© 2007 The AuthorJournal Compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing LtdPhilosophy Compass 2 (2007): 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2007.00100.xBlackwell Publishing LtdOxford, UKPHCOPhilosophy Compa ss1747-9991© 2007 The Author J ournal Compilation © 2007 B lackwell Publishin g Ltd10010.1111/j.174 7-9991.2007.00 100.xOctober 2007001???30???EthicsFour Faces of Moral RealismFour Faces of Moral RealismFour Faces of Moral RealismStephen Finlay*University of Southern CaliforniaAbstractThis article explains for a general philosophical audience the central issues and strategiesin the contemporary moral realism debate. It critically surveys the contribution ofsome recent scholarship, representing expressivist and pragmatist nondescriptivism(Mark Timmons, Hilary Putnam), subjectivist and nonsubjectivist naturalism (MichaelSmith, Paul Bloomfield, Philippa Foot), nonnaturalism (Russ Shafer-Landau,T. M. Scanlon) and error theory (Richard Joyce). Four different faces of ‘moralrealism’ are distinguished: semantic, ontological, metaphysical and normative. Thedebate is presented as taking shape under dialectical pressure from the demandsof (i) capturing the moral appearances; and (ii) reconciling morality with ourunderstanding of the mind and world.The contemporary debate over ‘moral realism’, a century after it waslaunched by G. E. Moore’s Principa Ethica, is a tangled and bewilderingweb. This is largely due to dramatic differences in what philosophersassume it is about. This article distinguishes and explains the central issuesand strategies for a general philosophical audience, through a criticalsurvey of some recent contributions to the literature.1 A pivotal problemis the lack of consensus over what ‘realism’ should mean in the contextof ethics; we shall see that the variety of metaethical claims labeled ‘realist’cannot be collectively characterized any less vaguely than as holding that‘morality’, in some form, has some kind or other of independence frompeople’s attitudes or practices.2 We look in vain for a reference for ‘morality’and a kind of attitude-independence common throughout the debate.Furthermore, there is no uniform separation between a concern for moralityproper and for the evaluative or normative more generally. Much of whatis said here about ‘moral’ realism can be understood to apply more generallythroughout the normative realm.One face of the debate focuses on ‘morality’ in the form of moralclaims, and is addressed to the question of whether these have truth-values(of a kind that are attitude-independent, in a sense to be explained). Theweakest, semantic kind of moral realism that affirms this is denied byexpressivism, the strongest kind of antirealism, represented here by Mark2 Four Faces of Moral Realism© 2007 The Author Philosophy Compass 2 (2007): 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2007.00100.xJournal Compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing LtdTimmons. ‘Moral realism’ has been influentially defined as holding merelythat some moral claims are true in this sense (Sayre-McCord 5), but thisneglects the other important dimensions of the debate.3 Another face isontological, addressing whether moral claims describe and are made true bysome moral facts involving moral entities (e.g., reasons, obligations), relations(e.g., justification), or properties (e.g., goodness, rightness, virtue). In rejectingthis kind of realism, expressivism is joined by metaethical pragmatism,represented here by Hilary Putnam.4 Other philosophers accept that moralclaims describe moral facts, entities, relations, and properties, but raisemetaphysical questions about the attitude-independence of these. Metaphysicalkinds of moral realism, which hold that there are moral facts involving moralentities, relations, and properties that do not consist in what anyone’sattitudes are or would be under any conditions, are rejected also bysubjectivists like Michael Smith.Less obviously but no less importantly, a final thread of the debateaddresses the normative authority of morality. Normative kinds of moralrealism hold that morality is authoritative for agents independently of theirdesires and other motivational attitudes. Although often overlooked, thisissue plays an important role in the obscure debate between ‘naturalistic’and ‘nonnaturalistic’ metaphysical versions of moral realism (the formerrepresented by Paul Bloomfield and Philippa Foot, the latter by RussShafer-Landau and T. M. Scanlon5) and is crucial to the claim of error theory,pressed by Richard Joyce, that morality is built on false presuppositions.The following diagram shows the different faces of moral realism, thetheoretical positions just described and their representatives, and therelationships between them:6© 2007 The Author Philosophy Compass 2 (2007): 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2007.00100.xJournal Compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing LtdFour Faces of Moral Realism 3I explore these kinds of moral realism by working from the weakest tothe strongest, addressing each as a potential place at which to demur; whatis the case for and what is the case against it? Dialectical pressure here comesfrom the two poles of internal and external accommodation.7 The challenge ofinternal accommodation is to do justice to the moral appearances, and isthought to push towards realism(s). The challenge of external accommodationis to find a comfortable fit for morality in our general, empirically informedunderstanding of the mind and world, and is thought to push towardsantirealism(s); objections to moral realism(s) have congealed into accusationsof ‘queerness’ on three dimensions: metaphysical, epistemological, and practical.1. Expressivist and Pragmatist NondescriptivismThe most modest face of moral realism is a semantic thesis. Its objects aremoral claims (whether judgments, utterances, beliefs, or propositions), ofwhich it holds that they or their contents have objective truth values.These truth values are ‘objective’ in that they are independent of theattitudes that anyone takes towards the moral claims. The strongest formof moral antirealism involves the rejection of this weakest form of realism,and is found in the expressivist tradition of which Mark Timmons’ ‘asser-toric nondescriptivism’ is a recent example.8 (A metaethical theory is notgenerally considered ‘realist’ unless it claims additionally that at least somepositive moral claims are true. I postpone discussion of antirealist viewsthat hold that all