Moral Epistemology

Aaron Zimmerman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781136965333
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

How do we know right from wrong? Do we even have moral knowledge? Moral epistemology studies these and related questions about our understanding of virtue and vice. It is one of philosophy's perennial problems, reaching back to Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Locke, Hume and Kant, and has recently been the subject of intense debate as a result of findings in developmental and social psychology.

In this outstanding introduction to the subject Aaron Zimmerman covers the following key topics:

• What is moral epistemology? What are its methods? Including a discussion of Socrates, Gettier and contemporary theories of knowledge

• 
  
  

• skepticism about moral knowledge based on the anthropological record of deep and persistent moral disagreement, including contextualism

• 
  
  

• moral nihilism, including debates concerning God and morality and the relation between moral knowledge and our motives and reasons to act morally

• 
  
  

• epistemic moral scepticism, intuitionism and the possibility of inferring 'ought' from 'is, ' discussing the views of Locke, Hume, Kant, Ross, Audi, Thomson, Harman, Sturgeon and many others

• 
  
  

• how children acquire moral concepts and become more reliable judges

• 
  
  

• criticisms of those who would reduce moral knowledge to value-neutral knowledge or attempt to replace moral belief with emotion.

Throughout the book Zimmerman argues that our belief in moral knowledge can survive sceptical challenges. He also draws on a rich range of examples from Plato's Meno and Dickens' David Copperfield to Bernard Madoff and Saddam Hussein.

Including chapter summaries and annotated further reading at the end of each chapter, Moral Epistemology is essential reading for all students of ethics, epistemology and moral psychology.

1
Moral Epistemology: Content and Method

1.1 What is moral epistemology?

Roughly speaking, moral epistemology is the study of whether and how we know right from wrong. This colloquial characterization is only “roughly” correct because as epistemologists we are concerned with more than just knowledge, and as moral theorists our interests extend beyond mere right and wrong. So, for instance, once we know that a proposition is false, we know that those who believe it do not know it. But this need not end our critical evaluation of the believer or believers in question. We may still ask whether they were misled by what was otherwise excellent evidence, or whether, instead, they lacked on balance good reasons for believing what they did. We can ask whether they were led astray by “internal” problems like poor vision, bad memory, or defective methods of reasoning, or whether the cause of error was instead “external.” Were the lighting conditions poor? Were they, perhaps, deliberately tricked by a crafty adversary? And we can ask whether those who do not know those propositions they believe are generally reliable on the matters at hand or whether they quite often go astray. Should we trust them in the future, or have they earned our suspicion?

Similarly, once we know that an action is immoral we know that those who perform it thereby do something wrong. But we may still want to know what makes the action bad and how the nature of these particular instances of immorality ought to shape our critical reactions. Is the act uncaring or cruel? Is it unjust or unfair? Do the perpetrators deserve blame for what they’ve done, or did they have a good excuse? Are they just rotten people, or is this act of immorality an exception to an otherwise acceptable pattern of behavior?

In sum, epistemology is concerned with knowledge and the truth required for it, but it is also concerned with belief, justification, reasons, evidence, cognitive malfunction, proper functioning, reliability, and a host of cognate notions. Moral philosophy is concerned with morally right and wrong actions and the moral goodness and badness endemic to them, but it is also concerned with virtues and vices such as kindness and cruelty, fairness and greed; it explores the nature of moral obligations and rights, and the more or less general rules that we must observe to fulfill the former and avoid violating the latter; and it has a great deal to say about moral excellence and culpability and the attitudes, rewards, and punishments that we ought to level at those who act in morally laudable or blameworthy ways.

Moral epistemology thus explores the application of an enormous and somewhat varied set of concepts to a range of behaviors and institutions that are, if anything, even more numerous and varied. In consequence, the field is an exceedingly difficult one to circumscribe. So, for example, as moral epistemologists we are concerned with knowledge and ignorance regarding the morally right thing to do; the way to arrive at justified or well-grounded beliefs as to which actions and institutions are just; an enumeration of the sort of psychological maladies and sociological conditions that result in an improper appreciation of the viciousness of cruelty; and so on for each such combination of the many things separately investigated by mainstream epistemologists and moral philosophers. Knowing right from wrong is no more than a chunk of the iceberg’s visible portion.

The looming multiplication of topics means that work in moral epistemology must of necessity be either wholly superficial or rather drastically limited in scope, and I aim to partially avoid the first of these vices by embracing the second to a greater degree than I would otherwise like. For this reason, among others, I will focus the discussion to follow on different views of basic moral knowledge and justification: our knowledge of the premises of those moral arguments we offer to one another in contrast with their conclusions; the justification with which we hold our most common moral beliefs; the assumptions almost all of us make when we consider these matters. As a result, I will only touch on the difficulties endemic when we try to “weigh” conflicting considerations so as to arrive at an all-things-considered verdict about a particular scenario of moral interest. That is, I will have relatively little to say about which if any of the numerous mutually exclusive courses of action available to a person at any given time are the morally right or permissible options for her to pursue. And I will address only in passing our judgments about whether and how a person who is forced to weigh competing moral considerations can come to know her all-things-considered moral duty or what is all-things-considered the morally best course of action for her to undertake.¹ I won’t ignore these topics entirely, but because there is little current consensus on them, a survey of the difficulties involved is the only way to avoid an overly dogmatic presentation.

And there are two other advantages to this approach. First, it allows us to begin at the beginning with those moral beliefs and judgments that are conceptually and developmentally most fundamental. And second, it establishes a forum for the discussion of moral skepticism: the view that we cannot know right from wrong, either because evidence sufficient to support knowledge is not forthcoming, or because there are no moral facts to be known. Of course, by focusing on our most basic moral beliefs we are prevented from providing much if anything in the way of a guide to those already competent moral judges who are trying to figure out how to resolve the moral dilemmas (real or imagined) that they have encountered in trying to lead good lives. At best, we can hope to provide moral people with a better understanding of their knowledge, while supplying the ignorant and incompetent – who nevertheless possess the intelligence needed to follow our discussion – with an account of their deficiencies (cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1095b [Aristotle, 1984, 1729–1867]).

1.2 Socrates, Gettier, and the definition of “knowledge”

One of the most intriguing questions in our field is whether virtue can be taught. Religious leaders and ethics professors, the writers of self-help books, and the principals of reform schools all claim to possess the kind of knowledge of virtue they must have if they are to teach it to their students or disciples. Can we learn how to be virtuous from a book? Does the acquisition of moral knowledge require training? Or is it, perhaps, largely innate? A number of different hypotheses come readily to mind. Perhaps some exceptional people can teach themselves virtue from the Torah, the Bible, the Koran, the Hindu Vedas, the writings of the Buddha, or the works of the great moral philosophers. After all, the physicist and climate apostate Freeman Dyson is supposed to have taught himself calculus from an encyclopedia entry. Why can’t the privileged few learn virtue in the same way? (When a sweet and loving child emerges from a horribly debauched environment, the attribution of “moral genius” is almost irresistible.) Perhaps, though, other people, indeed most children, really do need the flesh-and-blood instruction, training, and encouragement that good parents and teachers try to provide. Those of us who learned calculus in high school or college only managed to do so by asking a number of questions and solving a whole range of exercises and problems. Why should learning virtue be any easier? Indeed, it might turn out that some people lack the innate equipment to ever acquire virtue, no matter how much help they are given, and no matter how forcefully they are coerced into the pursuit. Surely, there are some kids – if only those with severe learning disabilities – who couldn’t learn calculus if their lives depended on it. Mightn’t virtue also be unattainable for some? Might some children – if only those with psychological problems of a rather drastic sort – be innately incapable of acquiring moral knowledge from even the most caring, perceptive, gifted communicator? When, as Shakespeare says, “good wombs have borne bad sons,” must anguished parents find recourse in either the hospitalization or imprisonment of their children?

These issues have a long and storied history. Indeed, they were hotly debated in Athens over 400 years before the birth of Christ, during the time of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, the greatest philosophers of antiquity. The sophists were intellectuals who claimed to be able to teach virtue. But you cannot teach what you do not know. So do the sophists then know how we ought to behave? If they do, they would seem eminently qualified to lead. In the final analysis we are the state. So someone who knows what we should do must know what the state should do. Shouldn’t the leader of the nation be someone who can articulate its proper mission and instruct us on the best means to its attainment? Shouldn’t the true teachers of virtue then lead us all?

In Plato’s dialogue Meno, Socrates discusses these issues with Meno, a Thessalian aristocrat. The best men – Pericles and Thucydides among them – sometimes produce bad sons. No doubt, they would have produced good children were it in their power to do so, and this suggests that virtue cannot be taught. But the sophist Protagoras was paid to teach virtue for more than forty years. Surely, his ability to maintain a paying clientele over so long a period speaks in favor of his expertise. The question is therefore extraordinarily difficult to resolve. After pursuing several lines of attack, Socrates introduces a novel hypothesis. When a virtuous person does the right thing, this is not an accidental matter. In fact, we will only judge that someone is virtuous if we are confident that he will act justly in the absence of some unforeseeable accident or unlucky circumstance. But, for all that, we must admit that a good person will not be able to share his virtue with his children unless they are blessed by nature (or the gods) in some way or other. Perhaps then the righteous man has the right opinion as to how we should act, but he lacks genuine moral knowledge. Perhaps the true opinion explains his reliably virtuous actions and the lack of knowledge explains his inability to communicate virtue to his offspring. “If it is not through knowledge, the only alternative is that it is through right opinion that statesmen follow the right course for their cities” (99b–99c).

But what is the difference between knowledge and true belief? Though Socrates claims to know very little, he tells us that he is absolutely certain that there is a difference between these two states of mind (98b). The preceding discussion gropes toward an account.

True opinions, as long as they remain, are a fine thing and all they do is good, but they are not willing to remain long, and they escape from a man’s mind, so that they are not worth much until one ties them down by giving an account of the reasons why. After they are tied down, in the first place they become knowledge, and then they remain in place. This is why knowledge is prized higher than correct opinion, and knowledge differs from correct opinion in being tied down. (97a–98)

Socrates’ tentative claim here is that one’s correct opinion on some matter can “become” knowledge once one has acquired some grasp of the reasons why it is true. Having an explanation of some fact solidifies or deepens one’s conviction in its truth, helps one remember it, and enables one to communicate it to others. Knowledge, according to Socrates, differs from true belief in all these respects; and if we keep these differences in mind, we will credit virtuous people with certain true opinions as to what is just and good, but we will persist in denying them any moral knowledge.

There are, I think, few contemporary thinkers who would endorse the hypothesis left on the table at the Meno’s end.² First, for a person to actually be virtuous, she would seem to need more than a set of correct opinions on moral matters. A virtuous person must be compassionate, loving, brave, and kind; and it is unlikely that these largely emotional capacities can be correctly identified with the possession of moral views that just happen to be true. Perhaps, as we will discuss, there is a kind of wisdom that really is sufficient for virtue, but wise people have more going for them than true opinions. Second, it is far from obvious that those who know something must be able to teach it to all those they wish to instruct; so why deny the virtuous moral knowledge simply because they do not invariably teach their children to be good?

Third, it is not at all clear that the children of the virtuous are ignorant of virtue. Mightn’t they know how they ought to behave, and yet fail to act as they know they ought? Perhaps the virtuous do succeed in providing their children with moral knowledge of a kind, and yet moral knowledge is insufficient for moral action. This last question would hound Socrates throughout his days and trouble Plato and Aristotle a great deal. Indeed, as we will see, it remains a central topic for moral epistemologists working today.

Still, even if we reject Socrates’ tentative explanation as to why virtue is not so easily inherited from the virtuous, the distinction behind his hypothesis holds considerable interest. Can someone have the right opinion on moral matters and yet fail to possess moral knowledge? To evaluate Socrates’ positive answer to this question, we need to assess his description of knowledge. And it turns out that this is no idle enterprise, as for thousands of years philosophers looked to his remarks for guidance. Mightn’t Socrates have provided us with the materials we need to define “knowledge” in terms of its difference from opinions that just happen to be true? Can we use his comments to formulate a relatively short, informative account of the kind of thing “knowledge” denotes, an account that might supply someone ignorant of this expression with an adequate grasp of its meaning?

Well, though Socrates doesn’t offer us anything like a definition of “knowledge” in the Meno, theorists inspired by him did.³ For instance, Roderick Chisholm would go on to define “knowledge” as a true belief held with adequate evidence (Chisholm, 1957), and A. J. Ayer would define it as conviction in some truth of which one has the right to be certain (Ayer, 1956/1990). Though interesting in their own right, the details of these accounts needn’t detain us here. For, in a landmark work, Edmund Gettier (1963) was widely credited with refuting them – and all similar analyses – by supplying compelling examples of people who seemingly fail to know facts that they nevertheless justifiably believe. In the wake of Gettier’s essay, the quest to provide Socratic definitions of “knowledge” has gradually ground to a halt.

Suppose, to gloss one of Gettier’s examples, that the boss tells me that I am getting a promotion. And suppose, that as I know I only have $20 left to my name, I quite reasonably infer that the man getting the promotion only has $20 left to his name. Indeed, though it is exceedingly coy, we might suppose that in response to an inquiring colleague I go on to assert what I have here inferred. “Who is getting the job?” he asks. “Well, I’m not at liberty to disclose his name,” I answer, “Though I will say that he’s someone who’s been reduced to his last $20.” Now imagine that for some reason or other the boss has lied to me, and it is really Jones who is getting the bump-up. But yet imagine too that, as chance may have it, Jones is in the exact same financial position as I am. He also has just $20 left to his name. Then I will be justified in believing that the man being promoted has only $20 left to his name, and this belief will be true, but the accidental nature of its truth will dissuade most of us from thinking of it as knowledge. I’m right in believing that the guy getting the promotion only has $20, but I do not know that this is so.

Now if testimony can provide us with good evidence, I have good evidence for what I believe in the case at hand; and, again, what I believe is in fact true. But my belief still fails to constitute knowledge; so Chisholm’s account must be rejected. And I surely have the right to trust those – like my boss – whose testimony I have no reason to doubt. So Ayer’s account cannot be quite right either. If our ordinary thinking about the matter is to be respected, knowledge cannot be equated with justified, true belief.

Philosophers responded to Gettier’s examples by requiring, in one way or another, that it be no accident that one’s belief is true if it is to be properly characterized as knowledge, with Alvin Goldman (1967, 1976, 1986) and Robert Nozick (1981, ch. 3) providing what were perhaps the most widely discussed analyses of this kind. But these and all subsequent attempts to reflect on our ordinary thinking about knowledge so as to arrive at a relatively simple, interesting, explanatory account of the phenomenon failed to secure widespread acceptance (Shope, 1983). For this reason, among others, many contemporary theorists now find themselves agreeing with Timothy Williamson’s (2000) claim that “knowledge” expresses a relatively simple concept that resists reductive definition or analysis.⁴ This isn’t to say that epistemology is now a dead discipline. We can still investigate knowledge in general, and moral knowledge in particular. But it now seems as though we are going to have to accomplish this task without the aid of a widely accepted definit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1 Moral epistemology: content and method
• Chapter 2 Moral disagreement
• Chapter 3 Moral nihilism
• Chapter 4 The skeptic and the intuitionist
• Chapter 5 Deductive moral knowledge
• Chapter 6 Abductive moral knowledge
• Chapter 7 The reliability of our moral judgments
• Chapter 8 Epilogue: challenges to moral epistemology
• Glossary of philosophical terms
• Notes
• Works cited
• Index