Metadata of the chapter that will be visualized online Chapter Title Why Moral Expertise Needs Moral Theory Copyright Year 2018 Copyright Holder Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature Corresponding Author Family Name Cholbi Particle Given Name Michael Suffix Division Organization/University California State Polytechnic University Address Pomona, CA, USA Email mjcholbi@cpp.edu Abstract Discussions of the nature or possibility of moral expertise have largely proceeded in atheoretical terms, with little attention paid to whether moral expertise depends on theoretical knowledge of morality. Here I argue that moral expertise is more theory-dependent than is commonly recognized: Moral expertise consists, at least in part, in knowledge of the correct or best moral theory, and second, that knowledge of moral theory is essential to moral experts dispensing expert counsel to non-experts. Moral experts would not be moral experts absent knowledge of moral theory, nor could they play the testimonial role we would expect them to play in moral inquiry and deliberation absent such knowledge. 71© Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 J. C. Watson, L. K. Guidry-Grimes (eds.), Moral Expertise, Philosophy and Medicine 129, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92759-6_4 Chapter 4 Why Moral Expertise Needs Moral Theory Michael Cholbi Philosophical and ethical literature concerning whether moral expertise exists and who (if anyone) might possess it has proliferated in recent years. My purpose here is not to address either of these questions, at least not directly. Rather, my concern is to investigate a matter that has been somewhat neglected in this literature, namely, the relationship between moral expertise and moral theory. With a few exceptions, debates about the nature and distribution of moral expertise have proceeded with relatively little attention to moral theory. No doubt part of the explanation for this inattention is that many of the contributors to these debates are ultimately concerned with whether a particular class of individuals, namely clinical bioethicists, are (or should be treated as) moral experts. (See among many Rasmussen 2011; Priaulx 2013) A central theme of my discussion will be that the neglect of moral theory in philosophical debates about moral expertise is unfortunate inasmuch as moral expertise is much more entangled with moral theory than contributors to these debates typically acknowledge. In particular, I shall attempt to show that moral expertise is theory-dependent. By this, I mean, first, that moral expertise consists, at least in part, in knowledge of the correct or best moral theory, and second, that knowledge of moral theory is essential to moral experts dispensing expert counsel to non-experts. Roughly then, if utilitarianism is correct, then a moral expert must embrace utilitarianism and invoke it in support of her moral testimony; if Kantianism is correct, then a moral expert must embrace Kantianism and invoke it in support of her moral testimony; etc. Hence, moral experts would not be moral experts absent knowledge of moral theory, nor could they play the role we would expect them to play in moral inquiry and deliberation absent such knowledge. My plan is as follows. In Section 4.1, I suggest that debates about moral expertise are better served not by efforts to define the notion but by attempting to identify those features of moral expertise that are responsible for scholarly controversies M. Cholbi (*) California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, CA, USA e-mail: mjcholbi@cpp.edu 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 72 about its nature and distribution. Section 4.2 proposes that there are two such features, captured in what I call the epistemic condition and the testimonial condition for moral expertise. Sections 4.3 and 4.4 seek to demonstrate that neither of these conditions is theory-independent; that is, in order for a putative moral expert to satisfy these two conditions, she must possess and make use of knowledge of the correct or best moral theory. There is one sense in which moral expertise might depend on moral theory that I do not address here. Some philosophers have thought that irrespective of whether there are individuals with the moral knowledge necessary to be moral experts, there is itself something morally questionable about our treating others as moral experts, perhaps because obeying the moral dictates of others would amount to foregoing or denying our own autonomy or agency. (Wolff 1970; see also D'Agostino 1998 and Driver 2006) A moral theory might, in other words, condemn moral agents' deferring to moral experts. If so, then a moral theory rules out not expertise itself but the practice of treating others as experts. This 'deontic' dependence is not the sort of dependence of moral expertise with which I am concerned here. My concerns are with whether moral expertise is theory-dependent metaphysically, in that knowledge of the correct or best moral theory constitutes moral expertise, or epistemically, in that such knowledge has a part to play in the experts' moral testimony being rightfully treated by others as expert testimony. In investigating the relationships between moral expertise and moral theory, I do not aim to hash out the merits of rival moral theories in an effort to identify which of these theories is correct or most defensible. Whether the fact that a moral theory renders moral expertise intelligible is a mark for or against its plausibility depends crucially on the degree to which rendering moral expertise intelligible is an important desideratum on moral theories generally. Sentiments vary on that matter, I expect. Some moral philosophers may insist that a moral theory needs to make sense of moral expertise, whereas others, upon discovering that a particular theory problematizes, or even precludes, moral expertise, would respond to this finding with indifference or even enthusiasm. I do not weigh in on this metaphilosophical dispute here. I merely hope to clarify the relationship between moral theory and moral expertise and leave it to others to draw out the implications my conclusions may have in appraising rival theories. 4.1 The Stakes of the Moral Expertise Debate Precisely what moral expertise consists in is far from obvious. Julia Driver (2013) has recently suggested that debates about moral expertise come to loggerheads when different senses of moral expertise are conflated. She notes that moral experts may be expert moral judges, especially adept at arriving at correct moral judgments; expert moral practitioners, those who act morally well more than others might; or expert moral analysts, those who have greater insight into the nature of morality. Driver suggests that this diversity of forms of moral expertise is unsurprising given M. Cholbi 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 73 that expertise in a given domain may take on different guises. Compare linguistic expertise. Those able to speak a given language with great fluency, those with excellent knowledge of that language's grammar, and those capable of crafting compelling poetry in that language can all plausibly be called experts in that language despite their respective aptitudes being only contingently correlated to one another. Driver's observations underscore that the project of defining moral expertise is likely to be misguided. 'Moral expertise' is not an everyday term from which we can extract different candidate definitions that can then be compared to ordinary usage, and it is therefore likely that any attempt to define moral expertise will strike partisans in debates about its nature and distribution as attempts to shape such debates by definitional fiat. Hence, I make no pretense of defining moral expertise here. Rather, I follow what I believe is a more fruitful method, namely, one that begins by asking why moral expertise is hotly debated in the first place and what is concretely at stake in such debates. What practical difference does it make if there are moral experts - or put differently, what must moral experts be if their existence makes a practical difference? In this connection, that the question of whether bioethicists (or moral philosophers) are moral experts has been so prominent in these debates is telling. Technologically advanced liberal democratic societies put moral expertise in a precarious social position. On the one hand, such societies tend to suppose that consultation with experts is essential to crafting wise decisions or policies. Respectful of science, such societies usually have large numbers of officials, scholars, etc., who, thanks to their expertise, wield disproportionate influence over public choice and action. At the same time though, these same societies tend to embody the Rawlsian picture of liberal society, with their members endorsing a diversity of reasonable conceptions of the good while aiming to respect value pluralism and individual autonomy. (D'agostino 1998; Kuczewski 2007; Kovács 2010) These two features of such societies generate competing demands that render moral expertise problematic in ways that other forms of expertise seemingly are not: The authority of experts should be respected, but the judgments of would-be moral experts are not and should not (thanks to value pluralism, autonomy, and so on) be invested with the same authority as the judgments of other expert authorities. This problematic is in evidence in debates about whether clinical ethicists are moral experts. In an institutional context in which patient autonomy is given normative priority and paternalism is frowned upon, what place is there for an individual whose expertise is not scientific or medical but ethical, and in what sense ought patients defer to these experts? Debates about moral expertise, I propose, therefore acquire their practical stakes from worries about whether, in liberal democratic societies in particular, there ought to be a class of individuals acknowledged and treated as having disproportionate moral authority. They are thus debates are whether anyone should be understood as suitable for playing the social role of moral expert. My larger concern here is what place knowledge of moral theory would need to have for moral experts to be suited to play this social role. But the more immediate point is that we need not settle every detail about the nature of moral expertise in 4 Why Moral Expertise Needs Moral Theory 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 74 order to home in on what moral expertise would have to consist in so that there could be individuals who play the social role about which controversy has arisen. Let us now consider in greater depth the social role of experts and what features moral experts must have in order to account for the controversies surrounding their existence and distribution. 4.2 Two Features of Moral Experts One platitude about moral expertise is that it is a species of expertise. I contend that the most succinct way to capture the notion of expertise is to say that experts are those whose testimony in their respective areas of expertise ought to be trusted. That expertise involves experts being trusted illustrates that expertise gains conceptual traction in those areas of human endeavor in which the knowledge relevant to that endeavor is not equally distributed, and as a consequence, some individuals must defer to the judgments of others if the latter are to make correct choices within that endeavor. While a scientific layperson ought to trust the testimony of a quantum physicist regarding how subatomic particles behave, two expert quantum physicists typically have no need to trust one another's testimony regarding quantum physics. This is not because disagreement among experts in some area is impossible. Rather, experts are in possession of area-specific knowledge that enables them to arrive at their own considered judgments in that area, so that when disagreement among them may arise, individual experts draw upon that area-specific knowledge so as to appraise or verify other experts' testimony. Experts thus have no need to trust other experts, for to trust another's testimony is to invest confidence in its veracity despite being unable to wholly verify or certify the truth or justifiability of that testimony in the way that experts can. Being peers, experts do not appraise each other's judgments in their exact area of expertise with the deference that characterizes nonexperts ' stance toward experts. There might appear to be instances wherein experts in a given field ought to defer to other experts in that same field. For instance, experts may rightfully defer to other experts when they have reason to believe that their expertise would be compromised by self-interest or a lack of partiality. The adage "a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client" underscores this possibility. An expert lawyer does not lose her expertise when she represents herself, but her capacity to offer expert counsel may be weaker precisely because of her personal proximity to the matters calling for expert judgment. But note that this example is not best described as an expert deferring to another expert. Rather, a would-be expert recognizes that because her expertise may not have its usual level of reliability, she is not properly treated as an expert in this particular instance. Hence, she is in effect a non-expert deferring to an expert. That experts are those whose testimony in their respective areas of expertise ought to be trusted also accounts for why expertise has little traction in those areas where knowledge is widely distributed (we have little need for experts in the addition M. Cholbi 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 75 or subtraction of single digit numbers) or where there is good reason for skepticism that there is knowledge in any robust or objective sense (experts in unicorn biology, say.) (McConnell 1984). Expertise thus has a set of background social conditions that elicit it and make it salient, namely, when (a) individuals vary in their levels of knowledge relevant to some endeavor,1 (b) some individuals acknowledge that they lack the knowledge adequate to make choices within that endeavor, and (c) individuals in that class seek out experts in that endeavor with the aim of accepting the experts' testimony for the purpose of making choices within that endeavor. Let us call this set of conditions the expert context. Expertise thus rests on an asymmetry between knowers. Non-experts look to experts in order to judge, choose, or act on the basis of truths they acknowledge an inability to discern or justify adequately on their own. "Recognition of expertise," David Archard (2011: 120) observes, "gives the non-expert a good reason to endorse the judgment of the expert, a judgment she would not otherwise make or have a good reason to make." (See also Watson, forthcoming) Non-experts' deference to a bona fide expert's testimony thus improves the epistemic standing of the nonexperts ' judgments in the expert's area of knowledge, but not by providing evidence intrinsically relevant to the truth of those judgments. In deferring to another's expertise, a non-expert is implicitly disavowing her ability to fully or adequately evaluate the evidence relevant to the judgments about which she defers. The non-expert's evidence for accepting the judgment in question consists in large measure of the fact that an expert attests to the truth of the judgment. The expert's competence in evaluating propositions within her area serves as the non-expert's primary reason for accepting the expert's testimony. The expert is, we might say, an epistemic surrogate for the non-expert. When the moral expert offers moral testimony, that testimony is correct (when it is correct) in a non-accidental way. For she does not issue correct moral testimony simply by chance. Her presumed knowledge of the moral domain not only explains her testimony, i.e., her moral beliefs do not only account for why she makes the moral utterances she does. Her knowledge is also what lends that testimony its credibility. But what exactly does the moral expert have knowledge of? A moral expert's area of expertise is practical and normative. (Iltis and Sheehan 2016) Moral expertise is practical in the sense that it is constituted by knowledge of first-order moral propositions attributing deontic status to choices, traits of moral character to individuals, etc. This claim is subject to a careful qualification: A person's moral expertise may be highly domain-specific (expertise in the morality of war or of corporate accounting, say), so that while her advice within that domain 1 Expertise need not involve only propositional knowledge. A good many crafts, arts, etc., involve expertise that consists largely in "knowledge how." See Dennis Arjo's contribution to this volume (Chap. 2) for how the concept of expertise might include "knowledge how." 4 Why Moral Expertise Needs Moral Theory 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 76 can be trusted, her moral advice concerning other domains may be no more reliable than the average person's. Moral expertise is normative rather than descriptive because it includes knowledge of which putative moral truths are in fact true rather than any kind of sociological or psychological knowledge of what moral claims individuals or groups accept or why they accept them. This is not to say that moral expertise has no descriptive or empirical component. For it will often be true that having greater moral knowledge than the average person is explained in part by having greater knowledge of non-moral but morally relevant facts. For example, an expert in end of life ethics needs to have at least rudimentary factual knowledge of which medical interventions tend to sustain or end life. (Conversely, a person may be disqualified from being a moral expert by virtue of ignorance of applicable empirical facts). The moral expert's expertise is moral because and to the extent that her knowledge of first-moral propositions exceeds and cannot be conceptually reduced to her knowledge of some body of non-moral facts. Moral expertise is thus compatible with any metatethical stance that affirms the existence of genuinely normative moral truths. This characterization of moral expertise leaves some loose ends (for example, how to distinguish moral norms from other norms, such as those of etiquette (Foot 1972)),2 but it points the way toward two conditions individuals must meet in order for them to play the controversial social role of moral expert. Expertise presupposes an epistemic asymmetry between experts and others. But how is this asymmetry best understood, i.e., to what degree on in what respect are experts more knowledgeable than others? (Driver 2013, Watson forthcoming) Answering this question seems to require having some idea of how knowledgeable non-experts are about first-order morality. In my estimation, that moral controversies or dilemmas receive so much popular and scholarly attention should not obscure that first-order moral knowledge, particularly with respect to relatively straightforward moral phenomena, is pretty widely distributed among human moral agents. Rare are human moral agents who do not know of the moral presumptions against deception or causing harm or injury or in favor of keeping promises (their behavioral adherence to these presumptions is another matter). Moral experts must therefore have significantly more first-order moral knowledge than this. Let us say that a person whose first-order moral knowledge exceeds this threshold satisfies the epistemic condition for playing the social role of moral expert. A second condition for moral experts to play their social role reflects what I earlier called the expert context. A moral expert does not merely have a disproportionate amount of moral knowledge. Other non-expert individuals must, in order for her to play the social role of expert, see her moral testimony as more reliable than theirs. These non-expert individuals are striving to make moral judgments they understand themselves to be insufficiently competent to make absent expert testimony or counsel. As I once expressed it: 2 See Dennis Arjo's contribution to this volume (Chap. 2) for a discussion of how social norms can have moral significance. M. Cholbi 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 77 Much in the same way that nothing counts as a chair that cannot be reliably sat upon, so too no one can count as an expert in morality who does not satisfy the very expectations of those who wish to utilize said expertise for practical purposes. The main expectation is the provision of reliable moral advice. (Cholbi 2007:329) Being a practical affair, morality is ultimately about choosing and doing, and so in deeming someone a moral expert, we are not primarily expressing our esteem or wonderment, as we might upon learning that an individual can recite π to a large number of digits or provide an off-the-cuff accounting of the causes of the Great War. We are instead expressing a confidence in their moral counsel. Hence, we would be loath to treat someone as a moral expert absent a justifiable confidence in the comparative reliability of their moral testimony. A moral expert, then, is someone whose high level of moral knowledge justifies her being treated as a reliable purveyor of moral advice because other individuals are always pro tanto warranted in trusting that individual's moral testimony. Call this second condition the testimonial condition for moral experts' discharging their social role. It is crucial to recognize that moral knowledge and its transmission or acceptance by others do not march in lockstep. There is certainly nothing inconsistent about S being a moral expert in the sense of having much more first-order moral knowledge (S meets the epistemic condition) while S's moral testimony is nevertheless not worthy of others' trust (S fails to meet the testimonial condition). The converse does not hold, however: Any knower whose moral testimony is trusted must, in order for that trust to be warranted, actually possess first-order moral knowledge. In the absence of such knowledge, the trust of non-experts would be misplaced. For it is this knowledge that renders the moral expert "deserving of trust with respect to their moral judgments." (Driver 2006: 625, emphasis added) 4.3 Theoretical Knowledge and the Epistemic Condition To return to the question at hand: To what extent must individuals have theoretical knowledge of morality in order to fulfill the social role played by ostensible moral experts? It might seem obvious that a moral expert must know the correct or best moral theory. After all, experts in a given area standardly possess a body of knowledge that can at least loosely be called 'theoretical'. This will be the case with respect to most academic knowledge, but it will also be true in cases of more craft-like knowledge. A skilled woodworker, for instance, may not know the principles of physics that apply to wood, but she will certainly know general principles about how wood is affected by various causal processes and which processes to follow in order to realize desired designs or effects. Why deny, then, that theoretical knowledge is essential to moral expertise? Dien Ho (2016) believes that the possibility of moral expertise requires neither that there be any correct moral theory nor that experts know which moral theory is correct. Ho's position rests on two arguments. I take up the first argument here, the second argument in the subsequent section. 4 Why Moral Expertise Needs Moral Theory 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 78 Ho develops his position regarding moral theory's role in moral expertise in response to a common skeptical argument (Ho 2016: 1–3): Moral expertise is impossible unless there are true moral theories of which we can have knowledge. But because either there are no true moral theories, or we cannot know which moral theories are true, then moral expertise is impossible (Frey 1978; Crosthwaite 1995; McGrath 2008; Cross 2016). Ho responds to this skeptical argument by appealing to observations regarding scientific theories and expertise. There can sometimes be "fundamental disagreements" in science that do not "lead to skepticism towards scientific expertise," Ho observes (2016: 371). Basic disputes in physics, for example, need not be resolved in order for us retain our confidence in the existence of expert knowledge in physics. Quantum mechanics and general relativity are incompatible theories, but their incompatibility does not seem to entail that there are no expert physicists, much the less that physics expertise is impossible. But if fundamental theoretical disagreement in science does not vitiate the prospects for scientific expertise, neither should fundamental theoretical disagreement in ethics vitiate the prospects for moral expertise. In the terms laid out in the previous section, Ho seems to be denying that experts need have knowledge of moral theory in order to satisfy the epistemic condition for individuals to play the social role of moral expert. Experts can issue expert moral judgments, and moral inquiry can proceed on familiar terms, even if experts lack knowledge of the true or correct moral theory. Therefore, expert moral knowledge need not be theoretical knowledge. Ho does not develop a robust account of why theoretical disagreement in science does not cast doubt on scientific expertise. But here is a conjecture that is at least compatible with Ho's remarks on the matter: Of the various criteria used to evaluate scientific theories, predictive power is most central. A scientific theory that issues predictions that are not borne out by relevant observations should be rejected. But sometimes multiple theories are compatible with relevant observations, in which case, all other things being equal, there does not seem any basis for preferring one such theory over another. We do not know which of these theories is true or correct, and indeed, on some 'instrumentalist' conceptions of science, there is not much more to a theory's validity than its predictive success. (Popper 1962) Hence, partisans of any predictively satisfactory theory can rightfully function as experts despite their claims to theoretical knowledge being contestable. Hence, Ho argues, perhaps we can get along just fine in scientific inquiry, reaching true conclusions, etc., even if there exists uncertainty at the level of theory. And so to the extent that experts contribute to scientific inquiry, their contributions need not presuppose the truth of any theory. Extrapolated to the moral case, moral expertise need not involve theoretical knowledge. I shall assume arguendo that Ho is correct that the lack of theoretical knowledge does not undercut scientific expertise. Yet if this is Ho's intended defense of the dispensability of theoretical knowledge to moral expertise, it does not seem to show that theoretical knowledge is inessential to moral expertise though. First, Ho's position seems to show that when there are no first-order disputes, theoretical disagreement does not impugn claims of expertise. If several scientific theories are predictively adequate, that some experts defend one theory while others M. Cholbi 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 79 defend another theory does not call into question their playing the epistemic roles of experts. But the expert context in which moral experts play their distinctive roles are contexts in which the moral equivalent of scientific observations - first-order moral judgments or 'intuitions' - are themselves contested. Moral non-experts look to moral experts in part to ascertain what they ought to 'observe', not to settle the theoretical significance of uncontroversial or already established moral 'observations.' Thus, the contexts in which theoretical disagreement in the sciences does not impugn scientific expertise (where predictions converge across theories) look to be a special case, largely inapplicable to the very contexts in which moral experts will be called upon for their moral expertise. We will return to questions about theoretical knowledge and the expert context in the next section. But perhaps this criticism is uncharitable to Ho. It could be that the dispensability of theoretical knowledge to expertise is most in evidence in contexts where there is first-order agreement, but it is dispensable in any context. Yet even conceding this, it is not clear that representing the relationship between moral theories and moral judgments as akin to the predictive relationship between scientific theories and scientific observations does justice to the place that moral theories have in moral knowledge. Suppose that some scientific theory T implies some observation O, and that O is observed in some experimental setting. O thereby confirms T. On its face, moral inquiry may appear to conform to this picture. Suppose that a moral theory M implies (in conjunction with relevant empirical facts) a first-order moral judgment N. Suppose further that N strikes us as antecedently plausible, i.e., we have a 'pretheoretical ' intuition in favor of N. We might say that N thereby 'verifies' M. Conversely, if N is antecedently implausible, then this counts against or 'disconfirms' M. N is thus evidentially relevant to the truth of M, though of course in neither case need we assume that N provides conclusive evidence for or against M. More specifically, should N 'disconfirm' M, we might take this as grounds for modifying or qualifying M rather than rejecting it altogether. Following the method of reflective equilibrium, we may undertake multiple iterations of this process with the aim of identifying the moral theory or principles that reflect the maximally coherent relationship between candidate moral principles and our intuitive moral judgments. (Rawls 1971). So far then, it may seem that Ho's analogy between scientific and moral inquiry holds. Moral intuitions 'predicted' by a moral theory vindicate that theory in a way structurally similar to the way observations vindicate a scientific theory. In the scientific case, the centrality of predictive success is what lends credibility to the theoretical agnosticism to which Ho refers. That T predicts O and O is observed seems adequate to the aims of scientific inquiry. To add 'and furthermore T is true' is either to be redundant or to wade into philosophically contentious territory. T ought to be accepted (in part) because its predicted observations are borne out. The justificatory relationship here thus runs from the observations to theory. The same cannot, I think, be said, of moral theory and moral judgments. That scientific and moral inquiry share an apparently similar hypothetico-deductive structure obscures differences between the role that theories play in these domains. 4 Why Moral Expertise Needs Moral Theory 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360 361 362 363 364 365 366 367 368 369 80 To see why, consider again a process of verifying a moral theory by appeal to intuitions or first-order moral judgments. Suppose that utilitarianism is theory M and that M (in conjunction with relevant empirical facts) implies the intuitively plausible claim N, that (say) it can sometimes be morally permissible to accede to a terminally ill patient's request to actively hasten her death. (Rachels 1975) M implies N, and N's plausibility suggests that this implication relationship holds. So far, so good. It would not, however, be correct to think that the processes of verification uncover the same justificatory structure as in the scientific case. Moral theories make 'predictions' we can test, yes. But in testing them, we take ourselves to be testing an assumed explanatory or justificatory relation between moral theories and moral judgments, a relation stronger than mere predictive efficacy. If utilitarianism implies that it can sometimes be morally permissible to accede to a terminally ill patient's request to actively hasten her death, then the truth of utilitarianism seems to account for the truth of this first-order judgment.3 The facts that utilitarianism posits as morally relevant (facts about the promotion of welfare, etc.) explain why it is the case that it can sometimes be morally permissible to accede to a terminally ill patient's request to actively hasten her death. As Ho notes, the "aim of a discipline determines the antecedent need to address deep metaphysical questions." (2016: 4) In the case of morality, our aims include providing justifications of our first-order moral judgments in terms of theoretical moral conceptions stronger than the logical implication of the former by the latter. An adequate moral theory, unlike (perhaps) an adequate scientific theory, does not just get the extensional relationships among concepts or properties correct. It explains those relationships as grounded in moral facts that are presumptively not local or 'one-off'. (Timmons 2013) As in the scientific case, moral theories are 'tested' against first-order judgments. But the fact that we accept a moral theory because it implies plausible first-order moral claims does not entail that the justificatory relationship runs from the first-order claims to the theory. Rather, the truth of the theory justifies the first-order claims. Moral inquiry aims at something more than predictive success, namely, explanatory grounding of our first-moral claims. It - and those who claim expertise in it - thus need to "address deep metaphysical questions" in ways that science and scientific experts may not need to. A failure to distinguish discovery from justification can obscure this difference. When using (say) reflective equilibrium, we are aiming at a mutual attunement of our moral theories and our first-order moral judgments. There is a sense, then, in which (for example) that utilitarianism implies that it is sometimes morally permissible to accede to a terminally ill patient's request to actively hasten her death gives us reasons to accept utilitarianism. The biconditional Utilitarianism is true if and only if it is sometimes morally permissible to accede to a terminally ill patient's request to actively hasten her death cannot be true unless both utilitarianism is true and that it is sometimes morally permissible to accede to a terminally ill patient's request to actively hasten her 3 This is not to preclude that some other theory could also imply this first-order judgment. M. Cholbi 370 371 372 373 374 375 376 377 378 379 380 381 382 383 384 385 386 387 388 389 390 391 392 393 394 395 396 397 398 399 400 401 402 403 404 405 406 407 408 409 410 411 81 death. But the fact that we might 'discover' that the latter is intuitively plausible and thereby confirm the former does not entail that the truth of the latter explains the truth of the former. The explanatory relationship is in fact the reverse. Our reasons for accepting first-order moral judgments thus cannot be detached from the moral theories that imply them as readily as observations can be detached from the scientific theories that imply them. Theoretical considerations play a role in moral deliberation and moral reasoning that they need not play, and often do not play, in scientific deliberation and scientific reasoning. (Hooker 1998) With respect to moral expertise, moral experts will need to rely upon theories (or theory-like considerations) in a more direct way than will scientific experts. For moral theories are reason-giving in a way that scientific theories are not: Scientific theories can be acceptable even if they only indicate extensional relationships among their concepts. Moral theories, on the other hand, derive their plausibility from the relationships among their concepts being both genuinely explanatory and justificatory. A moral theory gives us largely theory-based reasons to believe a first-order moral judgment, whereas a scientific theory gives us reasons to anticipate observations that themselves bear on whether we have reason to accept the theory. To revert to our earlier example, utilitarianism does not merely imply that acceding to a patient's request to actively hasten her death is morally permissible. It purports to give us a reason that accounts for its moral permissibility. Ho's analogy between moral theory and inquiry on the one hand and scientific theory and inquiry on the other hand thus proves suspect. For unlike in the scientific case, the evidential or justificatory relationship between moral theories and firstorder moral judgments cannot be modeled on or reduced to how theories imply or 'predict' first-order moral judgments. To the extent that moral experts can contribute to moral inquiry, they would seem to need to possess knowledge of the correct moral theory (or theory-like considerations) in order for their moral testimony to be supported by moral reasons. And in the absence of providing reasons in favor of their own moral convictions, it is hard to see how moral experts could contribute to progress in moral inquiry at all. 4.4 Theoretical Knowledge and the Testimonial Condition Ho offers a second argument for the independence of moral expertise from moral theory, one that suggests that experts can satisfy my testimonial condition without reference to theoretical moral knowledge. Ho argues that because theoretical knowledge is often unnecessary in order for moral disagreement to be rationally resolved, experts need not have theoretical knowledge in order to provide expert counsel regarding moral questions. To think otherwise is to falsely assume that "without a normative framework, one cannot solve any moral problems." But because that assumption is false, individuals can rightfully claim to be experts, and play the typical role of moral experts, even absent knowledge of the true or correct moral theory. (Ho 2016: 381). 4 Why Moral Expertise Needs Moral Theory 412 413 414 415 416 417 418 419 420 421 422 423 424 425 426 427 428 429 430 431 432 433 434 435 436 437 438 439 440 441 442 443 444 445 446 447 448 449 450 451 452 82 Here Ho seems to cast doubt on the place of theoretical moral knowledge in moral expertise by indicating that such knowledge is not essential in order for experts to satisfy the testimonial condition. Experts' moral testimony can and ought be trusted despite experts not invoking moral theory in support of that testimony. Hence, even if (contrary to the considerations adduced in the previous section) theoretical moral knowledge is necessary in order for moral experts to function as experts, such knowledge is not essential to non-experts' investing their trust in the moral testimony of experts. Ho is certainly correct that moral disputes are often resolved without the invocation of robust theoretical claims. In many ordinary deliberative contexts, individuals may seek to persuade one another, or seek consensus, regarding some moral question without giving so much as a thought to how various answers to that question might be theoretically grounded. "When we try to determine what we ought to do, we do not take some broad ethical theory, plug in the particulars of the situation, and see what recommendation falls out," Ho observes. "Moral problems, unlike calculus, are usually not solved by filling in the values for the variables" a moral theory designates as morally relevant. (2016: 374) But Ho's inference that because shared moral deliberation often proceeds in largely atheoretical terms moral experts' testimony can be atheoretical seems unwarranted. Indeed, Ho again overlooks that the expert context is one where theoretical knowledge is likely to be sought out. Echoing Judith Thomson (Thomson 1990), Ho observes that disputes about moral issues are often resolved via "discourse within a narrow context in which we assume some shared moral judgments, and we do not challenge the broad foundation of morality." (2016: 375) But the perceived need for consulting moral experts arises primarily or most acutely in contexts in which the participants in a moral discourse have concluded that their own deliberative capacities are inadequate to the moral question at hand - that with respect to these moral phenomena at least, they are not sufficiently expert. They may find themselves dumbfounded by novel moral phenomena, beset by competing moral intuitions about those phenomena, unable to render those intuitions about these phenomena consistent with judgments about other seemingly similar phenomena, etc. Any resolution of these moral questions likely to satisfy these non-experts will need to engage with morality's theoretical foundations. In terms familiar from Aristotle, these non-experts' struggles with 'the that' of morality reflect struggles with 'the why' of morality. Their inability to answer the moral questions that challenge them often reflects a lack of theoretical understanding, of which theoretical principles are relevant to those questions and what those principles imply. If an expert is to assist them, that expert must therefore invoke the theoretical knowledge needed to provide that understanding. Put differently, in many contexts of moral inquiry, the contributors to that inquiry operate as competent peers, seeing themselves and others as roughly equally capable to address the moral questions at issue. But as noted earlier, the relationship between moral experts and those who might accept their moral testimony is asymmetric, for the contexts in which moral inquirers look to experts are those in which those inquirers judge their own moral M. Cholbi 453 454 455 456 457 458 459 460 461 462 463 464 465 466 467 468 469 470 471 472 473 474 475 476 477 478 479 480 481 482 483 484 485 486 487 488 489 490 491 492 493 494 495 496 497 83 competencies to be inadequate, i.e., they are implicitly casting doubt on their shared moral judgments and assumptions. And the guidance they seek is theoretical in nature. We can get a better handle on the place of moral theory in expert moral testimony by imagining a moral expert who espouses an 'anti-theoretical' stance. Take, for instance, Jonathan Dancy's particularist moral theory (Dancy 2004), which proudly denies that moral knowledge can be systematized or codified. According to his theory, principles (which we would ordinarily expect to play a crucial role in systematizing or codifying our moral knowledge) have an extremely limited role in moral thought or choice. There are not, according to Dancy, defensible moral principles nor is moral deliberation characterized by the invocation of principles to address specific cases. Indeed, Dancy goes so far as to embrace a radically contextualist or holistic picture of practical reasons, denying even that there are true principles concerning the relevance of a given consideration (e.g., that an act would cause harm) to the moral justification of action. Dancy's particularism represents the skeptical end of a spectrum regarding the prospect of moral knowledge being systematized or codified.4 But note that this skeptical stance seems to have implications concerning moral expertise: If this form of particularism is true, then individuals whose moral knowledge satisfies the epistemic condition may nevertheless fail the testimonial condition and thereby be disqualified to play the social role of moral experts. Other moral experts, possessed of the same body of moral knowledge as a particularist moral expert, would of course find whatever moral counsel such an expert provides highly reliable (though, of course, being experts themselves, they would presumably have lesser need for or interest in such counsel). But those who sought out the particularist's moral counsel would be understandably uncertain about what level of confidence to have in such counsel. Consistent with the theoretical commitments of particularism, a would-be particularist moral expert could not straightforwardly appeal to principles to explain why her counsel is warranted in any specific case. For the particularist's expertise consists less in knowledge of such principles than in knowledge of which considerations are relevant to the case at hand and how they are relevant. Nor could she readily employ standard methods of moral argumentation in such explanations. For example, using generalizations and counterexamples in an effort to persuade her audience of the reliability of her moral claims would be greatly complicated by the fact (at least it is a fact according to particularism) that any consideration invoked in a generalization supporting a moral claim could play a different justificatory role in another moral context. My point here is not to argue against particularism of any kind. Rather, I merely wish to stress that there are profound tensions within Dancy-style particularism between the epistemic and testimonial dimensions of expertise, that is, given how particularism represents the moral knowledge possession of which is necessary for a would-be expert to satisfy the epistemic condition, any individual who satisfies 4 Other more moderate particularisms (for instance, Little 2001) may admit the possibility that moral experts can meet the testimonial condition. 4 Why Moral Expertise Needs Moral Theory 498 499 500 501 502 503 504 505 506 507 508 509 510 511 512 513 514 515 516 517 518 519 520 521 522 523 524 525 526 527 528 529 530 531 532 533 534 535 536 537 538 539 84 this condition is not likely to satisfy the testimonial condition. For particularist moral knowledge is opaque in a manner that makes moral expertise very difficult to judge, particularly for those who are not experts and are seeking the counsel of moral experts. Particularism is therefore likely to face an uphill battle in trying to address Scott LaBarge calls the "credentials problem," i.e., the problem of how nonexperts can be rationally warranted in accepting the moral testimony of putative experts. (LaBarge 2005) Again, I do not take these observations to refute particularism. If there are moral experts, then particularism is cast in doubt, and conversely, if particularism is true, then perhaps there are no moral experts. I take no stance on which of these options is correct. All the same, the case of particularism underscores a critical point regarding how moral theories relate to moral expertise: There are, or at least can be, gaps between the warrant a moral expert has for her moral beliefs, including her theoretical beliefs, and the warrant that others may have for trusting those experts' moral testimony. Particularism, I just argued, appears to have an unusually wide such gap. The case of particularism illustrates that a moral expert would be seriously hampered in playing the role dictated by the expert context if either she did not (or seemingly could not, in the case of the particularist moral expert) invoke theoretical claims. In this regard, the considerations show that theoretical knowledge is needed in order for experts to satisfy the testimonial condition parallel those that show that theoretical knowledge is needed for experts to satisfy the epistemic condition. The practice of shared moral inquiry and deliberation is oriented around reason giving. As soon as moral inquirers acknowledge a need for expert aid, they are compelled to assess a putative moral expert's testimony based on the reasons that support such testimony. This exercise mirrors first-personal moral reasoning, but occurs when moral agents acknowledge the shortcomings of their own first-personal moral reasoning. And in looking to experts, their trust in the experts' testimony should hinge in part on the experts' invoking theoretical claims (or making theoretical argumentative moves) in support of their testimony. It may be thought that my defense of the centrality of theoretical knowledge to moral expertise ends up insisting that non-experts be experts. For I have argued that in order for non-experts to invest their trust in the moral testimony of putative experts, those experts must give evidence of theoretical knowledge. But it might then be inferred that non-experts are evaluating the experts' testimony as if they (the non-experts) were experts themselves, evaluating the experts' theoretical commitments as if they possessed the very expert moral knowledge they seek from the moral expert. Invariably, non-experts will have to make judgments about the credibility of expert testimony, a challenge complicated by their own lack of expertise. But they need not be experts themselves in order to reach intelligible judgments about moral experts' moral testimony. For one, they may appraise that testimony by reference to what might be thought of as the experts' theoretical virtues. An expert who gives (seemingly) inconsistent testimony, who cannot provide a basis for morally differentiating similar phenomena, or who cannot answer rudimentary objections is not one that non-experts ought to trust. Such theoretical virtues likely underdetermine M. Cholbi 540 541 542 543 544 545 546 547 548 549 550 551 552 553 554 555 556 557 558 559 560 561 562 563 564 565 566 567 568 569 570 571 572 573 574 575 576 577 578 579 580 581 582 583 584 85 truth in moral theory inasmuch as partisans of rival theories may possess them to the same degree. All the same, non-experts have reasons to hold such an expert's moral testimony in suspicion. My invocation of these theoretical virtues is not meant to offer a complete account of the considerations that non-experts ought to take into account in deciding whether a putative moral expert's moral testimony deserves to be trusted. I merely mean to highlight that non-experts have rational bases on which to appraise the credibility of such testimony that do not presuppose that the nonexperts have expert knowledge. More importantly, an expert's inability to give any theoretical accounting of her testimony regarding first-order moral questions would, I propose, be a 'red flag' alerting non-experts that the expert's claim to reliable to first-order moral knowledge should be second guessed. In sum then, by neglecting the peculiarities of the expert context, Ho wrongly extrapolates from the fact that typical discursive contexts do not invoke moral theory that the atypical contexts in which experts come on the scene need not invoke moral theory. We should agree with Ho that it is foolish to think that a theoretical framework is necessary to "solve any moral problems." But we should be skeptical that experts can satisfactorily solve moral problems absent reference to any theoretical framework. Ho thus convincingly demonstrates that theory is not needed when experts are not needed. But there is good reason to think that theory is needed just when experts (apparently) are. 4.5 Conclusion I have provided no reason to think there are experts in moral theory, nor any guidance regarding the true or correct moral theory knowledge of which would be necessary for an individual to be a moral expert. I have attempted to defend the centrality of theoretical knowledge to moral expertise against those who deny that moral experts must have theoretical knowledge or that experts' moral testimony can be rightfully trusted by others if that testimony is atheoretical. In order for individuals to have moral expertise, their moral testimony must be ultimately rooted in theoretical knowledge.. Theory has a reason-giving function in moral discourse that it lacks in other discourses, including scientific discourse. Moral experts must therefore be theoretical experts. References Archard, David. 2011. Why moral philosophers are not and should not be moral experts. Bioethics 25: 119–127. Cholbi, Michael. 2007. Moral expertise and the credentials problem. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 10: 323–334. Cross, Ben. 2016. Moral philosophy, moral expertise, and the argument from disagreement. Bioethics 30: 188–194. 4 Why Moral Expertise Needs Moral Theory 585 586 587 588 589 590 591 592 593 594 595 596 597 598 599 600 601 602 603 604 605 606 607 608 609 610 611 612 613 614 615 616 617 618 619 620 621 622 86 Crosthwaite, Jan. 1995. Moral expertise: A problem in the professional ethics of professional. ethicists. Bioethics 9: 361–379. D'Agostino, Fred. 1998. Expertise, democracy, and applied ethics. Journal of Applied Philosophy 15: 49–55. Dancy, Jonathan. 2004. Ethics without principles. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Driver, Julia. 2006. Autonomy and the asymmetry problem for moral expertise. Philosophical Studies 128: 619–644. ---. 2013. Moral expertise: Judgment, practice, and analysis. Social Philosophy and Policy 30: 280–296. Foot, Philippa. 1972. Morality as a system of hypothetical imperatives. Philosophical Review 81: 305–316. Frey, R.G. 1978. Moral experts. Personalist 59: 47–52. Ho, Dien. 2016. Keeping it ethically real. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 41: 369–383. Hooker, Brad. 1998. Moral expertise. In Routledge encyclopedia of philosophy, ed. E. Craig, 509– 511. London: Routledge. Iltis, Ana S., and Mark Sheehan. 2016. Expertise, ethics expertise, and clinical ethics consultation: Achieving terminological clarity. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 41: 416–433. Kovács, József. 2010. The transformation of (bio)ethics expertise in a world of ethical pluralism. Journal of Medical Ethics 36: 767–770. Kuczewski, Mark G. 2007. Democratic ideals and bioethics commissions: The problem of expertise in an egalitarian society. In The ethics of bioethics: Mapping the moral landscape, ed. Lisa A. Eckenwiler and Felicia Cohn, 83–94. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. LaBarge, Scott. 2005. Socrates and moral expertise. In Ethics expertise: History, contemporary perspectives, and applications, ed. L. Rasmussen, 15–38. Berlin: Springer. Little, Margaret Olivia. 2001. On knowing the 'why': Particularism and moral theory. Hastings Center Report 31: 32–40. McConnell, Terrance. 1984. Objectivity and moral expertise. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 14: 193–216. McGrath, Sarah. 2008. Moral disagreement and moral expertise. In Oxford studies in metaethics, ed. R. Shafer-Landau, vol. 3, 87–108. New York: Oxford University Press. Popper, Karl. 1962. Conjectures and refutations. New York: Harper Torchbooks. Priaulx, Nicky. 2013. The troubled identity of the bioethicist. Health Care Analysis 21: 6–19. Rachels, James. 1975. Active and passive euthanasia. New England Journal of Medicine 292: 78–80. Rasmussen, Lisa M. 2011. An ethics expertise for clinical ethics consultation. Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics 39: 649–661. Rawls, John. 1971. A theory of justice, 2 1999. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Thomson, Judith. 1990. The realm of rights. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Timmons, Mark. 2013. Moral theory: An introduction. 2nd ed. Rowman and Littlefield. Watson, Jamie Carlin. Forthcoming. The shoulders of giants: A case for non-veritism about expert authority. Topoi 37: 39. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-016-9421-0. Wolff, Robert Paul. 1970. In defense of anarchism. New York: Harper and Row. M. Cholbi 623 624 625 626 627 628 629 630 631 632 633 634 635 636 637 638 639 640 641 642 643 644 645 646 647 648 649 650 651 652 653 654 655 656 657 658 659 660 661 662 663