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TimS comments on Less Wrong views on morality? - Less Wrong Discussion
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It isn't an accident that there are no universal mandatory incest moralities out there in recorded history. That's not actually enough to prove moral realism is true.
In short, there are universal morally relevant human preferences created by evolution (i.e. hunger, sex drive). That doesn't show that evolutionarily created preferences resolve all moral dilemmas.
The scientific method has hardly resolved all scientific dilemmas. So if there are real things in science, 'resolving all dilemmas' is not a requirement for scientific realism, so it would seem it shouldn't be a requirement for moral realism.
"Descriptive" statements about morality (e.g. 'some, but not all, people think incest is wrong') is objective. The only real question is whether "normative" ethics can be objective. 'people think incest is wrong' is a descriptive statement. 'incest is wrong' is a normative statement. The moral realism question is really whether any normative statement can be objectively true. The intuition pump for thinking "maybe yes" comes not from incest statements, but rather I think from statements like "humans shouldn't pick an 8 year old at random and chop off his limbs with a chainsaw just to see what that looks like." Incest statements are like pumping your intuition about scientific realism by considering statements like "Wave Function Collapse is how we get probabilistic results in real experiments." If you are wondering whether there is ANY objective truth, start with the obvious ones like "the sun will rise tomorrow" and "hacking the arms of reasonably chosen children to see what that looks like is wrong."
Resolving all moral dilemmas is not really part of moral realism, though.
For instance, checking with S.E.P., we have:
It's easy to come up with some true claims about morality. Morality is part of biology - and is thus subject to the usual forms of scientific enquiry.
This is a bad example, because "moral realism" really refers to normative moral statements, not descriptive ones.
I don't think there is any interesting controversy in describing what people think is wrong. The interesting controversy is whether anything is actually wrong or not. THe problem is with "Morality is part of biology" is it is ambiguous at best, many people would see that as a descriptive statement, not telling them that "therefore you ought to do what your biology tells you to do."
Best to work with unambiguous statements since the requirement is "at least some."
"Killing randomly chosen children to see what it feels like is wrong" is a normative moral statement, that if objectively true means morality realists are right.
"Most people think killing randomly chosen childern to see what it feels like is wrong" is a descriptive statement that is objective, but doesn't tell you whether you ought to kill randomly chosen children or not.
I think, at this point, a scientist would ask what you actually meant by normative moral statements. I.e. what you mean by "right" and "wrong". I figure if you are sufficiently clear about that, the issue is dissolved, one way or the other.
Would that scientist be hoping I had something to add beyond what is in wikipedia? Because unless that scientist tells me what he doesn't understand about normative moral statements in philosophy that isn't easily found on the web, I wouldn't know how to improve on the wikipedia article.
The article offers a bunch of conflicting definitions - from social science, economics and elsewhere. Until there's a properly-formed question, it's hard to say very much about the answer.
OK, here you go then.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative#Philosophy
That doesn't help too much with classifying things into categories of "right" and "wrong". Either one defines these terms as relative to some unspecified agent's preferences, or one gives them a naturalistic definition - e.g. as the preferences associated with universal instrumental values. Then there's the issue of which type of definition is more practical or useful.
My point a few comments ago was that moral realism is the theory that moral statements are real, not that statements about morality are real. Statements about unicorns are real: "unicorns are cute white horses with pointy horns that can only be seen by virgins" is a real statement about unicorns. Unicorns are NOT real.
Any argument or disagreement in this chain arises from what is purely some sort of disagreement about how to use some terms. I don't mean to suggest that the content of moral realism or normative vs descriptive is right or true or real, but I do have rather a thing about using words and terms and other labels in the standard ways they have been used.
For whatever reason, @timtyler considers the standard definitions of either moral relativism or normative to be nonsensical or incomplete or problematic in some serious way. Bully for him. In my opinion, it makes no sense to argue against what the standard definition of various terms are by pointing out that the concepts defined have problems.
Rather than redefining words like moral realism and normative that have quite a long history of meaning what wikipedia describes pretty clearly they mean, I suggest that people who want to create better concepts than these should call them something else, and not argue that the standard definitions are not the standard definitions because they are stupid or wrong or whatever.