Moral Knowledge Does Not Exist

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Moral Knowledge Does Not Exist

1. Ethical intuitions are necessary for ethical knowledge.

2. Ethical intuitions are too unreliable to be a source of knowledge.

therefore:

3. Ethical knowledge is not possible.

I am going to try to support this argument.

The conclusion is interesting because we humans, many of us at least, appear to have ethical knowledge in whatever sense we have knowledge of non-ethical matters.

We were just talking about this. I'm taking this for granted throughout today.

I have cited a philosopher, Kagan, we has defended this view. There are plenty of philosophers who would disagree, of course.

To those who disagree I don't have anything to offer today, but I would be happy to explore that further another day.

One thing I will say: I am looking for a view that is consistent with discoveries in cognitive psychology. While it used to be plausible to conjecture that humans have a magical faculty for perceiving ethical truths, we now know that this is false.

This is the claim that we have not yet established.

If I can establish this claim, I will have made the argument work.

BTW: feature of university philosophy—precision about the argument you are evaluating. Typically you will be taking much smaller steps. (campbell is here because he says philospohy is thinking in slow motion.)

first attempt

Ask them what I’m attempting to do

So why think that ethical intuitions are too unreliable to be a source of knowledge? One possible reason is cultural variation.

cultural variation, illustrated by purity

Good evidence for cultural variation since liberals tend to barely recognize purity as an ethical issue at all, whereas people who are socially conservative do well on this.

This is based on comparing means: it’s what you need (scalar) measurement invariance for!

BTW university research—it’s not an anecdote from Herodotus, it’s based on an actual discovery.

The difference in ethical intutions about purity matters. It predicts attitudes about ‘gay marriage, euthanasia, abortion, and pornography [...], stem cell research, environmental attitudes, [...] social distancing in real-world social networks’ and more (Graham et al., 2019).

I do think this argument is quite convincing.

A dinner guest vomits on you and then eats it. One person’s intuition is that this action is deeply immoral, but another’s intution is that this action is merely a bit rude.

They cannot both be right. So if they each rely on their intuitions as sources of knowledge, at most one will have ethical knowledge

Of course it will seem to you that your intuitions are right and another person’s are wrong.

But aren’t at least some intuitions universal?

‘one finds nearly complete agreement among moral intuitions [...] such as:

It is right to protect one’s children from lethal danger.’

(Bengson et al., 2020, p. 19)

I mentioned this one earlier.

No: maternal infanticide (Hrdy, 1979)

‘a mother in a hunter-gatherer society examines her baby right after birth and [...] makes a conscious decision to either keep the baby or let it die.’ (Hrdy, 2011, p. 198)

‘unlike any other ape, a mother in a hunter-gatherer society examines her baby right after birth and, depending on its specific attributes and her own social circumstances (especially how much social support she is likely to have), makes a conscious decision to either keep the baby or let it die.’ (Hrdy, 2011, p. 198)

Think about this for a moment. Some people—probably most of us here—have strong intuitions that killing an infant would be morally wrong.

But others have the intuition that, in some cases it would be morally wrong not to kill an infant. (∞todo find the source where it says immoral to keep.)

The dark side of cooperative breeding.

So there is not anything like complete agreement.

1. Ethical intuitions are necessary for ethical knowledge.

2. Ethical intuitions are too unreliable to be a source of knowledge.

therefore:

3. Ethical knowledge is not possible.

First attempt to support this argument is complete.

Why go on and do more? Usually I say give just one good argument.

So in an essay you would not give another argument (unless this one fails—in which case, why are you giving it at all?)

But for the purposes of discussion I want to offer you two lines of argument.

After all, I anticipate that you are an argumentative bunch and will not accept my arguments. So I want to make it difficult for you.

second attempt

Ask them what I’m attempting to do

Foot introduced us to trolley cases.

This is drop. Quoted (almost) from somewhere.

Mary notices a trolley rolling out of control. If Mary does nothing, the trolley will kill five people on the track. If Mary pulls a lever it will release a trapdoor in the footbridge and one person will fall onto the track—the trolley will kill the person, but then slow down and not hit the five other people farther down the track.

May Mary pull the lever?

Why may Chidi but not Mary?

Schwitzgebel & Cushman (2015, p. figure~2 (part))

Waldmann, Nagel, & Wiegmann (2012, p. 288) offers a brief summary of some factors which have been considered to influence including:

- whether an agent is part of the danger (e.g. on the trolley) or a bystander;

- whether an action involves forceful contact with a victim;

- whether an action targets an object or the victim;

- how directly the victim’s suffering impinges on the agent; and

- how the victim is described.

‘A brief summary of the research of the past years is that it has been shown that almost all these confounding factors influence judgments, along with a number of others’

(Waldmann et al., 2012, p. 288).

More on handout, specifically about factors which influence philosophers.

‘Our moral judgments are apparently sensitive to idiosyncratic factors, which cannot plausibly appear as the basis of an interpersonal normative standard. [...] we are not in a position to introspectively isolate and abstract away from these factors.’

(Rini, 2013, p. 265)

1. Ethical intuitions are influenced by extraneous factors.

therefore:

2. Ethical intuitions are too unreliable to be a source of knowledge.

1. Ethical intuitions are necessary for ethical knowledge.

2. Ethical intuitions are too unreliable to be a source of knowledge.

therefore:

3. Ethical knowledge is not possible.

Second attempt to support this argument is complete.

- between cultures there are inconsistent ethical intuitions

- ethical intuitions are influenced by extraneous factors

First table discussion. Over to you. qr code is in case you need online handout to look something up.

Are ethical intuitions so unreliable that they cannot be a source of ethical knowledge?

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Moral Knowledge Does Not Exist

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