New Brand of Moral Anti-Realism

I have a confession to make: I've switched teams and now consider myself to be a moral anti-realist. That is, I now think it is possible to draw a principled ontological distinction between the reality of paradigmatic natural facts and paradigmatic moral facts. Here is the basis of the distinction:

Realism about a certain domain of facts = the view that facts in this domain are causally efficacious independently of what anyone thinks about them

To my knowledge, I am the first to propose this manner of distinguishing between realist and anti-realist accounts of different domains of facts. Superficially, it may seem similar to Harman's distinction, but this apparent similarity is illusory, because unlike Harman I do not base the distinction merely in terms of causal efficacy. On the contrary, I am more than willing to grant that moral facts are often causally efficacious and can figure ineliminably in perfectly respectable causal explanations. What I think is that the causal efficicacy of moral facts is dependent upon certain people believing in them. (Who those certain people are is going to vary from case to case, which, if true, should only reinforce the sense that we're dealing with something less than fully real.)

If you need an argument to convince you to accept such an anti-realist account of moral facts, then consider the following example. There is currently a really large rock in my backyard. I take it for granted that the fact that this rock is currently blocking the backdoor to my house is a paradigmatic natural fact. Now, the question is: can we draw a defensible ontological distinction between this fact and the fact that murdering someone in the prime of life out of sheer boredom is wrong? With my distinction in hand, I think we can. The natural fact about the rock is going to be causally efficacious regardless of whatever anyone, anywhere, thinks about it. Even if no one in the whole world believes anything about that rock, you're not going to be able to walk out of my backdoor. But we're just not in the same position with regard to moral facts. If no one, no where thinks murdering someone in the prime of life out of sheer boredom is wrong, then, hey, sorry to break it to you, but the truth that such a murder is wrong (which I think my anti-realism leaves untouched) isn't going to have any causal effects whatsoever.

I think this form of moral anti-realism does a good job of articulating an intuitive sense that many of us have that there is a principled ontological distinction between natural facts and moral facts. In addition, I think this form of moral anti-realism has at least one interesting normative ethical implication. I think it implies that we cannot take consolation in moral truth in the same manner as we might take consolation in (what we might call) natural truth. For example, if someone else does not believe that there is a large rock blocking my backdoor right now, then I can take consolation in the fact that they have a false belief. Regardless of what they think, that rock is going to have an effect on them if they try and walk out of that door. With moral truth, since the causal efficacy of the truth depends upon certain people believing it, it is impossible to take consolation merely in knowing that someone who denies such truth is in the grip of a false belief.

Here I am reminded of Errol Morris essay "There Is Such a Thing as Truth".

www.errolmorris.com/content/editorial/npr505.html

In this essay, Morris is consoled by the fact that a childhood friend of his—who denied the truth about how far west Reno is—was wrong. I don’t think he can take such comfort in moral truth. Simply put: with regard to moral truth, if the right people don’t believe in it, it doesn’t matter.