Moral realism, the view that there are moral facts that are independent of our beliefs about them, has many defenders. But much less has been said about realism concerning other sorts of value. One of these, gastronomic realism is likely to seem implausible on its face. This paper argues, however, that much of the reasoning used to defend moral realism is about as well suited for defending gastronomic realism. Although these considerations

This fantasy grows from the acceptance by all sides in the tax debate that gross, or pretax, incomes are presumptively just and therefore the proper moral base line to begin debate. The authors say pretax incomes are morally insignificant, an idea they confess is hard to sell. They argue that ''individual citizens don't own anything except through laws that are enacted and enforced by the state,'' because without government there would be anarchy, an endless war of all-against-one that would diminish incomes and wealth, not to mention life itself. Thus it is after-tax incomes that people are entitled to own.

Government enacts rules on employment, influences interest rates, allows widely different qualities of education in school districts and imposes countless policies that distort distribution of pretax incomes -- compared with what they might be in a libertarian world of voluntary contracts and no government. Pretax incomes are presumed just, the authors posit, for the same reason slavery was once the law of the land: pervasiveness makes legal inventions appear to be natural law.

Murphy and Nagel say using pretax incomes as the basis of debate defies logic, since ''one can neither justify nor criticize an economic regime by taking as an independent norm something that is, in fact, one of its consequences.'' To them, acceptance of pretax income as a moral base line means that ''serious public discussion of economic justice has been largely displaced by specious rhetoric about tax fairness,'' resulting in a ''radical climate'' of tax proposals

Gdyby osoba/firma/organizacja charytatywna/instytucja inna od państwa obrabowała supermarkety, a pieniądze przeznaczyła cele charytatywne jej działania byłyby uznane powszechnie za niemoralne. Jednak pomoc ubogim finansowana z podatków jest uważana za rzecz chwalebną. Co uzasadnia ten podwójny standard? Prof. Michael Huemer omawia i obala teorie umowy społecznej, demokracji i konsekwencjalizmu