THE VERY IDEA Moral knowledge

What do you think? Every woman has the right to terminate her pregnancy. Abortion is murder. Education is a universal right. The taliban policy of preventing girls from attending school was morally permissible. It is wrong to mutilate the genitals of children. Female circumcision is right for those cultures (e.g. among many groups in the Horn of Africa) where it is a long established tradition.

In addressing these questions it feels like something hangs on the answer. Disagreements seem genuine – there’s a right answer, even if it’s hard to get to. Moral disputes are not like arguments over the taste of Marmite.

Realism… Moral judgements as objective. The possibility of moral facts and moral knowledge. Justification for moral judgements?

Motivations - truth Realism accounts for the actual nature of our moral discourse – our judgements look and function like any other declarative sentence. The existence of moral facts explains why our moral judgements are expressed in a truth-functional way. For example… The judgement that ‘hunting badgers is morally wrong’ has the grammatical form of a sentence that is capable of being true or false. It explains why some of our judgements are true.

Motivations - justification Realism explains why I am justified or not in expressing a particular moral belief or forming a moral judgement. My belief that wanton cruelty is wrong is explained by the fact that it is wrong – the belief is supported by the way things are and (as with any other belief) it has the job of reporting of how things are. …and why we can have moral knowledge – to know that p is right/wrong is to have a justified belief about the fact that p.

Justification – disagreement and progress Moral realism explains why moral disagreements are real. Just as we may dispute what the right answer is in science, so too with moral questions. If morality is objective in this way, then it makes sense of the idea of progress as well as the possibility of error. Parallel with scientific progress - things can improve morally as we come to acquire moral knowledge.

Links and discussion Meta-ethics in a very small nutshell.doc ‘Moral Relativism’, Richmond Journal of Philosophy Issue 13. ‘Moral Relativism’, Richmond Journal of Philosophy Issue 13. Science and morality – conference. Science and morality Science and morality - article. Science and morality Questions – (1) What reason is there to think morality is relative? (2) How should we understand the relationship between science and morality? (3) To what extend can our moral judgements be as justified as those in the natural sciences or mathematics? NEXT WEEK – PRESENTATIONS ON (3)