1
Suppose you wanted to justify to someone why something is morally wrong. This can be put by saying that you want to justify why the statement of that wrong is true. Let us consider one seemingly uncontroversial (we will come back to that) statement:
(a) Beating up old ladies is morally wrong.
We might even not add ‘morally’ here, as that it is wrong by way of being morally wrong is implied – as opposed to it just being a practical mistake like trying to pour boiling water into an upturned tea mug is wrong if what one wants to do is make a mug of coffee.
Now consider two other statements:
(b) Plants harness the energy from the sun by a chemical photosynthesis.
(c) 2+3=5
Statement (b) is a factual statement. Statement (c) is a mathematical statement.
Taken together, some complication aside, (a), (b) and (c) exhaust all the kinds of statement there are that purport to state truths. (In saying that (a) is taken as sub-class of value statements – other value statements might be aesthetic, for example.) This means that if one does not accept as true these statements, it is supposed, one would be making some kind of mistake, one would not be correct.
2
Before getting onto the main issue here, small detour, but one that may occur as a puzzle or objection to the alert reader. Most people would accept that statement (a) uncontroversially states something that is morally wrong, and that the statement conveying this is therefore true. There we are with the picture in our heads of some defenceless old woman being brutally hurt and injured by a pair of heartless thugs as she walks down a street.
In fact it is very hard indeed to think of any particular moral statement that is absolutely and universally wrong, such that it may be stated as true without fear of caveat or qualification. Although we might say, other things being equal, ceteris paribus – that is, in normal or usual circumstances – (a) Beating up old ladies in morally wrong. One could imagine circumstances where one might present a moral justification for it. What if they were nasty old ladies who were keeping a group of young children prisoner and torturing them, but would not, except by beating them up, tell you where they are such that if you did not get to the children they would die? Then one would have to accept the statement as true (a*) Beating up old ladies is sometimes not wrong.
As has been said, it is very hard to think of a moral statement that everyone would accept as true, as expressing a moral wrong, in all circumstances, as a universal absolute. The best stab at it might be something like: Torturing babies is wrong. Even then, is it impossible to think of circumstances where ‘Torturing babies is wrong’ is false, and does not describe a moral wrong? Well, that is perhaps best left to the reader’s …
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