That may also be true, at least according to some philosophical
arguments, for morality. Many philosophers believe that some abstract
entities, such as numbers, have an existence independent of minds.
That is, many philosophers and mathematicians believe that the number
three is not just a figment in the way that the color red is, but that
it has a real existence, which mathematicians discover and explore
with their mathematical faculties; they don't invent it. Similarly,
many moral philosophers argue that right and wrong have an existence,
and that our moral sense evolved to mesh with them. Even if you don't
believe that, there's an alternative that would make the moral sense
just as real -- namely, that our universal moral sense is constituted
so that it can't work unless we believe that right and wrong have an
external reality. So if you want to stop short of saying that moral
truths exist outside us, you can say that we can't reason other than
by assuming that they do. In that case, when we get down to having a
moral debate, we still appeal to external standards of right and
wrong; we aren't reduced to comparing idiosyncratic emotional or
subjective reactions.
---SPSmith
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