Sunstein represents moral heuristics as rigid rules that lead us to jump to moral conclusions, and contrasts them with reflective moral deliberation, which he represents as independent of heuristics and capable of supplanting them. Following John Dewey's psychology of moral judgment, I argue that successful moral deliberation does not supplant moral heuristics but uses them flexibly as inputs to deliberation. Many of the flaws in moral judgment that Sunstein attributes to heuristics reflect instead the limitations of the deliberative context in (...) which people are asked to render judgments. (shrink)

The ancient Greeks almost universally accepted the thesis that virtues are skills. Skills have an underlying intellectual structure (logos), and having a particular skill entails understanding the relevant logos, possessing a general ability to diagnose and solve problems (phronesis), as well as having appropriate experience. Two implications of accepting this thesis for moral epistemology and epistemology in general are considered. Thinking of virtues as skills yields a viable virtue epistemology in which moral knowledge is a species of a general kind (...) of knowledge that is not philosophically suspect. Also, the debate between internalists and externalists in epistemology is subversively resolved. (edited). (shrink)

Abstract: In this article, I consider some of the similarities and differences between deontologism in ethics and epistemology. In particular, I highlight two salient differences between them. I aim to show that by highlighting these differences we can see that epistemic deontologism does not imply epistemic internalism and that it is not a thesis primarily about epistemic permissibility . These differences are: (1) deontologism in epistemology has a quasi -teleological feature (not shared with moral deontologism) in that it does not (...) require that one abide by epistemic duties for the sake of (and not merely in accordance with) those very duties; and (2) in ethics, the relevant options we speak of are whether someone acts or does not act; in epistemology, we have an analogous further option: we can speak of whether someone believes that p , fails to believe that p , or withholds judgment about that p. (shrink)

abstract Part 1 of this essay argues that one of the most important contributions of philosophers to sound public policy may be to combat the influence of bad Philosophy (which includes, but is not limited to, bad Philosophy produced by accredited academic philosophers). Part 2 argues that the conventional conception of Practical Ethics (CPE) that philosophers bring to issues of public policy is defective because it fails to take seriously the phenomenon of the subversion of morality, the role of false (...) factual beliefs in this subversion, and the vulnerability to the exploitation of our moral powers that our social-epistemic dependency entails. Given the serious risks of the subversion of morality through the propagation of false factual beliefs, CPE's near exclusive emphasis on identifying sound moral principles greatly constrains its potential contribution to the Negative Task of Practical Ethics, the endeavour to reduce the incidence of the most grievously wrong behaviour. Practical ethicists should focus more on the ethics of believing, and develop a more sophisticated conception of the moral and epistemic virtues of individuals and of institutions, one that includes protective meta-virtues, whose function it is to guard us against the more frequent and predictable subversions of morality, including those subversions that are facilitated by the processes of belief-formation that our social institutions and practices foster. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend the view that we can have perceptual moral knowledge. First, I motivate the moral perception view by drawing on some examples involving perceptual knowledge of complex non-moral properties. I argue that we have little reason to think that perception of moral properties couldn't operate in much the same way that our perception of these complex non-moral properties operates. I then defend the moral perception view from two challenging objections that have yet to be adequately addressed. (...) The first objection is that the moral perception view has implausible commitments concerning the morally blind , people who would claim not to perceive wrongness. The second objection is that the moral perception view is not really compatible with a wide range of the main candidate moral theories. I argue that the moral empiricist has plausible responses to both of these objections. I then address three residual concerns that my defense raises. (shrink)

The manifest dissociation between our capacity to make moral judgments and our ability to provide justifications for them, a phenomenon labeled Moral Dumbfounding, has important implications for the theory and practice of moral psychology. I articulate and develop the Linguistic Analogy as a robust alternative to existing sentimentalist models of moral judgment inspired by this phenomenon. The Linguistic Analogy motivates a crucial distinction between moral acceptability and moral permissibility judgments, and thereby calls into question prevailing methods used in the study (...) of moral judgment. Indeed, the judgments that are the focus of most current empirical work in moral psychology are not proper targets of scientific study. (shrink)

John Mackie famously dismissed the rational tenability of moral objectivism with two quick arguments. The second, the so-called “argument from queerness,” proceeds as follows. A commitment to moral objectivism brings with it a commitment to the existence of moral properties as “queer” as Platonic Forms that are apprehended only through occult faculties like so-called “moral intuition” (Mackie 1977, 38). Since we have no reason to believe that there is any faculty such as moral intuition that serves as a reliable Form (...) detector, we equally have no reason to accept moral objectivism (1977, 23–24, 38–41). Recently, Julia Annas has observed that Mackie has offered us “a coarse and imperceptive interpretation of Plato,” in addition to a mistaken account of the epistemic requirements of moral objectivism (2001, 238). But one might worry that the case Annas makes for the homely nature of Platonic moral knowledge—it’s just like plumbing, only non-optional (2001, 246)—rests, as she admits, on her focus on dialogues like the Laches, in which the analogy between the moral virtues and crafts like flute-playing, shoe-making, and navigating is emphasized (2001, 244). Annas explicitly leaves open the question whether Mackie’s interpretation might capture Plato’s conception of moral knowledge in dialogues like the Republic, in which the analogy between moral and mathematical knowledge is emphasized (2001, 243). Yet it is clear from Mackie’s brief remarks about Plato that he has the Republic primarily in mind (Mackie 1977, 23–24). (shrink)

People support ethical antirealism with various arguments. Gilbert Harman thinks if a property of goodness existed, it would have detectable effects on objects that have it. However, Harman reasons, the good has no such detectable effects. Internalists think if good objects had some goodness property, that property would bond to desire and action in a way inconsistent with ethical realism. I defend ethical realism from the two arguments. I explain how good can both name a property and how objects with (...) that property might dispose people to seek them. This explanation of the good's magnetism provides a reply to Harman. (shrink)

The study extends and tests the issue contingent four-component model of ethical decision-making to include moral obligation. A web-based questionnaire was used to gauge the influence of perceived importance of an ethical issue on moral judgment and moral intent. Perceived importance of an ethical issue was found to be a predictor of moral judgment but not of moral intent as predicted. Moral obligation is suggested to be a process that occurs after a moral judgment is made and explained a significant (...) portion of the variance in moral intent. (shrink)

J. L. Mackie argued that if there were objective moral properties or facts, then the supervenience relation linking the nonmoral to the moral would be metaphysically queer. Moral realists reply that objective supervenience relations are ubiquitous according to contemporary versions of metaphysical naturalism and, hence, that there is nothing especially queer about moral supervenience. In this paper we revive Mackie's challenge to moral realism. We argue: (i) that objective supervenience relations of any kind, moral or otherwise, should be explainable rather (...) than sui generis; (ii) that this explanatory burden can be successfully met vis-à-vis the supervenience of the mental upon the physical, and in other related cases; and (iii) that the burden cannot be met for (putative) objective moral supervenience relations. (shrink)

In this paper, I reveal systematic aspects of the moral epistemology of the Warring States Confucian, Mengzi. Mengzi thinks moral knowledge is 'internally' available to humans because it is acquired through normative dictates built into the human heart-mind (xin). Those dictates are capable of motivating and justifying an agent's normative categorizations. Such dictates are linked to Mengzi's conception of human nature (ren xing) as good. I then interpret Mengzi's difficult discussion of courage and qi in Mengzi 2A: 2 as illuminating (...) the idea of 'internal' justification. The epistemology of courage is intimately related in 2A: 2 to its practice. Finally, I indicate at the end in outline the ways in which Mengzi and Gaozi are engaged in a dispute about moral epistemology that pits each of them against Xunzi and also against Zhuangzi. (shrink)

In this paper I present a new argument against internalist theories of practical reason. My argument is inpired by Frank Jackson's celebrated Knowledge Argument. I ask what will happen when an agent experiences pain for the first time. Such an agent, I argue, will gain new normative knowledge that internalism cannot explain. This argument presents a similar difficulty for other subjectivist and constructivist theories of practical reason and value. I end by suggesting that some debates in meta-ethics and in the (...) philosophy of mind might be more closely intertwined than philosophers in either area would like to believe. (shrink)

For moral realists moral judgments will be a kind of factual judgment that involves the basically reliable apprehension of an objective moral reality. I argue that factual judgments display at least some degree of conceptual sensitivity to error, while moral judgments do not. Therefore moral judgments are not a kind of factual judgment.

In this paper I attempt to defuse a set of epistemic worries commonly raised against ideal observer theories. The worries arise because of the omniscience often attributed to ideal observers -- how can we, as finite humans, ever have access to the moral judgements or reactions of omniscient beings? I argue that many of the same concerns arise with respect to other moral theories (and that these concerns do not in fact reveal genuine flaws in any of these theories), and (...) further, that we can and often do have knowledge of the reactions of ideal observers (according to standard, prominent theories in the domain of epistemology). (shrink)

One popular reason for rejecting moral realism is the lack of a plausible epistemology that explains how we come to know moral facts. Recently, a number of philosophers have insisted that it is possible to have moral knowledge in a very straightforward way—by perception. However, there is a significant objection to the possibility of moral perception: it does not seem that we could have a perceptual experience that represents a moral property, but a necessary condition for coming to know that (...) X is F by perception is the ability to have a perceptual experience that represents something as being F . Call this the ‘Representation Objection’ to moral perception. In this paper I argue that the Representation Objection to moral perception fails. Thus I offer a limited defense of moral perception. (shrink)

On the face of it, some of our knowledge is of moral facts (for example, that this promise should not be broken in these circumstances), and some of it is of non-moral facts (for example, that the kettle has just boiled). But, some argue, there is reason to believe that we do not, after all, know any moral facts. For example, according to J. L. Mackie, if we had moral knowledge (‘‘if we were aware of [objective values]’’), ‘‘it would have (...) to be by some special faculty of moral perception or intuition, utterly different from our ordinary ways of knowing everything else’’(1977,p.38).But wehavenosuchspecialfaculty.So,wehavenomoralknowledge. Following Mackie, let us distinguish two questions: Q1: Assuming that we have moral knowledge, how do we have it? Q2: Do we in fact have any moral knowledge? In response to the first question, I argue that if we have moral knowledge, we have some of it in the same way we have knowledge of our immediate environment: by perception. Many people think that this answer leads to moral skepticism, because they think that we obviously cannot have moral knowledge by perception. But I will argue that this is incorrect. The plan for the paper is as follows. In Sections 2–4, I work up to my answer to Q1 by considering rivals. In Section 5, I explain what marks my answer to Q1 as a distinctive view, and defend it. In Section 6, I briefly discuss how this answer to Q1 affects what we say in response to Q2. (shrink)

A strong, strictly virtue- based , and at the same time truth-centered framework for virtue epistemology (VE) is proposed that bases VE upon a clearly motivating epistemic virtue, inquisitiveness or curiosity in a very wide sense, characterizes the purely executive capacities-virtues as a means for the truth-goal set by the former, and, finally, situates the remaining, partly motivating and partly executive virtues in relation to this central stock of virtues. Character-trait epistemic virtues are presented as hybrids, partly moral, partly purely (...) epistemic. In order to make the approach virtue- based , it is argued that the central virtue (inquisitiveness or curiosity) is responsible for the value of truth: truth is valuable to cognizers because they are inquisitive, and most other virtues are a means for satisfying inquisitiveness. On can usefully combine this virtue-based account of the motivation for acquiring knowledge with a Sosa-style analysis of the concept “knowledge”, which brings to the forefront virtues-capacities, in order to obtain a full-blooded, “strong” VE. (shrink)

In this article I examine the consequences of the dominance of intuitive thinking in moral judging and deciding for the role of moral reasoning in moral education. I argue that evidence for the reliability of moral intuitions is lacking. We cannot determine when we can trust our intuitive moral judgements. Deliberate and critical reasoning is needed, but it cannot replace intuitive thinking. Following Robin Hogarth, I argue that intuitive judgements can be improved. The expertise model for moral development, proposed by (...) Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus, not only teaches us how we acquire intuitive moral judgements, it also shows the interconnectedness of intuitive thinking and deliberate reasoning. Analysing the expertise model in more detail, I show that it cannot do justice to the importance of reasoning skills. Reasoning skills are needed because we expect people to be able to argue for their standpoints. I conclude that moral education should not only aim at improving intuitive moral judgements, but also at acquiring reasoning skills. (shrink)

Many epistemologists are interested in offering a positive account of how it is that many of our common sense beliefs enjoy one or another positive epistemological status (e.g., how they are warranted, justified, reasonable, or what have you). A number of philosophers, under the influence of Wittgenstein and/or J. L. Austin, have argued that this enterprise is misconceived. The most effective version of this argument is to be found in Mark Kaplan’s paper “Epistemology on Holiday”. After explaining what this criticism (...) amounts to and why it is important, I then respond to it. My response is based upon, and is intended to display the explanatory power of, a contractarian account of our practice of epistemic appraisal. (shrink)

Human beings’ moral life can be divided into two forms, one based on moral instincts and the other on moral judgments. The former is carried on without deliberation, while the latter relies upon valuations and judgments. The two can ultimately be viewed as man’s innate moral nature and acquired moral conventions. Theoretically, preference for the former will lead to naturalism and for the latter to culturalism, but this is the reality of man’s moral life. Moreover, there may be a parallel (...) relation between the moral structure of human life and the grammatical structure of human language. (shrink)

Philosophers since ancient times have pondered how we can know whether moral claims are true or false. The first half of the twentieth century witnessed widespread skepticism concerning the possibility of moral knowledge. Indeed, some argued that moral statements lacked cognitive content altogether, because they were not susceptible to empirical verification. The British philosopher A. J. Ayer contends that 'They are pure expressions of feeling and as such do not come under the category of truth and falsehood. They are unverifiable (...) ... because they do not express genuine propositions.' The second half of the twentieth century brought a revival of interest among philosophers in moral and political questions. Whether or not ethics can be founded upon a rational basis continues to preoccupy the philosophical community even now. (shrink)

Moral principles play important roles in diverse areas of moral thought, practice, and theory. Many who think of themselves as ‘moral generalists’ believe that moral principles can play these roles—that they are capable of doing so. Moral generalism maintains that moral principles can and do play these roles because true moral principles are statements of general moral fact (i.e. statements of facts about the moral attributes of kinds of actions, kinds of states of affairs, etc.) and because general moral facts (...) explain particular moral facts (i.e. facts about the moral attributes of particulars). Moral holism maintains that what is a moral reason to in one case may not be one in another, and may even be a moral reason not to given suitable circumstances. Some ‘moral particularists’ maintain that moral holism motivates scepticism about the existence of and need for moral principles, along with scepticism about the viability of principle-based approaches to ethics and moral theory. But I argue that moral holism is itself a form of moral generalism, one that takes facts about the right- and wrong-making powers of (generic) moral factors to explain certain particular moral facts—namely, the rightness and wrongness of particular actions. I also argue that a moral-theoretic version of dispositionalism—the view that dispositions, powers, or capacities are the fundamental units of explanation—explains both why moral holism is true and why moral generalism is true. (shrink)

In this short paper, I argue that the phenomenology of moral judgment is not unified across different areas of morality (involving harm, hierarchy, reciprocity, and impurity) or even across different relations to harm. Common responses, such as that moral obligations are experienced as felt demands based on a sense of what is fitting, are either too narrow to cover all moral obligations or too broad to capture anything important and peculiar to morality. The disunity of moral phenomenology is, nonetheless, compatible (...) with some uses of moral phenomenology for moral epistemology and with the objectivity and justifiability of parts of morality. (shrink)

Moral heuristics are pervasive, and they produce moral errors. We can identify those errors as such even if we do not endorse any contentious moral view. To accept this point, it is also unnecessary to make controversial claims about moral truth. But the notion of moral heuristics can be understood in diverse ways, and a great deal of work remains to be done in understanding the nature of moral intuitions, especially those that operate automatically and nonreflectively, and in exploring the (...) possibility of altering such intuitions through modest changes in context and narrative. (shrink)

Peter Winch's famous argument in "The Universalizability of Moral Judgments" that moral judgments are not always universalizable is widely thought to involve an essentially sceptical claim about the limitations of moral theories and moral theorising more generally. In this paper I argue that responses to Winch have generally missed the central positive idea upon which Winch's argument is founded: that what is right for a particular agent to do in a given situation may depend on what is and is not (...) morally possible for them. I then defend the existence of certain genuine moral necessities and impossibilities in order to show how certain first-person moral judgements may be essentially personal. (shrink)