Moral Realism

[Music] hi i want to talk to you today about moral realism it's best understood i think as realism applied to morality or ethics and so the question is really about moral discourse are there any mind independent moral truths the moral realist answers yes now i could really just stop here but i think that doesn't explain the lay of the land so let's take a step back first of all ethics or normative ethics or morality is the question of well what's right and wrong what's good and bad what we ought to do and so on i've summarized it as consisting primarily of three questions what should i do what kind of person should i be and how do i decide that's normative ethics we're thinking about what kind of people we should be what we should do how we go about making those decisions but what are we doing when we engage in that kind of reasoning when we think about what's right and wrong when we classify certain states of character as virtues or vices that seems to be a different sort of inquiry it's called meta ethics when we're thinking not what should i do but how do i go about even thinking about what to do and what does it mean to call an action right or wrong those kinds of questions are questions about morality not questions within morality and that's what we're going to be talking about today moral realism is not a position within ethics it's a position about ethics about what we're doing when we engage in ethical discourse so let's ask a few meta-ethical questions first question is is moral discourse capable of being true or false is it something that has a truth value when we make a statement like murder is wrong or generosity is a virtue are we saying something that could even be true or false or are we doing something else well let's phrase that as a basic question as philosophers tend to think of it we can ask is moral discourse truth apt that is to say is it the kind of thing that is even capable of being true or false we could think are moral statements declarative statements are they making claims about the world or about anything else claims that could be true or false or are they doing something else expressing an attitude for example or giving a command or doing something that isn't something we can even classify as true or false well there are two possible answers here we can say yes or we can say no if we say yes we're saying well this is in the ballpark then of something to be evaluated is true or false that is a position known as cognitivism if we say no then we're basically saying this is outside that realm of ordinary evaluation it doesn't get truth values it's not to be thought about as true or false it's doing something else that's a position generally called non-cognitivism and i'm going to talk about that separately let's assume that we've answered this question yes that moral statements are something like declarative statements they're making assertions and so they can be evaluated as true or false they're capable of being true or false well are any of them true it might be yeah they're capable of being evaluated as true or false they're all false right so here we can say well are they ever in fact true and again we had two possibilities we could answer yes or no now if we say no if we say they're the kinds of things that are trying to make assertions about the world for example but gosh they're just totally wrong-headed they're all false we end up with a position known as error theory error theory basically says yes we're trying to attribute moral properties to things for example but there are no moral properties so everything we say in morality is just false well that's a view that could be maybe this is just a massive mistake and so there are no moral properties no moral qualities no moral relationships no moral facts we're talking as if there are we're saying that there are but it's just wrong when we say generosity is a virtue we're wrong and it's not because of some surprising fact about generosity that it's harmful in some ways or something no it has nothing to do with that it's just that we're claiming that anything is a virtue or that anything could be a virtue no there just are no virtues and so it's a bogus idea from the get-go not in the sense that it's meaningless it's just making a lot of claims that are false we can have a slightly milder kinder gentler version of this view where we say well look yeah they're false but they're not even trying to be true in the way you mean they're really fictional and so we could have a view known as fictionalism the idea here would be that when we engage in fiction storytelling and so forth yes in a certain sense we're saying a bunch of false things but we can talk about what's true in the fiction what's true in the story and so there's a kind of way of talking as if these things were true but of course they're not really robert subby tells his story of the three bears you're probably familiar with from your childhood once upon a time three bears lived together in a cottage in the woods well did three bears really live in a cottage in the woods the literal minded person might say hmm i i don't know of three bears living together in a cottage the bears live in cottages and you know go on and the rest of the story it gets worse i mean these bears have chairs and they have beds and they eat porridge really and yeah i mean saudi's not trying to describe some zoological facts instead he's telling you a story maybe morality is like that we're not trying to actually describe the world in any way we're doing something else something like storytelling suppose however we answer true we say moral discourse is truth act it could be true or false and in fact it's sometimes true we can now ask is it mind independent is it in some sense true about the world something independent of us or is it mind dependent so once again we can ask is this mind independent and answer yes or no if we answered no we're saying there are moral truths moral discourse is not only capable of being true it's sometimes true but its truths are dependent on the mind they're mind dependent in something like the way the conceptualist says there are universals but they're mind-dependent there's something like concepts or ideas or mental constructions so similarly here we might say yes there are moral truths but they are something like moral constructions moral projections or something of that sort or they depend in some other way on our states of mind that view is usually known as subjectivism and there might be a variety of different kinds of subjectivism depending upon exactly what mind dependence we have in mind there might be many ways in which moral discourse could depend on the mind and so similarly there are many different versions of subjectivism are these things truths about desires for example or about pleasures and pains or other states of mind are they truths about approvals and disapprovals there are lots of things we could say under the heading of subjectivism and there are many different versions of such a theory but suppose we say yes we say not only is moral discourse capable of being true and sometimes in fact true but also sometimes at least it's describing a mind independent fact it is that is to say true mind independently in a way that does not depend on mind we are moral realists so moral realism is that part of the logical space here in metaethics it's the view that moral discourse is truth apt capable of being true or false that it is at least sometimes true and in a mind independent way and so the moral realist says yes there are mind independent moral truths now that might sound odd to you mind independent moral truth i think most people throughout the history of philosophy probably have been moral realists i think most people intuitively are they think the fact that murder is wrong is true and they think moreover it's true not just because they happen to not want people to commit murder or something like that that's my dependent but that there really is a mind independent fact of the matter what kind of truth though would it be some people have criticized this view saying i don't understand what that could be what would be a mind independent moral property be like how could it exist and what kind of thing would be a moral fact so some philosophers have objected that these things if they existed would be very strange sorts of constituents of the world but we don't have to think of them as strange or suey generous though we could we could think there is a special kind of moral quality or moral property or moral fact we could also however say ah really this is just an utterly ordinary descriptive natural fact under a different guise so just as there are different varieties of non-cognitivism different varieties of subjectivism so there are different varieties of moral realism depending upon what kind of mind independent moral truth is involved here and what makes those things mind independently true there are many different possible responses to that and so many varieties of moral realism well let's summarize the moral realist says that moral discourse is truth apt it is capable of being true or false it is appropriately thought of in terms of truth values it is moreover capable of being true sometimes we say true things things like generosity is a virtue or murder is wrong then we say those things are independent of the mind it's not just dependent on our desires or fact facts about our psychology or something it is something really true about for example generosity as a state of character or about murder as a kind of action and so the claim is there are mind independent moral truths whatever their character might be whatever might make them true there are such truths they are mind independent and so this is a claim about the status of ethics about the status of morality whatever you think in particular is right or wrong good or bad virtuous or vicious the claim here is that you're making a claim about the world about something outside of you and your states of mind and that some of those claims might be true

Channel: Daniel Bonevac

Views: 1,614

Rating: 4.9658117 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: 23JxSfOUsZ0

Length: 11min 47sec (707 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 27 2020