There is no objective truth about what is good and evil.
Vanni Pulè
This is a long-standing philosophical position called moral anti-realism, and it was stated as settled fact. It is not settled. In the largest survey of professional philosophers, 62% take the opposite view, and the historical evidence about violence that was offered in support of it is read both ways by the two sides.How we reached this verdict ↓
Analysis and evaluation
We cannot rule on whether good and evil are real. Nobody can. What we can check is whether the question is closed, and it is not.
The position has a name and a long history
The view put forward is moral anti-realism: moral statements are not true or false in the way factual statements are, and what we call right and wrong is something people made rather than something they found. It is a serious position held by serious thinkers, and it has been argued over since antiquity.
The opposite view is moral realism: that “torturing children for fun is wrong” is true in the way “water is H₂O” is true, rather than in the way “chocolate is better than vanilla” is true.
Most philosophers take the other side
The 2020 PhilPapers Survey asked 1,719 professional philosophers whether they accepted moral realism or moral anti-realism. 62% leaned towards realism, 26% towards anti-realism, and 13% picked neither. Support for realism has risen since the same survey was run in 2009, when it stood at 56%.
One detail matters here more than the headline figure. The claim ties objective morality to a spirit handing down the rules. The survey shows the two come apart. Among philosophers who are atheists, a majority are still moral realists. They hold that moral facts exist without anyone issuing them, in the way mathematical facts do.
Violence really did become less acceptable
The historical point stands on its own. Manuel Eisner's review of some 350 historical studies found homicide rates in western Europe typically between 20 and 40 per 100,000 people in the late Middle Ages, falling to between 0.5 and 1 per 100,000 by the middle of the twentieth century. Duelling, judicial torture, corporal punishment of servants and wives, and public execution were all once lawful and are now not.
But this does not settle the argument, because both sides claim it. Anti-realists read changing norms as proof that morality is invented. Realists read the same change as people getting closer to something that was true all along, the way scientific understanding changed while the chemistry stayed put. The evidence fits either reading, so it supports the premise without establishing the conclusion.
Evaluation
Nothing said here is false. The position is coherent, it is held by about a quarter of professional philosophers, and the historical claim offered alongside it is accurate.
The problem is that it was stated as established, and it is not. It is one side of a live argument, and the side with less support among the people who work on the question full-time. Unproven, not false.
Editorial note
How we assessed this claim
We did not try to decide whether moral facts exist. That is not something a fact check can settle, and claiming to settle it would be taking a side in a philosophical argument rather than checking a statement.
What we checked instead was whether the question is closed, since the claim was put as though it were. We used the 2020 PhilPapers Survey, the largest survey of professional philosophers, for where the field stands, and Manuel Eisner's review of long-term homicide data for the historical point about violence.
We did not use False, because the position is defensible and widely held. We did not use True, because it was stated as fact when it is contested. Unproven covers exactly that gap.
Limitations
- A majority view among philosophers is not proof. It tells you the question is open and which way the specialists lean, not who is right.
Sources
- The 2020 PhilPapers Survey, full results, including the meta-ethics question
- David Bourget and David Chalmers, “Philosophers on Philosophy: the 2020 PhilPapers Survey”, Philosophers' Imprint 23:11 (2023)
- Manuel Eisner, “Long-term historical trends in violent crime”, Crime and Justice 30 (2003), 83–142
- Manuel Eisner, “Modernization, self-control and lethal violence: the long-term dynamics of European homicide rates”