Abstract
Particularism renders the options for a sound moral epistemology few and the prospects dim. One leading approach treats basic knowledge of particular cases as derivable from an a priori moral principle and a posteriori knowledge of the contingent non-moral facts to which the principle applies. Particularists must forgo this approach because it requires principles. Yet a purely a posteriori moral epistemology is also implausible, especially when combined with particularism. Particularists such as Jonathan Dancy are thus led to the view that our basic moral knowledge is a priori knowledge of contingent moral facts. We argue that this epistemology is unsound. While some cases of a priori knowledge of (even deeply) contingent facts may be defensible, they are not sufficient for particularist purposes. Moreover, neither Dancy’s appeal to the distinction between positive and negative dependence nor his discussion of intuitive examples provides sufficient support for this epistemology.
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Notes
Salmon, 1967: 39.
See Bonjour, 1998: 12–13 for a plausible defense of the dissenting view that what is knowable a priori is not a claim about a particular object but rather a claim about the length of whatever object is used to fix the length of a term such as meter.
Sometimes this point is put in terms of Gareth Evans’ distinction between “superficially contingent” and “deeply contingent” truths. See Evans, 1985: 178–213.
As Dancy puts it, “But nobody could suppose that knowledge of a basic moral fact is gained purely by examining one’s concepts, nor by thinking about the meanings of words” (Dancy 2004: 148).
See Dancy 2004: 101–108. As Dancy rightly notes we have no generally agreed upon account of what movements of thought deserve to be called inferences. The critical point we make here, however, is able to sidestep this partly terminological issue. For on Dancy’s view, there is no method at all, inferential or otherwise, by which we move from our knowledge of the descriptive fact, that Sue consoling Jill would bring welcome comfort, to a piece of moral knowledge, that the fact that Sue consoling Jill would bring welcome comfort is a reason to console. As Dancy puts it in speaking of basic moral knowledge, “In fact, there doesn’t seem to be a method of acquiring that sort of knowledge at all” (2004: 148, emphasis in original).
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This paper is drawn from Chapter Seven of our Principled Ethics: Generalism as a Regulative Ideal (Oxford University Press 2006). Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press.
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McKeever, S.D., Ridge, M. Particularism and the contingent a priori. Acta Anal 21, 3–11 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-006-1000-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-006-1000-3