Cartesian Skepticism and Internal Realism

Moral Realism, Skepticism and Anti-realism: a Critical Analysis of the Criteria for Moral Realism

Despite the fact that realism has long been the dominant outlook in science, ethical realism has been thought to be especially problematic. Even the most steadfast realists in other fields have questioned the existence of moral truths. It seems that the would be moral realist has his work cut out for him. The first step necessary for any defense of moral realism will be the identification of th...

The regress argument against Cartesian skepticism

Does the external world exist, as it so concretely seems? Perhaps not, says the Cartesian skeptic. After all, if you were dreaming or hallucinating, if an evil demon were bent on deceiving you, or if, god forbid, you were a brain in a vat, things might appear to you in just the same way. Why think, then, that you are experiencing good old reality rather than some dream or other fiction? Absent ...

Internal Realism: Transcendental Idealism?

1 Truth In Internal Realism

This essay deals with the concept of truth in the context of a version of internal realism. In §1 I define some variants of realism using a set of realistic axioms. In §2 I will argue that for semantical reasons we should be realists of some kind. In §3 I plead for an internalistic setting of realism starting from the thesis that truth is, at least, not a non-epistemic concept. We have to bear ...

A Liberal Realist Answer to Debunking Skepticism: The Empirical Case for Realism

Debunking skeptics claim that our moral beliefs are formed by processes unsuited to identifying objective facts, such as emotions inculcated by our genes and culture; therefore, they say, even if there are objective moral facts, we probably don’t know them. I argue that the debunking skeptics cannot explain the pervasive trend toward liberalization of values over human history, and that the bes...