generally, can we ever know, or at least have some justification for
believing, whether anything is morally right or wrong, just or unjust,
virtuous or vicious, noble or base, good or bad? Most of us make moral
judgments every day; so most of us would like to think so. But how is
such knowledge, or justification, possible? We do not seem to simply
perceive moral truth, as we perceive the truth that there is a
computer screen before us. We do not seem to simply understand it, as
we understand that all roosters are male. And we do not seem to simply
feel it, as we feel a bit hungry right now. Moral epistemology
explores this problem about knowledge and justification.
First, this article explores the traditional approaches to the
problem: foundationalist theories, coherentist theories, and
contextualist theories. Then the article explores the non-traditional
approaches: reliabilist theories, noncognitivist theories, ideal
decision theories, and politicized theories. The article concludes
with an introduction to naturalizing moral epistemology and to some
relevant issues in metaethics.
1. Classifying Theories of Moral Epistemology
Below we introduce moral epistemology in terms of eight theories of
moral epistemology. We divide these in half by distinguishing
traditional from non-traditional approaches. By "traditional" we
intend something more precise than just "old school." So we launch our
discussion of traditional approaches by defining our sense of
"traditional."
We conclude with two more detailed discussions. First, we introduce a
moral epistemic debate of considerable recent importance, the debate
about whether moral epistemology can be naturalized (roughly, moved in
the direction of becoming scientific). Second, we discuss moral
epistemology's broader context as a subfield of metaethics (roughly,
the part of ethical theory that examines the deepest assumptions
behind our moral thought); we use this final discussion to introduce
the problem of what the objects of moral knowledge could be.
2. Traditional Approaches
Foundationalist theories, coherentist theories, and contextualist
theories represent the traditional approaches to moral epistemology.
Reliabilist theories, noncognitivist theories, ideal decision
theories, and politicized theories represent non-traditional
approaches. By an approach to moral epistemology, we mean either (a)
an attempt to explain how we can have moral knowledge, or at least
justified moral beliefs, or (b) an attempt to argue that we cannot
have one or both of these. The former are more or less non-skeptical,
and the latter are more or less skeptical, approaches. This allows
non-skeptical and skeptical approaches to compromise at the point of
saying that we can have some justification for believing, but not
knowledge of, some moral truths.
Approaches to moral epistemology are traditional only if they are
committed to all of the following five (two moral and three epistemic)
assumptions:
[Moral] Cognitivism: we have moral beliefs, and thus moral belief
contents that are either true or false (but not both true and false).
[Moral] Realism: there are moral facts that can correspond to what
moral claims represent as being the case, such as facts about the
goodness or badness of people or the rightness or wrongness of their
actions.
[Epistemic] The Necessity of Justified True Belief: If someone knows
something, then at the very least one is justified in believing it;
and it is true; and one believes it. If one is justified in believing
it, then one has a decisively good reason to believe it, a reason that
makes one epistemically responsible in believing it.
[Epistemic] Internalism: In order to be justified in believing
something and therefore in order to know it, one must have in mind the
factors that reasonably ground one's right to believe it. The
strongest internalist theories demand that these factors be
immediately in mind, whereas the milder internalist theories demand
only that they be available upon reflection. This seems to imply that
one must possess (without any need for further experience or research)
the grounds of good answers to all kinds of skeptics in order to be
justified in believing something. However, it perhaps does not imply
that one can recognize all of those reasons as such or that one can
effectively articulate them.
[Epistemic] The Priority of Epistemic Structure: Theories of
justification must also be theories of the structure of justification
in response to the regress problem, which is discussed in the section
on Traditional Skepticism.
a. Foundationalist Theories
According to foundationalism, all justified beliefs are either
foundational or derived. Foundational beliefs or basic beliefs possess
noninferential justification; derived beliefs do not. A foundational
belief does not owe its justification to logical inference from other
justified beliefs. A derived belief gets its justification through
inference, either directly or indirectly, from foundational beliefs.
Where can we get noninferential justification for our foundational
beliefs? This is one of the most difficult questions for any
foundationalist theory. The two most common answers are experience
(for instance, sense perception or introspection) and reason (for
instance, grasp of the self-evident through understanding). Most
foundationalist moral epistemic theories go for one or the other, or
some blend, of these two very general answers. The two following sorts
of theories are usually conceived in foundationalist terms.
Moral Sense Theories assert the existence of a uniquely moral sense by
which we perceive rightness or wrongness. According to early Scottish
versions of this theory, such as those of Frances Hutcheson ([1725])
and David Hume ([1740]), the perception in question is reflexive,
grounded in a kind of sentiment or feeling, which is secondary to, and
attendant upon, perceiving actions or states of affairs with our
ordinary senses. Sometimes moral sense theories are described as
intuitionist theories; more often "intuitionism" is used only for the
following.
Moral Epistemic Intuitionist theories imply that we can
non-perceptually recognize some moral truths in a way that can
noninferentially justify us in believing them. According to W. D.
Ross, who defended perhaps the most influential classical version of
the theory, some moral propositions are self-evident, so that merely
understanding them produces, at least in the best people,
justification for believing them. His main examples are mid-level
moral generalizations such as, 'I have a prima facie duty (an
unless-overridden-by-a-stronger-duty, duty) to keep my promises'.
Ross's intuitionism is rationalist: it grounds foundational
justification for moral beliefs in a rational grasp of the
self-evident ([1930]; 1936). Some intuitionist theories are less
obviously rationalist. For instance, A. C. Ewing thought that we have
a unique ability to detect "fittingness" in responses to
circumstances, which is neither as straightforwardly rationalist as
Rossian intuition nor as similar to sense perception as a moral sense
theory would require (1949). Most historical moral and epistemic
theories imply some form of intuitionism, and even the most radical
departures from tradition. For instance, some naturalized moral
epistemologies claim strong analogies with intuitionism. Some writers
who have recently defended versions of moral epistemic intuitionism
are Robert Audi (1997, 2004), Jonathan Dancy (1993), Brad Hooker
(2000), and David McNaughton (2000).
b. Coherentist Theories
According to coherentism, all justified beliefs are inferentially
justified; there are no foundational beliefs. Instead, what justifies
us in holding beliefs are their relations of mutual support, that is,
their coherence. Justification therefore accrues to beliefs only in
virtue of their membership in coherent sets, and so cannot be assessed
when beliefs are evaluated singly. Coherence itself is usually taken
to be, at a minimum, logical consistency. Many coherentists argue that
it requires not only logical consistency, but also explanatory potency
or predictive value, similar to what good scientific theories exhibit.
The most important conception of coherence in recent moral
epistemology is called reflective equilibrium. John Rawls is largely
responsible for the contemporary importance of this conception. He
proposed it in the context of arguing for his even more famous
contractarian theory of justice; but as a moral epistemic idea, we can
consider it apart from that context. According to Rawls, one achieves
reflective equilibrium (narrowly conceived) when, and only when, one
has brought all of her judgments about the rightness or wrongness of
particular actions into ultimate harmony with all of one's judgments
about what it is generally or universally right or wrong to do.
Reflective equilibrium is a moral epistemic ideal: Rawls does not
suggest that anyone has achieved or will achieve it. Nevertheless, he
thinks that one is more or less justified in holding the moral beliefs
one does happen to hold according to, and in virtue of, the extent to
which she approaches reflective equilibrium (1971: 48-51). Reflective
equilibrium is a kind of epistemic balance across levels of
generality, achieved by facing and resolving conflicts between
particular and general moral beliefs by means that are supposed to
sort themselves out in the long run.
Some coherentist moral epistemologists, such as Geoffrey Sayre-McCord,
argue that a broader conception of reflective equilibrium, which
includes balance among not only our moral beliefs but also our
non-moral beliefs. For instance, Sayre-McCord thinks the broader
conception is better because requiring consistency between our moral
and our non-moral beliefs is likely to rule out perverse but coherent
sets of moral beliefs (1996: 166-70).
c. Contextualist Theories
Among close family I take for granted certain moral beliefs that I
would be hard-pressed to defend at a meeting of my philosophical
colleagues. Concerning the maintenance of my car, I take for granted
many things that I would not take for granted if it were a passenger
jet. Epistemic contextualism seems to vindicate such practices. It is
the view that justified beliefs can owe their justifications to
beliefs that are (even if not justified) not in need of justification
under the circumstances. Beliefs not in need of justification under
the circumstances are contextually basic. Which beliefs are
contextually basic in a given context depends on the sorts of
considerations raised in our examples above: Who am I talking to?, How
serious is it if I am wrong?, and so forth
Mark Timmons is a recent moral epistemic contextualist. He argues for
a context-dependent conception of epistemic responsibility that he
thinks supports (epistemic) contextualism especially well in the case
of moral beliefs. In actual practice, what constitutes epistemic
responsibility—for example, checking such and such
counterpossibilities before believing—varies according to context. In
the moral case, people are especially prone to take for granted, and
thus take to be epistemically responsible, certain mid-level moral
generalizations (of the sort W. D. Ross thought are intuitive) that
pass current in their contexts. These thus tend to serve as
contextually basic in moral belief (Timmons, 1996). Of course, how
much real epistemic justification one can get by extrapolating from
his epistemically responsible (even if not justified) beliefs can vary
according to the truth of those beliefs. For instance, Nazis
extrapolating from their peculiar, shared, anti-Semitic beliefs can
get very little epistemic justification. After all, one can take the
conception of epistemic justification that is accepted in one's
context to be epistemically significant when it is not, just as one
can (in the arguably more idealized, less realistic, foundationalist
and coherentist cases) take one's beliefs to be foundational or
coherent when they are not.
d. Traditional Skepticism
Each broad theory-type above is, among other things, an attempt to
solve a particular skeptical problem: the regress problem of
justification. The problem can be presented in the form of an argument
for a general, and not specifically moral, epistemic skepticism:
If all justified beliefs owe their justifications via inference to
other justified beliefs, then each justified belief owes its
justification to other justified beliefs which owe their
justifications to still further justified beliefs, and so on. Such
chains of epistemic dependence must either
never end, and thus form infinite regresses of justified beliefs, or
end only when the chains form closed circles.
All justified beliefs owe their justifications (via inference) to
other justified beliefs.
So all justified beliefs owe their justifications to chains of
epistemic dependence of type (a) or type (b).
But, if (3), then human beings can have no justified beliefs because
human beings have finite minds and are thus incapable of possessing
chains of epistemic dependence of type (a);
chains of epistemic dependence of type (b) add up to, at best,
circular arguments; circular arguments are never good reasons to
believe; so allegedly justified beliefs that fall into type (b)
dependence are not really justified.
Hence, human beings can have no justified beliefs.
The apparent seriousness of this problem, combined with epistemic
internalism's demand that we face it head on, leads to the "priority
of epistemic structure" assumption that is essential to traditional
approaches. Foundationalism and contextualism try to defeat the
regress argument by offering alternatives to premise (2). Coherentism
tries to defeat it by offering holistic alternatives to the linear
conception of epistemic dependence at work in premises (1) and (4).
To accept the soundness of the regress argument is to become a
general, extreme kind of epistemic skeptic: it is to accept that we
can have no justified beliefs and, thus, no knowledge. Such general,
extreme epistemic skepticism is rare. Moral epistemic skepticism, on
the other hand, is relatively common. It takes either weak or strong
forms. According to weak (moral epistemic) skeptical theories, we can
have justification for moral beliefs but we cannot have moral
knowledge: the kinds or degrees of justification involved are too weak
for knowledge. According to strong skeptical theories, we cannot even
have justified moral beliefs.
At least one recent, strong moral epistemic skeptic is traditional (in
our sense). Walter Sinnott-Armstrong thinks that the regress argument
is sound, so long as by "beliefs" we mean "moral beliefs." Perhaps,
for instance, foundationalism is a good response to the regress
problem in the case of our empirical—such as our perceptual—beliefs.
In any case, he does not think that foundationalism works for moral
beliefs. There are no good grounds, he argues, for accepting that we
have a faculty that justifies foundational moral beliefs. Every
attempt to argue that we do is essentially a form of dogmatism. It is
an attempt to strongly insist on our most cherished moral beliefs in
order to avoid having to defend them. Coherentism and contextualism
fare even worse on Sinnott-Armstrong's appraisal. They are not even
viable as general epistemologies. No matter how coherent a set of
beliefs is, there are any number of equally coherent sets that are
inconsistent with it. So coherentism fails to explain how beliefs, in
general, can be justified. Contextualists confuse mere persuasion with
argument: for example, my ability to get you to agree to certain
assumptions, and thus make them contextually basic, simply has no
bearing on whether they are likely to be true, and, so, on whether we
are justified in believing them (Sinnott-Armstrong,1996).
3. Non-Traditional Approaches
For various reasons, many philosophers reject one or more of the
essential assumptions of traditional moral epistemology. Below we
briefly introduce four sample kinds of non-traditional approaches.
Unlike foundationalism, coherentism, and contextualism, these theories
are all potentially compatible. There could be a reliabilist,
noncognitivist, ideal-decision-based, politicized theory. Some of
these are even, in the end, compatible with traditional theories (or
close analogues of traditional theories). They all, however, reject
one or more of the traditional assumptions as starting points.
a. Reliabilist Theories
I am probably average in my ability to correctly recognize dollar
bills. Yet I am also, sadly, average in my lack of understanding of
the complex physical, economic, sociological, and political conditions
that make dollar bills be dollar bills. Somehow I nevertheless
reliably recognize and daily form practically successful beliefs about
dollar bills. If I am ever justified in believing that 'here is a
dollar bill', I do not have in mind, and am not even capable of
calling to mind without further research, all of the factors that make
my belief true or that would justify it. Thus I cannot be justified,
if traditional epistemic internalism is right, in believing that 'here
is a dollar bill', despite my dollar-bill-reliability. David Copp
(2000), the reliabilist moral epistemologist whose example this is,
wants us to see that the traditional internalist outcome seems
preposterous.
Of course I am justified in believing in many cases that 'here is a
dollar bill.' So traditional epistemic internalism must be false. It
is false because, Copp thinks, it is the reliability, or lack of
reliability, of the processes by which we form beliefs that justifies,
or fails to justify, our beliefs; not, as epistemic internalists
insist, our deep skeptic-proof insight into their truth conditions.
Whether we perceive, understand, or can even recognize, how such
processes are reliable in us, as epistemic internalism demands, is
beside the point.
Copp proposes and defends an anti-internalist, that is, externalist,
moral epistemology. He argues that we (or at least the best of us)
have a reliable moral sensitivity, much as we have a reliable dollar
bill sensitivity. Our relevant moral sensitivity is made up of a
certain combination of (i) a heightened tendency to notice morally
relevant features of a situation, such as the pain produced by burning
a cat alive and the much less morally significant enjoyment that doing
this might bring to a gang of thugs; (ii) a reliable tendency to draw
correct moral conclusions from these features, such as the conclusion
that burning the cat, under the circumstances, is morally
reprehensible; and (iii) a reliable tendency to be motivated in a
morally appropriate way, such as being motivated to do something, if
feasible, to prevent the thugs from burning the cat alive (2000;
55-58). We can, as ethical theorists do, legitimately struggle towards
the exactly right combination of (i) – (iii). However we need not
understand how they are connected with truth—a highly complicated
matter of societal norms that appropriately arise from societies'
struggles to meet their "needs," according to Copp—in order for our
combinations of (i) – (iii) to justify our moral beliefs (1995). We
need only have combinations that reliably produce true beliefs in us,
in order for our (thus produced) moral beliefs to be justified.
b. Noncognitivist Theories
In his provocative attack on traditional, speculative philosophy,
Language, Truth, and Logic, A. J. Ayer wrote ([1936]: 107):
…if I say to someone, "You acted wrongly in stealing that money," I am
not stating anything more than if I had simply said, "You stole that
money." In adding that this action is wrong I am not making any
further statement about it. I am simply evincing my moral disapproval
of it.
According to Ayer, moral language merely expresses emotion just as "a
peculiar tone of horror" or "special exclamation marks" express
feelings. It does not make claims: it has no content of a sort that
can be true or false. Hence [moral] cognitivism—an essential
ingredient of traditional moral epistemology—is false. So, the whole
enterprise of moral epistemology, that is, the study of moral
knowledge, is doomed from the start: there cannot be moral beliefs or
truths, and because there cannot be justified true moral beliefs,
there cannot be moral knowledge.
Ayer, however, does not mean to entirely relegate the concerns of
moral epistemology to the dustbin. He only means to demote them. We
can accept noncognitivism and still argue that some moral feelings are
more reasonable or appropriate to given kinds of circumstances than
others. We can have more or less justification (although not epistemic
justification) for having, or tending to have, certain moral
attitudes. We can thus have better and worse moral theories.
While we might think that noncognitivism degrades ethics too much by
disconnecting it from the promise of truth, we might appreciate that
it allows us to non-skeptically avoid a host of messy ethical and
epistemic problems associated with moral realism. According to moral
realism, moral claims represent the world as being thus and so; they
are true when the world really is thus and so and false when it is
not. It is hard to say for moral claims, however, what "thus and so"
is supposed to be. Also, the very idea that moral "claims" represent
the world as being a certain way is a suspect idea. It suggests that
moral talk aims, like perceptual talk, at describing. But moral talk
does not seem to aim at describing; it seems to aim at prescribing.
Arguably, noncognitivism can make better sense of this than realism.
Noncognitivism conceives moral talk as projecting moral emotion (Ayer,
[1936]) or prescription (Hare, 1989) onto a perhaps otherwise
indifferent world, rather than as representing the moral features of a
world which contains no moral features.
Two especially influential recent noncognitivist theories are Simon
Blackburn's "quasi-realism" and Allan Gibbard's "norm expressivism."
Blackburn's quasi-realism combines an account of moral value as
projected value with a sophisticated attempt to vindicate the
rationality of certain indispensable (to moral discourse) practices
that treat moral talk as if it were cognitive (1996; 1998). Gibbard's
norm-expressivism claims that moral judgment is a species of
rationality judgment constituted by expressive, as opposed to
cognitive, acceptance of norms or rules that determine in the moral
case whether actions are forbidden, permitted, or required (1990).
c. Ideal Decision Theories
Ideal decision theories ascribe special philosophical importance to
the moral decisions of idealized persons who decide under idealized
circumstances. Only some ideal decision theories are moral epistemic
theories (others are non-epistemic, for example, ethical or
metaethical theories), and only some of those offer whole approaches
to moral epistemology. Contractarianism and the sort of approach that
Richard Brandt proposes are two ideal decision theories that are
sometimes conceived as whole approaches to moral epistemology.
Contractarian theories seek to ratify moral claims by appeal to the
agreement of fully rational, non-biased, well-informed people in real
or, more often, imagined circumstances. For instance, John Rawls
famously argued that principles of justice are morally binding on
members of a society if and only if they would be unanimously agreed
to by rational, relevantly-well-informed people in what he calls the
"original position." The original position is an imaginary situation
walled off by a "veil of ignorance," which prevents knowledge of the
particular, personal features that engender biases, such as our sexes,
ages, races, special tastes, talents, handicaps, or developed moral,
political, or religious outlooks. Rawls, however, was a traditional
coherentist when it came to moral epistemology. He did not view his
contractarian decision procedure as either an ethical theory or a
moral epistemology, but rather as a way of generating authoritative
principles of justice that would dovetail with the best ethical theory
and the best moral epistemology (1971).
Nevertheless, others have proposed and defended contractarian theories
as ethical theories and/or moral epistemologies. For instance, a
contractarian ethical theory might hold that actions are morally
permissible if and only if they would not be rejected in something
like Rawls's original position. Some contractarian moral
epistemologists think that discerning that a moral claim would be
endorsed in something like the original position can justify someone
in believing it (Gauthier, 1986; Morris, 1996). Although Rawls did not
hold this view, he did see his method as a kind of access to deep
facts about rationality itself, facts of the sort that his more
traditional moral epistemology finds ultimately decisive.
Richard Brandt suggests a different, but related, ideal decision
theory. A way to demonstrate the validity of a moral system is
…to show persons that if they were factually fully informed they would
want a certain sort of moral system for the whole society in which
they expect to live. (1996: 207-08)
This by no means makes moral knowledge easy to come by. But it does
put it on the same sort of footing as our other knowledge, since all
of our other knowledge is presumably about what the facts are, and to
make a claim about what the facts are is to imply something about what
it is like to be fully factually informed.
d. Politicized Theories
Most recent politicized theories are feminist theories. The very idea
of feminist epistemology strikes many as a mistake. What could be more
impartial, and less open to political interpretation, than standards
of knowledge or justified belief? We may as well talk about feminist
radio repair. However, feminist epistemologists often see the very
mistake they want to address in such a response. This impartiality, or
pretense of impartiality, in traditional epistemology blinds it to
relevant information or standpoints of oppressed classes, such as
women; or at least to the narrowness and biases that it is likely to
have since its assumptions, methods, and so on were conceived and
developed by socially privileged white men.
Anatole France ([1894]) famously wrote: "The law, in its majestic
equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor, to sleep under
bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." His irony is
Marxist: Marx thought that the impartiality of laws can blind us to
the very partialities they are designed to promote. Similarly, many
feminist epistemologists argue that the alleged impartiality of
traditional theories of justification or knowledge can blind us to the
views of the world, and perhaps in particular the moral views of the
world, they are designed to promote. Foundationalism, for instance,
which looks on the surface like a logically motivated response to the
regress problem of justification, has been considered to be just a
method for vindicating the basic tenets of the foundationalist's world
view, whatever those happen to be.
What is it that white-male-dominated, traditional moral epistemology
has missed? Let's consider three kinds of feminist answers. (1) Susan
Harding (1986) argues that the epistemic standpoints, that is,
perspectives from which we collect evidence, of oppressed classes are
epistemically better, that is, more likely to produce true beliefs,
than the epistemic standpoints of oppressor classes, especially
concerning the oppressor classes' biases. For instance, an antebellum
plantation owner would miss much that would be readily apparent to his
lowliest slaves. For many topics, including moral ones, he is likely
to live on some sort of epistemic Cloud Nine . (2) Traditional
epistemology builds its misleading impartiality on taking knowledge to
be an individual, rather than a community, activity. In fact, as the
relative success of science illustrates, real knowing is a community
activity: its body of knowledge improves only by surviving attempts by
communities to refute it. By wrongly conceiving knowledge as an
individual activity, traditional epistemology merely codifies the
individual biases, including sexisms, of its conceivers. (3)
Traditional epistemology is non-naturalized. So, it conceives actual
knowledge-ascription or justification-ascription practices as mere
subjects of epistemic evaluation, never as raw material upon which to
base epistemic principles. Once we reverse this trend, and go in for
naturalized epistemologies (see below), we can regard the actual
social and linguistic circumstances of knowledge ascriptions as
starting points. Once we do that, we can have, at best, only half of a
good moral epistemic theory if we ignore the special moral epistemic
practices, concerns, and paradigms provided by women (as traditional
moral epistemology arguably has). Feminist moral epistemologists, such
as Margaret Urban Walker (1996) and Lorraine Code (2000), have been
leaders in the effort to naturalize moral epistemology.
4. Can Moral Epistemology Be Naturalized?
To naturalize a philosophical subject is to somehow bring it under the
purview of natural science. What this means is controversial; but it
is usually thought to involve both substantial and methodological
projects. Substantially, it involves attempting to confine theories to
existence claims that science countenances, or could eventually
countenance. Methodologically, it involves attempting to limit
philosophical inquiry to methods whose validity science can, or could
eventually, vindicate.
There is nothing new about attempts to affect substantial
naturalization in ethics. Over two centuries ago, Jeremy Bentham
([1781]) tried to conceive moral claims as substantially about
quantities of pleasure and pain, and thus as about something that
might be scientifically modeled and studied. Efforts to naturalize
episstemology are a more recent phenomenon, with a more methodological
focus. The naturalized epistemology movement was launched by W. V.
Quine (1969), who rejected the traditional epistemological project of
trying to discover, through conceptual analysis, skeptic-proof, a
priori conditions for knowledge or justification. He proposed,
instead, that epistemology be reconceived as a branch of empirical
psychology. Many of his followers propose less radical reforms. What
they have in common is that they reject a fully traditional approach
in favor of "…an anti-skeptical, or at least non-skeptical,
empirically informed investigation of the grounds of knowledge" (Copp,
2000: 39).
The effort to naturalize moral epistemology is even more recent. Most
attempts take one or more of three forms: reliabilism, feminism, and
scientism (or so we will call it). Below, we say a bit about each of
these and introduce two objections that naturalized moral
epistemologists strive to overcome.
Some epistemic reliabilists try to naturalize epistemology, in
general, by identifying epistemic justification with observable and
measurable consequences: such as facts about the reliability of the
various processes by which we arrive at beliefs (for example, Goldman,
1994). Their rejection of traditional epistemic internalism makes room
for an anti-skeptical stance by allowing justification and even
knowledge in the absence of answers to traditional skeptical problems
like the regress problem. David Copp (2000), whose moral epistemic
reliabilism we sketched above, conceives his reliabilism as a
naturalized moral epistemology, and defends it against several
objections, including those we mention below.
Feminists stand to gain from naturalized moral epistemology room to
urge the relevance of their various empirical critiques of the
impartiality of traditional ethics and epistemology. The traditional
pretense of impartiality in epistemology was largely upheld by the
traditional conception of epistemology as only susceptible to a priori
investigation. Naturalized moral epistemology opens the door to, and
can even privilege, the sorts of psychological and sociological facts
that feminist moral epistemologists seek to call attention to.
Scientist theories, theories that promote scientism, propose and
evaluate moral epistemic theories on the basis of current scientific
theory, such as current sociology, psychology, artificial
intelligence, and neuroscience. For instance, Paul Churchland (2000)
tries to reconceive moral epistemology so that moral knowledge has
much less to do with the truth of general moral and epistemic
principles than with a kind of skill, by which we build and more or
less ably negotiate complex brain-to-social space relations.
One of the largest sources of objections to naturalized ethics or
epistemology concerns the essential normativity (value-ladenness,
prescriptivity) of both ethics and epistemology. Ethics is essentially
normative because it is about what we should do, not what we do.
Epistemology is essentially normative because it is about what our
epistemic standards should be, not what they are. Science, on the
other hand, is purely descriptive. Its subject matter—how the natural
world in fact is—is not normative. How then can ethics or epistemology
be brought within the purview of natural science? If we try to
assimilate the naturalization of both ethics and epistemology into a
naturalized moral epistemology, then the problem gets even worse:
neither ethics nor epistemology can derive their essential normativity
from the other.
Arguably, moral and epistemic principles must be general, in the sense
that they cover indefinitely many particular instances of rightness,
goodness, knowledge, and so on. Science can produce generalities, such
as natural laws, on the basis of generalizing from particular
observations. However, as Immanuel Kant ([1785]: 63) pointed out, in
order to soundly generalize to moral [or epistemic] principles in the
scientific way, one would have to already know which examples, which
observations or theoretical entities, are morally relevant; and one
can only know that on the basis of other general moral [or epistemic]
principles. Thus, if we are limited to scientific generalization from
examples, then we are trapped, unable to generate the general moral
[or epistemic] principles we need in order to get started.
5. Moral Epistemology & Metaethics
Metaethics is the part of ethical theory which studies the deep, often
non-moral assumptions behind our moral thought. Here are some
important metaethical topics:
moral epistemology;
moral semantics, the study of how and what moral language means;
moral ontology, the study of what sort(s) of reality underwrites the
truth or reasonableness of moral claims or attitudes; and
moral psychology, the study of the nature of, and relations among,
moral mental states, such as morally-relevant beliefs, desires,
intentions and motivations.
Such topics are difficult to pursue in a vacuum. Not only does each
involve an intersection or overlap between ethical theory and some
other enormous topic, their problems are often inextricably
interdependent.
For instance, the problem of what the objects of moral knowledge could
be is larger than moral epistemology; it is also a problem of moral
ontology and moral semantics. We conclude with a brief look at this
problem. We access it through the general outline of a dilemma posed
by A. J. Ayer against moral cognitivism. We borrow from Michael Smith
(1994) the idea of using Ayer's dilemma as a window into recent
metaethics. However, we do not closely follow Ayer in developing the
details of the dilemma nor explore Smith's more sophisticated
treatment.
Ayer's Dilemma (Ayer, [1936]: 103-06): Assume moral cognitivism. If
any moral claims are true, some sort of reality—something we can think
of them as representing—underwrites their truth. This reality must be
either something natural or something non-natural. However, if it is
something natural, then it must fall victim to G. E. Moore's arguments
against ethical naturalism. If it is something non-natural, then it
must either also fall victim to Moore's arguments against ethical
naturalism or fall victim to a host of other insuperable problems. So
no moral claims are true.
Obviously, Ayer's Dilemma leans heavily on G. E. Moore's arguments
against ethical naturalism. We briefly describe two of these, consider
how they also preclude some non-naturalist theories, and then give
some examples of the alleged host of other insuperable problems that
confront the ethical non-naturalist.
Like Moore, let's simplify by calling "the Good" whatever it is that
all true moral claims collectively represent as being the case.
Ethical naturalism is the view that the Good is something natural. By
"natural" Moore meant "…the subject matter of the natural sciences
and…psychology," or "…all that has existed or will exist in time"
([1903]: 92). Moore's two most famous arguments against ethical
naturalism are the naturalistic fallacy argument and the open question
argument. According to the naturalistic fallacy argument, any attempt
to identify the Good with something natural must commit a fallacy
because goodness is a normative (value-laden, prescriptive) property
and because nature is decidedly non-normative (value-neutral,
descriptive). According to the open question argument, good
definitions "close" certain questions for competent users of the term
defined. For instance, competent users of the term, "triangle," cannot
wonder whether there are any round triangles. But no identification of
the Good with something natural can have this feature: competent users
of "good" will always be able to wonder whether the natural states of
affairs in the definition are really good, and vice versa ([1903]).
Many philosophers think that Moore's definition of "natural" is
flawed. However, this matters little for our purpose since his
arguments seem to work, if they work, against ethical naturalist
theories of every stripe, and against many non-natural ones. They
work, if they work, against any position that identifies the Good with
something non-normative, even if it is something theological.
What remains, then, is to identify the Good with something non-natural
and normative. This seems to imply that the Good must be sui generis,
that is, utterly unique. This is the option which, according to Ayer's
Dilemma, must fall victim to "a host of other insuperable problems."
We will briefly mention three of these. First, if the Good is sui
generis, then we cannot defend the possibility of moral knowledge,
since we have no independent evidence of an epistemic faculty that
apprehends something as being both morally significant and utterly
unique. Second, if the Good is sui generis, then knowing what is good
could not provide motivation for doing what is good. Third, if the
Good is sui generis, then we are left without any possible explanation
for why moral properties supervene on natural (or at least
non-normative) properties; that is, why we cannot conceive any
difference in correct moral assessment when we cannot point to any
difference in the plain facts.
Responses to Ayer's Dilemma: One way to respond to Ayer's Dilemma is
to accept it. This leaves two alternatives: keep cognitivism and
become a skeptic or, as Ayer preferred, abandon cognitivism. J. L.
Mackie (1977) kept cognitivism and became a skeptic. He argued that
our realm of moral discourse, just like our realm of, say, Santa Claus
discourse, is nothing more nor less than a large body of false claims.
Ayer ([1936]), R. M. Hare (1989), Simon Blackburn (1996, 1998), and
Allan Gibbard (1990) all chose, instead, to abandon cognitivism and to
defend on a noncognitivist basis the possibility of something like
moral knowledge,.
Another option is to keep cognitivism and reject either the
anti-naturalistic or the anti-non-naturalistic horn of the dilemma.
Let's consider post-Ayer ethical naturalist theories, first.
Some ethical naturalists think that the Good is both natural and sui
generis. For instance, "Cornell Realists," such as Nicolaus Sturgeon
(1989), David Brink (1989), and Geoffrey Sayre-McCord (1988) think
that every particular instantiation of the Good can be identified with
a natural state of affairs, such as an instance of moral rightness
with some act of kindness under a natural description. However, they
think that the Good, itself, cannot be identified with anything these
natural instantiations all have in common. Instead, moral properties
like goodness and rightness have irreducible, and thus sui generis,
explanatory power of their own.
Others think that the Good is natural and not sui generis: it reduces
to some natural property or properties. For instance, Peter Railton
argues that it reduces to being what we would want for us, as we
really are now, to want, if we had "unqualified cognitive and
imaginative powers, and full factual and nomological information
about…[our]…physical and psychological constitution." (1986: 173-74).
Other "Reductionist" naturalists include Gilbert Harmon (1975);
Richard Brandt (1979); David Lewis (1986); and Frank Jackson, Philip
Pettit and Michael Smith (2004). Reductionist naturalists typically
respond to Moore's anti-naturalistic arguments by arguing that their
reductions—that is, their identifications of the Good with something
natural—are a posteriori (experience-based) identifications, rather
than a priori, and thus are immune to his criticisms.
Among ethical non-naturalists we must include Moore ([1903]). He
accepted that the Good is sui generis, and he argued that we have an
intuitive epistemic faculty that apprehends goodness and thus grounds
our beliefs about what is good or right. Although his positive view is
often rejected as a reduction to absurdity of ethical non-naturalism,
it has had important recent defenders, for example, Panayot Butchvarov
(1989).
Most recent defenders of ethical non-naturalism reject the sui generis
view, or at least Moore's version of it. Some argue that we can tell
what constitutes the telos (roughly, proper function) of something
that has one, provided that we know enough about it; and thus we can
know what constitutes the Good for it. The facts about telos for some
things—especially the most morally considerable things, like
people—cannot all be identified with something natural, at least not
in anything like Moore's sense of "natural." (Foot, 1978; MacIntyre,
1984)
Many non-naturalists reject that the Good exists, per se, in the world
that science studies, and they argue instead that it arises as a
necessary byproduct of any attempt to pursue purposive, or
goal-driven, rational activities—such as perceiving or understanding
or inferring or deliberating or intending or acting. The Good belongs,
as John McDowell (1994) says, to the "space of reasons." Such views
are capable of broadly Aristotelian, Kantian, or existentialist
development. In any case, they can require that the "space of reasons"
be sensitive to facts (whether natural, and thus unique to the world
that science models and studies, or non-natural) and logic. The
Aristotelian turn conceives the space of reasons as a product of
social relations, engendered by the necessary formation of
interpersonal relationships and conveyed by societally-sanctioned
forms of education (McDowell, 1994; MacIntyre, 1984). The Kantian turn
conceives the "space of reasons" in more individualistic terms: the
choices of individuals are morally evaluable according to whether the
principles implicit (or explicit) in them pass some objective test, or
tests, of rationality, such as being permitted by Kant's Categorical
Imperative (Korsgaard, 1996; Audi, 2004). Finally, the existentialist
turn views facts and logic as radically underdetermining the
rationality of choices, a short-coming that can only be made up for by
adopting some thoroughly subjective criteria, usually some kind of
authenticity, or trueness to oneself (Kierkegaard, [1843]; Sartre,
1992).
6. References and Further Reading
Audi, Robert, Moral Knowledge and Ethical Character, Oxford: Oxford
University press, 1997.
Audi, The Good in the Right: A Theory of Intuition and Intrinsic
Value, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004.
Ayer, A.J., Language, Truth and Logic [1936], New York: Dover
Publications, Inc., 1952.
Bentham, Jeremy, The Principles of Morals and Legislation, [1781]
Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1988.
Blackburn, Simon, "Securing the Nots: Moral Epistemology for the
Quasi-Realist," eds., Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Mark Timmons, Moral
Knowledge?: New Readings in Moral Epistemology, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1996.
Blackburn, Simon, Ruling Passions, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998.
BonJour, Laurence, The Structure of Empirical Justification,
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985.
Brandt, Richard, "Science as a Basis for Moral Theory," eds., Walter
Sinnott-Armstrong and Mark Timmons, Moral Knowledge?: New Readings in
Moral Epistemology, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Brink, David, Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Campbell, Richard & Hunter, Bruce, "Introduction," eds. Richmond
Campbell and Bruce Hunter, Moral Epistemology Naturalized, Calgary,
Alberta: University of Calgary Press, 2000.
Chisholm, Roderick, The Foundations of Knowing, Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1982.
Code, Lorraine, "Statements of Fact: Whose? Where? When?," eds.
Richmond Campbell and Bruce Hunter, Moral Epistemology Naturalized,
Calgary, Alberta: University of Calgary Press, 2000.
Copp, David, Morality, Normativity, and Society, New York: Oxford
University Press, 1995.
Copp, David, "Four Epistemological Challenges to Ethical Naturalism,"
eds. Richmond Campbell and Bruce Hunter, Moral Epistemology
Naturalized, Calgary, Alberta: University of Calgary Press, 2000.
Dancy, Jonathan, Moral Reasons, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1993.
Dancy, Jonathan, "The Particularist's Progress," eds. Brad Hooker and
Margaret Little, Moral Particularism, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000.
Ewing, A. C., The Definition of Good, New York: The Macmillan Company, 1949.
Foot, Philippa, Virtues and Vices, University of California Press, 1978.
Gauthier, David, Morals by Agreement, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986.
Gewirth, Alan, Reason and Morality, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978.
Gibbard, Allan, Wise Choices, Apt Feelings, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990.
Goldman, Alvin, "What is Justified Belief?" ed. by Hilary Kornblith,
Epistemology Naturalized, 2nd Ed., Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994.
Harding, Sandra, The Science Question in Feminism, Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1986.
Hare, R(ichard) M., Essays in Ethical Theory, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1989.
Hare, R(ichard) M., "Foundationalism and Coherentism in Ethics," eds.,
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Mark Timmons, Moral Knowledge?: New
Readings in Moral Epistemology, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Harman, Gilbert, Morality, New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.
Hooker, Brad, Ideal Code, Real World, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000.
Hume, David, A Treatise of Human Nature, [1740] 2nd Ed., ed. by L. A.
Selby-Bigge, rev. by P. H. Nidditch, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975.
Hutcheson, Frances, An Inquiry Into the Original of Our Ideas of
Beauty and Nature, [1725] New York: Garland Publishers, 1971.
Jackson, Frank, Pettit, Philip, and Smith, Michael; Moral Realism and
the Foundations of Ethics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2004.
Kant, Immanuel, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals [1785], tr. by
Mary Gregor, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Kierkegaard, Soren, Fear and Trembling / Repetition, tr. Howard V.
Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983, pp. 54-67.
Korsgaard, Christine, The Sources of Normativity, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1996.
Mackie, J. L., Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, New York: Penguin, 1977.
MacIntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue, 2nd Ed., Notre Dame, IN: University
of Notre Dame Press, 1984.
McDowell, John, Mind and World, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994.
McNaughton, David, "Intuitionism," Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory,
Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000, pp. 268-287.
Miller, Alexander, An Introduction to Metaethics, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003.
Moore, G. E., Principia Ethica, [1903], rev. edn., Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Morris, Christopher, "A Contractarian Account of Moral Justification,"
eds., Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Mark Timmons, Moral Knowledge?: New
Readings in Moral Epistemology, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Quine, W.V.O., "Epistemology Naturalized," Ontological Relativity and
Other Essays, New York: Columbia University Press, 1969.
Railton, Peter, "Moral Realism," Philosophical Review 95, 1986.
Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971.
Ross, W. D., The Right And The Good [1930], Indianapolis, IN: Hackett
Publishing Company, 1988.
Ross, W. D., The Foundations of Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1936.
Sartre, Jean-Paul, Notebook For an Ethics, [posthumous publication]
tr. David Pellauer, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
Sayre-McCord, Geoffrey, "Moral Theory and Explanatory Impotence,"
Midwest Studies 12, 1988, pp. 433-57.
Sayre-McCord, Geoffrey, "Coherentist Epistemology and Moral Theory,"
eds., Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Mark Timmons, Moral Knowledge?: New
Readings in Moral Epistemology, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Scanlon, T. M., What We Owe to Each Other, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1998.
Sidgwick, Henry, The Methods of Ethics [1907], Indianapolis, IN:
Hackett Publishing Company, 1981.
Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter, "Moral Skepticism and Justification," eds.,
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Mark Timmons, Moral Knowledge?: New
Readings in Moral Epistemology, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Smith, Michael, The Moral Problem, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1994.
Sturgeon, Nicholas, "Moral Explanations," Essays on Moral Realism, ed.
by Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989,
229-55.
Timmons, Mark, "Outline of a Contextualist Moral Epistemology," eds.,
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Mark Timmons, Moral Knowledge?: New
Readings in Moral Epistemology, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Walker, Margaret Urban, "Feminist Skepticism, Authority, and
Transparency," eds., Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Mark Timmons, Moral
Knowledge?: New Readings in Moral Epistemology, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1996.
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