mercredi 11 juillet 2018

Moral Realism And The Boydian Philosophy

By Gregory Turner


Most people see morals as the innate ability to know what is wrong and right while others see morality as rules that were artificially set up by the big leaders in society to incorporate peace and order. One of the more interesting philosophies regarding morality is the Boydian philosophy. This one establishes that morality does exist and tries to explain it from a scientific point of view.

The person behind this philosophical body of thought is the philosopher Richard Boyd. Boyd is an avid believer in the existence of scientific realism. He is also a believer of moral realism because he believes that the two are actually very similar in the way that they are treated by people and how they are found to be true.

Boyd follows the logic that if scientific realism is probably true, then moral realism must also probably be true too. So with that statement, Boyd actually concludes that moral realism is probably true. He bases this on the analogy that they are very similar in context.

Take for example, the presence of atoms as the building blocks of everything. Scientists believed in the presence of atoms even though they couldn't be seen, felt, heard, tasted, or smelled. Later on, scientists then were able to create an atom microscope and then were able to observe atoms and how they moved using this brand new piece of technology.

Boyd puts morality in the same light as scientific entities which could be theorized to exist but have to be discovered. Of course, his argument is by no means a way to discount anti moral realism. It is more for the purpose of looking at morality with an open mind and discussing how it is possible to argue moral realism.

Now, according to the theory and experiment based approach of the scientific method, a scientific concept is first created with a hypothesis then a theory. The next step is to create experiments and try to gather as much evidence there is to try and prove the theory correct. If the theory has been proven to be correct, then it will evidently become a truth.

This is why Boyd always questions what evidence of morality would look like because there is not any visible evidence. It is also a question of how would people experiment to get the evidence of moral realism in society. After all, it was established earlier that morality is there and just needs to be proven through the same scientific process. The process of proving it though, is another story.

With that said, Boydian principles suggest that an open mind is needed to view morality in such a light. Relating it to scientific entities, moral entities may work the same way as well. So if scientific entities are just waiting to be discovered but are already there, then moral entities are also waiting to be discovered too, if they do exist.




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