Are there moral facts

A quick glance at pre-CCSS state standards reveals that fewer than five states asked students to distinguish between fact, opinion, and reasoned judgment or something similar. The Common Core, by contrast, acknowledges that there exists a third possibility: reasoned judgment.

Far, then, from reinforcing the idea that either statements are objective facts or de facto opinions, the Common Core leaves the door open for precisely the discussion that McBrayer hopes to see. In this case, the curriculum resources to which McBrayer points as evidence of the limitations of the Common Core are developed by an independent group, unaffiliated with the CCSS, and not even part of a complete, CCSS-aligned curriculum. That is because, as classical educators have long understood, the focus of education in the early grades should be on knowledge acquisition.

Rather than reinforcing the prevailing moral relativism in our schools, Common Core actually provides a path forward for students themselves to find their way back to moral facts. Before joining the…. Advancing Educational Excellence. Search Search. Moral facts and the Common Core.

Kathleen Porter-Magee. Sheen Have all the possible arguments about the Common Core been exhausted? Policy Priority: Quality Choices. 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. 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? 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 , and ; see Tenenbaum, , 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. 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. 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. 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 C C2 S is a moral realist if and only if S is a descriptivist; S believes 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. 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.

Skorupski maintains that moral judgments have truth-apt contents, but he denies that the contents of moral judgments are factual. 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? 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.

How is it possible that some moral judgments are true if moral judgments are not factual? 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. 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. 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. 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. Furthermore, they are true because they correspond to the world. This shows that C2 is false. As the general conception, the correspondence theory of truth is insufficient for moral realism.

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.

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. 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.

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. 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.

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 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? 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. That is, literalism about moral language requires an independent footing.

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. 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? 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.

Some moral antirealists deny this. 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 , Naturalistic epistemology also deserves a serious consideration.

See Kim, , and Quine, 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.

See Goldman, , and But it seems obvious that the belief that moral knowledge is possible can be maintained even with these externalist theories of justification. 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. Moral realists maintain that some literal moral truths are known, or that we are justified in holding them.

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. 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. 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.

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. This results in some sophisticated philosophical accounts, he says. Justin McBrayer, a philosopher at Fort Lewis College, says the truth of moral claims can be evaluated by analogy to the ways non-moral truths are established.

Most philosophers are moral realists, but there is a sizeable minority in the antirealist camp. Sixteen percent said they held some other position. People think, act, and speak as if there are objective moral facts. But since most have never considered the alternative, many have trouble when pressed to defend their views. There is no doubt that how people think about morality affects their behavior, McBrayer says.

Psychological research backs this up. In another study , researchers found that participants who read an antirealist argument were more likely to cheat in a raffle than those who read a realist argument.

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