I came across this on a philosophy discussion board, where someone asked for evidence, any evidence at all, for moral realism and I think it’s very telling that there was none.
One person posted three arguments though and I thought it would be fun to evaluate them to see if they’re coherent. I wouldn’t be holding my breath.
First, there’s Mill. In your question, you seem to allude utilitarianism in stating “Believing in objective moral values might be a good strategy to maximize happiness” but then you kind of depart in suggesting that this would not make them true.
That’s just an appeal to utility. Just because an idea might lead to what you might define as a positive outcome, that doesn’t make the idea true. This is just the fallacy from consequences. Just because you really like the idea, that doesn’t make the idea factually correct and that’s the whole point. Which of the moral philosophical views is actually defensible in the real world? It doesn’t seem to be moral realism.
For Mill, the word good means pleasure-causing, and the word bad means painful. If there are objective things that would increase or decrease pain or pleasure, then it seems there’s an objective account of good and bad along this definitions. This could be called “moral realism.” Admittedly, there’s a grounding objection ready at hand which is why would what makes these ideas (pleasure and pain) equivalent to ideas we call “good” and “bad.” (I will return to this problem shortly). But for Mill, the only keep assumption is that we should relate pain/pleasure to good/bad.
So, in this sense, Mill is just pushing hedonism and hedonism is purely subjective, in opposition to the claims of moral realists. Just because you really like an idea, that doesn’t make said idea factually correct and that’s all I’m concerned with. Again, and I brought this up previously, what if killing the Jews made Hitler very happy? It caused him pleasure. That must make what he did “good”, right? For some subset of murderers, the psychopaths for instance, they enjoy killing. That must make murder good in those instances. This is where the moral realists run into problems because, good according to who? The majority? That doesn’t help, that’s just collective subjectivity and that’s beyond the bounds of moral realism. I’m still waiting for them to get back to the very basis of their ideas. However, let’s continue and see if this goes anywhere worthwhile.
Second, there’s Aristotle. I read him as a type of moral realist. On his configuration, what is good is that which accords with the kind that something is. I.e., what makes a dog an excellent dog. This becomes ethical “good” when used in reference to what makes a human an excellent human and enables their flourishing. If there are any facts about human flourishing, there’s a reason to view these things as real and thus what this theories declares good or bad to be real. Again, this view might leave us wondering what is different between saying “a good human being” and “a well-functioning human being.” In which case, it seems like we could drop the predicate. For a contemporary reference look at “Modern Moral Theories” by G.E.M. Anscombe.
Yet this completely falls apart as well. We can go back to the ontological argument proposed by Anselm and the refutation come up with by Gaunilo of Marmoutiers. To say that the most perfect characteristics must describe God is done away with by claiming that there is a most perfect island out there somewhere. Just because you can imagine a thing, that doesn’t make that thing real. It all becomes reductio ad absurdum, simply asserting a thing is real without being able to demonstrate that it is. Aristotle is just as guilty and just as subjective. What makes a dog an excellent dog? Who gets to decide the criteria? What I consider an excellent dog and what you consider an excellent dog might be two entirely different things. There is no demonstrable Platonic form for what an excellent dog is. This makes the entire process entirely useless.
Aristotle actually has a nice objection to crude readings of Mill (anachronistically) — which is that some people have thoroughly wrong understandings of pleasure and pain due to warped upbringings, etc.
No, not really, because again, there are very clear and obvious exceptions to the idea that nobody seems willing to talk about. Jack the Ripper might have really gotten off on hacking up prostitutes. Does that suddenly make what he did “good” because it provided him pleasure, contentment, enjoyment or whatever words you wish to insert? I don’t think you’re going to get a lot of people who agree with that.
Third, there’s Kant and similar theories. Here, “good” means in accordance with objective reason and bad means done subjectively rather than for objective reasons. (I’m sketching quickly here because the details are not relevant to your question).
Yet again, that’s wholly subjective in nature. Remember, we’re trying to get to this: “Moral realism (also ethical realism) is 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.” How any of this gets you anywhere remotely close to the objective world (and remember, the definition specifically does away with subjective opinion), I will never know. The second you start talking about people’s feelings, people’s opinions, basically anything having to do with people at all, you have left the realm of moral realism. Is there no one that actually has an argument that actually gets to where they claim they can go?
If you have any ideas, please let me know below.
I think Utilitarianism is garbage, but your criticism of it here makes some really poor mistakes.
First, it misunderstands Mill. While Mill is a classical hedonist, he doesn’t think hedonism is subjective. What causes you pleasure and what causes me pleasure might be different, but the idea that “pleasure is good” isn’t subjective!
Modern utilitarians usually don’t call themselves hedonists, and we might not call Mill a hedonist today just to avoid confusion – Mill doesn’t think that only pleasure is good. He thinks something closer to eudiamonia is good. He talks about higher and lower pleasures, and so on.
This is also a broader misunderstanding of Utilitarianism here. Typically, the belief is that you should do the thing that produces the most utility for all! Hopefully, you can see how the Hitler example doesn’t seem to work here.
There are loads of reasons to think Utilitarianism doesn’t work, but your criticisms don’t address either modern or historic positions accurately.
You don’t discuss how Aristotle grounds his position at all. How can you call this a refutation when you don’t discuss any of the defence he gives, or any of the modern accounts?
You ask who decides what the function is, but we’ve already talked about that together. We’ve talked a little about naturalism, and we’ve talked about how you can explain funciton by appealing to evolution, psychology etc etc. Again, this is a pet peeve I have with you which is that you only ever seem to remember your most article or comment. It’s so dishonest to not engage with this when I’ve taken a lot of time to explain it to you before.
Even if you think these accounts don’t work you need to say why, and you need to acknowledge that they exist!
I like how you say “I will never know ” as an obvious admission you won’t read more on Kant. It’s so bizarre to say “I can’t see how this would work and therefore it is false” when all you’ve done is read 3 sentences.
Something that should flag up that these aren’t good positions are that all of these were written before the term “moral realism” was kicking about. There is a reference to three historic positions, all of which are discussed in their own small paragraph.
I don’t understand why you’d go to philosophy stack exchange instead of just reading a textbook on modern views. It’s such an odd choice and it strikes me as a little lazy.
Again, I’ll say again is there any way I can DM you my work email and we can organise some kind of more formal thing?