Moral realism is the view that morality is factual, sometimes true, and not fake (like, it's not mind-dependent, or it's not like we're just identifying morality with social norms and peer pressure). How can one argue for this view? One way is to try, somehow, to latch moral realism onto some other discourse that we feel much more comfortable about.
For example, here's a recap of Sturgeon's argument: if you're a scientific realist, you think that our scientific views are largely true. And so you probably think that inference to the best explanation, or something awfully close to it, is true. This tells us that unobservables like protons or electrons exist, and it might also tell us that numbers exist. Sturgeon argues that ethical beliefs are necessary for making our explanations better, and so inference to the best explanation should tell us that there are moral facts. Of course, one could just say "Feh, I don't like science either" but we're not taking up that argument. We're just trying to argue for the conditional, "If you accept science (then you accept inference to the best explanation, and if you accept inference to the best explanation) then you accept moral facts.
Let's say that fails. What other ways are there to approach an argument for moral realism?
In Enoch we saw another way. But what he's still doing, the rock of his argument, is scientific realism. Put it like this: inference to the best explanation is true, we know that from scientific realism. If you think that inference to the best explanation is true, then you believe that it is justified. Then Enoch provides a justification for IBE. Then he says that the justification he provided also justifies some new principle--inferring that what is necessary for deliberation is true.
I've spent time trying to argue that this approach is misguided. First, I think that it's easy to see how you could have conflicts between what's necessary for deliberation and what's necessary for explanation. What this comes down to is there being a problem with creating something like two epistemic realms--they're going to interact and cause problems (though maybe make things better too). Also, the argument gets off the ground by demanding that a basic belief, such as IBE, give itself a justification, but maybe that's an unfair requirement. Maybe we need to simply take some principles as primitive and unjustified, or maybe we need to be coherentists and not ask for a single justification for every belief. So Enoch's argument is sensitive to alternatives that seem more attractive than his account.
There's another account that came before Enoch's, but it's vague and not fully worked out (as far as I can tell). S-M suggests the following:
Still another reply, compatible with the first two but relying specifically on neither, shifts attention from science and from mathematics and logic, to epistemology itself. To think of any set of considerations that they justify some conclusion is to make a claim concerning the value (albeit the epistemic as opposed to moral value) of a conclusion. To hold of science, or mathematics, or logic, that there is a difference between good evidence or good arguments and bad ones is again to commit oneself evaluatively. This raises an obvious question: under what conditions, and why, are epistemic claims reasonably thought justified? Whatever answer one might begin to offer will immediately provide a model for an answer to the parallel question raised about moral judgments. There is no guarantee, of course, that our moral judgments will then end up being justified. The epistemic standards epistemology meets might well not be met by moral theory. But there is good reason to think the kinds of consideration that are appropriate to judging epistemic principles will be appropriate too when it comes to judging other normative principles, including those that we might recognize as moral. This means that any quick dismissal of moral theory as obviously not the sort of thing that could really be justified are almost surely too quick.
In other words, the epistemic realm is another normative realm. The question S-M is asking is what justifies our justifications? What's the second-order justification of justifications? Now, if we're just asking for more justifications, why do we think that we'll get anywhere new? Put another way, we're asking for normativity to provide the basis for normativity. I think the idea is that we'll get somewhere, and that since we're providing justifications of something normative, that will also provide a model of how to deal with a different normative realm, such as ethics. In his longer essay S-M suggests that it's conceivable that maybe there would even be something that justifies both our epistemic beliefs and our ethical ones. His example is a long shot, but it's possible, I guess. Enoch really seems to me to be operating in that model: trying to find what justifies our epistemology, and then reflecting that back on ethics.
There's another thing S-M wants to say, which is that if some argument would conclude that normative stuff isn't good in general it would be too strong. But there's a natural weakening of these arguments to give a prima facie reason not to believe in the existence of something. We can allow stuff into our ontology, even if it's problematic to do so.
OK, one thing out of the way: this probably gives a good argument against a specific interpretation of the argument from queerness. Specifically, if the argument from queerness gives us a reason not to believe in ethical stuff, it should also give us a reason not to believe in epistemic stuff. But queerness says "There's nothing else like it," but here we went and found something else like it.
Is there another way to go? I want to throw out the possibility that maybe the game's over once we have some normative beliefs, specifically epistemological beliefs. Here's one argument: being justified in something, we'll assume, has some aspect of normativity to it. And so here's one possibility. Let's say that we analyze justification as, "X is justified in believing Y" as "X ought to believe Y." And so epistemology is full of ought-statements about belief. Then the only thing that distinguishes ethics from epistemology is that ethics deals with a lot more actions that belief (assumption: belief is an action). But it's not just justification that's normative, because there are some actions that involve being justified. You know something only if you're justified in believing it.
Another way for the game to be over is if we showed that ethics was doing nothing more than justifying beliefs. "You ought to do X" could be reinterpreted as "You ought to believe that you ought to do X." And what would be wrong with that? Plenty. It's actually a remarkably bad argument. Moving on...
A third option is that ethics and epistemological norms are just quite different things. As different as ethics and etiquette. Well, then what? Then I guess we're back to Enoch and S-M's efforts. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's just that Enoch is problematic (and I think the problems come from pushing epistemology too hard and by carving up our knowledge) and S-M doesn't really offer anything. So if there's anywhere to go, maybe it's by just saying "belief is an action, so why not?" but that's a pretty rotten argument too, because you could just as easily say "picking up your fork is an action, so why not?" Oy, still not getting anywhere.
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