Proving What We Already "Know"

[The Grand Nudger]

Perhaps not to you, but that may be down to you preferring some other moral system.  In moral realism, that's exactly what answers a moral question - and the only thing that answers a moral question.

Then moral realism is a bad paradigm.

-for a fact, or is that just your subjective opinion, or just a collection of misunderstandings popular in your society at the time you were educated, or just a miscommunication of "yuck!"? 

You see, this is the trouble.  Realism may be a bad paradigm...but if it's a bad paradigm for any of the reasons you mention, then it's a bad paradigm from which to make assertions to fact - even to facts to the contrary.  Moral realism is a minor sideshow to that larger concern - as the thing that typifies moral realism is to handle moral assertions to fact like we handle any other, of any other kind (which, despite your thinly veiled terror at the prospect, actually leads to the rejection of most specific assertions to moral facts).  My mountaintop removal mining example is ludicrously easy to object to on basis of fact as stated. Whether you think that's good or bad, and whether we succeed or fail to do it in practice, that's what moral realism is.  For a fact.

That's the definition of begging the question-- declare X as harm axiomatically, and then point to X harm being done.

Let's say everything we did was maximally harmed to fuck us-- poison the air and lakes, nuke every town, completely wipe out life on the planet.  What "objective facts" would you point to to demonstrate that this should not be done?  What if I were to point to humans who say things like "I kill animals just for fun," decide that the species, on the whole, is savage and cruel, and decide to go full-bore 12 Monkeys?  Can you demonstrate any moral rules that exist independent of a species capable of this level of evil?

More misuse of terms.  It isn't begging the question to say that moral realism concerns itself with facts.  That's what it is.  A realist conclusion (about anything - not just morality) is only true insomuch as it accurately reports those facts it purports to report.  We can (and do) disagree on what is and isn't harmful...and something like a 500 page report detailing the evidence of that harm is pretty demonstrative - if the subject is fact-based conclusions about the potential harms of mountaintop removal mining.  

You think we do it some other way.  You think that our well known biases creep in and cause us to misreport.  So do I - but that's still not what realism is or an argument against realism.  It's an observation about us, and the barriers we might have to effectively and consistently employ any realist proposition (yet again..about anything).  

There are, likewise, any number of objective reasons that we shouldn't do maximal harm - but if we fundamentally reject objective reasoning, then it doesn't matter how many there are..and no dearth or surplus of examples is actually relevant to our objections, just like it didn't actually matter that realism was coherent.

We're misreporting a fact.  We're saying that we object to x for y - when we do not.  We object to x for z, while failing to realize that our misreported y is an assertion to x. A quick example. Using mountaintop removal mining yet again. I say its bad because it causes y. A team of researchers, engineers, and labor conclusively demonstrates that they can do mountaintop removal mining without causing y. I persist in my assertions, nevertheless. This would strongly suggest that my reasons (if I even have any) were always z, just as this entire conversation has made it clear that you have reasons z which persist even after the failure of your many specific objections y.