Talk:Moral realism

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The answer to the question below is that a moral realist is not necessarily committed to the view that moral norms are 'objective' in the sense that a statement expressing that norm is universally true for all moral agents. Moral Relativists could be moral realists as well. - 27, October 2006

How is this different from moral objectivism? Could the two be merged? Canuck-Errant 10:28, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

It seems to me that much of this article is inaccurate, as there are "realist" positions that do not claim full objective status for moral claims. E.g. they may say that such claims are not relative to cultures or individuals and apply to our whole species - but may not be part of an objective reality that any rational spacies must acknowledge. Brink may be an example of someone who takes such a position, though I don't know whether he would accept that he could be described in such a way. If this distinction is drawn, the article needs revision. If the distinction is not drawn, I see no need to have two separate articles. Metamagician3000 11:16, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

This is a general problem on the Wiki pages for moral philosophy. There are many different ways of mapping and naming the available positions in ethics and we have failed to agree to a set of terms. You, like myself, grew up on subjectivists and relativists counting as "realists" and the term realism being used as part of a binary with "anti-realism." However, there is now an increasingly popular set of terms that changes the playing field. Added to the list is "irrealism," and that is where subjectivists and relativists now fall. The new paradigm is attractive in that it recognizes the gulf that separates metaethical objectivists from non-objectivists, though it is apt to cause quite a bit of confusion before the dust settles. Postmodern Beatnik 06:36, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

So, my last comment was made while I was making the switch from the old (Sayre-McCord) taxonomy to the new (Richard Joyce) taxonomy, and I must admit I did not fully grasp the changes. Regardless, the new taxonomy uses three theses to define moral realism and operates in binary with anti-realism/irrealism (they are used synonymously), and is—in my opinion—vastly superior. As it is already mostly in place both here and at moral skepticism (though I think we also need a moral anti-realism page), I suggest we make the new model of categorizing the possible positions in metaethics our official standard. We should have some sort of explanation about the terminological history somewhere, however. Any thoughts? Postmodern Beatnik (talk) 02:28, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I confess some puzzlement about placing constructivists (who are often Kantians) like Korsgaard and Rawls (or O'Neill) in the same camp as subjectivists, or in adjoining campus, since it seems to me that constructivists would want to say that there were truth-apt moral propositions the truth of which was preference- or desire-independent--that were, in a word, objective. It seems to me that it might be useful more clearly to distinguish between moral objectivism (with a small 'o'), a position to which constructivists could clearly subscribe, and moral realism, a sub-family of objectivism, to which they couldn't. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.93.180.171 (talk) 00:08, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Murder Imports Wrongness

I object to the illustrative example using the proposition "murder is wrong" to illustrate moral realism. The definition of the word "murder" is "a wrongful killing." This exposes the difficulty with many discussions of moral facts: the definitions for moral facts tend to be circular in nature. Definitions for ordinary facts (like "It is raining") do not tend to have this problem of circularity. If somebody chooses to take on a rewrite of this article I would hope that they could strive to eliminate circular definitions and other problematic discussions within this article.

1) Realists can supply arguments like "murder is wrong because it causes unnecessary suffering".

2) Relativists might agree that murder is wrong but be unable to explain why.

3) Denying that murder is in fact wrong is not relativism, it is nihilism or error theory.

1Z 02:41, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

in regards to your point number three, denying that murder is wrong isn't REALLY nihilism, it's just bad grammar. saying that "wrongful killing isn't wrong" is sort of a grammatical and linguistic issue. a better example would be to say that someone might hold the belief that killing isn't wrong, and that murder therefore doesn't exist as a concept except in people's imaginations.

It might be, although I think that is a minor point.1Z 18:22, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Robust/Minimal Moral Realism

I have just added a section on the difference between the robust model of moral realism and the minimal model of moral realism. My main problem with it is the formatting of the quote from Pekka Väyrynen. I used a template suggested by WP:MOS, but I am unsure it was the most appropriate way to address the formatting issue. Postmodern Beatnik (talk) 18:16, 1 May 2008 (UTC)