E.G.

In Russ Shafer-Landau’s Moral Realism: A Defence, SL divides views about the "reality" of the moral domain into three types.  Here, I’ll ignore one of those types (moral nihilism), and will focus on the contrast SL provides between moral constructivism and moral realism.

"Constructivists," says SL, endorse the reality of the moral domain, but explain this by "invoking a constructive function out of which the reality is created."  Constructivists differ on what they think is the proper "input" of this function.  Some think "subjective tastes and opinions" are the input; some think it is the workings of the rational will; etc.  But all constructivists have in common "the idea that moral reality is constituted by the attitudes actions, responses, or outlooks of persons, possibly under idealized conditions."  In short, for constructivists moral reality is constructed "from the states or activities… undertaken from a preferred standpoint." (p14)

By contrast, "realists" endorse the "stance-independence" of moral reality:

Realists believe that there are moral truths that obtain independently of any preferred perspective, in the sense that the moral standards that fix the moral facts are not made true by virtue of their ratification from within any given actual or hypothetical perspective.  That a person takes a particular attitude toward a putative moral standard is not what makes that standard correct. (p15)

This is apparently a somewhat unconventional definition of moral realism.  Most versions of moral realism, I think, ascribe mind-independence (rather than stance-independence) to moral reality. 

SL has a reason for abandoning the typical formulations.  SL thinks there are ways in which certain moral facts obviously are mind-dependent, so a definition of moral realism in terms of mind-independence would make realism absurd.  SL makes three remarks to establish the obvious mind-dependence of certain aspects of moral reality: 

1. "We obviously can’t enter a moral assessment of an agent’s motivations and intentions without recourse to what is going on in her mind."

2. "And the moral status of an action may depend very importantly on how pleased or miserable it makes others," etc.

3. "Further, it seems to make eminent sense to say that, absent all agents, there would be no moral facts (as opposed to moral standards) — no particular instances of right and wrong, moral good and evil, etc."  (SL’s distinction between "moral standards" and "moral facts is interesting, but not directly relevant for the present purpose.)

(All from pg 15.)

According to SL, given these three obvious dependencies of moral reality on mental states, if moral realism is the view that moral reality is mind-independent, then it is obviously false.  So a different version of moral realism must be offered.  SL’s "stance-independence" version of realism is the version SL offers to meet this need.

Here are a few of my reactions to this line of thought:

A. It’s not immediately obvious to me what a "stance" is supposed to be.  Some of SL’s remarks seem to suggest that a person’s "stance" with respect to a standard is supposed to be what that person thinks of the standard: Whether she thinks the standard is correct or incorrect, good or bad, etc.  But if that’s the case, isn’t it true that certain aspects of moral reality are as obviously stance-dependent as they are mind-dependent? 

Consider remark #1 above.  SL is right that we often need to know what is going on in an agent’s mind in order to assess her motivations and intentions.  But isn’t it equally true that, at least sometimes, we have to know what is an agent’s stance on various moral standards in order to assess her motivations? 

Suppose agent A believes stealing in circumstance c is wrong, while agent B believes stealing in circumstance c is right.  Agents A and B both find themselves in circumstance c, and as it happens, A and B both decide to steal.  Doesn’t it seem obvious we should assess A’s intentions differently than we should B’s?  And isn’t this because A and B both take a different stance on the relevant standard?  If so, then by making "stance-independence" the centerpiece of his definition of moral realism, SL has not succeeded in making realism avoid contradicting certain obvious truths.

B. A more important problem for SL’s definition of moral realism arises even if we assume that it is not obvious that some bits of moral reality are stance-dependent.  The intended virtue of SL’s definition of moral realism is that it allows certain aspects of moral reality, which obviously are mind-dependent, to be mind-dependent.  Its major vice, I think, is that it allows certain aspects of moral reality to be mind-dependent which, on any genuinely realist view, cannot be mind-dependent.  To put this point slightly differently: I think that by limiting the independence of moral reality to stance-independence, SL’s moral realism permits moral reality to be dependent on any mental property which is not a stance.  The narrower SL’s notion of a "stance" is, the more this is a problem. 

Consider SL’s definition of subjectivist constructivism, according to which "individual tastes and opinions are the things out of which moral reality is constructed."  We obviously do not want this to be classified as a realist view.  But if the mentioned "individual tastes and opinions" are not stances, then this is a realist view, on SL’s definition of realism.  And if a "stance" is what an agent "thinks" of a "standard," as SL seems to suggest, then as long as these "tastes and opinions" aren’t attitudes toward standards, they aren’t stances.  In that case, subjectivist constructivism is a realist view on SL’s definition of realism.  This, it seems to me, would be a big problem for SL’s definition of moral realism.