Taking morality seriously: a defense of robust realism

Abstract

This book argues that there are objective and irreducibly normative truths, truths that are not reducible to natural facts, such as that we should care about our future well-being and that we should not humiliate other people. The argument rests on two main pillars: first, the claim that non-objectivist metanormative theories, such as those reducing morality to preferences or to social attitudes, have highly problematic moral consequences; second, the claim that normative truths are indispensable for deliberation. The book then proceeds to argue that Robust Realism about normativity, the view defended, is not committed to an unacceptable or mysterious metaphysics, that it can successfully face epistemological challenges, that it does not face insuperable problems from moral disagreement, and that it can accommodate the plausibility of action for (specific) reasons. – AI-generated abstract.