In the following essay I propose to justify the belief in the existence of moral fact or truth. I do so in spite of John L. Mackie's strong arguments in favor of skepticism and with the assistance of Louis P. Pojman and my own personal beliefs.
Before we begin with a few arguments for my position, note that these are arguments in favor of belief in moral fact, not arguments for the particular moral facts I believe in. First, there is the argument from universality; morality in some form or another is present in all cultures and societies, though it may differ in each. The need for morality is as undeniable as hunger or thirst. And much like hunger or thirst, there exists an object for our desire; morality itself, though it may be as mixed and differentiated as separate cultures' food and drink. Why thirst for something which does not factually exist?
Also the fact that moral truths are not empirical by no means disproves their existence. Numbers and words, for instance have an objective existence, numbers of course, are for more objective, yet do not exist empirically; the symbol "2" much like the word "book" does not exist empirically, though two things, or even two books may. They are ideas, and, as such, exist in the mind, and not in the physical world. Moral facts are much like these; they exist, perhaps, in the mind, and not in the empirical universe, though they too may be applied there.
However, these two arguments seem to be far from absolute proofs of the existence of moral fact; numbers and the like have empirical objects, as do most all words. Moreover, while morality is present in all societies, it is so widely varied between them, and sometimes contradictory, that it is more evidence against an objective morality than for.
And even if, Mackie says, objective values existed, "they would be entities . . . of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe." This argument from queerness argues that objective morals are...