On Two Arguments Against Moral Certainty

Abstract

It certainly would be wrong for someone to enter my study in the next few moments and kill me for the money in my pockets. This is not a comment on the character of anyone who would do such a thing. It is a judgment as to the moral worth of the envisaged action. Yet it is not simply the judgment that the action would be wrong in the circumstances. It is the more ambitious claim that the action certainly would be wrong, that there is absolutely no doubt as to its moral worth. Now, although few would object to the moral judgment which I've just made, some would be unhappy about the certainty claim. Some hold the general epistemological view that we can never be justified in claiming certainty, a view which would be binding on moral judgments. Others are prepared to allow some nonmoral certainty claims but refuse to accord such a status to particular moral judgments. Some of the latter philosophers think that nothing more than probability claims are justified. Others think, more radically, that moral judgments do not lend themselves to epistemic, or cognitive, modalities of any sort. They think that even the claim 'My being killed for money probably would be wrong' is ruled out on the ground that it commits a category mistake. I intend to concentrate solely on arguments which are designed to limit moral judgments to probability claims, i.e. which conclude that, whereas a judgment of the form 'x is probably wrong' can be justified, a judgment of the form 'x is certainly wrong' cannot (where 'x' picks out a particular action). In so doing, however, I hope to accomplish two things against a more radical scepticism. First, someone may be attracted by the radical position because he regards with suspicion the view that moral judgments alone are capable of probability and not certainty. If we can say that probably a given action is right, why isn't it equally possible for us to say that certainly a given action is right? The two possibilities do seem to go hand in hand and the sceptic may feel that in abandoning one, we should abandon the other as well. I want to render this