Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 The open question argument
- 2 Emotivism
- 3 Error theory
- 4 Moral realism and naturalism
- 5 Moral realism and non-naturalism
- 6 Quasi-realism
- 7 Moral relativism
- 8 Moral psychology
- 9 Moral epistemology
- 10 Fictionalism and non-descriptive cognitivism
- Questions
- Glossary
- References
- Index
9 - Moral epistemology
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 The open question argument
- 2 Emotivism
- 3 Error theory
- 4 Moral realism and naturalism
- 5 Moral realism and non-naturalism
- 6 Quasi-realism
- 7 Moral relativism
- 8 Moral psychology
- 9 Moral epistemology
- 10 Fictionalism and non-descriptive cognitivism
- Questions
- Glossary
- References
- Index
Summary
[W]e should think for ourselves, not just listen to our intuitions.
(Singer 2007: 1)CHAPTER AIMS
To explain the epistemic regress argument.
To explain and critically discuss scepticism, intuitionism and coherentism.
To explain why moral epistemology might matter in areas of metaethics.
To discuss the role of epistemology within metaethics.
Introduction
I was watching a documentary a number of years ago and was stunned when a suited man recounted the following:
“I witnessed the whole family being tested on suffocating gas and dying in the gas chamber,” … “The parents, son and a daughter. The parents were vomiting and dying, but till the very last moment they tried to save their kids by doing mouth-to-mouth breathing.”
(This World, BBC television, 1 February 2004)What I knew then and there was that testing suffocating gas on political prisoners is morally abhorrent. This seemed immediate, involuntary and not inferred. However, moral sceptics argue there are good reasons to think that we cannot have any moral knowledge. They would argue that I cannot know that testing suffocating gas on political prisoners is morally abhorrent or that the Holocaust was morally wrong or that famine relief is a good thing.
In contrast, other metaethicists are more optimistic about the possibility of moral knowledge. For example, intuitionists and coherentists would argue that moral knowledge is possible.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- MetaethicsAn Introduction, pp. 141 - 156Publisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2011