Taking Morality Seriously: A Defense of Robust Realism

by David Enoch

In Taking Morality A Defense of Robust Realism David Enoch develops, argues for, and defends a strongly realist and objectivist view of ethics and normativity more broadly. This view--according to which there are perfectly objective, universal, moral and other normative truths that are not in any way reducible to other, natural truths--is familiar, but this book is the first in-detail development of the positive motivations for the view into reasonably precise arguments. And when the book turns defensive--defending Robust Realism against traditional objections--it mobilizes the original positive arguments for the view to help with fending off the objections.
The main underlying motivation for Robust Realism developed in the book is that no other metaethical view can vindicate our taking morality seriously. The positive arguments developed here--the argument from the deliberative indispensability of normative truths, and the argument from the moral implications of metaethical objectivity (or its absence)--are thus arguments for Robust Realism that are sensitive to the underlying, pre-theoretical motivations for the view.

Genres: Philosophy

308 pages, Hardcover

First published July 28, 2011

Reviews

[Richard Newton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I often like to read a contrarian view, and Enoch takes one relative to many modern philosophers discussing metaethics in his belief in robust realism. So we start out in something that appeals to me, even if I struggle to believe in realism. But in the end his arguments did not convince me anyway, and there seems something paradoxical, (although I can't position exactly why), about arguing for realism on the basis that it is the most plausible form of metaethics.

Plausibility is of course a useful tool, and arguing that an answer is the most plausible is, if not exactly a proof, at least a very strong support. However, I would have assumed if you were a realist, especially a robust realist, the proof is to point to moral truths and moral properties, not skirt around them with arguments showing it is plausible they exist. Of course, I have no idea how one would do this, and that is part of the reason I am not a robust realist.

But if you want a modern defence of realism, the Enoch offers some interesting arguments, and to be fair he also points out the weaknesses in his own argument - showing he is trying to approach the argument with a balanced set of perspectives.

[Rachael · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent and thorough defense of a robust moral realism, a nonreductive metaethics position. Enoch starts out by defending a realism about metanormative facts first through his impartiality argument. He then argues for the realism about moral facts through his deliberative indispensability argument (as opposed to explanatory indispensability which has been used by Harman and others to undermine moral realism). True, it is not necessary to invoke moral facts to explain the phenomenon of moral disagreement and moral talk, but they are indispensable to first person deliberation about moral issues.

Enoch then moves his focus to defense against possible counter arguments. He deals with tricky topics like epistemic accessibility challenges and supervenience, and perhaps easier and more popular arguments such as that from disagreement. Moral facts supervening on physical ones (and he does think that they do, two situations in which the natural facts are exactly the same have the same moral facts) does not mean that they have no separate ontology, or have nothing more to say. He argues that moral disagreement arguments can be dealt with by questioning whether or not some specific phenomenon requires an explanation, by noticing that many so called moral disagreements are actually nonmoral ones, and by also noticing that when moral disagreement occurs people tend to pick the side that aligns with their interests. These, Enoch argues, can help moral realism from losing too many plausibility points. Enoch ends with a rich chapter about motivation, internalism vs externalism about reasons and emphasizing that while relevant normative facts provide normative reasons for action, they are not intrinsically motivating. Even if there is an amoral monster about to torture his victim, completely unmotivated by moral arguments, he still has reason not to torture his victim.

[Taylor Simpson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty technical for a layman like me, but Enoch is very clear and uses a lot of helpful examples for most of the concepts. He also seems to be very intellectually honest, not shying away from the weaker aspects of some of his claims when necessary, and making both modest and stronger claims when appropriate and warranted.
I don't think I'm quite qualified enough to genuinely 'rate' the quality of this book for someone needing details on it, but it's been a great mental stretcher for me, and will certainly be a handy reference as I dive further into moral realism as a novice.

[Lau Lau · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really appreciate his way of doing philosophy. I think more philosophers should take a similar approach in their methodologies.

[Kramer Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very clearly written defence of objective normative reasons. Enoch's primary arguments in favour of Robust Realism were quite convincing, as were many of his defences of Robust Realism against counterarguments. It seems to me that at least two of Enoch's arguments (the argument from impartiality, and his evolutionary explanation of the correlation between our normative beliefs and objective normative facts) could be strengthened to deal with further concerns, but overall I found his arguments fairly robust (pun unintended).