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I use the example of abortion to show that there are some unresolvablemoral disagreements. I list four sources of unresolvablemoraldisagreement: 1) differences in the rankings of the basic evils of death, pain, disability, loss of freedom, and loss of pleasure, 2) differences in the interpretation ofmoral rules, 3) ideological differences in the view of human nature and human societies, and 4) differences concerning who is impartially protected by themoral rules. It (...) is this last difference that is the source of unresolvabledisagreement concerning themoral acceptability of abortion. I examine the views of Don Marquis and Mary Ann Warren who present opposing arguments concerning themoral acceptability of abortion. I show that their failure to take account of this last difference leads to flaws in their arguments that show that neither has been successful in showing that their position is the uniquely correct one. (shrink)

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Widespreaddisagreement aboutmoral issues is a prominent aspect of contemporary pluralistic societies. Surveys indicate that in the United States opinion is split close to 50/50 on the morality of abortion, the death penalty, same-sex relationships, and physician-assisted suicide. It is also a subject with a long philosophical history, going back to Plato and Aristotle and drives contemporary debates aboutmoral relativism, scepticism and objectivity. Should we be concerned about the extent ofmoraldisagreement? What (...) causes it? What are the onsequence ofmoraldisagreement? In this thorough and clearly written introduction to the philosophy ofmoraldisagreement and its philosophical and political implications Richard Rowland examines and assesses the following topics and questions: Relativism andmoraldisagreementMoral realism Peerdisagreement,moral knowledge and the problem of conciliationism Non-cognitivism andmoraldisagreementMoral uncertaintyMoraldisagreement and coercion New directions. Combining clear philosophical analysis with summaries of the latest research and including chapter summaries, annotated further reading and a glossary,MoralDisagreement is ideal for students of ethics, metaethics and political philosophy as well as philosophical topics that are closely related such as relativism, scepticism and objectivity. It will also be of interest to those in related disciplines such as political philosophy, ethics and public policy and philosophy of law. (shrink)

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If the extension of amoral expression varies depending on the context of utterance, as contextualism maintains, then two speakers who embrace differentmoral norms or come from different societies might refer to different properties when they use that expression. Contextualism therefore appears unable to accommodate the intuition that such speakers can disagree aboutmoral matters. For instance, a progressive and a conservative might disagree about the permissibility of abortion. But if theirmoral predicates pick out (...) different properties, what are they disagreeing about? Some have tried to meet this challenge by focusing on the shared assumptions between the interlocutors about their communicative exchange rather than on the semantic contents conveyed by the sentences that the interlocutors assert. This paper presents such an account ofmoraldisagreement that appeals to the questions under discussion (QUDs) that interlocutors mutually assume to be part of the background of their conversation. According to this account, interlocutors who embrace differentmoral norms can disagree because they accept an opaque QUD, which they are unable to resolve. This account allows contextualists to preserve their core semantic claim that when speakers usemoral expressions, the semantic contents of their claims vary across contexts of utterance. But at the mutually presupposed discourse level, the speakers presuppose a common QUD, to which the contents of both their assertions are possible answers. (shrink)

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The fact ofmoraldisagreement when conjoined with Conciliationism, an independently attractive view about the epistemic significancedisagreement, seems to entailmoral skepticism. This worries those who like Conciliationism, the independently attractive view, but dislikemoral skepticism. Others, equally inclined againstmoral skepticism, think this is a reductio of Conciliationism. I argue that they are both wrong. There is no reductio and nothing to worry about.

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This book disassembles themoral assessment of business practices into its constituent parts to identify and clarify the four key concepts that form the basis of importantmoral disagreements in business: ‘personhood,’ ‘ownership,’ ‘harm,’ and ‘consent.’ ‘Moral bottom lines’ are those fundamental concepts in business ethics that ultimately account for our most resilientmoral claims and unsurpassable convictions, and exploring them provides essential insights into the grounds on which we disagree in business ethics. This analysis is (...) useful for students in business school looking to understand fundamentalmoral disagreements in business and for practitioners interested in connecting practice with their ownmoral intuitions. The book also challenges scholars of business ethics by arguing that we can reduce business ethics disagreements to these four issues. "This is the most refreshing book on business ethics to appear in a long time. By focusing on 'personhood,' 'ownership,' 'harm,' and 'consent,' Eabrasu brings a new level of clarity and insight into disagreements on business ethic issues. Rather than reaching for an artificial utopian resolution, he embraces the challenge of explaining why we disagree. This is a must-read for serious business ethic scholars."Nicolas CapaldiLoyola University New OrleansLegendre-Soulé Distinguished Chair in Business Ethics. (shrink)

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The existence of deep and persistentmoraldisagreement poses a problem for a defender ofmoral knowledge. It seems particularly clear that a philosopher who thinks that we know a great manymoral truths should explain how human populations have failed to converge on those truths. In this paper, I do two things. First, I show that the problem is more difficult than it is often taken to be, and second, I criticize a popular response, which (...) involves claiming that many falsemoral beliefs are the product of nonmoral ignorance. (shrink)

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This article is a book review of ‘Moral Disagreements in Business’ by Marian Eabrasu, published by Springer 2019 134 pp.

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Widespreadmoraldisagreement raises ethical, epistemological, political, and metaethical questions. Is the best explanation of our widespreadmoral disagreements that there are no objectivemoral facts and thatmoral relativism is correct? Or should we think that just as there is widespreaddisagreement about whether we have free will but there is still an objective fact about whether we have it, similarly,moraldisagreement has no bearing on whether morality is objective? More (...) practically, is it arrogant to stick to our guns in the face ofmoraldisagreement? Must we suspend belief about the morality of controversial actions such as eating meat and having an abortion? And doesmoraldisagreement affect the laws that we should have? For instance, doesdisagreement about the justice of heavily redistributive taxation affect whether such taxation is legitimate? In this thorough and clearly written introduction tomoraldisagreement and its philosophical and practical implications, Richard Rowland examines and assesses the following topics and questions: -/- How doesmoraldisagreement affect what we should do and believe in our day-to-day lives? Epistemic peerhood andmoral disagreements with our epistemic peers. Metaethics andmoraldisagreement. Relativism,moral objectivity,moral realism, and non-cognitivism.Moraldisagreement and normative ethics. Liberalism, democracy, anddisagreement.Moral compromise.Moral uncertainty. -/- Combining clear philosophical analysis with summaries of the latest research and suggestions for further reading,MoralDisagreement is ideal for students of ethics, metaethics, political philosophy, and philosophical topics that are closely related, such as relativism and scepticism. It will also be of interest to those in related disciplines such as public policy and philosophy of law. (shrink)

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This paper sketches a general account of how to respond in an epistemically rational way tomoraldisagreement. Roughly, the account states that when two parties, A and B, disagree as to whether p, A says p while B says not-p, this is higher-order evidence that A has made a cognitive error on the first-order level of reasoning in coming to believe that p (and likewise for B with respect to not-p). If such higher-order evidence is not defeated, (...) then one rationally ought to reduce one’s confidence with respect to the proposition in question. We term this the higher-order evidence account (the HOE account), and present it as a superior to what we might call standard conciliationism, which holds that when agents A and B disagree about p, and are (known) epistemic peers, they should both suspend judgement about p or adjust their confidence towards the mean of A and B’s prior credences in p. Many have suspected that standard conciliationism is implausible and may have skeptical implications. After presenting the HOE account, we put it to work by applying it to a range of cases ofmoraldisagreement, including those that have feature in recent debates assuming standard conciliationism. We show that the HOE account support reasonable, non-skeptical verdicts in a range of cases. Note that this is a paper onmoraldisagreement, not on the HOE account, thus the account is merely stated here, while defended more fully elsewhere. (shrink)

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While many have argued thatmoraldisagreement poses a challenge tomoral knowledge, the precise nature of this challenge is controversial. Indeed, in themoral epistemology literature, there are many different versions of ‘the’ argument frommoraldisagreement tomoral scepticism. This paper contributes to this vast literature onmoraldisagreement by arguing for two theses: 1. All (or nearly all)moraldisagreement arguments share an underlying structure; and, 2. (...) Allmoraldisagreement arguments that satisfy this underlying structure cannot establishmoral scepticism because this underlying structure leads to a previously unrecognized reductio ad absurdum. In short, I argue that this reductio argument (very likely) refutes all versions of themoraldisagreement tomoral scepticism argument in one fell swoop. (shrink)

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Whenever A judges that x-ing is morally wrong and B judges that x-ing is not morally wrong, we think that they disagree. The two standard types of accounts of suchmoral disagreements both presuppose that the class ofmoral wrong-judgments is uniform, though in different ways. According to the belief account, thedisagreement is doxastic: A and B have beliefs with conflicting cognitive contents. This presupposes “belief-uniformity”: that the content ofmoral concepts is invariant in such (...) a way that, whenever A believes that x-ing is morally wrong and B believes that x-ing is not morally wrong, their beliefs have mutually inconsistent contents. According to the attitude account,moral disagreements are non-doxastic: A and B have clashing practical attitudes. This presupposes “attitude-uniformity”: thatmoral judgments are always accompanied by, or consist of, desire-like attitudes. Consequently, neither account is available if both uniformity-claims are rejected – as e.g., various forms of content-relativism do. This paper presents a new non-doxastic account of deonticmoraldisagreement, consistent with the rejection of both uniformity-claims. I argue first, that even if deonticmoral judgments are not desires, and are not always accompanied by desires, they have practical direction in the same sense as desires: they are attitudes that one can act in accordance or discordance with. Second: deonticmoraldisagreement can be understood as clashes in practical direction: roughly, A and B morally disagree if, and only if, some way of acting is in accordance with A’s judgment but in discordance with B’s. (shrink)

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This paper investigates and raises several criticisms of Dietrich von Hildebrand’s account ofmoraldisagreement in terms of the phenomenon ofmoral value blindness. In an effort to vindicate Hildebrand’s account, the paper examines his distinction betweenmoral (and morally-relevant) values and non-moral (non-morally-relevant) values – a distinction the working-out of which Hildebrand declared to be a ‘fundamental task’ for ethics. The implications of Hildebrand’s theory of ‘morality’ for deliberation andmoral rigorism are then (...) discussed. The conclusion of these investigations is that Hildebrand’s account ofmoraldisagreement renders his account ofmoral knowledge unsuitable for those disinclined tomoral theology, and therefore of limited value as part of a purely philosophical account ofmoral knowledge. The paper ends positively by sketching what Hildebrandian ethics might look like without Hildebrand’s notion of the ‘moral.’. (shrink)

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The key characteristic of deep disagreements is that any attempt to resolve them just reveals new points ofdisagreement that stem from underlying commitments. Manymoral disagreements appear to be like this. Do people have amoral obligation to get vaccinated? Should women always have the right to abortion – or is abortion rarely or never permissible? People who disagree on these issues often accept very different underlying values and commitments. In this paper, I argue that when (...) deepmoral disagreements become widespread, they can constitute an obstacle for achieving or sustainingmoral progress because the interlocutors of a deepdisagreement fail to engage in rational conversation. I develop Fogelin’s (Informal Logic 7, 1985) thesis, influenced by Wittgenstein, that deep disagreements do not occur in normal conversational circumstances. This is primarily done by applying Robert’s (Semantics and Pragmatics 5:1–69, 2012) theory of how questions determine the direction and aim of conversation. I argue that the parties of deepdisagreement are unable to include new questions in their discourse context that would provide strategies for resolving the first-ordermoral question (e.g., concerning abortion or vaccines) that they disagree about. I propose that a possible strategy for resolving such deep disagreements by engaging in conversational pretense, but ultimately argue that this strategy faces a number of worries. (shrink)

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This chapter focuses on the connection betweenmoraldisagreement andmoral relativism.Moral relativists, generally speaking, think both (i) that there is no unique objectively correctmoral standard and (ii) that the rightness and wrongness of an action depends in some way on amoral standard accepted by some group or an individual. This chapter will first consider the metaphysical and epistemic arguments formoral relativism that begin from the premise that there is (...) considerable amount ofmoraldisagreement both within individual societies and between them. The second half of the chapter, by contrast, focuses on the objection thatmoral relativism threatens to make us unable to havemoral disagreements because it seems to make us speak past one another. This part of the chapter also evaluates relativist responses to thisdisagreement problem that rely on semantic opacity,disagreement in attitude, metalinguistic negotiations, and truth relativism. The chapter finally concludes by considering future directions of research in this area. (shrink)

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Artificially intelligent systems will be used to make increasingly important decisions about us. Many of these decisions will have to be made without universal agreement about the relevantmoral facts. For other kinds ofdisagreement, it is at least usually obvious what kind of solution is called for. What makesmoraldisagreement especially challenging is that there are three different ways of handling it. _Moral solutions_ apply amoral theory or related principles and largely ignore (...) the details of thedisagreement. _Compromise solutions_ apply a method of finding a compromise and taking information about thedisagreement as input. _Epistemic solutions_ apply an evidential rule that treats the details of thedisagreement as evidence ofmoral truth. Proposals for all three kinds of solutions can be found in the AI ethics and value alignment literature, but little has been said to justify choosing one over the other. I argue that the choice is best framed in terms of _moral risk_. (shrink)

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In an influential article, Simon C. May forcefully argued that, properly understood, there can never be principled reasons formoral compromise. While there may be pragmatic reasons for compromising that involve, for instance, concern for political expediency or for stability, there are properly speaking no principled reasons to compromise. My aim in the article is to show how principledmoral compromise in the context ofmoral disagreements over policy options is possible. I argue that when we disagree, (...) principled reasons favoring compromises or compromising can assume a more significant part of what makes a position all things considered best, and in this waydisagreement can groundmoral compromise. (shrink)

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Deepmoral disagreements exist between Christians and non-Christians. I argue that Christians should resist the temptation to pin all such disagreements on the irrationality of their disputants. To this end, I develop an epistemological framework on which both parties can be rational—the key being that their beliefs are formed from different perspectives and, hence, on the basis of different sets of evidence. I then alleviate concerns that suchmoral perspectivalism leads to relativism or skepticism, or that it prohibits (...) rational discourse. I end by exploring new avenues for resolving deepmoral disagreements opened up by the perspectivalist approach. (shrink)

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When speakers utter conflictingmoral sentences, it seems clear that they disagree. It has often been suggested that the fact that the speakers disagree gives us evidence for a claim about the semantics of the sentences they are uttering. Specifically, it has been suggested that the existence of thedisagreement gives us reason to infer that there must be an incompatibility between the contents of these sentences. This inference then plays a key role in a now-standard argument against (...) certain theories inmoral semantics. In this paper, we introduce new evidence that bears on this debate. We show that there aremoral conflict cases in which people are inclined to say both that the two speakers disagree and that it is not the case at least one of them must be saying something incorrect. We then explore how we might understand such disagreements. As a proof of concept, we sketch an account of the concept ofdisagreement and an independently motivated theory ofmoral semantics which, together, explain the possibility of such cases. (shrink)

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Folke Tersman explores what we can learn about the nature ofmoral thinking by examiningmoraldisagreement. He explains how diversity of opinion onmoral issues undermines the idea thatmoral convictions can be objectively valued. Arguments onmoral thinking are often criticized for not being able to explain why there is a contrast between ethics and other areas in which there isdisagreement, but where one does not give up the idea of (...) an objective truth, as in the natural sciences. Tersman shows that the contrast has to do with facts about when, and on what basis,moral convictions can be correctly attributed to an agent or speaker. (shrink)

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The problem ofmoraldisagreement has been presented as an objection to contextualist semantics for ‘ought’, since it is not clear that contextualism can accommodate or give a convincing gloss of suchdisagreement. I argue that independently of our semantics, disagreements over ‘ought’ in non-cooperative contexts are best understood as indirect metalinguistic disputes, which is easily accommodated by contextualism. If this is correct, then rather than posing a problem for contextualism, the data frommoral disagreements provides (...) some reason to adopt a semantics that allows contextual variance in the meanings of ‘ought’. (shrink)

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This chapter details three sources of normativemoraldisagreement and surveys 11 approaches to understanding its implications for normative ethics. Section 2 explains how normativemoraldisagreement can emerge from first-order commonsensemoraldisagreement, second-order metaethicaldisagreement overmoral concepts and methods of ethics, and third-order metaphilosophicaldisagreement over the merits of different philosophical methods. Section 3 then details howmoraldisagreement has been argued to support eithermoral (...) error theory (Section 3.1),moral skepticism (Section 3.2),moral relativism (Section 3.3), commonmoral foundations beneath areas ofdisagreement (Section 3.4), empirical approaches to ethics (Section 3.5), considerations of peer-disagreement (Section 3.6), convergence ofmoral frameworks (Section 3.7),moral compromise (Section 3.8),moral pluralism (Section 3.9),moral pragmatism (Section 3.10), or metaphilosophical examination of the epistemic merits of different philosophical methods (Section 3.11). (shrink)

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Faultless disagreements are disagreements between two people, neither of whom has made a mistake or is at fault. It has been argued that there are faultlessmoral disagreements, that they cannot be accommodated bymoral realism, and that in order to account for them, a form of relativism must be accepted. I argue thatmoral realism can accommodate faultlessmoraldisagreement, provided that the phenomena is understood epistemically, and I give a brief defence of the (...) relevantmoral epistemology. (shrink)

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According to contextualist theories in metaethics, when you use amoral term in a context, the context plays an ineliminable part in determining what natural property will be the semantic value of the term. Furthermore, on subjectivist and relativist versions of these views, it is either the speaker's ownmoral code or hermoral community'smoral code that constitutes the reference-fixing context. One standard objection to views of this type is that they fail to enable us (...) to disagree in ordinary conversations. In this chapter, I develop a new response to this objection on the basis of Kai von Fintel and Anthony Gillies' notion of proposition clouds. I argue that, because we live in a multicultural society, the conversational contexts we face will fail to disambiguate between all the things we could mean. This is why we can at best put into play proposition clouds when we makemoral utterances. All the propositions in such clouds are then available for rejection and acceptance on the behalf of our audiences. The norms of conversation then guide us to make informative contributions to the conversation - accept and reject propositions in a way that leads to co-ordination of action and choice. (shrink)

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The existence of fundamentalmoral disagreements is a central problem formoral realism and has often been contrasted with an alleged absence ofdisagreement 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 ofmoral vis-à-vis mathematical realism. I argue that the analogy between mathematical andmoraldisagreement 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 whichmoral disagreements andmoral realism are not. 11. (shrink)

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Moraldisagreement is sometimes thought to pose problems formoral realism because it shows that we cannot achieve knowledge of themoral facts the realists posit. In particular, it is "fundamental"moraldisagreement—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 thedisagreement challenge (...) is flawed as it stands. The reason is that the epistemic assumptions it requires are incompatible with the possibility of fundamentaldisagreement. 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 whydisagreement sometimes leads to skepticism. (shrink)

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I defend convergentist realism from counterarguments that appeal to apparently deep and widespreadmoraldisagreement. Pace recent claims by antirealists, I first argue that scenarios such as the prominent “Magistrate and the Mob” case betray cognitive defects in subjects, such as partiality, that we would not find in ideal agents. After this, I defend three reasons to expect cross-culturaldisagreement onmoral cases even if convergentist realism is true. These defusing explanations concern individual and group (...) class='Hi'>moral development and themoral models on which agents rely. While developing my defense ofmoral realism, I aim for comprehensive engagement with responses to arguments by Doris, Plakias, and others that have been dispersed across several related articles. (shrink)

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Ethics’ reputation for wide-ranging, interminabledisagreement, coupled with conciliationism regardingdisagreement, has been leveraged as a basis formoral skepticism. The focus of this essay is on this challenge as it has been applied to philosophical ethics. I call the empirical conjecture underwriting the challenge into question – namely, thatdisagreement is widespread and roughly balanced within ethics – by describing the results of two studies involving over 400moral philosophers. The studies reveal widespread agreement, (...) and even consensus, on a range of purportedly contentiousmoral issues – capital punishment, abortion, eating meat, physician-assisted dying, euthanasia, and many others. The evidence the studies provide suggest that the extent ofdisagreement within ethics that the conciliationist challenge relies upon likely does not exist. (shrink)

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In any society influenced by a plurality of cultures, there will be widespread, systematic differences about at least some important values, includingmoral values. Many of these differences look like deep disagreements, difficult to resolve objectively if that is possible at all. One common response to the suspicion that these disagreements are unsettleable has always beenmoral relativism. In the flurry of sympathetic treatments of this doctrine in the last two decades, attention has understandably focused on the simpler (...) case in which one fairly self-contained and culturally homogeneous society confronts, at least in thought, the values of another; but most have taken relativism to have implications within a single pluralistic society as well. I am not among the sympathizers. That is partly because I am more optimistic than many about how manymoral disagreements can be settled, but I shall say little about that here. For, even on the assumption that many disputes are unsettleable, I continue to find relativism a theoretically puzzling reaction to the problem ofmoraldisagreement, and a troubling one in practice, especially when the practice involves regular interaction among those who disagree. This essay attempts to explain why. (shrink)

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In his book On What Matters, Derek Parfit defends a version ofmoral non-naturalism, a view according to which there are objective normative truths, some of which aremoral truths, and we have a reliable way of discovering them. Thesemoral truths do not exist, however, as parts of the natural universe nor in Plato’s heaven. While explaining in what way these truths exist and how we discover them, Parfit makes analogies between morality on the one hand, (...) and mathematics and logic on the other.Moral truths “exist” in a way that numbers exist, and we discover these truths in a similar way as we discover truths about numbers. By the end of the second volume, Parfit also responds to a powerful objection against his view, an objection based on the phenomenon ofmoraldisagreement. If people widely and deeply disagree about what is themoral truth, it is doubtful whether we have a reliable way of discovering it. In his reply, he claims that in ideal conditions for thinking aboutmoral questions, we would all have sufficiently similarmoral beliefs. However, we often find ourselves in less-than-ideal conditions due to various factors that distort our ability to agree. Therefore, differences inmoral opinion can be expected. In this paper, I draw a connection between these parts of Parfit’s theory and comment on them. Firstly, I argue that Parfit’s analogy with mathematics and logic and his answer to thedisagreement objection are in tension because there are important epistemic differences between morality and these fields. If one would try to account for the differences, one would have to sacrifice some measure of similarity between morality and them. Secondly, I comment on Parfit’s reply to thedisagreement objection itself. I believe that, although his description of ideal conditions has some potential for reachingmoral agreement, it may be difficult to tell if ideal conditions prevail. This obscurity spells further trouble for Parfit’s overall theory. (shrink)

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This paper considers John Doris, Stephen Stich, Alexandra Plakias, and colleagues’ recent attempts to utilize empirical studies of cross-cultural variation inmoral judgment to support a version of the argument fromdisagreement againstmoral realism. Crucially, Doris et al. claim that themoral disagreements highlighted by these studies are not susceptible to the standard ‘diffusing’ explanations realists have developed in response to earlier versions of the argument. I argue that plausible hypotheses about the cognitive processes underlying (...) ordinarymoral judgment and the acquisition ofmoral norms, when combined with a popular philosophical account ofmoral inquiry—the method of reflective equilibrium—undercut the anti-realist force of themoral disagreements that Doris et al. describe. I also show that Stich's recent attempt to provide further theoretical support for Doris et al.'s case is unsuccessful. (shrink)

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Should the existence ofmoraldisagreement reduce one’s confidence in one’smoral judgments? Many have claimed that it should not. They claim that we should be morally self-sufficient: that one’smoral judgment andmoral confidence ought to be determined entirely one’s own reasoning. Others’moral beliefs ought not impact one’s own in any way. I claim thatmoral self-sufficiency is wrong.Moral self-sufficiency ignores the degree to whichmoral judgment is a (...) fallible cognitive process like all the rest. In this paper, I take up two possible routes tomoral self-sufficiency.First, I consider Robert Paul Wolff’s argument that an autonomous being is required to act from his own reasoning. Does Wolff’s argument yieldmoral self-sufficiency? Wolff’s argument does forbid unthinking obedience. But it does not forbid guidance: the use ofmoral testimony to glean evidence about nonmoral states of affairs. An agent can use the existence of agreement ordisagreement as evidence concerning the reliability of their own cognitive abilities, which is entirely nonmoral information. Corroboration and discorroboration yields nonmoral evidence, and no reasonable theory of autonomy can forbid the use of nonmoral evidence. In fact, by using others to check on my own cognitive functionality, an agent is reasoning better and is thereby more autonomous.Second, I consider Philip Nickel’s requirement thatmoral judgment proceed from personal understanding. I argue that the requirement of understanding does forbid unthinking obedience, but not discorroboration. When an agent reasons morally, and then reduces confidence in their judgments through discorroboration, they are in full contact with themoral reasons, and with the epistemic reasons. Discorroboration yields more understanding, not less. (shrink)

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There is not onlymoraldisagreement among ordinary people: there is alsomoraldisagreement among philosophers. Since philosophers might seem to be in the best possible position to reach the truth about morality, suchdisagreement may suggest that either there is no single truth about morality, or at least if there is, it is unknowable. The goal of this paper is to rebut this argument: the best explanation ofmoraldisagreement among philosophers is (...) quite compatible with the thesis that manymoral truths are widely known. (shrink)

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According to the classical argument frommoraldisagreement, the existence of widespread or persistentmoraldisagreement is best explained by, and thus inductively supports the view that there are no objectivemoral facts. One of the most common charges against this argument is that it “overgeneralizes”: it implausibly forces its proponents to deny the existence of objective facts about certain matters of physics, history, philosophy, etc. as well (companions in guilt), or even about its own (...) conclusion or its own soundness (self-defeat). Is this overgeneralization charge justified? In this paper I argue that both overgeneralization objections are rather weak. The companions in guilt version very likely fails, and the self-defeat version more likely fails than not. This result gives us reason to consider the argument frommoraldisagreement more seriously than has recently been done. (shrink)

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This article is about the implications of a conciliatory view about the epistemology of peerdisagreement for ourmoral beliefs. Many have endorsed a conciliatory view about the epistemology of peerdisagreement according to which if we find ourselves in adisagreement about some matter with another whom we should judge to be our epistemic peer on that matter, we must revise our judgment about that matter. This article focuses on three issues about the implications of (...) conciliationism for ourmoral beliefs. The first is whether there is an asymmetry between the implications of conciliationism for the epistemic status of ourmoral beliefs and the implications of conciliationism for the epistemic status of our non-moral beliefs; for instance, some have argued that conciliationism leads to epistemologicalmoral skepticism but not to epistemological nonmoral skepticism. The second is what the implications of conciliationism are for the epistemic status of particularmoral beliefs. The third is whether conciliationism's impact on the epistemic status of ourmoral beliefs has practical implications. (shrink)

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Many philosophers have argued thatmoraldisagreement raises metaphysical and/or epistemological challenges formoral realism. In this paper, I consider whether widespreadmoraldisagreement raises a different sort of challenge by threatening the semantic commitments ofmoral realism. In particular, I suggest that the character of manymoral disagreements gives us reason to suspect that not all competentmoral speakers pick out the same properties as one another when they usemoral (...) terms. If this is so, both sides of amoral dispute may speak truly, and the standard realist diagnosis of such disputes—that at most one party can be correct—is mistaken. My argumentative strategy is to first isolate some features of linguistic exchanges that provide evidence of a lack of co-reference, and then argue that manymoral disputes have these features. I conclude by suggesting that there are plausible accounts ofmoral disputes that do not require co-reference. (shrink)

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Journal of Applied Philosophy, EarlyView.

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This paper argues that Hume was first and foremost amoral psychologist and a determinist, not a moralist. When confronting the fact ofmoraldisagreement, notably in "A Dialogue" affixed to hismoral enquiry, he maintained that it is not psychologically possible to approve of the conflicting norms of other cultures, except in the case of sometimes approving of individuals in other cultures for abiding by those objectionable norms rather than fomenting cultural upheaval. All cultures should (...) nonetheless agree on the most general and fundamentalmoral principles as well as on most specifics. But there are non-trivial specific cases on which there will be irreconcilable disagreements, based on conflicting beliefs concerning utilities, finer matters of taste, and uncertainties over how best to maximize conflicts between the useful/agreeable and the personal/social. In these cases, we would be wise to consider whether tolerating the conflicting views of others would be more useful and agreeable than attempting to enforce conformity. Toleration is among the less obvious virtues, but it is one that experience has by now taught us to adopt, at least in certain cases. (shrink)

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Moraldisagreement is widely held to pose a threat for metaethical realism and objectivity. In this paper I attempt to understand how it is thatmoraldisagreement is supposed to present a problem for metaethical realism. I do this by going through several distinct (though often related) arguments fromdisagreement, carefully distinguishing between them, and critically evaluating their merits. My conclusions are rather skeptical: Some of the arguments I discuss fail rather clearly. Others supply with (...) a challenge to realism, but not one we have any reason to believe realism cannot address successfully. Others beg the question against themoral realist, and yet others raise serious objections to realism, but ones that—when carefully stated—can be seen not to be essentially related tomoraldisagreement. Arguments based onmoraldisagreement itself have almost no weight, I conclude, againstmoral realism. (shrink)

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Canmoral disagreements be rationally resolved? Can universal human rights be defended in face ofmoral disagreements? The problem ofmoraldisagreement is one of the central problems inmoral thinking. It also provides a stimulating stepping-stone to some of the perennial problems of philosophy, such as relativism, scepticism, and objectivity. _Moral Disagreements_ is the first anthology to bring together classic and contemporary readings on this key topic. Clearly divided into five parts; The Historical Debate; (...) Voices from Anthropology; Challenges toMoral Objectivity; Defenses ofMoral Objectivity; and New Directions, the anthology presents readings from the following key thinkers: * Sextus, Empiricus, Chagnon, Wong, MacIntyre * Aquinas, Shweder, Brink, Rawls * Montaigne, Turner, Nussbaum, Narayan * Hume, Mackie, Gewirth * Nietzsche, Williams, Berlin. A distinctive feature of the anthology is that it brings philosophers into dialogue with well-known anthropologists. Also included is a comprehensive introduction by Christopher Gowans, introducing the problem ofmoraldisagreement to those coming to the topic for the first time. (shrink)

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Moraldisagreement about public policies—issues such as abortion, affirmative action, and health care—is a prominent feature of contemporary American democracy. Yet it is not a central concern of the leading theories of democracy. The two dominant democratic approaches in our time—procedural democracy and constitutional democracy—fail to offer adequate responses to the problem ofmoraldisagreement. Both suggest some elements that are necessary in any adequate response, but neither one alone nor both together are sufficient. We argue (...) here that an adequate conception of democracy must makemoral deliberation an essential part of the political process. What we call “deliberative democracy” adds an important dimension to the theory and practice of politics that the leading conceptions of democracy neglect. (shrink)

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Smith has argued thatmoral realism need not be threatened by apparentmoraldisagreement. One reason he gives is thatmoral debate has tended to elicit convergence inmoral views. From here, he argues inductively that current disagreements will likely be resolved on the condition that each party is rational and fully informed. The best explanation for this phenomenon, Smith argues, is that there are mind-independentmoral facts that humans are capable of knowing. In (...) this paper, I seek to challenge this argument—and more recent versions of it—by arguing that historical convergence inmoral views may occur for various arational reasons. If such reasons possibly result in convergence—which Smith effectively concedes—then themoral realist would require an additional a posteriori argument to establish that convergence inmoral views occurred for the right reasons. Hence, Smith-style arguments, as they stand, cannot be mobilised in support ofmoral realism. Rather, this investigation demonstrates the necessity of a genuine history of morality for any convergence claim in support of a meta-ethical view. (shrink)

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The existence of deepmoraldisagreement is used in support of views ranging frommoral relativism to the impossibility ofmoral expertise. This is done despite the fact that it is not at all clear whether deepmoral disagreements actually occur, as the usually given examples are never of real life situations, but of some generalized debates on controversial issues. The paper will try to remedy this, as any strength of arguments appealing to deep (...) class='Hi'>moraldisagreement is partly depended on the fact thedisagreement exists. This will be done by showing that some real life conflicts that are intractable, i.e. notoriously difficult to resolve, share some important features with deepmoraldisagreement. The article also deals with the objection that the mere conceptual possibility renders illustrations of actually happening deepmoral disagreements unnecessary. The problem with such objection is that it depends on theoretical assumptions (i.e. denial ofmoral realism) that are not uncontroversial. Instead, the article claims we need not only suppose deepmoral disagreements exist because they actually occur when some intractable conflicts occur. Thus, in so far as to the deepmoraldisagreement’s existence, the arguments appealing to it are safe. But as intractable conflicts can be resolved, by seeing deepmoral disagreements as constitutive part of them, we might have to consider whether deepmoral disagreements are resolvable too. A brief suggestion of how that might look like is given in the end of the paper. (shrink)

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This chapter offers a new interpretation of Nietzsche’s argument formoral skepticism, an argument that should be of independent philosophical interest as well. On this account, Nietzsche offers a version of the argument frommoraldisagreement, but, unlike familiar varieties, it does not purport to exploit anthropological reports about themoral views of exotic cultures, or even garden-variety conflictingmoral intuitions about concrete cases. Nietzsche, instead, calls attention to the single most important and embarrassing fact (...) about the history ofmoral theorizing by philosophers over two millennia: namely, that no rational consensus has been secured on any substantive, foundational proposition about morality. Persistent and apparently intractabledisagreement on foundational questions, of course, distinguishesmoral theory from inquiry in the sciences and mathematics. According to Nietzsche, the best explanation for thisdisagreement is that, even thoughmoral skepticism is true, philosophers can still construct valid dialectical justifications formoral claims because the premises of different justifications will answer to the psychological needs of at least some philosophers and thus be deemed true by some of them. The chapter concludes by considering various attempts to defuse this abductive argument for scepticism. (shrink)

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Sarah McGrath (2008; 2011) argues that, when it comes to our controversialmoral views, we have no reason to think we are less likely to be in error than those who disagree with us. I refer to this position as theMoral Peer View (MPV). Under pressure from Nathan King (2011a; 2011b), McGrath admits that theMoral Peer View need not always have been true, though she maintains it is true now. Although King seems to think there (...) should be current counterexamples to theMoral Peer View, he holds back from actually proposing any. I argue that those of us who favor marriage equality and gender equality are currently in a position to reject theMoral Peer View with regard to these issues, and I propose conditions under which people can reasonably take theirmoral beliefs to be epistemically advantaged. King and McGrath agree that opponents of slavery like William Wilberforce could reasonably believe they enjoyed an epistemic advantage over proponents of slavery, and I suggest that proponents of marriage equality and gender equality might make similar claims. I propose that we can make additional claims to epistemic advantages if we believe that (1) almost everyone that considers the matter admits they are advantages, (2) those who disagree with use would admit they are advantages, and (3) we can give a plausible explanation as to why those that we think are epistemically disadvantaged have not noticed that they are disadvantaged. Finally, I argue that it reasonable to think our controversial beliefs are justified if we can find reasons to think our opponents are mistaken, and do not see similar reasons to think ourselves mistaken. This is a better policy than supposing we are just as prone to make mistakes as our opponents, as the latter is both less defensible in theory, and more likely to stifle intellectual progress. (shrink)

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This essay explores the following position: Ultimatemoral principles are a priori truths; hence, it is irrational to assign a non-zero credence to any proposition that is incompatible with these ultimatemoral principles ; and this sort of irrationality, if it could have been avoided, is in a sense inexcusable. So—at least ifmoral relativism is false—in anydisagreement about ultimatemoral principles, at least one party to thedisagreement is inexcusably irrational. This position (...) may seem extreme, but it is argued that it is more plausible than it first appears. (shrink)

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In his recent work, "The Collapse of the Fact-Value Dichotomy," Hilary Putnam traces the history of the fact-value dichotomy from Hume to Stevenson and Logical Positivism. The aim of this historical reconstruction is to undermine the foundations of the dichotomy, showing that it is of a piece with the dichotomy - untenable, as we know now - of "analytic" and "synthetic" judgments. Putnam's own thesis is that facts and values are "entangled" in a way that precludes any attempt to draw (...) a sharp distinction between "value judgments" and "matters of fact." The idea of an "entanglement of facts and values" Putnam rightly attributes to John Dewey, who - we should add - made of it the main issue in his controversy with Logical Positivism. Nevertheless, a closer inspection of the problem whose history Putnam summarizes could bring into light important aspects of it that have been neglected. It is worth reading in this connection the intercourse between Dewey and Stevenson. Secondly, it is striking that Putnam's version of the history of the fact-value dichotomy hardly mentions the problem that caused this very dichotomy to arise in the first place: i. e., the problem of insolublemoral disagreements. By contrast, Dewey's attack on the dualism of fact and value can be read as an attempt to redescribe this kind of disagreements in a way that makes room for intelligent inquiry, and consequently for rational expectations of agreement. The "entanglement thesis" surely is a part of this re-description. But then it must have implications - particularly for the analysis of value-justification - which are overlooked, or by-passed, by Putnam. This leaves the question open whether Putnam and Dewey subscribe to different versions of pragmatism with regard to norms and values. (shrink)

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