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.
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.