Living like a realist

One of the stranger things I often hear in conversations about moral realism versus antirealism is the claim that people live "as though" moral realism is true.

The presumption seems to be that if you hold yourself and others morally accountable, judge people's actions, support laws against murder and other crimes, have strong moral commitments, and so on, that this somehow indicates that you're living "as if" moral realism is true.

This simply isn't true. All of these behaviors are consistent with antirealism. What do people imagine living like an antirealist would look like? Do they think antirealists have no moral concerns at all? That moral antirealists just go around lying and stealing and acting without regard for the welfare of others? That they don't care about anyone, don't judge other people, and so on?

If so, then there is a very serious misunderstanding about the implications of living "like an antirealist." Being a moral antirealist only means that you don't think there are stance-independent moral facts. It does not require you to not have moral attitudes or preferences, or to not care about other people, or to be amoral or violent or maximally selfish.

For comparison, imagine walking up to people in a restaurant. You observe people enjoying their drinks and food. Some of them are commenting on what they like about the food. One person is sending back a dish that they didn’t like. They are choosing from menus, rather than accepting any random food that is brought to them.

“Look at all these people, judging their food, deciding what to eat and what not to eat, having opinions about the quality of their meals! They’re living like gastronomic realists!”

This would be absurd. Such behavior does not indicate people think there are stance-independent facts about what food is good or bad. They’re doing precisely what one would do if they had no views one way or the other about whether “gastronomic realism” were true or false. They’re simply acting on their gastronomic preferences and expressing gastronomic views. They don’t need to be gastronomic realists to do any of these things.

Just the same, moral antirealists can and do act in accordance with their moral standards and preferences without this in any way indicating some kind of implicit commitment to moral realism.