Moral philosophy quiz answers (1)

I mentioned a while ago that I did a moral philosophy selector quiz available on line and found, to my surprise, that I lined up with Aquinas. That was a surprise because I started rebelling against Aquinas a Catholic school boy in Grade 8 and thought I'd spent my whole life repudiating the man.

So what were my answers. Well, I'm going to blog them all with explanations. Here is question 1 (my answers are in white:

1. MORAL STATEMENTS Moral statements are primarily:
   a) statements of fact or truth (e.g. "Murder is wrong" means "It is a fact that murder is wrong").
   b) statements of the speaker's desire/emotion?(e.g. "Murder is wrong" means "I hate murder").
    c) statements of command (e.g. "Murder is wrong" means "I say: don't murder").
    d) Doesn't matter/Dislike all answer choices

      What priority do you place on your selection above? High    Medium    Low  

This question determines that I am some variety of moral realist. A moral realist believes there is some standard of truth outside of us that applies in morality. The significant alternative here is emotivism, which is what you are if you picked #2. If you have been to college, you were probably subjected to some considerable amount of influence to become an emotivist.

As Raymond Chandler  once said, emotivism is a fine position if you are in a polite society where people tend to want the right things anyway. I've dealt with the huge problems of emotivism here.

I was not surprised to find myself answering as I did here. I have been a moral realist all my life. I remember getting into a  debate with a beautiful girl in Grade 11 and very strongly defending the position.