Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Counter-exampled

Just thought of a counter-example to my new brand of moral anti-realism (outlined in a previous post). Consider the following imaginary case:

Gustaf arrives early to coffee hour, before anyone else. He finds that there is only one package of Choco Leibniz. Although he has just finished a late lunch at Harold's Chicken Shack, which has left him stuffed, he proceeds to eat the entire package, knowing full well that others would have liked some.

I think a perfectly respectable explanation for Gustaf's action is that he is greedy. And I think that greediness is a moral property. Now imagine that neither Gustaf, nor anyone else, think that Gustaf is greedy. We then have an example of an instantiation of a moral property, one that no one thinks anything about, figuring ineliminably in a perfectly respectable causal explanation. Which is a counter-example to my new brand of moral anti-realism.

I have two things to say about this counter-example:

(1) It doens't undermine my proposal for distinguishing realism from anti-realism, it just implies that we should account for (certain) moral properties/facts in realist terms. Meaningfulness may still fall on the anti-realist side of things.

(2) I still think there's something right about the thought that it's unreasonable to be consoled by the existence of moral facts that no one thinks anything about. Maybe I just need a new way to articulate why I think this is unreasonable.

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