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Sarah McGrath
1. Introduction
On the face of it, some of our knowledge is of moral facts (for example, that
this promise should not be broken in these circumstances), and some of it is of
non-moral facts (for example, that the kettle has just boiled). But, some argue,
there is reason to believe that we do not, after all, know any moral facts.
For example, according to J. L. Mackie, if we had moral knowledge (if we were
aware of [objective values]), it would have to be by some special faculty of moral
perception or intuition, utterly differentfrom our ordinaryways of knowingeverything
else(1977,p.38).Butwehavenosuchspecialfaculty.So,wehavenomoralknowledge.
Following Mackie, let us distinguish two questions:
Q1: Assuming that we have moral knowledge, how do we have it?
Q2: Do we in fact have any moral knowledge?
In response to the first question, I argue that if we have moral knowledge, we
have some of it in the same way we have knowledge of our immediate environment: by perception. Many people think that this answer leads to moral skepticism, because they think that we obviously cannot have moral knowledge by
perception. But I will argue that this is incorrect.
The plan for the paper is as follows. In Sections 24, I work up to my
answer to Q1 by considering rivals. In Section 5, I explain what marks my
answer to Q1 as a distinctive view, and defend it. In Section 6, I briefly discuss
how this answer to Q1 affects what we say in response to Q2.
The contrast Harman sees between the scientific and moral case can be brought
out by consideration of a pair of Harmans examples (1977, p. 4, p. 8):
PROTON: A physicist sees a certain track in a bubble chamber and makes
the spontaneous judgment There goes a proton. The fact that a proton
passed through the chamber, we may suppose, helps to explain the physicists
judgment. The proton produces the track, which in turn causes a certain
pattern of light to enter the physicists eye, which in turn causes the physicist
to make the judgment.
CAT: Jim rounds a corner and sees a group of young hoodlums pour gasoline
on a cat and ignite it. Jim makes the spontaneous judgment What the children
are doing is wrong.
Harman claims that CAT differs from PROTON in the following way:
[I]t would be reasonable to assume, perhaps, that the children really are pouring
gasoline on a cat and you are seeing them do it. But [there is no] obvious reason
to assume anything about moral facts, such as that it really is wrong to set
the cat on fireIt would seem that all we need assume is that you have certain
more or less well articulated moral principles that are reflected in the judgments
you make, based on your moral sensibility. It seems to be completely irrelevant
to our explanation whether your intuitive immediate judgment is true or false.
(p. 7)
The contrast, then, is that in PROTON we do need to assume that there really is
a proton in the chamber in order to explain the physicists judgment. Whereas in
CAT, we do not need to assume that what the kids are doing really is wrong in
order to explain Jims judgment. And hence, Harman thinks, we dont know
that what the kids are doing is wrong. This conclusion seems to depend on the
idea that if we knew, it would be by inference to the best explanation.
Someone might object to the suggestion that we come to know moral
hypotheses by inference to the best explanation as follows. If we have moral
knowledge, then many of our moral judgments that amount to knowledge will
be judgments that we form spontaneously, as is Jims judgment in CAT. That,
according to the objection, is inconsistent with the claim that we always know
moral facts by an inferenceto the best explanation, or otherwise.
But this objection is misguided: it is consistent with Harmans answer that a
moral agent forms her moral judgments spontaneously, without reflection. To
see this, it will be useful to consider a few more examples illustrating knowledge
by inference to the best explanation. First, consider:
CHEESE: On coming home from work, Erika notices that the cheese is
missing. She reasons as follows. The cheese is missing. Could it be mice?
Maybe I left the cheese in the shop, or maybeSo, I have mice.
In this case, Erika knows she has mice in the following way. She considers a variety
of possible explanations of the fact that the cheese has been nibbled and concludes
that the most plausible among them is that there are mice. Let us call this a case of
explicit inference to the best explanation reasoning, because Erika actually goes
through the process of considering several possible explanations. Now consider:
DOOR: On arriving at work, Corinne sees that her co-workers door is
open. She spontaneously judges that Stephanie is in her office; she does not
consider a variety of possible explanations and conclude that one among
them is the most plausible.
In this case, the subject doesnt wonder about what the explanation might be: Corinne
does not consider whether a burglar has broken in to Stephanies office, or whether
the wind has blown her door open, etc. It is true, however, that if you asked Corinne
how she knows that Stephanie is in, she could produce the inference to the best
explanation reasoning: that Stephanies being in best explains the fact that the door
is open. Let us call this a case of implicit inference to the best explanation reasoning.
Finally, consider
LAB TECHNICIAN: Barbara the lab technician has been told that if she sees
a track in the bubble chamber, then there is a proton in the chamber. Barbara
sees a track, and thinks: Thats one of those tracks, so there goes a proton.
In this case, there is no explicit or implicit inference to the best explanation reasoning.
Barbara does not consider a variety of explanations and conclude that one among
them was the most plausible; nor, had she considered rival explanations, could she
pick the one that was best. She does not understand the theory that explains the
track, and so could not produce the reasoning. Rather, Barbaras knowledge that
there is a proton in the chamber relies in part on testimony: she was told that if there
is a track, then there is a proton. Still, Barbaras belief that there is a proton in the
chamber ultimately rests on inference to the best explanation reasoning: her judgment that there is a proton in the chamber counts as knowledge in part because some
scientist(s) somewhere performed inference to the best explanation reasoning.
So the justification for a judgment might be an inference to the best
explanation, even though the judgment is made spontaneously. Jims judgment
might be like Corinnes: it might be a case of implicit inference to the best
explanation reasoning. Or, Jims judgment might be like Barbaras: it might
rest on inference to the best explanation.
Now let us turn to the question of what, if anything, moral hypotheses
might explain. We said that Harmans complaint about moral theory is that
there is an apparent lack of connection between observational evidence and
moral theory: theories are supposed to explain something. In CHEESE, the
thing to be explained was that the cheese was nibbled; in DOOR, it was that the
door was open; and in LAB TECHNICIAN, the explanandum was that there
was a track in the chamber. According to Harman, moral theory, like scientific
theory, ought to explain observation. But as Harman notes, observation is
ambiguous. Observation could refer to an act of observing, as in Barbara
made her observation today at noon, or it could refer to the content of the act
of observing, as in Barbara wrote her observation in her notebook. This is the
Sellarsian ing/ed distinction: the distinction between the act of observing and the
content of what is observed. For clarity, let us use judgment for the act of
judging; observation for an observed fact.
Harman says that scientific, unlike moral principles, are justified ultimately
by their role in explaining judgments: unlike moral principles, scientific
principles can be justified ultimately by their role in explaining observations,
in the second sense of observationwhere the second sense is the -ing sense
(1977, p. 9). So Harmans answer to the question: What if anything does a
moral theory purport to explain? seems to be that if moral theory explains
anything, it explains the same thing scientific theory explains: judgments.
But thats implausible about science: it is not at all obvious that certain
psychological events, namely scientists acts of judgment, ultimately justify
scientific theories. For example, the theory of evolution is presumably justified
by its role in explaining the fossil record and the like; it is certainly not in
practice justified by its role in explaining psychological events occurring in the
minds of evolutionary biologists. Neither is it at all clear that the theory of
evolution could be justifiedat any rate to the high degree to which it is actually
justifiedby its role in explaining such psychological events.
Thomson thinks that if there are observations that moral hypotheses directly
explain, the most obvious candidates are observations about our moral
judgments. (A moral hypothesis, such as Alice ought to ring the bell,
might well explain a purely physical phenomenon such as the bells ringing.
But it would do so indirectly, via Alices judgment that she ought to ring the
bell.) We might say something similar about color hypothesesfor instance
that limes are greena comparison that Harman makes himself. The most
plausible candidates for what color hypotheses might directly explain are
facts about their psychological effects on usour color experiences, or our
judgments about color. If the best candidates for moral explananda are facts
about our judgments, then if we have moral knowledge, we have it because
moral hypotheses best explain facts of this sort: Jim judged that the
children were acting wrongly; Most of us think that one ought to keep
ones promises, etc.
Now that we have gotten clear on what, if anything, a moral theory might
explain, we can state the answer to Q1 that we have extracted from Harman
more precisely:
HA1: We know moral hypotheses by inference to the best explanation of
our moral judgments.
The next section argues that HA1taken as an account of moral knowledge in
generalis incorrect.
Here, Harman is explaining why his argument for moral skepticism does not
generalize to an argument for color skepticism. The passage suggests that if, in
practice, we find that a type of fact simplifies explanations of what we observe,
then facts of that type are explanatory enough to be known by inference to the
best explanation. So many people think that the crucial challenge posed by
Harmans argument is to show that moral facts simplifyor otherwise
improveexplanations.5
But a more straightforward response is to deny HA1. Returning to the
case of color: no doubt color hypotheses do explain color judgments (and
experiences): that this snowball is white explains my spontaneous judgment
(and experience) that it is white. But I do not believe that this snowball is
white because that hypothesis would explain why I judge that snow is white,
or because that hypothesis would explain why it seems to me that this
snowball is white. Incidentally, neither do I believe that this snowball is
white because its being white would explain some other fact, say that it is
reflecting a lot of light across the visible spectrum. So if I know that this
snowball is white, it is not by inference to the best explanationimplicit,
explicit, or in the manner of the lab technician, above. Whether there
is some inference to the best explanation of our color judgments seems
irrelevant to the question of what justifies my belief that the snowball is
white.
One way to bring this out is to consider that where there is an inference to
the best explanation, we have the observations to be explained first, and then go
on to judge that hypothesis is true because it would best explain the observations. Let us return to the example of Jims judgment that what the children are
doing is wrong. If Jim knows that what the children are doing is wrong, then the
story about how he knows cannot be: the hypothesis
observations. For sometimes, the truth of p is evidence for the truth of q not
because the truth of q would explain the truth of p; rather, it is that the truth of
q would be explained by the truth of p. For example:
DICKENSON: We know that Dickenson will soon feel ill because we have
just seen him wolf down a dozen hamburgers. (Thomson, in Harman and
Thomson 1996, p. 92)
In this example, we have evidence that Dickenson will soon be ill (our hypothesis)
not because that would explain that Dickenson is wolfing down a dozen hamburgers (our observation); rather, we have evidence that he will soon be ill because
that is explained by the fact that he is wolfing down a dozen hamburgers.
Thomsons idea is that our reasons to believe moral hypotheses are like
that: it isnt that the truth of moral hypotheses would explain our observations;
rather it is that the observations would explain the hypotheses. This suggests to
Thomson that the answer to Q1 is that we have knowledge of moral hypotheses
because they are explained by observations (Thomson, in Harman and Thomson
1996, pp. 914). For example:
Suppose that Alices giving Bert a banana was her keeping her word when it
cost her a lot to do so and she could have got away with not doing so. That, it
seems plausible to think, would explain the truth of Alices giving Bert a
banana was just. (p. 93)
Harman responds as follows (1996, p. 171). The moral skeptic doubts that
we have evidence for any moral facts, and requires, in order to be convinced, an
example in which a moral fact would explain a moral judgment. Clearly, in the
context of a dispute as to whether actions like Alices constitute justice, the
claim that Alices giving Bert a banana in such-and-such circumstances explains
and is evidence for the conclusion that Alices giving Bert a banana was just is
controversial and cannot show that there is evidence in favor of one moral
framework rather than another (pp. 1701). But while Harmans response
would be relevant if the task were to convince the moral skeptic, who is not
prepared to take any moral facts for granted, it is not relevant for our purposes:
we are not trying to prove that Alices giving Bert a banana was just from
premises which even the moral skeptic would accept. At present, we are simply
trying to answer the question: if we have moral knowledge, how do we have it?
In this context, it is not disputed that actions like Alices are just.
it is clear that the proposal has only pushed the question back: how do we know
truths like (NM!M)? Thus while Thomsons suggestion might be part of the
story about how we have moral knowledge, it cant be the whole story: it needs
to be supplemented with an account of how we know the principles that take us
from non-moral observations to moral facts.
4. Moral knowledge from a priori moral principles and particular nonmoral facts
4.1 Thomsons answer supplemented
We ended the last section with the question: how do we know truths like
(NM!M)? Since we may assume that (NM!M) is necessarily true if true at all,
one natural answer to the question is that we can know (NM!M) a priori. So
Thomsons proposal might be supplemented: we know contingent moral truths
like (M) by inferring them from a priori moral principlessuch as (NM!M)
together with particular moral facts. This supplemented answer is:
TA1+: We know conditionals like (NM!M) above a priori. Moral knowledge about particular cases comes from combining these principles
with facts about the non-moral features of particular cases.
But TA1+ faces the following problem. We have supposed that Thomson
conditionals like (NM!M) are knowable a priori because they are necessary.
But (NM!M) is not necessary. To see this, suppose Bert is going to use the
banana in a crime, or that Alice has poisoned the banana, etc. In these circumstances, giving Bert the banana would not be just. We may grant that there is a
non-moral sentence, (NM), that metaphysically necessitates (M): that there is
a non-moral condition that is metaphysically sufficient for Alices giving Bert a
banana to be just. But (NM) will be very complicated: if Alices giving Bert a
banana was her keeping her word when it cost her a lot to do so, and she could
have got away with not doing so, and the banana was not poisoned, and Bert
was not planning to use the banana to rob a bank, and the banana was Alices to
give, and Bert was not trying to break his addiction to bananas, and it was not
the case that Alice could have used the banana to save a starving personetc.,
etc., etc. It is not clear that we can state (NM!M), let alone know it a priori.
Alternatively, were we to add a ceteris paribus clause to (NM!M)Alices
giving Bert a banana was just if, ceteris paribus, it was her keeping her word
when it cost her a lot to do so, and she could have got away with not doing so
there is no guarantee that the ceteris paribus clause will not smuggle in some
moral conditions. In other words, holding all things equal might covertly be a
matter of holding equal some of the moral facts: for example, holding fixed that
there are not any extenuating circumstances that render giving Bert the banana
unjust.
In summary: in order to come to know particular moral facts from the nonmoral facts on which they supervene, we need to know some kind of principle
that connects the non-moral facts to the moral facts. This raises the question:
how do we know these principles? If answer is: we know them a priori, then the
connecting principles had better not be Thomson conditionals like (NM!M),
for those are not necessary. But necessary conditionals such as (NM!M) are
so complicated that it is implausible that we could know them at all, never mind
know them a priori. So we have not yet succeeded in supplementing Thomsons
story in a way that yields a plausible answer to Q1.
Assume for the sake of the argument that this statement of consequentialism is
demonstrably certain. Then in order to conclude that Alice ought to return
Berts banana, we need to know that Alices returning the banana will produce
the greatest possible amount of good in the universe. But, obviously, this is a
particular moral fact. But if it is a particular moral fact then we have again just
pushed the question back: how do we know that Alices returning the banana
will produce the greatest possible amount of good in the universe?
So suppose instead that the principle is: An action is morally permissible if
and only if it maximizes human flourishing. But how is human flourishing to
that the blind cant perceive moral facts, or that we can perceive moral facts
without a lot of conceptual sophistication. We can perceive that other people are
in pain, that its time to water the plants, or that Fred told a joke. The
proponent of PA1 can say that moral perception is like that.
It might be useful here to compare the problem of whether we can perceive
moral facts with Humes problem of whether we can perceive that one thing
causes another. Famously Hume thought that we cannot: in searching for that
primary impression from which we get our idea of causation, Hume reasons
that we neither find it in the objects nor in the relations that we perceive. We
find the relations of contiguity and succession, but can proceed no farther: we
find only that the one body approaches the other; and that the motion of it
precedes that of the other, but without any sensible interval (p. 77). We do not,
in particular, find an impression of a necessary connection.
Someone might say something similar about Jim. When he rounds the
corner, he sees only that there is gasoline, and that there is a cat, and that the
kids are pouring gasoline on the cat; there is not some additional factthat
what the kids are doing is wrongthat Jim perceives. But surely Anscombe is
right when she complains, in Causality and Determination (1971) that we have
here an example of a philosopher who goes looking for something, concluding
that all we find is such-and-such, having decided in advance that we will not
find the thing sought. Anscombe points out that Hume might as well have
argued that, neither do we perceive bodies, such as billiard ballswe find
only an impression ofa round white patch in our visual fields, etc. (p. 61).
The point is just that so far, we have not been given some reason to think that
while we can perceive that one billiard ball approaches the other, or that some
kids ignite a cat, we cannot perceive that one billiard ball causes the other to
move, or that what the kids are doing is wrong.7
However, TA1 faces a problem, which can be brought out by discussion of a
recent paper defending it.
5.2 A problem
In their defense of a perceptual view of moral epistemology, Watkins and
Jolley develop what they take to be Aristotles idea that we get moral knowledge
by the exercise of an intellectualized perceptual ability (2002, p. 77). Knowing
that torturing cats for fun is wrong is like knowing that a particular wine has
hints of oak and strawberries: it is known by the exercise of perception augmented by intellect (p. 77). If that is what moral perception is like, then seeing
that some particular action is wrong should be no more mysterious than
any other instances of perception that require some degree of sophistication,
training, or skill.
The problem with this view is not that it is false. On the contrary,
the problemat least given our purposes hereis that it is obviously true.
That is, as explained so far, it is not really a rival view about moral knowledge.
Proponents of each of the views we have discussed so far can agree with PA1:
surely everyone who thinks that we have moral knowledge can agree that we
perceive the moral facts, in the way that Watkins and Jolley say that we do.
Harman, for example, in contrasting the scientific and moral cases, emphasizes
that the difference is not a difference with respect to whether we perceive the
facts in question:
if you hold a moral view, whether it is held consciously or unconsciously, you
will be able to perceive rightness or wrongness, goodness or badness, justice or
injustice. There is no difference in this respect between moral propositions and
other theoretical propositions. (p. 5)
In other words, just as everyone should agree that the appropriately trained
physicist can perceive that there is a proton passing by, everyone should agree
that the appropriately trained person perceives that what the children are doing
is wrongassuming that what the children are doing is wrong. So the view that
we come to know the moral facts by perception does not appear to rule out that
we come to know them by inference to the best explanation, or by inference
from constituting non-moral facts, or by inferring moral facts from a priori
moral principles together with particular moral facts. If the perceptual view is to
provide us with a distinctive answer, we need a well-motivated restriction on
what it is to know something by perception according to which the three views
we considered in the previous sections would not count as perceptual views.
Again, for all that has been said so far, a proponent of any of the views we
have discussed is free to agree with the plausible view that the appropriately
trained person can make the spontaneous knowledgeable judgment that, say,
what the children are doing is wrong, just as the wine connoisseur can make the
spontaneous knowledgeable judgment that the wine has hints of oak and berries.
So what more could be meant by saying that we perceive the moral facts? What
is needed is some way of marking the view that we can in some circumstances
perceive the moral facts as a distinct view of moral epistemology.
recognizes this: he says that even if one were to concede that we can know a
priori generalizations such as: If one sees someone fall off a bicycle and can
easily help with what appears to be a broken arm, one has a prima facie
obligation to do so, we cannot know particular moral facts a priori:
Considerthe unconditional proposition that I actually have this obligation;
this presupposes both my existence and that of the injured person(s) and hence
is plainly neither a priori nor a necessary truth. (p. 109)
But Audis view seems to be that the fact that mathematical axioms and logical
truths are knowable a priori, whereas moral facts about particular cases are not,
is irrelevant to the claim that we know both in virtue of our general rational
capacity. What is distinctive of intuitions, he tells us, is that they have the
following four features: intuitions (a) must be non-inferential, in the sense
that the proposition in question is notat the time it is intuitively heldheld
on the basis of a premise; (b) must bemoderately firm cognition[s]one must
come down on the matter at hand; (c) must be formed in the light of an
adequate understanding of their propositional objects; and (d) must be pretheoretical: roughlyneither evidentially dependent on theories nor themselves
theoretical hypotheses (pp. 109110).
Now it is not clear that Audi, with these conditions, has explained a
distinctive and compelling version of intuitionism. (b) and (c) seem to be
features of beliefs generally, or at any rate are not distinctive features of
moral, mathematical, or logical beliefs. And since so many of our beliefs are
in some sense pre-theoretical, it is hard to see what work (d) is doing. But more
importantly, it is not clear that the basic Kantian thoughtthat one could know
moral facts by exercise of ones general rational capacityis correct: being good
at reasoning and in possession of the requisite concepts seems insufficient for
being in a position to gain moral knowledge, in the way that, arguably, being
good at reasoning and in possession of the requisite concepts is sufficient
for being in a position to gain knowledge of logical or mathematical truths.
Offhand, it seems that someone who is both good at reasoningboth theoretical and practicaland armed with the requisite concepts might be blind to
morality.
However, we can extract a useful idea from Audis discussion. The first
feature Audi lists as distinctive of intuitionsthat they are non-inferentially
justifiedseems a plausible candidate for marking off the perceptual view
from the other views of moral knowledge we have discussed. On the other
views, moral beliefs are justified by distinct non-moral evidence. A distinctive view that we sometimes get moral knowledge by moral perception is
this:
PA1+: We have some moral knowledge by perceiving moral facts, and this
perceptual knowledge does not rest on non-moral evidence.
learns that these people are monogamous, or that they prioritize each others
needs. According to the moral principles that Alice believes, these sorts of nonmoral facts would be insufficient for having a relationship that is morally
permissible. Alice simply comes to believe that there is nothing wrong with
this relationship, on the basis of her acquaintance with Bob and Chuck. Further
(we may assume) Alice comes to know that there is nothing wrong with this
relationship. She might then go on to revise the principle that she originally
believed: that homosexuality is wrong.
Someone might object in response to this example that they doubt whether
Alice comes to know that there is nothing wrong with this relationship: the story
gives us insufficient reason to think that Alices belief that Bob and Chuck do
not have an immoral relationship amounts to knowledge. For Alice, on becoming fond of Bob and Chuck, may have gradually come to believe that there was
nothing wrong with their relationship, simply because she liked them. And if
thats true, Alice does not know. The following example might help to bring out
the worry. Suppose Karen (falsely) believes that Julie is far too law-abiding ever
to break the law, and comes to believe that riding a motorcycle without a helmet
is legal in Florida by watching Julie ride off on her motorcycle without a helmet
in Florida. In fact, it is legal to ride without a helmet in Florida, but Julie would
ride without a helmet even if it werent. So Karens belief is not knowledge: she
just got lucky, because she thinks Julie would never break the law. Similarly,
Alices moral belief is not knowledge: she believes Bob and Chuck are not doing
anything wrong because she likes Bob and Chuck.
But the response is just that while it is of course possible to fill out the case
of Alice in such a way that her belief does not count as knowledge, it is possible
to fill out the details of the case so that it is. I am only using the example of Alice
to illustrate the kinds of case I have in mind when I say that sometimes our
knowledge of particular moral facts is by perception, and not on the basis of
distinct, non-moral evidence. Surely in at least some cases like the one that I
have described, we would grant that the subject extends her moral knowledge,
rather than merely happening upon a true belief.
best explanation. Returning to CAT, some take it that Harman has in fact
shown that moral hypotheses do not explain our moral judgments, because he
has shown that we can give a perfectly good explanation of our moral judgments
without mentioning any moral facts. But as Harman has in effect conceded in
his discussion of the color case, the fact that I can explain your judging p
without explicitly mentioning p is insufficient to show that p does not explain
your judgment.
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