Defending Moral Realism from Empirical Evidence of Disagreement.
Recently, empirically minded philosophers have employed evidence of widespread, fundamental moral disagreement to argue against moral realism. I argue that the empirical evidence does not refute realism because the disagreement is consistent with certain pluralistic versions of moral realism that po...
| Published in: | Social Theory & Practice Vol. 39; no. 3; pp. 393 - 417 |
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| Format: | Article |
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Florida State University
Jul2013
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| Summary: | Recently, empirically minded philosophers have employed evidence of widespread, fundamental moral disagreement to argue against moral realism. I argue that the empirical evidence does not refute realism because the disagreement is consistent with certain pluralistic versions of moral realism that posit a set of pro tanto normative principles. Others have appealed to pluralism in defense of moral realism but have used pluralism to attack the empirically based approach to ethical theory. Although I argue that the empirical argument against moral realism fails, I defend the approach and suggest better ways that (pluralist) moral realism could be tested empirically. |
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