Guided by Voices

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Wiland
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Epistemic Injustice ◽  
Moral Testimony

Guided by Voices defends both moral testimony and advice against a wide variety of common worries. It instead argues that it is often wise both to believe what other people tell you about what’s right and wrong, and to trust their advice. Deferring to others about moral matters is a way of gaining moral knowledge and understanding. Accepting testimony about morality can remedy epistemic injustice and forge epistemic solidarity. Best of all, taking advice is a way of forming a joint agent with your adviser, one whose activity is just as good as that of individual agents. Arguing against the presumption that moral reasoning is ideally done alone, Guided by Voices is the first book-length treatment of moral testimony and advice.

Epistemic Injustice and Epistemic Solidarity

2021 ◽  
pp. 90-115
Author(s):  
Eric Wiland
Keyword(s):  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Individual Autonomy ◽  
Epistemic Injustice ◽  
Moral Good ◽  
Moral Testimony ◽  
Epistemic Justice ◽  
Do So ◽  
What Matters

This chapter contains two more arguments against pessimism about moral testimony. First, it argues that epistemic justice sometimes requires you to accept moral testimony, despite the fact that doing so seems to clash with autonomy. Both good and bad experiences teach a person what matters, and how much things matter. Those who systematically suffer have moral knowledge that others tend to lack, and whose testimony is routinely dismissed. Epistemic justice demands that we trust their moral testimony. Second, this chapter argues that prioritizing individual autonomy is in tension with another plausible claim: that epistemic solidarity is an important good. When you accept moral testimony, you and the speaker may thereby benefit from the epistemic solidarity that the two of you now stand together in, and that this epistemic solidarity is a moral good, a good you would forego by declining moral testimony on the grounds that to do so would compromise your own autonomy.

Observation and Experience

2019 ◽  
pp. 106-150
Author(s):  
Sarah McGrath
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Moral Community ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Testimony ◽  
The World ◽  
Moral Claims

This chapter explores how experience and observation contribute to moral knowledge. It defends the view that experience and observation can contribute to moral knowledge in any of the ways in which they contribute to our ordinary, non-moral knowledge of the world around us, including by empirically confirming and disconfirming moral claims. I argue that moral testimony has important implications for the possibility of confirming moral views by non-moral observations. I also argue that membership in a moral community, which puts one in a position to compare the moral opinions of others with one’s own, can contribute to moral knowledge not only by affording evidence for or against one’s opinions, but also by providing feedback that can serve to calibrate one’s capacity for judgment so that future exercises of that judgment are more likely to deliver knowledge. The chapter concludes with a discussion of a priori moral knowledge.

scholarly journals Moral Reasoning Performance Determines Epistemic Peerdom

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
William H.B. McAuliffe ◽  
Michael E. McCullough
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Review Literature ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Cognitive Reflection ◽  
Friendly Criticism

We offer a friendly criticism of May's fantastic book on moral reasoning: It is overly charitable to the argument that moral disagreement undermines moral knowledge. To highlight the role that reasoning quality plays in moral judgments, we review literature that he did not mention showing that individual differences in intelligence and cognitive reflection explain much of moral disagreement. The burden is on skeptics of moral knowledge to show that moral disagreement arises from non-rational origins.

Moral Testimony

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Wiland
Keyword(s):  
Epistemic Injustice ◽  
Moral View ◽  
Moral Testimony ◽  
Extended Application ◽  
Working Out

Is there anything peculiarly bad about accepting moral testimony? According to pessimists, trusting moral testimony is an inadequate substitute for working out your moral views on your own. Enlightenment requires thinking for oneself, at least where morality is concerned. Optimists, by contrast, aim to show that trusting moral testimony isn’t bad largely by arguing that it’s no worse than trusting testimony generally. Essentially, they play defense. However, this chapter goes on the offensive. It explores two reasons for thinking that trusting another person’s moral testimony is especially good. The first is an extended application of some of the lessons from recent discussions about epistemic injustice. The second, borrowing some cryptic epistemological thoughts from the young Marx, is that trusting another’s moral testimony is necessary for perfecting ourselves. It concludes that it can be better to accept moral testimony than to arrive at the same moral view on your own.

Regard for Reason in the Moral Mind

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua May
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Empirical Literature ◽  
Moral Cognition ◽  
Evolutionary Mechanisms ◽  
Debunking Arguments ◽  
Fertile Ground ◽  
In Virtue Of

The burgeoning science of ethics has produced a trend toward pessimism. Ordinary moral judgment and motivation, we’re told, are profoundly influenced by arbitrary factors and ultimately driven by unreasoned feelings or emotions—fertile ground for sweeping debunking arguments. This book counters the current orthodoxy on its own terms by carefully engaging with the empirical literature. The resulting view, optimistic rationalism, maintains that reason plays a pervasive role in our moral minds and that ordinary moral reasoning is not particularly flawed or in need of serious repair. The science does suggest that moral knowledge and virtue don’t come easily, as we are susceptible to some unsavory influences that lead to rationalizing bad behavior. Reason can be corrupted in ethics just as in other domains, but the science warrants cautious optimism, not a special skepticism about morality in particular. Rationality in ethics is possible not just despite, but in virtue of, the psychological and evolutionary mechanisms that shape moral cognition.

Epistemic Problems of Moral Testimony

2021 ◽  
pp. 28-47
Author(s):  
Eric Wiland
Keyword(s):  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Testimony

This chapter discusses various arguments emphasizing epistemic problems with accepting moral testimony. It is often thought that there are various barriers that prevent a hearer from acquiring knowledge of moral truths on another person’s testimony. This chapter argues that none of these barriers are insurmountable. Although there indeed are various pitfalls to accepting testimony, none are peculiar to accepting moral testimony. In particular, it is possible to identify people who already have moral knowledge even if you yourself lack this knowledge. To do this, you need a theory of error—that is, some grasp of why another person might be better positioned to know moral truths than you yourself are. Armed with such a theory, it becomes possible to acquire moral knowledge through testimony.

scholarly journals Common Notions and Instincts as Sources of Moral Knowledge in Leibniz’s New Essays on Human Understanding

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-169
Author(s):  
Markku Roinila ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Practical Philosophy ◽  
Moral Action ◽  
Natural Light ◽  
Sources Of Knowledge ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
Necessary Truths ◽  
The Senses

In his defense of innateness in New Essays on Human Understanding (1704), Leibniz attributes innateness to concepts and principles which do not originate from the senses rather than to the ideas that we are born with. He argues that the innate concepts and principles can be known in two ways: through reason or natural light (necessary truths), and through instincts (other innate truths and principles). In this paper I will show how theoretical and moral reasoning differ from each other in Leibniz, and compare moral reasoning and instincts as sources of knowledge in his practical philosophy. As the practical instincts are closely related to pleasure and passions, which are by nature cognitive, my emphasis will be on the affective character of instinctive moral action and especially deliberation which leads to moral action. I will argue that inclinations arising from moral instinct, which lead us to pleasure while avoiding sorrow, can direct our moral action and sometimes anticipate reasoning when conclusions are not readily available. Acting by will, which is related to moral reasoning, and acting by instincts can lead us to the same moral knowledge independently, but they can also complement each other. To illustrate the two alternative ways to reach moral knowledge, I will discuss the case of happiness, which is the goal of all human moral action for Leibniz.

scholarly journals RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MORAL KNOWLEDGE AND MORAL REASONING OF SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS

2013 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sher Zaman
Keyword(s):  
Secondary School ◽  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Secondary School Students ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
School Curriculum ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Validity And Reliability ◽  
School Students ◽  
The Given

goal of an educational system. However, a perception exists in Pakistan that the given first two components, i.e., information and skills, are more focused in school curriculum and instruction but morals among students are informally addressed during class teaching. Such schooling of the learners does not meet the socio-moral needs of a developing society. Resultantly there occurs a societal moral decline that Pakistani society is facing now a day. The current study has, therefore, been conducted to determine role of the given moral instructional contents in fostering moral reasoning and judgment (determining the moral justification of an action) among the secondary school students, to address the issue related research question, as whether students’ moral knowledge accounts for variations in their moral reasoning. The research data for this correlational study was collected on two variables i.e. moral knowledge and moral reasoning of the students. For the purpose, researcher developed two instruments and used for measuring the variables involved in the present research. An achievement test was developed to measure moral knowledge of the secondary school students while, a test based on moral dilemmas was constructed to assess their moral reasoning. Psychometric properties of both the tests, for validity and reliability purpose, were ensured through expert judgments. Further improvement in tests was made on the basis of students’ responses that were taken in piloting of the instruments. A sample of 600 students of the grade 9 with their age range 14-16 years participated in the study. The correlation coefficient=0.204**, n=595, p<0.05 indicates that there was small correlation between students’ moral knowledge and their moral reasoning levels.

Working It Out together

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Richardson
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Discourse Ethics ◽  
Moral Authority ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Epistemic Injustice ◽  
Kingdom Of Ends ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Resisting some of the leading conceptions of joint moral reasoning prominent in the philosophical tradition, such as Kant’s kingdom of ends and Habermas’s discourse ethics, because they are too idealized to be useful in understanding joint, socially embodied reasoning, this chapter sets out from a simple understanding of reasoning, centered on the idea of responsibly conducted thinking. It does so to support the book’s account of the moral community’s moral authority, which invokes the possibility of joint, socially embodied reasoning at three distinct levels. Reconciling the idea of reasoning to that of social embodiment requires reconsideration of the relationship of reason to power or empowerment, which can be helpful to reasoning, as well as inimical to it. Generality and inclusiveness are central virtues of the socially embodied reasoning considered here, and violence, epistemic injustice, and a lack of mutually attuned, open-minded responsiveness some of its most serious vices.

Moral Testimony Goes Only So Far

2019 ◽  
pp. 165-185
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Harman
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Moral Epistemology ◽  
Moral Belief ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Total Evidence ◽  
Moral Testimony ◽  
Moral Ignorance

This paper argues for answers to two questions, and then identifies a tension between the two answers. First, regarding the implications of moral ignorance for moral responsibility: “Do false moral views exculpate?” Does believing that one is acting morally permissibly render one blameless? It does not. Second, in moral epistemology: “Can moral testimony provide moral knowledge?” It can (even granting some worries about moral deference). The tension: If moral testimony can provide moral knowledge, then surely it can provide justified false moral belief. But surely there is no blameworthiness in a case in which a person acts on a justified false moral belief. So surely some false moral views do exculpate. This tension can be resolved by adoption of the view that moral testimony cannot provide justified false moral belief; this view relies on the fact that whether a belief is justified is sensitive to an agent’s total evidence.

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