Skepticism in Ethics

In the previous chapters, we presented skeptical epistemology. In this chapter, we present skeptical ethics.

We follow the same approach adopted in the previous chapters. We start by endorsing skepticism, according to which there is no moral knowledge and no final justification of any moral judgment. While refusing to reduce ethics to psychology, we present a tentative psychological theory regarding the conditions under which a mode of conduct is considered moral in order to place it on the agenda for public discussion.

Philosophers concerned with ethics have traditionally studied the following questions:

1. 1. What renders a moral judgment valid moral knowledge – namely, certain or at least plausible?

2. 2. What should we do to acquire new valid moral judgments?

We endorse the skeptical answers to these questions, which are as follows:

1. 1. No moral judgment is certain or plausible; there is no moral knowledge; no moral judgment can be fully justified. (Again, conditional justifications are available, but they beg the question of validity of the outcome.)

2. 2. No method can fully guarantee the validity of any moral judgment. (Again, conditional guarantees are available, and most of them are poor.)

Skepticism was always unpopular – in epistemology and ethics alike.

The arguments against skepticism in ethics run parallel to those against skepticism in epistemology that we reviewed in previous chapters.