Can Cornell Moral Realism Adequately Account for Moral Knowledge?

Theoria 78 (1):26-46 (2011)
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Abstract

This article raises a problem for Cornell varieties of moral realism. According to Cornell moral realists, we can know about moral facts just as we do the empirical facts of the natural sciences. If this is so, it would remove any special mystery that is supposed to attach to our knowledge of objective moral facts. After clarifying the ways in which moral knowledge is to be similar to scientific knowledge, I claim that the analogy fails, but for little-noticed reasons. A preliminary conclusion of the article will be that this positive comparison to scientific knowledge hurts, rather than helps, the realist position. Yet, rather than spell trouble for moral realism altogether, I suggest that the apparent failure of Cornell realist moral epistemology points to a better way forward for moral realism

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Elizabeth Tropman
Colorado State University

Citations of this work

Ethical Reductionism.Neil Sinhababu - 2018 - Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 13 (1):32-52.
Moral error theories and folk metaethics.Benjamin Fraser - 2014 - Philosophical Psychology 27 (6):1-18.
A localist turn for defending moral explanations.Ryo Chonabayashi - 2022 - Asian Journal of Philosophy 1 (2):1-23.

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References found in this work

Moral realism: a defence.Russ Shafer-Landau - 2003 - New York: Oxford University Press.
The Right and the Good. Some Problems in Ethics.William David Ross - 1930 - Oxford: Clarendon Press. Edited by Philip Stratton-Lake.
Ethical Intuitionism.Michael Huemer - 2005 - New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

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