I argue that reliance on political testimony conflicts with two democratic values: the value of mutual justifiability and the value of equality of opportunity for political influence. Reliance on political testimony is characterized by a reliance on the assertions of others directly on a political question the citizen is asked to answer as part of a formal democratic decision procedure. Reliance on expert testimony generally, even in the context of political decision-making, does not similarly conflict with democratic values. As a (...) consequence of the argument, citizens have a pro tanto reason to rely on their own political judgment when determining their vote, and democratic societies have a reason to only ask citizens questions they are able to answer without reliance on political testimony. (shrink)

Many philosophers believe that there exist distinctive obstacles to relying on moral testimony. In this paper, I criticize previous attempts to identify these obstacles and offer a new theory. I argue that the problems associated with moral deference can't be explained in terms of the value of moral understanding, nor in terms of aretaic considerations related to subjective integration. Instead, our uneasiness with moral testimony is best explained by our attachment to an ideal of authenticity that places special demands on (...) our moral beliefs. (shrink)

In this paper I defend dependence on moral testimony. I show how going defenses of dependence on moral testimony have portrayed it as second-best by centering on how and why it is an important means to overcoming our defects. I argue that once we consider the pervasiveness of moral testimony in the context of intimate relationships, we can see that the value of dependence on moral testimony goes beyond this: it is not only our flaws and limitations that justify our (...) dependence on moral testimony, but also the importance of such dependence for the flourishing of our intimate relationships. On my view, dependence on moral testimony is not simply for those who cannot realize the ideals of moral agency; it is among those ideals. (shrink)

Philosophers think that there is something fishy about moral deference. The most common explanation of this fishiness is that moral deference doesn’t yield the epistemic states necessary for certain moral achievements. First, I argue that this explanation overgeneralizes. It entails that using many intuitively kosher belief-formation methods should be off-putting. Second, I argue that moral deference is sometimes superior to these other methods because it puts one in a better position to gain the relevant moral achievements.

Pessimists think that there is something wrong with relying on deference for one’s moral beliefs—at least if one is morally mature. Call this no deference. They also tend to think that what explains our aversion to cases of moral deference is the fact that they involve deference about moral claims. Call this moral explanation. Recently, both no deference and moral explanation have come under attack. Against no deference, some philosophers offer purported counterexamples involving moral advice. I argue that proponents of (...) this objection face a trilemma depending on how they spell out the details of their counterexamples. Against moral explanation, some philosophers offer debunking explanations of our aversion to moral deference. They present cases of non-moral deference that are troubling and argue that the feature that explains our aversion to this non-moral deference also explains our aversion to moral deference. I argue that none of these explanations (nor their conjunction) can explain all troubling cases of moral deference and that they face objections of their own. I conclude that we should be optimistic about the prospects of moral deference pessimism. (shrink)

My thesis is that moral ignorance does not imply a failure to care adequately about what is in fact morally significant. I offer three cases: one in which someone is ignorant of the precise nature of what she cares about; one in which someone does not reflect on the significance of what she cares about in a particular set of circumstances, and one in which someone cares deeply about two morally significant considerations while being mistaken about their relative significance. I (...) argue that these agents all clearly care at least “adequately” about everything morally significant, including the very considerations that in fact make their acts wrong. This creates theoretical room for a way of thinking about culpable moral ignorance that respects the key concerns of those in the voluntarist tradition who have held that moral ignorance is typically blameless, within an approach to thinking about moral responsibility according to which we are blameworthy for that which manifests poor quality of will; caring adequately does not require moral omniscience, but motivated moral ignorance and moral ignorance that reflects indifference to things that matter morally are still blameworthy. My thesis also suggests a fruitful change of direction for quality-of-will theorists: we should articulate the nature and structure of the standards for adequate caring, i.e. those that specify what it is to care “adequately”. I close by offering an initial proposal as to what these standards might look like and identifying four promising avenues for further research on this topic. (shrink)

So-called optimists about moral testimony argue, against pessimists, that, ceteris paribus, we ought to accept and act in accordance with trustworthy, pure moral testimony. I argue that even if we grant this, we need to explain why moral testimony cannot make us more virtuous. I offer an explanation that appeals to the fact that we cannot share inferential abilities via testimony. This explanation is compatible with the core commitments of optimism, but it also allows us to see what is right (...) about pessimism. (shrink)

Many writers have recently argued that there is something distinctively problematic about sustaining moral beliefs on the basis of others’ moral views. Call this claim pessimism about moral deference. Pessimism about moral deference, if true, seems to provide an attractive way to argue for a bold conclusion about moral disagreement: moral disagreement generally does not require belief revision. Call this claim steadfastness about moral disagreement. Perhaps the most prominent recent discussion of the connection between moral deference and moral disagreement, due (...) to Alison Hills, uses pessimism about the former to argue for steadfastness about the latter. This paper reveals that this line of thinking, and others like it, are unsuccessful. There is no way to argue from a compelling version of pessimism about moral deference to the conclusion of steadfastness about moral disagreement. The most plausible versions of pessimism about moral deference have only very limited implications for moral disagreement. (shrink)

1. If you tell me that it’s raining outside, I would, presumably, be justified in acquiring the belief that it is raining on the basis of your say-so.1 But if you tell me that some war is unjust or...

Motivational Internalism is the thesis that, necessarily, moral beliefs are accompanied by motivational states. It is plausible to suppose that while another’s testimony might transmit information and justification, it can’t transmit motivational states such as moral emotions. Thus, Internalism provides a compelling explanation of “Pessimism”, the view that there is something illicit about forming moral beliefs by testimony. This paper presents a nonconstitutive reading of the Internalist thesis and then argues that it supports Pessimism in the form of a defeasible (...) presumption against moral deference. It also argues against views which explain Pessimism by appeal to requirements on moral belief formation. (shrink)

This paper argues that ethical propositions can legitimately be used as evidence for and against empirical conclusions. Specifically, I argue that this thesis is entailed by several uncontroversial assumptions about ethical metaphysics and epistemology. I also outline several examples of ethical-to-empirical inferences where it is extremely plausible that one can rationally rely upon their ethical evidence in order to gain a justified belief in an empirical conclusion. The main upshot is that ethical propositions can, under perfectly standard conditions, play both (...) direct and indirect evidential roles in (social) scientific inquiry. (shrink)

Why is there a felt asymmetry between cases in which agents defer to testifiers for certain moral beliefs, and cases in which agents defer on many other matters? One explanation influential in the literature is that having understanding of a proposition is both in tension with acquiring belief in the proposition by deferring to another's testimony and distinctively important when it comes to moral propositions, as compared with what we might think of as many ‘garden variety’ facts. My project in (...) this paper is to offer a new and more defensible version of this explanation. This will involve re-conceiving understanding as a richer state than it is commonly thought to be, requiring affective and motivational engagement with reasons as well as cognitive facility. I also offer a new explanation of the tension between understanding and deference to testimony. (shrink)

Many philosophers have claimed that relying on the testimony of others in normative questions is in some way problematic. In this paper, I consider whether we should be troubled by deference in democratic politics. I argue that deference is less problematic in impure cases of political deference, and most non-ideal cases of political deference are impure. To establish the second point, I rely on empirical research from political psychology. I also outline two principled reasons why we should expect political deference (...) to be untroubling: political problems are difficult and require a division of epistemic labour; furthermore, there is value in exercising epistemic solidarity with those one shares an identity or interests with. (shrink)

Several authors have discussed and defended what is sometimes called the Asymmetry Thesis in social epistemology: that while reliance on testimony is essentially incontrovertible in epistemology, it is uniquely problematic for moral knowledge. This conclusion results, I argue, from considering the wrong sort of moral testimony: namely, ‘third-personal’ rather than ‘first-personal’ testimony. First-personal moral testimony is an inescapable part of the constitution of legitimate moral norms, and its role cannot be deflated as a form of mere information to be taken (...) up in private deliberation. The consequences of this argument for forms of hypothetical contractualism, in particular, are profound. (shrink)

Moral realism and some of its constitutive theses, e.g., cognitivism, face the following challenge. If they are true, then it seems that we should predict that deference to moral testimony is appropriate under the same conditions as deference to non-moral testimony. Yet, many philosophers intuit that deference to moral testimony is not appropriate, even in otherwise ordinary conditions. In this paper I show that the challenge is cogent only if the appropriateness in question is disambiguated in a particular way. To (...) count against realism and its constitutive theses, moral deference must fail to be appropriate in specifically the way that the theses predict it is appropriate. I argue that this is not the case. In brief, I argue that realism and allied theses predict only that deference to moral testimony is epistemically appropriate, but that the intuitive data plausibly show only that it is not morally appropriate. If I am right, then there is reason to doubt the metaethical relevance of much of the skepticism regarding moral deference in recent literature. (shrink)

This paper examines the empirical and armchair evidence concerning the practical profiles of normative judgments. It then argues that the theory of normative judgment that best explains these practical profiles is a version of cognitivism: subjectivism. The preferred version says, roughly, i) each normative predicate is conventionally associated with a certain conative attitude, and ii) for S to judge that x has normative status N is for S to judge that x has a property picked out by the conative attitude (...) associated with N. In short, having a normative judgment about x semantically necessitates having a conative attitude toward x's properties, to be contrasted with conceptual necessitation, metaphysical necessitation, rational necessitation, etiological necessitation, and other flavors of necessitation. (shrink)

Is there a problem with believing based on moral testimony? The intuition that there is a problem is a starting point for much research on moral testimony. To arbitrate between various attempts to account for intuitions about moral testimony, we need to know the exact nature of those intuitions. The current study investigates this empirically. The study confirms an asymmetry in the way we think about testimony about moral and descriptive matters and explores the extent to which this asymmetry is (...) explained by different metaphysical beliefs about the relevant domains, or beliefs about the relative background levels of deception or disagreement. (shrink)