Abstract

In the past twenty years or so the debate over moral realism has become a major focus of philosophical activity. Unfortunately, however, as a glance at the enormous literature the debate has generated makes clear, there is still no consensus as to what, precisely, it would take to be a moral realist (Sayre‐McCord 1988a). My aims in this essay are thus twofold: first, to clarify what is at stake in the debate over realism, and, second, to explain why, as it seems to me, the realist's stance is so much more plausible than the alternatives.