It is sometimes said that moral realism is the default metaethical position, in the sense that realists don't owe positive arguments for realism. They need to respond to objections, but that's all they need to do - they don't need to also motivate the view. I think that this is correct. But it hasn't been fully appreciated just how powerfully this works in realism's favour. Default status is a dialectical advantage, not an argument for realism. But these are not always clearly distinguished and are often run together in the literature. One way in which this happens is the following: Realists who want to lean into this dialectical advantage have often felt the need to offer arguments in support of the claim that it's really there - that realism really is default. Call such arguments Default Status Arguments (DSAs). DSAs usually proceed from a premise that our pre-theoretical thought, talk, or behavior is realist, to the conclusion that realism is default. As one would expect, anti-realists have made various objections to these arguments. However, neither realists nor their opponents have clearly distinguished DSAs from arguments for realism. But this distinction, I argue, has serious implications for the debate. When we clearly distinguish the strategy of arguing for realism from pre-theoretic thought and talk, from the strategy of arguing from pre-theoretic thought and talk that realism is default, it becomes clear that realism is on firmer footing than is usually appreciated. In particular, certain objections that are often made to DSAs, really only target arguments for realism, and don't in fact pose any problem for DSAs.
Louise Hanson is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford. She works on a variety of topics in metaethics and meta-aesthetics. She is interested in realism and related debates including: evaluative testimony, evolutionary debunking arguments, blame and blameworthiness, and the relationship between realism and naturalism. She is also interested in epistemic normativity, and issues in aesthetics including artistic value, morally bad art, and forgeries