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Moral Truth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2010

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Extract

Is worrying about whether moral judgments are true or false a philosophical waste of time? It can seem to be if moral truth claims are redundant on thejudgments they claim to be true. If to claim that the judgment “x is wrong” is true is simply to judge x wrong, anyone who is prepared to make judgments can consistently make truth claims. A concern for moral truth is then merely a concern for whether anything is right or wrong, not a separable concern for whether moral judgments are true or false.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1987 , pp. 437 - 452
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1987

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References

1 See Stevenson, Charles L., Facts and Values (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1963), 215–219;Google ScholarHarman, Gilbert, The Nature of Morality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 33–35Google Scholar.

2 Hare, R. M., Moral Thinking (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), 213.Google Scholar

3 Streawson, P. F., “A problem about truth—a reply to Mr. Warnock”, in Pitcher, G., ed., Truth (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1964).Google Scholar

4 Ayer, A. J., “Truth”, in The Concept ofa Person (London: Macmillan, 1963).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Unger, Peter, lgnorance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), chap. 7.Google Scholar

6 See Hare, R. M., Freedom and Reason (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963).Google Scholar

7 This remark is not intended to imply that the statement “x is illegal” has no truth value or that the legal imperative “x is wrong” has no truth value in a corresponding sense. Nor is characterizing legal imperatives as conventional intended to endorse an account of law which Ronald Dworkin classifies as conventionalism in Law's Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard niversity Press, 1986). The characterization merely implies that the legal “x is wrong” has no truth value over and above that of “x is illegal”, which is someth?ng even a “non-conventionalist” in Dworkin's sense can accept. For distinctions and an account of the issues, see especially his chapters 1 and 4, including referencesGoogle Scholar.

8 For a useful presentation of conventionalism, see Harman, The Nature of Morality, Pts. III and IV.

9 Mackie, J. L., Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (Harmondsworth, NY: Penguin Books, 1978), 41.Google Scholar

10 Contrast Philippa Foot, “Moral Arguments”, Mind 67 (1958), 502–513.Google Scholar

11 Mackie, , Ethics, 41.Google Scholar

12 Hare, R. M., Applications of Moral Philosophy (London: MacMillan, 1972).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 For a helpful discussion of whether practical reasons depend upon subjective conditions, see Bond, E. J., Reason and Value (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).Google Scholar