Moral knowledge precis
Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: Moral Knowledge addresses, and argues for answers to, a wide range of questions within moral epistemology, including questions about the sources of moral knowledge, the strengths and weaknesses of the method of reflective equilibrium as an answer to the question of where moral knowledge and justification come from, questions about moral testimony and moral expertise, and questions about the relation between experience and moral knowledge. It also discusses questions about the vulnerabilities of moral knowledge: how fragile it is as compared to other kinds of knowledge, and to what extent moral views are vulnerable to being “debunked” by empirical discoveries about their etiological histories. While the discussions of the specific topics in the book are relatively self-contained, there is a working hypothesis that both unifies and informs the more specific proposals: namely, that moral knowledge can be acquired in any of the ways in which we acquire ordinary empirical knowledge, and our efforts to acquire and preserve such knowledge are subject to frustration in all of the same ways that our efforts to acquire and preserve ordinary empirical knowledge are. In other words, any source of ordinary empirical knowledge is also a potential source of moral knowledge, and any threat to our ordinary empirical knowledge (or our ability to acquire such knowledge in the first place) is also a threat in the moral domain. Rather than attempting to argue for this sweeping hypothesis directly, I focus on potential pressure points, areas where the hypothesis seems least plausible, and where the chances for its falsification seem (both by my lights and by the lights of many others) relatively high. Chapter 2 argues that, while the method of reflective equilibrium as it is standardly characterized embodies genuine and important insights about moral epistemology and moral inquiry, it does not have the kind of epistemological significance that has sometimes been claimed for it. I argue that neither the pursuit nor the achievement of reflective equilibrium is necessary for having such knowledge: ordinary people who have never engaged in reflective equilibrium reasoning nevertheless have moral knowledge. Neither is impeccable application of the method of reflective equilibrium sufficient for conferring positive epistemic status on the resulting beliefs: given standard formulations, the method is consistent with a great deal of good reasoning about morality, but it is equally consistent with a great deal of bad reasoning about morality. Thus, on its standard formulations, the method of reflective equilibrium undercharacterizes good moral reasoning. I argue that one reason that this is true is that the method takes as starting points “considered judgments,” and subsequently yields an account that is both overly inclusive and overly exclusive. A more promising version of the method would take as starting points moral judgments that already have some substantive positive epistemic status or standing: for example, pieces of moral knowledge, or at least, things that we justifiably believe about morality prior to engaging in the method of reflective equilibrium. An upshot is that, on its most defensible interpretations, the method of reflective equilibrium takes for granted that we have some moral knowledge (or at least, justified moral beliefs) that we do not arrive at via application of the method itself. But if the ability of reflective equilibrium reasoning to deliver new moral knowledge generally depends on our already having substantial moral knowledge from other sources, then the method itself is not a promising answer to a kind of epistemological challenge about how we are able to acquire moral knowledge in the first place. This chapter also offers an explanation for why the method of reflective equilibrium is so popular among moral philosophers as an account of their “best practices”: namely that the reflective equilibrium process is a correct description of what happens when a philosopher critically reflects upon her moral views. The description is correct, though incomplete, insofar as it undercharacterizes the reasoning in question, by leaving out the positive normative characterization of the initial starting points. Chapter 3 explores the social aspects of moral knowledge. The chapter begins with the idea that, in the usual case, the fact that a person will have at least some substantial moral knowledge by the time she is in a position to engage in anything like reflective equilibrium reasoning is guaranteed by the fact that she will have absorbed some such knowledge from her social environment. According to what I call The Moral Inheritance View, one way of gaining full-fledged moral knowledge is through the manifestation of our natural tendency to adopt the beliefs that are held by those around us, or that are presupposed by common practices. An upshot is that, contrary to what many have supposed, being able to justify a moral view acquired in this way by citing the reasons in virtue of which it is true is not a necessary condition of knowing it. I go on to argue that while there are philosophically significant differences between moral and non-moral deference, the fact that someone else holds a moral view can, in some cases, give us a good reason to adopt that view as our own, even where the reasons to defer do not involve differences in non-moral information. Contrary to what some philosophers have claimed, I argue that even if it is true that ethics is not the sort of subject matter about which there could be a theoretical science, and even if it is true that morality is an a priori domain, there still may be circumstances in which it makes sense to defer to another person about moral matters. But although deference to another person about moral matters can be perfectly appropriate, it doesn't follow that there are no philosophically significant differences between moral and non-moral expertise; the view that deference is sometimes appropriate is consistent with skepticism about moral expertise, given a natural understanding of what would be involved in treating someone as a full-blooded moral expert. I appeal to David Enoch's distinction between “transparent” and “opaque” evidence to argue that there are two significant respects in which holding a moral belief on the basis of opaque evidence is suboptimal, which do not carry over to the non-moral case. When a person holds a moral view on the basis of deference to someone whom they regard as a full-blooded moral expert, they typically lack understanding of why that view is true. But we generally expect people to be able to provide reasons in favor of the moral views that they espouse, and when one's belief that the action or practice is wrong is based on opaque evidence, one is not in a position to discharge this burden. Moreover, a person who holds a moral view on the basis of opaque evidence is not in a position to fulfill an important ideal associated with moral agency: the ideal of doing the right thing for the reasons that make it the right thing to do. Moral deference does not put one in a position to fulfill this ideal even when it delivers moral knowledge. The final section of this chapter discusses the epistemology of moral expertise. Arriving at views about the reliability of others with respect to moral questions typically requires one to engage in substantive moral reasoning and judgment of one's own. Thus, those to whom we would attribute an unusually accurate sense of right and wrong will tend to be people whose sense of right and wrong overlaps strongly with our own, as measured by agreement with respect to specific moral issues. On the other hand, we generally will not judge that someone has a superior sense of right and wrong when it frequently leads her to make judgments that conflict with those that we are disposed to make. In the moral domain, we typically lack an independent basis for attributing genuine expertise that is comparable to the independent bases that we frequently possess in many other domains. Nevertheless, the fact that one is a member of a moral community, and thus is in a position to compare the moral opinions of others with one's own, can contribute to moral knowledge both by affording evidence for or against those opinions, and by providing feedback that can be used to condition or calibrate one's capacity for moral judgment, so that future exercises of that judgment are more likely to deliver knowledge. Chapter 4 defends the view that experience and observation can contribute to moral knowledge in any of the ways in which they contribute to ordinary empirical knowledge. More specifically, I argue that experience contributes to moral knowledge in at least four ways: by enabling moral beliefs, by triggering moral beliefs, by confirming and disconfirming moral beliefs, and finally, by sensitizing moral judgment. Perhaps the most controversial of these claims will be the claim that moral beliefs can be confirmed and disconfirmed by experience. I argue that even the most fundamental moral truths are susceptible to being confirmed and disconfirmed by observational evidence, because observational evidence can make one's overall view less coherent, and in a given case the most reasonable way to respond to this incoherence might involve adjusting one's confidence in a moral view as opposed to (or in addition to) adjusting one's confidence in one's non-moral views. For example, suppose S believes that her neighbor is a good person who would not engage in behavior that is seriously morally wrong, and S believes that Φ-ing is seriously morally wrong. When S learns that her neighbor Φs, it may be rational for her to respond by decreasing her confidence that ΦF-ing is wrong. Relatedly, in the moral domain, an important source of misleading evidence is this: people who are morally upstanding in other respects might engage in a practice or behavior that is in fact seriously morally wrong, in a social context in which its wrongness is not generally recognized, and this may increase rational pressure to agree that the relevant behavior is permissible. This mechanism can pose formidable practical difficulties for would-be moral reformers, who seek to convince other members of their society that some common behavior or practice is seriously wrong. When I say that experience contributes to moral judgment by sensitizing it, I mean that experience plays a role in refining or honing one's judgment to the point that subsequent exercises of that judgment are sufficiently reliable to count as knowledge. I argue that the hypothesis that experiential conditioning plays a significant role in influencing our moral judgments offers an understanding of fundamental moral disagreement that is superior to standard cognitivist alternatives. In Chapter 4, I also argue that attempts to account for basic a priori moral knowledge either in terms of intellectual seemings or else in terms of self-evident propositions are vulnerable to objections. An improved account of basic a priori moral knowledge combines elements of the intellectual seemings approach and the self-evident propositions approach. On this account, self-evident propositions are those propositions (if any) whose intellectually seeming true to a subject can be explained by their truth, and basic a priori moral knowledge arises when the truth of a moral claim explains why it intellectually seems true to a person who believes it on the basis of that seeming. Chapter 5 summarizes the central claims of the first four chapters, and concludes.
DOI: 10.1111/phpr.13026
Author: Sarah McGrath
Institution: Princeton University
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $2,630
OpenAlex ID: W4387583904