the most metaphysically reductionist subjectivists, anti-realists, nihilists and so on can fight just as hard as others to save their friends and families from a fire; to build flourishing lives and communities; to love their neighbors as themselves.
Like most Rationalists, you are tacitly assuming that ethics is a matter of uncoordinated individual action. But co-ordinated social action, such as putting people in jail, exists and is highly relevant.
Values can conflict. Not all values conflict. Where they do, the three words theory doesn’t tell you who wins or loses. Societies have systems of punishment and reward, which, hopefully, have an ethical basis. Putting people in jail is just wanton cruelty if they have done nothing wrong. But if ethics just “is” subjective value, and values vary, as they obviously do, who lands in jail...the vanila over or the tutti frutti lover, the little endian or the big endian? Voting allows you to settle, the issue, but it is not enough to justify it, because merely having a minority preference is not a crime.
Moral realism can answer this , practical, question: people should be jailed for doing things that are objectively wrong, not just for things that are against preferences. So realism has an advantage beyond “mattering enough”.
I agree realism is underrated. Or at least the term is underrated. It’s the best way to frame ideas about sentientism (in the sense of hedonic utilitarianism). On the other hand, you seem to be talking more about rhetorical benefits of normative realism about laws.
Most people seem to think phenomenal valence is subjective, but that’s confusing the polysemy of the word “subjective”, which can mean either arbitrary or bound to a first-person subject. All observations (including valenced states like suffering) are subjective in the second sense, but not in the first. We have good evidence for believing that our qualities of experience are correlated across a great many sentient beings, rather than being some kind of private uncorrelated noise.
“Moral realism” is a good way to describe this situation that we’re in as observers of such correlated valences, even if God-decreed rules of conduct isn’t what we mean by that term.
Like most Rationalists, you are tacitly assuming that ethics is a matter of uncoordinated individual action. But co-ordinated social action, such as putting people in jail, exists and is highly relevant.
Values can conflict. Not all values conflict. Where they do, the three words theory doesn’t tell you who wins or loses. Societies have systems of punishment and reward, which, hopefully, have an ethical basis. Putting people in jail is just wanton cruelty if they have done nothing wrong. But if ethics just “is” subjective value, and values vary, as they obviously do, who lands in jail...the vanila over or the tutti frutti lover, the little endian or the big endian? Voting allows you to settle, the issue, but it is not enough to justify it, because merely having a minority preference is not a crime.
Moral realism can answer this , practical, question: people should be jailed for doing things that are objectively wrong, not just for things that are against preferences. So realism has an advantage beyond “mattering enough”.
(PS. Not a full strength realist, personally).
I agree realism is underrated. Or at least the term is underrated. It’s the best way to frame ideas about sentientism (in the sense of hedonic utilitarianism). On the other hand, you seem to be talking more about rhetorical benefits of normative realism about laws.
Most people seem to think phenomenal valence is subjective, but that’s confusing the polysemy of the word “subjective”, which can mean either arbitrary or bound to a first-person subject. All observations (including valenced states like suffering) are subjective in the second sense, but not in the first. We have good evidence for believing that our qualities of experience are correlated across a great many sentient beings, rather than being some kind of private uncorrelated noise.
“Moral realism” is a good way to describe this situation that we’re in as observers of such correlated valences, even if God-decreed rules of conduct isn’t what we mean by that term.