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Topic: Moral realism

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	Moral realism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		Moral realism is the view in philosophy that there are objective moral values.
		Moral realists argue that moral judgments describe moral facts.
		It contrasts with expressivist or non-cognitivist theories of moral judgment (e.g.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Moral_realism (124 words)

	Moral skepticism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		In meta-ethics, moral skepticism (sometimes also referred to as moral error theory and moral nihilism) is a theory which maintains either that ethical claims are always false, or else that we cannot sufficiently justify ethical claims, and must therefore maintain doubt about whether they are true or false.
		The moral skeptic's conclusion is that supposedly objective values (in the sense explained above) are merely useful fictions that function for such purposes as social preservation.
		In this case, the alleged error is the common belief that moral claims are justifiable.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Moral_skepticism (477 words)

	Moral realism: Facts and details from Encyclopedia Topic (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-22)
		Morality is a complex system of general principles and particular judgments based on cultural, religious, and philosophical concepts and beliefs, by which...
		Moralism is the philosophy of adherence to morality....
		Moral universalism is a humanist view that claims that the fundamental basis for a universalist ethic-universally applicable to all humanity-can be...
	www.absoluteastronomy.com /encyclopedia/m/mo/moral_realism.htm (1115 words)

	In Defense of Moral Subjectivism: An Argument for the Subjectivity of Moral Values
		Moral laws are maxims which tell sentient beings that certain actions are to be deemed moral or immoral.
		But given that moral subjectivism is just as logically viable as moral objectivism and that moral objectivism is implausible if a scientific naturalism is true, I think that there is a good case for the nonexistence of objective moral values.
		However, the moral subjectivist can simply point out that many people claim to have a "moral sense", but all these people come to opposite conclusions about whether or not, for example, abortion or the death penalty is ethically right.
	www.infidels.org /library/modern/keith_augustine/moral.html (2009 words)

	SIX PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL REALISM
		Political realism does not require, nor does it condone, indifference to political ideals and moral principles, but it requires indeed a sharp distinction between the desirable and the possible-between what is desirable everywhere and at all times and what is possible under the concrete circumstances of time and place.
		Realism assumes that its key concept of interest defined as power is an objective category which is universally valid, but it does not endow that concept with a meaning that is fixed once and for all.
		Realism maintains that universal moral principles cannot be applied to the actions of states in their abstract universal formulation, but that they must be filtered through the concrete circumstances of time and place.
	www.mtholyoke.edu /acad/intrel/morg6.htm (4943 words)

	Moral Realism
		Moral realists, in contrast, are standardly seen as unable to sustain their accounts without appealing, in the end, to putative facts that fly in the face of naturalism.
		Moral realists of this sort allow that moral facts are not natural facts, and moral knowledge is not simply of a piece with scientific knowledge, even as they defend the idea that there are moral facts and (at least in principle) moral knowledge.
		Moral realists have here been characterized as those who hold that moral claims purport to report facts, that they are evaluable as true or false in light of whether the facts are as the claims purport, and that at least some such claims are actually true.
	plato.stanford.edu /entries/moral-realism (6506 words)

	20th WCP: Moral Learning and Moral Realism: How Empirical Psychology Illuminates Issues in Moral Ontology
		Moral realism is the view that moral realities are objective, and thus in some important sense(s) independent of either the subjective states of moral agents or intersubjective factors.
		So if the moral realist is to make her case, she must not only demonstrate that moral claims can be successfully tested, but also show that some moral claims are explanatory hypotheses which, if confirmed, provide evidence that moral facts play a causal role in the bringing about of moral and nonmoral phenomena.
		Successful moral internalization is manifested by an agent when, in situations where there is a conflict of interests between the welfare of another and her own interests, she consistently acts to promote the welfare of another person, rather than to attain social approval or egoistic aims.
	www.bu.edu /wcp/Papers/MPsy/MPsyRott.htm (3462 words)

	MORAL REALISM AND INFINTE SPACETIME IMPLY MORAL NIHILISM by Quentin Smith
		Global moral realism is true if and only if all organisms, inanimate mass and energy, and space and time, and states of these entities, have value nondependently upon whether conscious organisms believe they have value.
		I have argued that the conjunction of the propositions, (i) global moral realism is true, (ii) aggregative value theories (at least in one relevant version) are true and (iii) the universe has an infinite future and is spatially infinite, imply moral nihilism.
		Thus, the response to the objection is that the conjunction of the two premises, global moral realism is true, and the universe is spatiotemporally infinite, imply (given the aggregative theory of values) that there cannot be merely a finite number of units of positive value.
	www.qsmithwmu.com /moral_realism_and_infinte_spacetime_imply_moral_nihilism_by_quentin_smith.htm (5218 words)

	20th WCP: A Taxonomy of Moral Realism
		Since morality exercises a deep influence over the way we live our lives, it is easy to appreciate why the question — whether the subject is, or can be, objective —; has been, and remains a central preoccupation amongst moral philosophers.
		Though there are different moral theories that may plausibly be described as realist, it would be useful to note that despite the variation, moral realists aspire, on the whole, to arguing for objectivity in ethics in the distinctive way just mentioned.
		At this stage, the idea is to seek a keener insight of the general contours of moral realism in the light of the contrast with its main opponents on various substantive issues.
	www.bu.edu /wcp/Papers/TEth/TEthChew.htm (1475 words)

	Shweder -Moral Realism Without the Ethnocentrism: Is It Just A List of Empty Truisms? (conference paper) (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-22)
		Fourthly and finally, speaking as a moral realist who believes that moral realism is compatible with cultural diversity in social norms I conclude with a brief moral evaluation of the culturally endorsed West and East African practice of genital modifications for both females and males.
		The moral force is thought to be transcendental in the sense that its moral principles are authoritative and binding whether or not they happen to be cognized and understood by the contingent (and merely human mind) of particular living beings or leaders of particular nations.
		The moral character of an action or practice (e.g., voluntarily ending a pregnancy) is typically established by connecting that action through a chain of factual, means-ends and causal reasoning to some argument-ending terminal "moral" good, for example, personal freedom, family privacy or the avoidance of physical or psychological harm.
	www.ceu.hu /legal/ind_vs_state/Shweder_paper_2002.htm (11793 words)

	Realism
		Platonic realism is committed to the existence of acausal objects and to the claim that these objects, and facts about them, are independent of anyone's beliefs, linguistic practices, conceptual schemes, and so on (in short to the claim that these objects, and facts about them, are language- and mind-independent).
		The obtaining of a moral states of affairs would be the obtaining of a situation ‘with a demand for such and such an action somehow built into it’; the states of affairs which we find in the world do not have such demands built into them, they are ‘normatively inert’, as it were.
		The dispute [between realism and its opponents] concerns the notion of truth appropriate for statements of the disputed class; and this means that it is a dispute concerning the kind of meaning which these statements have (1978: 146).
	plato.stanford.edu /entries/realism (11751 words)

	Moral Arguments
		Other moral arguments include the prudential moral argument, which claims that we should believe in both God and an afterlife so that fear of judgment after death will deter us from committing immoral acts.
		Martin argues that a theistic ontological foundation of morality is impossible, that moral realism is possible in a godless universe, that theistic morality is subject to the accusation of arbitrariness whereas naturalistic moral realism is not, and that human beings are not "special" in the sense intended by theists.
		Moral arguments for God's existence may be defined as that family of arguments in the history of western philosophical theology having claims about the character of moral thought and experience in their premises and affirmations of the existence of God in their conclusions.
	www.infidels.org /library/modern/theism/moral.html (1192 words)

	Moral Realism: A Defence, Russ Shafer-Landau, book review for Teaching Philosophy
		Moral Realism: A Defence is a refreshingly clear, straightforward, and elegant search for the truth about whether there are any objective, universal truths in ethics.
		He argues that “moral principles and facts are objective in a quite strong sense: they are true and exist independently of what any human being, no matter his or her perspective, thinks of them” (p.
		8); he develops a distinctive version of moral realism that he calls moral “non-naturalism” and defends it from objections from a variety of moral irrealists (e.g., non-cognitivists, expressivists, emotivists, prescriptivists, error-theorists, subjectivists, relativists, constructivists and contemporary irrealists that attempt to mimic realists) as well as rival, typically “naturalistic,” moral realists.
	mail.rochester.edu /~nobs/papers/sl.html (1261 words)

	Moral Epistemology [Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
		In the moral case, people are especially prone to take for granted, and thus take to be epistemically responsible, certain mid-level moral generalizations (of the sort W. Ross thought are intuitive) that pass current in their contexts.
		Gibbard’s norm-expressivism claims that moral judgment is a species of rationality judgment constituted by expressive, as opposed to cognitive, acceptance of norms or rules that determine in the moral case whether actions are forbidden, permitted, or required (1990).
		Kant, Immanuel, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals [1785], tr.
	www.iep.utm.edu /m/mor-epis.htm (7225 words)

	Robert C. Koons: Phl 327 Lecture #13
		Moral Realism: the thesis that there really exist moral properties and facts.
		According to objective moral realism, moral facts do not depend upon corresponding human judgments, choices or attitudes, whether of individuals or whole cultures.
		The fact that an action is morally wrong gives us a reason not to do it (we have good reason to try to obey God's commands, since doing so keeps us in a harmonious relationship with God, and we should value such a relationship, since God is so important to each of us).
	www.leaderu.com /offices/koons/docs/chrphlec13.html (1683 words)

	Varieties of Realism and Anti-Realism
		Moral Realism (MR): There are normative truths about what one morally ought or ought not to do.
		Moral Anti-Realism (MAR): There are no normative truths about what one morally ought or ought not to do.
		Objective Moral To-Be-Doneness [or Not-To-Be-Doneness]: This would be a property of actions that everyone morally should perform [or should not perform].
	faculty.washington.edu /wtalbott/phil440/trreal.htm (480 words)

	DR. MICHAEL RIDGE
		Moral Epistemology Conference, University of Edinbirgh, November 21-22, 2003 (with Walter Sinnott-Armstrong).
		For I am trying to develop a conception of Kantian moral theory that is consistent with the thesis that all value is agent-neutral and teleological.
		In particular, Sean McKeever and I have been co-authoring a number of papers arguing against radical moral particularism (of the sort defended at length by Jonathan Dancy and others) and in favor of what we refer to as moral generalism as a regulative ideal.
	www.michaelridge.com /mr/cv (1790 words)

	Oxford Scholarship Online: Moral Realism
		Part I outlines the sort of moral realism that the author wishes to defend, and then offers critiques of expressivism and constructivism.
		It argues that moral realists have adequate replies to worries based on supervenience and the alleged causal inefficacy of moral facts.
		It argues that externalism about reasons is true, that moral rationalism is true, and that moral realism has an adequate account of moral disagreement.
	www.oxfordscholarship.com /oso/public/content/philosophy/0199259755/toc.html (211 words)

	Moral Realism (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-22)
		In this seminar we will explore what has come to be called the moral realism debate.
		We'll be rushing through quite a bit of material but our ultimate aim will be to move the arguments forward, past where they currently stand.
		Brink, David, Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics
	www.unc.edu /~gsmunc/Realism/Moral_Realism.htm (86 words)

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