Tuesday 10 July 2018

Moral Realism And The Boydian Philosophy

By Gregory Turner


Morality has always been a pretty hot topic for debate, especially when the concept of good and bad being innate or created by society is being argued about. For one group, morality is something artificial and just made by man while the other group believes morality is already existent but just discovered by humans. One philosophy that supports the latter is known as the Boydian philosophy.

Richard Boyd explains this concept through his belief that scientific realism itself is true. The principle of morality in the Boydian point of view is that moral realism and scientific realism are actually very similar. Because of their similarity, they can be compared with each other with one being able to prove that the other is true.

Boyd follows the logic that if scientific realism is probably true, then moral realism must also probably be true too. So with that statement, Boyd actually concludes that moral realism is probably true. He bases this on the analogy that they are very similar in context.

Take for example, the presence of atoms as the building blocks of everything. Scientists believed in the presence of atoms even though they couldn't be seen, felt, heard, tasted, or smelled. Later on, scientists then were able to create an atom microscope and then were able to observe atoms and how they moved using this brand new piece of technology.

Boyd puts morality in the same light as scientific entities which could be theorized to exist but have to be discovered. Of course, his argument is by no means a way to discount anti moral realism. It is more for the purpose of looking at morality with an open mind and discussing how it is possible to argue moral realism.

Now, according to the theory and experiment based approach of the scientific method, a scientific concept is first created with a hypothesis then a theory. The next step is to create experiments and try to gather as much evidence there is to try and prove the theory correct. If the theory has been proven to be correct, then it will evidently become a truth.

In that sense, there is a possibility that a moral entity exists, just like how scientific entities also do exist. The reason to believe that is because morality is already working for the society and has already been an embedded part of people for many decades. However, it is really hard to prove or measure its existence because it is really hard to see or observe them the same way germs can be observed. This does not mean it is not there though.

So in order to approach morality from that kind of perspective, it is important to first understand how similar it is to scientific realism. By relating moral realism to scientific realism, one can establish a connection between the two and how they are approached. From there, one can understand how moral realism may exist and must be found by people.




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