Cornell Realism - Moral Realism

Moral Realism

There are suitably mind-independent and therefore objective moral facts that moral judgments are in the business of describing. This combines a cognitivist view about moral judgments (they are belief-like mental states in the business of describing the way the world is), a view about the existence of moral facts (they do in fact exist), and a view about the nature of moral facts (they are objective: independent of our cognizing them, or our stance towards them, etc.). This contrasts with expressivist theories of moral judgment (e.g., Stevenson, Hare, Blackburn, Gibbard), error-theoretic/fictionalist denials of the existence of moral facts (e.g., Mackie, Richard Joyce, and Kalderon), and constructivist or relativist theories of the nature of moral facts (e.g., Firth, Rawls, Korsgaard, Harman).