scholarly journals Mathematical and Moral Disagreement

2019 ◽  
Vol 70 (279) ◽  
pp. 302-327
Author(s):  
Silvia Jonas
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Central Problem ◽  
Mathematical Realism

Abstract The existence of fundamental moral disagreements is a central problem for moral realism and has often been contrasted with an alleged absence of disagreement in mathematics. However, mathematicians do in fact disagree on fundamental questions, for example on which set-theoretic axioms are true, and some philosophers have argued that this increases the plausibility of moral vis-à-vis mathematical realism. I argue that the analogy between mathematical and moral disagreement is not as straightforward as those arguments present it. In particular, I argue that pluralist accounts of mathematics render fundamental mathematical disagreements compatible with mathematical realism in a way in which moral disagreements and moral realism are not.1

Reality and Morality

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Billy Dunaway
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Moral Language ◽  
Moral Properties ◽  
Realist View

This book develops and defends a framework for moral realism. It defends the idea that moral properties are metaphysically elite, or privileged parts of reality. It argues that realists can hold that this makes them highly eligible as the referents for our moral terms, an application of a thesis sometimes called reference magnetism. And it elaborates on these theses by introducing some natural claims about how we can know about morality, by having beliefs that are free from a kind of risk of error. This package of theses in metaphysics, meta-semantics, and epistemology is motivated with a view to an explanation of possible moral disagreements. Many writers have emphasized the scope of moral disagreement, and have given compelling examples of possible users of moral language who appear to be genuinely disagreeing, rather than talking past one another, with their use of moral language. What has gone unnoticed is that there are limits to these possible disagreements, and not all possible users of moral language are naturally interpreted as capable of genuine disagreement. The realist view developed in this book can explain both the extent of, and the limits to, moral disagreement, and thereby has explanatory power that counts significantly in its favor.

scholarly journals Are We Playing a Moral Lottery? Moral Disagreement from a Metasemantic Perspective

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sinan Dogramaci
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Content Determination ◽  
Sharon Street ◽  
Gilbert Harman

If someone disagrees with my moral views, or more generally if I’m in a group of n people who all disagree with each other, but I don’t have any special evidence or basis for my epistemic superiority, then it’s at best a 1-in-n chance that my views are correct. The skeptical threat from disagreement is thus a kind of moral lottery, to adapt a similar metaphor from Sharon Street. Her own genealogical debunking argument, as I discuss, relies on a premise of such disagreement among evolutionary counterparts.In this paper, I resist the threat from disagreement by showing that, on some of the most influential and most attractive theories of content determination, the premise of moral disagreement cannot serve any skeptical or revisionary purposes. I examine and criticize attempts, made by Gilbert Harman and Sharon Street, to argue from disagreement to relativism by relying on a theory of content determination that involves a principle that, within certain constraints, maximizes the attribution to us of true beliefs. And I examine and criticize Robert Williams’s attempt to show there is moral disagreement by relying on a theory of content determination that involves a principle that instead maximizes the attribution to us of rationality. My overall aim is to defend commonsense moral realism via a careful look at the theory of content and concepts.

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.

scholarly journals A New Route from Moral Disagreement to Moral Skepticism

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-207
Author(s):  
OLLE RISBERG ◽  
FOLKE TERSMAN
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Moral Skepticism ◽  
Reasoning Skills ◽  
Moral Facts

AbstractMoral disagreement is sometimes thought to pose problems for moral realism because it shows that we cannot achieve knowledge of the moral facts the realists posit. In particular, it is ‘fundamental’ moral disagreement—that is, disagreement that is not due to distorting factors such as ignorance of relevant nonmoral facts, bad reasoning skills, or the like—that is supposed to generate skeptical implications. In this paper, we show that this version of the disagreement challenge is flawed as it stands. The reason is that the epistemic assumptions it requires are incompatible with the possibility of fundamental disagreement. However, we also present an alternative reconstruction of the challenge that avoids the problem. The challenge we present crucially invokes the principle that knowledge requires ‘adherence’. While that requirement is usually not discussed in this context, we argue that it provides a promising explanation of why disagreement sometimes leads to skepticism.

Knowing that Pain is Bad

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Marshall
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Comparative Similarity ◽  
Knowing That

This chapter shows how moral knowledge is possible according to Compassionate Moral Realism, and how that view is able to sidestep the two most influential worries about moral realism’s ability to account for moral knowledge. First, an analogous case of knowledge is considered: knowing that two color experiences are similar in comparison to some third. The latter form of knowledge is hard to deny, and can be naturally explained in terms of a conceptual analysis of comparative similarity and reflection on conscious experiences. A parallel explanation, it is argued, can be given of moral knowledge of the badness of pain according to Compassionate Moral Realism. It is then shown that this explanation is not threated by considerations concerning the evolution of our capacities and concerning moral disagreement—in part because of the view’s compatibility with judgment pluralism.

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