Do Moral Explanations Matter

Abstract

In a recent paper Nicholas Sturgeon claims moral explanations constitute one area of disagreement between moral realists and noncognitivists. The correctness of such explanation is consistent with moral realism but not with noncognitivism. Does this difference characterize other anti-realist views? I argue that it does not. Moral relativism is a distinct anti-realist view. And the correctness of moral explanations is consistent with moral relativism. I. MORAL REALISM AND MORAL RELATIVISM 11~llicolas Sturgeon characterizes moral realism as comprising these theses: ... that our moral terms typically refer to real properties; that moral statements typically express propositions capable of truth and falsity; and that our ordinary methods of arriving at moral judgments provide us with at least some approximate knowledge of moral truths. I suspect that, in addition, we ought not to count a view as realist unless it holds that these moral truths are in some interesting sense independent of the subjective indicators-our moral beliefs and moral feelings, as well as moral conventions constituted bi coordinated individual intentions-that we take as guides to them. Sturgeon admits, "This last condition is va~e, and I can fmd no consensus in the literature about exactly how to spell it out ... ,,2 I think the statement of this last condition amounts to saying that moral truth is not code-relative. By a moral code I shall mean a general moral point of view that could be spelled out by specifying a set of norms. A person might possess a moral code without being able to do this spelling out. The vast majority of people who have moral codes are in this position. But the specification of the code is always something which in principle could be done.