Questioning the Reality of Morality

Core question introduced: “Is there anything you really ought to do?”
Strategy: first analyze what makes any claim true.
- Generic schema: $x\text{ is }F$
  • $x$ = subject of the sentence.
  • $F$ = predicate (the property being ascribed).
  • A sentence is true iff the subject really possesses the property denoted by the predicate.
Simple, familiar examples
- “Grass is green.” → True because grass actually has the property being green.
- “Brody is human.” (Brody = professor’s dog) → False because Brody lacks the property being human.
- “Class is cancelled.” → Truth-value depends on whether the class has the property being cancelled at the relevant time.

Mathematics
• “ $4 = 2+2$ ” → True because $4$ has the property being equal to $2+2$ .
• “ $180$ is the sum of the interior angles of a triangle.” → True because $180$ possesses the property being the sum of a triangle’s interior angles.
Biology
• “The oak tree is a plant.” → True because oak tree instantiates plant-hood.

Candidate moral truths
• “Murder is wrong.”
• “Casual sex is permissible.”
• “Vegetarianism is obligatory.”
If the simple schema works here, then each moral claim is true iff the corresponding action (murder, casual sex, vegetarianism) has the property wrongness, permissibility, obligatoriness, etc.

Compare:
1. “Casual sex is permissible.”
2. “Casual sex is widespread.”
  • Being widespread seems clear, measurable: distribution over a large population or area.
  • Being permissible feels less clear; its status as a real property is questionable.
Further comparison:
1. “Stealing is wrong.”
2. “Stealing is taking someone else’s property without permission.”
  • Taking property without permission = straightforward descriptive property.
  • Wrongness may not have the same kind of straightforward, mind-independent reality.

Philosophical definitions
• Objective truth = mind-independent; holds regardless of any human beliefs, desires, feelings.
– Example: “The table is solid.” continues to be true even if no one believed it.
• Subjective truth = mind-dependent; holds in virtue of human mental states (beliefs, desires, fears, hopes, etc.).
– Candidate: “Stealing is wrong” might be true only because of widespread human condemnation.
Implication for morality
• If moral predicates (wrong, permissible, obligatory) are subjective, then there may be nothing anyone ‘really’ ought to do in an objective sense.

Moral Realism
• Answers the opening question “Is there anything you really ought to do?” with YES.
• Claims that at least some moral propositions are objectively true; moral properties are real and mind-independent.
Moral Anti-Realism
• Says NO: no objective moral requirements exist; moral discourse is ultimately dependent on human attitudes, conventions, or emotions.

Will supply precise statements of what moral realists and anti-realists commit to:
• Which propositions each side must accept or deny.
Introduction of John Mackie’s “Argument from Queerness.”
• Core idea: if objective moral properties existed, they would be queer (i.e., fundamentally strange, unlike any other properties we know).
• Their strangeness (ontological & epistemological) forms a challenge to moral realism.

The subject–predicate truth-maker model works unproblematically for descriptive claims (physical, biological, mathematical).
Whether it works for moral claims hinges on whether moral predicates denote real, objective properties or merely express subjective attitudes.
Master the distinctions:
• Descriptive vs normative predicates.
• Objective vs subjective truths.
• Realist vs anti-realist meta-ethical positions.
Be prepared to explain Mackie’s “queerness” objection and why it specifically targets moral realism.