Moral skepticism
Encyclopedia
"Moral skepticism" denotes a class
of metaethical
theories all members of which entail that no one has any moral knowledge. Many moral skeptics also make the stronger, modal
, claim that moral knowledge is impossible. Moral skepticism is particularly opposed to moral realism
: the view that there are knowable, mind-independent moral truths.
Defenders of some form of moral skepticism include David Hume
, J. L. Mackie
(1977), Max Stirner
, Friedrich Nietzsche
, Richard Joyce
(2001), Michael Ruse
, Joshua Greene, Richard Garner, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (2006b), and the psychologist James Flynn. Strictly speaking, Gilbert Harman
(1975) argues in favor of a kind of moral relativism
, not moral skepticism. However, he has influenced some contemporary moral skeptics.
), epistemological moral skepticism, and noncognitivism
. All three of these theories share the same conclusions, which are:
we are never justified in believing that moral claims (claims of the form "state of affairs x is good," "action y is morally obligatory," etc.) are true and, even more so we never know that any moral claim is true.
However, each "gets" to (a) and (b) by different routes.
Moral error theory holds that we do not know that any moral claim is true because all moral claims are false, we have reason to believe that all moral claims are false, and so, because we are not justified in believing any claim we have reason to deny, we are therefore not justified in believing any moral claims.
Epistemological moral skepticism is a subclass of theory, the members of which include Pyrrhonian moral skepticism and dogmatic moral skepticism. All members of epistemological moral skepticism share two things in common: first they acknowledge that we are unjustified in believing any moral claim, and second, they are agnostic on whether (i) is true (i.e. on whether all moral claims are false).
Finally, Noncognitivism
holds that we can never know that any moral claim is true because moral claims are incapable of being true or false (they are not truth-apt). Instead, moral claims are imperatives
(e.g. "Don't steal babies!"), expressions of emotion
(e.g. "stealing babies: Boo!"), or expressions of "pro-attitudes"
.
, who defended the metaethical view in Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (1977). Mackie has been interpreted as giving two arguments for moral error theory.
The first argument people attribute to Mackie, often called the Argument from Queerness, holds that moral claims imply motivation internalism (the doctrine that "It is necessary and a priori that any agent who judges that one of his available actions is morally obligatory will have some (defeasible) motivation to perform that action" ). Because motivation internalism is false, however, so too are all moral claims.
The other argument often attributed to Mackie, often called the Argument from Disagreement, maintains that any moral claim (e.g. "Killing babies is wrong") entails a correspondent "reasons claim" ("one has reason not to kill babies"). Put another way, if "killing babies is wrong" is true then everybody has a reason to not kill babies. This includes the psychopath who takes great pleasure from killing babies, and is utterly miserable when he does not have their blood on his hands. But, surely, (if we assume that he will suffer no reprisals) this psychopath has every reason to kill babies, and no reason not to do so. All moral claims are thus false.
, so too are we unjustified in believing moral propositions. We therefore have reason to jettison our moral beliefs.
Amoralism is the idea to drop morality.
Hare
claims there are some reasons to obey moral rules. He claims that amoralists are logically consistent, but have plenty of disadvantages in their lives.
. The moral realist argues that there is in fact good reason to believe that there are objective moral truths and that we are justified in holding many moral beliefs. One moral realist response to moral error theory holds that it "proves too much" — if moral claims are false because they entail that we have reasons to do certain things regardless of our preferences, then so too are "hypothetical imperatives" (e.g. "if you want to get your hair-cut you ought to go to the barber"). This is because all hypothetical imperatives imply that "we have reason to do that which will enable us to accomplish our ends" and so, like moral claims, they imply that we have reason to do something regardless of our preferences. If moral claims are false because they have this implication, then so too are hypothetical imperatives. But hypothetical imperatives are true. Thus the argument from the non-instantiation of (what Mackie terms) "objective prescriptivity" for moral error theory fails.
Class (philosophy)
Philosophers sometimes distinguish classes from types and kinds. We can talk about the class of human beings, just as we can talk about the type , human being, or humanity...
of metaethical
Meta-ethics
In philosophy, meta-ethics is the branch of ethics that seeks to understand the nature of ethical properties, statements, attitudes, and judgments. Meta-ethics is one of the three branches of ethics generally recognized by philosophers, the others being normative ethics and applied ethics. Ethical...
theories all members of which entail that no one has any moral knowledge. Many moral skeptics also make the stronger, modal
Modal logic
Modal logic is a type of formal logic that extends classical propositional and predicate logic to include operators expressing modality. Modals — words that express modalities — qualify a statement. For example, the statement "John is happy" might be qualified by saying that John is...
, claim that moral knowledge is impossible. Moral skepticism is particularly opposed to moral realism
Moral realism
Moral realism is the meta-ethical view which claims that:# Ethical sentences express propositions.# Some such propositions are true.# Those propositions are made true by objective features of the world, independent of subjective opinion....
: the view that there are knowable, mind-independent moral truths.
Defenders of some form of moral skepticism include David Hume
David Hume
David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...
, J. L. Mackie
J. L. Mackie
John Leslie Mackie was an Australian philosopher, originally from Sydney. He made significant contributions to the philosophy of religion, metaphysics, and the philosophy of language, and is perhaps best known for his views on meta-ethics, especially his defence of moral skepticism.He authored six...
(1977), Max Stirner
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt , better known as Max Stirner , was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism...
, Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
, Richard Joyce
Richard Joyce (philosopher)
Richard Joyce is a British-Australian moral philosopher, known for his contributions to the field of meta-ethics. Joyce is a prominent moral anti-realist / moral skeptic and is known in particular for his defence of both moral fictionalism and moral error theory.He received a PhD from Princeton...
(2001), Michael Ruse
Michael Ruse
Michael Ruse is a philosopher of biology at Florida State University, and is well known for his work on the creationism/evolution controversy and the demarcation problem in science...
, Joshua Greene, Richard Garner, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (2006b), and the psychologist James Flynn. Strictly speaking, Gilbert Harman
Gilbert Harman
Gilbert Harman is a contemporary American philosopher, teaching at Princeton University, who has published widely in linguistics, semantics, cognitive science, philosophy of mind, ethics, moral psychology, epistemology, statistical learning theory, and metaphysics. He and George Miller...
(1975) argues in favor of a kind of moral relativism
Moral relativism
Moral relativism may be any of several descriptive, meta-ethical, or normative positions. Each of them is concerned with the differences in moral judgments across different people and cultures:...
, not moral skepticism. However, he has influenced some contemporary moral skeptics.
Forms of moral skepticism
Moral skepticism divides into three subclasses: moral error theory (or moral nihilismMoral nihilism
Moral nihilism is the meta-ethical view that nothing is moral or immoral. For example, a moral nihilist would say that killing someone, for whatever reason, is neither inherently right nor inherently wrong...
), epistemological moral skepticism, and noncognitivism
Non-cognitivism
Non-cognitivism is the meta-ethical view that ethical sentences do not express propositions and thus cannot be true or false...
. All three of these theories share the same conclusions, which are:
we are never justified in believing that moral claims (claims of the form "state of affairs x is good," "action y is morally obligatory," etc.) are true and, even more so we never know that any moral claim is true.
However, each "gets" to (a) and (b) by different routes.
Moral error theory holds that we do not know that any moral claim is true because all moral claims are false, we have reason to believe that all moral claims are false, and so, because we are not justified in believing any claim we have reason to deny, we are therefore not justified in believing any moral claims.
Epistemological moral skepticism is a subclass of theory, the members of which include Pyrrhonian moral skepticism and dogmatic moral skepticism. All members of epistemological moral skepticism share two things in common: first they acknowledge that we are unjustified in believing any moral claim, and second, they are agnostic on whether (i) is true (i.e. on whether all moral claims are false).
- Pyrrhonian moral skepticism holds that the reason we are unjustified in believing any moral claim is that it is irrational for us to believe either that any moral claim is true or that any moral claim is false. Thus, in addition to being agnostic on whether (i) is true, Pyrrhonian moral skepticism denies (ii).
- Dogmatic moral skepticism, on the other hand, affirms (ii) and cites (ii)'s truth as the reason we are unjustified in believing any moral claim.
Finally, Noncognitivism
Non-cognitivism
Non-cognitivism is the meta-ethical view that ethical sentences do not express propositions and thus cannot be true or false...
holds that we can never know that any moral claim is true because moral claims are incapable of being true or false (they are not truth-apt). Instead, moral claims are imperatives
Universal prescriptivism
Universal prescriptivism is the meta-ethical view which claims that, rather than expressing propositions, ethical sentences function similarly to imperatives which are universalizable — whoever makes a moral judgment is committed to the same judgment in any situation where the same relevant facts...
(e.g. "Don't steal babies!"), expressions of emotion
Emotivism
Emotivism is a meta-ethical view that claims that ethical sentences do not express propositions but emotional attitudes. Influenced by the growth of analytic philosophy and logical positivism in the 20th century, the theory was stated vividly by A. J. Ayer in his 1936 book Language, Truth and...
(e.g. "stealing babies: Boo!"), or expressions of "pro-attitudes"
Expressivism
Expressivism in meta-ethics is a theory about the meaning of moral language. According to expressivism, sentences that employ moral terms–for example, “It is wrong to torture an innocent human being”–are not descriptive or fact-stating; moral terms such as “wrong,” “good,” or “just” do not refer...
.
Moral Error Theory
Moral error theory is a position characterized by its commitment to two propositions: (i) all moral claims are false and (ii) we have reason to believe that all moral claims are false. The most famous moral error theorist is J. L. MackieJ. L. Mackie
John Leslie Mackie was an Australian philosopher, originally from Sydney. He made significant contributions to the philosophy of religion, metaphysics, and the philosophy of language, and is perhaps best known for his views on meta-ethics, especially his defence of moral skepticism.He authored six...
, who defended the metaethical view in Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (1977). Mackie has been interpreted as giving two arguments for moral error theory.
The first argument people attribute to Mackie, often called the Argument from Queerness, holds that moral claims imply motivation internalism (the doctrine that "It is necessary and a priori that any agent who judges that one of his available actions is morally obligatory will have some (defeasible) motivation to perform that action" ). Because motivation internalism is false, however, so too are all moral claims.
The other argument often attributed to Mackie, often called the Argument from Disagreement, maintains that any moral claim (e.g. "Killing babies is wrong") entails a correspondent "reasons claim" ("one has reason not to kill babies"). Put another way, if "killing babies is wrong" is true then everybody has a reason to not kill babies. This includes the psychopath who takes great pleasure from killing babies, and is utterly miserable when he does not have their blood on his hands. But, surely, (if we assume that he will suffer no reprisals) this psychopath has every reason to kill babies, and no reason not to do so. All moral claims are thus false.
Epistemological Moral Skepticism
All versions of Epistemological Moral Skepticism hold that we are unjustified in believing any moral proposition. However, in contradistinction to moral error theory, epistemological moral skeptical arguments for this conclusion do not include the premise that "all moral claims are false." For example, Michael Ruse gives what Richard Joyce calls an "evolutionary argument" for the conclusion that we are unjustified in believing any moral proposition. He argues that we have evolved to believe moral propositions because our believing the same enhances our genetic fitness (makes it more likely that we will reproduce successfully). However, our believing these propositions would enhance our fitness even if they were all false (they would make us more cooperative, etc.). Thus, our moral beliefs are unresponsive to evidence; they are analogous to the beliefs of a paranoiac. As a paranoiac is plainly unjustified in believing his conspiracy theoriesConspiracy theory
A conspiracy theory explains an event as being the result of an alleged plot by a covert group or organization or, more broadly, the idea that important political, social or economic events are the products of secret plots that are largely unknown to the general public.-Usage:The term "conspiracy...
, so too are we unjustified in believing moral propositions. We therefore have reason to jettison our moral beliefs.
Consequences
There are two different opinions that follow from moral skepticism.Amoralism is the idea to drop morality.
Hare
John E. Hare
John Edmund Hare is a British classicist, philosopher, ethicist, and currently Noah Porter Professor of Philosophical Theology at Yale Divinity School....
claims there are some reasons to obey moral rules. He claims that amoralists are logically consistent, but have plenty of disadvantages in their lives.
Criticisms
Criticisms of moral skepticism come primarily from moral realistsMoral realism
Moral realism is the meta-ethical view which claims that:# Ethical sentences express propositions.# Some such propositions are true.# Those propositions are made true by objective features of the world, independent of subjective opinion....
. The moral realist argues that there is in fact good reason to believe that there are objective moral truths and that we are justified in holding many moral beliefs. One moral realist response to moral error theory holds that it "proves too much" — if moral claims are false because they entail that we have reasons to do certain things regardless of our preferences, then so too are "hypothetical imperatives" (e.g. "if you want to get your hair-cut you ought to go to the barber"). This is because all hypothetical imperatives imply that "we have reason to do that which will enable us to accomplish our ends" and so, like moral claims, they imply that we have reason to do something regardless of our preferences. If moral claims are false because they have this implication, then so too are hypothetical imperatives. But hypothetical imperatives are true. Thus the argument from the non-instantiation of (what Mackie terms) "objective prescriptivity" for moral error theory fails.
Further reading
- Butchvarov, Panayot (1989). Skepticism in Ethics, Indiana University Press.
- Gibbard, Allan (1990). Wise Choices, Apt Feelings. Cambridge: Harvard University PressHarvard University PressHarvard University Press is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. In 2005, it published 220 new titles. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. Its current director is William P...
. - Harman, Gilbert (1975). "Moral Relativism Defended," Philosophical Review, pp. 3–22.
- Harman, Gilbert (1977). The Nature of Morality. New York: Oxford University PressOxford University PressOxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...
. - Joyce, Richard (2001). The Myth of Morality, Cambridge University Press.
- Joyce, Richard (2006). The Evolution of Morality, MIT PressMIT PressThe MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts .-History:...
. (link) - Lillehammer, Halvard (2007). Companions in Guilt: arguments for ethical objectivity, Palgrave MacMillan.
- Mackie, J. L. (1977). Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, Penguin.
- Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter (2006a). "Moral Skepticism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. ZaltaEdward N. ZaltaEdward N. Zalta is a Senior research scholar at the Center for the Study of Language and Information. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Massachusetts - Amherst in 1980. Zalta has taught courses at Stanford University, Rice University, the University of Salzburg, and the...
(ed.). (link) - Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter (2006b). Moral Skepticisms, Oxford University Press.
External links
- Moral Skepticism - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong.
- Moral Epistemology - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry by Richmond Campbell.
- Moral Reasoning - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry by Henry S. Richardson.
See also
- Amoralism
- Friedrich NietzscheFriedrich NietzscheFriedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
- Non-cognitivismNon-cognitivismNon-cognitivism is the meta-ethical view that ethical sentences do not express propositions and thus cannot be true or false...
- PerspectivismPerspectivismPerspectivism is the philosophical view developed by Friedrich Nietzsche that all ideations take place from particular perspectives. This means that there are many possible conceptual schemes, or perspectives in which judgment of truth or value can be made...
- Psychological determinismPsychological determinismtwo forms of psychological determinism:* Orectic psychological determinism is the view that we must always act upon our greatest drive. This is often called psychological hedonism, and if the drive is specified for self-interest: psychological egoism....
- Is–ought problem