Two Conceptions of Moral Realism

Abstract

properties; the realist holds that moral properties are real properties of objects. The two conceptions differ on the sense they give to the notion of a real property. According to the weaker conception, a property is a real property of an object if it is a property which is there anyway, independent of any particular experience of it. A popular (but not the only nor necessarily the best) way of capturing this notion of independence is to require that real properties persist when unperceived. As Hume held, continuity entails independence. On this approach, real properties are real (i.e. are there to be experienced) because they persist (i.e. are there waiting to be experienced). Another way of capturing this notion of independence is to turn our attention away from continuity in our world, and consider instead characterisations which turn on the nature of other worlds. Thus we might require the real properties to be ones which objects can have in certain counterfactual circumstances. On the first approach, then, subjunctive conditionals about what would be experienced if one were to look are sustained by statements about the actual continuity of the objects of experience. On the second, the subjunctive conditionals are grounded in statements about the properties that objects can bear in worlds very different from ours, typically worlds which lack perceiving minds. Such worlds are unfortunately not much use in ethical theory, not because it is so obvious that moral properties have no place in worlds devoid of minds to perceive them, but because the only possible objects of moral approval and disapproval are necessarily absent in such worlds. There are no actions and no agents there. Whether or not a suitable version of the relevant notion of