Our panel of 91 professional philosophers has responded to

218
 questions about 
Education
170
 questions about 
Freedom
282
 questions about 
Knowledge
374
 questions about 
Logic
105
 questions about 
Art
75
 questions about 
Perception
32
 questions about 
Sport
27
 questions about 
Gender
110
 questions about 
Biology
117
 questions about 
Children
208
 questions about 
Science
77
 questions about 
Emotion
89
 questions about 
Law
88
 questions about 
Physics
81
 questions about 
Identity
124
 questions about 
Profession
70
 questions about 
Truth
574
 questions about 
Philosophy
34
 questions about 
Music
58
 questions about 
Abortion
5
 questions about 
Euthanasia
2
 questions about 
Action
68
 questions about 
Happiness
287
 questions about 
Language
154
 questions about 
Sex
96
 questions about 
Time
2
 questions about 
Culture
51
 questions about 
War
39
 questions about 
Race
244
 questions about 
Justice
43
 questions about 
Color
75
 questions about 
Beauty
58
 questions about 
Punishment
67
 questions about 
Feminism
69
 questions about 
Business
36
 questions about 
Literature
24
 questions about 
Suicide
392
 questions about 
Religion
54
 questions about 
Medicine
1280
 questions about 
Ethics
151
 questions about 
Existence
110
 questions about 
Animals
221
 questions about 
Value
31
 questions about 
Space
80
 questions about 
Death
23
 questions about 
History
284
 questions about 
Mind
4
 questions about 
Economics
134
 questions about 
Love

Question of the Day

I recommend that you don't think about it this way.

Is mind-independent moral realism true? Geez. I don't know. (And, by the way, neither do you.) But here's some stuff I feel quite comfortable saying.

I want my kids to be empathetic. I want them to give a damn about how their actions affect other people. I want them to take seriously the idea that if they wouldn't be willing to put up with being treated in some way or other, then they'd better have a very good reason, and not just a selfish one, for treating other people that way. I want my kids to treat others decently. I want them to be honest. I want them to be fair. I want them not to be jerks.

Do I want all that because I'm convinced that mind independent moral realism is true? Nope. I want all that because I can't imagine not caring about such things. They seem right to me, and the fact that something called "mind independent moral realism" might not be true seems to me an awfully thin reason for turning my back on my considered judgment that I shouldn't be mean to people, let alone steal from them or cut the brake-lines on their cars.

I also want my kids not to be suckered into buying claims about what's "good" or "bad" that don't stand up to scrutiny. For example: if someone thinks that same-sex romantic relationships are "bad," this may end up making their lives miserable. But it's also moral baloney. The fact that some people think they're bad doesn't cancel the fact that the usual arguments meant to demonstrate this are lousy arguments—and not because they presuppose "mind-independent moral realism." Moral grown-ups who think some things are morally wrong and others are morally right don't think that just because they've been told these things. Moral grown-ups are perfectly capable of seeing through bad moral arguments.

But notice something else. You're looking for advice about how you should raise your kids. You want to know whether you should teach them the highly theoretical and disputable view that you call mind-independent realism or whether you should teach them the highly theoretical and disputable view you hold. You might protest that you're really just asking which approach is less likely to lead to harm for them. But don't you think (leave philosophy aside for the moment) that we should care about what might harm our children? That it would be a bad thing not to worry about this?

This isn't a "gotcha" question. I'm not saying that if you answer yes, you're committed to "mind independent moral realism." I don't know whether that would be true or not, and for that matter, I don't know how much difference it makes to whether moral judgments can be right or wrong. I'm just suggesting that your real worry here isn't about an abstract philosophical question. It's about how best to raise a child—a child who has some hope to growing up to be a wise adult. That's very different from wondering about which abstract, disputable philosophical view you should try to imbue your child with. In this case, I suspect you're likely to do better if you approach deciding what to do from within the midst of things, so to speak, rather than with a highly theoretical idea as your guiding principle.