A moral realist would think that there are facts about what is morally right or wrong that are true regardless of what anyone thinks about them. One way to put this is that they aren’t made true by our desires, goals, standards, values, beliefs, and so on. Rather, they are true in a way more like how claims about e.g., the mass of an object are true. Facts about the mass of an object aren’t made true by our believing them or preferring them to be the case.
-”One way to put this is that they aren’t made true by our desires, goals, standards, values, beliefs, and so on.”
OK, I am a moral realist under this formulation.
-”Rather, they are true in a way more like how claims about e.g., the mass of an object are true.”
I guess it depends on what you mean by “in a way more like”. Moral claims are pretty fundamentally different from physical claims, I don’t see how to get around that—one way to put it would be that the notions of right and wrong are not inductive generalizations over observed phenomena—another way to put it would be that the question “what does it mean for something to be right or wrong” is meaningless, the only meaningful question is “what do we mean when we say that something is right or wrong” (to which the answer is “we do not mean anything, rather we speak to advocate or condemn something”). But if you are just referring to some surface-level similarity like “neither of them is actually a secret way of referring to the speaker’s beliefs/opinions/values”, then sure.
Moral realists are going to differ with respect to what they think the metaphysical status of the moral facts are. Moral naturalists may see them roughly as a kind of natural fact, so moral facts might be facts about e.g., increases in wellbeing, while non-naturalists would maintain that moral facts aren’t reducible to natural facts.
A moral realist would think that there are facts about what is morally right or wrong that are true regardless of what anyone thinks about them. One way to put this is that they aren’t made true by our desires, goals, standards, values, beliefs, and so on. Rather, they are true in a way more like how claims about e.g., the mass of an object are true. Facts about the mass of an object aren’t made true by our believing them or preferring them to be the case.
-”One way to put this is that they aren’t made true by our desires, goals, standards, values, beliefs, and so on.”
OK, I am a moral realist under this formulation.
-”Rather, they are true in a way more like how claims about e.g., the mass of an object are true.”
I guess it depends on what you mean by “in a way more like”. Moral claims are pretty fundamentally different from physical claims, I don’t see how to get around that—one way to put it would be that the notions of right and wrong are not inductive generalizations over observed phenomena—another way to put it would be that the question “what does it mean for something to be right or wrong” is meaningless, the only meaningful question is “what do we mean when we say that something is right or wrong” (to which the answer is “we do not mean anything, rather we speak to advocate or condemn something”). But if you are just referring to some surface-level similarity like “neither of them is actually a secret way of referring to the speaker’s beliefs/opinions/values”, then sure.
Moral realists are going to differ with respect to what they think the metaphysical status of the moral facts are. Moral naturalists may see them roughly as a kind of natural fact, so moral facts might be facts about e.g., increases in wellbeing, while non-naturalists would maintain that moral facts aren’t reducible to natural facts.