LEZIONE 2
Moral Realism in General
These are some typical issues in metaethics. (More precisely, in the philosophical higherorder reflection about the fundamental conditions, conceptual, metaphysical, and normative, of
action and of its guidance. Meta-Practical Philosophy, so to say. “Moral” is taken in an extensive
sense, to cover the practically authoritative in general, not only ethical authority.)
(a) Moral ontology: Whether there are moral objects, or properties, or facts. Whether there
is something as counting as, or being, a moral object, property, or fact. In particular, Whether such
items would have something like a distinct essential nature, thus not being identical, or perhaps
reducible, to non-moral (non practical-normative) items.
(b) Meaning and function of moral discourse: Whether it is descriptive, aiming to represent
objects, properties, facts (as opposed to descriptive. Whether moral terms are reference-apt and
compose in ways that are truth-apt. Whether moral discourse has typically assertive force, its core
illocutionary import is assertion (as opposed to having typically imperative, or commendatory,
force).
(c) Moral epistemology: Whether there is anything like moral knowledge, or anyway moral
justified true belief. Whether there is a conception of knowledge, or of belief and justification, that
is appropriate for moral subject-matters. More in particular, Whether there are objective epistemic
reasons for moral belief or involved in moral knowledge.
(Preferably, decisions about moral ontology should be made, before one takes position
about the working of moral discourse, and taking this position seems necessary (while not
sufficient) for settling on a kind of moral epistemology.
“Preferably”, because one might deem, on general philosophical grounds, that it is meaning,
or epistemology, that govern ontology. But this may risk to prejudge the decision against realism, if
the idea is that ontology is governed by language-involving activities or by epistemic capacities.
Better then taking explicitly one’s start from ontology, so as to explicitly confront and leave open
all the important issues.)
It is standard to arrange and taxonomize the major metaethical positions - like realism,
error-theory, anti-realism, quasi-realism, cognitivism, non-cognitivism, constructivism, skepticism,
and so on - in terms of the combinations of answers they give to questions (a) - (c), or their likes.
(For an example, see A. Miller, An Introduction to Contemporary Metaethics, Polity, Oxford 2003,
p. 8).
I want to keep things simple, and to draw very straight lines, at least to begin with. So I will
say that a moral realist is one that gives an affirmative answer to all the questions under (a) - (c).
Thus: There are moral objects, or properties, or fact. There is something as being, as
counting, as such an item, a substance or nature to being a moral reality. Moral realities are not
identical nor reducible to others of different nature. Moral (practically authoritative) discourse is
descriptive. Its semantics is best understood in terms of satisfaction and truth. The central moral
speech act is assertion. One can have knowledge, or at least justified true belief, of moral matters.
Such knowledge or justified true belief can be understood along lines that are familiar to
epistemology. Objective epistemic reasons for moral belief or knowledge are possible.
This is a tall order for the moral realist, I admit. Moral, or practical authority, is grounded on
practical, moral reality, and on its essential nature, is articulated and expressed by means of truthapt, assertive moral discourse, and culminates in objective moral knowledge or true belief. It may
be doubted that this is in effect a tenable position, perhaps because of its excessive metaphysical
burden, or because referential semantics is inappropriate to practical discourse, or because
knowledge is not what we are after in morality.
Of course, these objections are no less simplistic that the outline of moral realism they are
leveled to. We should be prepared to bear all the metaphysical burdens that are to be borne. To
exclude the concepts of reference and truth from practical discourse is to beg the question by simply
rejecting moral realism. We seem to have moral or practical knowledge, and an understanding of
the structure and goal of actions, of how the world should be made by our doing, seems to be what
we are after as moral agents.
It is thus fair to say that, even on this radical reading, moral realism might be a live
theoretical option. I would even say that such radicalism might be more apparent than real. While
all the concepts and the views I introduced in outlining moral realism require careful interpretation,
I think that no recognizable or interesting kind of moral or practical realism can widely diverge
from what we have just seen, that moral reality, referential moral semantics, and objective moral
cognition, are non-negotiable features of moral realism.
I want also to add that there seems to be conceptual space for a sensible kind or form of
moral realism, that seems to include much of what is true about moral thought and conduct, and on
which (interestingly) some of the main positions in metaethics, otherwise widely different (and
different right on the topic of realism) seem tacitly to converge.
Before we leave these introductory matters, please notice that “moral” , as I am using it,
means practically authoritative. This concept, as a first approximation, involves two ideas.
One is that of a demand, or of a requirement, that is
a.
forceful enough as not to be easily overridden, as to play an important role in
the lives of persons
b.
fully justified, meaning by this that it can be assigned determinate grounds or
c.
conditions of correctness, and that (on a certain occasion) relevantly answers or
satisfies them
and whose force is grounded on its correctness and justification.
The other idea is that of the practical, of what has inherently to do with action, and with
other concepts that are intelligible only in connection with action, like those of motivation,
intention, or agent. Practical authority is a forceful demand that is addressed to action and that is
grounded and justified in ways that are suitable to the nature of action.
A Map of Metaethics