Moral Realism and Internal Realism: The Application of Putnam's Internal Realism Issue into the Field of Metaethics

Abstract

Moral Realism is such theory in metaethics, which can be characterized by three theses: ontological thesis - according to which moral facts exist independently of human opinion; epistemological thesis, that moral judgements can be truth apt, and moral knowledge is possible; and normativity thesis, that asserting a moral claim is a sufficient reason for acting in accordance with its content. However, in contemporary metaethics there is no realistic theory which would embrace all three theses together. Naturalists assert first two theses, but reject the last one, on the other hand nonnaturalists emphasize the third, but renounce first two. The author seeks to show that transferring this issue onto the ground of Putnam's Internal Realism, would help us to get rid of this problem in metaethics altogether.