Sayre-McCord on Moral Realism

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a new entry on "Moral Realism" by none other than Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, one of the most important living metaethicians. I haven't read it yet, but will do so first thing tomorrow morning. It opens thus:

Taken at face value, the claim that Nigel has a moral obligation to keep his promise, like the claim that Nyx is a black cat, purports to report a fact and is true if things are as the claim purports. Moral realists are those who think that, in these respects, things should be taken at face value ? moral claims do purport to report facts and are true if they get the facts right. Moreover, they hold, at least some moral claims actually are true. That much is the common (and more or less defining) ground of moral realism.

For purely autobiographical reasons, I think I'll find it interesting to look back at moral realism, which I once thought self-evident, and trace the process by which I became a constructivist, and by which I came to think of constructivism as a form of non-realism (and not just another way to get to realism).

By the way, I highly recommend SayreMcCord's edited volume Essays on Moral Realism. I first read it in a grad seminar with Nick Sturgeon—which at the time went straight over my undergraduate head—but I've gone back to it many times since. In fact, I think I'll pick it up right now, than you very much.