My meta-ethics are basically that of Luke's Pluralistic Moral Reductionism. (UPDATE: Elaborated in my Meta-ethics FAQ.)
However, I was curious as to whether this "Pluralistic Moral Reductionism" counts as moral realism or anti-realism. Luke's essay says it depends on what I mean by "moral realism". I see moral realism as broken down into three separate axes:
There's success theory, the part that I accept, which states that moral statements like "murder is wrong" do successfully refer to something real (in this case, a particular moral standard, like utilitarianism -- "murder is wrong" refers to "murder does not maximize happiness").
There's unitary theory, which I reject, that states there is only one "true" moral standard rather than hundreds of possible ones.
And then there's absolutism theory, which I reject, that states that the one true morality is rationally binding.
I don't know how many moral realists are on LessWrong, but I have a few questions for people who accept moral realism, especially unitary theory or absolutism theory. These are "generally seeking understanding and opposing points of view" kind of questions, not stumper questions designed to disprove or anything. While I'm doing some more reading on the topic, if you're into moral realism, you could help me out by sharing your perspective.
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Why is there only one particular morality?
This goes right to the core of unitary theory -- that there is only one true theory of morality. But I must admit I'm dumbfounded at how any one particular theory of morality could be "the one true one", except in so far as someone personally chooses that theory over others based on preferences and desires.
So why is there only one particular morality? And what is the one true theory of morality? What makes this theory the one true one rather than others? How do we know there is only one particular theory? What's inadequate about all the other candidates?
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Where does morality come from?
This gets me a bit more background knowledge, but what is the ontology of morality? Some concepts of moral realism have an idea of a "moral realm", while others reject this as needlessly queer and spooky. But essentially, what is grounding morality? Are moral facts contingent; could morality have been different? Is it possible to make it different in the future?
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Why should we care about (your) morality?
I see rationality as talking about what best satisfies your pre-existing desires. But it's entirely possible that morality isn't desirable by someone at all. While I hope that society is prepared to coerce them into moral behavior (either through social or legal force), I don't think that their immoral behavior is necessarily irrational. And on some accounts, morality is independent of desire but still has rational force.
How does morality get it's ability to be rationally binding? If the very definition of "rationality" includes being moral, is that mere wordplay? Why should we accept this definition of rationality and not a different one?
I look forward to engaging in diologue with some moral realists. Same with moral anti-realists, I guess. After all, if moral realism is true, I want to know.
I agree. But I think that people act as if agreement is possible not because they are thinking of morality in the consensus sense but rather that they are thinking of morality as an actual law external to people. For many of them, perhaps, even the law of God.
I wonder if there's any experimental philosophy on lay people's thoughts on meta-ethics. It would be interesting to see, for sure.
You're right that perhaps we're debating definitions and not substance. But I think you'd be hardpressed to come up with what behaviors are actually in the "consensus morality". And it's going to end up a lot like cultural relativism.
What I'd advocate is more of an ends relativism -- actually making things clearer by specifically stating which normative/moral ends we're dealing with. For example, we could contrast the claim "One ought to be a vegetarian (relative to the end of utilitarianism)" versus the claim "One is ethically permitted to eat meat (relative to the common moral beliefs of our culture)".
I doubt that much hangs what people's meta-ethical intuitions are. Compare, for example, the issue of what people's theory of the nature of "gold" is. If people generally think that gold is what it is because the gods have mixed their aura into it, still, what gold actually is depends only on what explains the features whereby we recognize it. That explanans still comes down to its having atomic number 79 - gods be damned. And, to boot, the religious theorists of Aurum might claim to high heaven that without its divine connection, gold would ... (read more)