Closereads: Peter Railton's "Moral Realism" (Part One)

We're reading a 1984 essay by Mark's U. of Michigan undergrad advisor, included among the most cited philosophy papers in some list that Wes found. Railton's goal is to give a naturalistic account of ethics that both connects tightly to observed empirical facts about humanity and also makes moral facts real parts of our world, not merely reducible to non-moral facts about pleasure or expressed preferences or the like. In this first part, Railton lays out what naturalism in ethics amounts to and begins to explain why past empiricists like Hume don't provide a realist picture of morality.
Read along with us: www.filosofica...
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[@lanceindependent]

It's really cool to see a breakdown of this paper. I look forward to seeing more of it. It's a shame more people aren't commenting!

[@theleastaction]

I'm sorry, but I think you guys need to digest this paper before discussing online. There is really a lot of original work here and you guys are just bouncing off superficial aspects of the paper and free associating with phil 101 material
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[@ThePartiallyExaminedLife]

Fair enough. The Closereads format may work better with some papers than others, and of course we're open to the idea that witnessing people try to make sense of new material on the fly may or may not be a pedagogical best practice. After recording another part of this, we determined that we should visit these themes (maybe or maybe not this exact paper) via PEL where we do pre-digest the work before just diving in.