Quasi-realism is a concept that comes out of meta-ethics, primarily from philosopher Simon Blackburn. It tries to explain how we can talk about moral judgments as if they are real, objective truths, even though they are not based on any external facts. Essentially, quasi-realism says that while our moral statements might sound like objective facts, they are just expressions of our attitudes or emotions.
Imagine you say, “Stealing is wrong.” A quasi-realist would argue that what you’re really doing is expressing a disapproval of stealing, not stating a fact about the universe. It’s like saying “Yuck!” when you taste something bad—you’re not saying anything about the food’s molecular structure; you’re expressing how you feel about it.
Blackburn once said, “We project our attitudes onto the world, and then act as though the world imposed them upon us.” In other words, we act like our moral feelings are facts about the world, but they are really just our own emotional responses.