Status

Abstract

Moral judgments are often regarded as universally true, whereas judgments of taste are taken to be only true relative to some group or individual. How could such meta-evaluative assessments be acquired? This chapter argues that people use consensus information to arrive at such assessments, and that it is rational to do so. Statistical inference mandates a trade-off between the extent to which a hypothesis fits the data, and the extent to which the hypothesis is flexible in its ability to fit a wider range of data. If almost everyone agrees in their judgments, this provides some reason to endorse a universalist hypothesis, according to which there is a single fact that the majority is tracking. So if almost everyone thinks that a certain action is wrong, the high consensus provides some evidence that it’s a universal truth that this action is wrong. The inference that it’s a universal truth that an action is wrong can also ground the judgment that the action is wrong in a way that is independent of authority. Thus, this might also provide an explanation for the acquisition of the moral/conventional distinction.