Moral Realism (Part 3) - A Moral Realist's Reply to Mackie

On The Very Idea - A Philosophy Podcast

In this final epiosode of a three part series, I examine and critique J.L. Mackie's criticisms against moral realism that he lays out in his error theory. Mackie holds that since morality is derived from culture and culture is diverse across humanity, then we should see that there could not be any universal moral facts which humanity could know. This argument from cultural relativism is weakened if we look at Michael Walzer's division of thick and thin senses of morality. Humanity could be seen as sharing a thin sense of morality if construed generally enough which allows each culture's society and social interactions to be functional. Likewise, there seems to be evidence that many humans share some sort of universal moral framework in their preference for certain goods. I use the goods of rights and security offered by (many) liberal social democratic frameworks as an example. Also given the need of certain moral standards to exist for human social interaction to occur at all, I argue that facts about morality don't need to seem peculiar or strange as facts at all - at least no more than facts of logic or mathematics. I ramble alot here but hopefully something comes of it.