Assessment of Louis Pojman's View on the Defense of Moral Realism

Subject Areas : Epistemological researches

mohammad saied abdollahi ¹ , Mohammad Ali Abdollahi ²

1 - qom university
2 - University of Tehran, College of Farabi

Received: 2023-09-03 Accepted : 2023-09-18 Published : 2023-08-23

Keywords: realism, Gilbert Harman, moral skepticism, moral nihilism, J. L. Mackey,

Abstract :

Moral realism is one of the most important approaches in meta-ethics. Accepting this approach or denying it has a unique role in the intellectual system of a moral philosopher. Louis Pojman, an eminent American philosopher, is one of the most important defenders of moral realism. He believes that skepticism and moral nihilism represented by Mackey and Harman are the most important attacks on moral realism, and if realism can be safely passed through these two scientific paths, this important ethical approach can be easily accepted.  In this article, after presenting Mackie's two fundamental arguments that is, reasoning through relativity and queerness, we try to show the inadequacies of his argument according to Pojman's point of view. In the following, we discuss the inefficiency of Harman's anti-comparison hypothesis and reveal how moral realities exist, and finally, we discuss Pojman's approach in defense of moral realism.

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