Analytic Philosophy 55 (1):54-74 (2014)
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Abstract |
What, if anything, is wrong with acquiring moral beliefs on the basis of testimony? Most philosophers think that there is something wrong with it, and most point to a special problem that moral testimony is supposed to create for moral agency. Being a good moral agent involves more than bringing about the right outcomes. It also involves acting with "moral understanding" and one cannot have moral understanding of what one is doing via moral testimony. And so, adherents to this view claim, relying on moral testimony is problematic. Importantly, the problem that afflicts moral testimony, according to this view, is not a problem for testimonial knowledge in general. Indeed, critics of moral testimony acknowledge that a vast amount of our knowledge comes, completely unproblematically, from testimony. Call this the Asymmetry Thesis. We argue that while the diagnosis of what is wrong with moral testimony (when there is something wrong with it) in terms of moral understanding is correct, the lesson many of its adherents draw from it, namely that there is a principled difference between moral an non-moral testimony which renders the first, but not the second, problematic, is not. In other words, we argue that the Asymmetry Thesis is false.
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Keywords | testimony moral testimony know how knowledge moral agency |
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DOI | 10.1111/phib.12033 |
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References found in this work BETA
Internal and External Reasons.Bernard Williams - 1979 - In Ross Harrison (ed.), Rational Action. Cambridge University Press. pp. 101-113.
Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives.Philippa Foot - 1972 - Philosophical Review 81 (3):305-316.
View all 14 references / Add more references
Citations of this work BETA
Moral Testimony: A Re-Conceived Understanding Explanation.Laura Frances Callahan - 2018 - Philosophical Quarterly 68 (272):437-459.
Moral Testimony Pessimism and the Uncertain Value of Authenticity.Andreas L. Mogensen - 2017 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 95 (2):261-284.
Epistemological Problems of Testimony.Jonathan E. Adler - 2006 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
The Non-Remedial Value of Dependence on Moral Testimony.Paddy McShane - 2018 - Philosophical Studies 175 (3):629-647.
View all 19 citations / Add more citations
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