Objective moral truths exist
Are some things simply right or wrong regardless of what anyone believes, or is morality a human invention that varies by culture? The core arguments follow.
Arguments for
- Some judgements — that gratuitous cruelty to the innocent is wrong — feel true in a way that survives disagreement, much like a fact rather than a preference.
- Moral progress (abolishing slavery, expanding rights) looks like the discovery of truths we previously got wrong, which only makes sense if there is a truth to get right.
- Without objective standards, we could not coherently say another culture’s atrocities were actually wrong — only that we happen to dislike them.
- Reason can derive stable principles (like impartiality and consistency) that hold for any rational agent, giving morality a non-arbitrary foundation.
Arguments against
- Moral norms vary widely across cultures and history, which is what we would expect if they are social conventions rather than universal facts.
- Unlike scientific claims, moral claims cannot be settled by observation or experiment, so it is unclear what would even count as evidence.
- Our moral intuitions are well explained by evolution and upbringing as feelings that promoted cooperation, with no need to posit mind-independent truths.
- Widespread, persistent disagreement among sincere, informed people is hard to reconcile with the idea that there are plain moral facts to be read off reality.
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