The five sexes, or how we establish morally relevant categories in a diffuse and continuous world

Abstract

It is generally assumed that moral realism requires a determined world, so that moral judgments can also be determined. From this point of view, genuine moral dilemmas, where two alternative judgments are equally well-grounded, would be a counter-example for moral realism. In this paper I argue against such a challenge to moral realism. Starting from the continuous and gradualist character of the constitutive criteria of our concepts, I show how indeterminacies and limit cases are to be expected where it can be impossible to determine the truth value of a proposition. The existence of fuzzy conceptual boundaries does not mean they cannot be crossed (that they are not useful, that they do not capture difference or relevant features from the point of view of the causal structure of reality and its intelligibility), quite the opposite: they serve to establish morally relevant differences. The very possibility of a community with common conceptual practices depends upon the existence of paradigmatic, central cases that exemplify a concept meaning or a moral valuation.