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3.1.4: Realism versus Anti-Realism

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    90559
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    The second key fork in the road that separates metaethical theories is the choice between Moral Realism and Moral Anti-Realism (as with Cognitivism, the “Moral” prefix is assumed from hereon). As before, understanding these broad positions is crucial to understanding and critiquing the specific metaethical theories outlined later in this chapter.

    Realism

    Realism is a view about what exists. It is the view that moral properties exists independently of human beings and can be located in the world. Just as an action can possess properties such as being “Salika’s action”, “a violent action”, or a “depressing action” so too it might possess the property of being a “morally wrong action”. Peter Railton (1950–) describes himself as in favour of a position that might be called “stark, raving Moral Realism” in virtue of believing that mind-independent moral truth exists in the world.

    Realism in ethics is somewhat controversial, but Realism in geography is far less controversial and might be a helpful guide to the realist view in ethics. When a geographer speaks of the water in Lake Ontario, the “Geography realist” believes that such water exists and has various properties and qualities (temperature, depth etc.) that exist independently and objectively; the water would have a particular temperature irrespective of any human belief about that temperature. Analogously, in ethics, realists hold that certain moral properties or facts exist and that they exist objectively and independently of the minds or beliefs of individual people (or at least, realists relevant for our discussion, such as Railton, believe this). Importantly, realists thus believe in the possibility of error — believing that “murder is wrong” does not make murder wrong. What would make murder wrong would be the presence of an actual moral property of wrongness (objective and mind-independent) associated with the act of murder.

    Anti-Realism

    Anti-Realism is simply the denial of Realism. Anti-realists deny the existence of any mind-independent, objective, moral properties. The moral anti-realist is thus akin to the anti-realist about dragons or leprechauns in that they simply deny their existence.

    Anti-realists tend to be (though need not be) non-cognitivists, a fact that should not be surprising given that non-cognitivists do not believe that our moral utterances aim of truth. However, the next section paints the metaethical map more specifically in respect of how Cognitivism, Non-Cognitivism, Realism and Anti-Realism might be combined to form specific metaethical theories.


    3.1.4: Realism versus Anti-Realism is shared under a not declared license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by LibreTexts.

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