A Failed Proof of Moral Realism

In a paper from 2013, Huemer presented what he describes as a proof of moral realism. Huemer’s argument is interesting, first, because it promises to be a new argument for moral realism, and second, because it aims to prove moral realism through switching focus to “first-person moral reasons” (aka “subjective reasons”): that is, what we have moral reason to do given our epistemic situation. At a very general level, Huemer’s proof has the following form: he first presents an argument for a first-person normative conclusion (“the Antitorture Argument”), and then argues that the features of the Antitorture Argument make it the case that its normative conclusion is true in a realist, attitude-independent, fashion. In this paper I argue that this suggested proof fails: Huemer’s considerations fail to support this attitude independence-claim, some because they concern the wrong kind of attitude-independence, and some because they are simply unconvincing.