I’ve been doing a lot of reading on moral realism of late, for obvious reasons, and I’m still not remotely convinced that it holds any water. Therefore, I wanted to grab something from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and at least start to talk about the article in passing. It just doesn’t demonstrate anything objectively real.

This time, we’ll just go over the introduction, otherwise this is going to be a very, very long post. I’ll come back and look at the rest as time allows, working one section at a time.

We’ll start off with a definition, from the aforementioned Encyclopedia, of what moral realism is. “Moral realists have here been characterized as those who hold that moral claims purport to report facts, that they are evaluable as true or false in light of whether the facts are as the claims purport, and that at least some such claims are actually true.” That’s just a bunch of words strung together and it doesn’t describe an actually useful position, so let’s try somewhere else. Wikipedia describes it as “the position that ethical sentences express propositions 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.” In other words, moral realists believe that there is a morality that exists beyond the mind of humans to invent it.

Except that’s absolutely not defensible in any way. So we’ll get back to the article at hand. It starts off with “Taken at face value, the claim that Nigel has a moral obligation to keep his promise, like the claim that Nyx is a black cat, purports to report a fact and is true if things are as the claim purports.” Except Nyx being a cat or having a cat is a completely demonstrable claim. You just have to produce the cat. If they can’t produce the cat, I am under no obligation whatsoever to accept it as true. I might, since having a cat is a very mundane claim and I know that lots of people have cats of all colors. I have a black cat myself. However, if they said they had a dragon, I would reject said claim unless it could be objectively validated by trotting the dragon out.

However, in the case of Nigel, there is no objective moral obligation to do anything. It’s certainly a useful trait within human societies, we want to be able to believe that people will do what they commit to doing, but beyond the human mind and the collective human desire, there doesn’t seem to be anything that obligates anyone to perform that specific act.

This is why it’s so important to define your terms and the one sticking point that I see so often is what is meant by “objective”. So here you go, from my perspective: “(of a person or their judgment) not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts.” In other words, it’s something that exists entirely beyond the ability of the human mind to invent or alter. Gravity exists no matter what humans think about it. Gravity is objectively real. Morals and ethics, they don’t seem to do the same, which is why I’m a moral anti-realist. I go where the evidence leads, full stop and there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that would lead me to conclude that moral realism is a coherent idea.

The article goes on to say that some moral claims are true. How do you know that? I’d say that first, you’d have to define “true” in some meaningful way and then demonstrate that the claim is accurate. Which moral claims can be made that can be objectively demonstrated to accurately represent reality? I don’t think you can come up with any. “You shouldn’t murder” or “you shouldn’t steal” aren’t demonstrable. At best, it leads to consequentialism, the idea that because we can subjectively choose to see the results in a positive way, they have to be true, but that’s not objective, is it? It doesn’t show that any of this is actually real, beyond our desire for it to be so, which takes it immediately out of the realm of the objective.

Then it  goes on to argue that moral non-realists only fall into two categories: “As a result, those who reject moral realism are usefully divided into (i) those who think moral claims do not purport to report facts in light of which they are true or false (noncognitivists) and (ii) those who think that moral claims do carry this purport but deny that any moral claims are actually true (error theorists).” Yet I’m not making either of those claims. My position is much more evidentialist. I have yet to see a single example of any moral claim which can be justified entirely beyond the human mindset. There is nothing in the moral landscape that can be demonstrated to be true, that once humans are removed entirely from the picture, can still be demonstrated to be true. We think it’s true, only because we’re the ones thinking that it’s true. Contrast that to the speed of light, which remains constant whether we’re there to study it or not. There is nothing that we can do to alter the speed of light in a vacuum but we can alter morality and we do all the time.

“The debate between moral realists and anti-realists assumes, though, that there is a shared object of inquiry—in this case, a range of claims all involved are willing to recognize as moral claims—about which two questions can be raised and answered.” We’ll get to those two questions in a second. If we can’t even agree what a moral claim is, then how in the world are we going to find parity in the discussion? Therefore, I simply ask what kind of questions they’re talking about and they usually can’t come up with any definitive answers. So let’s get to the two questions in question: “Do these claims purport to report facts in light of which they are true or false? Are some of them true? Moral realists answer ‘yes’ to both, non-cognitivists answer ‘no’ to the first (and, by default, ‘no’ to the second) while error theorists answer ‘yes’ to the first and ‘no’ to the second.” I don’t find the questions even coherent though. Do moral realists claim that they accurately represent reality? Sure. Can they prove it? No. Without that proof, their claims are irrelevant. Are some of them true? Certainly not objectively and certainly not demonstrably. Subjectively, maybe, depending on the criteria that we subjectively determine. That’s not what we’re supposedly talking about though.

This is why you need to be able to define your terms in some comprehensible way and stick to them. You can’t just throw out word salad and pretend it means something and that’s largely what a lot of philosophers do. Look at some of the quotes that I’ve presented so far. This is not clear, concise language, intended to facilitate open discussion, it’s gobbledegook. It’s people trying to pretend they’re smart without actually demonstrating it.

“By all accounts, moral realism can fairly claim to have common sense and initial appearances on its side.” There’s a reason that the appeal to common sense is a fallacy. What it has on its side is wishful thinking, nothing more. It appeals to people with an emotional desire for morality to be more than something we made up. That doesn’t mean that it is. This is usually where I lose people in a debate because the second they realize I’m not going to take their heartfelt desires seriously, I’m going to expect them to do some actual work and produce some demonstrable evidence, they just run away. It’s the same thing with the religious. Once faith is off the table, they have nothing else to say.

Next, however, there are five sections that I will get through over time. It might not be immediate but I promise that I will get there. My position is very simple. Put up or shut up. You can’t just play word games declaring up is down, left is right and subjective is objective. I’ve defined my terms. Go ahead and define yours. Then we can have a conversation and see where it gets us.

Usually, it doesn’t go anywhere worthwhile.