In passing, I might mention that I think that the fact that moral debates are not one-sided indicates that moral realism is false, since if moral realism were true, moral facts should provide us with one-sided evidence on moral questions,
At best that’s a circular argument, since you’re “observation” is that moral debates should not appear one-sided is based on an implicit premise similar to your conclusion.
No. It is based mainly on the fact that moral philosophers (rightly, in my view) use the reflective equilibrium method, where you weigh different intuitions and general principles against each other to arrive at moral judgements. This is precisely the sort of weighing of of pros and cons that we see in policy debates and which we don’t see in one-sided questions such as how Earthly life arose. The intuition that this is the right method in ethics is not based on my meta-ethical views on the nature of morality and is indeed widely shared among moral philosophers that subscribe to different meta-ethical views.
This is precisely the sort of weighing of of pros and cons that we see in policy debates and which we don’t see in one-sided questions such as how Earthly life arose.
Have you actually even looked into the state of our knowledge of how Earthly life arose? Last time I looked there were many competing theories and people were in fact weighing the evidence (such as it was) for and against each one.
At best that’s a circular argument, since you’re “observation” is that moral debates should not appear one-sided is based on an implicit premise similar to your conclusion.
No. It is based mainly on the fact that moral philosophers (rightly, in my view) use the reflective equilibrium method, where you weigh different intuitions and general principles against each other to arrive at moral judgements. This is precisely the sort of weighing of of pros and cons that we see in policy debates and which we don’t see in one-sided questions such as how Earthly life arose. The intuition that this is the right method in ethics is not based on my meta-ethical views on the nature of morality and is indeed widely shared among moral philosophers that subscribe to different meta-ethical views.
Have you actually even looked into the state of our knowledge of how Earthly life arose? Last time I looked there were many competing theories and people were in fact weighing the evidence (such as it was) for and against each one.