Moral Epistemology Research Articles

The limits of experience: Dogmatism and moral epistemology

AbstractLet “phenomenal dogmatism” be the thesis that some experiences provide some beliefs with immediate prima facie justification, and do so purely in virtue of their phenomenal character. A basic question‐mark looms over phenomenal dogmatism: Why should the fact that a person is visited by some phenomenal feel suggest the likely truth of a belief? In this paper, I press this challenge, arguing that perceptually justified beliefs are justified not purely by perceptual experiences’ phenomenology, but also because we have justified second‐order background beliefs to the effect that the occurrence of certain perceptual experiences is indicative of the likely truth of certain corresponding beliefs. To bring this out, I contrast “perceptual dogmatism” with “moral dogmatism”: the thesis that some emotional experiences provide some moral beliefs with immediate prima facie justification, and do so purely in virtue of their phenomenal character. I argue that moral dogmatism is much less antecedently appealing, precisely because the counterpart second‐order beliefs here are much less plausible.

What the golden rule teaches us about ethics

AbstractThe Golden Rule is regularly used in ordinary life, across many different cultures, to acquire new moral knowledge. At the same time, the Golden Rule is widely ignored both in ethics and metaethics because it seems to be an implausible normative theory. Most philosophers who have paid it any attention have thought that, at best, it is an initially tempting thought whose appeal should be explained by the ultimately correct normative theory. My aim in this paper is to attend to an alternative possibility: the Golden Rule teaches us something about metaethics, in the form of moral epistemology, rather than normative ethics. I will argue that sentimentalism, the view that the emotions are an essential source of moral knowledge, provides a compelling explanation of the usefulness of the Golden Rule. Before giving the sentimentalist explanation, I explain why proposed alternative sources of moral knowledge provide less compelling explanations of its usefulness.

Pricean ignorance

ABSTRACT Richard Price’s moral epistemology provides a distinctive account, not only of the sources of our moral knowledge, but also of its limits – that is, of the moral truths that we do not and even cannot know. According to this moral epistemology, the fundamental moral truths are necessary rather than contingent; if they are knowable at all, they are knowable a priori. In general, fundamental moral truths are akin to mathematical truths. Specifically, these necessary moral truths are grounded in the essences of act-types, which are knowable through ‘intuition’ if knowable at all. However, Price firmly rejects utilitarianism, recognizing several different ‘branches of virtue’, which can conflict with each other. As he argues, we cannot know the truth about act-types that exemplify such conflicting branches of virtue if the competing considerations are too finely balanced. This view of moral epistemology is compared with those of several other philosophers, including W. D. Ross. It is argued that Price has a more unified view than Ross: for Price, all moral knowledge flows from a priori intuition, but this is compatible with our being ignorant of many of the fine details of the fundamental truths of morality.

Moral Vagueness: Does Mathematics Have a Practical Solution?

If one favors Moral Intuitivism in order to deal with Skeptical argument, then thinking by analogy with mathematical knowledge is of use. A major objection to the mathematical analogy in Moral epistemology is the threat of moral relativism in practical applications of moral pluralism if we employ mathematical pluralism as a vector to proceed. Thus, the advocacy for moral pluralism faces an obstacle which should be addressed: a problem of moral «vague» predicates. This article addresses moral vagueness and considers objections toward several treatments of related Sorties series through possibility of deepening a proper mathematical intuition. However, the issue of human moral competency cannot be erased from the picture. It is a critical question for morality which very likely falls beyond the scope of Moral epistemology.

Epistemic Authorities and Skilled Agents: A Pluralist Account of Moral Expertise

This paper explores the concept of moral expertise in the contemporary philosophical debate, with a focus on three accounts discussed across moral epistemology, bioethics, and virtue ethics: an epistemic authority account, a skilled agent account, and a hybrid model sharing key features of the two. It is argued that there are no convincing reasons to defend a monistic approach that reduces moral expertise to only one of these models. A pluralist view is outlined in the attempt to reorient the discussion about moral expertise.

Can Intuitions Justify Moral Claims?

In the last three decades of the twentieth century, many analytic philosophers turned to addressing questions of practical ethics, radically expanding the field of moral philosophy beyond the meta-ethical topics that had been its primary focus for most of the century. Yet addressing practical controversies quickly raised the question of how normative moral claims might be justified. Many analytic philosophers relied on intuitionism, which has a long pedigree in Anglophone moral philosophy. This paper assesses three ways in which twentieth analytic philosophers drew on intuitions to support or dispute moral claims. We argue that those methods failed in their aim of promoting trustworthy moral knowledge because they relied on assumptions that, when presumed in contexts of structural epistemic injustice, are systematically misleading. Even though intuitions are among the sources of knowledge on which moral agents should rely, moral epistemology must give careful attention to the social processes through which intuitions and other forms of evidence are gathered, refined, and assessed. Producing trustworthy moral knowledge requires democratic reasoning processes that are sensitive to the ubiquity of epistemic injustice and domination and develops strategies for countering these.

The Secularisation of Conscience: A Natural Law Critique

The modern conception of a ‘secular conscience’ is at one time, both paradoxical and reductive. This phenomenon is attributable to two main factors. In the formal sense, the problem stems from a facile or partial invocation of the term, a result of the fragmentation of its multiple referents. In a substantive sense, the loss of conscience’s explanatory power is a direct result of removing moral structures that underpin traditional formulations of the concept. Historically, conscience has been a necessary component of moral epistemologies. As the innate mechanism for moral discernment, conscience existed as a core part of practical reasoning. In this backdrop, one of secularism’s most profound implications has been to shift conscience’s emphasis away from notions of ‘higher responsibility’ to ‘individual authenticity’. To make sense of this shift, the present article begins by considering the process of ‘secularisation’. Harold Berman defines ‘secularisation’ as the steady displacement of existing normative foundations. The article goes on to trace the etymological development of conscience as a concept and its historical link to moral agency. An examination of traditional normative structures follows, as represented by two seminal accounts of conscience in Western natural law tradition, namely those of Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin. Notwithstanding the variations in emphases due to denominational differences, both these natural law accounts offer a coherent normative outlook, adequate to sustain an integrated concept of conscience. The article ultimately seeks to critique the explanatory potential of modern accounts of conscience by exposing the ontological predicates of secular-rational modalities from the natural law perspective.

Standpoint moral epistemology: the epistemic advantage thesis

Standpoint moral epistemology: the epistemic advantage thesis

Making sense of things: Moral inquiry as hermeneutical inquiry

AbstractWe are frequently confronted with moral situations that are unsettling, confusing, disorienting. We try to come to grips with them. When we do so, we engage in a distinctive type of moral inquiry: hermeneutical inquiry. Its aim is to make sense of our situation. What is it to make sense of one's situation? Hermeneutical inquiry is part of our everyday moral experience. Understanding its nature and its place in moral epistemology is important. Yet, I argue, that existing accounts of moral inquiry do not give us the resources to do so. This paper develops a positive account of hermeneutical inquiry. I argue that when we engage in hermeneutical inquiry, we search for an apt perspective on our situation.

Attending to the Full Moral Landscape

This article explores the potential of recognizing ethical obligations to the other-than-human world. In particular, I emphasize how emotional responses to other-than-human beings reflect a proper apprehension of the moral landscape, which then allows ethical insights into our obligations towards others. Although this article overlaps with other work in environmental ethics, I specifically relate Margaret O. Little’s moral epistemology to our emotional experiences with the other-than-human to illustrate how a gestalt shift from “humans as apart from” to “humans as embedded within” complicates the moral picture of how we live with and in this world. I argue that when humans attend to our experiences with nature in an open and caring way, we can more easily and accurately ascertain the moral significance of the other-than-human parts of nature. Affective responses reveal important details of the moral landscape. Recognizing a reality of deep interrelatedness with the other-than-human world, our emotional responses to other-than-human beings enable us to appreciate moral obligations to care for the rest of nature and consider our relationality with the other-than-human world as a moral issue.

Truth, Ethics and Legal Thought—Some Lessons from Dworkin’s Justice for Hedgehogs and Its Critique

This paper reconstructs some of the core elements of Dworkin’s epistemology of ethics. To understand why, for Dworkin, questions of legal philosophy lead to moral epistemology, the main points of Dworkin’s last restatement of his theoretical account of law are outlined. Against this background, the paper critically assesses the merits of Dworkin’s criticism of current prominent forms of skepticism and what it teaches us about the epistemology of legal thought.

Toward a Perceptual Solution to Epistemological Objections to Nonnaturalism

Stance-independent nonnaturalist moral realism is subject to two related epistemological objections. First, there is the metaethical descendant of the Benacerraf problem. Second, there are evolutionary debunking arguments. Standard attempts to solve these epistemological problems have not appealed to any particular moral epistemology. The focus on these epistemologically neutral responses leaves many interesting theoretical stones unturned. Exploring the ability of particular theories in moral epistemology to handle these difficult epistemological objections can help illuminate strengths or weaknesses within these theories themselves, as well as opening up potentially unexplored avenues for responding to deeply entrenched concerns about our epistemic access to the moral properties. In this paper, I assess the prospects of an empiricist and perceptualist model of moral knowledge for responding to epistemological arguments against non-skeptical moral realism. I argue that such a view has powerful responses to these objections that are not open to other moral epistemologists. The upshot is that if some version of the view is correct, then the realist has less to fear from Benacerraf and evolutionary debunking–style epistemological objections. Insofar as one is already a committed realist, then, this provides some indirect support for moral perceptualism.

Women's Reception of Kant, 1790-1810.

This article contributes to the re-evaluation of narratives in the history of ideas that have failed to consider women's writings. The laudatory assessment of Kant as a philosophical innovator promoted by Germaine de Staël is questioned and his moral epistemology examined in relation to that of Elise Reimarus, Catharine Cockburn, Catharine Macaulay, and Isabelle de Charrière. The moral and political philosophies of the first three, grounded in natural law, are used to undermine Staël's claim that Kant's moral philosophy offers a significant advance over Locke's, a conclusion reinforced through a reading Charrière's critique of Kant.

Critiquing racist ideology as harmful social norms

In what follows, I will argue that racist ideology should be understood in terms of racist social norms that constitute certain incentive structures. To this end, I will motivate my position by examining two existing accounts of ideology: those of Tommie Shelby and Sally Haslanger. First, I will begin by reconstructing Shelby’s account of racism as ideology. After analysing three dimensions of ideology (epistemic, genetic and functional), I will argue that his view is too cognitivist. In this regard, Shelby’s view is doxastic in viewing that racist ideologies consist in misguided beliefs. Rather, what is essential in ideology is its functional dimension. Here, ideologies persist because they function to stabilize and reinforce the unjust status quo of subordination and oppression. Then, I will turn to Haslanger’s account of ideology as cultural technēs. Her view is more functional than Shelby’s since the former is based on the account of social practice and culture. While Haslanger is right about her critique of Shelby’s cognitivist view of ideology, I argue that what she calls nonideal moral epistemology weakens her overall insight. The problem is that without considering how to intervene in concrete social mechanisms, merely knowing certain moral truths may not practically motivate subjects under ideologies. Taken together, both Shelby and Haslanger narrowly understand ideology in terms of epistemic deficiency. Even though Shelby and Haslanger deal with the discursive superstructure of ideology, both underestimate the functional substructure of ideology such as social and psychological motives, desires and needs. Ultimately, I will argue that ideology is better understood in terms of a racist social norm. This account is explanatorily superior to Shelby and Haslanger’s views in its stress on the nonepistemic, nonmoral and functional aspects of ideology.

A Theological Consideration of the Fundamental Option and Moral Epistemology

The paper analyses the justification of personal integrity in ethical theories in contemporary moral epistemology. In the first chapter we present a theological consideration of the fundamental option that illustrates the complexity of agency of moral knowledge in the epistemic evaluation of a moral act as a specifically human conduct. Then, in the second chapter we briefly describe the inference and the structure of moral knowledge in ethical theories. In the last chapter, we argue why our personal integrity, our own understanding of it in self-estimation is related to the possibility of moral knowledge. We claim that moral knowledge is crucial in development of moral integrity of a person. The speculations on the possibility of their inference and cognitive capacity reflect on the epistemic disposition of the human being as a moral agent. Although ethical theories have offered a scientifically and methodologically precise frame to justify the truthfulness of moral knowledge and judgments, they have not anticipated the important fact of integrity between the intention, free will and practical reason.

Adorno’s Critique of Work in Market Society

Jaakko Nevasto has offered a number of thoughtful criticisms of our attempt to show that Adorno’s work can fruitfully be brought to bear on topics in business ethics. After welcoming his constructive clarifications, we attempt to defuse Nevasto’s main objections and defend our application of Adorno, focusing in particular on the topics of moral epistemology, needs, and the possibility of genuine activity – and thus good work – within capitalist society.

Dialectics of Ethics

Philosophical and theological ethics in the Islamic tradition tend to be appraised on the basis of a unilateral perspective, which circumvents a moral rational approach to intuition. On this account, moral knowledge is expected to rest on intuitive judgments, which are universally accessible to human beings. Looking at moral ontology and epistemology in Arabic philosophy, I demonstrate that taking intuitionism as the only valid rational discourse to ethics needs to be challenged. In fact, Arabic philosophers do not subscribe to a realist view of the good and evil in relation to human actions, and rather admit a division between cosmic values in metaphysics and moral values in ethics. In so doing, they show how metaphysics ascribes a substantial view to good in existence and a negative theory to evil, while the science of ethics admits a teleological and relative view of the good. Overall, the falāsifa remain committed to Aristotle’s premise that ethics does not rely on abstraction and emphasized the role of experience too. But, they seem to be also attentive to the dialectical nature of Islamic jurisprudence in producing norms considering both principles of the law and its particular application. This is also clear in their epistemology of ethical judgments such as the maxim justice is good. While they ascribe a universal status to ethical maxims, they preclude from granting them an absolute status over the authority of norms construction. Instead, philosophers attribute a dialectical role to ethical maxims to guarantee both consensus over norms and the possibility to produce truthful opinions. Keywords: Moral ontology and epistemology, The problem of evil, The nature of the good, Moral values, al-Fārābī, Ibn Sīnā, Ibn Rushd, Legal epistemology, Written and unwritten laws, Ethical maxims, Widely-accepted premises (mashhūrāt), Reputable premises (maḥmūdāt).

New Perspectives on Ethics in Islam [whole issue

Complete volume, containing all articles CONTENTS Introduction: Feriel Bouhafa, Towards New Perspectives on Ethics in Islam: Casuistry, Contingency, and Ambiguity I. Islamic Philosophy and Theology Feriel Bouhafa, The Dialectics of Ethics: Moral Ontology and Epistemology in Islamic Philosophy Frank Griffel, The Place of Virtue Ethics within the Post-Classical Discourse on ḥikma: Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s al-Nafs wa-l-rūḥ wa-sharḥ quwāhumā Ayman Shihadeh, Psychology and Ethical Epistemology: An Ashʿarī Debate with Muʿtazilī Ethical Realism, 11th-12th C. Hannah C. Erlwein, The Moral Obligation to Worship God Alone: Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s Analysis in the Tafsīr Anna Ayse Akasoy, Philosophy in the Narrative Mode: Alexander the Great as an Ethical Character from Roman to Medieval Islamicate Literature II. Islamic Jurisprudence Ziad Bou Akl, From Norm Evaluation to Norm Construction: The Metaethical Origin of al-Ghazālī’s Radical Infallibilism Felicitas Opwis, The Ethical Turn in Legal Analogy: Imbuing the Ratio Legis with Maṣlaḥa Robert Gleave, Moral Assessments and Legal Categories: The Relationship between Rational Ethics and Revealed Law in Post-Classical Imāmī Shīʿī Legal Theory Omar Farahat, Moral Value and Commercial Gain: Three Classical Islamic Approaches III Hadith, Quran, and Adab Mutaz al-Khatib, Consult Your Heart: The Self as a Source of Moral Judgment Tareq Moqbel, “As Time Grows Older, the Qurʾān Grows Younger”: The Ethical Function of Ambiguity in Qurʾānic Narratives Enass Khansa, Can Reading Animate Justice? A Conversation from Alf Layla wa-Layla (The Thousand and One Nights) Nuha AlShaar, The Interplay of Religion and Philosophy in al-Tawḥīdī’s Political Thought and Practical Ethics William Ryle Hodges, Muḥammad ʿAbduh’s Notion of Political Adab: Ethics as a Virtue of Modern Citizenship in Late 19th Century Khedival Egypt

THE MORALITY OF PROPERTY ACQUISITION IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY: A CASE STUDY OF NIGERIA

The belief that some behaviours are right and acceptable and that other behaviours are wrong concerning property acquisition in contemporary Nigeria society has been there over time, which in fact has socio-cultural and business undertone. Morality in this sense includes meta-ethics and abstract studies which questions individuals moral ontology, moral epistemology, normative ethics, and more concrete systems of moral decision-making such as deontological ethics and consequentialism. Property acquisition is obtained for the purpose of future business and also a source of passing inheritance to a person’s generation. The morality of property acquisition includes gaining of property through possession, prescription and agreement. This study therefore explored the morality of property acquisition done for investment purposes, embezzlement of fund, transfer of ownership and retirement purposes. It concluded therefore that, morality is an issue of societal values and ethics. It is of value that property acquisition such as land, building and other tangible assets be owned by an individual irrespective of age. It is recommended that property acquisition should be done under the morality of the society, property acquisition should not lead to unmoral characteristics of the society, government should satellite the political office holders and civil servants on property acquisition through whistle- blower through the public and appropriate punishment should be meant on the persons that breach the law because of property acquisition.

An Interpretation of Value Change: A Philosophical Disquisition of Climate Change and Energy Transition Debate

Changing values may give rise to intergenerational conflicts, like in the ongoing climate change and energy transition debate. This essay focuses on the interpretative question of how this value change can best be understood. To elucidate the interpretation of value change, two philosophical perspectives on value are introduced: Berlin’s value pluralism and Dworkin’s interpretivism. While both authors do not explicitly discuss value change, I argue that their perspectives can be used for interpreting value change in the case of climate change and the energy transition. I claim that Berlin’s pluralistic account of value would understand the value change as an intergenerational conflict and therefore provide a too narrow and static ground for understanding ongoing value change. Instead, by exploring Dworkin’s standpoint in moral epistemology, this essay distills a more encompassing perspective on how values may relate, converge, overlap, and change, fulfilling their functions in the course of climate change and energy transition. This perspective is further detailed by taking inspiration from Shue’s work on the (re)interpretation of equity in the climate change debate. I argue that the resulting perspective allows us to see value change as a gradual process rather than as a clash between generations and their values.