Are there moral facts
Are there real facts about right and wrong, or are moral words only feelings, habits and commands? This is a different question from whether morals vary between cultures.
What it is
When you say 'it is wrong to torture a child for fun', are you stating something true or false, in the way you would state that the Earth goes round the Sun? Or are you expressing how you feel, and asking others to feel the same? The question of moral facts asks what moral statements are. It is about the nature of moral claims, not about which ones are right.
It is different from the question of whether moral rules vary from one culture to another. Even if everyone agreed on morality, one could still ask whether there are any moral facts. And even if cultures differ, there could still be moral facts that some get wrong.
The main views
- Moral realism. Moral claims state facts, and some of them are true. 'Lying for personal gain is wrong' describes how things are, like any other claim. The facts do not depend on what anyone thinks or feels.
- Error theory. Moral claims aim at facts, but there are no such facts, so all of them are false. J. L. Mackie is the best-known defender of this view.
- Expressivism. Moral claims do not state facts. They express emotions, preferences or commands. Saying that something is wrong is closer to saying 'boo to that' than to describing it.
An example
Compare 'Water boils at a hundred degrees' with 'Cruelty is wrong'. For the first, we know how to find out whether it is true. For the second, a realist says it is also true or false, and we find out by careful moral reasoning. An error theorist says it sounds like a fact but is not one. An expressivist says it was never meant as a fact in the first place, but as a way of showing and sharing a stance.
Why people still disagree
- For realism. Moral language works much like factual language: we argue, give reasons, say that someone is mistaken, and put moral claims inside larger sentences. That suggests they are meant to be true or false. And the fact that people disagree about morality does not by itself show there is no truth, since people disagree about other things too.
- Against realism. People disagree deeply about morality, and our moral sense may have developed to help us cooperate, not to track moral truth. Moral facts also seem hard to fit into the picture the sciences give us, since nothing in the physical world seems to correspond to them.
- Where does it leave us? A person can hold that there are no moral facts and still care deeply about right and wrong. The disagreement is about what is going on when we do.
Written by epchē in our own words, and checked against independent sources on 8 October 2026. The sources are listed below.
Philosophies that answer it
Where each philosophy leans on this question, from the same positions the walk uses.
Nothing is truly right or wrong
Some things truly are
Sources we used
- Moral Realism · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, read on 8 October 2026
- Moral Realism · Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, read on 8 October 2026