Moral Skepticism

I defend ethical hedonism, the view that pleasure is the sole good thing, by arguing that it offers the only answer to an argument for moral skepticism. The skeptical problem arises from widespread fundamental moral disagreement, which entails the presence of enough moral error to undermine the reliability of most processes generating moral belief. We know that pleasure is good through the reliable process of phenomenal introspection, which reveals what our experiences are like. If knowing of pleasure’s goodness through phenomenal (...) introspection is the only reliable way to form our initial moral beliefs, we should accept ethical hedonism. (shrink)

It is sometimes alleged that “the reliability challenge” to moral realism is equally compelling against mathematical realism. This allegation is of interest. The reliability challenge to moral realism is increasingly taken to be the most serious challenge to moral realism. However, the specific considerations that are said to motivate it – such as considerations of rational dubitability and evolutionary influence – are widely held not to motivate an analogous challenge to mathematical realism. If it turned out that, in fact, they (...) do, then one might have to choose between moral realism and mathematical realism. Nevertheless, the relevant allegation has never been clarified, let alone evaluated. In this paper, I clarify and evaluate it. I argue that the allegation is plausible, but depends on theses in the philosophy of mathematics that are widely doubted. One upshot of the discussion is that mathematical realism faces challenges that have not been widely appreciated. Another is that the reliability challenge to moral realism may not be the most interesting epistemological challenge to moral realism. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss five meta-ethical challenges to Naturalistic Moral Realism, which includes secular moral codes such as Secular Humanism that, in my view, naturalists need to address to keep their commitment to moral realism from looking like special pleading. The five challenges are as follows: 1. The Ontological Problem (OP): How do such moral principles exist? 2. The Epistemic Problem (EP): How does our moral sense/intuition track such principles? 3. The Influence Problem (IP): What authority does the existence (...) of such principles have to supervene on our behavior? 4. The Axiological Problem (AP): What entities have moral value and deserve moral consideration? 5. Methodological Problem (MP): How do we go about arbitrating between moral claims when they conflict? (shrink)

Sosa’s topic is the use of intuitions in philosophy. Much of what I have written on the issue has been critical of appeals to intuition in epistemology, though in recent years I have become increasingly skeptical of the use of intuitions in ethics and in semantic theory as well.

I argue that the answer is affirmative, pace Oppy.

How is ethical knowledge possible? One promising answer is Moral Empiricism: we can acquire ethical knowledge through emotional experiences. But Moral Empiricism faces a serious problem. Our emotions are unreliable guides to ethics, frequently failing to fit the ethical status of their objects, so the habit of basing ethical beliefs on one's emotions seems too unreliable to yield knowledge. I develop a new, virtue-epistemic solution to this problem, with practical implications for how we approach ethical decision-making. By exploiting a frequently (...) overlooked connection between reliability and defeaters, I argue that an agent can have a reliable belief-forming habit despite having unreliable emotions. The upshot is that emotion-based ethical knowledge is possible even for people whose emotions are unreliable, but only if we cultivate the skill of noticing and responding to signs that a given emotion is unfitting. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 12 Bart Streumer makes an interesting case for an error theory in ethics—and for an error theory for normativity more generally, but I will focus on the more restricted target. I offer a reply on behalf of naturalists in ethics. My case for resistance will involve identifying a three-fold ambiguity in his use of the term ‘guarantee’. I conclude with some observations about the implications of theories of reference for moral/ethical terms for the debate.

_ Source: _Page Count 12 Bart Streumer makes an interesting case for an error theory in ethics—and for an error theory for normativity more generally, but I will focus on the more restricted target. I offer a reply on behalf of naturalists in ethics. My case for resistance will involve identifying a three-fold ambiguity in his use of the term ‘guarantee’. I conclude with some observations about the implications of theories of reference for moral/ethical terms for the debate.

Derk Pereboom’s book, Wrongdoing & the Human Emotions, addresses how we ought to respond to wrongdoing given the lack of basic-desert moral responsibility, falsity of retributivism, and the metaphysical and moral problems with moral anger. The book is outstanding. Pereboom’s arguments are important, interesting, powerful, and very well-written. Despite this, his specific arguments fail because basic-desert responsibility-skepticism makes non-consequentialism is false.

In Unbelievable Errors, Bart Streumer offers resourceful arguments against each of non-reductive realism, reductive realism, and non-cognitivism, in order to motivate his version of the normative error theory, according to which normative predicates ascribe properties that do not exist. In this contribution, I argue that none of the steps of this master argument succeed, and that Streumer’s arguments leave puzzles about what it means to ascribe a property at all.

It is hard to deny that that we possess any moral knowledge, and yet it is even harder to explain where this moral knowledge comes from. We know, for instance, that the Holocaust was profoundly immoral, but how do we know this? Many philosophers explain moral knowledge in the same way as perceptual knowledge. On the perceptual model, we acquire moral knowledge without inference based on experiences that represent moral facts. In Deductive Moral Knowledge, Declan Smithies challenges that perceptual model (...) and replaces it with a deductive model, according to which our most basic moral knowledge is based on deductive inference. -/- Smithies argues against Hume's Law, which states that you can never deduce an “ought” from an 'is”. In its place, he defends “the anti-Humean thesis” that we can know moral facts by deducing them from the non-moral facts on which they depend. We can know the moral conclusion that the Holocaust was wrong, for example, by deducing it from the known non-moral premise that it was genocide. -/- The anti-Humean thesis has wide-ranging implications for moral epistemology. It undermines regress arguments for moral skepticism without relying on special moral faculties such as moral perception, intuition or emotion. It supplies a new form of moral rationalism that explains how we can acquire a priori moral knowledge by deducing moral principles from non-moral assumptions in suppositional reasoning. It explains why no one can be justified in holding or acting upon morally repugnant beliefs, such as the belief that genocide is permissible. In addition, it resolves puzzles about the epistemology of moral disagreement, moral testimony, and moral uncertainty. -/- Deductive Moral Knowledge uses recent innovations in general epistemology to illuminate contemporary debates in moral epistemology. In doing so, it advances our understanding of deductive knowledge and a priori knowledge in general, as well as moral knowledge. (shrink)

The argument from queerness is one of the most important arguments for moral error theory. Moral error theory holds that moral discourse is hopelessly flawed or, more precisely, that all moral judgements are false. The argument from queerness, in the version I am concerned with, claims that moral discourse is centrally committed to the thesis that moral facts entail categorical reasons, understood as irreducibly normative favouring relations, and that if this thesis were true, moral facts would be queer. In this (...) paper, I argue that axiology does not fall prey to the argument from queerness. Axiology is the part of moral discourse that examines which things are good, which things are bad, and what makes good things good and bad things bad. I argue that axiology survives the argument from queerness for three reasons. First, many axiological judgements are not committed to the thesis in question. Second, some judgements about moral value are committed to the thesis but do not belong to axiology. Third, some axiological judgements are committed to the thesis but can simply be removed from axiological discourse. (shrink)

Ethics’ reputation for wide-ranging, interminable disagreement, coupled with conciliationism regarding disagreement, has been leveraged as a basis for moral skepticism. The focus of this essay is on this challenge as it has been applied to philosophical ethics. I call the empirical conjecture underwriting the challenge into question – namely, that disagreement is widespread and roughly balanced within ethics – by describing the results of two studies involving over 400 moral philosophers. The studies reveal widespread agreement, and even consensus, on a (...) range of purportedly contentious moral issues – capital punishment, abortion, eating meat, physician-assisted dying, euthanasia, and many others. The evidence the studies provide suggest that the extent of disagreement within ethics that the conciliationist challenge relies upon likely does not exist. (shrink)

Moral disagreement is often invoked to support skeptical conclusions about moral judgment, typically by modeling it on the epistemology of peer disagreement. On the dominant picture, disagreement with a peer supplies higher-order evidence of error and thereby rationally requires suspension of judgment or a substantial reduction in confidence. We argue that this evidential picture is problematic, especially in the moral domain. First, the conditions for epistemic peerhood are difficult to specify and apply without arbitrariness, and this undermines the assumption that (...) disagreement is a uniform sign of error. Second, even where peerhood conditions are plausible, moral disagreement need not play the specific evidential role presupposed by the skeptical argument. Drawing on resources from social epistemology, we develop an alternative framework on which persistent moral disagreement can function as a structured form of collective inquiry, regulated by argumentative practices and epistemic institutions. On this view, steadfastness is not automatically a sign of epistemic arrogance; under appropriate conditions, it is compatible with epistemic humility, and it can contribute to both epistemic and moral improvement. (shrink)

This is a short review of Shelly Kagan's book Answering Moral Skepticism (OUP, 2023).

On Kant’s view, human agents are “animals endowed with reason,” sensitive to both natural and moral incentives. His model is hybrid rather than dualistic: insofar as humans are sensitive to the authority of rational norms, they can transform themselves from animal rationabile into animal rationale. This raises the question: how do hybrid agents navigate the heterogeneity of incentives? This is a live question, giving rise to a methodological puzzle. What methodology fits hybrid agency? Two opposing approaches, reductive naturalism and anti-naturalism, (...) have prevailed, with John McDowell offering a middle ground through the concept of second nature. In contrast, this essay argues that Kant’s view vindicates the positive aspects of naturalism and anti-naturalism, while rejecting the reductive ambitions of the former and the robust ontology of the latter. Hybrid rational agency, characterized by self-reflection, allows for rational changes that are not merely adaptive responses but radical, original acts of reorientation toward the world. By refocusing on Kant’s account of moral agency, we recover the resources for a distinctive critique of reductive naturalism, showing its conservative and alienating effects. Kant provides an empowering view of human agency, in dialectical contrast to the second nature model based on habit and social training. (shrink)

This dissertation explores the theoretical and empirical foundations of Evolutionary Debunking Arguments (EDAs), a critical philosophical type of argument used to challenge realist positions across various domains, notably morality. The dissertation systematically analyzes how EDAs function, what they require as minimal empirical input, what their scope and limits are, and how they can be successfully applied to domains beyond morality. By investigating the empirical credibility of evolutionary psychology and the epistemological consequences of belief formation through natural selection, the dissertation provides (...) a rigorous framework for assessing the scope and limits of EDAs. The work investigates key problems such as the "empirical input problem"—which questions the degree of evolutionary evidence required for a successful debunking argument—and the "target problem", which is concerned with how EDAs can be generalised to expand and clearly define the target area for debunking. The dissertation applies its framework to specific case studies, including moral realism, color realism, and aesthetic realism, demonstrating where EDAs are most compelling and where their applicability is limited. Ultimately, the dissertation argues that while EDAs can effectively challenge certain realist positions, they must be applied with methodological precision to avoid overgeneralization. The findings have broader implications for metaethics, epistemology, and the philosophy of mind, offering new insights into the evolutionary constraints on human cognition and the justification of our beliefs​. (shrink)

I offer replies to the four sets of critical comments on my book, "Morality: From Error to Fiction," appearing in the same issue of this journal.

This is a précis of "Morality: From Error to Fiction," broken down chapter by chapter. Each chapter, plus a chapter-length Epilogue, is summarized in a few sentences.

Moral psychology—broadly speaking, the study of how people reason and act morally—has a long and productive history. Initially a subfield of philosophy, it posed groundbreaking questions about the nature of values and virtues, the balance of reason and emotion, and the gap between “is” and “ought.” In the twentieth century, the rise of psychology expanded the a priori philosophical enterprise into an empirical science. In psychology, perspectives of development, social interaction, cognition, and neuroscience brought new understanding and new questions. Over (...) the past few decades, moral psychology has emerged as one of the most vital fields in the human sciences. The Cambridge Handbook of Moral Psychology offers a state-of-the-art guide to this rapidly expanding field. It introduces central questions and recent insights, traces continuing puzzles and debates, and integrates empirical and theoretical perspectives. The interdisciplinary character of the volume reflects the fact that contemporary research in moral psychology is deeply informed by many disciplines and traditions, from its philosophical roots to its latest scientific discoveries in psychology, anthropology, sociology, behavioral economics, and more. (shrink)

In biomedical ethics, there is widespread acceptance of moral realism, the view that moral claims express a proposition and that at least some of these propositions are true. Biomedical ethics is also in the business of attributing moral obligations, such as “S should do X.” The problem, as we argue, is that against the background of moral realism, most of these attributions are erroneous or inaccurate. The typical obligation attribution issued by a biomedical ethicist fails to truly capture the person's (...) actual obligations. We offer a novel argument for rife error in obligation attribution. The argument starts with the idea of an epistemic burden. Epistemic burdens are all of those epistemic obstacles one must surmount in order to achieve some aim. Epistemic burdens shape decision-making such that given two otherwise equal options, a person will choose the option that has the lesser of epistemic burdens. Epistemic burdens determine one's potential obligations and, conversely, their non-obligations. The problem for biomedical ethics is that ethicists have little to no access to others' epistemic burdens. Given this lack of access and the fact that epistemic burdens determine potential obligations, biomedical ethicists often can only attribute accurate obligations out of luck. This suggests that the practice of attributing obligations in biomedical ethics is rife with error. To resolve this widespread error, we argue that this practice should be abolished from the discourse of biomedical ethics. (shrink)

If God commanded you to do something contrary to your moral conscience, how would you respond? Many believers of different faiths face a similar challenge today. While they take scripture to be the word of God, they find scriptural passages that seem incompatible with their modern moral sensibilities. In Morality and Revelation in Islamic Thought and Beyond, philosopher Amir Saemi identifies this as the problem of divinely prescribed evil. -/- Saemi unpacks two approaches to answering this problem. In the first (...) part of the book, Saemi demonstrates how Islamic thinkers of various historical traditions (including the Ash'arites, the Mu'tazilites, and the Greek influenced Philosophers, falasifa) adhered to a scripture-first view. By appealing to hidden moral facts known only to God or the prophet, a scripture-first approach views moral reasoning, at least when it conflicts with Scripture, with skepticism. An ethics-first view, however, places our independent moral judgments before scripture. In the second part of the book, Saemi offers two ethics-first solutions, with some roots in the Islamic tradition, to the problem of divinely prescribed evil. Each solution argues that our own moral reasoning is reliable in the face of skeptical arguments presented by Scripture-first views and shows how a theist can maintain their belief in scripture's divinity while relying on their own moral judgments. By studying the conflict between morality and revelation in Islamic thought, Saemi offers unapologetic solutions not only for progressive Muslims but for all theists who take their moral judgments seriously. (shrink)

Normative error theorists aim to defend an error theory which says that normative judgments ascribe normative properties, and such properties, including reasons for belief, are never instantiated. Many philosophers have raised objections to defending a theory which entails that we cannot have reason to believe it. Spencer Case objects that error theorists simply cannot avoid self-defeat. Alternatively, Bart Streumer argues that we cannot believe normative error theory but that, surprisingly, this helps its advocates defend it against these objections. I think (...) that if Streumer’s argument is successful, it provides error theorists an escape from Case’s self-defeat objection. However, I build upon and improve Case’s argument to show that we could never even successfully defend normative error theory whether we can believe it or not. So, self-defeat remains. I close by offering some reasons for thinking our inability to defend normative error theory means that we should reject it, which, in turn, would mean that it’s false. (shrink)

RESUMEN: Hume no comparte la indispensable premisa del ateísmo (Dios no existe), pero sostiene que solamente podemos afirmar que existe lo que se puede probar, comprobar y verificar. Tanto la causalidad como la sustancia como el propio yo son solo creencias. Este aplastante escepticismo influirá inevitablemente en la idea de Dios. La filosofía de Hume comparte con el ateísmo tres puntos cruciales: 1. Crítica al argumento del diseño; 2. Mortalidad del alma; 3. Crítica a los monoteísmos. Con este artículo me (...) propongo mostrar que la filosofía de Hume, aun siendo escéptica, supone una puerta hacia el ateísmo. PALABRAS CLAVE: escepticismo, agnosticismo, deísmo, ateísmo, monoteísmo, inmortalidad del alma./// ABSTRACT: Hume does not share atheism’s indispensable premise (God does not exist) but he argues that we only can assure what exists by proof and verification. Causality, substance, and the self are only beliefs. This overwhelming skepticism will influence inevitably his idea of God. Hume’s philosophy shares with atheism three cru- cial points: 1. Criticism of the design argument; 2. Mortality of the soul; 3. Criticism of the monotheistic religions. With this paper I intend to show that Hume’s philosophy, even though being skeptical, opens a door to atheism. KEYWORDS: skepticism, agnosticism, deism, atheism, monotheism, immortality of the soul. (shrink)

The problem is not only with what’s right and wrong but the problem is with who decides about what’s right and wrong. The question is not only about; what actions are good and what is regarded as good. Rather the question is; what is the basis for good and from where it comes and is being good, right or not? These questions are not only necessary for thinking about morality, rather it’s also led toward questioning the good of everything here. (...) As the questions are already been asked, so the question is; can the question itself be protected or not? And for us the question itself belongs with our own individuality and provides reasons to questions and understanding, that’s why protecting it becomes necessary. (shrink)

Metaethical debunking arguments often conclude that no moral belief is epistemically justified. Early versions of such arguments largely relied on metaphors and analogies and left the epistemology of debunking underspecified. Debunkers have since come to take on substantial and broad-ranging epistemological commitments. The plausibility of metaethical debunking has thereby become entangled in thorny epistemological issues. In this thesis, I provide a critical yet sympathetic evaluation of the prospects and challenges facing such arguments in light of this development. In doing so, (...) I address the following central question: how could genealogical information undermine the epistemic justification of moral beliefs? In Part I, I begin answering the central question by extracting explicit and implicit epistemic principles from three popular debunking arguments. These arguments, due to Gilbert Harman, Richard Joyce, and Sharon Street, generate principles concerning ontological parsimony, explanatory dispensability, epistemic insensitivity, lack of epistemic safety, unexplained reliability, epistemic coincidences, and explanatory constraints on rational belief. Having set out the principles tasked with explaining how genealogical information undermines, Part II of the thesis seeks to evaluate whether debunking arguments built on them succeed. To this end, I consider two types of challenges faced by such arguments. First, there are strategies that attempt to block global moral debunking arguments. I argue that one popular such strategy, the so-called ‘third-factor strategy’, has been misunderstood. When understood correctly, it is of no help in answering debunking arguments. I then flesh out an alternative and more promising strategy for blocking such arguments. I then turn to internal challenges facing debunkers, particularly those who rely on ‘explanationist’ principles. I argue that explanationist debunking arguments, as well as most others, fall prey to one or more of four internal challenges: the implausibility of first-order epistemic principles, the threat of overgeneralization, the threat of self-defeat, and the need for costly metaepistemic commitments. I conclude that current debunking arguments fail to establish that no moral belief is justified. By analyzing why existing arguments fail, I develop two conditions of adequacy that debunkers must satisfy in order to navigate the internal challenges successfully. I end by suggesting future directions that debunkers should pursue to rehabilitate the prospects for global moral debunking arguments. (shrink)

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)

This chapter examines Kant’s deduction of noumenal freedom of will from the moral law in (chiefly) the _Critique of Practical Reason_. It argues against the common view that Kant allows only for rational faith (_Glauben_) that we have noumenal freedom of will: rather, we can know (_wissen_) with objective certainty that our will is transcendentally free. This is because we have normative-practical knowledge of the moral law as the foundational axiom of all practical cognition, and because we know that transcendental (...) freedom of will is a necessary real condition for the existence of the moral law. Hence, we can knowingly infer that our will is transcendentally free. The chapter considers how Kant can defend the individual steps of this argument against various objections, such as the claim that Kant’s appeal to moral knowledge fails because it ignores the problem of moral skepticism. It further examines whether Kant’s view that we can know the existence of free noumenal causes is compatible with his critical epistemology and his appeal to noumenal ignorance. Although Kant’s position can be defended against some standard epistemological worries, it must face the concern that practical reason oversteps its boundaries when it posits free moral agents as the specific noumenal causes of natural events. (shrink)

This chapter examines the complications arising from Kant’s view that human actions can be regarded as effects of two different types of causes, namely, of empirical causes that are naturally determined and of noumenal causes that are free from natural determination. For Kant, we can legitimately regard the empirical causes that determine our spatiotemporal actions as causally dependent on our free noumenal causality. The chapter shows how this idea fits into Kant’s transcendental idealism and what cognitive status it has in (...) light of the general interpretive framework developed in Chapter I. It further examines how Kant’s concession that our empirically determined actions are (in principle) predictable accords with his libertarian conception of human freedom. In this context, it emerges that and why Kant’s doctrine of freedom does not imply (contrary to what some commentators suggest) the fatalistic claim that our (empirical or noumenal) moral character is unalterably fixed. (shrink)

This chapter argues that Kant’s conception of noumenal freedom or absolute spontaneity is not confined to the practical faculty of will but also applies to our theoretical intellect. Far from being thinking mechanisms, we exercise absolute freedom of thought and intellectual autonomy in cognitive actions such as, paradigmatically, empirical judgments about the natural world. The chapter shows that Kant’s account of epistemic freedom avoids doxastic voluntarism: transcendentally free cognitive actions do not stand under the immediate control of the will. Freedom (...) of thought is a distinctive species of transcendental freedom that differs from freedom of will in various ways: most importantly, our free understanding lacks what Kant calls “true causality” since it produces only representations of objects rather than objects corresponding to our representations. By resolving various textual puzzles and seeming conflicts between the two editions of the first _Critique_, the chapter demonstrates that Kant did not (contrary to what some commentators suggest) abandon his view that we possess absolute freedom of thought in the late 1780s. (shrink)

This chapter provides an interpretive framework for interpreting Kant’s views on freedom. It introduces various desiderata that any adequate interpretation must meet. It argues that certain prominent approaches, such as the metaphysically deflationary “two-standpoint” reading, fail some of these desiderata. The chapter defends a metaphysical dual-aspect reading of Kant’s transcendental idealism on the grounds that such a reading is uniquely suited to capture his views on human freedom. It articulates a key feature of Kohl’s interpretation: Kant’s doctrine involves a metaphysical (...) belief in the existence of an atemporal, undetermined form of causality, but this belief does not lend itself to any further metaphysical theorizing. The belief that we are free from determination by foreign causes can be adopted only from a distinctive normative standpoint that brackets explanatory questions. The chapter concludes by introducing the main challenges that arise for a rational reconstruction of Kant’s libertarian doctrine. Such a reconstruction must show how Kant can motivate his theoretically inscrutable conception of freedom against naturalistic, compatibilist views on which free capacities can be explained as part of the deterministic natural order. Moreover, it must show how Kant might be able justify the belief that we really are free in his metaphysically ambitious transcendental sense. (shrink)

This chapter considers the question: why, in Kant’s view, do our intellectual freedom and our theoretical rationality require that we can think without being determined by natural causes? Kant does not make the blanket claim that causal determinism per se is incompatible with epistemic freedom and rational thinking. Rather, Kant argues that if the human mind were exclusively determined by empirical causes (or indeed by _any_ foreign causes, including also divine imposition), then our cognitive representations would lack a priori rational (...) necessity. This would fatally undermine all our cognitive efforts including those that aim to reach objectively valid empirical judgments, because these judgments depend for their cognitive validity on a priori representations such as causal necessity. The chapter examines how Kant’s views on epistemic freedom relate to Hume, to his transcendental idealism, and to contemporary views on causation and evolutionary theory. It further shows how Kant can defend his view against various objections such as the genetic fallacy charge already considered in Chapter IV. The chapter culminates with the argument that we possess certain knowledge that our theoretical intellect is transcendentally free. However, from this it does not follow that our will or practical reason is also transcendentally free. (shrink)

This chapter examines how we can conceive our non-sensible noumenal freedom even though our categorial concepts like causality, contingency, or necessity seem restricted to sensible, empirical phenomena. It argues that we can adequately represent our free will through the idea of the moral law as an autonomous normative standard which governs the noumenal causality of free will. The resulting concept of noumenal causality is a distinctively practical concept that cannot be used for any theoretical, explanatory purposes. The chapter further shows (...) that even though both the free divine will and the free human will are governed by the same moral law, human freedom of will as a faculty of choice (Willkür) differs from divine freedom since it involves metaphysical contingency or alternative possibilities. The human will is akin to the divine will only, but significantly, as law-giving pure practical reason, the faculty of practical judgment (rather than choice). The chapter concludes by suggesting two conceptually separate grounds for Kant’s incompatibilism and anti-naturalism about free will: the causality of nature threatens our freedom of Willkür by removing the absolute contingency of human choice, and it threatens our freedom of practical reason by undermining the lawful a priori necessity of moral judgment. (shrink)

This chapter examines the second consideration supporting Kant’s stance that human freedom of will is incompatible with the causality of nature: if our faculty of choice (Willkür) were exclusively conditioned by natural causes, then our choices would lack the absolute metaphysical contingency that is integral to our moral self-conception as imperfectly rational agents who can go either way with regards to moral laws of reason. The chapter reconstructs Kant’s argument for this view. Kant’s claim that it is always possible for (...) human agents to violate moral norms does not (contrary to what some commentators suggest) require his hedonism about our empirical motives. Rather, this claim rests on a compelling contrast between desire-based and reason-based motivation that pervades all human choice. The chapter further shows that we freely violate moral laws of reason in three distinctive ways: through self-deception, rationalization, and (controversially) akrasia or weakness of will. In this context, it emerges that Kant does not unequivocally endorse the so-called “Incorporation Thesis” or the “Guise of the Good” view of human agency. (shrink)

In "Kant on Freedom and Rational Agency", I aim to give a comprehensive interpretation and a qualified defense of Kant’s doctrine of freedom as a systematic conception of rational agency. -/- Although my book follows Kant in focusing on the idea of free will as a condition of moral agency, it denies that moral freedom of will is the only relevant (transcendental) type of freedom. Human beings also exercise absolute freedom of thought (intellectual autonomy) in their theoretical cognition. Moreover, our (...) creation and appreciation of beauty requires our freedom of imagination. I consider these three varieties of free agency both in their own rights and in their systematic connections, by examining how they differ from and yet relate to each other. On this basis, my interpretation shows that and why for Kant transcendental freedom is the proper anchor ("cardinal point") of all meaningful, rational human activity: our moral efforts to become more virtuous and to make the world a better place; our theoretical efforts to understand, explain and predict the world; and our aesthetic engagement with the world of beauty, both artistic and natural. -/- Additionally, "Kant on Freedom and Rational Agency" illuminates Kant's intricate, multifaceted account by considering the various metaphysical, semantic, epistemological and normative dimensions of Kantian freedom and by revealing their systematic interconnections. One significant benefit of tracing these links is that by doing so we can arrive at a charitable view of how Kant seeks to justify the belief in moral freedom of will. -/- For many commentators, Kant's appeal to a moral ‘fact of reason’ as our basis for believing in supersensible free will is an abject philosophical failure or a lapse into dogmatic rationalism. By contrast, I show that Kant justifies our belief in free will through a rather powerful, two-pronged argumentative strategy. First, he constructs a practical-moral proof of free will via the fact of reason doctrine. Second, he provides a theoretical defense of this moral proof against challenges arising from a naturalistic worldview. The linchpin of this defense is his argument that naturalistic cognizers must presuppose their epistemic freedom of thought as a necessary condition of all objective theoretical (including naturalistic) cognition. Since epistemic freedom of thought and moral freedom of will are both species of transcendental freedom, naturalists cannot (coherently) debunk our practical self-conception as transcendentally free moral agents. The appeal to epistemic freedom of thought provides no positive grounds for believing in a free moral will; but it shields our moral self-awareness (which does provide such grounds) against its most prominent detractors. -/- This defense strategy (among other aspects of Kant’s view that I examine in my book) shows that a significant part of Kant’s legacy is his abiding potential to challenge and provide alternatives to a naturalistic philosophical worldview (held by the “defender of an omnipotent nature”) according to which the mechanistic order of nature engulfs all metaphysical reality and (thereby) our entire humanity. (shrink)

The introduction describes the main themes of the book and lays out its key ambition: to provide a systematic reconstruction and a qualified defense of Kant’s libertarian, anti-naturalistic doctrine of free agency. It explains how Kant’s account of freedom relates to contemporary views, and how the interpretation to be developed in the book compares to other major interpretations. It highlights some of the main challenges that arise for a sympathetic reconstruction of Kant’s view, such as the need to explain why (...) Kant prefers a theoretically inscrutable notion of freedom over alternative (compatibilist, naturalistic) notions, or the need to show how Kant can justify the belief that we are free in his metaphysically ambitious (transcendental) sense. The introductory chapter further provides a definition of key terms like “naturalism.” It concludes by giving a survey of the book’s overall structure. (shrink)

This chapter examines the first consideration supporting Kant’s stance that human freedom of will is incompatible with the causality of nature: if our will as practical reason were exclusively conditioned by natural causes, then our moral ideas and judgments would lack the lawful a priori (normative) necessity that is integral to our moral self-conception. The chapter reconstructs Kant’s arguments for this view and considers how these arguments relate to contemporary evolutionary debunking arguments. It also examines how Kant could respond to (...) various objections, such as the claim that those who assess the validity of a judgment in terms of its origin commit the so-called genetic fallacy. The chapter draws on Nietzsche’s philosophy to illustrate why genetic considerations are highly relevant for determining the validity of our moral judgments. (shrink)

The final chapter examines whether Kant’s views on freedom of imagination in his aesthetics (in the _Critique of the Power of Judgment_) fit into his systematic doctrine of freedom. Kant’s account of the free imagination seems to disrupt his canonical account of freedom as a law-governed rational faculty, since he insists that imaginative freedom is a _freedom from_ rational laws or concepts. The chapter shows that we can nevertheless regard freedom of imagination as a distinctive species of Kant’s generic notion (...) of transcendental freedom. Like freedom of will and freedom of thought, imaginative freedom requires independence from determination by foreign natural causes. And, while our aesthetic activity must not be determined by intellectual laws and concepts, it is still loosely, indeterminately governed by such laws and concepts; hence it does not collapse into an arbitrary liberty of indifference. This interpretation is congenial to various core tenets of Kant’s aesthetics, especially to his view that _aesthetic ideas_ play a central role in our creation and reception of beauty. The account of imaginative freedom developed here further explains how Kant’s aesthetics connects with his transcendental idealism, specifically with his claim that aesthetic ideas are grounded in our super-sensible faculties. The chapter concludes by suggesting that, with some leeway, we can regard our freedom of aesthetic imagination as exhibiting a special form of autonomy, the “autonomy of taste.”. (shrink)

This chapter considers the lingering worry that remained after the preceding chapter: namely, the concern that practical reason oversteps its legitimate boundaries when it posits free moral agents as the specific noumenal causes of natural events. The chapter shows that Kant is aware of this worry: he addresses theoretical attempts to “naturalize” morality, i.e., to conceive our practical reason and will as a part of the natural order of things. Such attempts are fueled by the aim to preserve the “omnipotence (...) of theoretical reason.” Kant defends the non-natural character of morality and (thereby) our knowledge of noumenal free will by arguing that those who seek to cognize the natural order of things must presuppose their own non-natural (a priori) theoretical representations and their freedom of thought. Since freedom of thought as a species of transcendental freedom is analogous to freedom of will, naturalistic cognizers cannot coherently debunk or explain away our a priori moral self-consciousness as free agents. This appeal to freedom of thought functions not as an independent proof of free will but as a theoretical defense of the practical-moral proof examined in Chapter VIII. The chapter confirms the potency of this defense strategy by showing how it applies to Nietzschean attempts to debunk our moral self-awareness. The chapter further shows how Kant’s defense of absolute human freedom avoids the worry that such freedom is incompatible with divine foreknowledge of human actions. (shrink)

A posteriori ethical intuitionism is a view according to which our ethical beliefs can be justified non-inferentially, and we acquire such justification through experience. To give credence to this view, one can refer to moral perception as an ability that allows us to perceive moral properties and thus provides perceptual justification for our ethical beliefs. In this paper, I analyze various approaches to moral perception and their possible application to the foundationalist project of a posteriori ethical intuitionism. The result of (...) the analysis is the identification of affective intuitionism as the most promising view in this context. In the remainder of the article, I discuss the challenges of cognitive penetration of moral perception. I argue that for the proponent of a posteriori ethical intuitionism, the best option is to recognize the existence of certain innate mechanisms of moral perception. Along with this, I try to show that such a solution does not necessarily undermine the validity of ethical theory and ethical development for our moral lives. Toward the end, I present possible strategies for defending a posteriori ethical intuitionism against the so-called evolutionary debunking argument, which calls into question the reliability of moral perception. (shrink)

Several philosophers have recently advanced wager-based arguments for the existence of irreducibly normative truths or against normative nihilism. Here I consider whether these wager-based arguments would cause a normative Pyrrhonian skeptic to lose her skepticism. I conclude they would not do so directly. However, if prompted to consider a different decision problem, which I call the normativity wager for skeptics, the normative Pyrrhonian skeptic would be motivated to attempt to act in accordance with any normative reasons to which she might (...) be subject. Consideration of the normativity wager will not inevitably cause the normative Pyrrhonian skeptic to lose her skepticism, but there are at least three routes by which it might: first, in considering the wager the agent may spontaneously (non-rationally) acquire a normative belief; second, considering the wager can motivate the agent to cause herself to (non-rationally) acquire a normative belief. Via either of these indirect, non-rational routes, she would cease to be a normative Pyrrhonian skeptic. Thus, consideration of the normativity wager may have value, even if it does not supply a rational argument that will dissuade skeptics. In addition, I consider the possibility of a third (rational) route by which the agent might lose her skepticism. (shrink)

The claim that skeptical theism induces moral paralysis or aporia (known as the moral paralysis objection) has been extensively discussed. In this context, Stephen Maitzen has introduced the Alien Doctor Analogy, an intriguing case that he employs to advance the moral paralysis objection. Michael Rea, however, has criticized the analogy for portraying the skeptical theist uncharitably. In this essay, I argue that Maitzen and Rea are both incorrect: the Alien Doctor Analogy is flawed indeed, but because it portrays the skeptical (...) theist too charitably. I modify the analogy to remedy this flaw. I then use the analogy to advance an original version of the moral paralysis objection. Specifically, I contend that skeptical theists, whenever they encounter apparently gratuitous evil that they could prevent, should be convinced by what I call the “God-Knows-Best Argument,” which always concludes that they should refrain from intervening. Thus, skeptical theism does induce moral paralysis. (shrink)

I argue that our general disposition to make moral judgments and our core moral intuitions are likely the product of social selection—a kind of gene–culture coevolution driven by the enforcement of collectively agreed-upon rules. Social selection could potentially track mind-independent moral truth by a process that I term realist social selection: our ancestors could have acquired moral knowledge via reason and enforced rules based on that knowledge, thereby creating selection pressures that drove the evolution of our moral psychology. Given anthropological (...) evidence that early humans designed rules with the conscious aim of preserving individual autonomy and advancing their collective interests, the theory of realist social selection appears to be attractive for moral realists. The goal of evolutionary debunking arguments should be to show not that our moral beliefs are the product of natural selection, but that realist social selection did not occur. (shrink)

It can easily look like evolution is in a better position to explain the reliability of our perceptual beliefs than the reliability of our moral beliefs. This paper takes a closer look at the issue and argues that there’s no reason—no reason which armchair philosophers could uncover—to think evolution can better explain perceptual reliability than moral reliability. It also offers a diagnosis of why it seemed otherwise. The diagnosis concerns our need to use the truth predicate as a generalizing logical (...) device in the perceptual case but not in the moral case. (shrink)

While many have argued that moral disagreement poses a challenge to moral knowledge, the precise nature of this challenge is controversial. Indeed, in the moral epistemology literature, there are many different versions of ‘the’ argument from moral disagreement to moral scepticism. This paper contributes to this vast literature on moral disagreement by arguing for two theses: 1. All (or nearly all) moral disagreement arguments share an underlying structure; and, 2. All moral disagreement arguments that satisfy this underlying structure cannot establish (...) moral scepticism because this underlying structure leads to a previously unrecognized reductio ad absurdum. In short, I argue that this reductio argument (very likely) refutes all versions of the moral disagreement to moral scepticism argument in one fell swoop. (shrink)