Moral realism: bases and history of this philosophical position

Moral realism is a philosophical position that defends the objective existence of moral facts.. That is to say, it maintains that, regardless of the subjective, cognitive or social properties; moral premises and actions have an objectively verifiable reality.

The latter has generated long and complex philosophical discussions around questions such as the following: are there really true moral affirmations? Does honesty, for example, have an objective reality? What is it that gives the quality of “true” to a moral affirmation? Is it a metaphysical or rather a semantic debate? Likewise, and beyond philosophical debates, moral realism has been incorporated into important theories of psychological development.

In line with the above, we will see in an introductory way what moral realism is, what are the philosophical positions with which it debates and how it has been incorporated into psychology.

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What is moral realism?

Moral realism is the philosophical position that affirms the objective existence of moral facts. According to Devitt (2004), for moral realism, there are moral statements that are objectively true, from which the following conclusion can be drawn:

there are people and actions that are, in objective terms, morally good, bad, honest, unkind, etc.

For its defenders, moral realism is an important part of the worldview of subjects in general, and it was for the sciences. especially before the emergence of contemporary currents that questioned the relationship between "meaning" and "TRUE".

He maintains, for example, that the cruelty of a person works as an explanation of his behavior, what makes moral facts part of the hierarchy of facts that make up the world natural.

some background

Realism, more generally, It is a philosophical position that supports the objective existence (independent of the observer) of the facts of the world.. This means that our perception is a faithful representation of what we observe, and the same is true when we speak: by affirming something in literal terms, its existence and veracity are confirmed. That is to say that in the background in this argumentation, there is the univocal relationship between language and meaning.

From the "linguistic turn" of the 20th century, philosophical debates and issues were treated in relation to language and were questioned the relationship between the latter and the meaning, with which the most philosophical truths were also questioned. fundamental.

The latter has led different philosophers to distinguish between debates about the meaning we give to the world, and debates about things in the external world. That is, between metaphysical debates and semantic debates. Realism as a philosophical stance can be seen in many different areas, for example, in philosophy of science, in epistemology, or, as in the case at hand, in morality.

Dimensions of moral realism

According to this philosophical position, moral facts are translated into psychological and social facts.

There are, therefore, actions that "should" be carried out and others that are not, as well as a series of rights that can be awarded to subjects. And all this can be verified objectively, since they exist independently of the person or the social context that observes or defines them. For this reason, Devitt (2004) tells us that moral realism is sustained in two dimensions:

1. Independence

Moral reality is independent of the mind, since moral facts are objective (they are not conformed by our feelings, opinions, theories, or social conventions).

2. Existence

It maintains a commitment to moral facts, since it affirms its objective existence.

Criticisms and debates around the objectivity of moral facts

Criticism of moral realism has come from subjectivist and relativist currents. who have questioned the relationship between language and the different elements that make up a psychological and social reality; as well as the possibility of talking about said reality regardless of who defines or experiences it.

Specifically, in the context of moral realism and relativism, two main criticisms arise, known as “non-cognitivism” and “error theories”. All of them debate around the same object of investigation: moral affirmations.

And they wonder, on the one hand, if these affirmations speak of moral facts, and on the other, if those facts or at least some of them are true. While moral realism would answer both questions in the affirmative, and would ask what makes a moral fact "true" in universal terms; non-cognitivism and error theories would respond in different ways.

Non-cognitivism

Non-cognitivism holds that moral claims do not correspond to moral properties, in fact, they do not. are properly affirmations, but indicative sentences without a truth condition that corresponds to the facts.

They are sentences that express attitudes, emotions, they prescribe norms, but not moral facts themselves. This semantic analysis is accompanied by a metaphysical position that affirms that there are no moral properties or facts.

In other words, non-cognitivists deny that moral statements allude to objective facts, and therefore, they also deny that these are true. In other words, they deny realist explanations about nature and moral reality, and they deny realist claims about the causal role of reality.

Error Theory

In broad strokes, the Theory of Error, by the Australian philosopher (known for his moral skepticism) John Leslie Mackie, says that moral claims do contain moral meanings, but none of them can be completely true. That is, there are moral facts that are reported through moral claims, but they are not necessarily true.

For the theory of error, there are no moral facts in themselves, that is, it denies the existence of any objective reality of morality. To analyze why people argue about moral facts that do not exist, someone who takes a position in defense of error theories could point out how the Moral affirmations are used to mobilize emotions, attitudes or personal interests (assuming that these discussions inform about facts with significant meanings). moral).

For his part, someone who defends non-cognitivism could analyze the same situation by referring to the practical utility of speaking as if the statements moral claims truly claim to report facts, even though they do not (given the idea of ​​moral claims they do not even claim to report). facts).

Moral realism in developmental psychology

Moral realism is also one of the key concepts in Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget's theory of moral development.

Roughly, what he proposes is that children go through two major phases characterized by stages of progressively abstract reasoning. These phases follow the same sequence in all children, regardless of their cultural context or any other element external to the subject himself. The phases are the following:

• Heteronymous or moral realism stage (5 to 10 years), where children attribute moral rules to figures of authority and power in a dichotomous perspective of good and evil, and let feelings such as honesty or justice emerge.
• Autonomous stage or moral independence (10 years and older), when children attribute arbitrariness to the norms, they can challenge or violate them and also modify them based on negotiation.

Later, the American psychologist Lawrence Kohberg He comes to the conclusion that moral maturity is not reached after the second stage proposed by Piaget. He elaborates his own scheme of moral development in six stages that include the first two of the Swiss psychologist, including the idea that morality has universal principles that cannot be acquired in the first childhood.

What Kohlberg does is take Piaget's theories of cognitive development into more detailed studies of the evolution of moral judgments; understanding these as a reflective process on values, and from the possibility of ordering them in a logical hierarchy that allows facing different dilemmas.

The studies of Piaget and Kohlberg marked in a very important way the developmental psychologyHowever, they have also received various criticisms precisely for appealing to a neutrality and universality of development. morality that could be applied to understand all subjects regardless of issues such as cultural context or gender.

Bibliographic references:

• Sayre-McCord, G. (2015). Moral Realism. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved August 13, 2018. Available in: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-realism/
• Devitt, M. (2004). Moral Realism: A Naturalistic Perspective. Areté Magazine of Philosophy, XVI(2): 185-206.
• barra, e. (1987). Moral development: an introduction to Kohlberg's theory. Latin American Journal of Psychology, 19 (1): 7:18.