A New Route from Moral Disagreement to Moral Skepticism

Olle Risberg,Folke Tersman

doi:10.1017/apa.2019.3

Abstract

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.

Highlights

One avenue for questioning theories that posit moral facts is to argue that we lack the ability to know those facts
Our aim in this paper has been to address a specific step of the disagreement challenge, one that goes from certain suppositions about moral divergence to the conclusion that realism leaves no room for moral knowledge
What we hope to have shown is that the adherence requirement helps to vindicate that step and generates a novel reconstruction of the challenge for moral realism

Summary

Introduction

One avenue for questioning theories that posit moral facts is to argue that we lack the ability to know those facts. Our aim in this paper is to present a novel version of the challenge that differs from others in two ways It relies on weaker assumptions about the nature of the existing moral disagreement than those that are typically invoked, and, second, it motivates the step from disagreement to skepticism by appeal to an epistemic principle that is independently supported and less susceptible to overgeneralization worries. We shall ignore that possibility and pursue the discussion on realist assumptions about moral truths, thought, and talk Another aspect of the challenge that we shall set aside concerns the step from the claim that moral realism rules out moral knowledge to the conclusion that it ought to be abandoned. If there are such disagreements, we lack the ability to know those truths

Therefore

Concluding Remarks