Abstract:
Moral realism is the doctrine that some propositions asserting that some action is ‘morally’ good (obligatory, bad, or wrong) are true. This paper examines three different definitions of what it is for an action to be ‘morally’ good (with corresponding definitions for ‘morally’ obligatory, bad, or wrong)1 which would make moral realism a clear and plausible view. The first defines ‘morally good as ‘overall important to do’; and the second defines it as ‘overall important to do for universalizable reasons’. The paper argues that neither of these definitions is adequate; and it develops the view of Cuneo and Shafer-Landau that we need a definition which is partly in terms of paradigm examples of morally good actions, which they call ‘moral fixed points’. Hence the third and final definition is that an action is morally good if it is ‘overall important to do because this follows from a fundamental universalizable principle, belonging to a system of such principles which includes almost all the moral fixed points; when a suggested fundamental principle is one which would be shown to be very probably true by the exercise of reflective equilibrium over many centuries
Machine summary:
How to define ‘Moral Realism’ Richard Swinburne Received: 2020/08/03 | Accepted: 2020/9/05 Abstract Moral realism is the doctrine that some propositions asserting that some action is ‘morally’ good (obligatory, bad, or wrong) are true.
Hence the third and final definition is that an action is morally good if it is ‘overall important to do because this follows from a fundamental universalizable principle, belonging to a system of such principles which includes almost all the moral fixed points; when a suggested fundamental principle is one which would be shown to be very probably true by the exercise of reflective equilibrium over many centuries’.
But since I suggest, it seems plausible to most people that there are moral propositions of the kind that actions are good to do for reasons of a universalizable kind, and so that there are logically necessary fundamental moral principles, it ought to seem plausible to them that on this second definition moral realism is true.
But it is implausible to suppose that any general principle of the fixed points kind (even if they all include a clause like ‘in worlds sufficiently similar to ours’), let alone any more contestable principle claiming that some kind of action described in non-moral terms is overall important, entails a contradiction.
So an initial way to regard Cuneo and Shafer-Landau’s claim is as a proposal to understand a suggested fundamental general principle asserting that a kind of action is ‘morally good’ as asserting that an action is important for reasons of a universalizable kind and also consistent with the moral fixed points, so chosen because almost all other humans believe them important (to do or not do) for reasons of a universalizable kind.