Taking Morality Seriously: A Defense of Robust Realism

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True, it is not necessary to invoke moral facts to explain the phenomenon This is an excellent and thorough defense of a robust moral realism, a nonreductive metaethics position. True, it is not necessary to invoke moral facts to explain the phenomenon of moral disagreement and moral talk, but they are indispensable to first person deliberation about moral issues. Enoch then moves his focus to defense against possible counter arguments. He deals with tricky topics like epistemic accessibility challenges and supervenience, and perhaps easier and more popular arguments such as that from disagreement.

Moral facts supervening on physical ones and he does think that they do, two situations in which the natural facts are exactly the same have the same moral facts does not mean that they have no separate ontology, or have nothing more to say. He argues that moral disagreement arguments can be dealt with by questioning whether or not some specific phenomenon requires an explanation, by noticing that many so called moral disagreements are actually nonmoral ones, and by also noticing that when moral disagreement occurs people tend to pick the side that aligns with their interests.

These, Enoch argues, can help moral realism from losing too many plausibility points. Enoch ends with a rich chapter about motivation, internalism vs externalism about reasons and emphasizing that while relevant normative facts provide normative reasons for action, they are not intrinsically motivating. Even if there is an amoral monster about to torture his victim, completely unmotivated by moral arguments, he still has reason not to torture his victim.

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Mar 17, Kramer Thompson rated it liked it. A very clearly written defence of objective normative reasons. Enoch's primary arguments in favour of Robust Realism were quite convincing, as were many of his defences of Robust Realism against counterarguments. It seems to me that at least two of Enoch's arguments the argument from impartiality, and his evolutionary explanation of the correlation between our normative beliefs and objective normative facts could be strengthened to deal with further concerns, but overall I found his arguments A very clearly written defence of objective normative reasons.

It seems to me that at least two of Enoch's arguments the argument from impartiality, and his evolutionary explanation of the correlation between our normative beliefs and objective normative facts could be strengthened to deal with further concerns, but overall I found his arguments fairly robust pun unintended. Sarah Schoonmaker rated it liked it Aug 01, Ioana Cozma rated it it was ok Dec 07, Paul rated it really liked it Sep 10, Ainar Miyata rated it it was amazing May 23, Matt Buckley rated it it was amazing Jun 02, Matt Coombe rated it liked it Apr 19, Jarrod Frizzell rated it it was amazing Feb 04, Adrian rated it it was amazing Oct 19, Kevin McGuiness rated it really liked it Jan 31, Jere rated it really liked it Jan 12, David Houston rated it really liked it Jun 08, Ralph added it Oct 16, If I prefer Chili's and you prefer Applebee's, it seems reasonable to do something like one of the following: However, it seems that I should not seek an impartial solution in moral conflicts once we bracket off cases where my own ignorance is quite likely the source of our conflict.

Suppose you and I find a stray dog, and must decide what to do with it. I think we should care for it while looking for its owner, and you think we torture it.

Here it seems like I should hold fast to my position. But now notice that, on some non-objectivist metaethical views, moral conflicts are "due to differences in mere preference" in the sense that there are no right answers independently of our preferences.

Taking Morality Seriously: A Defense Of Robust Realism

If one of these views were true, then it would be appropriate to seek "impartial" solutions to moral conflicts. There's a lot to like about this chapter.

Enoch is casting in high relief a way in which certain anti-realist views do seem not to take morality seriously. I have some concerns, though.

2012.02.38

Enoch errs, I think, in including expressivism among the theories targeted in this chapter. He begins his discussion of expressivism by acknowledging, as he should, that expressivists are not obviously committed to response-dependence about morals. However, there are at least two ways to interpret the claim that "[our] feelings explain morality". But this is just the sort of response-dependence many expressivists will immediately balk at.

On the other hand, the claim might mean something like: We are to "read off" the fact that an action has the property of wrongness from the fact that disapproving of it is proper, rather than reading off the propriety-fact from the property-fact. But then expressivism does not yet imply that nothing outside our feelings may settle a moral conflict.

See a Problem?

For just as the realist may explain the distribution of moral properties by pointing to non-feeling facts, the expressivist may explain the im propriety of moral judgments by adverting to the same. As long as a metaethical view places something other than our feelings or preferences at the bottom of this explanatory pyramid, it is beyond the reach of this chapter's argument, whatever it says about the other layers of the pyramid.

I also have a more general worry about the argument. Enoch acknowledges that the non-objectivist may be able to offer an alternative explanation of why we should stand our ground in moral conflicts. It's just that he doesn't think any such explanation could be satisfactory. I think, though, that he overlooks a promising suggestion. Everyone's interests count, at least presumptively.

But I shall want to claim that what counts as an impartial solution depends on whether the conflict is a characteristically moral one or a characteristically non-moral one.

For what makes, say, the "dog" conflict a characteristically moral one is just that there is an additional salient party to the conflict besides you and me -- namely, the dog. Just as the Lorax speaks for the trees, I speak for the dogs, and that adds weight to my urging. Now, in a footnote p. The moral judgments of someone who wants to torture the dog are no reason at all, says Enoch, to torture it. But impartiality implies that they are such a reason, albeit an outweighed one. So we must reject impartiality in moral conflicts, along with any explanation that relies on it.

Upon further review, though, it's not so obvious that impartiality has this implication. The intuition behind impartiality is, roughly, that everyone matters. But that doesn't mean that all preferences or interests matter. It is an oft-made point that the satisfaction of so-called "offensive tastes" should receive little or no weight see, e. So we might explain the normative inertness of your preferences in the "dog" case by saying that they are a kind of offensive taste.

In Chapter 3, Enoch presents a kind of "indispensability" argument for robust metanormative realism. So deliberation commits us to believing in objectively right answers to normative questions -- in other words, to objective reasons. In that sense, belief in objective reasons is indispensable to deliberation. David Enoch, Taking Morality Seriously: A Defense of Robust Realism.

Jeff Behrends - - Review of Metaphysics 66 1: A Defence of Robust Normative Realism. Allan, George, The Patterns of the Present: And Hall, David L. Cobb Jr - - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 80 3: Morality and the Emotions. Oxford University Press, Maibom - - Ethics 2: Gross - - Ethics and International Affairs 26 1:

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