ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the distinction between realism and anti-anti-realism. The central claim that the world is constitutively apt for conceptualization — rather than comprising extra–conceptual things–in–themselves — dovetails with John McDowell’s defence of moral realism. The chapter examines briefly McDowell’s claim that moral judgements are uncodifiable. It focuses on how appreciation of what is the relevant feature of a situation is a capacity for knowledge that forms part of virtue. The resulting anti–principles position within moral philosophy is often called “particularism”. The moral realism requires that the output of one’s sensitivity to moral facts is itself enough to play a motivational role in action. The characteristic phenomenology of value judgements is one of responding to the value found in objects. McDowell’s basic argumentative strategy is to claim that secondary or sensory qualities differ from primary qualities in a way that makes an analogy with value judgements appropriate because both depend on subjective responses.
