Introduction to Philosophy Lecture 12 Moral Realism and Relativism By David Kelsey

Moral Realism Moral Realism makes the metaphysical claim that moral values really do exist in the natural world and that they exist independent of our perceptions of them. Moral Realism makes the semantic claim, a claim about language, that moral claims do purport to report facts and are true if they get the facts right. Moreover, they hold, at least some moral claims actually are true. For example, it might be true that murder is wrong or that killing in self defense is permissible.

Moral Relativism Moral Relativism makes the metaphysical claim that moral values do exist, but that they exist only relative to a group or culture. Thus, the existence of moral values is indexed to different groups of moral agents, not to the external world as in Moral Realism. Moral Relativism makes the semantic claim that moral claims do purport to report facts but the truth of those facts is dependent on the circumstances of the group of moral agents the claim refers to or is about. Thus, the truth of moral claims can change in virtue of the culture or group the claim is about. For example, stoning someone to death for committing adultery or a ritual sacrifice to appease the Gods is morally wrong in present day United States but not so for other groups from other times in history.

Arguments against Moral Relativism Counterarguments: It is really anti-realism in disguise: some objectors say that relativism cannot count as anything but the denial of Realism for there is no sense in which a relative moral value is really part of the fabric of the universe. Some moral claims seem cross cultural. For example, murder is wrong. Progress appears to have been made. Moral disagreement makes sense. This is because we feel intuitively that the moral claims we make are in fact true and that we can come to convince someone else of this.

Mackie’s arguments against Realism: relativity The argument from the relative nature of morality. Mackie makes the case for the relativity of values. This argument appeals to the flexibility and changing nature of morality, how some moral claims seem true according to some cultures and false for others. Mackie is appealing to the “well known variation in moral codes from one society to another and one period to another.”

Mackie’s arguments against Realism: Strangeness Mackie makes 2 claims about the strangeness of moral values. 1. if there are moral values then they would be things of a very strange sort, “utterly different from anything in the universe.” Imagine an act of deliberate cruelty. What is the causal connection between the action being deliberately cruel and it being wrong? Just what in the universe represents this connection? Response: why can’t there be some type of physical law in existence that operates between an action and it being wrong? Something in the action that objectively and physically causes a ‘wrong’ feeling in us? Why must there be a connection between it being cruelty and it being wrong? 2. if we were aware of moral values it would have to be by a very strange type of perception, some type of moral intuition.

Mackie’s error theory Mackie’s theory is an error theory. Mackie thinks that when someone makes a moral claim, that the underlying assumption is the claim can be true or false and objectively true, but moral values are not real and so all moral claims are false. So Mackie is an anti-realist about moral value. He doesn’t think they exist. But he thinks that when someone speaks of or talks about moral value, that they are assuming what they say is something that can be objectively true or false. They are assuming morality is real in speaking about it. So when someone says “murder is wrong” the speaker means to say something that is true, he means to really describe some true objective fact about the universe. But according to Mackie, the claim is false and it is false because ‘wrongness’ doesn’t exist.