#MoralRealism
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answersinreason.bsky.social
Where do you stand on morality?

A review of my current ethical position and justifications + clearing up some issues with moral language.

#ethics #morality #metaethics #normative #subjective #objective #moral #moralrealism #atheism #atheist

www.answers-in-reason.com/philosophy/w...
September 26, 2023 at 5:34 PM
microglyphics.bsky.social
Truth → Rhetoric: Why Access Determines Authority.
👉 philosophics.blog/2025/12/15/t...
It poses an important question to Realists™.

#Philosophy #MetaEthics #Ethics #MoralRealism #Rhetoric #Ontology #CriticalTheory #Leadership #OrganisationalLife #Normativity #Writing #Truth #Rhetoric
Truth → Rhetoric: Why Access Determines Authority
I do not assume that normative assertions function as descriptive truths. Realism is compelling because it promises that moral disagreement has a fact of the matter beyond persuasion. The argument …
philosophics.blog
December 15, 2025 at 5:49 AM
serenissimaj.bsky.social
How should epistemic research bridge the 'situated' vs 'objective' knowledge dualism?

This matters because all knowledges are situated but not all advance justice, fairness, truth, emancipation.

As a critical realist, I glimpse a way to bridge this.

But am I wrong?

#CriticalRealism
#MoralRealism
October 8, 2025 at 5:56 PM
serenissimaj.bsky.social
"one must assume not only that there is a way of determining [...], what a better world might look like, but also that there is a way for this ‘concrete utopian’ vision to become shared [...]"
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

#normativity #SocialJustice #MoralRealism #Democracy

#CriticalRealism
The special issue considers how to make the world a better place In discussing normativity’s role in achieving social justice, one must assume not only that there is a way of determining, however fallibly and contingently, what a better world might look like, but also that there is a way for this ‘concrete utopian’ vision to become shared socially, leading to questions of democracy or social consensus. Whilst we have precedents for such achievements – take for example how our factual knowledge about bacteria has led to normative values about cleanliness, or how (it could be argued) humans have advanced their moral position for the better over time in terms of the question of slavery – nevertheless there is often disagreement about how we decide what to value, that is, what constitutes the good, and what normative role, if any, this good should play in processes of democracy/ social consensus. Figure 1 refers to the sorts of things that might be discussed – and indeed are discussed in this Special Issue – when considering the idea of normativity.
November 8, 2024 at 6:32 PM
serenissimaj.bsky.social
Working through this & Special Issue it introduces.
V. helpful on many levels as I try to theorise & practise 'why things matter to people', including whether/how academic writing matters (cf the whole #AI thing)
#CriticalRealism #MoralRealism #MoralRelativism #AcWri #IsOught doi.org/10.1080/1476...
The second level (Level II), contextually-situated instrumental rationality, makes use of the same protolaws as used in Level I and applies them towards improving the world, but whereas Level I is a general rationality, Level II is what actually happens in a context of, for instance, relations of domination. In this context, Bhaskar assumes that such instru- mental rationality is of greater benet to the oppressed than to the oppressor. He says, ‘The human sciences are not neutral in their consequences in a non-neutral (unjust, asym- metrical) world. And it is just this which explains their liability to periodic or sustained attack by established and oppressive powers’ (Bhaskar 2009, 182). An example is the stat- istical data indicating that, for the rst time since records began, life expectancy in the UK has declined (Collinson 2019). This statistic indicates that there is a signicant problem with the way that society is theorized, that is, it puts into question the justications us Cover of Andrew Sayer's 'Why things Matter to People' depicting 3 people sitting on a bench looking out to the sea
November 10, 2023 at 10:03 AM
serenissimaj.bsky.social
History repeats, and so must academics in speaking truth to power.

It's so hard to consistently live up to this within unequal structures, but never as hard as the oppression and dehumanisation inflicted on the wronged.

#SocialJustice #MoralRealism
#Shame

Reading these to find a way of coping 😢
Photo of Audre Lorde's "The Master's Tools will Never Dismantle the Master's House", Hannah Arnedt's "Men in Dark Times", and the spine of this year's One World Almanac
November 7, 2023 at 1:37 PM
dustcircle.bsky.social
Are there #objectivevalues?
Is #moralrealism true?

alonzofyfe.substack.com/p/are-there-...
Are there objective values? Is moral realism true?
A great deal of the discussion over whether there are objective values or whether moral realism is true is derailed by a failure to recognize that each of these questions is ambiguous.
alonzofyfe.substack.com
June 27, 2026 at 11:17 AM
whatisitliketobeaphilosopher.com
Non-natural moral facts seem weird, yet it seems weird to say our moral claims are not true. Victor Moberger explains what’s really going on in “Moral Facts Are Magic Tricks” in Too Weird to Believe, Too Plausible to Deny. Link in bio. #philosophy #ethics #morality #MoralRealism #antirealism
November 26, 2025 at 4:27 PM