Moral Realism and Infinite Spacetime Imply Moral Nihilism

Abstract

I argue that if the future is infinite, as contemporary astronomers believe it is, then moral nihilism is true if both moral realism and aggregative value theory is true. Usually, moral nihilism is defined as meaning nothing has value. But I am a moral realist, indeed a global moral realist, since I believe everything has value. I argued that everything is intrinsically valuable in my 1997 Ethical And Religious Thought In Analytic Philosophy Of Language. Nonetheless, I believe the recent astronomical discovery that future time is infinite implies that it does not morally matter what we do. This is what I mean by moral nihilism. It does not matter what actions humans or other agents perform. My derivation of moral nihilism has as one of its premises that moral realism is true. So this is a different approach from that of emotivists such as A. J. Ayer or relativists such as Nagel, Nietzsche and Sartre, who derived moral nihilism from moral anti-realism.