Noncognitivist moral realism

The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 1986

Are there objective moral truths (things that are morally right or wrong independently of what anybody thinks about them)? To answer this question more and more scholars have recently begun to appeal to evidence from scientific disciplines such as psychology, neuroscience, biology, and anthropology. This book investigates this novel scientific approach in a comprehensive, empirically-focused, partly clarificatory, and partly metatheoretical way. It argues for two main theses. First, it is possible for the empirical sciences to contribute to the moral realism/anti-realism debate. And second, most appeals to science that have so far been proposed are insufficiently empirically substantiated. The book’s main chapters address four prominent science-based arguments for or against the existence of objective moral truths: the presumptive argument, the argument from moral disagreement, the sentimentalist argument, and the evolutionary debunking argument. For each of these arguments Thomas Pölzler first identifies the sense in which its underlying empirical hypothesis would have to be true in order for the arguments to work. Then he shows that the available scientific evidence fails to support this hypothesis. Finally, he also makes suggestions as to how to test the hypothesis more validly in future scientific research. Moral Reality and the Empirical Sciences is an important contribution to the moral realism/anti-realism debate that will appeal both to philosophers and scientists interested in moral psychology and metaethics.

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 2006

The overarching aim of this essay is to argue that moral realists should be "causalists" or claim that moral facts of certain kinds are causally efficacious. To this end, I engage in two tasks. The first is to develop an account of the sense in which moral facts of certain kinds are causally efficacious. After having sketched the concept of what I call a "configuring" cause, I contend that the exercise of the moral virtues is plausibly viewed as a configuring cause. The second is to show that the causalist position I develop can withstand objections inspired by the work of Robert Audi and Jaegwon Kim. Moral antirealists frequently object that, if moral realism were true, then moral facts would be explanatorily idle. 1 In particular, some moral antirealists complain that, if moral realism were true, then moral facts would be causally idle; they would not do any genuine causal explanatory work. 2 This complaint challenges the heart of what is perhaps the reigning orthodoxy among moral realists. The apparent orthodoxy among realists is that moral facts exist, but are in some interesting sense "natural" facts. 3 It is commonly assumed, however, that natural facts are, in the paradigmatic case, causally efficacious. Accordingly, if moral facts are not causally efficacious, then they are not paradigmatic natural facts. And for those naturalists who believe that being causally efficacious is necessary and sufficient for something's being real, 4 the causal indolence of putative moral facts establishes that moral facts don't exist. It is not surprising, then, that a chief concern of those who subscribe to the apparent realist orthodoxy has been to show that moral facts are causally efficacious. An interesting feature of the recent moral realism/antirealism debate is that some prominent moral realists have agreed with the aforementioned antirealist complaint.

International journal of philosophy of religion , 2025

Noah McKay (2023) has proposed a novel argument against naturalism. He argues that while theism can explain our ability to arrive at a body of moral beliefs that are generally accurate and complete', naturalism fails to do so. He argues that naturalism has only social and biological grounds to account for our moral beliefs, which means that naturalism can only claim pragmatic value for our moral beliefs. McKay dedicates his paper to arguing against naturalism. This paper will focus on theism and examine whether theism can explain what naturalism cannot. Theism could rely on guided evolution or the miraculous intervention of God. In contrast to naturalism, theism has revelatory and supernatural grounds for our moral beliefs. This paper will demonstrate some of the challenges that these grounds would encounter. Finally, McKay's argument implies a dichotomy between unguided evolution and theism, which rests on a problematic assumption about evolutionary theory; by abandoning the assumption, the dichotomy also dissolves.

The diversity of moral beliefs across present and historical human societies provides a powerful argument against the existence of a correct morality that we are capable of knowing. In this paper I consider another possible interpretation of this diversity: that the acquisition of moral knowledge is difficult and takes a great deal of time. I develop this theme by first reviewing some of the error, confusion, and surprising new discoveries that have occurred in the history of the sciences and mathematics. Since those who pursue these disciplines have the same cognitive abilities and limitations as those who seek moral knowledge, we have reasons for believing that learning the correct morality, if such a morality exists, will take place by the same complex and tentative processes that operate in the acquisition of other kinds of knowledge.

Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 2017

This essay develops the epistemic challenge to non-naturalist moral realism. While evolutionary considerations do not support the strongest claims made by 'debunkers', they do provide the basis for an inductive argument that our moral dispositions and starting beliefs are at best partially reliable. So, we need some method for separating truth from falsity. Many non-naturalists think that rational reflection can play this role. But rational reflection cannot be expected to bring us to truth even from reasonably accurate starting points. Reflection selects views that are coherent and conflict-free, yet there is no reason to think that the non-natural moral truth must be like this. Inasmuch as we seek coherent, conflict-free, ethical viewpoints, that suggests that our goal is not non-natural truth at all.

Accounts of non-naturalist moral perception have been advertised as an empiricistfriendly epistemological alternative to moral rationalism. I argue that these accounts of moral perception conceal a core commitment of rationalism-to substantive a priori justification-and embody its most objectionable feature-namely, "mysteriousness." Thus, accounts of non-naturalist moral perception do not amount to an interesting alternative to moral rationalism. suggests that his account of moral perception can accommodate non-naturalist moral metaphysics. 3 Thus, I assume that non-natural moral properties are causally impotent. I do not here endorse the claim that causal impotence is a sufficient condition for being non-natural. 4 A.

Metaethics after Moore, 2006

's diatribe against the naturalistic fallacy in 1903 set the stage for most of twentieth-century moral philosophy. The main protagonists over the next sixty years were intuitionists and emotivists, both of whom were convinced by Moore that empirical science is irrelevant to moral philosophy and common moral beliefs. Even in the 1970s and 1980s, when a wider array of moral theories entered the scene and applied ethics became popular, few moral philosophers paid much attention to developments in biology and psychology. This isolation must end. Moral philosophers cannot continue to ignore developments in psychology, brain science, and biology. Of course, philosophers need to be careful when they draw lessons from empirical research. As Moore and his followers argued, we should not jump straight from descriptive premises in psychology or biology to positive moral conclusions or normative conclusions in moral epistemology. That would be a fallacy.² Nonetheless, psychology can still affect moral philosophy in indirect ways. That is what I want to illustrate here. I will trace an indirect path from empirical premises to a normative conclusion For comments on drafts and oral presentations, I thank