scholarly journals Are We Playing a Moral Lottery? Moral Disagreement from a Metasemantic Perspective

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sinan Dogramaci
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Content Determination ◽  
Sharon Street ◽  
Gilbert Harman

If someone disagrees with my moral views, or more generally if I’m in a group of n people who all disagree with each other, but I don’t have any special evidence or basis for my epistemic superiority, then it’s at best a 1-in-n chance that my views are correct. The skeptical threat from disagreement is thus a kind of moral lottery, to adapt a similar metaphor from Sharon Street. Her own genealogical debunking argument, as I discuss, relies on a premise of such disagreement among evolutionary counterparts.In this paper, I resist the threat from disagreement by showing that, on some of the most influential and most attractive theories of content determination, the premise of moral disagreement cannot serve any skeptical or revisionary purposes. I examine and criticize attempts, made by Gilbert Harman and Sharon Street, to argue from disagreement to relativism by relying on a theory of content determination that involves a principle that, within certain constraints, maximizes the attribution to us of true beliefs. And I examine and criticize Robert Williams’s attempt to show there is moral disagreement by relying on a theory of content determination that involves a principle that instead maximizes the attribution to us of rationality. My overall aim is to defend commonsense moral realism via a careful look at the theory of content and concepts.

Reality and Morality

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Billy Dunaway
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Moral Language ◽  
Moral Properties ◽  
Realist View

This book develops and defends a framework for moral realism. It defends the idea that moral properties are metaphysically elite, or privileged parts of reality. It argues that realists can hold that this makes them highly eligible as the referents for our moral terms, an application of a thesis sometimes called reference magnetism. And it elaborates on these theses by introducing some natural claims about how we can know about morality, by having beliefs that are free from a kind of risk of error. This package of theses in metaphysics, meta-semantics, and epistemology is motivated with a view to an explanation of possible moral disagreements. Many writers have emphasized the scope of moral disagreement, and have given compelling examples of possible users of moral language who appear to be genuinely disagreeing, rather than talking past one another, with their use of moral language. What has gone unnoticed is that there are limits to these possible disagreements, and not all possible users of moral language are naturally interpreted as capable of genuine disagreement. The realist view developed in this book can explain both the extent of, and the limits to, moral disagreement, and thereby has explanatory power that counts significantly in its favor.

scholarly journals Mathematical and Moral Disagreement

2019 ◽  
Vol 70 (279) ◽  
pp. 302-327
Author(s):  
Silvia Jonas
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Central Problem ◽  
Mathematical Realism

Abstract The existence of fundamental moral disagreements is a central problem for moral realism and has often been contrasted with an alleged absence of disagreement in mathematics. However, mathematicians do in fact disagree on fundamental questions, for example on which set-theoretic axioms are true, and some philosophers have argued that this increases the plausibility of moral vis-à-vis mathematical realism. I argue that the analogy between mathematical and moral disagreement is not as straightforward as those arguments present it. In particular, I argue that pluralist accounts of mathematics render fundamental mathematical disagreements compatible with mathematical realism in a way in which moral disagreements and moral realism are not.1

Sturgeon's Defence of Moral Realism

Dialogue ◽  
1990 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 267-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evan K. Jobe
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Negative Answer ◽  
Moral Principle ◽  
Human Conduct ◽  
Moral Explanations ◽  
Moral Quality ◽  
Moral Qualities ◽  
Gilbert Harman

Can a moral principle be tested and confirmed empirically? Can the fact that an event exhibits a moral quality play a role in explaining why a person observes the event as having that quality? Gilbert Harman, in attempting to point to a radical difference between scientific and moral facts, has endorsed a negative answer to these questions. With Harman's discussion in mind, Nicholas Sturgeon takes the affirmative side in his “Moral Explanations,” a potentially influential essay that is now beginning to appear in the textbook anthologies. Sturgeon rounds out his defence of moral realism by further arguing that moral qualities of persons can play an essential role in the scientific explanation of human conduct. Finally, he attempts to enhance the appeal of moral realism by arguing for the plausibility of its compatibility with physicalism. While granting that Sturgeon's discussion is challenging and instructive I shall try to show that on all points mentioned here Sturgeon has failed to make a good case.

scholarly journals A debunking explanation for moral progress

2019 ◽  
Vol 177 (11) ◽  
pp. 3171-3191
Author(s):  
Nathan Cofnas
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Moral Truth ◽  
Moral Progress ◽  
Cultural Convergence ◽  
Moral Beliefs ◽  
Debunking Arguments ◽  
Empirical Argument ◽  
Evolutionary Debunking

Abstract According to “debunking arguments,” our moral beliefs are explained by evolutionary and cultural processes that do not track objective, mind-independent moral truth. Therefore (the debunkers say) we ought to be skeptics about moral realism. Huemer counters that “moral progress”—the cross-cultural convergence on liberalism—cannot be explained by debunking arguments. According to him, the best explanation for this phenomenon is that people have come to recognize the objective correctness of liberalism. Although Huemer may be the first philosopher to make this explicit empirical argument for moral realism, the idea that societies will eventually converge on the same moral beliefs is a notable theme in realist thinking. Antirealists, on the other hand, often point to seemingly intractable cross-cultural moral disagreement as evidence against realism (the “argument from disagreement”). This paper argues that the trend toward liberalism is susceptible to a debunking explanation, being driven by two related non-truth-tracking processes. First, large numbers of people gravitate to liberal values for reasons of self-interest. Second, as societies become more prosperous and advanced, they become more effective at suppressing violence, and they create conditions where people are more likely to empathize with others, which encourages liberalism. The latter process is not truth tracking (or so this paper argues) because empathy-based moral beliefs are themselves susceptible to an evolutionary debunking argument. Cross-cultural convergence on liberalism per se does not support either realism or antirealism.

scholarly journals A New Route from Moral Disagreement to Moral Skepticism

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-207
Author(s):  
OLLE RISBERG ◽  
FOLKE TERSMAN
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Moral Skepticism ◽  
Reasoning Skills ◽  
Moral Facts

AbstractMoral disagreement is sometimes thought to pose problems for moral realism because it shows that we cannot achieve knowledge of the moral facts the realists posit. In particular, it is ‘fundamental’ moral disagreement—that is, disagreement that is not due to distorting factors such as ignorance of relevant nonmoral facts, bad reasoning skills, or the like—that is supposed to generate skeptical implications. In this paper, we show that this version of the disagreement challenge is flawed as it stands. The reason is that the epistemic assumptions it requires are incompatible with the possibility of fundamental disagreement. However, we also present an alternative reconstruction of the challenge that avoids the problem. The challenge we present crucially invokes the principle that knowledge requires ‘adherence’. While that requirement is usually not discussed in this context, we argue that it provides a promising explanation of why disagreement sometimes leads to skepticism.

Evolution and moral relativism

2014 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 483-499
Author(s):  
John Mizzoni
Keyword(s):  
Moral Relativism ◽  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Moral Reasons ◽  
Evolutionary Perspective ◽  
Moral Diversity ◽  
Main Ideas ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Gilbert Harman ◽  
Best Fit

This article looks at whether moral relativism fits within an evolutionary framework. As a metaethical theory, the main ideas of moral relativism include: conventions, moral reasons, moral diversity, and moral disagreement. Two different versions of moral relativism are examined, those developed by Gilbert Harman and by David Wong. Several other writers who have characterized the relationship between moral relativism and an evolutionary perspective are also discussed. In addition, the article examines what three different models of evolution (those of Darwin, Dawkins, and Gould) imply about moral relativism. I argue that Wong’s version of moral relativism, which eschews moral conventionalism, has the best fit with an evolutionary perspective. This may be the case, though, because Wong’s version is quite flexible and leaves us with the lingering question of whether it is really moral relativism.

A Frankfurter in Königsberg: Prolegomenon to any Future non-metaphysical Kant

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 583-604
Author(s):  
James Gordon Finlayson
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
The Other ◽  
Constructivist Theory ◽  
Kantian Constructivism ◽  
Sharon Street ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right

AbstractIn this article I press four different objections on Forst’s theory of the ‘Right to Justification’. These are (i) that the principle of justification is not well-formulated; (ii) that ‘reasonableness and reciprocity’, as these notions are used by Rawls, are not apt to support a Kantian conception of morality; (iii) that the principle of justification, as Forst understands it, gives an inadequate account of what makes actions wrong; and (iv) that, in spite of his protestations to the contrary, Forst’s account veers towards a version of moral realism that is prima facie incompatible with Kantian constructivism. I then evaluate Forst’s theory in the light of a distinction made by Sharon Street between restricted and unrestricted constructivism. I show that Forst has reason to deny that it is either the one or the other, but he is not able to show that it is both or neither. I conclude that the arguments Forst advances in support of his constructivist theory of the right to justification entail that it is a metaphysical and comprehensive conception in the relevant, Rawlsian sense. Forst’s theory of the right to justification therefore fails to fulfil one of the main stated aims.

Theism & Evolutionary Debunking Arguments Against Moral Realism

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 41
Author(s):  
Paul Rezkalla
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Michael Ruse ◽  
Evolutionary Debunking Arguments ◽  
Moral Beliefs ◽  
Specific Target ◽  
Debunking Arguments ◽  
Sharon Street ◽  
Evolutionary Debunking

Evolutionary debunking arguments against morality come in a variety of forms that differ both in how they take evolution to be problematic for morality and in their specific target of morality i.e. objectivity, realism, justification for moral beliefs, etc.  For the purpose of this paper, I will first articulate several recent debunking approaches and highlight what they take to be problematic features of evolutionary history for morality. In doing so I will be forced to abstract from some of the specific arguments offered, although I will provide replies to particular aspects of the arguments offered by Michael Ruse, Sharon Street and Richard Joyce. Then, I will show that theists have independent reasons for rejecting certain, core assumptions of these debunking approaches, thus deflating the major thrust of debunking worries for morality. While there may be good responses available to the non-theist realist with respect to several of the worries raised below, this paper will simply show why the theist need not be troubled by contemporary debunking approaches against morality.

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