Moral realism (also ethical realism) is the position that ethical sentences express propositions that refer to objective features of the world (that is, features independent of subjective opinion), some of which may be true to the extent that they report those features accurately. This makes moral realism a non-nihilist form of ethical cognitivism (which accepts that ethical sentences express propositions and can therefore be true or false) with an ontological orientation, standing in opposition to all forms of moral anti-realism and moral skepticism, including ethical subjectivism (which denies that moral propositions refer to objective facts), error theory (which denies that any moral propositions are true), and non-cognitivism (which denies that moral sentences express propositions at all). Moral realism's two main subdivisions are ethical naturalism and ethical non-naturalism.
Most philosophers claim that moral realism dates at least to Plato as a philosophical doctrinePlato's Moral Realism: The Discovery of the Presuppositions of Ethics, by John M. Rist (Jul 15, 2012) and that it is a fully defensible form of moral doctrine.Moral Realism as a Moral Doctrine, (New Directions in Ethics), by Matthew H. Kramer A 2009 survey involving 3,226 respondents from mostly English-speaking universities, including mostly faculty members, PhDs and graduate students, found that 56% accept or lean toward moral realism (28%: anti-realism; 16%: other).PhilPapers survey, 2009, under the heading 'Meta-ethics' A 2020 study found that 62.1% accept or lean toward realism. Some notable examples of robust moral realists include David O. Brink,Brink, David O., Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989). John McDowell, Peter Railton, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord,Sayre-McCord, Geoff (2005). "Moral Realism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2005 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). (link) Michael A. Smith, Terence Cuneo,Cuneo, Terence (2007). "The Normative Web: An Argument for Moral Realism", Oxford. Russ Shafer-Landau,Shafer-Landau, Russ (2003) "Moral Realism: A Defense", Oxford, . G. E. Moore,Moore, G. E. (1903). Principia Ethica, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. John Finnis, Richard Boyd, Nicholas Sturgeon,Sturgeon, Nicholas (1985). "Moral Explanations", in Morality, Reason, and Truth, edited by David Copp and David Zimmerman, Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Allanheld, pp. 49-78. Thomas Nagel, Derek Parfit, and Peter Singer. Norman Geras has argued that Karl Marx was a moral realist. Moral realism's various philosophical and practical applications have been studied.Praise and Blame: Moral Realism and Its Applications, (New Forum Books), by Daniel N. Robinson (Jul 29, 2002).
Robust versus minimal moral realism A delineation of moral realism into a minimal form, a moderate form, and a robust form has been put forward in the literature.
The robust model of moral realism commits moral realists to three theses:Väyrynen, Pekka (2005). "Moral Realism", Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd Edition, Donald M. Borchert (ed.). (link )
The semantic thesis: The primary semantic role of moral predicates (such as "right" and "wrong") is to refer to moral properties (such as rightness and wrongness), so that moral statements (such as "honesty is good" and "slavery is unjust") purport to represent moral facts, and express propositions that are true or false (or approximately true, largely false, and so on). The alethic thesis: Some moral propositions are in fact true. The metaphysical thesis: Moral propositions are true when actions and other objects of moral assessment have the relevant moral properties (so that the relevant moral facts obtain), where these facts and properties are robust: their metaphysical status, whatever it is, is not relevantly different from that of (certain types of) ordinary non-moral facts and properties.
The minimal model leaves off the metaphysical thesis, treating it as matter of contention among moral realists (as opposed to between moral realists and moral anti-realists). This dispute is significant, as acceptance or rejection of the metaphysical thesis is taken by those employing the robust model as the key difference between moral realism and moral anti-realism. Indeed, the question of how to classify certain logically possible (if eccentric) views—such as the rejection of the semantic and alethic theses in conjunction with the acceptance of the metaphysical thesis—turns on which model we accept.Joyce, Richard (2007), "Moral Anti-Realism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2007 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). (link) Someone employing the robust model might call such a view "realist non-cognitivism", while someone employing the minimal model might simply place such a view alongside other, more traditional, forms of non-cognitivism.
The robust model and the minimal model also disagree over how to classify moral subjectivism (roughly, the view that moral facts are not mind-independent in the relevant sense, but that moral statements may still be true). The historical association of subjectivism with moral anti-realism in large part explains why the robust model of moral realism has been dominant—even if only implicitly—both in the traditional and contemporary philosophical literature on metaethics.
In the minimal sense of realism, R. M. Hare could be considered a realist in his later works, as he is committed to the objectivity of value judgments, even though he denies that moral statements express propositions with truth-values per se. Moral constructivists like John Rawls and Christine KorsgaardKorsgaard, Christine (1996). The Sources of Normativity, New York: Cambridge University Press. may also be realists in this minimalist sense; the latter describes her own position as procedural realism. Some readings of evolutionary science such as those of Charles Darwin and James Mark Baldwin have suggested that in so far as an ethics may be associated with survival strategies and natural selection then such behavior may be associated with a moderate position of moral realism equivalent to an ethics of survival.
Ethical objectivism Moral objectivism is the view that what is right or wrong does not depend on what anyone thinks is right or wrong. Moral objectivism allows for moral codes to be compared to each other through a set of universal facts. Nicholas Reschar says that moral codes cannot derive from one's personal moral compass. An example is Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative: "Act only according to that maxim [i.e., rule] whereby you can at the same time will that it become a universal law." John Stuart Mill proposed utilitarianism, which asserts that in any situation, the right thing to do is whatever is likely to produce the most happiness overall.
According to the ethical objectivist, the truth of typical moral judgments does not depend upon any person's or group of persons' beliefs or feelings. This view holds that moral propositions are analogous to propositions about chemistry, biology, or history, insomuch as they are true despite what anyone believes, hopes, wishes, or feels. When they fail to describe this mind-independent moral reality, they are false—no matter what anyone believes, hopes, wishes, or feels.
There are many versions of ethical objectivism, including various religious views of morality, Platonistic intuitionism, Kantianism, utilitarianism, and certain forms of ethical egoism and contractualism. Platonists define ethical objectivism even more narrowly, so that it requires the existence of intrinsic value. Consequently, they reject the idea that contractualists or egoists could be ethical objectivists. Objectivism, in turn, places primacy on the origin of the frame of reference and considers any arbitrary frame of reference a form of ethical subjectivism by a transitive property, even when the frame incidentally coincides with reality.
Advantages Moral realism allows the ordinary rules of logic (modus ponens, etc.) to be applied straightforwardly to moral statements. We can say that a moral belief is false or unjustified or contradictory in the same way we would about a factual belief. This is a problem for expressivism, as shown by the Frege–Geach problem.
Another advantage of moral realism is its capacity to resolve moral disagreements: if two moral beliefs contradict one another, realism says that they cannot both be right, and therefore everyone involved ought to be seeking out the right answer to resolve the disagreement. Contrary theories of meta-ethics have trouble even formulating the statement "this moral belief is wrong," and so they cannot resolve disagreements in this way.
Proponents Richard Boyd defends a naturalistic moral realism according to which goodness is a homeostatic property cluster: a family of human goods whose co-occurrence is maintained by psychological and social mechanisms, with no analytic definition and no property necessary for every instance. Boyd calls this position "homeostatic consequentialism", and the account of kinds he introduced was applied widely outside ethics.
Peter Railton's moral realism is often associated with a naturalist approach. He argues that moral facts can be reduced to non-moral facts and that our moral claims aim to describe an objective reality. In his well-known paper "Moral Realism" (1986), Railton advocates for a form of moral realism that is naturalistic and scientifically accessible. He suggests that moral facts can be understood in terms of the naturalistic concept of an individual's good. He employs a hypothetical observer's standpoint to explain moral judgments. This standpoint considers what fully rational, well-informed, and sympathetic agents would agree upon under ideal conditions. Railton's naturalistic approach aims to bridge the is-ought gap by explaining moral facts in terms of natural facts, and his theory is generally considered to be a response to the challenge of moral skepticism and anti-realism. By doing so, he attempts to show that moral facts are not mysterious or disconnected from the rest of the world, but can be understood and studied much like other natural phenomena.
Philippa Foot adopts a moral realist position, criticizing Stevenson's idea that when evaluation is superposed on fact there has been a "committal in a new dimension." She introduces, by analogy, the practical implications of using the word "injury". Not just anything counts as an injury. There must be some impairment. When we suppose a man wants the things the injury prevents him from obtaining, have not we fallen into the old naturalistic fallacy?
Foot argues that the virtues, like hands and eyes in the analogy, play so large a part in so many operations that it is implausible to suppose that a committal in a non-naturalist dimension is necessary to demonstrate their goodness.
W. D. Ross articulates his moral realism in analogy to mathematics by stating that the moral order is just as real as "the spatial or numerical structure expressed in the axioms of geometry or arithmetic".