After Moral Error Theory, After Moral Realism

Moral Realism, Moral Relativism and Moral Rules (A Compatibility Argument)

Relativism and realism are often held to be in conflict. It is not obvious what the exact nature of the conflict is supposed to be, because it is not obvious what the two doctrines amount to. But that there is some kind of conflict between moral realism and moral relativism is evidenced by the fact that some take moral relativism to be the straightforward denial of moral realism. David Brink, f...

Moral Realism without Convergence

It is sometimes claimed that if moral realism is true, then rational and informed individuals would not disagree about morality. According to this line of thought, the moral realist is committed to an extremely substantive convergence thesis, one that might very well turn out to be false. Although this idea has been accepted by prominent moral realists as well as by antirealists, I argue that w...

Revisiting Folk Moral Realism

Moral realists believe that there are objective moral truths. According to one of the most prominent arguments in favour of this view, ordinary people experience morality as realist-seeming, and we have therefore prima facie reason to believe that realism is true. Some proponents of this argument have claimed that the hypothesis that ordinary people experience morality as realist-seeming is sup...

Agency and Moral Realism

How to define ‘Moral Realism’

Moral realism is the doctrine that some propositions asserting that some action is ‘morally’ good (obligatory, bad, or wrong) are true. This paper examines three different definitions of what it is for an action to be ‘morally’ good (with corresponding definitions for ‘morally’ obligatory, bad, or wrong) which would make moral realism a clear and plausible view. The first defines ‘morally good ...