Philosophy Compass 8 (6):552-559 (2013)
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Testimony is an important source of our knowledge about the world. But to some, there seems something odd, perhaps even wrong, about trusting testimony about specifically moral matters. In this paper, I discuss several different explanations of what might be wrong with trusting moral testimony. These include the possibility that there is no moral knowledge; that moral knowledge cannot be transmitted by moral testimony; that there are reasons not to trust moral testimony either because you should try to gain and use “moral understanding” to make your moral judgements instead or because doing so is damaging to your moral character in various ways. Finally, I discuss some “debunking explanations” according to which it is right and rational to trust moral testimony from a trustworthy source. © 2013 The Author. Philosophy Compass © 2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
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DOI | 10.1111/phc3.12040 |
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References found in this work BETA
Inference to the Best Explanation.Peter Lipton - 1991 - London and New York: Routledge/Taylor and Francis Group.
View all 21 references / Add more references
Citations of this work BETA
Moral Testimony: Transmission Versus Propagation.Alison Hills - 2020 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 101 (2):399-414.
If You Justifiably Believe That You Ought to Φ, You Ought to Φ.Jonathan Way & Daniel Whiting - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (7):1873-1895.
Moral Testimony: A Re-Conceived Understanding Explanation.Laura Frances Callahan - 2018 - Philosophical Quarterly 68 (272):437-459.
Epistemological Problems of Testimony.Jonathan E. Adler - 2006 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
View all 32 citations / Add more citations
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