Moral realism: A Defence - Russ Shafer-Landau
Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2022 10:48 am
Here is a book that counters the Moral Fact Deniers' claim, i.e. there is objective Moral Realism.
Moral Realism: A Defence
https://www.amazon.com/Moral-Realism-De ... 0199259755
Introduction
Let me begin this book of philosophy with a bit of armchair sociology.
Nowadays many people express their moral views with a great deal more hesitation than was usual in the past.
We are less likely to wholeheartedly trumpet the cause of Progress, Manifest Destiny, Religion, or, indeed, anything that comes with capital letters.
Part of this stems from our comparatively greater exposure to those who think differently from us.
Part of this comes from witnessing what can be done by those whose certitude in their own moral convictions allows them to deny the humanity of their victims.
These two causes, and others, have themselves contributed to a distinctively philosophical source of our more measured ethical ambitions.
The philosophical source is a kind of scepticism about morality.
This scepticism is the view that our moral opinions are either never true, or are correct, when they are, only in virtue of our endorsements.
On this line, moral laws are human laws, made by, and for, humans.
Without some sort of personal or interpersonal ratification, a putative moral law is no law at all—just words, a mere pretender.
Moral principles enjoy no objective or transcendent status; they are not universal, but parochial; they are not awaiting our discovery, but rather are products of our creative efforts.
In likening the moral law to the positive law, whatever reservations we have about the authority of the latter are transferred to the former.
For those taken with this analogy, the often dismal history of our legislative undertakings seems to provide ample reason for the sort of moral modesty we see today.
But it doesn't, really.
If we create morality, then there is far less room for error than otherwise, and so far less ground for modesty.
If rightness is in the eye of the beholder, then so long as one's eyes are open, one is seeing aright, and there's an end on it.
Moral modesty is a virtue, when it is, just because of our fallibility—just because knowing the right thing to do is sometimes very difficult, and there are so many ways we can go wrong.
But modesty is not always a good thing.
It is easy to forget this if one is concentrating on textbook cases of arrogant Victorians or antebellum slaveholders.
Yet were we faced with such people as political opponents, humility and hesitation would be no virtue.
An unwavering conviction about certain matters is sometimes right and proper.
Whether such inflexibility amounts to virtue depends crucially on the worth of one's causes.
How is such worth best measured?
Sceptics about the status of morality claim that evaluative standards must reflect our own appraisals of propriety and worth.
Yet if we are the authors of the moral rules, then such rules are only as sound as we are.
We are rarely as imaginative or sympathetic as we might be, we are weak, liable sometimes to cut corners, and subject to all sorts of pressures to compromise.
The rules we make will invariably reflect these limitations.
In my own opinion, this is not cause for celebration, though there are some who see an inherently valueless world as an opportunity for limitless indulgence or courageous self-creation.
I surmise that most of those willing to adopt such a view do so not because of its intrinsic attractions, but because they do not understand how any alternative could possibly be true.
How could the moral law be something not of our own making, something whose truth did not depend on the commitments of those who are bound by its dictates?
Answering this question is the project I have set myself in this book.
If success is possible on this front, it will take the form of an adequate defence of moral realism.
Moral realism is the theory that moral judgements enjoy a special sort of objectivity: such judgements, when true, are so independently of what any human being, anywhere, in any circumstance whatever, thinks of them.
Moral Realism: A Defence
https://www.amazon.com/Moral-Realism-De ... 0199259755
Introduction
Let me begin this book of philosophy with a bit of armchair sociology.
Nowadays many people express their moral views with a great deal more hesitation than was usual in the past.
We are less likely to wholeheartedly trumpet the cause of Progress, Manifest Destiny, Religion, or, indeed, anything that comes with capital letters.
Part of this stems from our comparatively greater exposure to those who think differently from us.
Part of this comes from witnessing what can be done by those whose certitude in their own moral convictions allows them to deny the humanity of their victims.
These two causes, and others, have themselves contributed to a distinctively philosophical source of our more measured ethical ambitions.
The philosophical source is a kind of scepticism about morality.
This scepticism is the view that our moral opinions are either never true, or are correct, when they are, only in virtue of our endorsements.
On this line, moral laws are human laws, made by, and for, humans.
Without some sort of personal or interpersonal ratification, a putative moral law is no law at all—just words, a mere pretender.
Moral principles enjoy no objective or transcendent status; they are not universal, but parochial; they are not awaiting our discovery, but rather are products of our creative efforts.
In likening the moral law to the positive law, whatever reservations we have about the authority of the latter are transferred to the former.
For those taken with this analogy, the often dismal history of our legislative undertakings seems to provide ample reason for the sort of moral modesty we see today.
But it doesn't, really.
If we create morality, then there is far less room for error than otherwise, and so far less ground for modesty.
If rightness is in the eye of the beholder, then so long as one's eyes are open, one is seeing aright, and there's an end on it.
Moral modesty is a virtue, when it is, just because of our fallibility—just because knowing the right thing to do is sometimes very difficult, and there are so many ways we can go wrong.
But modesty is not always a good thing.
It is easy to forget this if one is concentrating on textbook cases of arrogant Victorians or antebellum slaveholders.
Yet were we faced with such people as political opponents, humility and hesitation would be no virtue.
An unwavering conviction about certain matters is sometimes right and proper.
Whether such inflexibility amounts to virtue depends crucially on the worth of one's causes.
How is such worth best measured?
Sceptics about the status of morality claim that evaluative standards must reflect our own appraisals of propriety and worth.
Yet if we are the authors of the moral rules, then such rules are only as sound as we are.
We are rarely as imaginative or sympathetic as we might be, we are weak, liable sometimes to cut corners, and subject to all sorts of pressures to compromise.
The rules we make will invariably reflect these limitations.
In my own opinion, this is not cause for celebration, though there are some who see an inherently valueless world as an opportunity for limitless indulgence or courageous self-creation.
I surmise that most of those willing to adopt such a view do so not because of its intrinsic attractions, but because they do not understand how any alternative could possibly be true.
How could the moral law be something not of our own making, something whose truth did not depend on the commitments of those who are bound by its dictates?
Answering this question is the project I have set myself in this book.
If success is possible on this front, it will take the form of an adequate defence of moral realism.
Moral realism is the theory that moral judgements enjoy a special sort of objectivity: such judgements, when true, are so independently of what any human being, anywhere, in any circumstance whatever, thinks of them.