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The distinction between proving moral principles and rationally resolving moral disputes is an important one. If, for example, there were a world of moral facts independent of human activity, then it might be possible to discover those facts and organize our knowledge of them. This might constitute a kind of proof of certain principles. But the absence of such a world does not imply that we cannot rationally resolve disputes or have moral knowledge. The philosopher Peter Singer offers the following comment. Referring to several other philosophers, he writes:

In their denial of a realm of ethical facts that is part of the real world, existing quite independently of us, they are no doubt correct; but does it follow from this that ethical judgments are immune from criticism, that there is no role for reason or argument in ethics, and that, from the standpoint of reason, any ethical judgment is as good as any other? I do not think it does....

The issue of the role that reason can play in ethics is the crucial point raised by the claim that ethics is subjective. The non-existence of a mysterious realm of objective ethical facts does not imply the non-existence of ethical reasoning. It may even help, since if we could arrive at ethical judgments only by intuiting these strange ethical facts, ethical argument would be more difficult still. So what has to be shown to put practical ethics on a sound basis is that ethical reasoning is possible. [Peter Singer, Practical Ethics, p. 7.]