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Moral Facts and Moral Explanations

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Abstract

The challenge of Gilbert Harman that there are no moral facts is robust, to an extent extreme and counts most for the realists underline moral facts and moral explanations. The paper begins with the absorbing challenge posed by Harman that ends in some sort of skepticism. After a brief exposition of nature of moral facts, the paper focuses on another interesting squabble whether or not we conceive of serious moral explanation that bridges the gap between theories/ principles, and our moral observations. In a separate section it has been shown that moral explanations are far too necessary for moral facts because moral facts need to have explanatory potency. Moral facts need to explain our observations of moral phenomena. The contentious issue has been addressed remarkably well by Nicholas Sturgeon and Brad Majors. I have a suggestion that cogency of ideas of moral facts and moral explanations depend among other things, on the conception of possible worlds.

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Notes

  1. Ethical Subjectivism speaks of ethical judgments being propositional in nature, of which some propositions are true by virtue of actual or hypothetical attitudes of people. No doubt, it is a form of cognitivism, and opposed to realism because it does not accept that moral properties, such as wrongness refer to objective facts, independent of human opinion. Moral subjectivists such as Westermarck, Russell and Perry, are of the opinion that moral judgments are cognitively true insofar as they are reports of, or descriptions of mental states.

  2. Error theory of J. L. Mackie is known for its claim that assertions concerning objectivity of value, intrinsic values etc. are erroneous or simply, false (not just meaningless). There are no entities corresponding to such assertions. Notably, error theory is on the one hand descriptivist but on the other hand anti- realist because it holds that there are no moral facts.

  3. Moral skepticism doubts (and even denies) the role of reason in morality. Moral skepticism denies even moral knowledge, moral belief, moral truth, moral reasons and moral facts. A common perception is that just due to the reason that no one can have any real knowledge of moral status of anything or about existence of moral facts in the world; doubt is but general in moral cases.

  4. Cornell Realism is non-reductionist naturalistic cognitivism developed and propagated by some philosophers such as Nicholas Sturgeon, R. Boyd, G. Sayre-McCord, all of them having Cornell University connection. Non-reductionists claim that moral properties are irreducible natural properties in their own right. Natural properties would thus include moral properties in addition to natural properties.

  5. Quasi- Realism has been supported by Gilbert Herman and Simon Blackburn. They do not state any moral facts to hold good. Quasi-realists accept moral truths, moral knowledge, moral objectivity but not the correspondence of judgments and moral facts. However, Herman stands out as anti-realist ethical relativist and Blackburn comes up with his conception of projectivism.

  6. overdetermination happens when multiple causes determine a single observed effect, any one of them may be sufficient to determine the effect.

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Correspondence to Debashis Guha.

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Guha, D. Moral Facts and Moral Explanations. Philosophia 49, 1475–1486 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-020-00303-5

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