Conclusions

In this chapter, I summarize the main claims that I endorse in the book. The claims are organized thematically, and I provide references to the specific sections and chapters in which I discuss the themes. The main themes are: 1. General Theses and Methodological Assumptions; 2. Reflective Equilibrium and Coherence as a Source of Moral Knowledge; 3. Social Aspects of Moral Knowledge; 4. Experience and Observation as Sources of Moral Knowledge; 5. Knowing the Difference Between Right and Wrong, Ryle’s Puzzle, and Losing Moral Knowledge. My hope is that this chapter will be useful for those who wish to read selectively.

Observation and Experience

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.

Moral Knowledge from Others

This chapter explores a number of philosophical issues raised by the possibility of arriving at moral views by relying on other people. I defend the Moral Inheritance View, according to which a person whose earliest moral views are inherited from her social environment might very well have substantial moral knowledge even before she is in a position to begin critically reflecting upon or reasoning about those views. More generally, I argue that other people are in principle potentially rich sources of moral knowledge. To the extent that we have reservations about the propriety of forming moral views by relying on others—as opposed to through the exercise of our own autonomous judgment—what is legitimate in those reservations does not derive from its being impossible to acquire moral knowledge in this way, but rather from other sources.

Introduction

This introductory chapter contains a brief overview of the topics the book addresses, together with a discussion of the working hypothesis: that moral knowledge can be acquired in any of the ways in which we acquire ordinary empirical knowledge, and that our efforts to acquire and preserve such knowledge are subject to frustration in all of the same ways that our efforts to acquire and preserve ordinary empirical knowledge are. Section 1.2 discusses methodological preliminaries and assumptions concerning the relative priority of moral epistemology (as opposed to metaphysics or semantics), the standards of moral vs. non-moral knowledge, and the relationship between moral knowledge and justified belief. Section 1.3 introduces another theme that unifies many of the arguments and views presented in this book, namely that our access to moral knowledge has an important social dimension.

Losing Moral Knowledge

Some philosophers—including Gilbert Ryle, Ronald Dworkin, and Thomas Nagel—have held that there are important respects in which our cognitive relationship to morality is more secure than our cognitive relationship to ordinary empirical knowledge. I defend the claim that moral knowledge is susceptible to being lost in the same ways in which non-moral knowledge is, including by being forgotten and by being debunked. I offer a novel solution to Ryle’s puzzle about “forgetting the difference between right and wrong.” The chapter raises, and suggests answers to, a number of underexplored questions, including questions about the extent to which some cases of moral corruption are best understood as cognitive processes (i.e. processes involving a loss of knowledge), as well as questions about the kinds of considerations that could in principle make it reasonable for us to lose confidence even in moral claims that strike us as obviously correct.

Reflective Equilibrium, Its Virtues and Its Limits

For many moral philosophers, the method of reflective equilibrium is the correct account of how moral inquiry should ideally be conducted; it stands at the very center of moral epistemology. I argue that although the method of reflective equilibrium embodies important insights, it does not have the kind of centrality for moral epistemology that has been claimed for it. Impeccable application of the method is neither necessary nor sufficient for moral knowledge, and on its most defensible interpretation, the method takes for granted that we already have some moral knowledge (or at least reasonable beliefs). Because the ability of reflective equilibrium reasoning to deliver new moral knowledge generally depends on our already having substantial moral knowledge from other sources, the method is not a promising answer to the traditional epistemological challenge of how we are able to acquire moral knowledge in the first place.