Moral Realism Starter

• How do moral truths motivate or justify action?– Hint: think of a normative theory’s account of

how we should decide between actions– Hint: doesn’t even have to be a morally realist

theory…

Moral Realism: Starter 2

• For use after students have grasped the view that moral properties are analogous to secondary ones.

Write a paragraph explaining this view.

Today’s homework

• 0 7 Evaluate the claim that moral values cannot be derived from facts. (50 marks)

• Or: Moral Naturalism (they can) vs. (non-cognitivism = they can’t but this doesn’t matter) vs. moral properties as relational (they can, but circuitously).

Ethical Naturalism

• What is Ethical Naturalism?• Aristotle: • Mill: • Nietzsche: • Hume: The Is/Ought Argument• Moore: The Naturalistic Fallacy • Moore: The Open Question Argument –

Metaethics

Ethical Properties as relational properties

Moral Realism

• Moral truths = God-independent transcendent truths. Maths analogy. Platonism. Moral elitism. Acrasia.

• Moral truths = natural facts. The open question argument and the naturalistic fallacy.

• Moral truths = relational properties which provide reasons for action. Analogy with secondary properties.

• Issues: How is knowledge of moral truth possible? How is agreement over moral truth possible? To what extent can such truths motivate/justify action?

Why this third way?

• moral realism/cognitivism has issues– Transcendental realism/moral Platonism is

nonsensical.– Moral naturalism is fallacious.

• Yet moral irrealism/non-cognitivism has issues– Emotivism, CR leave little room for rational discussion

of moral disagreement: no acts or persons can really be, say, courageous, rude, wrong.

Bridging the gap

• Could a realism about physical/non-evaluative properties be supportive of (a kind of) subjectivism about evaluative moral properties?

• Philosophy of Perception: Indirect Realism– Realism about primary (perceiver-invariant) physical qualities

(shape, movement, size)– Which cause perceiver-dependent (irreal/variable) secondary

qualities (colour, sound, smell, taste etc)

• Moral Philosophy: could moral properties be analogous to secondary qualities?– Might allow a more sophisticated non-cognitivism about ethics…– Could be issues with the success of the analogy, though

(morality and maths!)

Moral truth as relational

• moral truth is based on relational properties which provide reasons for action– [objective] Facts about the world– [specific to humans] generate Reasons why we act– So Facts [relational, consistent] Reasons

• the analogy with secondary properties. – Properties of the world are invariant– But moral properties (=Reasons for acting) arise from

these invariant properties in a consistent way for us.– So facts can’t change without reasons changing

(Supervenience relationship?)

Locke on Primary and Secondary Qualities

• Qualities thus utterly inseparable from the body [physical object]in what estate soever it be; such as in all the alterations and changes it suffers, all the force can be used upon it…such as sense constantly finds in every particle of matter…these I call original or primary qualities of body…simple ideas…, viz, solidity, extension, figure, motion, or rest, and number.

• Secondly, such qualities, which in truth are nothing in the objects themselves, but powers to produce various sensations in us by their primary qualities, i.e. by the bulk, figure, texture, and motion of their insensible parts…these I call secondary qualities.

• … e.g. that a violet, by the impulse of such insensible particles of matter of peculiar figures and bulks, and in different degrees and modifications of their motions, causes the ideas of the blue colour, and sweet scent of that flower to be produced in our minds…these [secondary] sensible qualities…are in truth nothing in the objects themselves but powers to produce various sensations in us, and depend on those primary qualities, viz, bulk, figure, texture, and motion of parts…

Primary versus Secondary• Primary qualities are objective and invariant.

– They do not depend on human perception. – A being who lacks vision could understand e.g. a square shape…(bats!)– Bernard Williams: ‘”What is real is accessible from any point of view”

• Secondary properties such as colours, sounds are not real properties of objects, but are mutable and subjective. – They do depend on human perception. – What we perceive of as colours, noises, smells would not be perceived

as such by other creatures (bats!)• Yet primary qualities cause secondary ones. • So our mutable sensory experience rests on something wholly

enduring.

A grassy example

• When we see grass as green we should not think it really is. – Calling grass green = it would look green to a normal human

observer in standard lighting conditions. – Yet it consistently, enduringly seems that way to us: a sensation

of green is how human beings with normal eyesight respond to something that is real, namely the presence of certain kinds of light waves.

• It is true (to us) that grass is green; we can observe it to be so; we can justify it as being so.

• So questions about the correct colour of an object – have an answer – and there are agreed procedures for establishing what it is.

Task: in pairs

• Considering the previous analogy (I’ll rewind the PP in a second)

• Devise a moral exemplar and use it to explain how moral/evaluative qualities might be analogous to secondary physical qualities– ‘As grass is green’…means X, so ‘….’ means…

• We’ll then look at the ‘Protagoras’ for an example drawn from the classic literature.

The analogy between moral and secondary properties, explained

• Secondary qualities supply an attractive model for evaluative properties. – They allow for the notions of truth, justification and

observation. – Calling an action right is analogous to calling grass

green: it would be termed right by a normal human observer under standard conditions.

• It is true (to us) that x is right; we can observe it to be so; we can justify it as being so.

Moral properties= reasons for action• moral properties can be thought of as

reasons for action.– Reasons are scalar: some are good, some are less

good, some aren’t really reasons.

• Yet facts about reasons – are objective

– even though they’re not natural facts

– they are normative facts about justification and reasoning

• so moral truth is objective but relational.

So what is a moral judgement?

• Calling something ‘wrong’ = reasons against doing something are stronger than reasons for doing it.

= statement of normative fact

• so moral judgements are truth-apt

• and is/ought gap is bridged–Natural properties reasons for action objective facts about reasons for action.

Conclusion: twinned worlds

• Both values and secondary qualities turn out not to be real properties.

• But they arise from real scientific properties.– Irrealism and realism can be twinned.– Perceiver-dependent (but consistent) reasons

for action can be derived from objective facts.– And there can be objective facts about these

reasons.

What does this mean for morals?

• Saying an action is right is not just to express personal approval.

• If moral properties are analogous to secondary qualities saying an action is right means– We expect other people will share our moral attitudes, – provided that they are in the appropriate state– and are making their judgement in suitable

circumstances.

Hume: Impartial Observer or Ideal Spectator Theory

• In The Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals • Human beings are social animals: our natural sympathy

with other human beings gives us shared access to an impartial viewpoint.

• This detached perspective on human affairs is the moral point of view.– It considers the motives and interests of each person impartially– It is a convergent common framework for discussion

• morality is not a matter of individual choice chosen by arbitrary and even capricious acts of individual will

• but the creation of human society, having evolved in response to the specific requirements of communal living.

What does this mean in practice?

• An action is right if it would elicit approval in a fully informed, impartial and sympathetic spectator.

• So my moral feelings are only reliable if I am – fully informed about the effects of an action– and if my view is not distorted by bias or prejudice.

• Hume: we actually use a special moral vocabulary to indicate this

From the ‘Enquiry concerning the principles of morals’

When a man denominates another his enemy, his rival, his antagonist, his adversary, he is understood to speak the language of self-love, and to express sentiments, peculiar to himself, and arising from his particular circumstances and situation.

But when he bestows on any man the epithets of vicious or odious or depraved, he then speaks another language, and expresses sentiments, in which, he expects, all his audience are to concur with him. He must here, therefore, depart from his private and particular situation, and must choose a point of view, common to him with others: He must move some universal principle of the human frame, and touch a string, to which all mankind have an accord and symphony.

If he means, therefore, to express, that this man possesses qualities whose tendency is pernicious to society, he has chosen this common point of view, and has touched the principle of humanity, in which every man, in some degree, concurs.

Issues 1

• Can we define impartiality? Undistorted moral experience must be a great deal rarer than accurate colour vision! – Can we have a God’s eye point of view? – Can we really be an ideal spectator? – What is ‘appropriate state’ and ‘suitable circumstances’, in this

context?

• Will agreement will be swift or easy?– Can we attain the ultimate goal of complete moral

agreement? – Or is an ongoing conversation enough?

Issues 2• Does the analogy between secondary physical qualities

and evaluative qualities hold?• Are we always clear what the relevant moral facts are that

give rise to reasons for action? Might there be competing facts, uncertain views? (Compare: ‘is it blue or grey?’)– Of course, this might indicate moral uncertainty that can be resolved

through discussion…

• Do the same factual properties always give rise to identical reasons for action for everyone?– Seeing your sister talk to a strange bloke curiosity in the UK,

rage in (stereotypical) Afghanistan?– BUT – might not similarity of reasons be enough?– And in the example above, the same reason (desire to protect

relative) underlies both responses…

Issues 3

• The explanation is obscure: is it saying that evaluative properties are simply epiphenomena of factual ones?– Causal connection is therefore one-way– Moral choice is therefore removed from us: facts

cause (uniform) reasons for action loss of freewill– BUT 1. Does it matter that we are not as free as we

might think? (Twin studies/Nietzsche saying we are creatures with many drives)

– AND 2. We can still come to factual conclusions about the relative strengths of our reasons for action, and reason about these therefore.

Homework: please write a couple of evaluative paragraphs

• [Topic sentence]

• Point

• Exemplification or expansion

• Answer/ discussion point (and example)

• Rebuttal or counter ( + response)

• Link [back to topic]

• [Synthesis] or summary of paragraph argument

The difficulty is the point!

• But this difficulty might fit our practice. – questions about the morally correct course are more difficult to

answer than questions about the correct colour of things– public discussion helps us to move towards the right answer

• If moral disagreements were– irresoluble then why would we would bother to go on arguing

about them?– Too easily resoluble then why would we bother about them?

Possible conclusion

• Ideal spectator theory is a metaethical theory that has implications for normative moral theories.– Morality must be universal and impartial and produced by an

appropriate process of reasoning which meets communal standards.

– Don’t Kant and Mill and Aristotle all say something like this?

• But: might not the ideal spectator incline towards utilitarianism?– ‘the ideal spectator will wish for the welfare, rather than the

harm, of those under his gaze; since he is impartial between them he will seek to harmonize their desires and interests so that as many of them can be satisfied as possible.’

Concluding questions:

To each of the questions below, what answers can be generated by the knowledge-base the syllabus provides?

• How is knowledge of moral truth possible? • How is agreement over moral truth possible? • To what extent can such truths motivate/justify action?