Moral Realism: A Defence Book

If there is an aspect to contemporary metaethics whose prospects are especially hopeless and unconvincing, and if you want to read a book that can help you to make a conclusion about the antecedent of that opening conditional, then you should read this book. Shafer-Landau's defense of moral realism is as flaccid as the moral realism he tries to defend. The many deep wounds I received from reading this book are still too fresh to allow me to face them in too much detail here, but the primary grounds for his defense of the truth of moral realism are by way of an analogy to the contemporary philosophy of mind; Shafer-Landau's real moral properties are ontologically analogous to consciousness. And if that dubious enterprise isn't enough to fill you with the kind of total despair that you've been searching for, then by all means, dive into this sea of argumentative retreat yourself, for I can assure you that your thirst can be slaked many times over in these 302 pages of delicate and sophisticated maneuvering. The two most prominently disagreeable features of this book, for me, are these. First, aware of the profound (if not even disturbing, I would add) difficulties that arguing in favor of moral realism's realism entails, Shafer-Landau opts for the far less satisfying strategy of insisting on the difficulties of proving moral realism false. Did you hear that? Instead of squarely arguing for the truth of his moral beliefs, much of the book is devoted to undermining arguments against moral realism: thus, moral realism could be true because it's hard to prove that it's false. One wonders: why doesn't he simply face the facts? Second, although he says early on "that [he] came to these views by way of argument, rather than (as is usual) by way of rationalizing preexisting convictions..." (8-9), don't believe him. The entire work is an obvious rationalization of preexisting convictions. This book is a manifest example of the theological nature of (at least) some of modern philosophy. Nietzsche's conviction that modern philosophy has'despite its profession to the contrary'inherited basic elements of Christianity will find strong support in this book.