Gakuranman.com – illuminating Japan

Moral Anti-Realists tell a different story to that of Moral Realists. According to them, there are no moral facts or properties. If so, what are we doing when we say moral statements such as ‘murder is wrong’? To be an Anti-Realist, we are looking to reject one or more of the premises in the Correspondence [...]

Let’s begin the debate by focussing on the possibility that there are objectively existing moral facts. Realist views accept the existence of objective moral properties. To put this in perspective, think about what this would be saying. When we make moral statements such as ‘murder is bad’, we talk as though there are moral facts [...]

Also known as ‘Moderate’ or ‘Actualist’ Modal Realism. Unlike Lewis’s Genuine Modal Realism, EMR has varied tenets and thus I will only outline some of the differences to GMR. In contrast to Lewis’s GMR, EMR theories do not take other possible worlds to be concretely existing (the main reason for not wanting to accept Lewis’s [...]

Okay, so we’re well under way. We have a theory of Possible Worlds, which looks nice and really helps us (okay, perhaps just Philosophers) talk about the world more clearly with one another. Sounds good, but it comes at a heavy price. Here are some of the big objections to Lewis’s Genuine Modal Realism.

Genuine Modal Realism (GMR) Okay, so we’re no longer frightened by ‘Realism’ right? At least, not by the terminology. If you’re not sure, check here for a primer. So what is Modal Realism? In a general sense, ‘Modality’ is talking about what is possible. What could have been, what could have been otherwise and what [...]

Whatnow? Realism? And Anti-Real-isms? Since this is the first time I’ve written about Realism and Anti-Realism, perhaps I should start with a brief explanation of what we (those bearding-twirling Philosophers and their bald counterparts) mean when we talk of objects being ‘real’ or not. For one to be ‘realist’ about something is to say two [...]