Theory

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 461-473 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonas Olson
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Error Theory ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Moral Error Theory ◽  
Moral Error ◽  
Oxford University Press ◽  
Moral Facts

This article is a response to critical articles by Daan Evers, Bart Streumer, and Teemu Toppinen on my book Moral Error Theory: History, Critique, Defence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). I will be concerned with four main topics. I shall first try to illuminate the claim that moral facts are queer, and its role in the argument for moral error theory. In section 2, I discuss the relative merits of moral error theory and moral contextualism. In section 3, I explain why I still find the queerness argument concerning supervenience an unpromising argument against non-naturalistic moral realism. In section 4, finally, I reconsider the question whether I, or anyone, can believe the error theory.

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