Abstract
Moral realism and some of its constitutive theses, e.g., cognitivism, face the following challenge. If they are true, then it seems that we should predict that deference to moral testimony is appropriate under the same conditions as deference to non-moral testimony. Yet, many philosophers intuit that deference to moral testimony is not appropriate, even in otherwise ordinary conditions. In this paper I show that the challenge is cogent only if the appropriateness in question is disambiguated in a particular way. To count against realism and its constitutive theses, moral deference must fail to be appropriate in specifically the way that the theses predict it is appropriate. I argue that this is not the case. In brief, I argue that realism and allied theses predict only that deference to moral testimony is epistemically appropriate, but that the intuitive data plausibly show only that it is not morally appropriate. If I am right, then there is reason to doubt the metaethical relevance of much of the skepticism regarding moral deference in recent literature.
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Notes
McGrath (2011: 115) calls this intuition a “datum.” For literature reviews, see Jones and Schroeter (2012) and Hills (2013). Some articles that helped set the contemporary agenda are Jones (1999), Nickel (2001), Driver (2006), Hopkins (2007), Hills (2009) and McGrath (2009). For dissents from the common intuition, see Anscombe (1981), Singer (1972), Jones (1999), Sliwa (2012), Tiwald (2012), Groll and Decker (2014), Enoch (2014), Driver (2013, 2015), McShane (2017) and Lord (draft). A quick note on terminology: there is nothing essential about using the predicate “inappropriate” in these arguments. Different philosophers describe the problem of moral deference in different ways, but whether we use “inappropriate,” “odd,” “impermissible,” “illicit,” or some other evaluative term, the argument of this essay applies.
See especially Nickel (2001), Driver (2006), McGrath (2009, 2011) and Hills (2015), each of whom ultimately seeks to respond to the challenges on behalf of the relevant metaethic. See Enoch (2014: 234–235) for a more general argument that any metaethical theory on which some moral judgments are “in some way more okay than others” will be a potential target for such an argument.
A quick cautionary word about cases. As Hopkins (2007, 613) rightly notes, “The examples that persuade one side fail to convince the other, and nothing more abstract can be appealed to that is not itself controversial. Stalemate rapidly threatens.” Cases of moral deference are frequently plagued by features that make deference inappropriate but do not derive from the distinctly moral features of the case. For example, moral status involves deference about a moral matter that ought to be obvious, and it may be inappropriate to defer about something obvious. Likewise, some cases of moral deference (for example, deference about whether it is morally permissible to eat meat, which is a popular example in the literature) are plagued by the problem of expert and peer disagreement. Perhaps it is inappropriate to defer about something subject to widespread expert and peer disagreement. However, obviousness and disagreement impede appropriate deference no matter the domain of belief. To get the intuitive force of the cases, you have to think that the moral content in particular contributes to the inappropriateness of deference. This essay takes the intuition onboard, though see the references in n. 1 for dissent.
Following Sayre-McCord (2013).
This is not to say that metaethical theses are silent on normative questions altogether. Nihilism is a limiting case incompatible with every moral claim, though it is properly bracketed in discussions of moral deference. Some philosophers, e.g., Dworkin (1996), have argued that certain anti-realist theories share this feature with nihilism; see Dreier (2002) for critical discussion. Other theses, e.g., Cornell Realism, are commonly thought to be especially friendly to some variety of consequentialism as a normative theory. But these philosophers do not claim that metaethical theses pronounce on specific first-order questions like whether it is morally inappropriate to F, for some particular action type F.
In Robert Hopkins’ influential terminology, only “epistemic pessimism” about moral testimony could even in principle pose a challenge for moral realism or its constitutive theses.
Driver cites Jones (1999), Driver (2006), and Hills (2009) in support. She goes on to say, “Yet, even granting this, one might still hold that a person ought not to rely solely on the testimony of someone else in deciding what one ought to do, that such reliance exhibits moral failure” (emphasis mine).
Several authors either suggest or endorse something in the neighborhood of a requirement for moral understanding. Hopkins (2007) calls it “The Requirement” and Nickel (2001) calls it the “Recognition Requirement.” See also Hills (2009, 2010). Groll and Decker (2014) endorse an understanding requirement, but they argue that the requirement in no way uniquely marks the moral domain.
Hills (2010) adds, plausibly, that moral understanding involves not just knowing p and knowing why p, but having internalized or grasped “the relationship between a moral proposition p and these reasons so that you can, for instance, use that relationship to form new beliefs” (192). She also speaks of an “appreciation of the reasons why p” that can “accredited” to you as “a kind of achievement” (193). For Hills, although moral understanding requires propositional knowledge, it contains a non-propositional component akin to non-propositional accounts of knowledge-how (195–198).
Hills (2009) makes this explicit: “If you want to be properly oriented to moral reasons, you have excellent instrumental reasons not to defer to experts or to put your trust in moral testimony. But these are practical reasons, not epistemic ones, so it does not follow that it is epistemically rational to treat moral testimony in this way” (126, emphases mine).
Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pushing me to clarify why I think that the requirement of moral understanding is not an epistemic requirement in the relevant sense.
Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for suggesting that I make note of this issue.
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Brian Barnett, Alex Campbell, Ian Cruise, Sarah McGrath, Carla Merino-Rajme, Ram Neta, Ryan Preston-Roedder, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, Russ Shafer-Landau, Keshav Singh, Silvan Wittwer, and audiences at both the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association and the North and South Carolina Philosophical Societies, for discussion of this paper.
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Blanchard, J. Moral realism and reliance on moral testimony. Philos Stud 176, 1141–1153 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-018-1051-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-018-1051-5