The 'Swabian Proof of Moral Realism' Project

[This is the first version of this website, work in progress. Any corrections or suggestions are welcome! Contact: please, click here.]

Here are some common-or-garden moral questions.

(1) Are we morally required to save the lives of starving humans in other countries?

(2) Can killing sometimes be morally allowed, or even required? And are there any (morally relevant) differences about the killing of humans on the one hand, and the killing of animals on the other?

(3) Are there any moral requirements or rules within business and commerce?

(4) Are we morally required to save our planet for generations to come?

Those interested in moral issues consider such questions highly significant. But notice that all these (so-called "material") questions crucially depend on another, more fundamental question:

(5) Do moral entities actually exist, or is it true that the view that morals exist (really, objectively) but an illusion?

Among philosophers and non-philosophers alike, the rejection of moral facts ('oughts', duties, 'moral properties') and of values ((dis-)value states, (dis-)valuable states) is common. If those who doubt moreal realism ('moral skeptics', 'moral nihilists', 'moral non-realists') are right, then all those material questions, while seeming so interesting, are really unsubstantial; they are (then) just dealing with fiction, they refer to nothing. The significance of moral questions depends fundamentally on the truth of 'Moral Realism', the view that moral entities (facts, properties, objects) exist really. 

It is a rather amazing fact, however, that despite the crucial significance of this question, its discussion is not one of the 'hottest' issues within academic (meta-)ethics. Furthermore, even those debates which actually are led tend to be strangely indirect and largely sophistic, to concentrate on side issues, to focus on fashionable terms and subjects (like 'natural(ism)', 'queer', 'non-cognitivism'), and to follow suit to the ideas of 'prominent' philosophers (like Hume, Moore, Mackie), rather than to target the actual key question, whether moral entities exist or not, straight on. To see exactly what this means you may browse the 'Relation to Prominent Issues' zone.

The present website presents and (still further) develops a straightforward, down-to-earth, effective defence of the existence of moral entities, concentrating on the sticking points, trying to avoid any vain discussions, trying to employ only the strongest (most plausible) assumptions, and seeking utmost economy in all relevant respects.