Moral Realism

The moral realist contends that there are moral facts, so moral
realism is a thesis in ontology, the study of what is. The ontological
category "moral facts" includes both the descriptive moral judgment
that is allegedly true of an individual, such as, "Sam is morally
good," and the descriptive moral judgment that is allegedly true for
all individuals such as, "Lying for personal gain is wrong." A
signature of the latter type of moral fact is that it not only
describes an enduring condition of the world but also proscribes what
ought to be the case (or what ought not to be the case) in terms of an
individual's behavior.

The traditional areas of disagreement between the realist camp and the
antirealist camp are cognitivism, descriptivism, moral truth, moral
knowledge, and moral objectivity. The long and recalcitrant history of
the realism/antirealism debate records that the focal point of the
debate has been shaped and reshaped over centuries, with a third way,
namely, Quasi-realism, attracting more recent attention. Quasi-realism
debunks the positions of both realism and antirealism.

On the one hand, considering cognitivism, descriptivism, moral truth,
moral knowledge, and moral objectivity as specifying the sufficient
conditions for moral realism ignores the quasi-realist way. On the
other hand, defining moral realism in a way that accommodates
quasi-realism concedes too much: unlike the moral realist, the
quasi-realist denies that moral facts are explanatory. Consequently,
one can view quasi-realism as the contemporary heir of antirealism.

1. The Realism/Antirealism Debate

If there are moral facts, how can we know them? For a realist, moral
facts are as certain as mathematical facts. Moral facts and
mathematical facts such as numbers, are abstract entities, and as
such, are different in kind from natural facts. One cannot literally
display moral facts as one could display, say, a plant. One can
display a token of the type, for example one can write "lying for
personal gain is wrong" or one can write an equation; however, one
cannot observe moral and mathematical facts in quite the same way as
one can observe, with the aid of a microscope, clorophyll in a leaf.
Such limitations of experience do not stop realists and antirealists
from disagreeing on virtually every aspect of the moral practices that
seem to presuppose the existence of moral facts. The list of contested
areas includes moral language, moral truth, moral knowledge, moral
objectivity, moral psychology, and so on. These areas are not discrete
but intermingle.

The moral realist may argue for the view that there are moral facts as follows:

(1) Moral sentences are sometimes true.

(2) A sentence is true only if the truth-making relation holds between
it and the thing that makes it true.

(3) Thus, true moral sentences are true only because there holds the
truth-making relation between them and the things that make them true.

Therefore,

(4) The things that make some moral sentences true must exist.

It is a short inference from the existence of the things that make
some moral sentences true to the existence of moral facts.

The moral antirealist can respond to the argument by denying any of
the three premises. The antirealist could be a non-descriptivist in
rejecting premise (1): no moral sentences are true for they do not
describe how the world is; or, she may reject a version of the
correspondence theory of truth by denying premise (2): she may argue
that a sentence can be true even if there holds no truth-making
relation between it and the thing that makes it true. For instance,
she may be a proponent of the coherence theory of truth, which holds
that a sentence can be true only when there is a truth making relation
between it and other sentences relevant to it. Or, she may even reject
as illegitimate the inference from "things that make some moral
sentences true" to the "existence of moral facts."

In the past, many antirealists were noncognitivists, holding that
moral judgments are not cognitive states like ordinary beliefs: that
is, antirealists hold that unlike beliefs, the essential function or
aim of moral judgments is not to represent the world accurately. (A
non-descriptivist claim is that cognitivism —more specifically
descriptivism— is necessary, but not sufficient for moral realism, as
will be shown presently.) Moral judgments are, according to the
noncognitivist, mental states of some other kind: they are emotions,
desires, or intentions of the sort that are expressed by commands or
prescriptions.

If moral judgments are expressed by commands or prescriptions, then
there cannot be literal moral truths. (Cf. Wright 1993. He argues that
the focal discussion in the realist/antirealist debate should be about
the acceptable theories of truth.) If there are no literal moral
truths, then no moral judgments may be cited as evidence for knowing
how the world is. Moral knowledge can no longer be considered as
descriptive or propositional; or, no one is justified in believing
certain things about the world in making moral judgments. This
illustrates how the noncognitivist analysis of moral judgments can be
escalated into the antirealist rejection of (those good names that we
take for granted when we participate in moral practices such as)
"moral truths" and "moral knowledge." The antirealist's noncognitivism
threatens moral objectivity as well. Objectivity is to be found within
the world. If moral judgments are not about accurately describing the
world —for example, if moral judgments are about us —then moral
objectivity will not be found within the world. If moral objectivity
is to be found within us, then it is not the same objectivity with
which we began, or, so had been the old antirealist's way.
a. Cognitivism

If it is noncognitivism that provides the antirealist a way of
rejecting moral truth, moral knowledge, and moral objectivity, the
denial of noncognitivism (that is, cognitivism) must be necessary for
the realist to properly claim them. Cognitivism is the view that moral
judgments are cognitive states just like ordinary beliefs. It is part
of their function to describe the world accurately. The realist
argument that stems from cognitivism — as we saw from the above
argument— is oftentimes guided by the apparent difficulties that the
noncognitivist analysis of moral judgments faces. For instance, there
is the famous Frege-Geach problem, namely, the noncognitivist
difficulty of rendering emotive, prescriptive or projective meaning
for embedded moral judgments.

Geach (1965) uses the "the Frege point," according to which "a
proposition may occur in discourse now asserted, now unasserted, and
yet be recognizably the same proposition," to establish that no
noncognitivist ("the anti-descriptive theorist") analysis of moral
sentences and utterances can be adequate.

Consider a simple moral sentence: "Setting a kitten on fire is wrong."
Suppose that the simple sentence means, "Boo to setting a kitten on
fire!" The Frege point dictates that the antecedent of "if setting a
kitten on fire is wrong, then getting one's friends to help setting a
kitten on fire is also wrong" must mean the same as the simple
sentence. But this cannot be because the antecedent of the conditional
makes no such assertions while the simple moral sentence does. In
other words, the noncognitivist analysis of moral sentences cannot be
given to the conditional sentences with the embedded simple moral
sentence. The problem can be generally applied to cases of other
compound sentences such as "It is wrong to set a kitten on fire, or it
is not." Even if the noncognitivist analysis of the simple sentence
were correct, compound sentences within which a simple moral sentence
is embedded should be given an analysis independently of the
noncognitivist analysis of it. This seems unacceptable to many. For
the following argument is valid: "It is wrong to set a kitten on fire,
or it is not; it is not 'not wrong'; hence, it is wrong to set a
kitten on fire." If the argument is valid, then the conclusion must
mean the same as one of the disjuncts of its first premise. The
argument would be otherwise invalid because of an equivocation, and
the noncognitivist seems to be forced to say that the argument is
invalid.

The Frege-Geach problem demonstrates the noncognitivists' requirement
of adequately rendering emotive, prescriptive, expressive, or
projective meaning of those moral sentences that are embedded within
compound moral sentences. (For more on the Frege-Geach problem, see
Non-Cognitivism in Ethics. See also Darwall, Gibbard, and Railton
1992: 151-52.)

The cognitivist understanding of moral judgments is at the center of
moral realism. For the cognitivist, moral judgments are mental states;
moral judgments are of the same kind as ordinary beliefs, that is,
cognitive states. But how are we to know this? One manageable way is
to focus on what we intend to do when we make moral judgments, and
also on how we express them. Moral judgments are intended to be
accurate descriptions of the world, and statements express moral
judgments (as opposed to command or prescription) just as statements
express ordinary beliefs. That is, statements express moral language.
The statements that express moral judgments are either true or false
just as the statements that express ordinary beliefs are. Moral truths
occur when our signs match the world.

Language allows us to communicate with one another, typically using
sentences and utterances. A large part of language involves, among
many other things, influencing others and us. Normative language, in
contrast with descriptive language, includes moral language (that is,
moral language is part of evaluative or normative language). It is
even more important not to be swayed by moral language because moral
reality grips us. It is bad that others try to deceive us, but it is
worse that we deceive ourselves into accepting moral facts simply
because of the language that we use. That is, moral language — if it
is not to describe the world —must not be mistaken as descriptive.
Moral language binds us in a certain manner, and the manner in which
it binds us is important.
i. Descriptivism

Moral language and descriptive language share the same syntactic
structure. "Sam is good" predicates a kind of goodness to Sam just as
"Sam is four-legged" predicates having four legs to her. "Being good"
as in "being good is being able to bear one's own scrutiny" and
"having four legs" as in "having for legs is not required of being a
dog" are both noun-like phrases. Again, to say, "If Sam is good, then
she will be able to bear her own scrutiny," illustrates that moral
predication could be embedded to form a compound sentence just as
descriptive predication could. We use both parts of language with an
equal ease. Almost all of us are proficient in using moral language.
Most of us understand what others express with it; and, we are
expected to have understood what moral language means. Few people
would apply the term "morally permissible" to an apparent case of
wanton cruelty. Furthermore, moral language is governed by the same
fundamental rules of logic as descriptive language. For instance, one
and the same action cannot be good and bad at the same time. (The
philosophical rejection of moral facts remains popular, although this
focal reliance on the logico-linguistic aspect of the moral practices
is no longer fashionable. See Darwall, Gibbard, and Railton 1992,
especially p. 123.)

From this, must we then infer that there are entities like "moral
goodness" and "obligation" to which moral language refers in the
world? Are the three characteristics of structural similarity between
moral and descriptive languages, the equal ease with which we employ
them, and the logical interplay between them good enough reasons for
thinking that there are moral facts? Is it not possible that our ways
of influencing others and ourselves are exactly where syntax and
semantics of our language betray us and, consequently, that moral
language suffers from a lack of referents analogous to terms such as
"nothing," the "present king of France," do?

Either moral language describes (or, it is intended to describe
accurately) the world or it does not. According to descriptivists,
moral language describes the world. The descriptivist position has
been thought as the mark of moral realism, while the non-descriptivist
position as that of antirealism. This is captured as follows:

(C1) S is a moral realist if and only if S is a moral descriptivist.

So while one may hold that there are no moral facts, according to C1,
one may not at the same time hold that moral language describes or is
intended to describe the world. Again, one may not hold both that
there are moral facts but that our languages about them do not
describe the world. For if C1 were true, being a moral realist and
being a descriptivist about moral language are logically equivalent.
So any non-descriptivist realism and any descriptivist antirealism
would show that C1 is false. The possibilities will be discussed
shortly in §2 and §3. Descriptivism and, hence, the truth-aptness of
moral language. is discussed in more detail in what follows. (Ignored
for the moment is what Blackburn calls "quietism" according to which
"at some particular point the debate is not a real one, and that we
are only offered, for instance, metaphors and images from which we can
profit as we please" 1984, 146. One may claim quietism to be present
in pretty much any important and interesting philosophical dispute,
like "primary versus secondary, fact versus value, description versus
expression, or of any other significant kind" 1998, 157. Quietism
about whether moral language describes the world, if true, would
render the traditional realism/antirealism debate over descriptivism
as a dispute over no difference where there is nothing more than "the
celebration of the seamless web of language" 1998, 157.)

Descriptivism in meta-ethics is a cognitivist view, according to which
moral language describes (or, is intended to describe) the world. (Cf.
Horgan and Timmons 2000, 124. This rough definition, according to
them, falls under the dogma of the "[mistaken] semantic assumption:
All genuinely cognitive content is descriptive content." Conflating
descriptivism with cognitivism is, according to them, "a largely
unquestioned dogma.") An inevitable corollary of descriptivism is that
moral language is apt to truth evaluation; that is, statements express
moral judgments that are either true or false. We may say
alternatively that moral sentences express propositions without
affecting the result of the discussion. As Nicholas Sturgeon puts it,
"moral [sentences] typically express [statements] capable of truth and
falsity" (1986, 116). Strictly speaking, then, descriptivism says
little about, and remains neutral with respect to, the two views in
moral epistemology: there are moral statements that are known to be
true. Descriptivism does not tell us whether there is any moral
statement known to be true. Nor does it tell us anything about the
things by virtue of which moral statements are true when they are
true. (Cf. Skorupski 1999. He thinks that descriptivism in conjunction
without a substantial theory of truth is no descriptivism at all.
There is just a terminological difference, and the descriptivism in
conjunction with a substantial theory of truth will be discussed in
section 2.)

The moral descriptivist believes that moral statements express moral
judgments, and that they are either true or false. If every sentence
that is capable of truth-value describes the world, then so does every
moral statement. Moral language describes the world because every
truth-apt sentence describes, or is intended to describe the world.
The non-descriptivist denies that. The non-descriptivist believes that
moral statements do not express moral judgments. Rather, the
non-descriptivist believes that moral judgments are expressed by
commands or prescriptions. Neither commands nor prescriptions are
truth-apt, and as a result they typically are not meant to describe
the world. Moral language does not describe the world, according to
the non-descriptivist. That is, it represents our wishes, preferences,
emotions, and so on, but it represents nothing over and above them.
Figure 1 illustrates the disagreement between the descriptivist and
the non-descriptivist. (Definite antirealist positions are marked with
the dotted boxes in the figures that follow. An oval box will mark
definite realist positions. See figure 5.)

Figure 1

Non-descriptivists disagree about exactly what moral language
accomplishes, while they are unanimous about what it does not. G. E.
Moore's open question argument supports emotivism, a non-descriptivism
contrary to his intention in the beginning of the 20th century. A. J.
Ayer and C. L. Stevenson argue that moral judgments express feelings
of approval or disapproval, or that making moral judgments is
equivalent to emoting in reference to behaviors of others and ours.
(See Ayer 1952 and Stevenson 1937, 1944, and 1963.) Stevenson says
that, "Mr. G. E. Moore's familiar objection about the open question is
chiefly pertinent in this regard. No matter what set of scientifically
knowable properties a thing may have (says Moore, in effect), you will
find, on careful introspection, that it is an open question to ask
whether anything having these properties is good," (1937, 18). R. M.
Hare's universal prescriptivism, according to which "'ought'-judgments
are prescriptive like plain imperatives, but differ from them in being
universalizable" (1991, 457) emphasizes that moral language
facilitates ways of prescribing actions for all of us. The
norm-expressivism of Allen Gibbard has renewed arguments for
non-descriptivism recently. Rejecting emotivism, Gibbard,1990, holds
that moral judgments are concerned about rational-to-have or justified
moral sentiments, not just about feelings or preferences one has.
Apparently, he holds that some moral feelings can be called
rational-to-have or justified. It is when "one's acceptance of norms
that permit the feeling" (Darwall, Gibbard, and Railton: 1992, 150-51)
is expressed, a feeling may be called rational-to-have. So while moral
judgments (and moral language) are expressive of what we accept as
norms, namely, a state of mind, they are not about describing the
world, namely, non-descriptivism about moral judgment and language.
Blackburn's projectivism seems difficult to classify one way or
another especially when it is considered in conjunction with his
quasi-realism (Blackburn: 1984, 1993, and 1998). Moral language
according to the projectivist lets us spin our own story onto the
world. Non-descriptivists agree, nonetheless, that moral language is
the tool of choice when we are panting for help, recommending a course
of actions, passing judgments on what others do, and so on, but it is
never the tool for describing the world.

The views discussed above can be illustrated with an example. Consider
the moral sentence, "Petal ought to avoid eating too much." The
utterance of the sentence expresses the speaker's judgment about Petal
and perhaps about her tendency to the excessive consumption of food.
The cognitivist holds that the speaker's judgment is of the same kind
as ordinary beliefs, that is the cognitivist holds that the speaker's
moral judgment is a cognitive state. Beliefs are representations of
how things are, namely, possible states of affairs; and, language
typically expresses beliefs. According to the cognitivist, then, the
moral sentence that expresses the moral judgment represents a possible
state of affairs. We may say that the descriptivist maintains that the
moral sentence describes what ought to be the case about Petal and her
tendency toward food. Petal could be instantiating the property of the
"oughtness" of avoiding the excessive consumption of food, although
this is not the only cognitivist way of maintaining her descriptivism
about moral language. Just as the morning star refers to Venus, the
linguistic item "ought to avoid eating too much" may refer to a moral
property. It might even be maintained that there obtains the
referential relation between moral expressions and the things in the
world that they are supposed to pick out.

Noncognitivists hold that the speaker's judgment in saying, "Petal
ought to avoid eating too much," is not of the same kind as cognitive
states. Some noncognitivists go further and deny that the moral
sentence represents a possible state of affairs. That is, some
noncognitivists are non-descriptivists as well. The non-descriptivists
maintain that the surface structure of moral language—and the logical
interplay it displays within our use of it—is not a good guide in
understanding what moral language does for us (and what we intend to
do with it). The word "nothing" picks out no object whatsoever,
although it serves as a grammatical subject; the definite description
the "present King of France" refers to no one, although its article
"the" indicates a unique satisfier of the description, and so on.
These are familiar cases (of our language betraying us ontologically).
So, part of the non-descriptivist claim is that moral language
ontologically manipulates us just as "nothing" and the "present king
of France" do. The merit of the view according to which there lurks a
deeper structure (or meaning) to our moral language must be judged on
how successful the non-descriptivist construal of the sentence about
Petal is.

The non-descriptivist construal of "Petal ought to avoid eating too
much" varies. Emotivism construes it as the way of emoting the
speaker's disapproval of Petal's excessive consumption of food, or the
way of informing Petal of her feeling. The expressivist construes it
as the speaker's way of expressing her preference with regard to
Petal's eating habit. The prescriptivist construes it as the way of
commanding Petal to not eat excessively. The norm-expressivist
construes it as the way of expressing the speaker's non-acceptance of
the norms that allow such a consumption of food. Perhaps the
projectivist would construe the statement about Petal as a way of
"objectifying" the speaker's disapproval. However, all reject that
there is a dyadic relationship of reference or correspondence, between
the moral sentence and how the world is. The dyadic relation has all
but been reduced to the monothetic relation of showing/manifesting the
speaker's psychological state. (The truth of this does not entail that
people do not believe in moral principles. A. J. Ayer says that "[t]o
say…that these moral judgments are merely expressive of certain
feelings, feelings of approval or disapproval, is an over
simplification" 1954, 238.) Figure 2 diagrams the non-descriptivist
positions.

Figure 2

The contrast between descriptivism and non-descriptivism seems inapt
for Gilbert Harman's relativism because his relativism is a definite
moral antirealist position. He rejects the objective status of moral
facts. (See his 1977, 1986, and 2000; see also Harman and Thomson 1996
in which an interesting discussion of reasons both for and against
moral objectivity is presented.) The relativist maintains that there
are some ethical questions that can be correctly answered with "yes"
for one, and "no" for another. Her claim implies nothing concerning
for what moral language is meant. Error theorists maintain that moral
judgments systematically err by positing moral facts. (For instance,
Mackie says that "[t]he assertion that there are objective values or
intrinsically prescriptive entities or features of some kind, which
ordinary moral judgments presuppose is, I hold it not meaningless but
false" 1977, 40.) That is, moral language aims to get the world right,
but it always misses the mark. Mackie's error theory in this respect
occupies an important niche between the sides of the descriptivism
divide and the sides of the moral realism divide. Figure 3
incorporates projectivism, relativism, and error theories, into
figures 1 and 2.

Figure 3

The ontological ramification of accepting descriptivism (or,
cognitivism) is not inevitably moral realism. Figure 3 indicates that
descriptivism is not sufficient for moral realism. Mackie's error
theory is discussed in §2 in establishing the insufficiency.
Blackburn's projectivism, and John Skorupski's "irrealist cognitivism"
will be very briefly discussed as well. Descriptivism is nonetheless
necessary for moral realism. The necessity is argued in §3 when Bruce
Waller's "megaethical level" is considered and rejected. That is, a
conjunct of C1 will be shown to be false while the other conjunct of
C1 will be shown to be true, thereby making the conjunction C1 false;
more specifically, it will be shown that "if S is a moral
descriptivist, thenS is a moral realist" is false and it will be shown
that "S is a moral realist only if S is a moral descriptivist" is
true.
ii. Mackie's Error Theory

Is it true that S is a moral realist if and only if S is a
descriptivist? That is, is C1 true? Any coherent descriptivist
antirealism would establish that C1 is false. Another way that C1
could be shown to be false is to establish the possibility of
non-descriptivist realism. The insufficiency of descriptivism will be
established in this section. The realist territory, as it were, will
not be properly marked by descriptivism.

Consider Mackie's remark that:

The assertion that there are objective values or intrinsically
prescriptive entities or features of some kind, which ordinary moral
judgments presuppose is, I hold it not meaningless but false (1977,
40).

Moral judgments are false, or so the above-quoted passage reads. But
why are they all false? It is because there are no entities to which
moral language refers. Moral language purports to describe things that
are not there. According to Mackie, it is a (perpetual) error to
suppose that there are moral entities, thus, the name "error theory."
Mackie's error theory is a prima facie descriptivist antirealist
position: it maintains that there are no moral facts. In addition he
accepts that moral judgments are meant to describe the world. Is this
combination of moral antirealism and descriptivism plausible?
Blackburn certainly thinks that it is not.

Blackburn, whose own view seems to be indeterminate between
descriptivism and non-descriptivism, thinks that Mackie's error theory
is inconsistent. This is partly because of the apparent difficulty in
attributing a pervasive systematic error to our making moral
judgments. As Blackburn puts it, "[T]he puzzle is why, in the light of
the error theory, Mackie did not at least indicate how a shmoral
vocabulary [that is, a moral vocabulary cleansed of its ontological
error] would look, and why he did not himself go on only to
shmoralize, not to moralize." According to Blackburn, this is so
seriously puzzling that Mackie's failure to shmoralize "in itself
suggests that no error can be incorporated in mere use of those
concepts" (1985, 2).

To try avoiding the pervasive and systematic error should appear
reasonable to those who were aware of it. But Mackie seemed "quite
happy to go on to express a large number of straightforward moral
views [namely, to moralize rather than to shmoralize]" (Blackburn
1985, 1).

Does Blackburn's charge establish that Mackie's antirealism and
descriptivism combination is inconsistent? No, it does not. What
Blackburn demands of Mackie is the consistent deployment of his
meta-ethical view in his moral practice. But to lead a moral life
strictly according to one's meta-ethical view requires heroic efforts.
Try imagining an error theorist deploying his meta-ethical views when
it comes to the existence of an external world! She cannot help but
conduct her business as if it is no error in thinking that there
exists a world external to her. It is impossible for her to show that
it is an error to believe in the existence of such a world. More
generally, the second-order beliefs on the first-order moral practices
are rarely made explicit. Everyday moral practices (within which
Mackie continues to moralize) are not a translucent showcase for
meta-ethical views. So, Blackburn fails to establish that
descriptivist antirealism is inconsistent. That is, Blackburn should
expect no explicit display of Mackie's error-theoretic commitments.

Blackburn's projectivism may qualify for the descriptivist
antirealism. (Blackburn's descriptivism will be discussed in §2 of
section 1.2 in more detail.) Moral language has content, according to
Blackburn, but the content is not determined by the world. The content
of moral language is determined rather by what "the mind [expresses
as] a reaction by 'spreading itself on the world'" (Blackburn 1984,
75). That moral language has content suggests that part of its
function is to accurately describe the world. At the same time,
Blackburn's projectivism is an antirealist position because he
maintains that the content is somehow "written" by us.

There are other recent theories that result from explicit attempts at
combining descriptivism and antirealism. Hatzimoysis says "a
minimalist conception of truth fits the bill of antirealist
cognitivism in ethics." (See for example, Hatzimoysis 1997, 448.)
Skorupski's "irrealist cognitivism" is one such theory. He argues for
it by denying "all content is factual content" (1999, 438).

The fact that moral language expresses cognitive states, that is, that
moral language has descriptive content, according to Skorupski does
not guarantee the existence of moral facts; nor does it justify belief
in the existence of moral facts. (Cf. Horgan and Timmons 2000. They
distinguish three different kinds of content: declarative, cognitive,
and descriptive.) Skorupski says that "normative claims are truth-apt
contents of cognition…but their truth is not a matter of
correspondence or representation" (1999, 436). The truth-apt fragment
of language is truth-apt because of its descriptive content. So the
first conjunct of Skorupski's remark is descriptivist. But when moral
language is true (or false), it is so not because it corresponds to
the world: there is nothing that answers to moral language. That is,
Skorupski rejects the existence of moral facts, and his position is
hence antirealism.

Is Skorupski's irrealist cognitivism consistent? Descriptivism by no
means entails the correspondence theory of truth, and Skorupski's
antirealism is based solely on his denial of the correspondence theory
of truth. Irrealist cognitivism is hence consistent.

Mackie's error theory, Blackburn's projectivism, and Skorupski's
irrealist cognitivism are instances of descriptivist antirealism. We
may then conclude that moral descriptivism is not sufficient for moral
realism. But is it a necessary condition for moral realism? If it is,
then we may hope to mark the proper realist territory by adding
additional necessary conditions. (My emphasis on consistency of
maintaining both descriptivism and antirealism is not meant to suggest
that a descriptivism/non-descriptivism debate as represented by, say,
the Frege-Geach problem which claims that embedded moral language
appears to have descriptive contents rather than emotive, prescriptive
or projective content, is not as important and relevant to the
realism/antirealism debate. See Darwall, Gibbard, and Railton 1992,
especially pp. 151-152.) The necessity of descriptivism for realism
will be discussed in the following section. Another conjunct of C1, "S
is a moral realist only if Sis a descriptivist" will be examined.
iii. Waller's Megaethical Level

Few philosophers take the noncognitivist realist position seriously.
For instance, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord (1988, 9-14) dismisses it quickly
as inconsistent. But noncognitivist realism is certainly a logical
possibility. In this section, we shall examine Waller's arguments for
its tenability.

Waller's noncognitivism is attenuated: moral judgments are not
cognitive states when no fundamental common values are in place. He
says "noncognitivism insists that when fundamental value conflicts
arise and basic value questions are posed, then the disputes and
values are noncognitive" (1994, 63). Statements only express moral
judgments when an assumed set of common fundamental values is present.
Waller's remark that "such independent moral conversion is evidence in
favor of moral realism and against noncognitivism" sounds inconsistent
with the label of his theory "noncognitivist moral realism." (See his
1992, 129.) Waller's remark makes it seem as if moral realism and
noncognitivism are contradictory to each other. Waller's strategy is
to distinguish the "megaethical" level from the level where there are
uncontested fundamental values. This allows Waller to maintain that at
one level "the moral facts are internally real," but at another level,
namely, the megaethical level, "[the moral facts] are ideal" (1994,
67). Waller's divide-and-conquer strategy entitles him to either
cognitivist moral realism at the level of assumed values, or
noncognitivist antirealism at the megaethical level. So Waller's
"noncognitivist realism" fails as a noncognitivist realist position.
We may then conclude that cognitivism (or, descriptivism) is necessary
for moral realism. Cognitivism, the view that moral judgments are
cognitive states like ordinary beliefs (with its two corollaries,
namely, descriptivism and their truth-aptness), could facilitate the
realist/antirealist debate, but cognitivism alone is not sufficient in
facilitating the discussion, not solely in its terms anyway.

The necessity of cognitivism for realism may lead us to expect that
specifying additional necessary conditions for realism could mark the
proper realist territory. Cognitivism combined with some substantial
theory of truth is taken up next.
b. Truth in Moral Judgments

Moral statements express judgments, and for some, moral statements
describe the world. But moral realism is not present everywhere
cognitivism (or, descriptivism) is present. That is, cognitivism and
descriptivism, which had once crystallized the realism/antirealism
debate, no longer do so. Crispin Wright's recommendation that "moral
anti-realists, for instance, should grant that moral judgments are apt
for truth and falsity" (1993, 65) illuminates more recent discussions
of the subject. Mackie's error theory (1977), Skorupski's irrealist
cognitivism (1999), and perhaps Blackburn's projectivism (for example,
1984) illustrate, as we saw earlier, the possibility of consistently
combining cognitivism with antirealism.

An error theorist maintains her antirealism by insisting that moral
judgments involve a pervasive error. No moral judgments are true,
according to the error theorist, although they are truth-apt because
they purport to describe the world. Moral realists part company with
the error theorists over truth in moral judgments: some moral
judgments are true. Still, this is not sufficient for moral realism.
The projectivist functioning as a quasi-realist and Skorupski should
be able to claim that some moral judgments are true. Moral truths can
be literal or figurative; and, they can be the matter of
correspondence or coherence (coherence with other already held beliefs
stands in here for the range of "modified characteristics" of truth).
Figure 4 illustrates this point:

Figure 4

Deflationist theorists of truth reject that the truth-predicate "is
true" adds to the meaning of linguistic items. For instance, "snow is
white" and "'snow is white' is true," mean, according to them, the
same. Deflationist theories include F. P. Ramsey's redundancy theory
of truth (or, the prosentential theory of truth) and Paul Horwich's
more recent minimalism. Inflationist (substantive or robust) theorists
of truth, in contrast with deflationists, maintain that truth is a
real and important linguistic item. Inflationist theories include the
correspondence theory of truth, the coherence theory of truth, and the
so-called pragmatic theory of truth. Inflationists disagree not only
about the nature of the property of truth, but also disagree about the
bearers of the property truth.
i. An Analogy

Consider the judgment, "Suffering from lack of food is bad." The
judgment is usually expressed with the statement "suffering from lack
of food is bad." Call it a "B-statement." Sometimes, we find it
necessary to express it with "it is true that suffering from lack of
food is bad." Call it a "T-statement." (To complete it, there are
"F-statements" like "it is false that suffering from lack of food is
bad.") We use T-statements to emphasize partiality toward "being true
to the world." However, regardless of what motivates us to use
T-statements, the explicit ascription of truth in T-statements
commands our attention. Does the T-statement add anything extra to the
B-statement? If so, what is it that the T-statement says over and
above the B-statement?

There are two broad ways to answer the question: deflationism and
various forms of substantial theory (or what we called above
"inflationist theory"). Substantial theorists deny that the
B-statement and the T-statement are exactly the same while the
deflationist maintains that the difference is merely stylistic. If the
deflationist has her way, then it is obvious that antirealists could
have truth in moral judgments. (David Brink argues against the
coherentist theory of truth with respect to moral constructivism. See
Brink 1989, 106-7 and 114; see Tenenbaum, 1996, for the deflationist
approach.) Antirealist moral truths would seem irrelevant in marking
the realist territory. If some form of substantial theory is true,
then the T-statement adds something to what the B-statements say. Here
are two alternatives.

Letting a coherence theory of truth stand in for the range of
"modified theories" (namely, the inflationist theories of truth that
are different from the correspondence theory of truth), and the
"B-proposition" for what the B-statement describes about the world,
the T-statement adds that:

(1) The B-proposition corresponds to an actual state of affairs.

(2) The B-proposition belongs to a maximally coherent system of belief.

It is worth noting also that even the non-descriptivist may say that
the T-statement adds to the B-statement, insofar as the B-statement
expresses something other than the B-proposition. The
non-descriptivist has two alternatives as well.

The T-statement adds that (letting a coherence theory of truth stand
in for the range of "modified theories," and the
"B-feeling-proposition" stand in for the range of non-descriptivism,
for example, the speaker dislikes suffering from lack of food):

(3) The B-feeling-proposition corresponds to an actual state of affairs.

(4) The B-feeling-proposition belongs to a maximally coherent system
of belief. We may say that the T-statement specifies truth conditions
for the B-proposition or for the B-feeling-proposition. It could be
objected that the non-descriptivist must deny that there are
truth-conditions for moral language. Nonetheless, she need not object
to moral language describing something about the world figuratively.

If option (1) were true, then there would have to be an actual state
of affairs that makes the B-statement true. That is, there must be a
truth-maker for the statement, "suffering from lack of food is bad,"
and the truth-maker is the fact that suffering from lack of food is
bad. But no other alternatives require the existence of the fact for
them to be true.

If one ignores deflationism, truth in moral judgments gives rise to
exactly four alternative theories of truth. Realists cannot embrace
options (3) and (4) because, as we saw, non-descriptivism is
sufficient for moral antirealism. The remaining option (2), although
it is a viable option for the realist, falls short of guaranteeing
that there are moral facts. In other words, moral realists must find
other ways to establish the existence of moral facts, even if option
(2) allows a way of maintaining moral truths for the realists.
Modified theories, for example, the coherence theory of truth are
simply silent about whether there are B-facts. That is, option (2)
could be maintained even if there were no B-facts such as suffering
from lack of food is bad. Thus, the most direct option for realists in
marking her territory from the above list of alternatives is (1). It
appears then that the correspondence truth in moral judgments properly
marks the realist territory. This is captured in C2:

(C2) S is a moral realist if and only if S is a descriptivist;
Sbelieves that moral judgments express truth, and S believes that the
moral judgments are true when they correspond to the world.

Is C2 true? No, it is not. For the antirealist may choose to deny that
moral judgments literally describe the world. This is how Skorupski
earns his antirealist title.
ii. Skorupski's Irrealist Cognitivism

If C2 were true, then there could not be any cognitivist antirealist
who believes that some moral judgments are true, and who also holds
that moral truth is a matter of correspondence to the world. However,
Skorupski's irrealist cognitivism qualifies as one such position.

Skorupski maintains that moral judgments have truth-apt contents, but
he denies that the contents of moral judgments are factual. Skorupski
remarks "[normative language's] truth is not a matter of
correspondence or representation" (1999, 436). This remark may suggest
that Skorupski's irrealist cognitivism is a variant of option (2)
above about what the T-statement adds to the B-statement. Nonetheless,
there is an extension of Skorupski's theory that would consistently
allow it to fall within option (1). This extension of Skorupski's
theory would be a cognitivist antirealist position, combined with a
correspondence theory of truth.

Moral statements express moral judgments, and as such, moral
statements can be either true or false. What makes moral statements
true when they are true? Skorupski's remark above rejects that
correspondence to the world is the truth-making relation. As was
mentioned, this rejection could indicate that Skorupski holds a
modified theory of truth or a deflationist theory. Perhaps he does,
but it is not explicit. What is explicit is Skorupski's denial that
moral judgments have factual contents. How is it possible that some
moral judgments are true if moral judgments are not factual? One way
to answer it—and to extend Skorupski's irrealism—is to maintain that
moral judgments are not literal. Moral judgments are still expressed
by moral statements, but what moral statements describe are not moral
states of affairs. Moral statements express states of affairs of the
world other than moral ones. In this way, moral statements can be true
by corresponding to the world, once moral statements are recognized as
describing, for example, a psychological aspect of the world.

Consider the statement "Santa Claus came early last year." Call it the
S-statement. (The "S-statement," "T-statement," "S-proposition,"
"S-feeling-proposition," and cognates are used as "B-Statement",
"T-Statement," "B-proposition", "B-feeling-proposition" and its
cognates are above.) Does the S-statement describe the world as it was
last year? Surely, it does. It reports either that (1) there was at
least one person whose image fits the description of Santa, or that
(2) there was the giver of toys around Christmas. It reports also that
the person in either case came earlier than other years. Children are
delighted by Santa's early appearance in primarily the sense of (2).
And they wonder, "Will Santa come early this year as well?" Similarly,
children reason, "If Santa comes early, I will have an early Christmas
present." Of course, very few us of are Santa realists, although most
of us are cognitivists about the S-statement in either sense.

How are adults able to maintain both cognitivism about the S-statement
(more specifically descriptivism about it) and antirealism about Santa
facts in the sense of S-statement (1)? Adults acknowledge the
existence of surrogate toy-givers, while denying that the S-statement
expresses the S-proposition in the sense of (1), namely, adults deny
that there was at least one person whose image fits the description of
Santa. Instead, adults believe that the S-statement expresses the
S-feeling-proposition, or something equivalent to it. This is how one
maintains antirealist cognitivism about Santa judgments.

There are many garden-variety Santa judgments. Santa judgments are
expressed by Santa-statements, but no Santa-statements express the
S-proposition. The S-statement does not involve the state of affairs
in which there is the person whose name is Santa Claus. Nonetheless,
the S-statement could be either true or false. Suppose that it is
true, that Santa did come early last year, but suppose that we are
also not realists about Santa Claus. We know better than those who are
perplexed by the existence of people who fit perfectly the
descriptions of Santa. We know that the S-statement does not say
anything about a person named Santa Claus. For most, the S-statement
is never about Santa, but rather it is about, for example, the
toy-givers, the state of one's national economy, and so on. That is,
we deny that the S-statement expresses the S-proposition, however,
this rejection does not force us to adopt deflationism or a modified
theory of truth. The S-statement could express something true when it
corresponds with the world as long as it expresses something other
than the S-proposition. For instance, the S-statement expresses
something true if the S-statement expresses the fact that the state of
the national economy was good last year, and if the state of the
national economy last year was actually good: in this case the
S-statement expresses something true when it correctly reports the
economy of last year. There is no inconsistency.

Analogously, moral statements express moral judgments. Insofar as
moral statements are understood as expressing psychological facts
about the world, moral statements can be true or false. Some "moral"
statements are true in this way. Furthermore, they are true because
they correspond to the world. Even if this is not Skorupski's theory,
it is an extension of his theory that instantiates cognitivist
antirealism, combined with a correspondence theory of truth. This
shows that C2 is false.
iii. The Correspondence Theory Requires Realism, Not Vice Versa

Our previous discussion of Skorupski's cognitivist irrealism gives no
details about the correspondence theory of truth it employs. It might
be objected that such lack makes it impossible to judge whether or not
Skorupski's theory, or an extension of it, constitutes a
counterexample to C2. But the "correspondence theory" is ambiguous
between the general conception of truth that appeals to correspondence
as the truth-making relation, and the very detailed analysis of truth
that satisfactorily specifies the notion of truth in terms of the
correspondence relation. As the general conception, the correspondence
theory of truth is insufficient for moral realism. Antirealists are
entitled to the correspondent truth of moral judgments insofar as
moral judgments are understood "figuratively." For as the general
conception, the correspondence theory of truth imposes "for any
proposition , it is true that just in case there is a way things could
be such that anyone who believed, doubted, etc. that would believe,
doubt, etc. that things were that way, and things are that way"
(Wright 1999, 218). Apparently, the conception "offers little more
than a long-hand version of the correspondence platitude," and it
"certainly carries no direct implications for the realism debate in
its modern conception" because "there is so far no commitment to any
specific general conception of the kind of relations that may be
involved in truth, or of the nature of the non-propositional items in
their fields" (Wright 1999, 223-24). On the other hand, as analysis,
the correspondence theory perhaps is too strong for realism. The
latter point will not be discussed further as our purpose here is to
establish the non-sufficiency and the non-necessity of the
correspondence theory of truth for moral realism. It seems reasonable
to suppose that Skorupski's irrealist cognitivism, or an extension of
it, constitutes a counterexample to C2 as the general conception of
correspondence theory of truth.

To sum up, consider the following five claims:
The correspondence theory of truth is false or implausible.
The correspondence theory of truth requires the truth of realism.
The correspondence theory of truth is not required for realism (and no
particular theory of truth is).
"The correspondence theory of truth in conjunction with cognitivism"
is not sufficient for realism.
"The correspondence theory of truth in conjunction with cognitivism
and the correspondence (truth) of moral judgments" is not sufficient
for realism.

The discussion of Skorupski's (extended) antirealism aims at
establishing claim (5), but since (5) implies (4) there is no need for
independently establishing claim (4). Claim (1) is apparently bold,
controversial, and not required for our purpose. Claim (2) seems
false: an error theorist like Mackie is a moral antirealist, however,
he may adopt a correspondence theory of truth and not contradict his
particular brand of moral antirealism. Furthermore, claim (2) is not
required for our purpose either. To properly mark the realist
territory, we need not determine if the correspondence theory of
truth— whether one considers it to be general theory or
analysis—requires realism. Finally, claim (3) seems at least OK, and
it is relevant to our goal. The T-statement discussed above, namely
the T-statement that "'Santa came early last year' belongs to a
maximally coherent system of beliefs," shows that realists, moral or
otherwise, are not forced to accept the correspondence theory of
truth. That said, if moral realists opt for moral truths of the
non-correspondence kind, then they would have to find other ways of
establishing the existence of moral facts.
c. Literal Moral Truth?

In the previous section, it is proposed that one need not be a moral
realist if she is a cognitivist that believes moral judgments express
moral truths and that the truths they express are truths because of a
correspondence between the judgments and facts in the world. The
argument might attract the following response: such an antirealist
position appears possible simply because it involves denying that
there are any literal truths in moral discourse; even if cognitivism
and moral truths that are obtained by employing a revisionary theory
of meaning are considered to not be adequate for moral realism, then
cognitivism and moral truths that are obtained on a literal
understanding of moral language should be considered adequate for
moral realism. This section offers replies to such a potential
response.

Consider again the Santa statement, "Santa Claus came early last
year." An antirealist may construe it as saying

The national economy last year was good, and the economic boom was
manifested by consumer confidence.

Consequently, the antirealist can say that because the S-statement
expresses the S-feeling-proposition about the national economy and
consumer confidence, nothing prevents the antirealist from adopting a
correspondence conception of truth. Children, of course, insist that
the S-statement is literal, that is, it expresses the S-proposition,
"Santa Claus came early last year." If the S-statement were to be
taken literally, no antirealist could hold both that there are some
Santa truths and that those Santa truths are matters of correspondence
to the world. Santa antirealists cannot acknowledge any Santa fact if
such an acknowledgement presupposes the existence of Santa, the
person. The S-statement obviously express something other than the
S-proposition, but is it the same with moral judgments and statements?

The preceding discussion signals a shift in the realist/antirealist
debate. The literal meaning of moral language now comes to the fore of
the discussion. We seem to have run a full circle. The
non-descriptivist and the non-cognitivist point out that moral
language may manipulate us ontologically because it misleads us into
thinking that moral statements describe the world: obviously, the
Santa statement cannot be taken literally. Even if it is unreasonable
to insist on the literal interpretation of the S-statement, the same
cannot be maintained with an equal confidence about moral statements.
It is not obvious that moral language must not be taken literally. We
are certain that there is no such living person as Santa Claus: that
is why we can be certain that the S-statement cannot be taken
literally. Nonetheless, with respect to moral statements, the
existence of moral facts is exactly the issue. As a result, we cannot
be as certain about moral language as we are about the S-statement
that it must not be taken literally.

Granted, one of the most deeply rooted realist and antirealist
disagreements has been whether moral language expresses things
literally. Should moral language be taken literally or in some
revisionist fashion? Skorupski, an antirealist cognitivist, must
maintain that moral language describes the world, yet it does not do
so literally. For instance, it expresses our ways of influencing
others and ourselves. Realists, on the other hand, must maintain that
moral language describes the world, and it does so literally. Moral
language comes with shades of normativity, but that does not entail
that moral language cannot be taken literally. Instead, the
logico-linguistic considerations prove that moral language is no
different from ordinary declarative statements that express ordinary
beliefs. How are we to decide between the two? Does "species-ism is as
(morally) bad as racism" express whatever it expresses literally? Is
it even feasible to apply literalism, in the first place, to the
realist/antirealist debate?

Surely, it is difficult to decide between the two above-mentioned
alternatives. Language allows many things for us. For example, people
sometimes disagree about whether an utterance expresses a genuine
question or whether it expresses an assertion (in the form of a
rhetorical question). This indicates that it can be difficult to know
when a statement is to be taken literally and when it is not. If
literalism were to carry any weight for the realism/antirealism
debate, then there should be some independent way of telling when a
statement is to be taken literally. That is, literalism about moral
language requires an independent footing. Furthermore, it is very
difficult to imagine that the long and recalcitrant history of the
realist/antirealist debate has been just about the literal meaning of
moral language. We presumably understand what moral statements
express, if only in a rudimentary fashion. The disagreement about
literalism may help explain why moral realists and antirealists often
seem to talk past each other. Nevertheless, attributing different
meaning to moral terms fails to further our inquiry. At any rate, it
does not seem feasible to make literalism a criterion for moral
realism, especially when the difficulty associated with literalism
about moral language is considered.
d. Moral Knowledge

Some moral judgments are literally true, but some truths are not
known. It is sometimes thought that we get moral facts right, while
others get them totally wrong. Is there any merit to such a claim?
Does one ever know a certain moral judgments to be true? (Joel
Kupperman asks, for instance, "[i]f there is some set of moral truths,
or approximately correct moral beliefs, independent of our feelings,
attitudes, or opinions, then how can we ever know that we have found
or arrived at them?" 1988, 33.) We get some moral facts right
sometimes, according to the realist. That is, we succeed in knowing
certain moral judgments to be true. Moral realism implies some sort of
literal success theory, and so moral knowledge is implied by it. Or,
moral realism entails at least the possibility of such knowledge.

Moral realists hold that we can have justified true moral beliefs, or
that we can have warranted moral beliefs, according to some
post-Gettier theories of knowledge. (See, for instance, Alvin
Plantinga's discussion of "warrant."; See Gettier, 1963, and
Plantinga, 1993a and 1993b). Some moral antirealists deny this. For
example, Mackie's error theory insists that no moral judgments are
known to be true because the moral statements that express them always
describe the world falsely. It is impossible to know something false
as true! Moral skeptics hold that no moral judgments are justified or
warranted. The epistemic success claim at once provokes
epistemological questions: under what conditions are we ever justified
or warranted in holding moral beliefs? And, how can we truly say that
we have correct moral facts?

In answer, some moral realists have adopted a coherentist theory of
justification, while others have opted for foundationalism and
intuitionism. For instance, David Brink adopts coherentism in defense
of a naturalist version of moral realism. (See especially Brink 1989,
122-43.) Naturalistic epistemology also deserves a serious
consideration. (Cf. Consider Jaegwon Kim's worry of losing
normativity. See Kim, 1988, and Quine, 1986.) Some theories of
justification are able to accommodate moral knowledge more easily than
others. A causal theory of knowledge and justification, for instance,
is ill suited for the task. Alvin Goldman's reliabilism may not be the
best-suited theory for it either. (See Goldman, 1978, and 1986.) But
it seems obvious that the belief that moral knowledge is possible can
be maintained even with these externalist theories of justification.
Consider, for instance, a version of reliabilism: S is justified in
holding "that p" iff pis the result of a reliable cognitive process.
One can be justified in holding that Doctor Evil is no good if the
judgment results from a reliable cognitive process, say, for example,
the cognitive process that results in Austin Powers being good.

The possibility of moral knowledge does not entail moral realism, even
though moral realism entails moral knowledge. As was shown above,
there is nothing to stop the moral antirealist from claiming moral
knowledge once she helps herself to cognitivism, moral truths, and
some theory of justification. On the other hand, moral realists need
not be shy about adopting an externalist epistemology either. A
naturalistic realist would hope that moral knowledge is on a par with
empirical knowledge. The realist may even agree that the paradigm
justification for empirical knowledge is perceptual and is thus
causal. The moral realist would have to reject causal reductionism,
according to which the causal power of the supervening facts is
entirely reducible to that of base facts. Moral judgments are true
just in case they correctly report the supervening facts that depend
on the non-moral base facts.
e. Moral Objectivity

Moral realists maintain that some literal moral truths are known, or
that we are justified in holding them. Moral judgments are true just
in case they correctly report the supervening facts that depend on the
non-moral base facts. But are moral facts—the supposed truth-makers of
moral judgments—objective? It could be the case that no ethical
judgments are true independently of the desires or emotions that we
happen to have, or, there could be different yet valid answers to the
same ethical question as ethical relativists insist. Neither
subjectivists nor relativists are obliged to deny that there is
literal moral knowledge. Of course, according to them, moral truths
imply truths about human psychology. Moral realists must maintain that
moral truths —and hence moral knowledge—do not depend on facts about
our desires and emotions for their truth. For instance, W. D. Falk
analyzes the good as "a dispositional property of things as ideally
assessed, a power to evoke favor by way of an ideal assessment" (Piker
1995, 102). Having objective literal moral knowledge seems to be
sufficient for moral realism because no moral antirealists would
acknowledge the possibility of such knowledge. Figure 5 summarizes the
results of the discussion from 1.1-1.5.

Figure 5

We finally arrive at the definite moral realist position, which is
marked by the oval box above. The combination of cognitivism,
descriptivism, success theory, literalism, and objectivism seems
sufficient for moral realism. Nonetheless, there are a couple of
reasons why the moral realist territory is better marked by the
explanationist consideration. This consideration leads to
explanationist moral realism according to which there must be moral
facts because they are essential in our understanding of the world.
Literalism faces uncertainty if one considers what moral sentences
mean, a consideration that is not ideal for the realism/antirealism
debate. Despite these categories, the advent of quasi-realism signals
the new antirealist way. A quasi-realist can claim that cognitivism,
descriptivism, moral truths, moral knowledge, and even moral
objectivity, are within the antirealist camp.
2. Quasi-Realism, Antirealism, and the EI thesis

Quasi-realists such as R. M. Hare, Gilbert Harman, and Simon Blackburn
promise to set people free from the unduly rigid ontology of moral
realism, namely, the existence of moral facts. Quasi-realism would
allow people to enjoy the traditional realist comforts such as moral
truths, moral knowledge, and moral objectivity, without the realists'
baggage of commitments, theoretical burdens, and practical costs, or
so they contend. It all sounds too good to be true, but such a
possibility seems exciting: why insist on the existence of moral facts
if all aspects of our moral practices, especially the realist-sounding
ones, could be understood without the fact-multiplying realist
ontology? Of course, the real question is this: is there anything
significant that will be lost in our understanding of our moral
practices if we were to settle for quasi-realism? A definite "yes" to
the question has to be given, and we shall see why in this section.

The possibility that the quasi-realist extends to people is that
quasi-realism poses no serious threat to the moral realist position.
However, this quasi-realist contention— that by siding with
quasi-realism nothing significant will be lost in our understanding of
our moral practices—is simply mistaken. The quasi-realist loses some
of the best explanations of events, states of affairs, and phenomena
within the world: the quasi-realist must reject folk moral
explanations. This is so, it will be argued, because the quasi-realist
cannot accommodate folk moral explanations without reducing them to
naturalistic explanations.
a. An Analogy: Quasi-Realism about Derogatory Judgments

Blackburn discusses derogatory judgments in his attempt to show how
the quasi-realist allows for realist comforts. The quasi-realistic
understanding of these judgments, according to Blackburn, allows for
antirealist cognitivism about derogatory judgments, derogatory
descriptivism, derogatory truth, derogatory knowledge, and even
derogatory objectivity. The same may be said of the quasi-realistic
understanding of moral judgments: for example, the quasi-realist might
be entitled to cognitivism when it comes to moral judgments,
descriptivism when it comes to moral language, moral truth, moral
knowledge, and the quasi-realist perhaps may even be entitled to moral
objectivity. Analogously to the quasi-realism about derogatory
judgments, Blackburn claims that quasi-realists are entitled to all
these, without being committed to the existence of moral facts as part
of the supposed fabric of the world.

Blackburn's derogatory judgments argument goes something like this:
"Kraut" is an inherently derogatory expression. The judgment "Franz is
a Kraut" is a cognitive state just like ordinary non-derogatory
beliefs. It consists partly of the judgment that Franz is German. The
sentence or utterance "Franz is a Kraut" expresses a statement that
describes how the world is. The Franz sentence expresses something
true, namely, that Franz is a German insofar as it expresses nothing
further about him. But the Franz sentence expresses more than just his
nationality. It also expresses that Germans, including Franz, are fit
objects of derision. We may call this additional part the "derogatory
judgment" of the Franz sentence. The Franz sentence expresses
something false because, according to Blackburn, the part that
expresses the derogatory judgment is false. No one is a fit object of
derision solely because of his nationality. Consequently, the Franz
statement describes the world falsely.

What makes the Franz statement false? What makes the Franz statement
false is twofold: 1) no one is a fit object of derision solely because
of his nationality, so, the statement is false because it has failed
to refer to anything; and 2) there is no person in the world toward
whom it is appropriate to have the derogatory attitude and/or
intention that is expressed by way of the Franz statement. The
quasi-realist may maintain that the truth or falsity of the Franz
statement is to be determined by the existence or non-existence of the
person toward whom it is appropriate to have such an attitude. Since
there is no such person, the Franz statement is false. That is to say,
the speaker of the Franz sentence speaks falsely because she reports a
state of affairs as actual that is non-actual, namely she is falsely
reporting that it is appropriate to have derogatory attitudes toward
some people solely because of their nationality, although she may be
correctly identifying Franz's nationality as German. Truth or falsity
in derogatory judgments may be found in the way that they correspond
or do not correspond to the world.

Analogously, quasi-realists may earn the right to maintain cognitivism
when it comes to moral judgments, descriptivism, moral truths, moral
knowledge, moral objectivity, and so on. For the quasi-realist, the
inner workings of moral language are such that they afford such
realist-sounding expressions like moral truths without ever accepting
the realist ontology.
b. Quasi-Realism, Antirealism, and Explanationist Moral Realism

The quasi-realist paints a rosy philosophical picture in which one can
enjoy realist-sounding luxuries while not multiplying entities beyond
necessity. Nonetheless, the nagging question remains: is it not better
to have a real thing than to have a quasi-real thing, especially when
the theoretical price is right? We must challenge the quasi-realist's
entitlement to be regarded as the contemporary heir of moral
antirealism, and examine her reasons for thinking that quasi-realism
is true. It is ethical relativism that wins Harman antirealist
entitlements. Blackburn earns his spurs through projectivism that
eventually allows for the ontological parsimony. But why do
quasi-realists think their particular brand of antirealism is true?
Both Harman and Blackburn give a surprisingly unanimous explanation.
They call it the explanatory inadequacy thesis of the moral and it
addresses the comparative explanatory inferiority of moral facts, the
total lack of explanatory power of moral facts, or explanatory
reductionism.

For instance, according to Blackburn, projectivism must be true
because "we need to explain the ban on mixed worlds, and the argument
goes that antirealism [projectivism] does this better than realism"
(1984, 184). Harman thinks that ethical relativism—the view that
"there is no single true morality"—must be true because it is a
"reasonable inference from the most plausible explanation of moral
diversity" (Harman and Thomson 1996, 8). Harman's reason is a version
of the explanatory inadequacy of moral facts thesis. It is the
inadequacy thesis that entitles the quasi-realist to the antirealist
parsimony. To mark the moral realist territory in such a way that
implies the irrelevance view (the view that the explanatory inadequacy
of moral facts does not constitute evidence against moral realism)
ignores the fact that it is primarily the inadequacy thesis that
entitles the quasi-realist to anti-realism. The explanatory power of
moral facts is the only realist doctrine that is immune from
quasi-realist debunking.

It is puzzling for the quasi-realist to advance the explanatory
inadequacy thesis since she has ample room for accommodating folk
moral explanations. She only needs to appeal to the putative moral
facts as though they are real. The "as though" attitude does a
yeoman's work. It gives her the right to use notions such as
bivalence, moral truth, moral knowledge, and so on. It seems rather
arbitrary to stop at accommodating moral explanations. The
quasi-realist's dismissive attitude toward moral explanations is the
quasi-realist's qualification as an antirealist.
3. Moral Realism after Quasi-Realism

Such quasi-delicacies like quasi-moral-truths, quasi-moral-knowledge,
or quasi-moral-objectivity allow for contemporary antirealist ways,
but moral realists surely cannot rest content with them. Moral
realists must find a way for not only rejecting the quasi-realist's
debunking of the disagreements between the traditional realist and the
antirealist, but also a way for establishing "real" moral comforts. A
couple of ways moral realists do this is by asserting the existence of
objective literal moral truths and explanationist moral realism.

Figure 5 indicates an inflated way of establishing the realist's
ontological thesis, namely, that there are moral facts. On this
inflated moral realism, the realist view turns out to be a jumble of 4
major theories in philosophy: cognitivism, descriptivism, literalism,
and success theory. (The correspondence theory of truth is neither
necessary nor sufficient for moral realism as we saw above.) Although
the existence of objective literal moral truths may show that the
aforementioned theories are jointly sufficient for moral realism, it
ignores the quasi-realist's ways of saying the realist-sounding things
(the quasi-realist's way in masquerading as moral realists, if you
will). A less inflated way of marking the realist territory would be
advisable, should there be such a way. This is because quasi-realists
insist that they are as much entitled to cognitivism, descriptivism,
moral truth, moral knowledge and even moral objectivity as moral
realists. Their insistence effectively thwarts realist attempts at
marking their territory by relying on the traditional disagreement
between realists and antirealists mapped in figure 5.

Explanationist moral realism has been suggested as a way of blocking
the alleged quasi-realist masquerade. It focuses on the significance
of having moral explanations. The explanationist moral realist holds
that moral facts genuinely explain events and states of affairs in the
world. In a rough and ready way, the explanationist realist maintains
that there are moral facts because they explain non-moral events.
However, her claim is debated even within the realist camp. Some moral
realists consider that explanatory adequacy (or, inadequacy for that
matter) is irrelevant in establishing the truth of moral realism; and,
it is no easy task to show that moral facts are genuinely explanatory
(or, that the quasi-realist's accommodation of moral explanations is
not as robust as she claims it to be). Nonetheless, since
explanationist moral realism is much simpler than the inflated moral
realism of figure 5, explanationist moral realism demands the
realist's close attention.
4. References and Further Reading
Alston, William P. 1996. A Realist Conception of Truth. Ithaca:
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Blackburn, Simon. 1981. "Rule Following and Moral Realism," In
Holtzman and Leich (1981).
Blackburn, Simon. 1984. Spreading the Word: Groundings in the
Philosophy of Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Blackburn, Simon. 1993. Essays in Quasi-Realism. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Blackburn, Simon. 1998. Ruling Passions: A Theory of Practical
Reasoning. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Blackburn, Simon, and Keith Simmons, eds. 1999. Truth. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Brink, David O. 1989. Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Darwall, Stephen, Allan Gibbard, and Peter Railton. 1992. Toward Fin
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(1):115-89.
Dodd, Julian. 2002. "Recent Work on Truth," Philosophical Books, 43:279-91.
Fine, Kit. 2001. "The Question of Realism," Philosopher's Imprint 1, (1):1-30.
Geach, Peter. 1965. "Assertion," The Philosophical Review, 74:449-465.
Gettier, E. L. 1963. "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?" Analysis, 23 (6).
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Goldman, Alvin I. 1978. "A Causal Theory of Knowing," in Essays on
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Goldman, Alvin I. 1986. "What is Justified Belief?" in Empirical
Knowledge: Readings in Contemporary Epistemology, edited by P. K.
Moser: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Hare, R. M. 1952. The Language of Morals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Harman, Gilbert. 1977. The Nature of Morality. New York: Oxford
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Harman, Gilbert. 1986. "Moral Explanations of Natural Facts—Can Moral
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Philosophy, XXIV (Supplement):57-68.
Harman, Gilbert. 2000. Explaining Value and Other Essays in Moral
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Harman, Gilbert, and Judith Jarvis Thomson. 1996. Moral Relativism and
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Sturgeon, Nicholas L. 1986. "Harman on Moral Explanations of Natural
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Tenenbaum, Sergio. 1996. "Realists without a Cause: Deflationary
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Waller, Bruce N. 1994. "Noncognitivist Moral Realism," Philosophia 24
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Wedgwood, Ralph. Forthcoming. Nature of Normativity, Oxford University Press.
Wright, Crispin. 1992. Truth and Objectivity. Cambridge: Harvard
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Wright, Crispin.1993. "Realism: The Contemporary Debate: Whither Now?"
in Reality, Representation and Projection, edited by J. Haldane and C.
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Wright, Crispin.1999. "Truth: A Traditional Debate Reviewed," in
Blackburn and Simmons (1999).