Critisms Of Realism Flashcards
What is Cultural Relativism?
All beliefs and ethics are relative to culture e.g good and bad => you can’t judge other cultures, as they are different (truths are relative to a culture).
If there were objective moral properties and facts (moral realism was true), then you would expect every culture to eventually discover these moral facts in a similar way to how every culture has discovered other objective truths such as 1+1=2.
What is Mackie’s Best Hypothesis?
It is more plausible to say that different ways of living have given a rise to different moral beliefs, rather then saying that different moral beliefs result from badly distorted perceptions of ONE moral reality which is the only good in itself.
Different cultures have developed different conventions about how to live and they are reflected in their moral judgements (which vary from one culture to another)
What is the key idea of Mackie’s Argument from queerness?
Anti-realism fits within the facts, realism doesn’t.
Outline Mackie’s Argument form queerness
Things are made of stuff/matter which is atoms. You could say that atoms refer to ‘is’ whereas wrongness to ‘ought’. Wrongness is not material, not made of stuff.
So if there are moral judgements and moral properties independently of our minds, it would be WEIRD/QUEER that there is something in the moral statement (in the world) itself that motivates us.
What is epistemological queerness?
We can’t prove Moral realism (there are moral facts independently of our minds) epistemologically. These moral facts are neither known priori nor posteriori e.g the act of courage is right, we don’t know that priori and when we experience courage, we still don’t know whether it is right or not.
