Moral anti-realism

Abstract

Moral anti-realism is the metaethical position that challenges the realist position in favor of the non-existence of moral facts—specifically, any properties, relations, events, etc. that have moral significance. Three distinct forms of anti-realism are moral noncognitivism, moral error theory, and non-objectivism. Moral noncognitivism argues that moral judgments are not truth-apt, and thus cannot refer to real properties. Moral error theory posits that the prevailing moral views are systematically false, and non-objectivism allows for moral facts but insists that they are mind-dependent. The article highlights points of tension between moral realism and anti-realism, including intuitions, explanatory challenges, and the problem of deriving normative conclusions from purportedly non-normative facts. It also explores attempts to demarcate between minimal moral realism and robust moral realism and considers whether relativism is a useful component of moral anti-realism. The article concludes by acknowledging the unresolved nature of the debate between moral realism and anti-realism. – AI-generated abstract.