Philosophy
The Paradox of Moral Disagreement and Moral Realism
Quick fact
Philosopher J.L. Mackie argued that the mere existence of deep moral disagreement—between cultures and even within a single person's own evolving moral views—is evidence that moral values are not objective features of the world, but projections of our own attitudes and desires.
Why this is interesting
People have disagreed about right and wrong for millennia—honor killings are defended in some places while condemned in others. If moral truths were simply true, wouldn't everyone eventually agree?
Read the full explanation
Understanding The Paradox of Moral Disagreement and Moral Realism
Imagine you travel to a remote island where the inhabitants think it's morally correct to eat the elderly, while you think it's deeply wrong. Your gut instinct might be: 'They are just wrong.' But this raises a thorny question: if moral truths are objective, they should be discoverable by everyone through reason, just like mathematical truths like 2+2=4. Yet across the globe, we see wildly different moral codes—honor, hospitality, punishment, gender roles—that seem as varied as languages. This persistent disagreement looks like a puzzle for moral realism, the view that there are mind-independent moral facts. If such facts existed, wouldn't there be a way to settle disputes? The paradox is that we often talk as if some moral claims are objectively true, yet we cannot seem to resolve our disagreements.
A deeper explanation
The paradox bites because moral realism makes two commitments: (1) moral statements are truth-apt—they describe a reality; and (2) at least some of these statements are true. Disagreement alone doesn't refute this—after all, people disagree about scientific facts, but that doesn't mean there is no fact of the matter. For example, people argued for centuries about whether the earth revolves around the sun. However, moral disagreements are often what philosophers call 'deep' and 'intractable': they stem from fundamental differences in values, not from simple ignorance or error, and they seem resistant to rational resolution. Furthermore, the ways of life that accompany these moral codes are often so integrated that it's hard to see how one could be objectively correct. This leads some, like Mackie, to conclude that there are no objective moral values, a position known as error theory. Others, like relativists, say that moral truth is relative to a culture or individual, so there is no single true morality. A realist might respond by pointing to convergence—some moral principles, like prohibitions against murder or lying, appear in nearly every culture—or by arguing that disagreement simply reflects our limited capacity to grasp moral truths. But the paradox remains: the more we emphasize the objectivity of morality, the harder it becomes to explain why we disagree so much, and the more we explain the disagreement, the more we seem to undermine the objectivity itself.