Are there any moral facts?

Morality at home
Maggie and Peter are married and both work outside the home. Maggie finds that she winds up doing almost all the housework in addition to her outside job. After a while, she points this out to Peter, arguing that he should help out more on the grounds that the status quo isn’t fair. Peter might think about it and decide Maggie is right without further argument. He might on the other hand offer an argument. Perhaps he argues that house-cleaning is “women’s work.” Maggie points out that this claim could only be defended if she had no other job – or if Peter had lots of other household duties that were equally onerous (repairs etc.) As it happens they live in a new condo, and Maintenance does all the repairs (and anyway, Maggie is better at repairs than Peter). Peter has no equivalent household duties, therefore Maggie has two jobs, while Peter only has one. Peter points out that he’s trying to write a novel in his spare time, and he argues that Maggie should regard this as his second job. Maggie responds that she’s got her dissertation to finish, herself -- why should that take a backseat to Peter's novel? Peter concedes this point and says that he’ll help more, but Maggie’s standardsof cleanliness are unreasonably high. Either she lowers her standards to a reasonable level, or she should expect to do something extra…and so on.

Homely disputes like this are not what we think of when we think of “moral discussion” – it’s not grand enough – but the question is one of fairness, a paradigmatically moral issue.
Notice that both Peter and Maggie seem to believe that there is an answer to the question “Are the current household arrangements unfair to Maggie?” They each take a position on whether the status quo is unfair, and they present arguments in support of their positions. Moreover, in the story I told, Peter actually seems to accept some of these arguments --- Peter appears to grant that, unless he is contributing in some other way that balances out Maggie’s contribution to the housework, then it is unfair for her to be doing all the housework. In admitting this, he concludes that he should do more housework than he does, though he still argues that Maggie values extreme tidiness more and therefore, she should contribute more than he does. The question I asked seems to have been resolved in Maggie’s favor, though the argument about what new arrangement is fairest continues beyond the point where I ended my example. The two of them behave as though there were some fact of the matter in dispute -- as though there were an answer independent of what either of them thinks. They even seem to make progress by means of rational argument in determining what this fact of the matter is. Yet if there is a fact of the matter, it is a moral fact, and it is widely agreed that there can be no such thing. There are facts and there are values (including moral values) but never the twain shall meet.

"Facts"
Let me pause here to clarify what I mean when I speak of 'facts' and of there being a 'fact of the matter'. People sometimes use the word “fact” in opposition to ‘interpretation’ or ‘opinion’. In the movies, reporters often interrupt their sources, saying “just the facts, ma’am” and judges (at least on courtroom dramas) often instruct witnesses to leave their opinions out and “stick to the facts.” In such cases, the aim is to keep as close as possible to what the witness observed for herself, and leave the reader or the jury in a position to draw whatever conclusions may be warranted. A witness may say he heard the defendant enter the hallway and go to his room, but, unless the witness also saw the defendant, this involves drawing a conclusion, which may be more or less warranted. The witness heard footsteps and concluded that the footsteps were those of the defendant. If the witness were permitted to draw this conclusion without good reason, then the jury may fail to see that there is reasonable doubt that the defendant committed the crime. For the jury system to work, the jury should be the ones to draw the controversial conclusions – not the witness. “Facts” in this usage, then, are the uncontroversial claims which are confidently accepted by both sides of the debate. Interpretations, inferences or opinions, are more controversial claims which are based upon these more uncontroversial observations.

This is not the distinction that’s most relevant to my concerns. The way I plan to use, a fact is a true statement (or more accurately, the state of affairs in reality that makes the statement true), no matter how controversial the statement is, no matter whether anyone knows it now or not. So, if the defendant actually did kill the victim, then “the defendant is guilty” is a fact, even if the claim remains forever unproved. To take another example, it was always a fact that the earth revolved around the sun, even when this view was regarded as uncontroversially false. Is it a fact that the ultimate constituents of matter are the tiny vibrating strings hypothesized by string theory? At this point, obviously, we can’t say, but what we can say is that there is a fact of the matter – the claim is either true or false or the issue has been badly formulated. For example, if someone never beat his wife and you say “I suspect he’s never stopped beating his wife.” Is this conjecture true or false? Whichever you say, you imply that he did once beat his wife. One solution to this dilemma (though not the one I’d take in this case) is to say that it isn’t true or false, but rather, indeterminate. Again, you might say that there is no fact of the matter about whether witches float when you submerge them in water, since there are no witches.

Whether there are moral facts or not, we seem to believe there are.
To return to our original discussion, Maggie and Peter, when confronted with their moral question about fairness, act as though there were a fact of the matter. Yet, as I was saying, it has become a platitude that there are no moral facts -- if two people disagree over fairness or courage or honesty or the permissibility of abortion, homosexuality or suicide, we are told that they are not really disagreeing over the facts. There are no moral facts (we are told) and arguments over morality are therefore pointless. Maggie and Peter are wasting their time arguing over nothing. And yet they don't seem to be arguing over nothing, and if Peter were to introduce the non-existence of moral facts into the debate with Maggie, it would most likely seem like a sophistry and a cop-out.

All of us have small-bore moral arguments of this sort all the time, and contrary to received dogma, we do act as though there were a fact of the matter about what's fair or unkind or merciful. Received modernist dogma may still be right -- perhaps there never is a fact of the matter in moral questions. But if so, we are left with a practical problem: if we give up our unreflective, commonsense belief that there is a fact of the matter about what's fair or unfair, can we go on with the kind of moral arguments that help us to resolve disputes. And if we cannot go on with these practical arguments (at least not in good faith), how do we fill in the gap this would leave in our lives? Is it possible that there really are moral facts? If so, what would they be like?