This book examines a variety of arguments that might be thought to support skepticism about the existence of morality, and it explains how these arguments can be answered by those who believe in objective moral truths. The focus throughout is on discussing questions that frequently trouble thoughtful and reflective individuals, including questions like the following: Does the prevalence of moral disagreement make it reasonable to conclude that there aren't really any moral facts at all? Is morality (...) simply relative to particular societies and times? What could objective moral facts possibly be like? If there were moral facts, how could we ever come to know anything about them? Shouldn't belief in the theory of evolution undermine our confidence that our moral intuitions reliably reveal moral truths? Would moral facts ever actually explain anything at all? Can morality really have the motivating and rational force we normally take it to have? How can one possibly find a place for objective moral values in a scientific worldview? The book explores plausible answers to questions like these and it thus aims to show why the belief in objective morality remains an intellectually reasonable one. (shrink)

Skeptical theism combines theism with skepticism about the ability of human beings to know God's reasons for permitting suffering. In recent years, it has become perhaps the most prominent theistic response from philosophers to the evidential argument from evil. Some critics of skeptical theism charge that it implies positions that theists and many atheists alike would reject, such as skepticism about our knowledge of the external world and about our knowledge of our moral obligations. I discuss these (...) charges, with emphasis on the charge of moral skepticism. I argue that the charges have merit, and I conclude by rebutting the claim that God's commands could give skeptical theists moral guidance despite the morally skeptical implications of their position. (shrink)

This chapter offers a new interpretation of Nietzsche’s argument for moral skepticism, an argument that should be of independent philosophical interest as well. On this account, Nietzsche offers a version of the argument from moral disagreement, but, unlike familiar varieties, it does not purport to exploit anthropological reports about the moral views of exotic cultures, or even garden-variety conflicting moral intuitions about concrete cases. Nietzsche, instead, calls attention to the single most important and embarrassing fact (...) about the history of moral theorizing by philosophers over two millennia: namely, that no rational consensus has been secured on any substantive, foundational proposition about morality. Persistent and apparently intractable disagreement on foundational questions, of course, distinguishes moral theory from inquiry in the sciences and mathematics. According to Nietzsche, the best explanation for this disagreement is that, even though moral skepticism is true, philosophers can still construct valid dialectical justifications for moral claims because the premises of different justifications will answer to the psychological needs of at least some philosophers and thus be deemed true by some of them. The chapter concludes by considering various attempts to defuse this abductive argument for scepticism. (shrink)

It has been claimed that a key difference between ancient and contemporary skepticism is that, unlike the ancient skeptics, contemporary skeptics consider ordinary beliefs to be insulated from skeptical doubt. In the case of metaethics, this issue is related to the following question: what attitude towards ordinary moral thought and discourse should one adopt if one is a moral skeptic? Whereas moral abolitionists claim that one should do away with ordinary moral thought and discourse altogether, (...) moral fictionalists maintain that, given that morality produces practical benefits, one should continue to make moral utterances and have moral thoughts, while at the same time refraining from asserting such utterances and believing such thoughts. Focusing particularly on Mackie’s skeptical stance, the present essay considers whether the view that first-order moral beliefs are unaffected by moral skepticism is defensible, whether moral fictionalism is compatible with moral insulation, and whether contemporary moral skeptics are in general committed to there being insulation between first- and second-order levels. (shrink)

Moral skepticism is the denial that there is any such thing as moral knowledge. Since the publication of The Myth of Morality in 2001, Richard Joyce has explored the terrain of moral skepticism and has been willing to advocate versions of this radical view. Joyce's attitude toward morality is analogous to an atheist's attitude toward religion: he claims that in making moral judgments speakers attempt to state truths but that the world isn't furnished with (...) the properties and relations necessary to render such judgments true. Moral thinking probably emerged as a human adaptation, but one whose usefulness derived from its capacity to bolster social cohesion rather than its ability to track truths about the world. Essays in Moral Skepticism gathers together a dozen of Joyce's most significant papers from the last decade, following the developments in his ideas, presenting responses to critics, and charting his exploration of the complex landscape of modern moral skepticism. (shrink)

"Moral skepticism" is the thesis that no moral code or standard is or could be objectively justified. It constitutes as important a challenge to anti-skeptical moral theory as does skepticism about God to theistic philosophies. It expresses intuitive doubts, but it also entails the falsity of a variety of philosophical theories. It entails a denial of moral knowledge and truth, but one could reject it without holding that there is such knowledge or truth. An (...) anti-skeptical theory could be a familiar "epistemic theory," but it could also be a "practical theory," according to which some moral code has an appropriate justification in practical reason. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume 27, Number 1, April 2001, pp. 3-83 Moral Skepticism and Moral Naturalism in Hume's Treatise NICHOLAS L. STURGEON Section I I believe that David Hume's well-known remarks on is and ought in his Treatise of Human Nature (T 469-70)1 have been widely misunderstood, and that in consequence so has their relation to his apparent ethical naturalism and to his skepticism about the (...) role of reason in morality. My aim in this paper is to display their connection with these larger issues in Hume's work by placing them in a more illuminating light. Readers may wonder whether there is anything left to say about the passage containing these remarks; they may also share Barry Stroud's suspicion that the vast literature focused on this one paragraph has "given it an importance and point out of all proportion to its actual role in the text of the Treatise."2 But I have some new things to say. I agree, moreover, that many recent discussions, in projecting twentieth-century assumptions onto Hume's text, have accorded this passage the wrong sort of importance: that is part of what I want to correct. But getting clear about what Hume is saying here is, I shall argue, a way of moving familiar and obviously central questions about his views on morality into an unfamiliar but revealing focus. Hume's is-ought thesis is commonly, and I believe correctly, seen as an application of his more general skepticism about the capacity of reason to discover "moral distinctions." But that general skepticism is usually taken, in turn, to conflict with those many passages in which Hume Nicholas L. Sturgeon is Professor of Philosophy, Sage School of Philosophy, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853-3201, USA. e-mail: [email protected] 4 Nicholas L. Sturgeon appears to say, in a reductive and naturalistic vein, that ascriptions of moral virtue and vice simply state certain empirical facts, facts about our own sentiments. My central thesis, however, is that Hume's view that there is a logical gap between is and ought is not merely consistent with his reductive naturalism, but actually depends on it. It is precisely because moral ascriptions state the facts that they do about our sentiments that no ought can be derived from an is and, a bit more generally, that reason is unable to discover moral distinctions. Hume's skepticism about reason in ethics depends, I shall argue, on his reductive ethical naturalism. This is not the usual understanding of Hume's views, and it will require careful explanation and defense. I shall proceed in several stages. My first step, in Section II, will be to argue that Hume's naturalism is at least consistent with his skepticism about reason, and in particular with his remarks about is and ought. I shall show this by focusing on a difficulty often taken to epitomize the conflict between these two strains in his thought: namely, that the paragraph containing these remarks (T 469-70: henceforth, the is-ought paragraph) and the one immediately preceding it (which I shall call the matter -of-fact paragraph (T 468-9)) appear, on their most natural readings, flatly to contradict one another.3 On the most common reading of the is-ought paragraph, it assumes the existence of two classes of statements, «-statements and oM^hr-statements, and declares that no member of the latter class can be derived entirely from members of the former. In the preceding paragraph, however, Hume appears in the guise of an ethical naturalist and subjectivist, and, if we take him at his word, simply equates a moral judgment with one asserting what he himself calls a "matter of fact," albeit a psychological fact about oneself: So that when you pronounce any action or character to be vicious, you mean nothing, but that from the constitution of your nature you have a feeling or sentiment of blame from the contemplation of it. (T 469) But, one supposes, if a moral assessment of an action or character is equivalent in meaning to a description of one's sentiments, then it can be derived from that description, and there... (shrink)

The fact of moral disagreement when conjoined with Conciliationism, an independently attractive view about the epistemic significance disagreement, seems to entail moral skepticism. This worries those who like Conciliationism, the independently attractive view, but dislike moral skepticism. Others, equally inclined against moral skepticism, think this is a reductio of Conciliationism. I argue that they are both wrong. There is no reductio and nothing to worry about.

In this introductory chapter, I not only present the essays that make up this volume but also I offer an extensive critical overview of moral skepticism with the hope that it will turn out to be useful particularly to the uninitiated reader. I first provide a taxonomy of varieties of moral skepticism, then discuss the main arguments advanced in their favor, and finally summarize the ten essays here collected, which deal with one or more of those (...) skeptical stances and arguments. (shrink)

Moral skepticism is at present a vibrant topic of philosophical inquiry. Particularly since the turn of the millennium, the metaethical study of skepticism has profited from advances in general epistemology and findings in empirical sciences, in light of which new arguments for and against moral skepticism have been devised, while the traditional ones have been reexamined. This collection of original essays by leading metaethicists will advance the ongoing debates about various forms of moral (...) class='Hi'>skepticism by drawing on recent innovative work on moral disagreement, moral knowledge and justification, moral error theory, moral fictionalism, moral phenomenology, moral psychology, and evolutionary debunking of morality. It will be a valuable resource for professionals and advanced students working in the areas of moral philosophy and moral psychology. (shrink)

Skeptical theists purport to undermine evidential arguments from evil by appealing to the fact that our knowledge of goods, evils, and their interconnections is significantly limited. Michael J. Almeida and Graham Oppy have recently argued that skeptical theism is unacceptable because it results in a form of moral skepticism which rejects inferences that play an important role in our ordinary moral reasoning. In this reply to Almeida and Oppy's argument we offer some reasons for thinking that skeptical (...) theism need not lead to any such objectionable form of moral skepticism. (shrink)

Facing morally controversial passages in Scripture, many Muslims find themselves forced to choose between accepting the dictates of Scripture and trusting their modern moral sensibilities. Let’s call the view that our independent moral judgment is not reliable when it is in conflict with the apparent meaning of Scripture, moderate moral skepticism. Assuming the falsity of the divine command theory, I will explore the argument for moderate moral skepticism by discussing the ideas of the Mu‘tazilite (...) theologian, Qadi ‘Abd al-Jabbar al-Hamadani (935–1025). My hope is that the discussion of the ideas of ‘Abd al-Jabbar helps us to see why the argument for moderate moral skepticism is appealing and what is the best way to resist the argument. (shrink)

Moral skeptics maintain that we do not have moral knowledge. Traditionally they haven’t argued via skeptical hypotheses like those provided by perceptual skeptics about the external world, such as Descartes’ deceiving demon. But some believe this can be done by appealing to hypotheses like moral nihilism. Moreover, some claim that skeptical hypotheses have special force in the moral case. But I argue that skeptics have failed to specify an adequate skeptical scenario, which reveals a general lesson: (...) such arguments are not a promising avenue for moral skeptics to take. They’re ultimately weaker when applied to morality compared to perception. (shrink)

According to moral error theory, morality is something invented, constructed or made; but mistakenly presents itself to us as if it were an independent object of discovery. According to moral constructivism, morality is something invented, constructed or made. In this paper I argue that constructivism is both compatible with, and in certain cases explanatory of, some of the allegedly mistaken commitments to which arguments for moral skepticism appeal. I focus on two particular allegations that are sometimes (...) associated with moral skepticism. The first is the suspicion that in making moral claims we are merely projecting our attitudes onto the world. The second is the suspicion that in arguing for and against moral views we are merely attempting to influence each other to give similar answers to questions that have no determinate answer. (shrink)

Over the last twenty-five years skeptical theism has become one of the leading contemporary responses to the atheological argument from evil. However, more recently, some critics of skeptical theism have argued that the skeptical theists are in fact unwittingly committed to a malignant form of moral skepticism. Several skeptical theists have responded to this critique by appealing to divine commands as a bulwark against the alleged threat of moral skepticism. In this paper we argue that the (...) skeptical theists’ appeal to divine commands fails to rescue their position from the threat of a worrisome form of moral skepticism. (shrink)

Respondents to the argument from evil who follow Michael Bergmann’s development of skeptical theism hold that our failure to determine God’s reasons for permitting evil does not disconfirm theism at all. They claim that such a thesis follows from the very plausible claim that we have no good reason to think our access to the realm of value is representative of the full realm of value. There are two interpretations of ST’s strength, the stronger of which leads skeptical theists into (...) moral skepticism and the weaker of which fails to rebut the argument from evil. As I demonstrate, skeptical theists avoid the charge of moral skepticism while also successfully rebutting the argument from evil only by embracing an equivocation between these two interpretations of ST. Thus, as I argue, skeptical theists are caught in a troubling dilemma: they must choose between moral skepticism and failure to adequately respond to the argument from evil. (shrink)

Skeptical theists purport to undermine evidential arguments from evil by appealing to the fact that our knowledge of goods, evils, and their interconnections is significantly limited. Michael J. Almeida and Graham Oppy have recently argued that skeptical theism is unacceptable because it results in a form of moral skepticism which rejects inferences that play an important role in our ordinary moral reasoning. In this reply to Almeida and Oppy’s argument we offer some reasons for thinking that skeptical (...) theism need not lead to any such objectionable form of moral skepticism. (shrink)

This article argues that introductory ethics classes can unwittingly create or confirm skeptical views toward morality. Introductory courses frequently include critical discussion of skeptical positions such as moral relativism and psychological egoism as a way to head off this unintended outcome. But this method of forestalling skepticism can have a residual (and unintended) skeptical effect. The problem calls for deeper pedagogical-cum-philosophical engagement with the underlying sources of skepticism. The paper provides examples of how to do this and (...) explains the additional benefits of teaching moral skepticism. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend a non-skeptical intuitionist approach to moral epistemology from recent criticisms. Starting with Sinnott-Armstrong's skeptical attacks, I argue that a familiar sort of skeptical argument rests on a problematic conception of the evidential grounds of our moral judgments. The success of his argument turns on whether we conceive of the evidential grounds of our moral judgments as consisting entirely of non-normative considerations. While we cannot avoid skepticism if we accept this conception of (...) our evidential grounds, that's because accepting this conception of our evidential grounds is tantamount to accepting the skeptic's conclusion. We have nothing to fear from arguments for skepticism from skepticism. (shrink)

Proponents of evolutionary debunking arguments aim to show that certain genealogical explanations of our moral faculties, if true, undermine our claim to moral knowledge. Criticisms of these arguments generally take the debunker’s genealogical explanation for granted. The task of the anti-debunker is thought to be that of reconciling the truth of this hypothesis with moral knowledge. In this paper, I shift the critical focus instead to the debunker’s empirical hypothesis and argue that the skeptical strength of an (...) evolutionary debunking argument is dependent upon the evidence for that hypothesis—evidence which, upon further inspection, proves far from compelling. Following that, however, I suggest that the same considerations which spell trouble for the empirical hypotheses of traditional debunking arguments can also be taken to give rise to an alternative—and better supported—style of debunking argument. (shrink)

According to Agnosticism with a capital A, even if we don’t see how any reason we know of would justify God in permitting all the evil in the world and even if we lack evidential and non-evidential warrant for theism, we should not infer that there probably is no reason that would justify God. That’s because, under those conditions, we should be in doubt about whether the goods we know of constitute a representative sample of all the goods there are, (...) among relevantly similar things. In my "Epistemic Humility, Arguments from Evil, and Moral Skepticism" (2009), I defended Agnosticism against the charge that it leaves us in doubt about whether we are obligated to intervene to prevent horrific suffering we can prevent at no risk to ourselves. In his “Agnosticism, Skeptical Theism, and Moral Obligation” (2014), Stephen Maitzen argues that, in light of my defense, Agnosticism is at odds with commonsense morality’s insistence that we have an obligation to intervene in such cases. In the present essay, I argue that the moral principle Maitzen seems to impute to commonsense (it's hard to tell what principle he has in mind) is false and that a moral principle much more in keeping with commonsense is compatible with Agnosticism and my defense of it. Along the way, I mention multiple misrepresentations Maitzen makes of Agnosticism and my defense of it. (shrink)

May argues that moral skepticism is less plausible than perceptual skepticism if it’s formulated using epistemic closure. In this paper, I argue we should be skeptical of the implausibility thesis. Moral skepticism can be formulated using closure if we combine moral nihilism with a properly formulated evolutionary scenario. Further, I argue that pace May, the phenomenon of ‘imaginative resistance’ isn’t an issue for the moral skeptic; she has an evolutionary explanation of the phenomenon. (...) Thus, we should be skeptical of the implausibility thesis. (shrink)

Reprinted in Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, Wadsworth, 2013, 6th edition, eds. Michael Rea and Louis Pojman. In this essay, I argue that the moral skepticism objection to what is badly named "skeptical theism" fails.

Moral disagreement is sometimes thought to pose problems for moral realism because it shows that we cannot achieve knowledge of the moral facts the realists posit. In particular, it is "fundamental" moral disagreement—that is, disagreement that is not due to distorting factors such as ignorance of relevant nonmoral facts, bad reasoning skills, or the like—that is supposed to generate skeptical implications. In this paper, we show that this version of the disagreement challenge is flawed as it (...) stands. The reason is that the epistemic assumptions it requires are incompatible with the possibility of fundamental disagreement. However, we also present an alternative reconstruction of the challenge that avoids the problem. The challenge we present crucially invokes the principle that knowledge requires "adherence". While that requirement is usually not discussed in this context, we argue that it provides a promising explanation of why disagreement sometimes leads to skepticism. (shrink)

The focus of this paper is the following claim: as a purely conceptual matter, the moral truths could be pretty much anything, and we should assume this in assessing our reliability at grasping moral truths. This claim, which I call No Content, plays a key role in an important skeptical argument against realist moral knowledge – the Normative Lottery Argument. In this paper, I argue that moral realists can, and should, reject No Content. My argument centers (...) on the idea of practical intelligibility. I explore different aspects of practical intelligibility, and I argue that such intelligibility sets a constraint on the possibilities we should consider when assessing our reliability at grasping moral truths. (shrink)

This paper considers the theoretical and methodological origins of Marx's beliefs and attitudes towards classical moral theories and then their implications for two basic questions: (1) In what way, if any, was Marx suspicious and dismissive of classical moral theories (e.g., utilitarianism or Kantianism), and (2) what sort of moral theory can a proponent of Marx's moral views support? Here it is argued that there is a clear sense in which Marx would not have been automatically (...) suspicious of moral ideas, conceptions, discourse and the rest. But there is an equally clear sense in which he was. It is in the latter respect that Marx’s views must be explicated in terms of his theory of historical development, and it is only here that the full richness and impact of Marx’s views on moral philosophy can be understood and appreciated. (shrink)

Students sometimes profess moral relativism or skepticism with retorts like ‘how can we know?’ or ‘it’s all relative!’ Here I defend a pedagogical method to defuse moral relativism and moral skepticism using phenomenal conservatism: if it seems to S that p, S has defeasible justification to believe that p; e.g., moral seemings, like perceptual ones, are defeasibly justified. The purpose of defusing moral skepticism and relativism is to prevent these metaethical views from (...) acting as stumbling blocks to insightful ethical inquiry in the classroom. This approach puts the burden of proof on the relativist or skeptic (to justify their view, contrary to appearances), and makes their views costlier: if we reject moral seemings as a kind, we must reject other less objectionable seemings too (e.g. intellectual seemings). Finally, this approach improves learning outcomes by ‘hooking onto’ student familiarity with seemings, e.g. seeing is (defeasibly justified) believing. (shrink)

This brief discussion argues that Ayn Rand misconstrued David Hume's famous "is/ought" gap, just as innumerable others have. Hume objected to deducing ought claims (or judgments or statements) from is claims and not to deriving the former from the latter. He was silent about this but his own work in ethics and politics suggests that he would agree that one can infer ethical, moral or political beliefs from an understanding of facts (such as those of history).

Julia Annas has affirmed that the kind of modern moral skepticism which denies the existence of objective moral values rests upon a contrast between morality and some other system of beliefs about the world which is not called into doubt. Richard Bett, on the other hand, has argued that the existence of such a contrast is not a necessary condition for espousing that kind of moral skepticism. My purpose in this paper is to show that (...) Bett fails to make a good case against Annas’ thesis. To accomplish this, it will be helpful to consider the Pyrrhonean attitude towards morality as expounded in Sextus Empiricus’ work. (shrink)

In ambito accademico anglo-americano, ma non solo, Richard Joyce è ormai noto per i suoi lavori su metaetica, etica evoluzionistica e psicologia morale. Le due pubblicazioni che hanno consacrato Joyce come figura emergente di questi ambiti di ricerca sono The Myth of Morality (Cambridge University Press, 2001) e The Evolution of Morality (Mit Press, 2006). Se nel primo libro Joyce difende la teoria dell’errore e il finzionalismo morale, nel secondo egli fornisce una genealogia della morale su...