Moral Antirealism

Meta-ethics is a philosophical problem that attempts to discover what morality means. It is the focus of whether normative ethics, the value judgments of what is moral, can be impartial or commonly held. This philosophical discipline is trying to decipher what moral values means, and what people meant when they said something is “right” or “wrong.” To understand if morals are objective or universally true, meta-ethics tries to find the foundations of morals, and recognize if some things are morally right or wrong for all people. When we speak about meta-ethics, we see that some morals may differ from culture to culture. A central question in the discussion of meta-ethics is if there are such things as objective moral values. Are there moral truths that are known or able to be known by everyone? A moral realist would say that moral truths do exist, even if some people have yet to understand them. In this paper, I intend to argue that there are no universal moral truths because objective moral values do not exist. To understand the debate in meta-ethics one must decide if there exist such things as moral facts. If a person makes a statement that something is morally wrong, is this statement an objective fact or a subjective opinion? In the textbook, Philosophy: Traditional and Experimental Readings, Tamler Sommers presents a good example of how one society had different moral opinions about an event. Michael Vick, a famous football player, was arrested for operating a dog-fighting ring. Most people, that had voiced an opinion about Vick’s actions, severely condemned his actions as immoral. These people would say that it is a fact that dog fighting is wrong, and under no circumstances should it be allowed to happen. The example of Vick’s arrest and sub sequential condemnation by many members of society displays to us the cultural differences with regard to moral objectivity. Although, there were a few people that saw no moral problem with Vick’s actions, because Vick was raised in a culture where dog-fighting is very much morally acceptable. The problem of objectivity is clear in this example. Is the statement “dog-fighting is wrong” an objective truth or a subjective opinion. Dog-fighting does in fact happen, but there can be no rightness or wrongness accessed to it morally. If some people say that there is nothing wrong with dog-fighting it is impossible to say that the statement “dog-fighting is wrong” is objective. It is not objective because it is not a universally held belief, and it is a statement of opinion because not everybody would agree. There is another question concerning meta-ethics, and it is if moral statements are supposed to be objective at all. In the previous example someone made the statement’ “dog-fighting is wrong,” because they believe that it is the truth, but others may make the statement knowing that it is not the truth. This means that some making the statement “dog-fighting is wrong” know that the statement is not true but they think of it as a personal preference. Some people may recognize that there is no objectivity in morals, but it is their beliefs because it is their personal desired behavior for society. A person may understand that different cultures have different customs and we may not all agree with the different behaviors. These philosophers do not think that a moral statement has to be truth apt, which means that it would be a fact know or able to be known by everyone. I believe that a moral statement must be truth apt, because I believe for a moral to be true it must be objective. I believe that a moral has to be true and universally held for it to be real. If one moral that is believed to be true turns out to be false how am I to believe that all moral values could not be found to be false as well. For example, “lying is wrong” is a moral statement that many would believe is objective and truth apt, but not everyone