scholarly journals Defusing the Regress Challenge to Debunking Arguments

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (6) ◽  
pp. 785-800
Author(s):  
Shang Long Yeo
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Truth ◽  
Debunking Arguments

AbstractsA debunking argument contends that some target moral judgments were produced by unreliable processes and concludes that such judgments are unjustified. Debunking arguments face a regress challenge: to show that a process is unreliable at tracking the moral truth, we need to rely on other moral judgments. But we must show that these relied-upon judgments are also reliable, which requires yet a further set of judgments, whose reliability needs to be confirmed too, and so on. Some argue that the debunker faces an insurmountable regress, which disables the debunking conclusion. In this paper, I explore and defuse this regress challenge.

Moral Truth

Dialogue ◽  
1987 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 437-452
Author(s):  
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Truth ◽  
Truth Claims

Is worrying about whether moral judgments are true or false a philosophical waste of time? It can seem to be if moral truth claims are redundant on thejudgments they claim to be true. If to claim that the judgment “x is wrong” is true is simply to judge x wrong, anyone who is prepared to make judgments can consistently make truth claims. A concern for moral truth is then merely a concern for whether anything is right or wrong, not a separable concern for whether moral judgments are true or false.

scholarly journals Belief Pills and the Possibility of Moral Epistemology

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil Sinclair
Keyword(s):  
Moral Epistemology ◽  
Moral Truth ◽  
Recent Attempt ◽  
Evolutionary Debunking Arguments ◽  
Debunking Arguments ◽  
Moral Judgements ◽  
Evolutionary Debunking ◽  
Evolutionary Explanations ◽  
Moral Facts

This chapter argues that evolutionary debunking arguments are dialectically ineffective. Such arguments rely on the premise that moral judgements can be given evolutionary explanations which do not invoke their truth. The challenge for the debunker is to bridge the gap between this premise and the conclusion that moral judgements are unjustified. After discussing older attempts to bridge this gap, this chapter focuses on Joyce’s recent attempt, which claims that ‘we do not have a believable account of how moral facts could explain the mechanisms…which give rise to moral judgements’. It argues that whether there is such an account depends on what it is permissible to assume about moral truth and that it is reasonable to make assumptions which allow for the possibility of at least partial moral epistemologies. The challenge for the debunker is to show that these assumptions are unreasonable in a way which does not render their debunking argument superfluous.

scholarly journals A debunking explanation for moral progress

2019 ◽  
Vol 177 (11) ◽  
pp. 3171-3191
Author(s):  
Nathan Cofnas
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Moral Truth ◽  
Moral Progress ◽  
Cultural Convergence ◽  
Moral Beliefs ◽  
Debunking Arguments ◽  
Empirical Argument ◽  
Evolutionary Debunking

Abstract According to “debunking arguments,” our moral beliefs are explained by evolutionary and cultural processes that do not track objective, mind-independent moral truth. Therefore (the debunkers say) we ought to be skeptics about moral realism. Huemer counters that “moral progress”—the cross-cultural convergence on liberalism—cannot be explained by debunking arguments. According to him, the best explanation for this phenomenon is that people have come to recognize the objective correctness of liberalism. Although Huemer may be the first philosopher to make this explicit empirical argument for moral realism, the idea that societies will eventually converge on the same moral beliefs is a notable theme in realist thinking. Antirealists, on the other hand, often point to seemingly intractable cross-cultural moral disagreement as evidence against realism (the “argument from disagreement”). This paper argues that the trend toward liberalism is susceptible to a debunking explanation, being driven by two related non-truth-tracking processes. First, large numbers of people gravitate to liberal values for reasons of self-interest. Second, as societies become more prosperous and advanced, they become more effective at suppressing violence, and they create conditions where people are more likely to empathize with others, which encourages liberalism. The latter process is not truth tracking (or so this paper argues) because empathy-based moral beliefs are themselves susceptible to an evolutionary debunking argument. Cross-cultural convergence on liberalism per se does not support either realism or antirealism.

A Dialectic of Morals—III

1941 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 350-394
Author(s):  
Mortimer J. Adler
Keyword(s):  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Truth ◽  
First Principle ◽  
Exercise Preference ◽  
Human Desire ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Cultural Location ◽  
Ultimate Principle

In the preceding sections of this essay, I have outlined a dialectical procedure whereby a doubting mind might be led to the recognition of moral truth. What has been given is the bare plot of a conversation between teacher and student. The student was, at the beginning, a skeptic about moral matters, denying the objectivity of moral knowledge, supposing that all moral judgments were a matter of opinion, entirely relative to the individual or to his cultural location at a given time and place. The teacher, by asking him to explain the undeniable fact that men exercise preference, gradually made him realize that his own criteria for preference — pleasure and quantity of pleasure — had a certain universal validity; and then, as a result of seeing the inadequacy of these criteria, the student began to understand that happiness, rather than pleasure, was the ultimate principle of moral judgments. The crucial steps in the argument were: (1) the distinction between pleasure as one among many objects of desire and pleasure as the satisfaction of any desire; (2) the enumeration of the variety of goods which are objects of human desire; (3) the point that only the totality of goods could completely satisfy desire; (4) the realization that this totality of goods, leaving nothing to be desired, is the end of all our seeking, and that everything else is sought for the sake of its attainment; (5) the conception of happiness as “all good things,” a whole constituted by every type of good, the complete good being the end, the incomplete good its parts or constitutive means; (6) the conclusion that the end, as the first principle in the practical order, is the ultimate criterion of preference, for preferor choice is exercised only with respect to means, and hence we should, in every case, prefer whatever is more conducive to the attainment of happiness.

Debunking Arguments from Insensitivity

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 91-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Braddock
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Skepticism ◽  
Debunking Arguments ◽  
Evolutionary Debunking

Heightened awareness of the origins of our moral judgments pushes many in the direction of moral skepticism, in the direction of thinking we are unjustified in holding our moral judgments on a realist understanding of the moral truths. A classic debunking argument fleshes out this worry: the best explanation of our moral judgments does not appeal to their truth, so we are unjustified in holding our moral judgments. But it is unclear how to get from the explanatory premise to the debunking conclusion. This paper shows how to get from here to there by way of epistemic insensitivity. First, we reconstruct Richard Joyce’s evolutionary debunking argument from insensitivity. Second, we raise epistemological difficulties for Joyce’s argument. Third, we develop and defend a new debunking argument from insensitivity.

Moral Obligation and Moral Motivation

1995 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 187-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Copp
Keyword(s):  
Moral Obligation ◽  
Moral Motivation ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Truth ◽  
Arbitrary System ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
Internal Connection ◽  
The Right ◽  
Do The Right Thing

'Internalism’ in ethics is a cluster of views according to which there is an ‘internal’ connection between moral obligations and either motivations or reasons to act morally; ‘externalism’ says that such connections are contingent. So described, the dispute between internalism and externalism may seem a technical debate of minor interest. However, the issues that motivate it include deep problems about moral truth, realism, normativity, and objectivity. Indeed, I think that some philosophers view externalism as undermining the ‘dignity’ of morality. They might say that if morality needs an ‘external sanction’ - if the belief that one has an obligation is not sufficient motive or reason to do the right thing- then morality is debased in status. Even an arbitrary system of etiquette could attract an external sanction under appropriate conditions.Although I believe that the more interesting internalist theses are false, there are important truths that internalism is attempting to capture. The most important of these is the fact that moral judgments are intrinsically ‘normative’ or ‘choice-guiding,’ that they are, very roughly, relevant to action or choice because of their content.

Particularism in Ethics

Philosophy ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Shiu-Hwa Tsu
Keyword(s):  
Moral Education ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
Practical Wisdom ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Truth ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Major Function ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
Moral Metaphysics ◽  
Action Guidance

Particularism has certainly cut much ice with the development of analytical ethics since the late 20th century. Its proto-idea goes back at least to Aristotle, who maintains that the major function of practical wisdom is to discern the moral truth via a close examination of the situational particulars. Particularism’s contemporary prominence, on the other hand, is largely due to Jonathan Dancy, who endows the doctrine with much of its flesh and bones. Yet, in spite of this, no consensus has been reached on what exactly particularism amounts to. There are many versions of it. Roughly, they all take the basic line that moral principles of one sort or another play no essential role in the key areas of ethics. As a view about moral metaphysics, particularists maintain that the distinction between rightness and wrongness does not depend upon the existence of universal moral principles; instead, what is right or wrong is determined by the morally relevant particulars of the case before us. As a view about action guidance, particularists argue that the moral principles are, at best, nothing more than rules of thumb and, at worst, may lead us seriously astray. The key to making sound moral judgments lies in the exercise of moral sensitivity rather than in rule following. As a view about moral explanations and justifications, particularists contend that their ultimate sources lie in the particulars of the situations rather than in any universal moral principles. As a view about moral education, particularists oppose the idea that it consists essentially in the teaching of moral principles; rather, what really matters is the cultivation of moral vision. As a view about moral reason, particularists subscribe to ‘reason holism,’ the view that what is a reason for in one context may not be so in another, or may even turn out to be a reason against. Particularists reject the contrary doctrine of ‘reason atomism,’ the idea that each reason behaves in the same principled way on any occasion. In each of these key areas in ethics, there can be a version of particularism in support of the view that moral principles do not play an essential role. And there can be a version of ‘principlism,’ or what is sometimes called ‘generalism,’ that denies it. This article provides a survey of the major issues involved in the debate between the particularists and the so-called generalists or principlists.

Cautiously optimistic rationalism may not be cautious enough

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin F. Landy
Keyword(s):  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Judgments

Abstract May expresses optimism about the source, content, and consequences of moral judgments. However, even if we are optimistic about their source (i.e., reasoning), some pessimism is warranted about their content, and therefore their consequences. Good reasoners can attain moral knowledge, but evidence suggests that most people are not good reasoners, which implies that most people do not attain moral knowledge.

Neuroscience and Ethics

2017 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 82-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Matthew Liao
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Empirical Results ◽  
Joshua Greene

Abstract. A number of people believe that results from neuroscience have the potential to settle seemingly intractable debates concerning the nature, practice, and reliability of moral judgments. In particular, Joshua Greene has argued that evidence from neuroscience can be used to advance the long-standing debate between consequentialism and deontology. This paper first argues that charitably interpreted, Greene’s neuroscientific evidence can contribute to substantive ethical discussions by being part of an epistemic debunking argument. It then argues that taken as an epistemic debunking argument, Greene’s argument falls short in undermining deontological judgments. Lastly, it proposes that accepting Greene’s methodology at face value, neuroimaging results may in fact call into question the reliability of consequentialist judgments. The upshot is that Greene’s empirical results do not undermine deontology and that Greene’s project points toward a way by which empirical evidence such as neuroscientific evidence can play a role in normative debates.

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