Moral Testimony, Knowledge and Understanding

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kumar Viswanathan
Keyword(s):  
Moral Testimony

Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility Volume 6

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Moral Testimony ◽  
Quality Of Will ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Standing To Blame

This is the sixth volume of Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility. The papers were drawn from the fourth biennial New Orleans Workshop in Agency and Responsibility (NOWAR), held November 2–4, 2017. The essays cover a wide range of topics relevant to agency and responsibility: the threat of neuroscience to free will; the relevance of resentment and guilt to responsibility; how control and self-control pertain to moral agency, oppression, and poverty; responsibility for joint agency; the role and conditions of shame in theories of attributability; how one might take responsibility without blameworthy quality of will; what it means to have standing to blame others; the relevance of moral testimony to moral responsibility; how to build a theory of attributabiity that captures all the relevant cases; and how thinking about blame better enables us to dissolve a dispute in moral philosophy between actualists and possibilists.

Accepting Moral Testimony

2021 ◽  
pp. 5-27
Author(s):  
Eric Wiland
Keyword(s):  
Basic Problem ◽  
Moral Testimony ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Specific Sense

This chapter clarifies the putatively problematic phenomenon: what it is to accept moral testimony, and what seems to be the basic problem with it. It argues that you accept testimony that p, just in case 1) you believe the testimony that p for a testimonial reason, and 2) either a) the testimonial reason to believe p in fact makes the difference whether you believe p, or b) would alone be enough for you to believe p were there no nontestimonial reasons to believe (or disbelieve) p. To identify what seems to be the basic problem with accepting moral testimony, we need to understand how morality fits in to this formula. Philosophers often claim that accepting pure moral testimony is problematic. This chapter distinguishes three different ways of understanding purity and identifies the specific sense of purity that characterizes the alleged problem.

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.

The non-remedial value of dependence on moral testimony

2017 ◽  
Vol 175 (3) ◽  
pp. 629-647 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paddy Jane McShane
Keyword(s):  
Moral Testimony

scholarly journals VI—Should We Believe Philosophical Claims on Testimony?

2019 ◽  
Vol 119 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-125
Author(s):  
Keith Allen
Keyword(s):  
Moral Testimony

Abstract This paper considers whether we should believe philosophical claims on the basis of testimony in light of related debates about aesthetic and moral testimony. It is argued that we should not believe philosophical claims on testimony, and different explanations of why we should not are considered. It is suggested that the reason why we should not believe philosophical claims on testimony might be that philosophy is not truth-directed.

Against epistemic pessimism about moral testimony

Episteme ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Paddy Jane McShane
Keyword(s):  
Prima Facie ◽  
Main Thrust ◽  
Epistemic Warrant ◽  
Moral Testimony ◽  
Epistemological Views

AbstractMy aim in this paper is to argue against what I call “epistemic” pessimism about moral testimony. Epistemic pessimists argue that moral testimony fails to transmit epistemic warrant as non-moral testimony does. I reject epistemic pessimism by defending the No Difference Thesis, that there is no in principle difference between the transmission of epistemic warrant by moral and non-moral testimony. The main thrust of my argument is that there is a good prima facie case to be made for the thesis, namely, that it is supported by all of the major current epistemological views of testimonial warrant, both reductionist and non-reductionist. After making this case, I consider five pessimist attempts to undermine the No Difference Thesis, and argue that none of these attempts succeeds. So, in the absence of any other compelling criticisms, we are justified in rejecting epistemic pessimism and accepting the No Difference Thesis.

Moral Testimony: A Re-Conceived Understanding Explanation

2017 ◽  
Vol 68 (272) ◽  
pp. 437-459 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Frances Callahan
Keyword(s):  
Moral Testimony

scholarly journals Moral Advice and Joint Agency

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Wiland
Keyword(s):  
Moral Worth ◽  
Moral Understanding ◽  
Moral Testimony ◽  
Joint Agency ◽  
Right Reason ◽  
The Right ◽  
Do The Right Thing ◽  
Moral Advice

There are many alleged problems with trusting another person’s moral testimony, perhaps the most prominent of which is that it fails to deliver moral understanding. Without moral understanding, one cannot do the right thing for the right reason, and so acting on trusted moral testimony lacks moral worth. This chapter, however, argues that moral advice differs from moral testimony, differs from it in a way that enables a defender of moral advice to parry this worry about moral worth. The basic idea is that an advisor and an advisee can together constitute a joint agent, and that this joint agent’s action can indeed have moral worth. So while the advisee himself might not do the right thing for the right reason (this because all alone he lacks the right reason), and while the advisor herself might not do the right thing for the right reason (this because all alone she does not do the right thing), they together do the right thing for the right reason.

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