Moral Realism (Part 1) Are There Moral Facts?

On The Very Idea - A Philosophy Podcast

In this first instalment of a three part series focusing on Australian philosopher J.L. Mackie's error theory regarding morality, I look at the view that error theory attacks - moral realism. Moral realists hold that moral facts indeed exist and that they can make moral statements true. We all know what an empirical fact might look like - the sentence 'it is raining' is supported by the empirical fact that when we look outside, it is, in fact, raining. But, what would a moral fact look like? Could there be such a thing? In this episode, I try to trace out an outline of a moral realist position and see which well known moral theories (Kantianism and Utilitarianism) fall under it. I ramble a lot in this one but hopefully something or other comes to light.