scholarly journals In Defence of Moral Realism: Examining Harry J. Gensler’s Critique of Cultural Relativism and Subjectivism

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anja Yousif
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Cultural Relativism ◽  
Moral Experience ◽  
Moral Progress ◽  
Moral Semantics

This paper will explore the nature of morality by providing a critique of cultural relativism and subjectivism and then arguing that moral realism provides a more coherent account of the nature of morality. The claim that moral realism provides a more coherent account of the nature of morality than cultural relativism or subjectivism is based on the arguments from moral progress, moral disagreement and moral semantics; and moral experience.

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.

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.

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

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.

Moral Progress Without Moral Realism

2010 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Moral Progress

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 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.

Culture and Moral Evaluation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diane Jeske
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Cultural Relativism ◽  
Moral Evaluation ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
Moral Deliberation ◽  
Moral Norms

Cultural norms and pressures often act as an impediment to effective moral deliberation. In seeing why disagreement about moral norms and a commitment to toleration do not provide us with reasons for accepting cultural relativism, we have less reason to view cultural norms as constitutive of moral norms. Even if moral norms are not constituted by cultural norms, some philosophers have argued that being raised in a particular culture can affect the degree to which one is subject to various kinds of moral evaluation. Examination of our case studies shows, however, that the kinds of cultures envisioned by these philosophers are rarely realized in practice. Nonetheless, we need to be sensitive to when ignorance is not culpable and, thus, to when actions resulting from that ignorance are not culpable. Moral disagreement should also cultivate in us an appropriate humility.

Does Moral Disagreement Pose a Semantic Challenge to Moral Realism?

Philosophia ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 1059-1073
Author(s):  
Justin Horn
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Moral Disagreement
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