This is the first paragraph of the Introduction to my thesis:
It is a fact that 2 + 2 = 4. It is a fact that bears can swim. It is a fact that some people think that stealing is morally wrong. There are many types of facts—mathematical, biological, and psychological, to name a few. What this thesis investigates is: Are there any moral facts? It is a fact that some people think that stealing is morally wrong, but is it also a fact that stealing is morally wrong? To answer this question, we must first determine what being morally wrong consists in. What does being morally wrong (or right) entail? What would moral facts be like, if there were any? Would they necessarily provide everyone with a reason to be moral rather than immoral? Would they necessarily motivate everyone who apprehended them to act in moral ways? Would they help explain some part of the world that we experience? These are some of the questions that I will examine in this dissertation.
These are the first four paragraphs of the Conclusion:
Philosophy is often thought to be an impractical discipline. Its supposed irrelevance to everyday life is seen by some as an unforgivable vice. Ethics is one area of philosophy that is obviously practical; ethicists advise us on such matters as whether abortion ought to be allowed, whether we ought to engage in stem cell research, and how we ought to treat non-human animals. The practical nature of ethics is one of the features that draw philosophers and non-philosophers alike to the subject. Metaethics appears to be more theoretical than normative ethics because, as the name suggests, metaethics is about ethics, rather than about life and what to do. ‘Do moral judgments necessarily motivate?’ is an interesting question, but it does not obviously have anything to do with everyday life. However, although such questions do not obviously have anything to do with everyday life, they nevertheless do have very much to do with everyday life. The answer to the question ‘Is morality an objective matter of fact?’, for example, could have very far-reaching consequences.
Our judicial systems, for example, seem to be based on the assumption that ethical matters are factual. We punish murderers because they deserve punishment, not merely because it makes it safer for us to walk the streets; the reason that you are not allowed to be tried by your family and friends is that their subjective biases might cloud their moral judgment of you; the reason that there are several people on a jury rather than just one is to give the jury a better chance of reaching the truth of the matter. The reason that no one is justified in getting too upset when they lose a barbecue cook-off is that how good one’s barbecue sauce tastes is a subjective matter; it varies from person to person. And the reason that people are justified in getting very upset when their secret recipes are stolen is that the wrongness of stealing is presumed not to be a subjective matter; it is presumed not to vary from person to person—it is presumed to be morally wrong for everyone to steal.
If it were shown that morality does not pertain to objective matters of fact and that there are no moral facts, then the impact on our lives would be considerable. If we were to come to see that there are no moral facts, then we would lose a certain sort of justification for being upset that someone had stolen our secret recipe, we would lose a certain sort of justification for putting people in jail, and we would lose a certain sort of justification for thinking so hard about which actions to perform. Eating a sandwich one day and a salad the next is perfectly acceptable; giving to charity one day and stealing from someone the next would also be equally acceptable if there were no moral facts. In Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan Karamazov contends that if there is no God, then everything is permissible. (Dostoevsky 1880) Many people do not believe in God, but think that, nonetheless, moral facts do exist. These people typically do not take the non-existence of God as a reason for thinking that everything is permissible. However, a similar thing might be said of morality: If there are no moral facts, then everything is permissible. Therefore people who believe that there are moral facts ought to worry about the possibility that there might not be such facts undergirding their moral judgments; they ought to worry that they are like people who worship a false god.
It is for this reason that I set out to answer the question ‘Are there any moral facts?’ in this thesis. I have concluded that there are moral facts, and this is a conclusion that I take to support ordinary people’s presumptions about the basis of their moral judgments. I have argued that it is a fact that we all have reason to treat each other impartially, and have claimed that impartial treatment of persons is at least partially constitutive of morality. Let us look back now and see how this conclusion developed from the arguments that I examined in the rest of the dissertation.
There are 968 other paragraphs. If you would like to read any of those, please email at . Or, you can read the abstract of my thesis.