Moral Truth

The labels ‘truth’ and ‘true’ apply, we suggest, to what is asserted or believed, not to the sentence in which the assertion is contained or the belief expressed. Things are true in and of the world independently of the existence of any person to utter statements about them. We criticise Joshua Greene’s confused and internally contradictory account of moral truth. We can differ about moral beliefs in a way that we cannot sensibly (assuming we have all the relevant facts) disagree about factual beliefs, but this is not a sufficient ground for arguing that there is no such thing as a moral truth. We examine various types of moral propositions, including propositions such as ‘abortion is wrong’ and ‘torturing innocent children for fun is wrong’. If people disagree about the abortion proposition, what does that tell us about moral truth? The proposition is a conviction to that effect: a conviction, to be philosophically (and morally) reputable, must be justifiable, but it is not capable of proof or disproof. The proposition cannot be regarded as either a moral fact or a moral fallacy. The torture case is different. No rational person could disagree with the proposition. The torture for fun of innocent children cannot (in a logical sense) be justified, and the proposition is a moral fact.