Realism Vs Moral Realism

In today’s society, moral actions are based on emotions, feelings, and our own personal decisions that better ourselves. Moral realism states that we do indeed have moral facts that exist and pertain to everyone, without ties to feelings. I will talk about basic ideas of moral realism as well as those who contradict realism. I will hit on Alfred Ayer’s emotivism ideas as well as J. L. Mackie’s ideas of skepticism that also contradict moral realism, finally backing up Mackie’s ideas as to why they are the most convincing. First off, before getting into all the theorists ideas and values, one must comprehend the fundamental principles of moral reasoning. Pojman discusses moral realism and states “moral facts exist and are part of the fabric of the universe; they exist independently

Emotivism is morals that are made up solely of expressions of feelings which are somewhat meaningless as they have nothing to back it up or support “feelings.” According to Ayer, something must either be tautologies, true by definition, or verifiable statements. He argues that sentences are only meaningful if they can be verified and since moral sentences cannot be verified, they are in turn not meaningful. Ayer continues on to say that any statement even expressing some form of feeling is considered meaningless. For example, “charity is good” relays positive feelings toward charity therefore charity cannot be deemed completely good as that expression, “charity is good”, is meaningless. Ayer’s ideas of emotivism contradict moral realism because his ideas lead toward no moral truths. He speaks that emotions with moral ideas are meaningless, therefore by adding any emotion to a moral statement would make it meaningless, according to Ayer. Moral realism has ties with emotions too it, not all moral statements involve emotions and feelings, but Ayer’s ideas definitely refute the ideas of moral