Moral realism is the view in philosophy that there are objective moral values. Moral realists argue that moral judgments describe moral facts. This combines a cognitivist view about moral judgments (they are belief-like mental states that describe the state of the world), a view about the existence of moral facts (they do in fact exist), and a view about the nature of moral facts (they are objective: independent of our cognizing them, or our stance towards them, etc.). It contrasts with expressivist or non-cognitivist theories of moral judgment (e.g., Stevenson, Hare, Blackburn, Gibbard, Ayer), error theories of moral judgments (e.g., Mackie), fictionalist theories of moral judgment (e.g., R. Joyce, M. Kalderon) and constructivist or relativist theories of the nature of moral facts (e.g., R. Firth, Rawls, Korsgaard, Harman).
Some moral realists include David Brink, John McDowell, Peter Railton, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, Michael Smith, Russ Shafer-Landau, G.E. Moore, and Thomas Nagel. The Philosopher (detail), by Rembrandt Philosophy is a field of study that includes diverse subfields such as aesthetics, epistemology, ethics, logic, and metaphysics, in which people ask questions such as whether God exists, whether knowledge is possible, and what makes actions right or wrong. ... Objectivity has several meanings: Objectivity (philosophy) Objectivity (journalism) This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... Morality, in the strictest sense of the word, deals with that which is regarded as right or wrong. ... Look up Fact in Wiktionary, the free dictionary For other uses, see Fact (disambiguation). ... In ethics, cognitivism is the view that ethical sentences express propositions and can therefore be true or false (they are truth-apt). ... Expressivism is a theory about the use of moral language in the field of Meta-ethics. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into cognitivism (ethics). ... Charles Leslie Stevenson (1908-1979) was an American philosopher primarily concerned with ethics, philosophy of language, and meaning. ... R.M. Hare Richard Mervyn Hare (March 21, 1919 – January 29, 2002) was an English moral philosopher, who held the post of Whites Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford from 1966 until 1983. ... Simon Blackburn (born 1944) is a British academic philosopher also known for his efforts to popularise philosophy. ... Allan Gibbard (b. ... Alfred Jules Ayer (October 29, 1910 - June 27, 1989), better known as simply A. J. Ayer (and called Freddie by friends), was a British philosopher. ... John Leslie Mackie (1917–1981) was a philosopher, originally from Sydney, Australia. ... Fictionalism is a doctrine in philosophy that suggests that statements of a certain sort should not be taken to be literally true, but merely a useful fiction. ... In philosophy, moral relativism is the position that moral or ethical propositions do not reflect absolute and universal moral truths but instead are relative to social, cultural, historical or personal references, and that there is no single standard by which to assess an ethical propositions truth. ... John Rawls (February 21, 1921 – November 24, 2002) was an American philosopher, a professor of political philosophy at Harvard University and author of A Theory of Justice (1971), Political Liberalism, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, and The Law of Peoples. ... Chris Marion Korsgaard is a professor at Harvard University. ... Gilbert Harman (born 1938) is a contemporary philosopher teaching at Princeton University who has published widely in Ethics, Epistemology, Metaphysics, and the philosophies of Language and Mind. ... David Charles Brink (b 9 August 1939) is a South African businessman and sits on the boards of a number of large companies. ... John Henry McDowell (born 1942) is a contemporary philosopher, formerly a fellow of University College, Oxford and now University Professor at the University of Pittsburgh. ... Michael Andrew Smith (born in Melbourne, Australia on 23 July 1954) is an Australian philosopher who teaches at Princeton University. ... George Edward Moore George Edward Moore, also known as G.E. Moore, (November 4, 1873 - October 24, 1958) was a distinguished and hugely influential English philosopher who was educated and taught at the University of Cambridge. ... Thomas Nagel (born July 4, 1937, in Belgrade, Serbia) is Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University and member of the Board of Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. ...