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Cognitivism and Metaphysical Weight: A Dilemma for Relaxed Realism

ABSTRACT Another view has entered the metaethical debate—relaxed realism [Dworkin 1996; Parfit 2011; Scanlon 2014]. Relaxed realists claim that there are irreducible moral properties, but seek to avoid the metaphysical objections traditionally levelled against this claim: the aim is a ‘metaphysically light’ non-naturalism. This paper asks about what, if anything, distinguishes relaxed realism from sophisticated expressivism. While the relaxed realist response is clear—unlike expressivism, relaxed realism is a cognitivist view—I argue that this response is vulnerable to a dilemma. If relaxed realists understand their cognitivism in minimalist terms, it fails to set relaxed realism apart from expressivism. If, instead, they offer a robust account of truth and belief, relaxed realists incur the metaphysical weight that they aim to avoid. On either horn, relaxed realism fails to be both metaphysically light and genuinely distinct from sophisticated expressivism.