Normative Ethics and the Prospects of an Empirical Contribution to Assessment of Moral Disagreement and Moral Realism

Abstract

Here is a version of the familiar argument from disagreement. The successes of science are best explained by invoking a realist understanding of these successes. Moral realism is warranted only if the same pattern applies to ethics and ethical successes are best explained by invoking a realist understanding of them. One hallmark of scientific success is convergence of explanation: scientists with quite different cultural backgrounds can typically agree in assessing scientific explanations. Ethics does not exhibit this hallmark of success. Instead, ethics is beset by fundamental disagreement among interlocutors who suffer from no epistemic disadvantage. On the basis of fundamental disagreement, the analogy between ethics and science is undermined: moral realism is not warranted. This argument roughly captures an important focal point of discussion in contemporary meta-ethics. Over the past decade, there has been an explosion of interdisciplinary work between philosophers and psychologists about moral psychology.