Will the Real Issue Please Stand Up? (by guest blogger Bryan Van Norden)
One of the classic debates in ethics is between realism and anti-realism. It's hard to precisely state what is at issue without being tendentious, but one way would be this. Are there moral facts (realism) or are there just individual human or social opinions or reactions (anti-realism)?
I'm not going to say anything in this post about the arguments for or against each side, and I'm intentionally not going to say which side I'm on personally. Instead, I want to just make a couple of sociological observations (with the caveat that my results are purely anecdotal).
(1) Most people feel strongly about this issue, whether or not they have a "philosophical" mind. This topic is a sure-fire discussion starter in any introductory philosophy class.
(2) Whichever side a person agrees with, she generally thinks that the other position is pretty obviously mistaken, and is a little bemused that anyone actually believes the other side.
(3) Realists worry that, if you actually took anti-realism seriously, it would encourage some sort of moral decay, while anti-realists worry that realism is really just a rationale for being dogmatic about morality.
(4) If pressed, most realists will assert that they "know" that anti-realism does NOT actually encourage moral decay, while anti-realists will assert that they "know" that realism is NOT actually just a rationale for being dogmatic about morality.
My sense is that (3) is what accounts for (1). In addition, no matter how often people assert what they do in (4), they still really believe (3) in their gut. This explains (2), because the arguments for one's position are really just rationalizations, while the arguments against one's position don't touch what really motivates one to accept it.
Maybe it would lead to a more productive debate if we talked less about moral realism and anti-realism, and more about how to find the mean between (A) taking one's ethical commitments seriously, and (B) dogmatically sticking to one's commitments? (David Wong has an interesting discussion of this in his recent book, Natural Moralities, pp. 179-272.)
(By the way, sorry for being so behind in replying to comments. I got a copy-edited manuscript this week, which I was rushing to revise for the publisher. But I sent it off, and I'll be back to my contrary self on Monday. *smile* )