Morality, objectivity, and knowledge

The view that there are no universal moral truths and that the right thing to do is simply whatever one's society approves or commands.

argues that cultural relativism does not follow from the fact that different societies adhere to different moral codes.

The fact that different societies (or individuals) disagree does not rule out the possibility that one is right and the other is wrong.

The fact that two societies disagree about the rightness of a given type of act may not indicate disagreement at a deeper level.

The fact that two societies disagree about a moral principle maybe be because they have different circumstances that call for different applications of the same basic principles.

Argues that a further difficulty with cultural relativism is that if one accepts it, one cannot consistently criticise even societies whose institutions or traditions are abhorrent - for example, societies that practice slavery or are viciously antisemitic.

argues that moral claims are significantly different from scientific claims, because whereas scientific claims are accepted on the grounds that they explain some phenomenon in the world, moral claims do not.

Whereas a physicist's observation of a vapor trail in a cloud chamber is best explained by the supposition that a proton has caused the vapor trail, we can explain a moralist's belief that a child who sets fire to a cat is acting wrongly without assuming that the child's act really is wrong.

We could assume that a person had been brought up to believe that burning cats was wrong, and conclude that when seeing an observation (that a cat is being burnt), that this is the underlying phenonmenon that causes the exclamation of 'that's wrong!' it is not necessary to portray an ethical underlying fact.

"conceived as an explanatory theory, morality, unlike science, seems to be cut off from observation."

unlike other facts, moral facts would have to have the odd property of being intrinsically action-guiding.

we must suppose that any objective good "has to-be-pursuedness somehow built into it"

concludes that our moral assertions, though cognitively meaningful, are all false.

Mackie believes in

To explain why we wrongly think there are objective values, he cites a number of factors that he sees as encouraging this mistake.

embraces but also goes beyond Hume's appeal to the mind's "propensity to spread itself on external objects"

takes issues with Harman's claim that moral facts have less explanatory value that scientific facts

points out (and as Harman would agree), we cannot even describe the phenomena that science seeks to explain - for example, the physicist's observing a vapor trail in a cloud chamber - without assuming the truth of parts of various scientific theories.

to assess the claim that moral facts have less explanatory value than scientific facts, we must similarly allow ourselves to draw on aspects of the relevant moral theory. But our moral theory implies that the child's setting the cat on fire is wrong, and because that act cuases us to believe that the child has acted wrongly, Sturgeon argues that the fact that the child's act is wrong does contribute to the explanation of our belief.

according to our moral theory, needlessly cruel acts are necessarily wrong. Because of this, setting a cat on fire but not acting wrongly is not a real possibility.

Given the parallels that he finds between ethics and science, Sturgeon concludes that any argument that tells against the explanatory significance of moral facts will tell equally strongly against the explanatory significance of physical facts.

Harman, Sturgeon and Mackie all agree that if morality is to be objective, then the world must contain

Rejects the picture of moral objectivity that if morality is to be objective, then the world must contain moral facts.

The objectivity of ethics depends not on what sorts of facts the world contains, but rather on what sorts of reasons we have to act.

The view that values are real is that people have reason to do may be true or false independently of our beliefs and inclinations.

Acknowledges the possibility that none of our desires are sources of reasons, he believes that some in fact are, and that we can discover this by scrutinizing them from an external perspective. For example, the fact that someone wants his headache to stop can be seen to give him and everyone else a reason to relieve his pain.

The view that no one has any knowledge

Suspends belief about whether anyone has any knowledge.

The view that we never have good reasons to hold our moral beliefs, and therefore that we cannot have moral knowledge

Carefully analyses two of the most important arguments for Academic skepticism as they pertain to moral knowledge.

"The point here is only that there is enough reason to believe moral nihilism that it cannot baldly be dismissed as irrelevant on this basis"

"My main contention in this essay has been that given the degree to which merely contingent factors appear to have shaped our moral outlooks, there is a serious question about whether I even have good grounds for believing that I am right and you are wrong when you and I diagree about what I ought to do."

"Even if I never do have good grounds for believing that I am right and that you are wrong, it may nevertheless often remain rational for me to base my actions on my own moral judgements rather than yours."

It can be objective to act on your moral judgements even when, paradoxicallly, you have good reason to regard the chance of their rightness as quite low.

First-person perspective challenge to your own morality

morality is based on contingent facts about your upbringing.

The best way to meet the first-person challenge of morality is not to try to show that one's moral judgements are better-supported than those of others, but rather to recognize that being a practical agent just is acting on one's own best judgments.